An end of the season trip and so much more....

This is a post full of pictures. We have had some adventures lately and the true love of my life is now, on occasion, reading my ridiculous blog so I want to share some pictures with you and him..... Here goes.

Well, at the beginning of the week, we loaded up the car and I do mean loaded, and headed for Gulf Shores, Al. My sister and her family got a beach house for a week and we decided to take my mom (mimi) and go have some fun in the sun with them. Here is a picture going through the tunnel in Mobile.

This is a picture taken in the hotel. My niece decided to go back to the hotel with us every night. So the oldest is mine and the youngest my niece. I just thought this was a beautiful picture.

Here's my girl on the alligator in the ocean. My son is the one at the end of the line on a boogie board. They had a blast.

This is my oldest playing Frisbee on the beach with my nephew. She hates the beach but even she had a really good time.

Here's our temporary man of the house showing off more of his board skills.

And here is a flag that was at the beach house next door, I just loved it waving along the ocean front.

Now, we are back home and back to reality. No one wanted to leave but Mimi had to go back to work and so the fun was cut short. We had a great time but we sure did miss daddy being with us. Although, I don't think I would have been able to frequent as many little stores had he been with us. (ha ha)

Next, I wanted to share with you my new pot rack. I am hanging my cast iron on it. It has freed up some space in my hobbit kitchen and I really like it but I am not sure what needs to be put in the opening.

Then today, our neighbor came over and put up a temporary electric fence for us. The grass back here has grown to a level that we can not control so he fenced it in for us to put our horses on. I really need to borrow some goats.LOL

Here the horses are enjoying some new pasture.

I also thought I would share our baby chicks that are no longer babies. Every year we get about 5 or 6 new babies and here are a couple of this years crop. I think this one is so pretty. She is an Auracauna and she will lay blue/green eggs.

My honey loves a black chicken and our last one disappeared so here is his new black chicken.

Now for the bad news, before we left for the beach, I was of course, canning tomatoes and I heard a loud pop. I had blown up my cook top. So I just decided I will deal with it when I get home. Now I am on the hunt for the best deal on a cook top. In the mean time, I still have tomatoes running out of my ears, literally. So this is what little man and I fixed up today. We put my Coleman camping stove on a table outside and I began canning on the porch. I really should have been doing this all along, as it really saved my kitchen from heating up.

Oh and by the way, so far the best deal is at Cowboy Maloney's in Jackson. However, I have a few more calls to make.

I thought last but not least, I would end with a beautiful picture of our mammoth sunflowers. They started blooming while we were gone and they were quite the site to come home to.
Have a great weekend!!!

July is flying by.....

Well, we had a pretty good 4th. It was as good as could be expected without the love of my life here. My mother came down and my sister and her family. Our little version of Mayberry has a big Lena Day every 4th of July. We have politicians and speakers come and give their .02. My girls spent the day signing in participants for the antique car and tractor show. Then they moved on to making snow cones.

Last year my honey did the color guard. So this year in lieu of him being deployed they asked if my son could do the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag. It was great. He was so nervous but it was truly a treasured memory for us all. Here he is on stage.

There are all kinds of events for the kids. The big one is the turtle race. Kids decorate their turtles and then race them around a circle. My son did it last year and my nephew wanted to do it this year. Here he is with his turtle.

They won 3rd. place. Needless to say, my sister and family will be back next year.

It was a great day and a great way to take our mind off of the circumstances of our day to day.

~

Her"s one of my projects that I have somewhat completed.

Now keep in mind I did this myself and really could have used the expertise of my honey but I think it came out pretty good. I love Rue's new pantry and she was my inspiration. I love her wooden brackets and I think I will change mine out one by one. These shelves will be holding the majority of my canning. I have 19 jars of muscadine and pear preserves left out of the 75 I put up last year. If any of you would like for me to send you a jar leave me a link to your email. The harvest will be coming in again in Sept. and Oct. and I will be starting all over.LOL I would love to share our abundance.

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~~ Indeed, the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its produce.~~

Psalms 85:12

And here's some of the produce this week. I am putting up corn, tomatoes, and peas this week. All of this harvest is slowing down the process of my really big project but it is making the days go by faster. Most days I look up and it's 2:00 before I even get the day started good.

I pray that we put up enough that we can eat from the garden all winter. We will see.

Have a great week.....

Whew.... It has been a while!

We have had so much going on and so many changes in a month.

About 3 wks ago..... we put this man, the love of my life, my very best friend and the father of my babies ......

