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My how time flies!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 12 weeks since my visit with my friend Tammy and her family, and these guys and gals hatched!  We had such a wonderful time watching them hatch and cheering them on as they entered the world.  What a great learning experience for all of our kids to get to experience!  I was so glad that the timing worked out to where they were hatching whey they were here. 
Here they are now:
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Where has the time gone?  I miss Tammy terribly, but we talk almost daily, and we’re planning a trip up there next year.  I can’t wait! 
Back to the chicks.  Right now, they are in their own separate area (but not completely cut off from the rest of the flock), but soon, they will be joining the rest of the flock.  They have approximately another 8 weeks before the girls start laying, but we’ll have to separate the young males before then.  Unfortunately, we cannot keep them all, but I might keep one or two.  The rest will go into my freezer at around 20 weeks of age.  We’ll just have to wait and see how my flock’s doing at that time. 
We also finally got part of a garden planted.  Not what I had originally planned, but it’ll do.  We planted 5 rows of corn, 2 rows of beans, and 1 row of potatoes.  So far, I do have corn and beans coming up which is great!  I’m praying that they will continue to do well and that I’ll have something to put into my freezer to last us through the winter. 
Well, there you have it – an update to our farm life.  We stay pretty busy, but I love it!  I’m so very thankful for all that God has blessed us with.  I’m more blessed than I could ever put into words.  

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Childless for a couple of days…….

Brian and I are childless for a couple of days. Listen! Do you hear that? It’s the sound of peace & quite. No fighting, yelling, squealing, etc. Very nice! While the kids get to spend quality time with their grandparents, we get some quality time together. As much as we love our children, this time is so important to couples, and it tends to get pushed to the back burner a lot. As parents, we forget that we started out as 2 and became ____ (for us – 5). When couples don’t spend that quality time together getting caught up on each other’s lives, they tend to start drifting further apart. I believe this (along with our lack of a strong faith in Christ and focus on Him) starts to pull many marriages apart. They start to become strangers to each other, and this is not a good thing. Your spouse should be your best friend, not your worst enemy.

If you haven’t had any quality time with your mate in a while, please take the time to do so. Just a dinner together minus children is a good thing. Also, try not to make your children the focus of your time together. Yes, we all love talking about our children, but this is a time for the two of you to catch up on each other’s lives. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, try to focus on something that doesn’t require talking about the kids. Talk about your dreams, the latest way you stretched your dollars, a new recipe, the latest scrapbook page you created, anything but the kids. Make sure that you also ask your husband about what’s going on at work. Focus on each others lives, likes and dislikes, dreams, etc. Don’t be afraid to dream, that’s what keeps life interesting. The point is to get to know one another all over again.

We all show our kids daily how much we love them, now it’s time to show our mate how much we love him/her. There are several ways that you can find quality time together, but the easiest and most frugal way would be to put the kids to bed early and plan a late dinner together at home. If you have to, have a picnic on the bed or in the bedroom floor. If you can’t plan dinner, plan a special dessert just for the two of you. Remember, it doesn’t have to be expensive, just quality time. The purpose is to make time for each other. After all, you started out with just the 2 of you, right? Don’t get me wrong. I miss my kids, but this time without them is a good thing.

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~Plan A Baking Day~

I love baking bread and the smell of freshly baked bread! It’s one of my favorite things to make! Most of the time, it’s hard for me to keep my family (aka my husband) away from the bread to give it time to cool!

With the summer heat now in full force, I always dread those baking days because it heats up my kitchen (and the rest of the house) so much. So, I try to choose one morning a week and get all of my baking done at that time so I’m not heating up my house so much. I also set my roaster oven up out on the back porch and bake out there, too! I can bake more at one time plus only heat up the house with half the amount of heat. The key is to spread things out enough that you’re not overlapping your breads too much. Over rising can also cause problems in your breads, especially in rolls.

Here’s a list of what I’ve been cooking/baking this week:

Basic Frugal White Bread
Cinnamon Rolls with cream cheese icing
Easy Yeast Rolls
Crescent Dinner Rolls (recipe coming soon)

(I also made some crepes for us to eat for breakfast. I’ll post the recipe for them soon, as well. )

Half of my yeast rolls went to a meal that my small group at church was taking to another class member and her family who is not feeling well.

A lot of times, when I’m making rolls, I’ll bake half and freeze the other half. We don’t need all of them at once, so I have enough for 2 meals that way. I just have to make sure and allow enough time for the dough to thaw and rise before baking, for crescent rolls – about 1 hour and for dinner rolls – maybe 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

One more quick tip: Make sure that you use a pan with high sides when making things such as rolls or cinnamon rolls. The dough need something to “climb” on so that they rise up and now out. This gives you nice fluffy rolls instead of flat rolls.

This plan also works well for other dishes as well. Cook once and eat twice (or more)!

This post is linked to:

Tackle It Tuesday
Works For Me Wednesday
Kitchen Tip Tuesday
Things I Love Thursday