Mini Heart Bunting Valentine Cards & One For You

Each year the kids and I have fun making valentine cards to give away to friends and family and in addition to this we decided that it would be fun to participate in a valentine card swap this year as well that will provide us with oodles of mail which is just plain fun anytime.

What I hadn't anticipated was making 38 cards! Yes, that was definitely more than I ever could have imagined but creating things with the kids is always fun :)

I love making bunting and my daughter always wants to use my sewing machine so I thought I'd combine the two together and so our little mini heart bunting cards came to life :)

We started by cutting out little rectangles of burlap fabric slightly smaller than the face of our cards and pulled out a few threads from each of the sides to give it a frayed appearance. Then between the two of us we traced over 120 miniature little hearts onto the paper side of some Heat n Bond paper that we would later iron onto an assortment of red fabrics.

With our hearts traced, ironed onto our fabrics, cut out and then permanently affixed to the top of our burlap rectangles in a semi circle formation it was time to get stitching!

Using a nice bright red thread my daughter stitched on the string for our bunting so that it no longer looked like our hearts were just floating all alone finishing the mini heart bunting...

And then she took each of the finished burlap rectangles and stitched each of them to the front side of each of our little note cards. So much more simpler than mucking around with glue and then waiting for everything to dry! Plus getting to use mama's sewing machine is always such a treat :)

I just love how they turned out with their little red stitching from the sewing machine and I was so happy that my daughter had so much fun sewing them. Originally I thought that she would maybe make it through half of the cards we had to make but she just wanted to keep sewing and sewing which actually turned out to be a good thing because we now have extras to share with you!

So if you or your children would like a little surprise Valentine card sent to you in the mail just let me now in the comments below and make sure you leave me a way to get in contact with you for your address :)

The first five commenters will have one personally sent to you by my happy heart stitcher *grin*.

All of the Valentine cards have now been spoken for :)

Hugs,
Rosina

I've Got A Teenager!!

On Monday my son turned 13!!!
I can't believe I have a teenager in the house already. It sort of makes me feel old *grin*. On Saturday he had a couple of friends over for the day and we had his big cake, party food and presents and on Monday the actual day of his birthday we kept it pretty low key. I made his favorite meal of hamburgers and as a joke I stuck a candle in the top of one of the burgers and sang happy birthday to him as I brought it out to him for lunch :) You should have seen the grin on his face. I'm actually looking forward to his teenage years as it brings a whole new set of experiences and he is such a great kid that it can only get better :)

Today we all worked on our Valentine's day cards that we are making for a swap we are participating in. My daughter traced out hearts on some heat n bond paper and then we transferred it to the burlap rectangles above which are going to make the front panel of our cards.

I just LOVE all of the red fabrics and can't wait to show you how they turn out. Last year we made cute little handprint heart cards and we shared our extras with some of you lovely readers and we're going to do it again! So make sure and check back as I will have 5 of our new cards ready to hit the mail just for you :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Sunshine & Sausage Making

Now that is an odd title I do admit but since my photos include a little bit of both I thought it fit *grin*.

The sun graced us today with its warmth and light and it felt so good after the last bout of rain we were soaked with. After lunch we bundled up and set out for a walk to burn off some extra energy from being house bound and searched for interesting finds along the way. We admired the snow still clinging to the highest mountain peaks, spied on little Sparrows and Spotted Towhees and at one point my 5 year old even ripped his boots off so that he could walk barefoot over a bunch of clumped moss along the roadside LOL. Now that would have made a good photo. Oh how I wish I had brought my camera with me!!

We have finally finished putting our cow into the freezer which is such a relief. It was two very long days of cutting and wrapping from morning till night and tired aching feet and backs but the sight of our freezer bursting to the top with those brown paper packages makes it all worth it.

Our favorite part of the whole process though is making sausage :)
I use a mix of 3/4 beef to 1/4 pork, fresh garlic and onions run through the grinder along with the meat and a bunch of spices mixed in to make our sausage meat. I don't add any extra fat or fillers, just the basics and then once its all mixed together Hubby feeds it into our grinder which has a handy little sausage stuffing attachment and I control the sausage casings, filling them uniformly for twisting into links later.

The whole process moves along quite quickly and if you ever need to buy a very economical meat grinder with a lot of punch I highly recommend Moulinex. We have a Moulinex HV6 and it has two plates for course and fine grinding, sausage horn and a reverse function in the even that it jams and we have been using it for the last 9 years. It has ground all our beef that has been butchered since purchasing it and we finally had to sharpen the blade this time around as it was a bit dull. I'm not sure if you can still get the HV6 but I see there is a newer model now available :)

So here they are all twisted into links and portioned into dinner sized amounts. They are drier than a normal store bought sausage understandably since we don't add any additional fat but they make up for it in taste and I know exactly what is in them :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Nature Walk ~ Bald Eagle Spotting

On our nature walk this week we were treated to a spectacular show of bald headed eagles :) We have a network of trails that wind up the mountain behind our house and to our bottom field and it was down there that we came across a good half dozen of them.