On this bus, to go to.....(actually to go to the airport but you get the picture)

Iraq.

Here he is in front of a palace.

To say it was one of the worst days of my life would be an understatement. I have cried and cried and just when I think it is getting better.... I cry some more.

On a more positive note, he made it there safely and praise God for technology. We are using Skype and a webcam to see and talk to him via computer everyday. So to say it could be much worse is so true. When we did this 4 years ago it was much worse. When he starts working 16 hour days we wont talk to him as much but right now, while they are transitioning troops over, we are getting very spoiled.

While he is gone, I plan to do a lot of my projects. Here was the first one....

This is my living room that we painted a nice dark Khaki a year ago, when we moved in.

Well, I was never really happy with it because it was so dark and this room does not have a lot of natural light. I need light and airy. So last week, I repainted it Benjamin Moore's Adobe beige. I love this color. Here it is now. I will be painting all of the trim a bright white tomorrow.

Now, this is our other huge project. The garden is coming in.

Today, I put up 3 gallon bags of corn. My corn is not ready yet but a neighbor gave us a good bit. We ate some for dinner tonight and it was so wonderful.

I also put up 7 qts. of pickles. We love homemade pickles.

Now, here is some of the rest of my bounty right now.

I hope to put up lots of canned tomatoes, ketchup and spaghetti sauce. That is if I win the battle on blossom end rot.LOL

It also looks like we will start picking peas tomorrow.

Here is a picture of one of our sunflowers. We always plant a row of sunflowers for our middle daughter. She loves them and they are beautiful in the garden.

It is a busy, busy, time but I love harvest time.

I have a really large project going on and I can't wait to share it but it will be a while before it is completed.

May Garden Party and a little update....

I can't believe May is here all ready. We have been busy, busy around here. My husband left on Friday. He is not out of the country yet but he mine as well be. He will possibly get to come home for 4 days in June, then he will be off to Iraq. It is a very sad time for us and I haven't felt much like blogging but I went to Rhoda's spot this morning and thought how fun a May Garden Party. I can do that. However, over here in Ms. we are experiencing quite the down pours. So in between pouring rain episodes, I went and took a few pictures. Now, keep in mind we moved to this place with little to no landscaping and along with all of our other projects I have been piddling with the yard here and there. So here are a few items we have planted.

Oh, and of course I forgot to upload my pics first so you can't click on them. Sorry.

These are the azaleas from the spring. They bloomed like crazy. They are finished now and I have already done all of the pruning of them.

These are some elephant ears that I have planted to kind of hide the air conditioner unit. Elephant ears do great down here in the South.
These are amaryllis. I have two kinds this beautiful pink and white and we have some red. I love these.
Here's my spider wort. I literally dug it off the side of the road to go in this flower bed. We have it growing all up and down the road and highway. It is beautiful.


Now, this is not such a beautiful spot, yet, but I wanted to show it to you for a reason. This bed is completely under the awning of my back porch. It gets very little afternoon sun. Well, when we moved here it had some hideous looking roses in it that were tall and leggy looking. Now we have planted dwarf gardenia in there and I need to add some colorful flowers.







I cut the roses back and moved them to this bed and they get more sun and are loving it.

If you look closely in the corner I have some purple jade coming up and taking off. I thought I had dug it all up and moved it but I guess not. It kind of looks good in with the roses.

I have three of these little planters with perennials and potato ivy around.



Here are the muscadine vines loaded with this years bounty.

Last but not least here are the blueberry bushes and fig tree we planted this spring. They are doing great and we should have about a handful of fruit this year.LOL However, in 3 years, Lord willing, we should have more than enough.

If you get a chance stop by Rhoda's at Southern Hospitality and take a look at her May Garden.

Outdoor Wednesday!!!

Good morning, friends.

Oh, my, 2 posts in the same week, I believe that is a record. I saw this little weekly meme at one of my other favorite daily stomping grounds and thought I would participate. Here are my blooming azaleas. They are really showing out. You can click on the pics. for a closer look.
We bought this house at the end of May last year and by the time we saw the house the azaleas had already bloomed, so we had no idea what color they would be. They are breathtaking to say the least and I want about 20 more of the same color all around my yard.LOL

A couple of weekends ago, we worked on some landscaping and mowing of the lawn. This is the Gerber daisy my daughter picked out for the front porch. It's blooming beautifully.

And here is a geranium I picked out for my front porch table. I just love geraniums. Red is my favorite color of geranium but my daughter's is pink. I guess you can tell who won.

