We have been busy...I mean way busy around here this week. We are trying to squeeze a 3-day vacation in real quick. We have plans to go up north with friends to see the autumn color. We are leaving on Thursday and will be back late Saturday.
I can hardly pack in all the stuff I need to do before we leave. Then I have only 10 days after we get back before Rhiannon and I head to Tennessee. I'm so looking forward to that trip that I want to have all my chores done as much as possible so I can forget them and relax in the south--my favorite place!
I have a few pictures I hope to post on here before we leave to show you the one big task we were up to around here in the last week. It's all done now--thankfully! The reason I put so few pics on is because our system is so slow that it literally takes me hours to post several pics. I cooked supper one night while babysitting the computer while it loaded them. It's a big job!
The one really big chore on my mind is "A Sturdy Fence." As happened with "The Fields of May," you get to a point where you are scrambling to make sure everything is just as you want it before the book goes to print. That's where I'm at. It's been proofread, checked and re-typed, but I just get these little last-minute thoughts that need to be added. I am re-reading again and setting everything in order in a mad rush to get it to the publisher! They assured me this morning that I'm ok and can take my vacations and relax! Phew! That's good!
Will write more soon, hopefully with pics. The surprise item is getting a second coat of tung oil! No guesses yet? Clue: part of it is round. Blessings, LORI
Showing posts with label "A Sturdy Fence". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "A Sturdy Fence". Show all posts
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
MAKING APPLESAUCE, A RECIPE SUGGESTION, MY NEW BOOK COVER AND MORE CLUES!
Today was a wonderful day around here! Rhiannon had the day off. After a couple of weeks of 12 hour days, this was welcome! She and I headed to Kalamazoo to do some shopping. I had a few items to pick up for my speaking engagement on Saturday.
I had intended to do applesauce today, but when I found out this was the alternative--you guessed it--I went to town! Actually I hurried and canned 6 quarts of the best applesauce after we got home. I fixed a good main dish for supper and made it to church on time--all this was done between 4:30 and 6:45 when we headed over to church! I was pretty happy about that!
Yesterday I got the first pictures of the cover for my new book, "A Sturdy Fence." This was very exciting! I really like it! After all the hard work of writing a book, choosing and approving the cover is like the icing on the cake! This book picks up where "The Fields of May," left off, but deals with lots of little things that can go wrong in a courtship! I hope you'll all want to read it. I think there are several encouraging things that anyone can glean from this story.
I want to comment on a scripture that I've been meditating on. I'm going to include it in my talk on Saturday. It's Proverbs 21:5 "The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, But those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty." This scripture reminds me that if I want to prosper, I have to make good plans and goals and stick to them. It is a rare person that gets rich by accident. Of course, getting rich is not the goal here, but you don't even make a decent living by accident. It takes work. It takes plans and diligence. It's another one of those things that only time will reward. You do all this little stuff day by day and eventually you look back and say, "wow, I accomlished all that!" (Things like making applesauce year after year or saving in a bank account!).
Today I held in my hands some of the "other materials" that will go along with the "thing" that is coming to my house. I found out it will be in tomorrow. I will not get it until Friday, most likely. It comes from a long ways away. Some assembly required! Do you have a guess what it is?
Today's recipe suggestion: The other night we had chips and salsa. We had some leftover cheese sauce and added our own cheese to it for a taco bar last night. I made taco meat as well. Tonight I took the leftovers--the taco meat, the cheese mixture and added it to boiled macaroni. I added a little milk for consistency and had the most wonderful homemade hamburger, taco, macaroni stuff you could imagine. It's a great quick dish for using leftover taco stuff! Try it! We had a little of the leftover applesauce as well. I didn't have quite enough to fill a 7th jar and that went well with the homemade taco macaroni.
Hope you enjoyed today's scripture thoughts, recipe and CLUE! Baa, baa black sheep, have you any wool?! Blessings, LORI
I had intended to do applesauce today, but when I found out this was the alternative--you guessed it--I went to town! Actually I hurried and canned 6 quarts of the best applesauce after we got home. I fixed a good main dish for supper and made it to church on time--all this was done between 4:30 and 6:45 when we headed over to church! I was pretty happy about that!
Yesterday I got the first pictures of the cover for my new book, "A Sturdy Fence." This was very exciting! I really like it! After all the hard work of writing a book, choosing and approving the cover is like the icing on the cake! This book picks up where "The Fields of May," left off, but deals with lots of little things that can go wrong in a courtship! I hope you'll all want to read it. I think there are several encouraging things that anyone can glean from this story.
I want to comment on a scripture that I've been meditating on. I'm going to include it in my talk on Saturday. It's Proverbs 21:5 "The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, But those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty." This scripture reminds me that if I want to prosper, I have to make good plans and goals and stick to them. It is a rare person that gets rich by accident. Of course, getting rich is not the goal here, but you don't even make a decent living by accident. It takes work. It takes plans and diligence. It's another one of those things that only time will reward. You do all this little stuff day by day and eventually you look back and say, "wow, I accomlished all that!" (Things like making applesauce year after year or saving in a bank account!).
Today I held in my hands some of the "other materials" that will go along with the "thing" that is coming to my house. I found out it will be in tomorrow. I will not get it until Friday, most likely. It comes from a long ways away. Some assembly required! Do you have a guess what it is?