A few of them were skittish and flew away but the others that remained eyed us curiously from their tree top perches. I would have loved to have gotten a little closer for a better photo as these ones are a little grainy but my little guy was so busy stomping tracks into the snow that I didn't dare go any further into their comfort zone *grin*.

Speaking of tracks we found these great bird tracks!

Now I'm not certain if these were from the eagles but we found them nearby and they look like the tail feathers of a large bird as it sat in the snow. I should have put my hand or shoe by them as they really were quite big. I have never found anything like this before so it was so neat to share it with the children :)

We hung around as long as we could before we became to cold to stay an longer but we got to see a few of them soaring back and forth between different trees and even a few juveniles that joined the older eagles. I wish I could have stayed much longer just admiring their grace and beauty. A true winter treat :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Unplugged Family Fun

{Our snow queen safely tucked beneath her umbrella}

Old man winter has been creating havoc around us this week and on Sunday afternoon he hit us with one heck of a windy snowball toppling trees up and down the island, knocking out our power for 23 hours and leaving us with no telephone service or internet for even longer.

But that didn't stop us from having fun *grin*.

Our evening was lit by oil lamp and scented with delicious smells of beeswax candles while our ears were filled with stories, board games, and silly chatter late into the night....

and plenty of outdoor play during the day. Thank goodness for wood heat and hot soup to thaw out our bodies after being frozen in the blustery cold and I'm sure that eating loads of icicles does nothing to keep children warm except it does bring giant smiles to their faces *grin*.

The 'girls' don't seem to be fond of the snow though and for the first couple of days they actually refused to leave the warm straw covered floor of their house :) My oldest ended up stomping down a nice path and area for them to come out to eat fresh scraps and in the end I think that it was stepping in the deep snow that they didn't like because they didn't mind staying on the hard packed snow. As you can see in the photo above though the lure of food would pull them into deeper areas if they thought it was worthwhile enough *grin*.

The falling snow has turned more to rain these last few days though and it is starting to melt our snow reserve but hopefully it won't all go away taking it's bright white beauty with it!

Hugs,
Rosina

Winter Wonderland

***Please note that there are a few graphic photos at the end of this blog entry showing the butchering of our cow and I just want to let you know in case you would rather not view them. ~ Rosina***

I am absolutely smitten with the beauty of winter :)
The snowy weather has continued here all week. While it hasn't amounted to much more than 5 or 6 inches it has tried awful hard and the temperatures dipped as low as -14 freezing our back door permanently shut for 4 days!! Thankfully we have another door so we didn't have to try to hard to get it unthawed *grin*.

I had been holding off heading into the city for groceries and errands since the highway has been covered with slush and hard packed snow but the fridge was mighty bare and hubby has been home from work due to all the wind up this way so we bundled up and ventured out with the truck.

Normally the trip takes us just under an hour but it was over an hour this time before we got into town as we slowly made our way over the mountain, through the fog and sometimes rather slippery conditions.

The trees covered in snow and the silence that it brings made the trip so enjoyable though that I could have gazed out the window for much longer. You just can't beat a the winter wonderland that snow brings :)

The cold weather has also brought with it the perfect temperature for killing our beef cow. We raised him from a little calf on our own pasture and it will be so nice to have yummy homegrown beef in the freezer again since I never buy any from the supermarket.

We didn't have a cow for butchering last winter so we were behind. We always try to have one cow ready every second winter so that we don't run out of meat but it didn't quite work out that way this time.

With the hide removed Hubby and my dad worked on taking out the gut and all of the organs so that they could cover the meat and raise it up high where it will hang for 2 weeks before we do the big job of finishing the butchering and all of the wrapping.

My daughter was really interested in watching the men work and was not squeamish about it at all which was great and we got to have a really good look at the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver.

I should have thought of it sooner but it would have been really cool to have done a biology block for our homeschool courses so I'm going to have to think ahead next time and get a bunch of materials ready so that we can do a full dissection class. Every moment can be a learning moment *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Hello King Winter

Winter has finally come to our little neck of the woods bringing with it breathtaking beauty.

It started snowing yesterday evening, with the snowflakes falling quite heavily and this morning we awoke to a little over 4 inches of snow on the ground :)

I could hear the squeals of delight from the family room as I lay all cozy in bed and I knew that I was going to have to officially designate today a snow day because there was no way that I was going to get the children to focus on school work with all that snow beckoning them to come out and play.



