Rey the Homemaker!

I've been busy lately, can you tell?
I ordered some Utah peaches, corn and tomatoes this year. I haven't done any canning in a while and I thought it would be good to stay in practice and teach my girls a little about it too.

They had a blast shucking the corn and good thing because I really needed the help!

After shucking we cleaned them, blanched them and prepared them for the freezer. Next year we are going to try drying/dehydrating some for a few recipes that call for them. We're not big fans of canned corn around here so we didn't go that route.

Next we started on the peaches. Sage helped me a lot with blanching and peeling them. We only canned seven quarts because we wanted enough left over for other stuff.

Like homemade peach ice cream which we made Saturday night and homemade peach cobbler which we made Tuesday night. I was going to make some peach jam but Deni couldn't keep her hands off the rest of the peaches. She must've ate over ten on Saturday alone!

In between all this I was given three quarts of pomegranate juice. So I made jelly and some very yummy pomegranate syrup. This is all I have left after giving most of it away!

I didn't get to the salsa until Tuesday and Wednesday. It turned out rather disappointing for all the effort that was put in. Making salsa (canning quality) is a long process. It's not bad salsa it's just that you can't can "fresh". I'm a pico de gallo girl myself so bottled just tastes...well, bottled!

But I took some to work and it was gone in no time. So I guess it was alright.When preparing the tomatoes for the salsa your supposed to drain off most of the liquid, so I did get two quarts of tomato juice! It took me almost an hour just to strain all the seeds out but it was yummy!

It's very rewarding to put the effort in for something fresh and better for my family! I think I'll be better prepared next time too as I learned (the hard way) a few lessons along the way. Like making sure your jars will fit in your pot! Even though it was a lot of work I will definitely do it again next year!

Yard Work

Been thinking about doing some yard work. Key word here being "thinking". It's still too freakin hot here to do anything outside. But I would really like to start doing some improvements around the house. Increase our home value and stuff.

We've been here two years last month and it's finally time we put a yard in!

Money is the biggest thing holding us back. We want to do something nice but lack the funds to put into it. So, at this point it's probably better to just get on with something that looks decent rather than wait for something that may never happen.

Any landscaping ideas? I know we will for sure xeriscape. There really is no other choice out here in the dry barren desert land. There are a few plants that survive that I am looking into. I would like a little pop of color here and there. I would like to do something creative with decorative rock. I don't want to do something that looks like everyone else though. I dunno, it's hard when your choices are limited. I've thought about in-laying the rock kinda like this:

Thought about doing something fun with the walkway too. Since the walkway is already in place I was thinking about doing something in a straight line along the edge with round pebble/river rock type decorative rock. Like this:

Make it look all modern/zen and stuff. Something pretty yet still low maintenance. I would have Dennis install a drip/bubble system so the few plants we get would be adequately supplied. I have no clue on the types of plants I would like except for one. I was driving past the school the other day and they had these little gems.

The color just really stood out and I thought it would be a nice addition to the landscape plans. I happened to have the camera with me so I pulled over and got a quick shot of one to add to the landscape idea folder. I'll have to find out what they are and what seasons they're good in and stuff. SO, by posting this I hope it gives me an incentive to start on it.

But don't hold your breath people!

I am really good and starting and not finishing, it's something I'm working on getting better at in my thirties!

I would appreciate any ideas you got so throw em my way!

September already!

I can't frackin' believe it's September already! It's time to start making Halloween costumes!The first week of school came and went and thank goodness for the three day weekend to help us to recover!Dennis is back to working the G.E.D. program which means I'm back to being a single mom. He helps out a lot by cramming most of the "homework" time into the hour and a half he's home from school before heading off to adult ed. It's a huge relief for Sage to have her homework done before I get home. Then it's concentrating mainly on reading with each of them, practicing math facts & spelling words and what not.The girls have learned to be a HUGE help maintaining our new "schedule" by stepping up to help with making and cleaning up after dinner. They all help clear the table then Sage loads the dishwasher and True unloads when it's done. Deni helps out by gathering all the laundry and taking it to the laundry room so I can keep on top of it! When you only have two full days to spend as a family, you learn to keep up on the house work so you can play during the weekend!Speaking of weekends, last weekend was quite a doozy! I ended up taking care of my cousins baby all day Monday and overnight till Tuesday morning because he got into an accident on his 4-wheeler. He was going up a hill while someone else was coming down. They hit head on and the other guy took off. His brother called 911 because he was sure he had broken his leg. The ambulance then ended up calling flight and they flighted him to UMC Trauma Center where they found he had indeed shattered his femur and replaced it with a metal rod.Now, I urge you all to BE CAREFUL on your ATV's! Billy (my cousin) is a pretty safe guy. He wears his gear and he's really good at what he does. You just never know about the other people out there who aren't as cautious! This accident could have been much worse, every year you hear of people out at Red Rock getting seriously hurt and even killed. Thank God when Billy's leg got broke it didn't sever the femoral artery that runs along it or he could have bled to death within minutes.With that aside, my family did enjoy having a baby in the house for a day. My girls already miss her.Well I was going to try to put up a video last week but I'm still in the process of gathering footage seeing that there's a shortage of time in the mornings before getting out the door to work and school! So I'll just leave you with a couple shots of the girls sporting some tattoo's they rubbed on last weekend. They take after mommy eh?! ; )