Gathering The Moments

August has seemed quieter since we didn't take any road trips this month at all.  We really just hung out at home and got a good month of school under our belts!  

The month began with losing Tommy, Joseph's younger brother. The memorial service was special.  Their mom Susanna has posted an amazingly open post on her blog that is worth reading.

 Kyle turned nine this month and we started school!  So happy to have 19 days finished already!

 All four of my girls were baptized this month.

 Our church gave Emma a going away party, and took the time to pray over her.

 We've had amazing weather for August, with the a/c off much of the time!  Unheard of for August!

 Kamryn and I had a sleep over and we attended a wonderful wedding!

The month seemed calm and slow, in spite of the big life events of this month.  I'm thankful for all the memories this month.

Thanks Cheryl for hosting us again this month.  I love Gathering the Moments, and if you do why don't you join us? 

www.thinking-about-home.blogspot.com

Look What I Found On My Husband's Phone

These are Kyle's glasses.  The kids often take photos with Tim's phone, so I assume these are their work, maybe even Kyle himself.

All I can say is with a boy, you never know what you're going to get!

Happy Friday Friends!

Waterlogue App Again

I've been having some fun with this great app. 

 I really like how this turned out.  Sometimes the faces aren't great on this app, but these turned out fine.  

 The chapel ruin at the Palace of Holyrood House, Edinburgh, Scotland August 2013.  

Tea cups drying after they've been scalded.  This was a photo I took the day after our Christmas tea last December.  I love the way this one looks, too!

This app is so fun to use.  It is now available for the iPad as well!

Do you have and use this app?  I am wondering how they would work as a digital upload to have them printed on a canvas.  They could be great Christmas photos!

It's Nearly Time

to bid our girl farewell, and leave her at her school, but not yet.

Emma is in her last week of work.  Just four more days, then a week to pack, and we head out on a week of vacation in Williamsburg.  Then we take her to her school.

She is excited and so am I, believe it or not.  She is going to be stretched and challenged and matured in these next two years.  God has been doing beautiful things in her life and that is only going to continue.

I will definitely cry some tears, but with texting, and FaceTime, I think we can connect each week.  

She has an adventurous spirit and is so much fun to hang around with.

I definitely will miss my girl, but I wouldn't hold her back from what God has for her for anything.

So I've Decided

to give Trim Healthy Mama at try.

We've been eating well for years now - a lot of organic food, good local produce, raw milk.  But I realize now that I also had tons of carbs in my diet, and yet didn't feel like Adkins was the way to go.

I've been seeing a lot about Trim Healthy Mama online, there are a ton of recipes on Pinterest, and I joined the group on Facebook as well.

When we were in Florida, I found out that  a friend of my sister in laws, a gal I know as well, who reads my blog, but rarely comments, a great cook was doing THM and since January had lost about 50 pounds.  That is what spurred my looking into it more.

Like I said I joined the FB group, and bought the book.  I decided to take the plunge.  I have significant weight to lose, and this has given me hope that I can eat well, many of the things I already eat, just not mixing carbs and fats, and using Stevia and Erythritol (which is a sugar alcohol and is the what the sweetener Truvia is) instead of honey or evaporated cane sugar, to eat lower carb wraps etc.  I believe that this can work for me.

The other night I made tacos.  I could have everything that we use for tacos, so I just made my tacos with carb balance tortillas and regular tortillas for the family.  That is easy.  

Right now I am in the learning process still - What makes up an S (satisfying meal) and what makes an E (energizing meal), when to do a Fuel Pull etc…

I will keep you updated.  I'd appreciate your prayers, as the Lord may bring me to your mind.

Sleep Over

One of the challenges, if I can call it that, of having my granddaughter living with us, is that I don't always get one on one Grandma/grandchild time with her.

Last night, I invited her to "sleep over" with me in my bed.  While Tim read to our kids (he is reading the Return of the King) before he went to work, Kamryn and I headed to my room to watch something together.  We ate popcorn, and enjoyed Princess and the Popstar, and then Blue's Clues.

