We celebrated Elsa’s birthday this week. For decorations, my son made a doily banner using doilies that my sister-in-law had given to me and some crochet thread (for the string) that had come from my grandmother. I left the ranunculus on the table that I had purchased at the nursery last week. They were a…
Today I’m bringing you two new recipes on the website. These took a while, because I kept making new batches, testing variations in the recipes, until I was satisfied. Plus, my family wanted to eat them as soon as they were done, which often left no chance to take pictures! One is for saltines. These…
Ezrom bought some clay with his birthday money from his grandparents and made the Polie family. I harvested green onions, garlic scapes, marjoram, thyme, and rosemary from my garden this week. I planted dill and mustard seeds from my pantry in the garden. I planted several more seeds in the garden–both flowers and food. I transplanted…
When we moved into our house, we gutted it. In the living room/our dining area, we knocked out the entire wall. We took out the corner fireplace (the first thing to go), the windows, the sliding doors, and made a new wall, with tall windows and French doors. It’s a lot of windows to wash,…
The temperatures have been in the 50’s and 60’s during the day, and in the 30’s and 40’s at night for the last month. (Temperatures are in Fahrenheit, for my non-U.S. readers). My Dorsett Golden Apple is leafing out. It’s the first one to do so each spring (it ripens in summer). Those are flower…
We sold our car! We are now officially a one-car family again. We were very blessed to sell it for just $500 less than what we paid for our new van, so it was like buying a new car for $500. Because we waited to register our van until after we sold our car (we had…
I brought this orchid to church on Sunday as part of an object lesson. Women and men stopped me in the halls and in classes to ask me about it, “Is it real?”, “Do you cultivate orchids?”, and more. Everyone was fascinated by such a beautiful fresh flower. I love fresh flowers. I love having…
I harvested parsley, sage, arugula, and Swiss chard from the garden. I transplanted thinnings (of lettuce) into another spot in the garden. I transplanted 4 small heads of lettuce (that had started growing from reseeding themselves) into another part of the garden. I put out more jars in the garden to encourage my plants to…
The photo above is one I took two years ago. I was experimenting to see what, if any, difference it made having the jars over my seedlings. I knew the jars kept the bugs and birds from eating them, but I wanted to see if leaving them on for longer made much difference. …
I made two lemon meringue pies to celebrate Ezrom’s birthday and my grandmother’s birthday. I used lemons from the garden to make them. I used shortening in the crust instead of butter, which kept the cost down. It was less than $1 for both pies. He loved the giant origami cranes that his sister folded and hung for…
I cleaned my pantry. Then I took new pictures of the pantry. Click over to the pantry page on my website to see 13 more images! If you have any questions about my pantry, please ask them here. Updated to add: If you like my pantry shelves, you may be interested in this…
I planted seeds in my garden several days this week. Some of them have sprouted already. I put empty glass canning jars (the small jelly jars) over the seedlings that sprouted. I have found that by doing this (the last two years) that I have prevented my seedlings from being eaten by bugs and birds. The…