More Birthday Pictures

My Girl is 5 Years Old Today!

Happy Birthday Elle! She's been waiting days to open this present! She got to open it this morning before eating breakfast.

Polly World!

My First Houseplant

Well, technically it's my 2nd houseplant. My mom gave me a transplant from a plant in her kitchen that looked just like this one but it died on me. This afternoon while I was in the grocery store I decided to take a look at the floral department to see what I could find for a Thanksgiving centerpiece and I found the exact same plant! It's called Baby's Tears and it is supposed to be easy to grow. Maybe it will be this time since the plant is more mature......I'm hoping!

Tonight my dishwasher seems to have took a turn for the worse. This little plant will cheer up the kitchen sink area since I will be spending a lot of time there now. While I was potting it at the counter I heard my dishwasher make a loud pop sound and then quit. I can't get the water to drain out and none of the buttons work. Scott gets back from his business trip late tonight so maybe he will be able to figure out what is wrong with it this weekend.

Well, I better go get started on those dishes. :)

Baby Toes

Hearts At Home

Last weekend I went to a Hearts at Home Mom's Conference with a friend. Scott had the kids all by himself from Friday morning till Sunday night. I came home to a clean house and happy children so he did a great job! :) The conference was wonderful. It was nice to get away for a couple of days and get rejuvenated and have some girl talk without being interrupted. Sara Groves was the special music for the weekend and she was fabulous! My new favorite CD now is her latest one called Add To The Beauty.

We stopped in the Twin Cities and did some shopping on the way down to the conference and then again on the way home. My best find of the weekend was this dress to wear to Scott's employer's Christmas party. I just love it!

It was a great weekend but it was nice to get home again!

The Apron Is Finished

Crazy Smile

Thomas lost his other front tooth yesterday. He is now missing 4 teeth and has one silly smile now. :) There aren't any others that are loose right now so he should have some new permanent teeth before he loses any more baby teeth. He will miss the regular visit from the tooth fairy!

Aprons

Tonight I am getting together with two friends and we are going to sew aprons that look like the one in this picture. I found the yellow and red flowery fabric at Joann's and thought it would look cute with the red trim. I'll post a picture when it is done.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Winter

It's been snowing like this off and on all day. Nothing is accumulating on the ground, thankfully. There is even a thin coating of ice on our end of the lake. Winter really is coming....ready or not! :)

An Apple Afternoon

This is what I got started on after we had finished school for the day and had some lunch. I washed all of the apples and then used that nifty apple corer/slicer to cut them up. That is one of the best gadgets I have in my kitchen! It saved me a lot of time. After I took this picture and was looking at it I realized that most of the items in this picture are gifts from family. The big bowl is from Scott's Grandma Betty. It was a wedding gift. The yellow canner is from my mom and the cutting board is from my mother-in-law.


This is the one jar of applesauce that I made. The flavor of it was really good and the kids loved it but I wasn't going to get as many jars of it as I had hoped that I would. It was a lot of work to get to this point and since I can buy applesauce on sale at a great price at the store I thought that it would be better to take the applesauce and add sugar and spices and make apple butter instead.

The wood apple in this picture was carved by our neigbor. It is really neat. He gave it to Elle and she is sharing it with me in the kitchen. He made a fish for Thomas that we will take a picture of and put on his blog.

Here is the apple butter simmering on the stove. It simmered and simmered and simmered for a little over 2 hours! Thomas and I took turns stirring it because it pretty much had to be stirred constantly during that time. The house smelled so good yesterday afternoon!

The finished apple butter! Every single jar sealed so I was happy about that. I will be giving some away as Christmas gifts to Sunday School and swimming lessons teachers.

We toasted up a piece of bread and tried it out. My taste testers gave it their seal of approval! I think that this will have to become a tradition in the fall for us now. I really enjoyed making it and would like to try it with pears as well. Maybe this winter!

Here is the recipe that I used. I combined a couple of different recipes that I found on the internet and came up with this one -

10 lbs apples
3 cups fresh pressed apple cider

Boil this in a large pot until apples are soft. (In the picture you can see that I used water and too much of it too. Next time I will boil the apples in the juice and use it in the butter rather than throwing the apple flavored water down the drain like I did this time.)

Press the apples through a food mill. Put 13 cups of applesauce mixture in a heavy bottomed pot. Add -

5 cups granulated sugar
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp allspice
3/4 tsp ground cloves

Simmer on medium low heat, stirring regularly until mixture reduces to a thick, buttery consistency. Pour into hot sterilized canning jars, water bath, and enjoy.