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.

The Coston's cabin

So we have this cabin that we go to every summer. It is in remote central Oregon. It's a little log cabin with no electricity and a propane powered water heater. The whole place is wired for propane so we do have lights but it is pretty primitive. My in laws have been going since their kids were knee high and I have been going since I married in so this is something that we do every year without fail.

It is nestled along side a little lake stocked with tons of trout. There are also several osprey nests along the lake. The whole place is teaming with wildlife but not a lot of people. Some years we have been up there and not seen another person aside from our own family for the whole week.

The kids had a blast fishing and swimming and canoeing. We saw tons of deer and went on nature walks. All in all we had a great time.

Fan girl squeel!!!

So this week at the San Diego Comic con, the director of New Moon released some new footage of the movie. I felt the absolute need to share with the class.

I apologize for the crummy quality of the hand held camera and the thousands of teenage girls screeching but I will overlook it for the awesomeness that will be this movie. November 21st can't get here quick enough!!





Oh Mylanta!!!!

4th of July weekend

Last weekend was 4th of July and my Mom and I decided to nab Sunshine and have us a girls weekend getaway. We had been reading about some really cool events going on up in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. So we felt we needed to investigate. You see my mom and I are newly obsessed with this magazine called "MaryJanes farm". Check her out here. She is awesome beyond all belief. She teaches us how to make most everything from scratch, grow our own everything and do it all in a nifty apron. She is based out of Moscow, Idaho but was opening her second store in Coeur d"Alene. She was having a big grand opening and would be there to sign copies of her newest book. Naturally like obsessed groupies we had to find a way to get there.

My mom has a cute little travel trailer that we all would fit comfortably in, so we loaded up the cooler with what we had on hand and away we went. We stayed the first night in Umatilla up the Gorge and the other 2 nights we stayed in Spokane, Wa.

We had a great time camping and just goofing around. We got to meet MaryJane and had a wonderful time in Coeur d'Alene. We enjoyed the 4th of July parade and festivities on the lake all day. We swam and played in the park , and the fireworks over the lake were incredible.

It was a lot of fun with my mom and daughter just hanging out being silly girls. Something we don't get to do often enough but I think we need to make this an annual thing for the 4th of July.

Oh the glorious days of summer

I love summer. Maybe I have mentioned this a time or two. Living in a place where it rains 75% of the year is really fighting my nature. But for now it's where we live and we make the best of it. We basically enjoy every last drop of of summer that we possibly can.

Our days are filled with a whole lot of nothing much but we enjoy every second.

Bug spent his day yesterday having "backpack expeditions" across the street in our field. He and his friends packed their backpacks with their toy compasses and water bottles and hit the trail. I could hear them playing and it was just refreshing to see them completely wrapped up in their own world of imagination. He had a lot of fun.


Then Sunshine spend the majority of her day swimming in the pool. By late afternoon she pulled her wrinkly self out and sat on the porch to dry out in the sun.

Seems the nice warm sun has the same effect on her as it does on me :)

Just darn cute

camping

This past weekend we went camping at Fort Stevens outside of Astoria on the coast. My mom joined us in her trailer. We were in our 3 room tent. We had a blast. We stayed 2 nights and the campground was really nice. It was loaded with bike trails so we all loaded up , (Nana too) and hit the trails. We went on a 5 mile ride to the beach and a cool shipwreck and then on to the abandoned battery.

The kids had a blast all weekend making friends at the campground and riding their bikes all over the place. They had a great time. We will definitely be visiting again this summer.