Cookie Cheer Up!

Well, we have a snow blower that works but unfortunately I don't have a snow blow operator!

Yesterday after plowing the drive and my wonderful path to the barn, Farmer John started to complain about his wrist hurting. He was in so much pain before work this morning I told him to go get it checked out.

Diagnosis... Tendonitis! Yah... so no nice plowed path to the barn.  We aren't quite ready to give that responsibility to our son with anything more than a shovel at this point in time.

Had another surprise diagnosis today... strep throat for my nine year old!  Keep the good times coming!

So what can you do when it is cold, snowy and you have "patients" to keep happy?  Make Christmas cookies!

Who doesn't feel better after a frosted Christmas sugar cookie? 

Usually we have a traditional recipe we follow but I found a new recipe that includes sour cream in it and it seemed like a good day to give it a try.

We didn't mess with Christmas shapes today since it was just a "test" run.  We stuck with easy-peasy circles.  Plain white frosting and simple sprinkles.

The verdict... Yum! I think this may be my new traditional recipe!  I will definitely need to make lots so that my son has fuel to snow shovel my path to the barn.

You can find the recipe for  Cut-Out Sour Cream Cookies and frosting here!

They certainly boosted spirits at Creek Cottage Homestead.  Happy baking, frosting and eating!!

God's Plan For Us

Proverbs 31:12

 

She brings him (her husband) good, not harm, all the days of her life.

God's Plan For Us

Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.

Proverbs 31:11

Women, this is what we need to be working towards.  I can honestly say that I don't meet these standards right now but the Bible says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So this is obtainable by the doing of the Lord and not myself.  My job is to submit to His will and be obedient.

Confidence - full trust

Value- worth, merit, usefulness (notice it isn't necessarily a materialist notion of value)

Happenings Around The Homestead...

This is the first year we have ever grown cabbage.  I love fresh from the garden cabbage but do not enjoy it cooked or fermented.  However, my husband loves sauerkraut so we are experimenting with our first ever batch.  It's sitting on the counter as we speak.  We don't have a crock so we are using (re-using) a Costco pickle jar covered with an old t-shirt rag.  It's high tech, let me tell you.  I may (or may not) try some when it's done.  I know, I know, kraut is supposed to be really good for you.

We have also yet to have a frost in my area so the tomatoes are still coming on strong.  The kids are getting good at prepping the tomatoes for canning.  (Apples too.)  When they start to complain, I simply say, "You like to eat, don't you?"

This is a pic of the bag City Girl whipped up in about 15 minutes.  She wanted a certain size and everything we had was either too big or too small so she went down to our "craft" room and created what she needed.  The body of the bag is a bottom leg of a pair of jeans she had made into cut-offs earlier this year.  She merely had to sew one end shut.  For the handle she made a braided rope made from old t-shirts and sewed it on.  We had some iron-on decals laying around and she embellished the bag with those. (The decals were marketed for the back of jean pockets... who wants their daughter wearing kissy lips on her backside? This is a much more tasteful application.)

There are so many possibilities for this bag.  It is really only limited by your imagination.  It is a quick, easy, and cheap project.  Goodwill stores are great sources of jeans and t-shirts!

What have you all been up to?

God's Plan For Us!

A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.

 

Proverbs 31:10

 

Wife:  A woman married to a man

 

Noble: Exalted moral excellence

 

Character: Moral quality or integrity

 

Moral: Ethics or standards

Ruby: One of the rarest, most precious of gemstones

Are women these days striving to be a wife of noble character or are we merely rubble?

Family Time & The Family Economy

With our new school schedule we have added an evening "family time".  Our first family time together last week was met with mixed reviews.  Farmer John wanted to get everyone involved with his future business, Bamboo On The Fly (tentative name), and so we all tumbled out to the garage to work on his current Bamboo Fly Fishing Rod.  I must admit only John and our two littlest (Reagan and Taylor) were overly excited to do this.  Later I realized that I had to confess sin because I was less than championing my husband's vision at the time. (Which is really silly because I very much want him to leave his "corporate" job for a home-based, family biz.)

Yes, we put a blowtorch in the hands of our 13 year-old son!

 

 And our 15 year-old daughter

 Not our 4 year-old- she was content to make up her own games with balls and badmitton birdies!

