Showing posts with label challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label challenge. Show all posts

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Blast Into The Crazy Past: How Fostering Changes Your Life...

Welcome to memories...my memories....welcome to a Blast from my Crazy Past!

It is interesting to see how things change in your life. I wrote this a year ago, in 2015 to read to a few close friends one night. I ran across it recently and decided I would share it here. It was hard to decide whether I should have it go out on Fostering Friday or today since it isn't current events. So I went with Blast Into The Crazy Past.....

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Backyard Work...(Update: Some pics added)

I woke up this morning and thought, "Wow...it is going to be a perfect day today. Let's get started!" So we got breakfast and chores out of the way, then headed out to the backyard. I had one of the girls bring out a Bible story book and we started our day right there in God's outdoors!

While some of the girls did school indoors, one of my girls joined me outside to do her school work while I worked. Every now and then we would find something interesting to share with the others. It was alot of fun!

So what was I doing outside? Well....I have a dog. Also an outdoors cat. I would put pics up of their cute selves, but I am on my husband's computer and am not finding any pics on here....(I will add some later!) (Added!)



At any rate, my dog is part chihuahua and part "doxie". A sweetheart, but in case you don't know, "doxies" like to dig. We have never had problems with her digging under fences or anything like that. She is very happy in her backyard with her peeps. However, she does like her holes. Well, she decided that she was going to dig in my potato barrel. I was NOT amused! I decided to put some old chicken fencing up around my raised beds and barrels. I think it will work great, but it was WORK. Whew!

I also planted the rest of my veggie seedlings! I have a few flower seedlings that are not ready to plant, but other than that, I am down to the plants I will be directly sowing into the soil. I love how God made His system of providing food for us!

Then I took the weed-eater to the whole backyard. Didn't take long and that was another workout! Add in the raking of the grass and boy was I ready for lunch afterwards!

After lunch, I hung up a privacy curtain in our walkway in the backyard. This would be really hard to explain without you seeing my yard. To give you an idea, we live smack dab in town. Basically we are surrounded by school buildings, our church, businesses as well as a couple sweet neighbors! On three sides of our yard, there are bushes, a fence and a building. In our walkway, there was no privacy and people could see right into our backyard. Anyway, I now have this nice privacy curtain hung up. I really like how it looks!! In fact, it looks like it has been there all the time.

We also set up a table for our future BBQ's/picnics and doing school outdoors. After that, we set up some other things to get our living area ready for the next 6 months. When I say we live outdoors during Spring/Summer/Fall, I am not joking! We take it seriously! An extension of our living space and of course, the garden is out there.

I forgot to mention that I also ironed and put up some darkening curtains for the sliding glass door heading out to the patio. In our main living space there are sliding doors and a HUGE picture window that need help in the summer to keep the heat outdoors where it belongs. These curtains help keep it cool in the house, not to mention that they are one of my favorite colors! :)

Tonight, I am hoping to get our awning set up and possibly my clothes line!!! Can't wait!!! I will try and take some pics tonight and add them to this post so you can see what I am talking about and maybe it will make more sense! Pictures always help me!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Tutorial: How to Make Frozen Burritos

So if you have been reading my blog for long, you know that I am trying to completely go back to the basics and cook/bake everything from scratch. As a result, you don't have a whole lot of "fast" foods for when you are in a hurry. So now I am working on making some things that are fast to have in the freezer for those times.

This first one is frozen burritos for on the go! So here is my pictorial tutorial (say that ten times fast!):



To start, you need tortilla shells, refried beans mixture or whatever for your filling and cheese. 
Now, we usually make our own tortilla shells from scratch. But wouldn't you know it, we were out! So I picked up some that were on sale. For our filling, I used refried beans, rice and olives.
These are small shells, so I used my small cookie scoop to put the beans on.


Two scoops...

 Then some cheese....


 Fold one...
Fold two...

 Fold three...

 Fold four...
Place on cookie sheet...

 Rereat above steps till you have a full cookie sheet...
 Place in the freezer for about 20 minutes...till they are firm.

When they come out, they should hold their form like this...

Somehow I deleted my last pic, but what I did was then place the 20 burritos in two freezer bags. Wrote the contents and the date and popped them in the freezer to be used later!! 

When you are ready to eat them, take out as many as you need, put them in the microwave or toaster oven and Enjoy!!!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Today: Purging the Shed

We have a shed on our property that we are able to store things in. It has been really handy and I have enjoyed it up till the last two years:
A couple years ago we stored some things for someone. We were only supposed to be storing for a couple months. Those couple months turned into a couple years. Then they moved and didn't want the stuff. In the meantime, we had no way to even get to our stuff because their stuff was in the way. It resulted in us haphazardly moving things around here and there till we could get to what we wanted. Over the past few months I have been able to get in for a hour or so at a time. I would tidy and give away a few things, but it just hardly made a dent. 
So....guess what? This afternoon while the sun was out, we dug into that storage shed. It took almost 4 hours, but we got it done! It is completely organized, cleaned out and best of all I was able to give away a TON of stuff including:

  • A baby bouncer. (Uh...Lil Mr is three years old.)
  • A Stroller. (Repeat above...)
  • A dining room table. Not the greatest condition, but works.
  • 7,000,000 Reader's Digest Books.
  • Two lawn chairs.
  • A huge box full of misc. small things.
  • A baby bassinet. (Was going to keep this for my girls....but decided not to.)
  • Several bags of clothing and jackets. (I think this were supposed to go to Goodwill some time ago and got side tracked...)
  • Two old youth desks. The old kind where the chair is attached to the desk. I wanted to keep them so bad, but just no room in our house.
  • A tall tin Nutcracker. (Decided our house isn't cut out for him...)
  • A vanity with mirror.
And so much more! I mean, we can actually get to the freezer now. The bikes can be parked and not stacked. It's a miracle! 

The downside would be that I am completely worn out now and contemplating a early bed time!

Have a great day!

Friday, March 25, 2011

TODAY: Planting Starters, Pizza Dough, a Challenge and so much more...!

We had so much fun this afternoon that I HAVE to share, complete with pictures. So enjoy!


So I admit, when we get the "bug", we get the bug. We haven't had a garden for two years for reasons out of our control. This year, we were so antsy that we decided to start our plants indoors!


Spooning the soil into containers...


Some of the plants, ironically, none of this are the ones we started. But I wasn't in charge of the camera the whole time! LOL



Ahhh....some cantaloupe and bell peppers...I can taste them already!





Jalapenos and small sweet pumpkins. 
(This variety is great for pie and canning.

I had lots of help...



Fancy watering pot, eh?


My Kindergartener showing off her printing skills! Not bad!



My First Grader helps as well...





First person to tell me what kind of seeds these are will get some in the mail! Put your guess below!


My hubby fixed up this lovely spot for my seedlings...

"I'm gonna watch them grow...!"


My wonderful hubby made pizzas with home-made dough for dinner!!



Yum, yum! This one is ours, can't wait to taste it!

And THAT was our afternoon in a nutshell of pictures!