A Great Hiking Day...

Last night it rained for the first time in AGES and we all woke up this morning with a burning desire to go on a hike. So we headed out to one of our favorite stomping grounds. Here are some pics from the day:

Ouch, there's a rock in my shoe!

Weird plant we found...

Pine-cone, anyone?

Our youngest girl was our Emergency Corpsman...er, woman.

Our trusty guards... 

Beautiful Ranch across the valley.

I am SO in love with this man!

Love that my hubby is such a great daddy!

Little House- Day Ten Making Molasses Candy

We saved our activity till daddy got home last night to help us. It's a good thing we did, as it took a lot of muscle work to get our candy to the right temperature. Daddy's muscles came in handy!

                         Here are the directions:

First, you have your husband get all his frustrations out on a bag of ice:

Then put ice in a container and set in freezer to chill out....

Next, mix 1 cup molasses and 1 cup brown sugar in pot....

(We doubled the recipe!)

Mix in pot and boil till the candy reached the "hard crack" stage on a candy thermometer or until a drop of the mixture dropped into cold water forms a hard ball and cracks. The latter is my preferred method as that is how I was raised! (It takes about 30 minutes to reach that stage.)

This will take a lot of muscle and elbow work, so be sure and include the kiddos!

Remove the syrup from the heat. BE CAREFUL!

Dribble a spoonful of syrup onto the snow...or ice... and make all kinds of designs!

And....the finished product. old-fashioned molasses candy!

NOTE: You may have noticed that I am not blogging our adventures every day. That is because some days, all we do is a small craft or simply just read a chapter and have no activity or only work on our time-line. So while I usually take pictures every day, I am not posting everything!

Back To Piano Lessons!

After taking a break for financial reasons, we are back to our favorite piano teacher, Miss Amy! Mac and George are back taking lessons. Our younger two will probably wait another year or so before heading back.

Little House- Day Three and Four- MAKING BUTTER!

We learned all about churning butter! Due to unforeseen circumstances, we were not able to churn butter the day we read about it, but we had fun none-the-less!

We also received two books in the mail, My Little House Crafts Book and The Prairie Girl's Guide to Life. Both are books I highly recommend! 

As far as the curriculum I have put together, I have already made a few minor changes. Mistakes I made or crafts/lessons I wanted to add in. So I am making pencil marks in there so that I can make the necessary changes to my Master Copy on the computer.


Below are some pictures of our crafts and churning butter from the last couple days!

Butterchurn Booklet

Attic Treasure Accordion Book

Building a chimney...

Sterilized Cooking Utensils...

Why are we grating a carrot? We are preparing to dye our butter just like LHOP! However, due to our somewhat testy grater, I chose to use the Magic Bullet instead...

Time to scald some milk...

Then add the shredded carrot...

Mix...

Scald...

After scalding our carrot-milk, we strain the carrot pieces out...

Add the carrot-milk to the jar...

Add three cups of cold full cream...

What I really wanted to use to churn our milk was our butter churn that was my great-grandparents, but there is a crack in the base of the jar that someone put it in years before we got it...

So....we attempted to do it using a mason jar:

That was taking MORE time than it was worth....so we switched to modern appliances:

Little butter buds starting to appear!

WE HAVE BUTTER!!!!

Draining the butter milk off...

Our yummy buttermilk!

The finished product!

Fresh butter and buttermilk mean that we need to make buttermilk biscuits!

You can find the recipe I used for the biscuits here: Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

And fresh butter and buttermilk biscuits mean......a tea party!

Hope you enjoyed pictures of  our buttery day like we did!

Little House- Day Two

"Standing on end in the yard was a tall length cut from the trunk of a big hollow tree. Pa had driven nails inside as far as he could reach from each end. Then he stood it up, put a little roof over the top, and cut a little door on one side near the bottom. On the piece that he cut out he fastened leather hinges; then he fitted it into place, and that was the little door, with the bark still on it.............The hams and the shoulders were put in brine, for they would be smoked, like the venison, in the hollow log."   LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS, CHAPTER ONE 

A lot of people smoke their meat for a hobby, for the taste etc...but can you imagine that being one of the main ways to keep your food for all of winter? When we read the whole outline of what they did to preserve every LITTLE bit of the pig, the amount of work amazed us! They used every part of the animal down to the tail that they roasted for a fun treat. This wasn't your typical "Oh, someone gave us some ham, let's put it in the smoker this afternoon.", it was an all day or two affair to get it all preserved before going bad.

For our craft today, the girls colored a tree trunk smokehouse, added pine chips and a little door to complete it. We wanted to put some Hickory Smoke drops on it, but we were all out. Next time we buy it, we will put a couple drops on. 

Down below, you will see some pictures from the morning:

Adding the glue...

The Smokehouse Activity.

Finished product!

Some of daddy's smoker chips!

Stapling in the door to our smokehouse...

Proud of their work...

One of the illustrations by Garth Williams of the smokehouse.

Hope you enjoyed today's installment of Little House in the Big Woods. Tomorrow we will have something really fun, so be sure and check back tomorrow evening!