 

Here I am with the torch.  The pieces of bamboo for the rod are slid into the copper pipe and then the pipe is heated with the torch.  This dries the bamboo.  You could see the steam being released at the tube ends.

 

 

As you can see the garage is highly unkempt.  Farmer John is on vacation this week and so one of our projects (practical arts for school) will be cleaning the garage.  By mid-October we'll be getting heavy frosts/freezes and the cars will need to be parked inside overnight. (Farmer John does not want to scrape ice at 3:30 in the morning!)

 

Leave me a comment if you are interested in a Handcrafted Bamboo Fly Rod!

 

If you are wondering about family economies check out Kevin Swanson's Generations Radio show (search the archived shows for "family economies) and Herrick Kimball over at The Deliberate Agrarian writes frequently on this topic too!

 

Too Many Happenings Around The Homestead!

Sometimes I don't post because nothing particularly exciting is going on.  Other times like, these past few days, I don't post because there is too much going on.  My husband rotated to a new position at work, we started a school, we started a new schedule, and I've been canning tomatoes.

My husband has moved to receiving manager instead of administration manager. That means instead of closing the warehouse and getting home around 11:00pm, he opens the warehouse and goes in at 4:00am.  This also means that he gets up at 3:00am.  Guess what time I get to get up at?  Yep... 3:00am. Yeah!

I get up at that time to make John's coffee, breakfast and pack him a lunch.  Also, if I can stay awake, that gives me time to have a personal quiet time (that really is quiet), computer time, writing time, time to get ready for the day, time to clean and time to make breakfast for the kids before they get up and start their days.  It all looks really good on paper but 3:00am is really early.

The kids get up at 8:00 and eat, get ready for the day, do their morning chores and are ready to start school by 9:30. The school day keeps me busy rotating between children and their subject needs. Sometimes I am free if they don't need a lot of help.  Other times I have very little free time.  School is done by 4:00 and I get a few minutes to breathe before dinner prep, dinner, family time and bed.  It is a very full day but the schedule allows us to keep on task. There are days (like tomorrow- my daughter's birthday) that we throw out the schedule all together and just enjoy the day.  Also we had to toss the schedule yesterday because we have tomatoes to can.  But that is okay.  My goal is to be productive so schedule or no as long as what needs to get done, gets done it is a good day.

How do you do all you need to?

Surprise, Surprise!

 

City Daughter

Today was a day of pleasant surprises for me:

1. Six people to the dentist with not a one cavity! City daughter does need her wisdom teeth pulled though.

2. I was researching the YA market (Young Adult Books) and found out that the Christian publishing industry is really latching on to YA.  Yeah!  I'm not sure if I want to go Christian or Mainstream when I'm done with The Follower but it is good to know I have more options.

3. My tomatoes are really starting to ripen.  I may have enough ripe to start canning!

4. I remembered I had a Costco package of pork chops in the freezer.  Meat for dinner!

5. Farmer John made it home from Detroit meetings in time to eat dinner with us.

6. City daughter baked my favorite cookies for dessert... chocolate chip!

What a really good day!  Simple things make me happy :)

Losing it Mondays!

200 lbs must go!

Hmmm... I have some fat showing too! I'd like to drop 20.

This is the start of my husband's journey to health.  He just entered a weight loss contest at work and weighed in today at 360 lbs. His ideal weight is in the 160's.  That is 200 lbs. to lose folks.  He has been able to lose weight before successfully, however some injuries happened that made working out too painful and he gained it all back.

With the start of this contest and a new shift beginning at work it is ideal for us to begin working out again. And I do mean us... the entire family.  We do it together from John on down to Taylor. I think we will start with walking.  It shouldn't be too hard on the joints and we'll take it slow and build up.  By the time winter comes round we should be in shape enough to start our work out videos and weight training. (This will be on top of any homestead work like chopping and stacking wood.)

We don't have too much of a change diet wise.  We've already cut out most junk food and eating out and I buy mostly whole foods. (I confess to having artificially colored corn on hand for children who immediately want food when they get up.)  We will need to increase our vege intake and watch portion sizes.  One thing John has to monitor on his own is sampling the Costco samples and not being tempted by the food court at work.  The frozen yogurt isn't too bad but calories add up.

