This Long Weekend

For this long weekend I am taking some time to do some planning. We have had a wonderful, excitement filled summer full of family and fun. One son is off starting a teaching internship, another son is off to start his junior year of college and the third is starting his senior year of high school. Thursday was a very quite day here with the two girls and myself. We cleaned the house. It felt very good. Then we left Friday for a day long outing on the road with Dean. We had a blast and I will be posting about that soon.

We girls have some ideas on how we want our fall and winter to be and we are in the planning stages. I just need some time to look at the calendar and the budget and see what we will do. What we all want is to spend some time with each other and with friends, while having a balance of alone time as well.

So this is a work weekend for us. Some use it as a end of summer last hurrah. We are craving some routine here and that is just what I am going to attempt. It is a challenge to fit in everything and at the same time make it peaceful and calm. For me anyway. I want time with my husband, time with the girls, time to help my son with his future plans, time for me and all my loves. Time for some homeschooling, time for baking, time for planning ahead. We still need to work in the garden, tend to the chickens and get all that wood in! It doesn't ever end, and that is good.

Hopefully at the end of this weekend I will be organized and ready to take on the fall!

Deep Breaths

I am off today to be with my mother while my father is away. My mother can no longer be alone. I work with the elderly, but this is my mom. It is going to be different. She no longer can do the normal things we all take for granted. Deep breaths are needed today.

Beans and Buns

I am being over run by beans. Wax beans and Green beans. I put three bags of beans in the freezer for winter. After the garden is put to bed and we are remembering all the fresh veggies it will be so nice to pull these out and eat them!

I cut the tips off and blanch them for 3 minutes in boiling water. Then I quickly put them in ice water to stop them from cooking. Then I drain them and dry them on a towel on the counter. After that they go into a zip lock bag. I then put the freezer bag back in the water to push the air out of the bag. Zip it up and into the freezer it goes. I place the bags on a cookie sheet and place them in the freezer until they freeze. They keep their shape better that way.

Sorry for the dark pictures. Sometimes my camera does weird things. Well maybe it is the photographer.

TaDa!!!

I made bread this past weekend as well. I try to make a bunch to freeze as well so I am not making bread every other day. (Even though sometimes I still have to.)

I like to make my own hamburger buns.

I use Farmgirl Fare's Farmhouse Bread recipe. It makes three loaves of bread, or sometimes it makes two loaves and a batch of hamburger rolls. I like making my own, because I can size them according to the size of the people eating them. Bigger ones for the adults and smaller ones for the little girls. I don't like it when I buy store buns and then half gets thrown out because they are too big.

They cook up so nice. I put sesame seeds on mine as well as salt. I think I will skip the salt from now on because we didn't like it as much. Too salty.