Christmas in the new house

       Christmas in our new house was very nice. The Daughter put out cookies for santa and carrots for the reindeer. In the morning she came down the stairs and looked at the empty plates and asked "did santa eat those cookies? did rudolf  eat the carrots"?  Why yes they did!

Let the opening begin!

                                                                She must have been good!

Pellet Stove Problems

      There is nothing like the heat from a wood stove. We have always heated our home with one but in this new house we went with a pellet stove. We didn't have time to stockpile wood for this winter. So we got this stove off of craigslist. It is every bit as warm and really easy to start. You don't have to open it up and poke at it. You can leave it run all night and its still warm in the morning (as long as you remember to pour a bag of pellets in before you go to bed).  The ash is minimal and its easy to clean out. No more ash bucket and shovel! Just as I was thinking  how wonderful this new stove was it did me wrong!  Some kind of gunk clogged a pipe in the back of it and I had to take it off and clean it out. But as I was doing that a big gust of wind came by, traveled down the pipe, and blew out all that gunk from the pipe into my kitchen! Since my face was down there at the time I came up looking like a coal miner! and my kitchen looked like this!

      A layer of black gunk was all over everything! Did I mention I was in the middle of making my Christmas goodies? I spent the rest of the day cleaning. It was on EVERYTHING!

Finally got the stove back up and running and The Daughter was toasting her buns again.

Homemade Baby Wipes

I make my own baby wipes.I wish I had done this wipes and wipes ago.  I don't have to worry about how many I am using, just pull out however long of one you think will get the job done!  Here is how you do it. you will need :

2 paint buckets with lids 
baby wash ( i like aveno)
baby oil
roll of paper towels, make sure its select a size type

Use a large serrated knife to cut the paper towel roll in half. Put each half in a paint bucket. Boil 4 cups of water and let cool a little. Pour 2 cups in a measuring cup, stir in 2 tablespoons of baby wash and 1 tablespoon of baby oil into it. Slowly pour it over your paper towel roll.

Let it soak in a little, put the lid on and turn it upside down and let soak a little more. Then open it up and pull out the cardboard roll in the middle. There you have it!  Repeat steps for the other roll.

The Butchering

Well folks, we tried to get the cow into a meat cutter but evidently they don't take dead cows. They have to come in alive and walking to be processed. Soooooooooooooo we butchered it ourselves.....in my kitchen.

                                  The guys had to cut it and bring the quarter sections in the house.

                                                              It is heavier than it looks!

                                                                            Here we go!

I have to say, it was kinda fun. I am pretty proud of the steaks I cut out. Our family came and helped. It took 2 days of cutting and packaging. My 12 year old niece was awesome at grinding hamburger!

                The process went very well and our family went home with a freezer full of beef.

                                                                         The End

Roadkill

 


                    One regular Tuesday night we were sitting in the livingroom watching tv. The phone rang, it was about 10pm. It was our neighbor, she says "there is a car in your driveway" then she says somebody hit something in the road and its still alive and they are trying to help it, they parked in your driveway. Right away I thought it was my dog Levi who is an escape artist. I have worried that he would get out and get hit by a car. The Husband ran out the door without his coat. It was 20 degrees out. I waited a while thinking he would come back in but he didn't. So I decided to take his coat out. Another neighbor was out there and he told me it was not a dog, it was a cow. I was glad it was not Levi but good grief a cow?! The neighbor says my husband went up the road to help and he was going up too and offered to take his coat. The sheriff was called out. I watched from the window. Nobody was hurt but the cow didn't make it.   This should be the end of the story but its not because I'm married to The Husband.
                      No he did not come back home after the excitement was over. He stayed out and helped the neighbor guy get the cow out of the ditch, which is quite neighborly of him.  The neighbor next to us is a farmer, he has a big herd of cows. We thought the cow might have been his but he went out and counted his cows and had all of them. The Husband grew up on a cattle farm, so those two work good together. Anyway, I look out the window and the neighbor was on his tractor with the bucket all the way up in the air and this dead cow is dangling from it by its back legs.  A few minutes later I look out again and The Husband is directing the neighbor through our yard with this dead cow. He looks like one of those guys you see on the runway at the airport directing a plane. I am thinking "No No No you are going the wrong way with that dead cow!"  Why should I be surprised?  The Husband had talked the the sheriff and asked for possession of this cow. He was thinking "why waste good meat?" Let me tell you, we just bought a steer from this neighbor guy and had it butchered. Or freezer is full! What are we going to do with this cow?? The Husband spent the next hour skinning and gutting the cow in the yard behind the barn. It was 20 degrees out and he was still in his work cloths! I am always fussing at him about taking his work cloths off before he starts working out in the garage after work or whatever! Good thing he was wearing the navy pants. I held the flashlight. I won't go into detail about the rest of it but it was pretty interesting. We didn't get to bed till about 1 am and he had to work the next day.  This is what we ended up with. I feel a few more grey hairs coming in.

The Husband was pretty proud of his kill, roadkill that is.....

Now what?  you might be asking, yeah me too.....I am afraid to think about it

The Husbands Outdoor Woodburner Project

So now that we have this big old farmhouse we have big old farmhouse electric and heat bills! Didn't see that coming! We like to heat with wood but this house had oil heat. Thats a new one for me The Husband decided we needed an outdoor wood furnace, only now that we just bought this house we are to broke to buy one, they run about $7,000. He looked at the shaver wood furnace and liked it. Then I threw it out there, "hey, your handy with metal. how much would it cost if you built it yourself?" he said about 1,400.00 Next thing I know he is off to the scrap metal yard. Later that day I look out my kitchen window and see this:

Yes that is what it looks like, a big blue dumpster hanging out of my tree! then I see this:

Why is he on top of it??? I am not surprised anymore of the stuff he gets himself into. This is going to be an interesting project. Now, back to making cookies with The Daughter.

Our New Life

                                                             A Little About Us

We both grew up in Ohio but shortly after we married we moved to New Mexico. When we tell people that they automatically think we moved to Mexico! Its not Mexico! No it is not hot there, the weather was very much like Ohio weather but not as rainy. Its like Colorado. Anyway, the Husband got a job in Albuquerque and there we were for 9 long years. We had no family there, it was hard, especially after The Girl was born. So The Husband found a job back in Ohio and now we are home sweet home again starting a new life!

We bought a house, a big farmhouse. We loved it the minute we saw it, or at least I did! The Husband grew up on a farm, I worked at a horse farm for years, so it was very appealing to both of us.

The Girl is 2 going on 15! She definitely makes life interesting.  She has been very independent since she was born. She has a sense of humor and laughs alot. Everyday she says something so funny! Lately she has been laughing at big words. The funny word at the moment is "likity- split". She says it over and over and laughs.