Scavenger Hunt October 9

It's been quite a while since I've been able to find all 5 of the scavenger hunt items!  I've been unsuccessfully trying the past few weeks, and I think I've achieved it this time!

Landscape

On the way to pick up my children from my parents last Monday, I stopped at many farms along the way to take a photo from the side of the road.  {My apologies if you recognize your farm here}The bright blue sky is such a beautiful contrast to the horses and their Barn Red abode.

Color Wheel Complementary

I hunted for a scene that contained 2-3 colors from opposite sides of the color wheel.  While I shot these apples just because they're juicy and sweet and hanging heavy ripe from the branches this time of year, it fits the prompt:  red and green are from opposite sides of the color wheel.

Black & White

My beautiful First Born!  She's really growing up.  We spent the day yesterday doing a local Barn Tour.  We visited 4 farms, sampled local apples and cheeses and took a hay ride.  What beautiful weather~70s~and the colors are just gorgeous right now!

Food

My indoor food shots hardly ever turn out well...I need to work on my lighting and backdrops.  We went to a local apple orchard where we could pick our own apples.  The kids just loved it! {for a while, anyway}There's nothing like biting into a fresh, juicy apple.

White space

White space is blank space in a piece of art or photo.  I took this photo while stopping on the side of the road to take photos of barns.  American pride rings loud and clear in the Heartland.

Blessings & Bounty Fall Canning

I look forward to fall-time to reap the benefits of all the work of summer & spring.  But boy, is it exhausting!  So glad to have my mom's help in all of this!  We had OODDLES of tomatoes this year!  We've canned tomato soup and salsa and juice, nearly 100 quarts, I'm sure.  Of course, there's all the onions and peppers that go into it as well.  I'm grateful for how well my pepper plants and tomato plants grew this year!  And there's more to come!

We live in an area surrounded by orchards--apples, cherries, pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, you name it!  We've canned a bushel of pears and nectarines and I froze up a bushel of peaches.  I hope that's enough--another friend with the same size family canned 5 bushels of peaches!  That's a lot of work!  Add to all this harvesting is trying to start school at home at the same time!  By the end of the week, all was done, but boy was it busy!  One night, my mom and I were in the kitchen still cooking away at 10 pm!

Some people don't like to mess with pears, but everybody in my house loves them!  So juicy!

Along with all of this, I've been baking homemade bread and cooking up some Venison Barley Stew--just perfect on cool fall days!  Homemade oatmeal, pancakes and muffins for breakfast (all from scratch) to see how I could prepare food more frugally & more healthfully for my family--too bad they're not all a hit with the youngsters!  But I love it when I hear, "Mama, you're the best!  You make the best pancakes ever!"

I've even been making my own yogurt, successfully, (after a few not so successful batches) and I think it tastes fabuloso!!!  Not nearly as tangy/sour as the store's plain yogurt.  I love eating it with some fresh fruit or homemade granola.  Again, the kids don't think so much of it, but I think if I blend it with some of our frozen fruit, and add a little sweetener, they'll like it better.

Wait! Weight a minute!

Here's my girls at my parents' house for Hannah's birthday party. We celebrated with her cousins, one of whom is 3 days older! They had a party together. They had so much fun sledding and marching through the snow. They took themselves on quite a hike through the woods and trails!

I don't know about you, but for me, my weight has been a never-ending issue for me. As soon as I get to a "good" weight, I either backslide and relax on my eating or I get pregnant. Right now, I have 20 lb to go to get back to the weight I was a year ago. How discouraging. In the last 3 months, I've worked out harder and ran further than I've ever ran. Since Maverick's been born, I've ran 103 miles!! I've lost 7 lbs. I'm the same weight I was a month ago. On the bright side, I've lost an inch on my thighs and 1.5 in on my hips in the last month. SO! Time to crack down on my sweets. I've tried to keep my calories below 1500, but somehow when I eat yummies like cookie dough or more recently, frosting, I think I can just not count them. How ridiculous! So here's to being more accountable to what I eat, keeping better track of my calories, and limiting my sweets to {nearly} zero!!

My Birthday Girl

Hannah turned 5 on February 19. Can't believe I'm the mother of a 5-year-old! She's got such a fun personality and is very creative. Her creativity comes out in her story telling and her make-believe playing. Most of her stories and playtime revolve around horses, of course. For the past 2 years, her love of horses has only increased! Horse books are the only books she cares to check out at the library every week.

