Christmas Crafting

Well, it's that time of year again....and I'm so excited I can hardly contain myself!!!

It's time for Christmas Crafts!! I have a TON of inspiration and probably too many planned projects to ever complete.

Here is a glimpse of what I'm working on

I know you can't tell much about the actual projects, but I'm afraid that some special people may read the blog and I don't want to ruin anyone's Christmas surprises. I'll see if there are any that I can share and I'll try to post them later on.

For now, it's back to the craft table....

A Recap....with pictures

Let's see if I can get all these promised pictures for you posted in some order that makes sense.

First of all: Apple Time

We started with apples....a half bushel to be exact.

I cooked down the apple pulp, put it through the food mill and then it went into the oven for a couple hours, that didn't cook it down the way I thought it would, so I stuck it in the crockpot overnight

While the apple butter was in the oven I decided to try some Cran-Apple cider jelly....it came out great!! Personally I love it!

When I got up the next morning the apple butter still wasn't done so I put in a pot and cooked it down (nearly 2 hours). Then it went into canning jars, processed 10 minutes and then YAY!!! apple butter is done....and so tasty!

Brad's Birthday Banana Pudding Cheesecake

I found the recipe at examiner.com

The way I figure anything that starts with 4 blocks of cream cheese must be good

Nilla Wafer crust, a layer of sliced bananas then the creamy cheesecake goodness....bake and eat

It was REALLY good! Next time I'm going to leave out the sliced bananas and put them on top instead.....they were a strange consistency after they baked.....Yummy, but rubbery.

Brad's Birthday Eve

Tomorrow is Brad's birthday. Yay!!! I can't wait for him to be "old" like me. I am excited about his birthday this year. We are having dinner at my grandparents after church. The birthday boy has chosen the menu....fried turkey, potato salad, baked beans, corn, green bean casserole (thanks Becky for whipping this up for me) and for dessert we're having banana pudding cheesecake....yep it's a mouthful. When he first said that I was like "what the heck is that....how am I going to make that?" Then I Googled it -- there are a LOT of recipes out there. I chose one and, after a quick trip to the store, I got to work getting it baked so it had plenty of time to chill in the fridge. I can't wait to taste it!
I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow....for now I'm going to bed, but if you see Brad around tomorrow make sure to wish him a happpy day.

Apple time

It's that time of year again. I know I told you before that October is crazy busy but I really love this time of year! I got a ton of errands done today and now the house is filled with the smell of cooking apples. I have apple butter cooking down as I type. This is my first attempt so I'm anxious to see how it comes out.

I still have apples left so I'm thinking about trying to make and freeze a couple pies so they are ready for the holidays.

After the apples are all taken care of I think I'm going to try making grape juice. Sounds like fun to me!

Our visitor

As I walked into the kitchen this morning to start a pot of coffee something out the window caught my eye. It was this guy. Sorry the picture isn't great I took it through the kitchen window. I tried to sneak onto the porch to get a better one, but he heard and me headed to the woods. I was so hoping he'd hang out and let me get a couple more good pictures. I'm not too worried though, he'll be back soon.

As you can tell in the pictures fall is definitely here. All of a sudden we have leaves all over the yard and the trees are starting to look bare. Our summer's been so dry that the "experts" say that the leaves probably won't change color, they'll just fall off.....I'm VERY glad to see they were wrong. Our colors aren't as dramatic as they usually are, but they are still beautiful.

Busy days ahead

It looks like this fall is going to a busy one. I was just looking at my calendar for October and I have nearly every day off planned out already. Here's the rundown:

Deer season starts (bigger deal for Brad than for me)
Clip for the Cure, Breast Cancer Research fundraising day at work
Covered Bridge Festival (probably 2 days)
Lunch with Indy area HP gals
Doctor's Appointment (or 2 or 3, hopefully)
Fabric Shopping Field Trip with Ladies' Sewing Circle
Family in from Alaska
Color Cafe hairshow

That covers the highlights but doesn't include all the fall to do list (redo flower beds, clean leaves off the porch, put up gardening stuff, etc) or the normal household chores (laundry, cooking, dishes, etc) or working or hobbies (quilting, knitting, starting Christmas gifts). Yep, it's gonna be a busy one!

3 years....already

I can't believe it's been 3 years since my last post! So much has changed, or maybe everything has changed so much we've come full circle to where we were....Brad has worked everywhere from Iowa to Alabama and finally is back in Indiana. The dogs are both doing great, over 70 lbs each and still playing and wrestling all over the house. We are still trying to have children, but that's a long story probably best left for another day. The sheep, singular now, is in need of a new home or a barn-mate. We have newly born kittens, but they are the grandkittens of one that was new born at my last post. Strangely enough, Brad altered the bar, but we are getting ready to change it again....funny how life works.

I'm going to try to keep things more up to date from here on. We have internet on the farm now. We just became high tech since they decided to offer something other than dialup out here. YAY!!! It's so nice to be part of the 21st century.