October #1 - home updates and grandchildren fun

Hello everyone

Welcome to our front porch, all decked out for fall.  My husband bought the mums. 

My son bought the pumpkins and we filled them with the succulents that grew like crazy on our patio this summer. 

The white pumpkins went to his home and he arranged the orange ones at our front door.  

Our interior re-do is still in progress.  

There’s a pretty new rug in our entry way and that will give a clue to the home style I’m working toward.

We are waiting on the new carpet to be installed and have those 3 bedrooms and hall emptied and their contents are pretty much living in our dining room for now.  

The new furniture has been ordered and most of it is in boxes in my husband's shop. 

Some of the new curtains are here and some are backordered.  I went with insulated  ones from the Vermont Country Store and I think we are really going to enjoy them.  

Once it’s all done,  there will be more to show but for now,  this  house is anything but normal.  🤪

Some of the grands have been here. 

These guys were very happy to get crocheted toys from my mom,  their great grandmother. 

 

Braeden is missing his top front teeth.  Gavin is wearing a mask just because it was a new mask.  

Most falls, we make acorns out of mini Nilla Wafers, Kisses, chocolate chips and chocolate frosting to hold them together.  

All the local grands made them but they weren’t here at the same time and I didn’t get a photo when the countryboys were here,  

Here are the city cousins very happily making and eating acorns 

  

I hope you all are enjoying fall and making the best of it as possible.  

❤️ Rhonda 🇺🇸 

September #5 - cooking and home plans

Hello everyone.  Our garden is still producing, this was Sunday morning’s harvest.  See the late coming lblackberries and strawberries? 

Tonight for supper, I prepped these veggies below 

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I cooked the green beans and then added the potatoes and made salmon patties.  The cucumbers and onions are something my mom always made in the summer and I think most all people in our region eat them,  it’s just sliced cucumbers and onions,  salt, pepper, a teaspoon of sugar and half vinegar/half water.  They keep in the fridge for days.  

My grandchildren love granola bars and I tried this recipe 

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link to granola bar recipe

⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️   

They were delicious and I will be making them again. 

In January,  we decided we  wanted to update the 3 bedrooms on one end of house.  We’ve lived here 18 years and the white carpet in those rooms (especially after 8 grandchildren and 2 dogs) has seen better days.  We got distracted by the quarantine but we decided a few weeks ago to just go ahead and do it. 

First,  we picked out and ordered the carpet.  It’s a process and everything takes longer right now.  It will be at least 2 weeks until it’s installed. 

In the meantime,  we are emptying those rooms and painting.  And were also doing some minor changes in other rooms.  

   The dining room is getting full 

 And 2 of the bedrooms are just about empty.  

All the groceries for ‘just in case’ were moved to the master bedroom.  3 of the grands were a huge help with this task and I sure hope they are available when it’s time to move it back. 

And here’s my current to do list.  Some of it is things to do, some are things to shop for.  

I have no idea why we buy toys,  this 8 year old was happy for hours with a box 😊

Busy days here with gardening and home things.   I will try to blog as updates occur.  

All of our grands are in school in their classrooms, some full time and some 1/2 the week.  I know we are all just ready for life to get less stressful, right?  

Hope you all are fine 

❤️ Rhonda 🏠

September #4 - fun with grandchildren

Hello everyone

I’ve just about spent all of today doing nothing but going to the dentist.  I’m getting a crown and he had to do some extra numbing.  It’s just now wearing off so maybe I can get back to normal life now.  

Grandchildren were with us the last few days and they have all reached the age where they really eat - 

3 of them were here one day and we got takeout pizza for lunch,  I like using the Little Caesar app for ordering.  When you arrive at the store,  the pizzas are waiting in a hot box.  You just enter your code, take out the pizza and leave- no standing in line 

While they went with Grandpa to pick up the pizza,  I baked a batch of cake mix cookies 

These were yellow cake mix with chocolate chips -

Just use any cake mix- add 2 eggs and 1/2 cup of oil and about a cup of any addition like chocolate chips, nuts, oatmeal. Etc

Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes 

I went to my very first yardsale of 2020 on Friday. I saw the signs on my way to pick up grandchildren and stopped.  

I got 3 vintage magazines and a slimline beverage dispenser.  The dispenser is now in the fridge full of Crystal Light and it works great. 

This magazine was printed in the middle of World War II.  It reminds me of my grandmother.  She was a farm wife with 2 sons and 2 sons in law all serving during WWII.  ( and they all returned home alive)

Victory gardens were a topic in this issue and I thought these cartoons were funny 

And not about gardening but funny

Later in the week,  2 grandsons were here and they happily ate 

Baked tacos and homemade cinnamon rolls 

Baked tacos are so good and so easy!

Just put the shells straight from the box into a baking dish.  Add grated cheese and warm taco filling to each.  Then bake for about 5 minutes at 375 degrees.

