Puttering Around

Most of the time when I post to my blog it has to do with knitting, stitching or sewing. But I do other things as well. Today I'm going to show a few things I've been up to this summer:)

One of the things my daughter entered into the county fair was this Country Apple Fritter Bread. It filled the whole house with apple/cinnamon-y goodness. Since I'm (mostly) gluten free, we don't usually bake in this house. I know there are ways around it, however most often the results just aren't what I had in mind, and I'm not a baker, so we just usually skip the baking. But this smelled SOOO good, I just had to give it a try the day after. All I did different was to substitute Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1 gf flour for the flour it called for and it turned out really good. It was a bit too moist, so if you try it as a gf recipe, maybe add a bit more flour or a little less milk. Another reason we avoid baking in this house??? It was gone the same day I baked it. I had to force myself not to finish it off before anyone else got home!! :)

In the past I volunteered as a community leader with 4-H (meaning I was the adult leader for our club for 4 years). Last year I handed that off to a couple families in our club, but I am still one of the adult leaders for the 4-H Jr. Leaders group. This is a group of 12 year olds and up that help with several of the county events. Every year they put on a dance at the fair. All ages of kids can come and dance the evening away, they provide a DJ and snacks. The Jr. Leaders do most of the dancing, but the little kids have lots of fun too. I get to be one of the chaperones, and it is so fun watching the kids dance and be silly:) Above is my daughter dancing with one of the little girls. This little girl is also in the MOPs class that my daughter volunteers with so they know each other pretty well:)

From the road looking into our property. The only place where water runs through - though it's all dried up now:)

From the road right in front of our property - my favorite tree:)

I've taken some pictures on my walks. We live in the wide open country with farm ground and a few pastures all around us. Beyond the few trees we have on our property (soon to be more as we are letting a small area grow without cutting them down), it's hard to find much other than wheat/corn/milo/bean fields to look at. Earlier this summer we got quite a bit of nice rain, so it was a least a pretty green. Now it's dried up a bit, but if you look hard you can still find the beauty in it:)

From my walk yesterday - the fields beyond are fallow right now, but there are some pretty wildflowers along the road.

Our little house.

 

Right now there's not much color outside, so I decided to take a couple of tea bottles that we have be drinking like crazy and make use of them. These are fake flowers, but they bring a bit of color into the house:)

It's time for my to run now, I'm meeting my sister-in-law at a small independent bookstore and cafe for some stitching time:) It'll be fun!!

Officially Summer

Late last week I was sleeping in a bit and I still had a few min to stay in bed when a noise woke me. It was muffled as we have a window a/c unit in our bedroom, but it came again and again. At first I thought the wind must have picked up and we were getting gusts, but that didn't seem right after a few min, so I got up. I heard it a bit more clearly once I wasn't in my room and knew instantly what was going on...

This little guy got out of his pasture:) Actually it was him and a full grown bull, but the older bull got scared as soon as he saw me and ran around the other side of the pasture. This guy was really spooked too and his momma was all kinds of upset, so I decided to wake my daughter up and call the farmer that owns this little guy.

We thought we might be able to get the little one in before the farmer came, but his momma was following him close on the other side of the fencing and as they got closer to the open gate, we decided to wait fearing the momma would get out instead. We really didn't need more cows out and about.

Momma was staying close

We did help Mr. Yoder get the young one in and then he called a couple of his farm hands out to help with the older bull and to fix the fence (the breach was on the other side of his pasture - not sure how they found their way to our yard:).

Baby back with momma, he was hungry!! 

Mr. Yoder apologized, but I'm not sure a summer has gone by without us needing to get a hold of some farmer in the area letting them know about escaped cows, so I just told him it wouldn't be summer without cows in our yard!! :) Just part of living in the country.

Gracie

We met Gracie in the fall of 2001 when she came to be a part of our family. Our daughter was 2 1/2 years old and didn't have any siblings so we thought she would be a great addition to our family.

Our daughter at around 4 (Gracie would have been around 2)

She was bred to be a service dog and most of her siblings did get chosen to be just that, but Gracie had just a bit too much energy and loved to jump up on people. Otherwise though,
she was a really good and smart dog. She learned fast and was super protective of her human child.