With their snowsuits on and their gloves cinched up tight they were all gone by 8:30. Not long after there was a knock on the family room window letting me know that they had made paths around the house to the chicken house, the woodshed and around the front yard :) The snow is so light and fluffy that they even shovelled half of the driveway and that is no small feat!

There were no snowmen built today because the snow refused to stick together but there was a whole lot of snow angels, sledding, snow eating and the occasional face plant *grin*. All I can say is BRRRR!!! The temperature was around -6 today and with the wind chill it was more like -15 making our little jaunt to the mail boxes down by the main road a little nippy so we really had to do some speed walking to get the old blood pumping and create some internal heat :)

More snow is forecasted for tomorrow so I can just imagine what filled their prayers tonight at bedtime *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Breaking the Silence :)

I apologize for the radio silence that has creeped up over my blog! I seem to have a bit of blogger's block *grin*. It's been pretty quiet around here since the holiday festivities quieted down and we settled back into a familiar rhythm of homeschooling in the morning, farm chores, making every effort to get outdoors each day to take in the beauty around us and spending time making nourishing meals to warm us now that winter has finally made an appearance with snow and freezing temperatures :)

We've had some lovely visits with our closest friends letting the kids have fun playing together and we even hit the skating rink earlier this week :)

It was the first time my youngest two children had been on skates so they were so excited. L took to it like it was second nature and took off without any instruction or help of an aid to keep her up while my little guy had fun making ice angels in the middle of the rink and getting pushed around wildly in one of the little kiddy cars they had. Afterwards we surprised the kids with a visit to a nearby coffee shop where they got to have hot chocolate to warm up with and us mamas soaked in the warmth from the fireplace :)

This morning I also had a chance to attend a fantastic seminar by Linda Kane an ICAN Certified Neurodevelopmentalist http://www.hope-future.org/ on effective ways to teach children and she shared all sorts of amazing information on the ways the brain develops in children. Really cool stuff that I'll have to share in another blog post :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Apple Nachos... How have we not met before?!

How is it that I had never heard of apple nachos?!

I was reading one of my new favorite blogs, Manifest Vegan, when I came across a very interesting recipe for a fruity nacho. Hence the apple nacho name.

Apparently this recipe has been around for quite a while and I seriously must be one of the last few people in the blogosphere to hear about it! Basically it's just thin slices of apple, and then I drizzled on a wee bit of organic peanut butter, unsweetened coconut, almond slivers, walnuts and a few chipits for fun :)

In the original recipe I linked to above she uses pecans which would be awesome to and what about a few dried cranberries on there instead of the chipits? I am SO doing that next time!!

What a great snack it made for the children this afternoon when their tummies were growling and it was way to early for supper :) It's pretty healthy right? I guess maybe the chipits aren't LOL.

Okay now be honest... if you have never heard of apple nachos you have to let me know that I'm not the only one that missed out on this fun food idea *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Goodbye 2011... Hello 2012

Well I guess it's all over... 2011 that is *grin*.

Last night we pulled out a fancy table cloth for the coffee table, covered it with delicious finger foods for our annual new year's eve party and invited my mom and dad to join us :) We had cheese and crackers, hummus and veggie chips, fresh oysters that I breaded and fried, black Alaskan cod which is seriously to die for when you steam it in the oven....

and poached pears in a merlot and grand marnier sauce. I've been wanting to make these for a long time and thought it would make a lovely dessert to eat at the stroke of midnight :) I made a syrupy reduction out of the poaching liquid and then drizzled it over the warm pears and vanilla bean ice cream. So yummy and a lovely way to ring in the new year!

My dad just happens to be a new year's baby as well so today we got to have another party for his birthday with homemade sushi. We made California rolls and others with smoked sockeye salmon, shrimp croissants and my mom made cherry cheesecake for his birthday cake. I think I've eaten enough for an entire week in the last 24 hours LOL.

I'm not one for new year's resolutions usually as I tend to break them but last January I had vowed to live life more intentionally and 2011 lived up to what I had envisioned so I plan to do a whole lot more intentional living in 2012!

But when I read this lovely excerpt below from Ann Voskamp's blog, A Holy Experience a few days ago it just made me say 'YES'!

“I don’t really want more time;
I just want enough time.
Time to breathe deep & time to see real & time to laugh long, time to give You glory & rest deep & sing joy…
I just want time to do my one life well."
{read more here}

I can't agree more whole heartedly with what she wrote and I am looking forward to everything this brand new year brings my way :)

Happy New Year,
Rosina