Remove from oven,  add toppings and serve 

I made the cinnamon roll dough in a bread machine and used this recipe,  but no sticky topping.  I just frosted them and added some chopped pecans (and one grandson was not thrilled with the nuts so he looked carefully and picked a roll with the fewest nuts) 

Then later in the weekend,  the 5 local grandchildren were all here at the same time.  They have not seen each other much during the 🦠 and they had lots of fun together.  

They are getting big, aren’t they?  The are 10, 5, 8, 7 and 11! 

Babies don’t stay babies very long at all.  

Have a good week everyone 

❤️ Rhonda 🇺🇸

September #3 biscuits and broth

Good morning 

I’m trying to be more productive.  The pastor in Australia we watch is doing a series on Nehemiah,  where the wall around Jerusalem gets rebuilt For an application now,  he suggested we  all make 5 new goals.  That’s advice I needed as I have not thought about goals since this virus changed everything.  

So today,  I’ve been up several hours.  I did some Bible reading and an exercise video.  (Those are 2 of my daily goals) 

Then I looked on my to do list and thought this was a perfect time to start some freezer biscuits.  

I chose a recipe that used half and half, also known as light cream,  because I had 2 jugs of this cream that needs to be  used.  

I quadrupled the recipe and made the first batch plain.

➡️basic biscuit recipe  ⬅️

  

I added our diced jalapeños and sharp white cheddar to the second batch.  

They are all in the freezer, and when frozen, I will bag them up and bake as needed.  (I freeze them first on sheets and not touching so they don’t freeze together in one big lump.) 

I baked a few of the jalapeño cheese ones and they are delicious!  

In my last post,  I showed the chickens I cooked for taco meat.  

The broth from cooking them in the crockpot had been chilling in the fridge.  

I took the fat off the top and put the broth in containers to freezer for future recipes,  

It is really nice broth with a gelatin consistency and should be very good when I cook with it.  

When I was growing up,  everyone’s kitchen had a can with a strainer to save bacon grease for future cooking.  It was thrifty and Southern cooks like that bacon flavor in so many things. 

When I saw this ad for a local farm store,  I was so surprised!  

They are selling little tubs of bacon grease for $7.99!  

The looks to be the size of a small tub of margarine.  

I don’t cook with bacon grease but if I did,  I would not buy it ready made.  It is a free byproduct anytime bacon is cooked.  

And here’s a cartoon that made me laugh 

Have a good day everyone 

❤️Rhonda 🏠 

 

September #2 - mostly kitchen stuff

Hello 

It’s still just weird around here.  Our little county is now in the Red Zone as classified by the virus numbers.  I’m normally optimistic but this seems to have no end in sight.  

So, we are just staying busy with home stuff, staying at home or in safe places,  and staying busy.  

Here’s my current to-do list

More peppers- my husband’s plants are just producing so much! 

So this last batch,  I sliced the bells into strips along with onions and froze them in meal size bags.  They will get sautéed like fajita style veggies and be eaten on fajitas or any kind of Mexican meal.  

I also diced more jalapeños and froze them too.  

I made a double recipe of the cheddar carrots recipe I shared in my last post and they were so good!

I also made a double batch of Mexican Wedding Cookies/Russian Tea cakes/SnowBall cookies.  I didn’t add the chopped nuts or roll them in powdered sugar.  

Instead,  I made flattened balls of the cookie dough and dipped some in sprinkles, some in mini chocolate chips and topped some with pecan halves.  

They brought big smiles to everyone I shared them with.  

My husband needed a knee X-ray in Oklahoma City this week.  It was near the military Commissary we like so much.  We haven’t shopped there since  March 1st so we went after he had the X-ray.  

The Commissary is huge and I feel very claustrophobic wearing masks, so we only shopped a few aisles and the meat department.  

Their meat prices were so low and they have very nice quality.

Ducky smells the meat.  😀 I like the brown paper sacks so I always them up and reuse them for many things,  

They had these boxes for $30 filled with an assortment of fresh meats.  

  

I didn’t add up the price tags exactly but they would of been more than $40 if bought individually.

I cooked the 4 rolls of ground beef when we got home and seasoned them for taco filling.  

To make room in the freezer for the new meat purchases,  I did a little rearranging.  

I also took out 2 whole chickens and cooked them in a slow cooker.  Then I shredded it and seasoned it for chicken taco filling.  

It’s cooked chicken seasoned with tomato sauce, onions,  cumin, red pepper and garlic to taste.   

A bonus of cooking whole chickens is all the broth - about a 1/2 gallon!  I’ll chill it, remove the fat on top and then freeze in meal size containers.

To save space,  I re-wrapped some of the meat into freezer paper or zipper bags and it takes up much less space then when left of the original trays. 

Two of grandchildren are attending their school everyday like normal.

Three of them are doing in person school 2 days and week and virtual school 2 days a week.  

And three of them are doing only virtual school.  Some of the virtual classes are really good and I commend the teachers.  This situation is probably the hardest on them as they must be so flexible.  

Anyways,  here are 3 siblings all watching a class for 1 of them.  But they were all interested and ready to learn. 

Hope you all are fine 

❤️Rhonda 🇺🇸

Living the red zone 😱