Last but not least, this is what we have on the mini farm this week. The week before we left on our cruise, we noticed this chicken missing. She is a small chicken, a Wheaten Old English Game Hen to be exact. So we just thought something must have gotten her while out free ranging one day. We had looked everywhere and she was nowhere to be found. Well, she came out of hiding this week and look what she has with her.

She has 7 little chicks. This is the first time we have let one of our hens keep their chicks. We have always been afraid that predators would get them. However, she is doing a great job keeping her little brood safe and we are going to leave them alone and hope for the best. I can not tell you how much fun it is to watch a momma chick walk around the yard with her little babies in toe. It is pure joy.

I have to say letting the chickens raise babies the natural way sure beats this.

~

We have 7 baby Americauna chicks in our laundry room. I bought them last week. They are the ones that lay the blue and green eggs. I will keep them in the laundry room for about another week and then they will go to the barn.LOL

Well, that is all for my Outdoor Wednesday. I hope you will all head over to A Southern Daydreamer and check out a few more.

~

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Have a great day!!!

Changes all around us....

Good morning friends. It has been a tough week and last few weeks to be honest. My husband has begun the journey of deploying. He is currently away from home doing training. Yesterday was my birthday so he did sneak back home for the night. I just love him for that. He literally drove 2+ hours home, got home at 8:00 and had to leave at 5:00 this morning. I was so sad for him to leave. I know you do what you have to do but I just want to go on record saying that I hate this and I just want to cry. The loss for me and my children for this next year is overwhelming me right now. I am trying ever so hard to be strong and to just cry out to Jesus for strength. He is the only one who can provide it right now.
~

On to other topics. We had a great time on our cruise. It was just what we needed. I have so many pictures but I thought I would limit it to these. Here is the beautiful sunrise over the ocean one morning at sea.

We spent a good portion of our time out here on the balcony just watching the vastness of the ocean. God's handy work is amazing. I love this picture.

This is when we ported in Cozumel. We had a great time going through the streets and shopping. Then my honey and kids went off to zip line, rappel, and snorkel. They had a great time and I had a great time just relaxing. We also ported in Calica and went into Playa Del Carmen. It was fun.

Now for the not so great part, we had left our Shih Tzu, Beaux, with my mom. I will preface by saying that Beaux was extremely attached to our family and since we were going to be away for 6 days, we hated to leave him at the vet. We knew he would be depressed and didn't want it to go on for that long, bad decision. My mother said he did not eat or go to the bathroom for days. She said he crawled in a corner and snapped at her when she came close. On the fatal day she let him out in her fenced in back yard. He seemed to do better outside. Well, while she was at work he either dug out of the fence or climbed over. I am not sure which. He got in the road and was killed. I can not even begin to tell you how devastating this has been for our family. I think, as women, we have a natural need to baby something. I would love more real babies but do not have any so this was my families baby. He was my oldest daughter's 16th birthday present and we all loved him dearly. He slept with my daughter every night and went straight out to the barn with her every morning for chores. I made him an egg almost everyday of his life. He was rotten and I don't plan on doing that again, hence his separation anxiety. Anyway, this was Beaux and we love and miss him dearly.

The flip side to the horrifying accident is that my mother also cried for days. She knew how upset we would be and thought we would be mad at her. We were mad at ourselves for putting my mother in such a terrible predicament. I never thought that Beaux would act so terribly. I just wish in hindsight that we had taken him to the vet and boarded him. Although, I do think that God had a bigger lesson for us. I think we had put Beaux on such a pedestal that we also needed to learn a huge lesson.

~

Anyway, my mother thought the best thing to do was to find my daughter another Shih Tzu. So she drove to Memphis and got this little guy. If you have been in this situation, you know this just made it worse. Mother was just trying to make things better but we needed time to grieve. Not to mention, I probably would not have gotten this same breed again. They just get so attached. However, we took him so that she would not feel like we didn't appreciate the gesture or that we were mad. Oh, it has been hard. On several occasions I have accidentally called him Beaux, bringing us all to tears. His name is Murphy and he is now an 8 week old chocolate and white Shih Tzu. He is a cutey.

~

Before we left on vacation, we had decided to get this little guy. A friend of ours dog had puppies and my children had been around them since they were born. They had never really asked for one, as they knew I would say NO. However, my husband is leaving for a year and this is a good time to ask him for anything. So they did!! He explained to me that we need a good farm dog/watch dog. I have yet to see any real good farm dog qualities but I am on the look out for them.LOL However, on the watch dog front, I think he may be good for that, if not we have guns, and praise the Lord, he does not chase my chickens so far.

