4 Sweet Sisters

Focacia (sp?) Have you ever wanted to make your own fresh bread? My Girlies just adore it and it makes the most wonderful sandwiches. Well on Thursday night, July 22nd we will be discussing the types of grains, grinders, mixers, and bread machines. Then will dive into making our own loaves of sandwich bread by hand. Come join me. Space is limited to 10 ladies. Cost of the class is $10. Your payment... will reserve your spot! I will send out welcome emails to all those participating once I receive your confirmation. Hope to see you there! Banana Chocolate Chip julie PS. Couldn't find a picture of our sandwich bread. There here somewhere.

So I was over at Raising Homemakers this morning. I get reminders from their site via face book . Anyhow, I 'm really enjoying the site because sometimes I get bogged down in the midst of it all. I even feel at times I'm in a battle, unfortunately a battle of wills. Much of it is of my own making. Today the discussion revolved around keeping a household. A huge item jumped out at me... Yikes! Dare I come clean... here goes..... I don't follow through enough with my girls. Ugh!!! Those of you who know me know this. I've been trying to keep it from myself and blame it all on them. Bad mom, I know. Now believe me I'm not being to hard on myself. We all (I hope I'm not the only one) have things come up in life that throw us off track. I unfortunately don't always get back on! One of my summer "head" goals (meaning I didn't write it down in stone) was to get on top of it with my girlies and stay there. I'm not talking about being mean. I...

Just a quick post on Man Food. Superman's schedule has change where he can no longer be home for lunch. Now I need to make sure he gets fed! He's the type of guy who forgets to eat. (I wish it were me.) Anyway it's not in the budget for him to eat out and truthfully neither he or I would want him to. So what to do. After two days of him eating oatmeal and cereal for lunch it finally redawned on me! Yes, I've done this before, but forgotten. So without further typing.... Homemade hotpockets. I made a base mixture of grass fed ground beef and dear meat. 2 to 1. Then I added 5 bags of chopped scallions (kitchen basket from produce), 2 or so cups of chopped green pepper, chopped head of garlic , salt and pepper. Cooked it throughly iwith a glug of olive oil. While this was going on I made up a recipe for 6 loaves of bread dough. I used soft white wheat because I had surplus from filing buckets. At this point dough is rising and meat mixture is cooling. I seperated the mix...

We officially ended our 2 weeks of eating out of our pantry. We did it with no problem at all. We could easily do a month, but I really don't want to deplete supplies I keep on hand. If we had gone a month I would have had to buy some milk and cheese. So that being said, we didn't spend any moola on food or other household supplies. We even had fresh produce (i thought i would have to buy) from our garden! Today's topic (if you haven't guessed) is Pantries . Do you have one? Do you want one? Why have one? I think we'll start with the why have it: Plan meals in advance or on the fly. When prices are high you can shop your pantry for deals you've already snagged. Eases your burden in a financial crisis or lean times. Prepared in case of short or long term emergency. This is a short list( it could be much longer). The reason why we keep our pantry? All of the above and I grew up seeing my Mom and Grandmother do it. It makes great sense for any budget conscious ...

Has anyone else had a Frugal Failure out there? Well, we sure did! Despite all my best efforts and preplanning I still went over budget for the holiday season. Hmmmmmmmm .( Truthfully, I think we do every year, but we take it out of short term savings and pretend it never happened. ) Well not this year! Nope. We are going to buckle down and eat from our Pantry. The one that I, the Chickadees and Superman have created this past year. I've been meaning to post about this project and have even started posts and then things have come up that needed more attention. Well now is the time! Aren't you excited? I'm always up for a challenge. I thrive on them (most of the time). My goal is to eat out of our pantry, freezer and grain storage for at least two weeks. I do have moo la for produce and milk. I think the hardest part will be skipping the BOGO's and seeing things get depleted ... I like this little safety net we've created, but I think we should see it in u...

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've: Made tea! -Planted pumpkins -weeded and planted calendula -drained (into the garden) & clean out rain barrel -exercised the chickens -found, uploaded, and ordered Fl notebook photos -have girls cleaning school room -started laundry -woke at 6:30 am -quiet time (i think i need more) Whew! Here's what I did on Saturday! Yup. I canned my own apple pie filling. Go here to 4 Reluctant Entertainers. I never would have tried this if she hadn't made it look so good! It was pretty simple and we had a huge surplus of apples. I would do a couple of things differently next time. 1. Add a bit more sugar 2. Not fill my cans so full! No we can make apple pie any old time w/o as much work. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. julie

Things I like to get back or accomplish this week. - Get up at 6:30 - Writing/Scripture - Bake Bread - Clean my bathroom (yikes!!! :0) - Finish Florida notebooks - Hair cut - Clean out School Room (I'm CONSTANTLY doing this) - De clutter craft room -Laundry -Get ready for our anniversary! -Organize portfolios and school work for storage -Continue food plan -Plus all the other stuff that comes and I'm forgetting! Do you have anything big planned this week? julie

As you can probably tell from previous post I'm not a very eloquent person or a good writer for that matter. Which leads me straight into today's topic..... Perfectionism. Oooo we really hate/love that word don't we! I do. I still get caught up in it's ugly web. Perfect dieting (weight control), perfect marriage, perfect homeschool children, perfect school program to name a few. Yikes, that's only a few. The thing I've (pretty) much learned over the past 16 years of marriage and motherhood is that my Dad isn't looking for perfection from me. He's already got that and more! He wants me to be good, maybe even superb in many areas of life and to come to him whether I'm good or bad at it. So this leads me to homemaking, child rearing, schooling, and husband loving. Way back when my first daughter was just a tiny babe I would purpose to sit down in the afternoons and read a couple of scriptures and write in my prayer journal ( not for long or I would ...

Take heart dear ones.... I just wanted to open a bit of discussion. Why do we do what we do? Many of us didn't chose to stay home and raise a family. A number of us thought we would have it all, including that big corner office in the city. Or we would be traveling all over this big, beautiful world! But for one reason or another we have been called to home life (at least most of us reading-i think). Some have come kicking and screaming, while others of us never wanted to leave and came running back! I'm one who never wanted to leave, but thought she had to... Does that make any sense? I graduated High School with a full scholarship to Junior College started but withdrew mid semester my first term. Why? I had no clue of what I wanted to do other than be a Mom and that seemed to be just a side job (not what you were "supposed" to dedicate yourself to). I started working at a bank and tried moving out on my own. I accepted Jesus as my Savior during this time and began ...