Then she and I snuggled in with her five stuffed animals and went to sleep.  Well, she wiggled, and jiggled for a while, but it wasn't too long before she was asleep.

It was fun, and I need to remember to take the time for just she and I.  

Love that girlie so!

Have You Seen This?

                                                                        Link Here


This is a pretty great list of links to recipes of things to make instead of buying them.   We already make some things that we used to pay someone else to make for us.  Growing up and into my adulthood it never occurred to me that I could just make it myself! 

My interest in this kind of thing started in missionary training when I realized I could make my own 'cream of' soups, and in more recent years we've started to make our own laundry detergent, ranch dressing, mayonnaise, toothpaste, household cleaners, fly spray for horses.  We do it not only to save on the budget but also because we don't want the harmful chemicals that are in many of these items that are commercially made.

Here is a link to my post that shares my laundry detergent recipe.


Do you make any items that you used to purchase?

Garden: Mid-August

I headed outside tonight around eight o'clock when Kyle said, "Mom!  Come look outside!  Everything is orange!"

 He was right.  The sun setting reflected on the clouds gave an orange glow to the evening.

I decided to take some photos of the garden here in mid to late August.

First, this metal sign I found for outside the kitchen door may have been prophetic.   We have recently discovered that we have not two roosters, but four!  Can you believe it?  They are starting to get a bit fussy with each other, so three of them need to go.  We may try to sell them.

 It also means less hens.  I was looking forward to having twelve laying hens but it looks as if we will only have ten.  They don't all lay everyday so we will only get about 8 eggs a day.  That seems like a lot until you realize that it's not enough to make scrambled eggs for 6 people or a quintuple batch of pancakes on a Sunday night. I may have to start buying eggs again from the Amish farm that is GMO free on the grains they feed to their chickens.

 This is Obedient Plant or as some call it, Disobedient Plant as it can be invasive.  During the day these flowers are covered with pollinators.  The color in the sky is casting a weird glow in my photos!

 Aren't they lovely close up?  They are an August blooming plant.  Down the driveway toward the front walkway, and the garden looks a bit peaked.  We have had wonderful weather and no drought conditions, it is just the time of year.  The Echinacea has been pollinated and they are now making seed.  I leave them, bedraggled though they are, because the finches love the seed heads!

 See how amazing my hydrangea is on the right?  That is all new growth, so next year the flowers should be amazing.  I have learned my lesson that if Winter is anything like last year, this plant will be wrapped well!

 Do you see that empty spot on the right here in the photo above?  Look at the photo below.

I came home the other day and saw a lot of dirt on my walkway.  I immediately thought the chickens had been in the garden again, but on further investigation it was Rachel's dog, Sadie.  Naughty dog!  She's been laying out here.

We've had a few tomatoes finally ripen, but we've had something eating the tomatoes.  Tim thought it was the chickens but I haven't seen them down there for a while.  Well, it's always something, and we learn something new every year.

How are your gardens growing this August?

Cottage Cooking: Easy Chicken and Dumplings

Today we started back with our home economics class, we began working on knitting, and our friends were staying to dinner because we needed to plan our trip to Williamsburg.


With my niece Kaitlin here and our friend Denny, I needed to feed 13 people and so I planned to make this dish, though I had never made it before.

To make things a bit easier, my friend Jen brought store bought biscuits to use as the dumplings.

I have no photos but here is what I did.

Boil chicken breasts until done.  I put them in my KitchenAid mixer to shred them, then took steamed mixed veggies and tossed both in the crockpot, or in this case two crock pots.  I then made homemade cream of chicken soup using a rue and milk, and I add Better Than Bouillon organic chicken soup base as flavoring.  

When it thickened I added it to the chicken and veggies, and Jen added the biscuits into the mixture and we turned on the crock pots and put the lids on.  The biscuits were done when we were ready to eat.  

It was easy and delicious!  This could easily be made and instead of serving with dumplings, you could serve it over rice, or noodles.  I love these kinds of crowd pleasing meals.  They are healthy and satisfying.

I hope you enjoy this meal.  Let me know if you make it.