I just want to state right now, we will not stop eating eggs from our free-ranging chickens or grass-fed meat, cream and butter.  These things are healthy for you!  I will not buy low-fat anything or diet anything- it's not natural people.  I will cook from scratch the things we like and take a meat on the side approach.  I will practice and perfect catching wild yeast at home and turning it into healthy bread. I also want to research "cleanses"- not the kind bought through a program or a store but made from scratch at home.

I think our biggest challenge is just getting moving and finding more energy. And of course for me... I keep hoping to catch a joy of cooking.  I love to bake and will make loaf after loaf of bread to perfect it but there is something about cooking that just doesn't do it for me.  But I really do need to transform into a chef.  That is unless some one knows Bobby Flay and he wants to just come live with us. We've got a great spot for him in the basement... as long as we aren't working out.

So join us every Monday and see how and what we are doing to make ourselves healthier.  I'll want to know what you are doing too!

Mrs. Q Thinks She Is People!

Mrs.Q wanting to be on the inside.

 

Today was another hot day.  When we weren't down by the creek we were hanging in the back yard under the trees and who was hanging out with us... Mrs. Q.  My dad commented that he had never known a chicken that liked to hang out by itself.  That is when it dawned on me that she wasn't hanging out by herself.  She was hanging out with us.  We are her new flock.  She thinks she's people!

 

The other day when we were gone but my parents were in their trailer they said she stood at the slider door off the deck and cackled and clucked for us.  Today when I was inside for a moment she followed me right up to the door and thought she was coming in.  She squawked with indignation when I didn't let her follow.    She also hangs out under the picnic table when we eat outside.  We don't have a family dog... we have a family chicken!

Martha making Mrs. Q. Jealous.

 

 Martha isn't sure what to make of Mrs. Q and I'm sure Mrs. Q wonders why Martha is on the side of the door she wants to be on.  But here's a hint... Martha uses a litter box and I'm not buying chicken diapers.

Making rope and keeping cool.

 

 When we weren't hanging with the "Q" we were down at the creek.  Farmer John doesn't like to just sit around and he doesn't like to read or write like I do so he gathered a bunch of dried grass along the bank and wove rope.  Very ingenious! Last year, after a shoulder surgery, he used his downtime during recovery to make himself a "straw" hat out of dried daylily leaves.  We'd sell them but it took a lot of time to make and I don't think most people would pay $100+ for a daylily hat.

$100 or more for a handmade hat?

Ingenious Chicken Feeding Contraption

 

Earlier in the day he finished setting up our teenage chicks' "Protein From Thin Air" bucket.  There is a smaller bucket inside the larger.  Inside the small lidded bucket are the entrails from butchering our roosters.  We allowed flies to land in there and lay their eggs.  The eggs will hatch and the maggots will fall out of both buckets. (Courtesy of the holes drilled in each bucket.) Then the chickens can feast.  The smell is masked by grass clippings stuffed in the bucket to keep predators away. You can read about the process in depth in Harvey Ussery's book The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.

Snowball the teenage rooster

 

Clearly the maggots aren't dropping yet or Snowball wouldn't be escaping his enclosure and free ranging in my garden!  He is so funny to watch.  He'll fly to the top of the chicken tractor and crow to let all the ladies know he's in charge!  Only his crow isn't quite developed yet.  My mom thought she was hearing a cat in the morning.  She figured out today it was snowball "crowing".  Keep at it little guy!

Meet Farmer John!

Meet my wonderful husband, John.  He is the CEO of the Lewis family and a great man.  He works as a manager for Costco by day and is farmer, fisherman, daddy, carpenter, artisan, husband and John-of-all-trades the rest of the time.  We will have been married 20 years this October! He is equally at home with a chain saw as with a sewing machine. He's a handy cook (much more cheffy than me.) and chief tickle monster! God has blessed me well! There isn't much he can't do.  (He can't write poetry.)

 He makes incredible walking sticks from branches found laying around.

 A little carving, sanding, polishing, varnish and string...

 He has just recently built his first bamboo fly-fishing rod and hopes to make it into a business.

He whipped out this handy little bamboo scooper from some extra bamboo he had in the scrap pile. We use it to fill the chicken feeders.

What can I say?  How can I go wrong with a man who like to relax by watching the chickens!

