Flan you!!!

We were invited to Lacey's house for Mexican tonight (Nacho's!!) so I decided to do a mexican dessert.  Never did one before but wanted to try it out.  I decided to do Flan.  Flan is like a Mexican Cheesecake. A mix of Cheesecake and Custard.  Boy it turned out yummy!!!   The caramelized sugar did not turn out too great.  So I ended up sprinkling sugar and cinnamon on the top.  It was pretty good for my first try!! It would be better with the caramelized sugar on the top but I will have to work on getting better at that!! :)

Today was kind of a lazy day.  Didn't really do much.  In fact can't even remember what I did this morning!! LOL  Oh!!  I had to make the Flan then because it had to be in the refrigerator a certain amount of time.  Then I went to lunch at Pizza Hut with Grandpa, mom, Scott, and Bob (he left for Florida today I believe. If he didn't, he is leaving tomorrow.  He is Scott's uncle that we purchased the house from!!) and had to eat and run because the Flan was in the oven. Once I got that out, I ran up to Rural King because Scott said they had chicks up there.  But they are Cornish Crosses and those are meat birds. I do not want any meat chickens!! LOL  I will stick to my egg layers for now.  I am not quite the farmer yet!  After that, I ran to Grandpa's house for a few and talked with mom. Then came home and watered my young trees and berry bushes and the garden I actually have planted thus far.  Everything seems to be doing well out there.  I do need to go weed out there and in my front flower bed. Then I went to where Bob and Scott were packing up some of his stuff to take back to FL. So sat with them for a while during a rest and talked a bit.

Then it was time to run to Lacey's house for supper.  So we chit chatted while Scott tilled up her flower bed.  Lacey's house has a lot of potential to it.  Told her it takes a step at a time to make things look better.  Time and money.  Then we tore into the Flan (even Addison liked it!!) after finishing the Nacho's!!  With a storm moving in, we had to head home to feed the dogs and get them inside before the storm moved in.  We made it!! LOL  It is raining as we speak!!

Now it is off to bed!! Ahhhh ... can't wait to do that!! :)

Another fairly busy day ... again!!! LOL

Ahhhhhh ... yet another busy day down.  I woke up a little late this morning. It was around 9 am.   But I jumped out of bed and got busy right away.  Cleaned up the living room again (only swept it), the dining room and the kitchen. Then I french braided Addison's hair for school. I found out around 10:30 we were having family come for leftovers from last night for lunch (I totally love entertaining!!  It was Scott and I, Mom, Grandpa, Denny and Bob!) so I swept 2 of the couches from dog hair.  Then had to make some more spaghetti and sauce to make sure we had enough for everyone. Then cleaned up the dishes (they still have to be done) and put away the leftovers. After that was done (Addison had already been picked up by her mom around noon!) and everyone had left, I packed up the chickie girls (my 10 chickens!!), mom's mantis, and all my other garden items and headed out to the garden.  Got the chickie girls unpacked (put up an x-pen and set their carrier inside the x-pen and opened the door.) and got to work in the garden. I almost had 3 4x4 squares done when Scott came home (from helping prune some of Grandpa's trees) and said we are suppose to meet mom and Grandpa at the "Clown house" (aka McDonald's!!) for pancakes (the Mickie D's here has all you can eat pancakes for about $2 a person. Full house with the older folks!! LOL). So I packed the girls into the carrier and off to Mickie D's we went. It was fun watching everyone come in and everyone knew one another.  Scott's brother, Todd, and his kids, Laynee and Wyatt, joined us then the three ring circus began!! LOL  After all that fun, I came home and worked further on the garden.  Let the chickie girls out.  I am happy to say that the chicks know who I am!! One of the Rhode Island Reds (I call her Lucy ... she is our largest Red!!) got out of the x-pen and I didn't notice.  I was working some dirt and looked down near my foot and there stood Lucy!! LOL So got her back into the x-pen and finished up my garden that I could get done (got 10 4x4 squares done ... still have to rake the weeds/roots out then plant) before it got dark.  Then packed the chickies up and the garden stuff I took down there and tractor-ed them back up to the house.  Viola!  My day in a nutshell!!  I shall sleep well!! LOL  It is suppose to rain tomorrow so I don't expect to work much in the garden tomorrow but Thursday is suppose to be nice again so maybe I will get more done then!  Slowly coming along!! :)  Nighty nite!!

Busy Day ...

Wow!!  Woke up this morning at 8:30 and just now sitting down (@8:18 pm)!!  Mainly just cleaning the house.  Took me all day to sweep the place, steam mop the main house and stairs. Then I cleaned the kitchen and unloaded the dishwasher.  Then I made some homemade Focaccia Bread.  Turned out great!!  Needed some more Rosemary and Thyme on the top (they said with herbs, the less the better so maybe I didn't use enough.  But my first time making it so experimenting!!).  I think next time I will do some garlic salt.  I made some doughnut muffins too.  Haven't eaten one of those yet so not sure what it tastes like.  Looks pretty good!! I love baking and cooking.  I made so much spaghetti, sauce and bread that we had Grandpa, Sue, Gary and Addison over.  Addison's mom, Lacey, bailed out on us (  :P  )!! Even with everyone eating a ton of it, I have a ton left. We had salad too.  I love having people over for supper!!  Then after everyone was gone, I cleaned the kitchen again!! Dishwasher is running right now. So all is well here in the house.  Nitey nite!!