Special Weekend

Saturday was the memorial service for Joseph's younger brother Tommy.  He lived with his family for over a year, and packed a lifetime of living into that year.  When he was in the orphanage he basically lived in a crib.  Tommy was 17 years old and this photo was taken this summer.  

Sunday was a going away party for Emma, at our church.

 She will be attending weddings the next two Sundays before heading on vacation then school, so this was the only Sunday to do it.

 Aren't they beauties?  Fun, precious girls who look awfully cute in their glasses!

It was very precious to have some of the men and women of the church pray for Emma.  She knows that she is dearly loved and appreciated.  

She'll be missed.

Home Keeping: Open Windows

The weather is delightful for August.   We turned the air conditioner off and are enjoying the fresh air blowing through our windows.

 At night it has been chilly and when I got up this morning the outside temperature was 64 degrees.  Perfect sleeping weather!

Usually we are in the Dog Days of Summer, with the air conditioner blasting, but not this year.  The last two evenings have found me, ME, out playing badminton, instead of hiding inside the house.

www.allposters.com

I hope this weather lasts for months!

From One Book Lover To Another

We have these delightful friends, Tim and Barbara, that are missionaries in Ireland.  They are home right now, for at least a year, while he works on his Master's degree.  The only sad part is they will be in Louisville, KY for this, so we won't see them at church weekly, but hey, it's about a 9 hour drive!

We invited their family to dinner the other evening, so that we could squeeze in a visit before they head to Kentucky, and it worked out for the older kids to go to their weekly Ultimate Frisbee game.

Barbara brought me a hostess gift.  If you love books you're going to be jealous.

 She also brought me an Irish tea towel, Dark Orange Marmalade, a wee silver spoon, and some Irish tea.  She knows me well!

 It was given as a prize to a Thomas Rushford for proficiency in English on May 8, 1879.

 The first book is Silent Tom.  It also says An American Prize Tale.  This is a link to what I could find out about the book.  Another link said it was a Temperance book from 1875.

 Now we are going to have to make scones.

She also brought me this book.

Written by Kathleen M. Macleod, Barbara thought I might like it because it takes place in Scotland.

I'm very blessed in my friends, am I not?

Do you collect books?  Do you read old books?  

The Leaves They Are A Changin'

I'm sure I'm not the only one experiencing this.  

As I drive along the roads here in beautiful Lancaster County I am seeing changes.  Already.  In August.  The sumac and other trees and bushes that change color in September,  are changing already.  

It's happening in my own backyard.

 I took these photos while I was mowing yesterday.

My burning bushes are turning red…

 Our Black Walnut trees which always are the first to change and drop leaves are changing now.

The weather has been warm and sunny during the days and cooler at night.  I think the poor trees are confused.  They think it's time.

The weather is forecasted to stay in the mid 70's to low 80's with perhaps a day or to of hotter weather.  The last several years we have had high humidity and scorching temperatures all summer, and August is historically a hot month here.  I'm not sure we'll make it to swim at Camp Geezer this summer.  They had pool issues which required a new liner, then a new pump, but truthfully it hasn't been that hot to swim.  The water is too cold to swim, unless your a crazy person like Lindsay who, along with Joseph, headed over last week just after the fire tanker filled my Dad's pool with water from the spring feed reservoir.  

Mind you, I am not complaining.  We have the air conditioning off, the lovely breeze blowing through the house, sunshine…what more could we ask for?  I love this kind of weather!

We sat on the deck after dinner last night with our guests and drank coffee and tea, and watched the kids play.  It was lovely.  If this keeps up I'll be able to enjoy the outdoors, usually I hibernate in the summer and come back to outdoor life in the Autumn!

Oh, one more thing!  I want to show you this interesting frog I found yesterday in the grass by our fire pit.

He was very coppery, and he had started to move out from this area and then decided to move back a bit and wait for me to stop going around and around this space!  Smart froggy!  We have lots of toads and frogs due to our creek but I've not seen one this color before.  

I saw a forecast for winter and they were saying that it will be colder than normal and more snow than normal, so it sounds as if they are thinking it will be like last year.  I'm thinking we better store up as much sunshine in our bones as we can!