OOPS!!

If you scroll past the "Baked Beans and Muffins" post you will see a new post . I'm not sure why it showed up there! :o

The Master Bathroom

I just want everyone to know, I'm not liking my camera right now!! Every time light comes in, it is PINK!!!!! I guess it's not registering a certain color or too much of another!!

Anyway............ Here is the master bathroom. His and Her sinks! :)

His and Her shower. We made this shower 5 feet long and 3 and 1/2 wide. We also put two shower heads up. One on both sides.

If you look at the first picture this is right across from the left side of the closet. I have a big space here that is empty right now. I really need to get busy decorating. I need help though! :) (see what I mean about the PINK!!)

Well, hope you enjoyed this short tour of the master bathroom.

Come back soon. :)

Baked Beans and Muffins

Yesterday I made Baked Beans. Not in my bean pot though. I didn't want to tie up my oven all day at 275 degrees because we wanted to make muffins. I put them in my crock pot and they came out great!:)

For two pounds of beans I used one stick of butter, a small onion, and a small apple. I put these in the bottom of my crock pot.

I soaked the beans the night before,

Drained and rinsed them,

Put them back on the stove, covered them with water, and boiled till I could take some out on a spoon, blow on them and the skins peeled. Maybe 20 min.

I took out 1 cup of the hot water that I boiled the beans in, and drained the rest of the beans.

In the reserved water I put 2 tsp. of salt

3/4 cup of molasses

1 tsp. of dry mustard

2 T. of brown sugar

2 tsp. of pepper

Brought all this to a boil and stired it up well.

Poured it over my beans and added some boiling water till my beans were covered

Then I put tinfoil all over the top and pressed it right down on the beans and around the sides of the crock pot.

I do this because it has been through my experience the beans on top dry out and get hard. The ones underneath are ok, but the ones on top don't seem to cook.

These beans cooked for about 6 hours, at the end I unplugged the pot, and let them sit for about 2 hours. I did add another 1/4 cup of molasses and "gently" stirred them. If you like them sweeter add more :)

On the other side of my kitchen...................................

Timothy, my official taste tester of everything I make, was making muffins I saw on http://http://kellishouse.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-snow-day.html .

He is the one I call when something I am making is missing an ingredient, he can tell right off what is missing. :)

Muffins ready to go in the oven!

"Brother Made" and "Brother Approved"!!!

Have A Great Easter! :)

The rest of my house:)

I thought I would continue the tour since I haven't shown you the rest of my house:)!!

This is Dean's room. This is the right side of the room. This cedar bed is three and a half feet high. :o

He wont let me trim the legs down so it will be a normal size!


I bought this for him for Christmas and we haven't figured out what to do with it yet. It is iron and very heavy!


This is the left side of his room. Just in case you couldn't tell........ he is really into hunting and fishing! :)


Dean has a lot of wall space so, once again Pastor Caron came and did this for Dean. It took him 8 and 1/2 hours! :o He is a really amazing artist! This is all airbrushed.

A close up!

If this isn't the truth, I don't know what is !!!

Even the celing fan has a hunting theme!

It is the Browning symbol with deer hoof prints on the base!

Dean shot his second crow last week. I didn't want to post this for fear of offending someone that hates hunting, but this is a way of life for us, this is our family blog, and Dean really wanted me to post this:)

Dean is learning taxidermy and is starting to learn how to do birds. He is working on some beaver hides. He trapped 2 this winter skinned them, stretched them, and is going to tan them. He is also tanning a big raccoon that he got from a friend this winter. He really enjoys it and has had fun doing all the research to find out all the how to's on this subject.

Hope you enjoyed a tour of Dean's room.

Have a great day.

Show and Tell

Go to http://kellishouse.blogspot.com/ to participate in "Show and Tell Friday" :)

My show and tell today consist of my Great, Great, Grandmothers wedding certificate, and my Great, Great Grandmothers Bible and my Grandmothers Bible.

This wedding certificate is dated 1866 and is in the original frame. It was given to me when my Grandmother Acelia died in 1992. I love the frame , one of the corners on the bottom left is missing but it still looks ok. I am very thankful to have it. It hangs in Acelia's (my daughter) room I think she will probably inherit this :)

The names on the certificate are Edwin Fenton and Acelia Carey Pitt

One of the things I like is the Spencerian writing, it is sooo beautiful!

These are my most cherished Bibles. The one on the left belonged to my Great Great Grandmother , Acelia Carey Fenton. The one on the right belonged to my Grandmother Acelia Carey Hall.