The Lewis Men

Yes, we have a t.v.  And yes we are currently subscribed to cable. (That's up for possible change.)  So what happens when the History Channel reruns season two of Top Shot, in order, all at once?  The men sit glued to it and then have to go recreate it.  Silly Boys.

They're doing this... when  perhaps...

  we should have been working on this!

And then they leave their gear out on my white comforter and heirloom quilts!  Boys!

Family Exercise

Bikes, bikes and more bikes (and a trailer for the little girls)

Reagan and Taylor: along for the ride

Our family has gotten on the "health" band wagon. My husband got motivated to loose the extra weight he's been carrying around for years (89 lb loss so far) and to do that we've changed eating habits and added daily exercise to our routine.

Spring has been fun. Now that John and I have gotten bikes we go for a daily ride in the country. It burns calories and is wonderfully relaxing at the same time. I look forward to it and the kids really enjoy it too. We also plan on adding hiking to our exercise program and of course when Lake Michigan warms up- swimming.

The added bonus of this new lifestyle has been all the extra energy we have to work on homesteading projects. We are expanding our garden (leading to more canning, cooking and maybe a little extra to sell), built a top bar beehive to start working on keeping bees (which will lead to our own honey, beeswax, and candlemaking), built a greenhouse (great for seed starting and later seed saving), and the DH plans on building our own picnic table so we are able to say bye,bye to the indoors for the spring/summer and spend more time outside. Time to disconnect from the T.V. (Except for Biggest Loser- of course. Gotta keep the weight loss motivation going.)

I'm a killer!

A dandelion killer.

The DH asked the the kids and I to pick all the dandelions in the yard in an effort to stop their seeds spreading and erradicate the herb from our yard. Notice I said herb, not weed. I am personally pro-life when it comes to dandelions. They are a pretty and useful flower. I don't understand the suburban man's lawn fixation. Why must you only have one type of grass growing in your lawn and why in the world would you want to spread poison all over it to stop useful herbs from growing. Freedom for herbs!

Alas my DH is one of those men. He does not want anything but grass growing in his lawn. He cringes at the thought of ripping out the lawn and planting something as ridiculous as... food. Anywhoo... as a submissive wife... the kids and I went out and picked everylast flower and stem we could find. Luckily we did not have to dig up the roots- we'd still be digging when the first snow falls next winter.

After we were done I noticed my neighbor/landlord went out and spread chemical poison- ahhh- fertilizer over the yard. Sigh. Silly-minded men and their lawn egos.

If you want to read up on the GOOD that are dandelions go here.

86 lbs and counting!

April 2010

September 2009

I am so proud of my husband, John. He started watching the Biggest Loser late last summer for the first time and he got motivated by it. He saw people his own weight (345 lbs at the time) losing weight through good old fashion diet and exercise. He decided that if they could do it, so could he. He knew he wouldn't drop the weight as fast as they do on the show (Where they have little else to do but exercise all day.) but he would do the same things at a pace his schedule allowed. I am proud to say that at this point (28 weeks since we started.) He has lost 86 lbs! On the "Ranch" on Biggest Loser a lot of people lose this in 14 weeks so I'm very proud that it only took him double.

John (and the rest of us- its a family thing) exercises about one hour a day, five times a week. In the fall we walked and did exercises in our yard (as a family), during the winter we bought three Biggest Loser work out videos and did those and now that it is spring we are walking, biking and jogging.

Diet wise... John avoids sweets and junk food/food with empty calories. He watches his fat intake and counts calories. He has learned to make healthy food choices and control his portions. We avoid fast food and most of the industrial stuff called "food" at the grocery store and opt for real food. Fruits, veges, chicken, turkey (instead of beef- it's leaner) fish, brown rice and whole wheat pasta, home made from scratch everything as much as possible. We eat well and he is never "starving". Grocery shopping is also quicker these days as I can skip almost all of the aisles in the store and just shop the perimeter.

I usually have some homebaked goodies for the kids and I (or Oreos... I'm weak, what can I say.) But if John wants something "snacky" he eats pistachios (the kind in the shell as it takes time to shell them and that slows down the eating and makes the snack last longer.) or he eats sugar free jello at only 10 calories a serving or chews sugar free gum at five calories a stick. We don't usually like to partake in sugar substitutes- they'll kill you quicker than the real stuff- but during his weight loss we allow those couple things.

