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!!