Rainy Days ... miserable me!!

Feeling blue today (therefore the blue text!!).  But I have a massive headache due to the rain going on.  Rain means mold and mold means misery for me!! 

Got a lot done since I last posted.  I got most of my dining room done, my craft room is a little more organized  I stuck most of the boxes in the closet for my craft room so I can slowly unpack that and organize it. My desk in there was clean at one point but now all this crap is heaped on it again so I need to re-organize that room.  The other bedroom (the purple room)is still a mess but looks a little better than it did.  Needs some storage boxes taken downstairs to storage and other boxes unpacked then the bed put together and viola! That bedroom will be completed. 

Finally got the birds a place to stay too. So they are much happier.  Especially Twinkie.  She ended up with the smaller white cage Zeus used to use for a living room perch.  So now she will get handled more (which doesn't really make her very happy!!LOL)so by doing this eventually she will be happier being with people and not so scared of strangers. 

My baby chicks are growing quickly!!  A couple of them are a pretty good size now. We have decided to purchase a shed and build that into a chicken coop.  Customize it for our needs.  Scott has a couple good ideas for it.  The shed we want is about $600 and then probably a couple hundred more to customize it for the chickens.  But it will be a nice large space so if we decide to expand into more chickens, we have the space to do it!! We could make a real nice coop for the chickie girls that way!! :)  PS  Decided to name my largest Rhode Island Red Lucy.  She is a large presence and has red feathers ... Like Lucy was a red head and a big presence in comedy!! I loved her goofy antics!!

Our pasture (we have decided to call the land beyond the front yard the pasture!! We have no backyard, all of our land is out front and to the side.  So an acre or two is the front yard while the remaining land is "the orchard", the front pasture, the side pasture and the far pasture!! LOL) is growing in nicely.  The grass is tall and there are some really tall weeds that need to be dug out. Mainly along the drainage system the ethanol plant had to dig out on the property. So they need to go.  Then it is mainly grass.  It is a real soft piece of property ... meaning the dirt is a lot of sand. So a lot of the time when you are walking across it, it sinks below your feet.  So that is a weird feeling. But I love looking out our window and seeing all that land.  What a wonderful feeling to look out and see all that land and know it is yours!!  I cannot wait to find the perfect horses to fill in some of that acreage!! LOL What an exciting thing to think about ... my childhood dream coming true. How awesome is that?!?! 

People think I am nuts when I say I am glad to have moved here.  Then they hear I have been a city girl all my life and say "Ahhhhh, ok!". LOL I have experienced all that comes with the city and have found it to be over-rated. I am not a big shopper so being close to extensive shopping is not a must for me.  And if I HAVE to have the different choices, I can drive 45 mins up the road to Terre Haute and have choices.  No biggie!!  Anything under an hour is good for me (although to talk to people around here, that is like trekking to the other side of the world!! LOL).

I really haven't missed much of what I had anywhere else I lived. We will see as time goes on though on how happy I stay (I think I probably will ... especially after building a barn and adding a few horses!! LOL).

Ta Tah for now!!

Lazy Day ....

Today is a lazy day. I spent most of my day yesterday in the garden.  My head is sunburned as is my arms. But I got a small part of my garden done.  It is gonna take me forever!! LOL  But it will be a nice garden when it finally gets done.

We went to watch Austin (Daren, Scott's cousin's son) play soccer on Sunday.  Daren had come into town from his job to visit his family and was there to watch Austin play too.  It was a lot of fun.  Austin plays for a team called Crawford County Chaos. They lost their first game but won their second day.  Addison, Daren's girlfriend's daughter and his step daughter, was there.  She took a shine to Scott and by the end of the day decided she needed to come stay at our house for the night.  So instead of two of us coming home, there was three of us!!  Not long afterwards, two more were added to our bunch.  Daren and Lacey brought Addison's stuff over and ended up staying for supper.  They had brought their two boxers, Boomhauser (Cracky) and Bailey (Fat) to play with our guys.  That was fun to watch!!  And they are sooo goofy anyway!! LOL But it was an enjoyable day.

Then the next day Lacey came to pick up Addison to do some errands but Addison wasn't ready to leave yet!! So she spent the rest of the day helping me and Scott around the house.  She came out and played in the garden with me.  Found out she hated getting dirty but yet she was out there burying her legs and feet in the dirt while I planted my garden!! LOL  Then she would come up to the house and help Scott do whatever it was he was doing up here.  Apparently she doesn't like her shirt wet either.  If she gets a drop of water on it, apparently she likes to change her shirt ... not a word was said to us about changing her shirt when it got wet several times!! LOL  And she is suppose to be a picky eater and won't eat anything ... she ate a half a can of Macaroni and beef for lunch and for supper 2 whole pieces of pizza by herself!! So she did real well.  Lacey came back over around 5 pm and we had some homemade pizza for supper.  It was good. Had really hard time with my dough last night though!!  Was driving me crazy! But it ended up turning up good.  I like cooking with gas too.  It is easier and faster.  And more even too.