~

His name is Diesel and he is 1/4 blue heeler, 1/4 rottweiler, and 1/2 German Sheppard. I do have to admit he is kind of cute.

And here are the two of them together. They are about the same age and about 30 lbs. different.

We have also added 7 new baby chicks to the farm life. I really didn't need any, as I have eggs running out of my ears. I dropped off 2 dozen to a friend yesterday. However, I had lost all of my Americana chickens and I wanted some more blue and green eggs. So right now I have 7 baby chicks under a light in my laundry room. In about a week I will move them to a brooder box in the barn. I like to keep my eye on them for about a week first.

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I guess that is about all that is going on around here. I have done some landscaping in the front and when I finish it I will post some pics. I have a long way to go to catch up to Mrs. Pickets beautiful yard. If you need inspiration go check out here beautiful pics.

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I hope you all have a great day!!!
~

Busy days down on the farm.....

Good Morning Friends,

It has been a while since I have had a chance to sit down and really update. As usual, things have been busy, busy around here. I got back from my procedure and everything has gone smoothly. I hope to do a whole post on that soon. However, we got back on Monday and my oldest daughter came down with the Flu on Wednesday. Which meant by Friday we all had the Flu, except Hubby, who is required by the military to take a Flu shot. It was rough, as we have never had the flu. We are just now, 2 1/2 wks. later, really getting over it.

But on a more happy note, this is what we are up to..... We have disked up our garden plot. It measures 50 X 95, which will be about 4750 sq. ft. of beautiful garden. We plan on planting:

• LOTS of Peas (several different kinds)


• Tomatoes (several different kinds)


• Cucumbers (mainly for pickling)


• Squash


• Eggplant


• Zucchini


• Peppers


• Okra


• Corn


• Sunflowers


• Marigolds


• Watermelon


• Muskmelon

If you look closely you will see a little stray chicken running through.LOL
Now this is what hubby, middle DD, and Ds are doing bright and early this morning. They are taking these once little cuties to market. They looked like this back in July.

Now they look like this.

They are loaded on the trailer and are headed to the processor. It was sad to see them go but they were getting quite stinky. It has been a fun project and I think we will probably do it again if the meat is as good as we keep hearing.

And last but not least, I thought I would throw in a daily around here. Here are the horses waiting on their morning rations. As Hubby and the kids were leaving with the pigs, the horses were letting us know they are ready to eat.

Now for other news, the day for my honey to leave is getting closer and closer. He leaves our home in May for a month of training before going over to Iraq. However, he will be gone for 4 wks. sporadically between now and then. So we are leaving next week to go on a cruise. We are so excited. We will be gone from Monday to Saturday. We wanted to do something extravagant before he left and this is it!!! So today and tomorrow I will be getting things packed and then it's Bon Voyage Baby!!!

I hope you all have a beautiful weekend. It is a glorious 70+ degrees here in Mississippi, so I foresee some yard work going on here.

Good Morning, Friends....

I hope you are all doing well. We have been so extremely busy lately that I have not had time to do my usual rounds. It has felt like spring around here with temps. in the 60's -70's. So we have gotten a lot done. By the way, thank you all for your well wishes for my mother. She is doing great!!



I wanted to share a new little pretty that I got recently from the amazing Susie Harris. That girl is so good. I ordered it to go in the little blank spot outside my front door but it was so pretty that I can't put it outdoors. So here she is with an added ribbon hanging above my mantel on that wonderful old window. I wish I had some other great thing going on on the mantel but this is it. Nevertheless, it is a start.

We have also been planting fruit trees and getting our garden ready for planting.

!

In other exciting news, my husband just got a job promotion. He is excited about it but it's an hour drive from our home so I am a little weepy. We love our new house and wont be moving right away. However, when Dh gets back from Iraq, if we just hate the situation we may look at moving again. UGHH!! Anyway, you have to do what you have to do.

!

As for other news, I am having a little procedure done on Saturday, if you would all please pray for me. My oldest daughter will be going with me and we will be flying on Fri. and Mon. I hate to fly. So I should, Lord willing, be home on Monday and will check in with you all. Have a great weekend and God Bless.

A Little Prayer Request...

