Strawberry Jam

Last year I made several jars of strawberry jam and was hoping it would last us close to a year when the strawberry season started up again... NOT. With my child eating PB&J almost every day, we went through it pretty quickly. So this season I am determined to try and make enough to last us until next April!

I saw yesterday that the pick-your-own strawberry farm, about 5 min from our house, was open for business! After service, KFC and I ran a few errands and headed to the farm on our way home. One of our errands was to Wal-Mart to get more canning jars. I was SUPER tired but I pushed myself to doing at least one batch last night while the berries were still fresh. The hardest/longest part was cleaning, coring, chopping, and smashing. Once all that was done it took only about 2 min for the berries and pectin to come to a boil. Added in the extremely large amount of sugar and brought back to a boil again. Then I was ready to spoon it into the jars!

Here are our picked strawberries.

The strangest strawberry I have ever seen. I think it was three berries that had grown together!

Bringing the berries, pectin, and sugar to a boil

Jars in the water to seal their lids

All done! Now for them to rest for 24 hours.

This batch made 5 pint sized jars with a few strawberries to spare. The entire box of strawberries cost only $4.50! That about how much you would pay for just 1 in the store! We will be going back to get more since I am wanting to stock us up for the year and 5 jars just won't do it!

Update On The 'Girls'

This past weekend, hubby FINALLY finished the fence around the chicken coop. For the past 5 weeks the chicks have been borded up inside the coop. At first they needed to be that way since they still needed the heat lamp, but these past couple weeks have been lots of "almost flying out of the coop" chickens every time I opened the back door to feed them! Hubby had a 'surprise' visit this Sunday from a good friend of his that moved to VA several years ago. He and hubby worked diligently on finishing up the fencing while I and mainly his wife kept getting attcked by BUGS.... spiders, ticks, caterpillars, and various flying things! Gotta love the woods!

Here are the girls right after we 'freed' them. As much as they kept trying to get out the past several weeks, they were very unsure about actually coming that afternoon!!! Bryan finally had to open the back door and push them all out the front! Then they LOVED it!

I matched the chicks up from when we got them (few days old) till now (7 weeks old). Amazed at how quickly they grew!

Americauna "Percy"

(blue/green eggs)

Silkie "Fro"

Red Star "un-named"

Road Island Red "Paprika"

Buff Orpington "TinkerBell"

(Some how I missed taking a picture of her as a chick except the picture when they all arrived. She's the one at the top far left)

Red Star ROOSTER "Willie"

(I am just about 100% sure she is a he rooster. Its bigger than the rest, has longer tail feathers, and has a VERY tall comb! The other girls barely have a comb. As soon as it crows, its gotta go, but don't wanna)

Them all together, free to roam around! Starting from top going counter clockwise are: Percy, TinkerBell, Paprika, Fro, Un-named, Willie

Wow, What A Colorful...

Fan??? 

Yes, KFC has been very sweetly and persistantly asking for this particular fan found at Lowes ever since we moved into the new house!... so that makes it about a year and four months of wanting this fan! Anytime we have been at Lowes, she HAS to go and see "her" fan. But for $100 for the price of the fan, she was going to have to wait. She didn't NEED a fan, nor did she NEED a new light for her room. Hubby has been working a side job and decided we could go ahead and get her this fan! Finally! Makes me very sad to get it since I had a chandelier in her room that followed us from the old house that I had bought for her room while I was pregnant! {snif, snif} but this does make HER, not  me, very happy!

 I, of course had to take a final picture of the old light...

I made KFC wait in our bedroom till hubby brought the box in. Here is her reactions...

Helping her daddy take all the parts out

After several attempts of hubby trying to hang the fan (he kept forgetting parts cause he wouldn't let me get the instructions because he Knows what he's doing!), it was finally up!

Before & After

I do think the fan is cute. I told KFC that it was sad for me to take down her light since I had bought it for her before she was born. So she said to me "Mom, I just growin up!"

KFC's Sleepover

Hubby had asked if cousin P could come spend the night with us this weekend. So we had a family dinner Saturday night and kept cousin P till late Sunday evening. Kaile had a ton of fun! Sunday afternoon started some arguing, but they were both extremely tired.

Bath time for the girls...

Anytime someone has spent the night with KFC she has never let them sleep in the bed with her... but this time she did! SO CUTE! I waited till I couldn't hear them giggling anymore in the monitor and went in to get a picture. I discovered they had added stuffed animals, books, baby dolls and accessories in the bed with them!

No Money... No Problem

What kinda things do you do when you're broke... sit at home and take crazy pictures, that's what! Last week, after Hubby got home, we spent some time outside on the front lawn.

The moon that night

What We've Been Up To This Week

Sunday was our Memorial of Jesus' Death. Our attendance was 232 with about 120-130 of our own publishers. The day stated off good, made it to the KH on time, then right before the concluding prayer KFC was knocked out! Very strange since she never sleeps at the KH. Of course I wanted to get our yearly family picture at the Memorial and this year it was not a pretty picture. But thought it funny to get a picture anyway...