This year, we have been reading lots of books together, and we started doing preschool at home. We're following Sonlight's 4-5 yr old curriculum, which gives lots of reading suggestions. She's doing great at recognizing all her letters and sounds and can write them all as well. We recently started on blending sounds together and she's so pleased with herself when she gets it right! She'll be reading soon. She's also determined to count to 100, but she forgets every 7...like she forgets 17, 27, 37...97! Who needs 7? Isn't it "unlucky"?

About a month ago, I was helping her with AWANA Cubbies and we were discussing sin and heaven and salvation. I described how God hates sin and won't let sin into heaven, but because Jesus died for our sins, we can ask for forgiveness for our sins and tell God that we believe Jesus is his son and that we want to follow him. Hannah said she wanted to think about it before she prayed. A few days later, she told me, "Mama, I don't have that sin inside me anymore. I prayed just like you said!" She loves to learn her verses and asks lots of questions about what she's learning about God.

Every night, she and her sister run horse races on their stick horses while I'm either cooking supper or cleaning up. They get their exercise! Sometimes they make their horses run barrel races, sometimes it's doing circles in the round pen, and sometimes they are running from mountain lions!

Hannah is a great big sister, and it made my heart melt this morning when I overheard her tell her baby brother how much God loves him! Today in the van, she was lifting her hands to the sky singing praise songs to Jesus. I love her heart! She is my encourager and my helper! She is my firstborn daughter!

Here's how I made the cake: (this is a recipe to extend your cake mix)

1 box Funfetti Cake mix

Oil called for in the cake + enough water to make 2 cups

4 eggs

2 tsp baking powder

1 cup flour

Mix it all up and pour into a greased and floured cake pan. After baking according to the box, let cool for a while. The cake pan said 10 minutes, but this wasn't long enough for my cake. I used a knife to cut the top of the cake to make it even, knifed along the edges to loosen it, then tipped it over to invert it on my tray. It didn't come out. I shook it. I knifed the edges again. I tried to get my fingers in there to loosen it. It finally came out. Some stayed in the pan. Frosting, like love, covers a multitude of wrongs. {grin} I made a double batch of Wilton's Buttercream Frosting. I got rave comments on the frosting. It's so rich, how could it not be good?

Cream:

2 lb powdered sugar

2 sticks/1 cup shortening

2 sticks/1 cup butter

Add:

4 Tbls milk

2 tsp Vanilla

I took out 2 cups and added 4 tsp light caro syrup to thin it. I spread this around the whole cake. I mostly did this because the cake was in pieces and very bumpy. Don't do this if you don't have to...it covers up all the details the pan gave the cake! I then colored some yellow, some purple, and some pink and filled up my pastry bags and away I went! Ta-Da! It turned out very bright and better than I'd hoped. Hannah loved it! And it tasted very good, too!

Green Smoothie

I have enjoyed smoothies for the past year and a half...since I started the PRISM diet and couldn't have any more sugar. I recently decided to try the PRISM way again, and have started eating more smoothies again, too! I love a treat after the kids go the bed, and so, instead of ice cream, I enjoy a large cup of smoothie. Here's how I make mine:

1/2 cup of plain nonfat yogurt

1/2 cup of skim milk (or more as needed)

1/2 cup of frozen strawberries

1/2 cup of frozen blueberries

1 banana (frozen is good, too. When bananas are on sale, I buy bunches, peel them and stick in a large ziplock bag and throw them in the freezer. You can pull one out at a time kinda easily)

Handful of spinach

Throw everything into the blender, milk first. Because I use frozen fruit, it starts to get really thick and hard to mix the frozen fruit. I add more milk if needed to keep the blender going. This makes a HUGE cup, so share if so inclined. I don't like to share. I figure it's about 260 calories. Like I said, this makes a lot, so share if you want less calories.

Last summer, I picked strawberries and blueberries and froze them. I picked a LOT. Which is really interesting, since I don't like either of them. Never have. But in my smoothie, they're YUMMY! I also use plain non fat yogurt, which tastes really gross if you try to just eat it. But in a smoothie, it's YUMMY! I was also never a fan of spinach, convinced it must be disgusting, but actually, raw, it has no taste to me. Now, cooked it still looks slimy, so I'm not ready to try that. You can see the before and after picture of what the smoothie looks like when I added the spinach. It changes the color slightly, and there are flecks of green, but not by much. Honestly, I couldn't taste it, but it does change the texture slightly.