Today I am tired.  Don't feel like doing anything but I do need to do something.  Still have a butt ton to do.  And I am tired of the house looking the way it does. And not being able to know where anything is at.  So frustrating!! LOL

Anywho ... gonna get off of here and do something productive for the time being.  So until later!! :)

"Big City" visit ...

We traveled to the "Big City" (Terre Haute, IN) today!! Actually Terre Haute has done a lot of growing since I last went there many moons ago.  We went to the Pet Food Center and bought the animals food today.  The dogs, cats and cockatiels needed food. Then we also had to pick up cat litter. While there, they had a Moluccan Cockatoo named Andy there.  Poor Andy was needing a new home because the previous owner was afraid of the bird and could not handle it.  Apparently he is good in his cage but when you go to bring him out of his cage, he can become quite the terror.  We told the girl checking us out about dropping him to the floor when he is nasty and not letting him near his cage.  She was not aware of that fact ... ahhhh, the things I could teach people!! LOL After the Pet Food Center, we went to Herbs & Heirlooms and Homebrew too!! That was a REALLY cool store with all sorts of neat stuff.  They carry incense, aromatherapy items, herbs, precious stones, and wine/beer making stuff. There is a lot of other things too but that is the short list.  I am sure you will hear more about it as I check it out in my future visits to Terre Haute!!  After that store, we stopped by Lowes and window shopped. Then we came back here, unloaded the car (Scott's) and took my truck to Rural King.  Scott was gonna get fencing to do the Dogs permanent fence but decided not too.  We ended up buying chicken feeders and waterers for the chickies. After that, we went to Walmart and picked up some groceries and a new steam mop for my floors!!  A mop just does not get it!!  It leaves a nasty water mark and film on the floors. It is quite frustrating to clean your floors only to sit down and they still look nasty from an angle.  Once we got home and unloaded the groceries, I went out to the garden and made 12 4x4 sq's for my sq foot gardening.  It is gonna rain sometime tomorrow so I think most of my work will be done inside tomorrow.  Besides, I think 12 sq's are a good start for me.  It is gonna take a few days to clean those out of roots and prep for the seeds, which I still have to find tomorrow!! LOL  Once I got that done, I sat down for about 20 mins and we decided to go enjoy some DQ. So we got shoes on and met Grandpa and Mom at the DQ and enjoyed some down time with them. The Carmel Brownie Blizzard is good!! Now I am back at home, my feet kicked up and my eyes feeling heavy!! LOL  Awwww ... it feels good to feel tired. I sleep like a baby now a days after working my butt off!! LOL That was my day in a nutshell!! :)  Not so bad!!  LOL

Mushroom hunting

I got to go mushroom hunting for the very first time today!  It was tons of fun!!  It was in a very hilly place so I did a lot of climbing!!  It reminded me of my days in Georgia climbing Kennesaw Mountain or even Stone Mountain (without most of the trees, etc!! LOL).  Was thinking being part mountain goat would have been a good thing to be during that time!! LOL  I guess the mushrooms we were hunting were called Morel Mushrooms.  Suppose to be really good eatin' if you enjoy that kind of thing. I found the first mushroom and I found the most mushrooms!!  And I was the newbie!! LOL Everyone kept asking me if I could smell them.  My nose does work VERY well.  I think I could probably train it to find them. They have a very distinct scent about them. I found a really nice Morel Mushroom hunting guide via Field and Stream Mag online.  But I enjoy my time out in the woods anyway.  I love trees and feel very connected to God when surrounded by trees full of life. It was lovely listening to the birds throughout the trees and the little frogs jumping when you rustled through the dead leaves on the floor of the woods.  The only tough thing about it was climbing through the rose bush thorns.  Apparently the Young Farmers of America decided that a certain rose bush (I cannot remember their name) made wonderful natural cow barriers and they used them for such.  Worked out fine and dandy until the birds started eating the fruit on it and then pooped the seeds out and the stuff started sprouting up everywhere!!  And apparently the only thing that kills those suckers are goats eating it!! They love the stuff Uncle Gary said.  I know I don't!! LOL I have tons of scratches on my arms from those nasty little suckers!!  Another draw back is the ticks!!  I pulled about 7 or 8 of those little boogers from my body after hunting.

Altogether though it was a nice day!

We got some plants from Mom and Grandpa today too!!  Was tickled pink to see those!!  Got 3 Goji berries, 3 Honeyberries, 2 Giant Blueberries, 3 Nanking Cherry bushes and 2 Japanese Maple trees!!  So excited!!  Have never had any of those fruits (except maybe the blueberries!!) so I will be excited to see the fruit on those within 1-2 years!!  Re-planted our Blackberry bushes today too.  Between our fruit trees, our berry bushes, the couple grape vines and the garden I want to grow, we shall be pretty set at some point!! LOL

Ahhhh, we are so blessed!!  Getting to use the land that God blessed us with ... ahhhhh!!  Life is great!!!