The Canning is Done!

I am so glad to be done with this years canning! I always start out loving it and then after a lot of late nights, after working all day, I start getting tired of it. But our family loves to get a jar of jelly or jam during the winter months. And everyone asks for Salsa. That is Jeff specialty. He helps cut up all the hot peppers and everything else except the tomatoes. I get the tomatoes ready and do the cooking and canning part. We are really a pretty good team when we work together. As you can see we have an empty shelf this year. Last year every shelf was full in the storage room. Not much left in the garden now and a frost is predicted for this coming Thursday which is the opening day of bow season. Jeff is still working on building the hen house and worrying that he has not moved his tree stands around yet. But he wants to close the building up tight for the winter and he is really good with his priorities. I am a lucky woman. Picked out the paint and bought the primer so I am hoping to have a few nice days to get it painted yet this fall and ready for the chicks in the spring.

Red, White and Blue

It is DIY day at A Soft Place to Land hosted by Kimba. Here is my project. The large letters I bought from Michael's. I'm sure everyone knows where one of those stores are. Then I picked out my favorite red, white and blue scrapbooking papers. Bought at a number of different places. Then I painted the edges of the letters with my favorite blue paint. Next I sit the letters upside down on the back of the papers and traced. Twice for the S and the A on different papers. Next I cut into 1 or 2 pieces on the 2 alike letters at the same time. And then you piece back together until you are happy with the look. Next Modge Podge them on the letters and decorate with ribbons or anything you would like. I did ink the edges of the paper before decoupaging them. Had hubby hang them above a very high window. I really wanted them to look as though they were sitting on the ledge but he had his own opinion on that. But heh that's ok, because I did not want to climb up there myself.

Second Time Around Tuesday

I found this cake stand at a local antique shop this past weekend. Out with mom-in-law(my favorite person to shop garage sales, antique and resale shops with). It was our small towns harvest festival and there was a flea market, craft show and garage sales to check out also. Not to mention a quilt show, bike show, car show and a parade that we did not get time to see. The
parade that is. We did go to the quilt show could not miss that. But I did not take any pictures, I don't know what I was thinking.
At first I thought this would just go in the cupboard until I made a cake to put on it. But I started moving things around and I think this looks good. As you can see I love red, I add it where ever I can. Check out Rednesday at It's a Very Cherry World and 2nd Time Around at A Picture is a Worth 1000 Words. Sorry I seem to be able to copy my link and place it on other sites but I cannot seem to figure out the opposite. Need some help with my blogging. Please be patient I will learn it yet.

What came out of our garden for dinner.

We are trying to clean out our garden. I have to say I am getting tired of canning and trying to think of things to do with the rest of the peppers left in the garden. We still pick close to a quart of strawberries every other day, we have some ever bearers, and we have winter squash that is still ripening. But yesterday we went out and picked more peppers. I picked every Pablano pepper that was on the 4 plants we had.

Then I roasted them so I could peel the skins off.

This is what I used most of them for. It is a Chili Relleno Casserole. You can find the recipe here musingsofaranchwife.blogspot.com. I am hoping that Ranch Wife will not mind me sending any of you her way. It was really good.

Now Ranch Wife did not have a picture, and I usually need a picture when I cook something new to know I am putting things together correctly. It might not look exactly like this when someone else makes it but I'm telling you it is good. Here is my problem though, I had scoop of this for dinner last night and then another small scoop and then the leftovers went into the fridge, because there is just Jeff and I. Now I cannot have anymore because today is the day of the start of my diet. I had been planning on doing this diet thing for a couple of weeks now so Jeff gets all the yummy leftovers.

I am a short little Gramma, not quite 5.1 and I have put on about 12 pounds this past year that are really starting to drag me down. So I weighed in this morning at 150.8 pounds and am giving myself three weeks to take the 12 pounds back off. I have now told the world, or so I think I have, so there is no turning back.

Thanks for stopping in!

New Rock Garden and a Truck Full of Lumber

Jeff and I are still working outside trying to finish off our summer projects. I have all kinds of crafty things that I want to work on inside but I have canning to do and perennials that I need to find a home in the ground for. I also have a huge pile of mulch that we picked up over Labor Day weekend that I have only spread about half of. It's a race to get everything finished around here. This first picture I pulled out of a gardening magazine (I don't remember which) a couple of years ago.

It was my inspiration for the rock garden I planted this summer on either side of a short walkway between our fruit trees. I love to grow sedums. They are so easy, they don't need a lot of care. Instead of boxing off the box with more wood I used rock. That way I could just place them where I wanted and did not have to ask Jeff to cut anything. I can use a saw if I want, but I really do not care to. I just am not that handy with electrical tools. I am hoping that all the little areas will fill in and overflow in the next couple of years.



Labor Day weekend we hulled home this truck full of lumber. We need to start adding some buildings to our property. We have 10 acres and a lot of plans on how to use it. It has been slow getting around to some of our projects but finally we have a start. I have mentioned this building in earlier post this summer, so if you have been following my site you may be able to guess what this will become.

Here is my husband putting in the footings and foundation. He is very precise about things and you can see he is working on getting everything level.

Here are the walls all stacked up in the garage where he was building them. No room for my car the last week and a half.

Jeff's dad and brother came over Saturday to help get the walls attached and ready for Jeff to start with the rafters next.

This is what it looked like yesterday, Sunday afternoon. I have to tell you there is already siding on it since I took these pictures. But I have been inside canning pepper jelly and stuffing peppers to freeze, so I did not get any pictures this evening before it got dark. We had a rotten year of tomatoes but we have every kind of pepper imaginable in the garden that I need to find a use for in the next week. Any guesses yet? It's our Hen House! It will be ready for next springs chicks! I am so excited!


What do you think? Jeff has done his homework. Windows on the correct side for the best ventilation and warmth. Took the complete summer to for us to agree on the plans he drew up. I picked out this really cute house from a book I brought home from the Tractor Store. But that was it, cute, not practical. Thanks for reading my ramblings. Hope everyone has been getting their summer projects finished and is ready for the fall season.

Paper Pieced Tag

Jeff and I always pick up pretty rocks when we go on vacation to use in the stepping stones we make. There are always a handful or more that we just keep aside to remember our trips. I usually put them in a jar and the grand kids almost always play with them and mix them all together so we really don't know where they came from. So this year I decided I would start labeling where we picked them up and the year. Since Scrappy Frogs Challenge is to paper piece something, I decided to work that into the tag I was making to tie around this years jar. I used my new QuickKutz Epic Six to cut the tags with Spellbinder Dies. This is my first die cutting tool so I am just learning how to use it. I used a paper piecing pattern I found on the Internet, but I had to reduce the size quite a lot for it to fit on the tag. All the paper was just out of my scrap stash.