This was taken a few weeks ago

She also got along with just about every other animal she had ever met. We added a puppy when she was around 4 and she became his 'momma'. She would even get curious with the cows and goats that we've had and bump noses with them. The cat in the above photo followed her around everywhere.

This was her last day, daughter wanted as many photos as possible

We thought we were going to have to put her down in December, but the vet did some acupuncture and chiropractic adjustments along with some pain meds that she stayed on until her last day, and that gave us several more months with us. It even allowed her to see her through her 16th birthday in March:)  

She went quietly and very quickly and we are very thankful for that. She just needed a little nudge to fall into her forever sleep.

And while my family is already trying to talk me into a new puppy (I'm not quite ready yet), our other dog, who usually only occasionally comes in to eat and rest if it's really windy outside, has been making himself at home inside a little more and a little more...

Spades was dumped out here and found us 2 1/2 years ago

He'll never completely be an indoor dog, but I'm secretly hoping he'll become enough of one to satisfy the family:) He doesn't need trained and is already a part of the family. Although some of the puppy pictures my hubby keeps showing me makes getting a puppy seem a bit tempting. We will see how I'm feeling about it in a few more weeks/months. I'll make sure to post pictures if we do get a new family member:) 

Winter Came Crashing Down

My last post talked of how I was holding on to the Autumn season with everything I had. I'm thinking that Mother Nature must have heard me wrong and decided that what I really wanted was Winter to come as fast as possible because within a couple days that is just what happened. Not a nice, calm, beautiful snowstorm, but ice and freezing rain. And it lasted for 3 days:/ Thankfully we never did lose power, thought I don't know how, but it was a blessing as our pellet heater runs on electricity. Here are a few pictures from the storm...

This was a solid sheet of ice and you can see a few branches as they stated crashing down.

This is when it was almost over and it looks like this on all sides of the house. The sound was awful, but thankfully none that hit the house were very big and we had no damage.

I am happy to report that warmer weather is coming back, at least for the time being. I know I can't fight off winter for much longer:)

Well, Hello There

It's been a few months, how are you all doing? We are now a couple months into this school year and I think it's been one of the slowest years yet to feel like we are settling in to a schedule. Partly because of changes in activities for dd, and partly because of dh's crazy schedule. He's been on overtime for about 2 months now, which means he gets up at 3:00 am and would normally get home around 5:00 pm (and then go to bed early so he can get up early:). But this overtime schedule collided with his parent's finding a house in town that they really love. So he has also been spending a few evenings a week and all weekend at the family farm helping his parents pack up, get ready for an auction and moving. It's been a really busy couple of months for him. On top of this, our insurance sent a letter saying they would be out to take pictures of the property for their underwriters. This means that we need the buildings to look kept up or they can drop us from the insurance (they would give us time to make repairs if needed, of course). We knew the house needed painted, so dd and I started scraping and painting a couple weeks ago. Thankfully dh was able to get a couple days off work to help get it finished up. The siding really needs replaced, not just painted as we believe this is the original siding (built in 1920), but paint is going to have to do for now. We really need to replace (and re-wire) the porch light. You tend to ignore things like that until you post a pic on your blog and then it sorta stands out!! :)  

Graci guarding our front porch. She's starting to feel the effects of age (13 years old).

I'm super excited to report that it is starting to feel like Autumn around here!!! We are still having highs in the 80's here and there, but more and more it is cooling off and the leaves are changing. I really love this season:)

Of course, we have to get some Autumn yummy-ness going too. I've not tried the hot apple cider flavor yet, but the pumpkin spice is really good - especially with a bit of pumpkin creamer thrown in, and the hibiscus cranberry tastes like Christmas in a cup - YUMMY!!

As for crafty time, well, I've kinda let it all slide. I did get one knitting project done, and started a couple others, but not much else and almost no stitching. I did start a Christmas Ornie yesterday and I'm hoping to be able to show that to you by the end of the week along with the knitting project I finished. Until then, Happy Autumn!!