Today's recipe suggestion: The other night we had chips and salsa. We had some leftover cheese sauce and added our own cheese to it for a taco bar last night. I made taco meat as well. Tonight I took the leftovers--the taco meat, the cheese mixture and added it to boiled macaroni. I added a little milk for consistency and had the most wonderful homemade hamburger, taco, macaroni stuff you could imagine. It's a great quick dish for using leftover taco stuff! Try it! We had a little of the leftover applesauce as well. I didn't have quite enough to fill a 7th jar and that went well with the homemade taco macaroni.
Hope you enjoyed today's scripture thoughts, recipe and CLUE! Baa, baa black sheep, have you any wool?! Blessings, LORI
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
THANKFULNESS AND CANNING TOMATOES!
Hi, everybody! I've got to stray from commenting on the last few verses of 2 Peter for a day or so. Lots of other stuff got in the way....like tomatoes! Clint and I both had to make trips to Centreville today--me to pick up my now proofread manuscript of "A Sturdy Fence,"--and he to meet with a family concerning an upcoming funeral. So because we were combining our trips to save gas, I had to hurry and scurry to have the tomatoes at a point where I could leave the process. I asked him to take a few pictures, but his morning was consumed with studying in the book of James to prepare for tonight's Bible study. I could not take pictures, get the two big loads of laundry hung out, wash, cut, cook, and juice tomatoes plus be ready to go by 11:30! My real, true intent was to post pics of the tomato juicing process. Well....
I got all the tomatoes cooked and juiced in time and left the hot juice in a big cooker awaiting my return. This afternoon I'll cook it down, add tomato paste, spice, etc., and then can it. It may mean I miss prayer meeting tonight. But with the last two days of this week occupied, I guess it might be hard to avoid. The canning is certainly more difficult these days since my good help is no longer available! Rhiannon is working in the corn and just isn't available most days. She loved the canning and was excellent help. They are in the middle of harvest and she's putting close to 12 hour days. Last night she was teasing about the corn sorting process and how it has so much spiritual application. I asked if she'd like to be my guest blogger for a few days, take pictures of the amazing process that goes into producing quality seed corn, then post them complete with spiritual comments (bad seed needs to be removed, etc), but she said she's too busy! Sorry! I'm sure you would have found it all interesting. It's truly an amazing process. We don't often realize what all goes into things we take for granted--things like the availability of good quality seed to the farmers of this nation.
Today as I was starting the tomato canning process, I thought again about the availability of water. I am so thankful for running water! No kidding! I often think of that and breathe a little prayer while I'm doing some task where water at the touch of a faucet handle is indispensable. Making spaghetti sauce or any kind of food processing is just such a task. It forced me to consider what it was like for grandmas as they canned back in the day when all the water used had to be hauled from a well or pumped by hand. And they didn't have the option of deciding not to can, it was a lifestyle and a necessity if you wanted to eat over the winter. I recently read an entry in some notes my dad's mother left for the family describing a fire that occurred in their house back in the early '30's. She was looking at the new catalog (a really big deal!) with the neighbor lady while her green beans were canning on the stove. A spark found an open spot in the chimney and started a fire in the wall. Soon grandma saw the smoke and the rush to rescue the house was on. She told how a neighbor man rescued her cooker full of beans. They all sealed and everything was fine in the end, but she really emphasized how that guy was bent on saving those beans!
I always kind of dread the canning process. It's not one of my favorite tasks, especially spaghetti sauce--probably because of the many steps involved. But today I'm thankful that I have good equipment, no chimney to worry about, and running water to clean up all the mess! Thankfulness.....it's a good thing. Blessings, LORI
I got all the tomatoes cooked and juiced in time and left the hot juice in a big cooker awaiting my return. This afternoon I'll cook it down, add tomato paste, spice, etc., and then can it. It may mean I miss prayer meeting tonight. But with the last two days of this week occupied, I guess it might be hard to avoid. The canning is certainly more difficult these days since my good help is no longer available! Rhiannon is working in the corn and just isn't available most days. She loved the canning and was excellent help. They are in the middle of harvest and she's putting close to 12 hour days. Last night she was teasing about the corn sorting process and how it has so much spiritual application. I asked if she'd like to be my guest blogger for a few days, take pictures of the amazing process that goes into producing quality seed corn, then post them complete with spiritual comments (bad seed needs to be removed, etc), but she said she's too busy! Sorry! I'm sure you would have found it all interesting. It's truly an amazing process. We don't often realize what all goes into things we take for granted--things like the availability of good quality seed to the farmers of this nation.
Today as I was starting the tomato canning process, I thought again about the availability of water. I am so thankful for running water! No kidding! I often think of that and breathe a little prayer while I'm doing some task where water at the touch of a faucet handle is indispensable. Making spaghetti sauce or any kind of food processing is just such a task. It forced me to consider what it was like for grandmas as they canned back in the day when all the water used had to be hauled from a well or pumped by hand. And they didn't have the option of deciding not to can, it was a lifestyle and a necessity if you wanted to eat over the winter. I recently read an entry in some notes my dad's mother left for the family describing a fire that occurred in their house back in the early '30's. She was looking at the new catalog (a really big deal!) with the neighbor lady while her green beans were canning on the stove. A spark found an open spot in the chimney and started a fire in the wall. Soon grandma saw the smoke and the rush to rescue the house was on. She told how a neighbor man rescued her cooker full of beans. They all sealed and everything was fine in the end, but she really emphasized how that guy was bent on saving those beans!
I always kind of dread the canning process. It's not one of my favorite tasks, especially spaghetti sauce--probably because of the many steps involved. But today I'm thankful that I have good equipment, no chimney to worry about, and running water to clean up all the mess! Thankfulness.....it's a good thing. Blessings, LORI
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