This is the Bible on the Left. The picture didn't come out very well but the pages are full of notes from D.L. Moody in Chicago. I wonder if she visited there where he preached or maybe even lived there?
This is from Grandmas Bible (the one on the right) No one looked through this Bible before they gave it to me and I found some very cherished treasures. This is a book mark that has the Lords Prayer on it, and she wrote on the back: "This was my help thru all the lean years, Mom" My Grandmother died in 1992, notice when she wrote this? I believe she wanted to send a message to her children, grandchildren , and great grandchildren before she died :)

Here is another treasure I found, a letter written to her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren telling them how proud she was of all them and all the work they had done. She goes on to say "Keep in touch with one another" and "help when needed" She ends by saying "My love to all of you and my little grands and great grands" She died 6 months after she wrote this letter and two days before the birth of my first baby. As a matter of fact I was across the hall from her, in labor, at our local hospital.

My Grandmother will live on in our hearts and my home. I have her things displayed everywhere!! I love them, and I loved her dearly. I named my only daughter after her:)

I hope you enjoyed my show and tell:)

Have a great day!:)

Crockpot chicken

I thought I would share this recipe with you. It is the easiest dinner I have EVER made!!

Last year we raised 50 meat chickens . We processed them ourselves thanks to our brother and sister in law. We didn't pluck the feathers, and process them like you get them at the store. We took the skin right off. This is much easier and very cost effective since you don't have that expense in time (if you do it yourself) or money if you pay the butcher to do it! I take the skin off the chicken from the store anyway, and it is much healthier for you :)

All I do is take my chicken give it a rinse, put it in the crockpot..........

Add a very generous amount of seasonings, put the lid on and walk away (do not add any liquid to this). I have done this no later than 10:00 am, and we usually eat at 6:00pm. 15 min before dinner I take the chicken out and put it on a plate and take all the meat off the bone. The juice in the bottom I make into gravy on top of my stove or I just put the meat back in the juice and serve it that way. :)

I mentioned making "moose" jerky in a recent post. My three boys and husband are avid hunters and that is all we eat for red meat (this year however we are raising beef on our farm).Here is a picture of how it turned out. It is really good!

Well hope you have a great day, and happy cooking!!

Boiling Sap!!

Dean took the snowmobile out yesterday and collected all the sap in the buckets. We had about 4 gallons, and it froze overnight. So here it is melting slowly in the pot!

We have 22 five gallon buckets out right now! It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup! That is a little less than 3 gallons of syrup!

Here it is melting, the sap looks like water, but does have an amber hue to it, and you can slightly taste something sweet.


Still melting:)

...............and melting:)

Notice how far up the sap comes to the top? This whole pot boils down to a little less than a pint!



Ok now were getting somewhere! You can see the color starting to come and at this point the house smelled really good!! The sap was really sweet too!


I transfered the sap to a smaller pan so I could keep track of the temp. of the syrup.

(excuse my dirty stove :)!! When the syrup is ready they say that it has "aproned" , because when you dip a spatula in it, it forms an apron on the back of the spatula.


Once the syrup was about 225 degrees F , I put a coffee filter in a funnel and strained it into another pot.

Here is the finished product! One pint of maple syrup. Guess what we are having for breakfast?

This is the first time I have ever done this. It was fun, but it is alot of work. My kids really enjoyed it too.

We wanted to try sugar snow with the syrup, but it didn't come out too good. The syrup just melted the snow and turned to water. Does anyone have some tips on this?

Have a great day!

Garden Plans

We are in for a real Nor'easter this weekend so I thought I would start some flower seeds :)

I am not going to let the weather get me down!! Spring is on the way, and at some point this snow has to go! :) This is what Acelia and I have planned for our flower garden. We also bought two big boxes of wildflowers we are going to line our driveway with.

I really paid attention to the kinds of herbs I use on a regular basis. These are the ones I use most! The only thing that I can't grow well outdoors ( that I use) is rosemary and sage.

I know this doesn't have anything to do with starting seeds but I thought I would share this bit of excitement with you!! When this catalog arrives everyone is so excited. As a matter of fact I had to sneak this catalog away to photograph it! It is our bird catalog from Murray McMurray. We are ordering our laying hens and meat birds soon. We plan to have 40 layers and 100 meat birds this year. This catalog if filled with really nice pictures of male and female chickens, ducks, geese and so on. There is also some interesting facts on the different birds. I would recommend getting one even if you don't plan to have chickens just for the information. Their web site is www.mcmurrayhatchery.com

Example: I didn't know till David (my 11 year old) told me there was "weeder geese". I said, "Ok, David what is a weeder goose?" He told me, "A goose that weeds your strawberry patch and your corn patch!"

There you have it !!!! A goose that actually weeds your garden!! I learn something new everyday!!:)

Has anyone started their seeds or gardens yet? Do you have any favorite gardening tips for someone who doesn't have a green thumb?:)