The whole family is really enjoying our new healthy life style. The kids still complain about the exercise videos, though. We are looking forward to hiking and walking and maybe even rock climbing or other things we've never done before. We even included all our newly learned knowledge into homeschool lessons. The kids can look at a plate of food and know about how many calories they are putting in their bodies. This helps them to make right choices.

I'm sure there is more I can say but I'll let you all ask questions if you have any. (Oh... I've lost 23 lbs doing this and trimmed up my waist and built muscle. I actually look good in short sleeve shirts and have calf definition once more in my legs, not to mention having more energy.)

My DH- always the practical one

Over the weekend I found this great listing for a little farmhouse on three acres. It is right in our area, only a few miles northwest of us. It is white and cute with a great little porch and a big red barn and the asking price is only $79,900. With a USDA Rural home loan we could go 0 down, have no pmi (private mortgage insurance) and have a payment of around $450 a month. Plus the seller could pay up to $4500 dollars of closing costs and we'd qualify for O'bama's $8,000 tax credit for first time homebuyers. (We qualify because we haven't owned a home in three years.) Draw back: One bedroom, one bath, 1,000 sq. feet.

The DH, always the realist, says I'm "smoking crack" to think of shoving all seven of us in that space. I told him we could add on, one room at a time but he didn't catch the vision. So we wait.

I WANT LAND! I WANT GARDENS & CHICKENS & A PIG NAMED BACON!

Someday. Okay, I'm off to wait patiently.

Current Reading

Slow Cooker Classics (Reader's Digest)- to save time and money and beat the eating out or prepared food habit.

The Bread Bible (Rose Levy Beranbaum)- to master the art and eventually make saleable loaves.

Candymaking (Kendrick & Atkinson)- to master the art and eventually make saleable products.

Total Money Make Over (Dave Ramsey)- to GET OUT AND STAY OUT OF DEBT! Whoo... this is a whole other post.

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm off to bake bread and make some heart shaped sugar cookies for my kids to frost and contemplate what lucious dinner to cook the DH. We're sending the kids downstairs early tonight and having a date/movie night. (Watching Fireproof- for the second time.)

Homemade Thursdays- Pot Roast

Pot roast covered in garlic, onion, mushrooms and Worchestershire sauce.

Made easy in the slow cooker!

Homemade Thursdays is hosted by http://shipfullofpirates.com/

Tonight's dinner is pot roast. In an effort to make cooking a good dinner easier, I pulled out the crock pot. I don't use it as often as I could so I'm going to make a habit of using it more. The DH has challenged me to save money. So instead of waiting till the last minute to think about dinner and thus pulling out the frozen prepared food or coaxing the DH to let us go out, I'm going to work on my cooking in the crock pot. A little work in the morning and a good healthy, less expensive dinner, is on its way.

I just plopped my roast in, added a couple of tablespoons of minced garlic, half a chopped onion, some sliced mushrooms, salt, pepper, and liberal dashes of Worchestershire sauce. It's cooking on low and smells great.

I plan on serving mashed potatoes and gravy with it as well as creamed spinach. I also have blackberries to make into a crisp or cobbler.

This is how my DH feels loved- A good homemade dinner that I spent time on. While he understands that some days just don't allow for tons of cooking, he does prefer more cooking and less defrosting and heating.

Father's Day!

Posing on dock

Posing on dock 2

Fisherman with poser

Seven tolerating fishing

Andi trying her luck

Rem waiting patiently for a bite

I was fairly sure at some point we'd be fishing Reagan out of the water. She liked the ducks.

We had a great Father's Day. The rain held off and we were able to take John fishing. It wasn't his ideal spot, but he wanted to go somewhere where the kids were safe (not standing in a river) and where they might actually have a better chance of catching something. We went to Grandville, a couple of towns over from us. They have a lovely little city park with a pond/lake. (It's really too big to be a pond and not really big enough to be a lake.) It has a nice board walk and fishing dock plus a playground, bathrooms, drinking fountains and the Grandville one room school house. The kids fished for a while and then we left dad on the dock and went to the playground as well as toured the school house which was open for a short while. (They had it set up complete with a dunce cap corner! The kids loved the look into the past.) I love family days.