4 Sweet Sisters

I'm participating in Frugal Friday over at Life as Mom but I always have other things to share. Spices were the topic of discussion over there today. I used to buy in bulk from Frontier but they are a bit pricey for me. So I've switched. Mountain Rose Herb has lots and lots of organic/non irradiated spices for about half of what the other site charges. I also use Costco and I buy the 2, one pound blocks of yeast that work really well. Fresh spices are always wonderful. Certain times of the year my chickadees live on pesto sauce and I try to freeze enough for future pizzas. Yummy! I grow dill for dips and cooking, basil, sage, and garlic. I know, garlic in FL? That's what I've been thinking, but the "books" all say it can be done. For 2 years I've planted garlic and onions. My onions grow, but don't bulb. Still haven't figured that one out and they are the bulbing variety. Garlic, I put it in the ground and it shrivels up...So I decided it must be...

My life has felt like a bit of a mess lately. I have many (many,many) excuses, but in fact it boils down to me, me, me. Changing everything up and putting it on a summer schedule seems to be a lot to handle for an eat the same breakfast everyday kind of girl. When I was a much younger woman say 19-23. I thought change was extremely hard. I learned to deal with it, even learned to embrace it. I seemed to easily let the Lord handle it then... Once I started having chickadees change was almost at a constant and I really thought I, I, I had it licked. Then the first chickadee started to homeschool and not realizing that she had a visual disability (regular eye exams didn't pick it up) we proceeded to try every known spelling, phonics and math program for the several years. Our daily home life was also always changing, between new babies, floods, remodels, moves and just day to day life..... All of the sudden change was killing me. BUT it didn't. The one constant that I see...

I wanted to wait and share this as Frugal Friday post because so many seemed interested in it last week. Although I'm not quite sure that blueberries are the most frugal of fruits to pick! Here on the Gulf Coast you - pick prices range from $3 to $12 a pound. You'll need lots of berries for jam and freezing. Well, at least we seem to. Here's Farm Girl getting ready to sample a berry. Here's how a commercial patch is done. The blueberries are grown large water barrels of mulch. 24 pounds of berries later! Once home, I place all the blueberries in a deep cold water sink bath. Then I take them out by cups full to rinse. After that I line the counters with old bath towels and spread the berries out to dry. I do this with strawberries also. I also roll them around a bit to make sure they are nice and dry. This doesn't take long. Watch out for berry stealer's ! It's oh so tempting to eat and eat! At this point I bag up cup fulls for freezing. I did 24 cups, eno...

It's been raining here! It feels like spring again. I actually turned off the air. I know I'll be turning back on soon but to feel cool 60 degree weather at night! Ahhhhhhhh ;) Since it's raining, Urban Girl is feeling quite sorry for our Silkies. She said they were so wet and needed her help. So later I find out that she has enlisted her younger sisters to help. She set up a drying station on our front porch and used her hair dryer to dry the chickens! I heard they loved it and were very relaxed. 4 Sweet Sistes Chicken Spa! They actually looked quite nice and fluffy when I took a look later. ************************************ Yesterday, while I was looking at all of the coupons the Little Chef came to me and needed scissors to help clip. So I of course took out the ones that I needed and let her have them. Superman was going through her pile of coupons and found a $5 off of a bottle of Whiskey. Anyone else clip that one out? In these two...

jalapenos ... o how i love thee... deep, dark green with a crispy crunch fragrance so rare that a grown woman cries oil so intense that it burns at the touch spice so intense that the tongue doth water jalapenos ! jalapenos !! Why do I suffer? love....... Okay, so I was using the term "love" loosely here. On Saturday we went blueberry picking and processed 24 pounds of berries!!! We also went to my favorite veggie drive thru . I got cantaloupes for 50 cents, a HUGE watermelon, 25 pounds of tomatoes and 31 pounds of jalapenos! (I split the peppers with another fanatic. Actually she is worse than me!) Last night I was making up some poppers for dinner. (I wear protective gloves when deseeding .) Well wouldn't you know it... jalapenos juice spurted up and hit me in the eye! Not good...really not good :( I spent the next 10 minutes doing a cold water eye flush. Need I say more. Superman then brought up a pair of protective eye gear. What I have to do for my tasty treats! He...