We later found out she was running a temperature of 101... great, she's sick. Her temperature stayed up till Tuesday so I made her a Dr's appointment. Doc said there was a virus going around, don't remember what she called it. Starts off with fever, eyes ache, possible UTI, then it turns into diarrhea. Luckily she never got diarrhea and she stated to complain about UTI symptoms but they went away. 

While waiting in the waiting room at the doctors office, she needed to use the potty. Took her in to find a big sized potty and a child's sized potty! It is the cutest thing to see a miniature potty where she can sit on it by herself with her feet touching the floor. I really want one of these at the house... and I think I know the perfect spot for it to go!

Unfortunately, Wednesday night KFC and I both developed cold symptoms! Most of this week, we have spent our days just hanging out at the house, trying to rest. There's been lots of cold medicine, tissues, and sleepless nights-well only I, Kaile will sleep through anything. I have been awake since 3:30am this morning just because I was so miserable! Yes, this is what I have resorted to... toilet paper up my nose to catch whats running out because the nostril is completely stuffed up!

While feeding the chicks this week, I tried to get a picture to show of how much they have grown... didn't get a good one since every time I open the coop door, they frantically try to fly out! Bryan is supposed to be done with their fencing this weekend, so maybe I can get better pictures.

I did manage to get a load of laundry done this week, but not so much in the way of cleaning the house. Just no energy. While trying to sort our clothes, KFC decided she would start trying them on!...

Hubby's Shirt

KFC's entire body in my one pant leg... she's just tiny right!??? haha :)

Hubby's underwear

Today I decided on my way home I would swing by Multiflora Greenhouse. I have never been there before so I didn't know what to expect. Let me tell you, this place is HUGE! They have every flower/plant imaginable! I was there to get some vegetable plants. We were there probably almost an hour. KFC went crazy at looking at all the different colors of flowers and she loved the little paths they had separating the different plants. She also found it her job to go around and pick up all the flowers that had fallen over- and there were a lot of them! Since the place it so huge, and I didn't feel like asking someone, I only found/came home with cucumber, squash, and zucchini. They only sell them in packs of 6- meaning I will have a lot of the same vegetables growing! Their pricing is also super cheap! For the set of 6 plants they were only $1.95 each. Would like to go back and find some different vegetables.

The Things You See...

...out in service!

Here are the many things I have spotted around town:

While at a RV, we heard a crash and hubby looked over and saw this tree that had fallen on the roof a few houses down!

Here is a cool tree house with a telescope attached.

Some snap shots of the long days in the car...

KFC got a hold of the camera and took a picture of "Chessy" sleeping

And then her awake

And then of me... I don't look at happy as Chessy

Now off to the country. I thought we lived in the country till we found Hurdle Mills...

Remember those old gigantic satellite dishes that the 'older generation' had? You never really knew what to do with them after they came out with cable. Always such an eye sore and still is to the yards that still have them! But alas, A Solution! This homeowner took it, turned it upside down and made a gazebo out of it and completely furnished it with chairs under it! Picture doesn't show it justice of how it really looked.

We also came across the 'Wrong Road'! Oh no!

This next picture I did not find myself, I snatched it from other person. We have unanimously come to the agreement that the sign was supposed to say "Eggs For Sale". And they don't think a child wrote this. Where was the 'No child left behind' many years ago???

Lastly, here was our latest day in Hurdle Mills...

KFC on the car ride there

We went down what we thought was a driveway, but the drive just ended in a big field of some kind of crops. BUT here are the 'things' we spotted / did down there.

There was an old house. Made me wonder what kind of family grew up there and how many kids were raised there for it just to now be dilapidated. It was a fairly large house for it had what looked like an addition added to it - goes from the house over to where that tree is on the left.

And then we found the outhouse! I think we all got out to get a picture of this. The house had no door but was equipped with a toilet seat and bowl of used up toilet paper. I was informed that this was not a 'real' outhouse since it had this fancy addition (seat) to it! haha :)

See the bowl of toilet paper...

I found this really cool green glass bottle/jug. I REALLY wanted to take it!

As we were riding up the driveway Ann spotted some heirloom daffodils... and she HAD to have them! She asked if anyone had a shovel....ummm no sorry, didn't think I would be needing that today! haha. There was lots of daffodils growing but she decided she wanted the ones that were in the middle of the driveway. She started out with a big stick and then moved on to a pen as her tool of choice. It took A LOT of effort as the ground was a mix of hard clay with rocks. But success was she!

She also picked a pretty nice bouquet of the other surrounding daffodils!

Adjacent to this driveway was another house that had this bright pink house in the back yard. We were first thinking it was a chicken coop, but we then decided it was maybe a child's playhouse since the chickens were fenced in at the other side of their property.

I've checked out another country territory so I'm sure I will be seeing a lot more crazy things!