Peaches!

This weekend I sliced, chopped, diced, pureed, and mashed my way through two and a half bushels of peaches. I made, jam, fruit leather,  butter, honey and canned 54 quarts of peaches. That should do us for the year. It helps to have little helpers, which was a first this year.

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Of course this made for more of this, despite my efforts to contain the stickiness on towels. Or this, finding toys in my newly clean and sterilized jars. And thank goodness for husbands who think you are crazy for working so hard and bring you dinner form one of your favorite places. It's all worth it in the end when you see this when you wake up in the morning and hear your children say they can't wait for next year to

DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN!

My two front teeth

It's round three of the toothless grins around here! Fiona lost both of her front bottom teeth at the same time! She was quite excited to start her collection of gold dollars and drink out of a straw without opening her mouth. She's heard enough about it from her brothers! Unfortunately she got my genes and is missing two or three permanent teeth so this is the start of a lot of dental work. We haven't told her that yet, we're just letting her be excited about this stage of growing up. Please note the black eye. I waited a few days to take this photo. This is a good reminder of why one should never throw rocks and especially not through freshly hung sheets when you can't see where they are going!

Corn!

Two weeks ago I froze 100 ears of corn. It was then that I realized if I kept going with all of my plans and my husband does bring home a deer I will have no.more.room. So when I got my second batch of 100 ears I decided to can it. Corn requires the use of a pressure canner. I have had a pressure canner, um rather 3 of them for many years. My husband grew up helping his mom can and is the expert around here. He taught me all I know about pressure canners. To me they seemed a bit scary with all that pressure built up inside! But they are really very simple to use. I just make sure to be careful and follow the directions.

So, to start shuck, wash and remove all the silk from the ears. This is a great job for children and all of mine do this for me. It goes so fast with all of those hands working  together.  Next you will want to cut all of the kernels off of the ears. I use my husband's fillet knife and it makes short work of each ear.I learned this trick from my friend Sharmin, set your ear up in a Bundt pan, then all the kernels will fall into the pan and there is less mess and it's easier to hold the ear and get a close cut.Here is all of my corn cut. Next you will want to fill your warm clean jars with corn. Do not shake or press down! Then fill with boiling water leaving about 1 inch of space.Wipe rims to ensure a good seal then secure lids and rings. I forgot to take picture of some of the steps, I got so into my project! hile I get the jars ready I fill the pressure canner with a couple of inches of water and start it to simmer. Then I slowly lover the jars into the hot water. I would recommend reading and following the directions on your own canner to be safe!  I wrap a towel around the jars to keep them from clanking together. I don't know if this is necessary or not but my husband's mother did it so I do it too.  Then tighten the lid and wait for the valve to pop up as you can see in the picture below. Corn needs 10 pounds pressure so I wait for it to reach that, then I start timing for 85 minutes. when it is done turn off the burner and wait until the valve goes back down. You can now take out your jars of corn.It take about three hours for batch and I ran four. It takes time but I was able to do things like clean the kitchen, prep some furniture for painting, and read a book while waiting so it seemed so much easer than blanching and freezing. It looks so pretty sitting on the shelf and I don't have to worry about loosing it if my freezer decides to quit.

Evening entertainment

My sweet angels, so kindly letting me take some evening photos. One must always make the warrior pose at some point.And not to be outdone boy two makes sure to add another level of silliness. Doesn't everyone put grass in their toes!? Then suddenly we moved into live wrestling competitions on the front lawn. Free for all who wish to view. Now it's a battle to the death. With boy one in the leadWait what is this. A secret weapon? I will help you, He's pinned!Oooo! let me pose for a minute for the camera, glamour shots are so fun.Then in a split second boy two is declared the winner of the round.   Repeats are tomorrow evening same time same place. :)

It's War!

We have been living in a wonderful world denial. We thought the groundhogs were gone. After all last year we watched a red tailed hawk swoop down and eat one right in front of us. The old shed where they were living was removed and my boys piled their tunnels with rocks and dirt. We hadn't seen one in almost a year, until now...

Brazen little thief! He seems to be enjoying the green tomatoes. And if he thinks he's going to win, he's got a little surprise waiting for him. All ready my son is out looking for his holes. He better find a new home fast and preferably one far away from my tomatoes!

Finished layouts

Here are some of the layouts I finished last weekend. There are many more that just need journaling. I have such a hard time adding words when I am away. It's so much easier to journal when I am in my own space. I hope to finish those up sometime soon. (snickering to my self about someday soon)

While I was gone...

My pumpkin grew and was harvested with perfect timing as I had just used up last years harvest. We still have about 10 more in various stages out there. This is a good year for pumpkins in our garden! My Fiona learned to ride her bike. My husband suggested that she should try to ride so she went out and got her bike and helmet and went over to the parking lot to wait for him. Apparently she got tired of waiting and just started riding without help. Then called out to him "Poppa I'm riding"! I snapped a few pictures today and you would never know she has only been riding for two days.

I managed to get quite a bit done while I was gone at the scrapbook convention. I took a stack of half-finished layouts with me to work on and did a couple of new pages. I hope to get some pictures of them tomorrow. First I needed to get some sleep and put the house back in order.