Kim in TN wanted to know what a good starter book on canning might be. I would recommend any of the Ball Jar canning books. My copy is from 1959 and works just fine. When I'm looking for a new recipe I usually Google it. Look at a bunch of them, figure out what ingredients my family will like and what they won't and go from there. Especially true of pickling recipes! For simple canning (that's what I do- anything that can be water bathed ) I follow the Sure Jell or Ball jam recipe. I prefer the Sure Jell Low Sugar, but I've not been able to get it so i use my same Sure Jell recipe, but substitute the Ball Pectin. Most jam takes about 8 cups of sugar! My recipe takes 4. You can really taste the fruit and it really seems sweet! If your following Weight Watchers it's 1 point for 2 tablespoons! (Nice when your having toast in the morning.) Other simple canning is salsa, and fruits where you use a simple syrup, water or fruit juice as the liquid to pack the fruit in. T...

I'm not feeling to "frugal " this Friday , but I did want to let you know about the online Make it Lovely Conference from the Girlhood Home Companion. My older chicks have been having a nice time talking with other girls about God's grace, organic gardening, and (today) starting your own business. Very neat! You can get more info here at Remembrance Press with Jill Novak . As promised I said I would post a picture or two of yesterdays work. We made 19 quarts of pears and a 2 1/2 quarts (6 pints) of pear butter. This apx 36 pounds of pears! Here's the cost breakdown. I don't count jars because I reuse them from year to year. There was a $3 off of Kerr and Ball jars in the paper a couple of weeks back. So I did invest in some new wide mouth jars. Great for fruits and pickles. Really just about anything, although I do like salsa made in the smaller mouthed jars.( It's easier to pour. ) Back to the break down: 36# Organic pears $29.80 about 83 cents per po...

At last! Yes, it is raining here in our little part of the world. Our neighborhood has been without for apx 2 months. We had nothing to wash all that nasty pollen away! But tonight, as we sat in church it came down. I wanted to run outside to play and dance! It's still raining...thank you Lord. I didn't realize how much I take those little droplets of refreshment for granted, until they were gone for so long... So it's been a couple of days. I thought I show you a bit of what we have been up too! Nothing like a little birdie whistling in a pie. School Girl whipped this tasty apple pie up last night! Gotta love homemade apple filing, so nice to have it on the shelf for whenever. Here's the older two chickadees dismantling our washer and dryer........ Homeschooling at it's finest. School Girl has been itching to get mechanical. They put them all back together and they work great! ;) I'll post about my new best friends at a later dat...

Gifts can mean so many different things to different people. Some think of the fruits of the Spirit or the specific gifts that the Lord gives to each one of us that makes us uniquely different. Other times we may think of monetary gifts, useful gifts, impractical, but oh so fun gifts and even crazy outlandish gifts. Like that crazy claw that massaged your scalp! I think it was called the Octopus. Some of my favorite gifts are the unexpected from children. They want to give with all of their hearts and they usually don't have the means to buy you what they want to give. That can be a really good thing! My little Chef was very cute this Mother's Day and so very excited about the day. She had a count down going on like it was her Birthday or Christmas. Anyway, yesterday she skipped into my room with a card she picked out for me! The day before we had been shopping everywhere for a new washer and dryer (thank you rainy day fund). While we were out she found something that capture...

Welcome to another Frugal Friday! This is Urban Girl's idea of helping me out with my head cold... cute...very cute. Now watch, someone will put a patent on it! Is it more frugal to use toilet paper or tissues? Here's my frugal tip for the week. Please excuse my photos...I'm sick. I really like glass covered dishes and even decanters, but I really didn't have a purpose for them until a couple of years ago. Now I use them in our master bath and maybe when the chickadees are quite a bit older I'll let them use them. This one is for baking soda (teeth and hair). For teeth I mix it with a bit of tooth paste. See how pretty it looks. The others are for sea salt and plaque rinse (which looks pretty gross in this picture). Here are some old mirror trays that Superman hung on the wall over the tub and just below is another glass dish being re purposed for tub items. It used to hold salt until I broke the lid. So my Bocia gav...

Having a garage sale is not my favorite thing, but it actually went well. We did No planning, other than having the stuff pulled from all corners of our home the week before. I even forgot to make sure I had enough singles and change on hand, but that didn't effect it one bit. One tip- we did have it on the 1st weekend of the month. A friend had told me that's the best time to have one. Also we don't have any thru traffic so you would think paying for an add would help? NO, it doesn't seem to matter in our case. A good sale here is $75 or so. It almost makes it not worth having. So we have a secret weapon.... Our Chickadees! They make crazy, colorful signs and Superman puts them up everywhere. Then the Chickadees stand down at the end of our block wearing lampshades and other crazy attire to bring the customers in. (another reasons to have lots of children-heehee) In the end we got rid of a lot of stuff, doubled our usual take, donated to our church sale, stocked some o...