Riddle me this....

We have a 20,000 gallon pool to play in. Why is it they choose to play in a Rubbermaid container filled with water instead?

Priceless.

Summer extravaganza

So I know I have been sort of neglectful over here. In all honesty there has not been a whole lot of note worthy stuff going on here.

I have been doing a lot of canning as I do every summer. In case you have forgotten last summer...let me remind you. 2008 summer canning extravaganza

This summer has been no exception. Thus far I have done ......

• strawberry jam
• raspberry jam
• raspberry syrup
• blueberry syrup
• blueberry pie filling
• apricots
• beets
• pickles
• salsa
• peach/pineapple salsa
• pickled peppers
• bing cherry pie filling
• stewed tomatoes

My kitchen has been a nonstop conveyor belt of garden goodness. But I have not been documenting all this action on this blog. Instead I have been working a lot over at my other blog Gen x home ec. I have been working at putting up recipes and "How to's" for a lot of my basic stuff.

Come check it out and try some of my recipes out. Lord knows they are family tested.

Tearing down the house!!!

So one of the things that has always bugged me about my house was my kitchen. If you follow along here, you know that I spend the majority of my day in the kitchen because someone is always hungry in this house. I have this strong desire to feed everyone that comes though my doors.

But my kitchen is an "L" shape that looks into my family room with this set of cabinets right at eye level. It drives me nuts. So you have to bend down to have a conversation with anyone in the basic same room. It feels closed off for no real reason.

These are my cabinets.


So we decided yo knock out cabinets out to give more of an open feel. The cabinets we knocked out were mostly just for look anyway. They barely held anything efficiently and had weird shelves. I kept most of my dry goods out in the garage pantry anyways. So it was really not this big sacrifice.

Well my friends Molly and Carl decided to come over and help us do the job. What it turned into is Carl knew exactly what he was doing and he did most of it himself. The whole cabinet came down in about 30 minutes. It was just screwed into the ceiling. It all came down in once piece.




Then once it was done Molly and I painted it to match the rest of the kitchen. The entire project took all of an hour. It just took 4 adults. It looks so much better though.

Also something we discovered once we started taking them down, is that the vent over our stove was hooked up to nothing. It was just a prop. There is a hole in the ceiling, but nothing was connected to it. It served no purpose. So depending on what the code is, we may need to get another one if we ever go to sell, but since we have been getting by with only the illusion of having one this long, there is no real hurry to put in another one.

I got up this morning and could actually keep an eye on my kids as I made their breakfast. I was awesome! Chaos didn't ensue when I left the room, because I didn't really leave the room. It totally opens up the two rooms.

Now I need to find another project to occupy myself with. How about pulling the house back together after this one :)

Who is Maryjane?

So a couple weeks ago I posted something on here that just sort of scratched the surface of something bigger. Over 4th of July my mom, daughter and I went over to Idaho to meet Maryjane Butters and see her store opening. In that time I have had so many people ask me about this "MaryJane person" and ask what her deal is. I sort of tried to explain it, but didn't do her a whole lot of justice in the process. So I did find a couple videos that explain who she is and what she is all about.

I discovered her through her magazines, but once I really got into what she was trying to teach us, something just clicked in me. Her philosophy on home keeping, and just better living is exactly how I grew up and had to be reminded about. I have made a lot of changes getting back to simple basics because of her. I feel I need to spread the word :)

Also I am starting m own farmgirl chapter. More info here. I will keep you posted on what exactly will happen with that. But let me know who is interested. I plan to have get togethers that involve big batch cooking, canning and possibly sewing or crafts. Women have been doing this sort of thing for generations. Why did we stop in the past couple of generations I am not sure, but I plan to fire it back up.