As of last Friday, my life has been turned upside down. My mom fell on a little patch of ice in her yard and tore her Supraspinatus Tendon and began to tear her infraspinatus tendon. Which, in lamens terms, is her rotary cuff in her shoulder. It is a tear that has to be surgically fixed. My sister and I have been taking turns staying with her in the hospital and then I brought her home with me for a couple of nights. She is at her home tonight but we are already feeling like that is not a great idea. Her pain is just so intense and gets worse during the night. However, she just wanted to go home for a night. My sister is going to go get her tomorrow. The surgery will be Tuesday and she will come home with me until the weekend and then go back to my sisters. If you could just say a prayer for us. We are all just worn out with this whole situation and are just ready to be on the road to recovery. I have driven the 100 mile one way trip every day this week and tonight I am dragging, oh and my house is a mess.LOL My mom is very strong and independent so you can imagine how tough this is on her and us all. So, I thank you in advance for lifting us up in prayer.

Wow, it's Jan. 12th and this is my first post of the year......

Well, it's a new year and we have had so much going on. The love of my life had been off since Dec. 19th and around here that means a lot of family time. He finally went back to work and I took the week trying to get my house back in order (lots of laundry) and getting started back with schooling. We love having him home and wish he did not have to go back to work but nothing really gets done, house work wise, when he is home. We had a GREAT Christmas and New Year. However, this little gadget has taken over the living room and the rest of my families life.LOL
It is the Nintendo Wii. My honey and I are pretty much on the same page with not being real crazy about watching television or playing video games all the time. We had fought this little gadget for going on 2 years now but decided this year to break down.LOL All we have is the Wii sports game, that came with the system, and the Wii Play but the whole family just loves it. My son and honey are now in there playing baseball. I have to say it is a great game system for getting the whole family involved. We have it set up in the living room, so no one is locked away in the bedroom, away from the whole family and it's been so much fun. We are already huge board game fans and this is just a whole other level of family fun.

Now, this is what else we have been doing on our little hiatus. I painted, or rather, hubby painted my front and back door this wonderful shade of red. It was a HARD decision going with the red. I was wavering between black and red and asked hubby what he thought. He said you have talked about red for years. He was right!! I love the way it turned out!

The color is Spanish Tile from Lowe's.

Oh and I want to put something in that big bare area by the door. What do you think Susie, do I need one of your new, absolutely adorable, signs there? Oh, and I know that Gothic light fixture needs to go, it's on the list.

Then I, not hubby, primed and painted my mantel black. I got this wonderful idea from the great Mrs. Dot at Picket's Place. Of course, hers is so much prettier with all of it's great beefiness but I still love mine. I don't know exactly how I want to decorate my mantel but this is a good start. I also need to paint the stove insert.

Another one of the projects we got done was tiling the bathroom floor. If you look at the little potty room floor closely there, you will see this horrid epoxy painted concrete flooring, that was throughout the entire house. The previous owners came in and put down this Pergo laminate wood floor, which we like but they did not do the potty rooms. So we decided on a cheap peel and stick tile at Lowe's to cover up the hideous.

The bathtub and toilet are a yellow color, which I kind of like and we chose this tile to play off of the yellow. I think the improvement is 100%. Well, that is it for the projects and I bet my manly man hubby was glad to go back to work.LOL I'm just joking, he loves this stuff.

Our plans from now until his deployment, sniff, sniff, are as follows:

*Paint kitchen cabinets and add a cabinet.

*Tile other bathroom with the same peel and stick tile.

*Landscape front of house.

*Replace outdoor light fixtures.

*Paint front and back porches.

*Plant fruit trees.

*Work on new chicken house.

*Paint all of trim in the house a high gloss white.

*Get my enormous garden area ready and possibly start planting.

Oh, the list could go on and on.

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I should put this in a post of it's own, as it is so important, but it is hard enough for me to get one post up much less two. However, one huge thing that I want to add that we work on every new year and are doing this new year, is our Bible Reading Plan for the year. We each, even our not so little little man, try to read through the Bible every year. We work on a plan at the beginning of every year. This year I am reading some in the old Testament, some in the new Testament, some of a Psalm, and some of a Proverb every morning. It takes me about 30 minutes to read, pray and meditate. Just 30 minutes profoundly changes the tone of my entire day. I would encourage you, that if you are not doing something similar, try it!! Reading through the precious Word of God can be life changing.

Here is the site that I got my reading plan from:

http://www.oneyearbibleonline.com/readingplan/oneyearbiblereadingplan.pdf

It's not to late to start and get caught up with me. I usually fail miserably at this but in light of my honey leaving in July, I know that I will need to cling to the Word of God and am hoping to be victorious in my goal this year!!