Applesausin"

We've been making applesauce. We did it with our neighbor Neca down the street in her canning kitchen... I think we might have to think about putting one of those in if we ever build our dream house :) We've made applesauce Three different times and these pictures are from when it was just me and Sam. I love having a full pantry of pretty jars full of canned things!

Canning

I know it's not quiet canning season but I had some peaches I needed to do. I like canning. I like the time it gives me to think, how my boys ask for the fruit that I'm working with and how they snitch it! I also like to think back to how my mom canned when I was little and how my grandmothers and great-grandmother's canned. What a legacy of love and skill that has been pasted down from one generation to another. It makes me grateful that I'm a woman and that I have these skills to! By the way my new favorite way to do peaches is to slice them and then put them into a big bowl with thawed orange juice concentrate. Yum!

Missing in Action

So things have been busy lately... My friend Mandy and I picked our neighbor's apple tree and did 41 quarts of pretty pink applesauce in three days! That was fun! We picked one day and sauced the next two.


We've planted a tree in the back yard and Sam learned how to climb up the slide stairs in the back yard. He was pretty sad when the weather turned and he couldn't play out side. I spray painted a brass ceiling fan I got on clearance black and we hung that up in the master bedroom. It looks great!

But what's really going to keep me busy this week is the fact that the family is decending on our house for a late lunch early dinner saturday... What did we do? So today I finished painting the baseboards upstairs and we moved some things from the living room to the back bedroom downstairs.... So if you are the lucky ones that are coming on Saturday... Don't look under the couches or in the back bedroom :)

I've also decided that next week I'll reveal our kitchen project.. It's not quite done but we've come along way.. Enjoy this before picture of our kitchen.

Apples and Pears and Bears....Oh My!

Okay... so I have this great friend Mandy who likes to do crazy things with me. We (Zach, Sam, and I) have been walking the elementary kids to school for a while because Zach likes to and it gets him up and ready for the day. Anyway there is this house by the school that has been turned into a duplex. It has two pear trees, three apple trees, and some plum trees. No one ever uses the fruit and the trees are just loaded. We decided to ask them to see if we could pick some pears. The tenants didn't mind so a couple days later we came prepared with bags and picked pears. Zach and our friend Caleb thought that was great! Well we decided that we'd pick a couple apples to see if they were any good and they were! Mandy got this look that she always gets when she's got a scheme going and said hey lets come back on Monday and pick apples and do applesauce. Monday rolls around and Josh was home but we were smart and brought cars and a ladder. We picked 7 boxes of apples! We ended up doing 45 quarts of applesauce With our new friend Jennifer... so I think we are stocked for a bit! Okay now I know you're wondering where the bears come in... Well we also have this great friend Neca who is brilliant! I love being able to ask her all sorts of questions. She has a peach tree and gave us some peaches to can so we needed to return a box. Zach went with me and when she opened the door Zach walks right in to check the place out! Silly kid. She loves books and has a stash in their family room which Zach promptly discovered. He pulled out a book about Huggley the monster that lives under the bed. Huggly and his monster friends go camping in the people world and end up running into a bear! It's a really cute story so if you find it it is a fun one to read. So that's where the bear comes in!