I just finished my third baby blanket, and this one is for Baby Sister
(Baby Sister is her name for now, since we don’t have an official one yet, we are open to suggestions)
This sweet little thing will be the blanket we use on her blessing day and for church. I love to have a pretty blanket to wrap my babies in for Sunday and other special occasions.
The entries to my house have always bugged me. The front door opens to a nice little entry room, with a nice little coat closet and since it is the formal entry way into our home I have wanted to keep it more like that, a formal entry. The other two doors into the house open directly into living areas, one being the kitchen and the other the eating area of our house. There really isn’t a seperate area where we can walk in and deposit coats, hats and gloves adn have them out of the way. In the past I kept a large basket under a table in the front enrty way, hoping to catch all the misc items adn the kids coats and keep them looking sort of neat. Well, I have decided that that approache isn’t working (after 10 years, I know I can be a tad stubborn). With our family growing larger, and hopefully it will continue to grow over the next few years, I had to give up my idea of having a “formal” entry and just work with things being functional. Here is what I came up with, and I am really happy with the results, so far the kids have kept everything picked up and neat, and that is always a good thing!
We purchased this little “bench” from IKEA, it is acutally part of an entertainment center, this is the piece that a TV is supose to sit on, then you buy whatever shelcing you would like to go around it. It is a sturdy piece of furnature, and it works well as a bench too, the drawars will be used for hats, scarves and gloves.
(this is why I don’t like to paint, I can never get the tape off…..)
Dadzoo took a 2×6, cut the ends at a 45 degree angle (to look nice) and screwed the board into the wall, into the studs, knowing that the hooks wold be carring a lot of weight. He then attached the hooks to the board. Very simple, looks nice and will serve my purpose.
So far this has worked really well, the coats actually end up where they are supose to be, instead of on the floor, and I don’t think it takes away from the “formality” of my “formal” entry.
(at least too much anyway)
I saw this little “how-to” craft in my Country Living magazine. I thought those book marks were so sweet, I just had to make some and Mother’s Day seemed the perfect opportunity to learn a new craft.
I hope the mothers in my life enjoy using this simple little craft as much as I enjoyed making them.
We are simple people, we don’t need fancy Television sets, gaming systems, or a thousand cable stations. All we need is cement truck, some lawn chairs and a couple of contractors, and we are entertained all day long.
What odd thing(s) do you find entertaining?
We drink raw milk that comes from happy cows who eat fresh green grass all day long. Because our milk is raw, meaning it isn’t pasturised or homoginized, we get a nice thick layer of cream that rises to the top of the milk. This time of year especially the cream is thick and there is a lot, being that the cows have all calved and they are eating fast growing green grass, the milk is full of vitamins A and D and the taste is wonderful. I like to make butter with the cream, being that raw butter is actually nutritious with the combination of natural occuring fat soluable vitamins and the fat that is butter. The quickest way, I have found to make butter is with my blender, it only take a few minutes and very little work. I do have an old fashioned butter churn which I have used, but it takes a while to get butter from all the churning.
First I let my jars of cream sit out for a few hours, to bring them to room temprature. It makes the cream whip up faster, and while this step isn’t neccisary, it cut the churning time in about half. Then I add it to my hand dandy Blendtec blender (one of my favorite kitchen purchases).
I set the spead to “1” and just let it blend, it will go for about a minute then shut off, then I check it, and start it over if I need to. There have been times that I have only had do this twice, but other times (when the cream is cold) it takes several cycles.
After a couple cycles, it turns into whipped cream
One more cycle and I have butter, it is floating in buttermilk.
I then strain it, getting most of the buttermilk to save later for recipes
The buttermilk is stored in a jar in the refridgerator for a couple of days, so it can clabber and it takes on the tangy taste that we all know as buttermilk. Since my butter is sweet cream butter, the buttermilk that comes off of it tastes like skim milk. For more information on cultured buttermilk and sweet cream buttermilk, go “here“.
I then rinse the butter very, very well in cold water. This takes a little while, you need to get all the buttermilk out of the butter, the old buttmilk will make the butter go bad, but butter that is cleaned well lasts a long time. I usually rinse, then let it sit, stir and rinse again and let sit again, this takes maybe an hour, but it isn’t that time consuming, as I stir then let sit while I do other things.
There you have it, grass fed raw butter, beautiful and yellow. That yellow color comes from vitamin A, that the cows get from fresh greeen grass. Comercial butter that comes from corn and soy fed cows is white, and yellow coloring is added. This beautiful color comes from healthy cows eating what cows were ment to eat. The butter is then packed away in jars and stored in either the fridge of freezer to be enjoyed on potates, veggies or hot bread.
