My urban container garden #1

Well, now that I'm back to blogging, I thought it would be good to share my gardening experiment with y'all! This is the first year I started seeds inside. I started them in late February and was totally surprised at how well they did. Note: Do NOT use sharpie's to label the Popsicle sticks unless your gonna wrap tape over them before you spray water your garden!! lol:) Here are some pics of my seedlings:)( Wish I had taken more at all the different stages, but like I said, not much blogging going on at the time...)

These are almost all tomatoes. There are a few green pepper plants and then the three that you see sprouted are some seriously leggy cucumber plants:)

This is Kayla's garden...

And this is Samantha's...


Later, I transferred them all to milk cartons ( which were kinda a pain later to transfer to buckets so don't know that I would recommend that, but they work in a pinch..) then many of them went to the 5 gallon buckets I had on hand and the cucumbers to a larger plastic tub. Here is a pick of that.

I put them on the porch at first to "harden them off". They really struggled with the switch from milk carton to bucket. I think I would start them in a bit larger peat moss pots next time and then when they have real good established roots, switch them strait to the buckets. By the time I switched them from milk cartons to buckets, they were SO TALL they were leaning all over each other.... SO, think I started them a little early! :)
SO out of 21 tomato plants, about 4 died from shock. There was one rouge night that got in the thirties and it killed 4 tomato plants and all three of my cucumbers were no match for that temperature..... so sad.... I really didn't anticipate caring so much about these plants!! LOL I tell you what though, they're like my babies!!! So much time and care went in to growing them and keeping them healthy, that I really wanted them to do well, and was totally sad when the few died:( BUT, the next post will show y'all how the survivors are doing now!!! Be back soon!

Persecution anyone?

About two or three weeks ago I was playing with this video concept and recorded this one here. It's kinda just some thoughts on persecution and passion. Even if my kids are the only ones who ever care about these videos, I thought it would be a cool idea to tape my thoughts about different things as they come to mind.  I know for me, if my mom had some stash of videos from back when she was young, I would be watching them over and over again.  So, here's hoping at the least these will be cool for my kids.  At most..... God knows!

Blessings

p.s. turn up the volume, I'll figure out this mic thing yet!

Trying out the video thing!!

How to make YOGURT!

So, I know it's been a long time without a post, SO SORRY ABOUT THAT!!! This last school year was the most challenging of my life and all my energy HAD to go to my kids with no exceptions last year. SO, it's summer now, things are a lot more relaxed and finally I have a little more time to get back to blogging a bit!! YEAH!!

So to start out a new season of blogging, I wanted to share with y'all just how EASY it is to make YOGURT!!!
I have been blessed to get my milk from two different places. I get a gallon of fresh raw goats milk ( I'm telling you, it taste just the same done right!!!) from a local goat farm and I get a gallon of raw cow's milk from another friends farm!! SCORE!!! I especially am thankful for the cow's milk because cow's milk separates so I can take all that wonderful cream on top and make butter and buttermilk and then have skim milk left, which is what I drink anyways! SO cool....

Ok, so, yogurt! What I do is take a half gallon of skim milk, and I add a small yogurt container in the milk and mix, ( you can actually add a bit of milk to the yogurt first to break it up, then dump it in the whole 1/2 gallon. This yogurt should be plain, and HAS to have LIVE CULTURES in it! And guess what, THAT's IT!!! Leave it out on the counter for 12-24 hours. ( This depends on how fresh the yogurt is, I used a fresh Greek yogurt with no weird additives, it worked great, but was a little loose, so next time I will try a little more yogurt or one with more live culture). Just experiment around till you get the consistency you like. It's so worth it!! Then you will have your own fresh yogurt!! HERE is another web sight with a slightly different way of making it, i will try this next time just to see how it works!

Now comes the add-ins! Our families favorite yogurt is lemon, so I went searching this morning and found this web sight HERE. This web sight rocks because it goes over how much to put in for so many different flavors. I tried the lemon this morning with the yogurt I made and it tastes SO GREAT!! I used a splenda type sweetener because of my diabetes and it still tastes wonderful! It did make my yogurt even looser and so became one of those expensive yogurt drinks you can buy, but still, so awesome!

I hope you try some of this out. I so enjoy knowing I can make my own foods and being less dependant on "the man":)

Blessings!!!

Sabbath day fun!

Hi all!! We have recently been convicted to start observing the Lords Sabbath on the first day of the week ( on God's calender that's Friday 6pm till Saturday 6pm ). Now to all of you who think we have suddenly turned Jewish, NOPE! :) We are just choosing as a family to observe the fourth commandment on the day we believe God originally chose. We still worship the Lord with other believers on Sunday right now, that may change, or, we may do both, God knows! But for now, God has told us to kick back and relax and enjoy family and Him on the Sabbath. SO, last night before six I made a really yummy extra huge pizza with string cheese filled crust!!!! I WISH I had taken a picture of that beauty but will have to do so next time! We ate that and watched a video called "the Apostles of Comedy". It was four Christian men who also happen to be pretty funny!!
This morning we had fun making pancakes and a nice relaxed pace, no hurries! Now, we did afterwards need to take some trash from my parents house to the dump. That was pretty easy and done quickly. Then later today I gave the girls two canvases and some recycled materials. Here are some pictures of what they started doing. Kayla my red head has squares I cut out from coke cans, and Sammy has bottle caps from various containers. I will have finished pictures soon! I also have a video of my little man dancing this morning that I have been trying to download and get up on here:)

Happy Purim!

Hello all. For the first time in the Land family, we are celebrating the Purim Festival! This is a celebration to remember the time when God saved some of His people ( the Jews from the tribe of Judah ) from the wicked Haman. The History of this event is found in the book of Ester in the Bible! God worked in the heart of one Jewish girl named Hadassah and saved the entire tribe of Judah!!! One reason why I believe that this is a great festival for Christians to celebrate is this; the tribe of Judah are our brothers and sisters AND, if God had allowed there destruction then Jesus ( being also from the tribe of Judah ) would have NEVER been born, therefor we would never have been redeemed by His sacrifice on the cross!! SO, all that to say, we had a GREAT time celebrating this weekend!
First we read about the history of the book of Ester while eating a very NICE breakfast! Then, all sat around and listened to mom read the story out of the WORD. It was really fun actually cause every time we got to the word HAMAN we all yelled "BOOOOOOOO!" Even Ben joined in on this one! Sammy added that she wanted to yell "YEAH!!!" for Mordecai so we did that as well! The girls also played the various rolls of characters in the book while I read.. that was fun!
Also, it's tradition to dress up which is symbolic of how Ester had to change her name and "hide" that she was Jewish. There are some pics below of that:)
We also had fun making some mishlot manots ( I know I'm spelling all this wrong!!!). Those are Jewish food baskets/gifts that they give on Purim. They especially do this for the poor so that everyone will be able to celebrate and feast that day! We made peanut clusters, chocolate covered strawberries and regular strawberries cleaned and ready to go. YUM!
Lastly, the girls received a Purim gift from us ( zoobles:) and then we watched "One Night With the King," the Ester story in modern movie form ( free on Netflix!)
We had a really great time remembering what God did way back then, but we can also fast forward to what Jesus did for us, and then fast forward some more and remember God's promise to come back!! He NEVER breaks his promises!! TRUST IN HIM!!!



Kayla looks so old in this one!

My sweetie!

Super man!!!

I gave him his cape early so he could be superman for Purim! So cute!

The Lands have a LAMB!

Here are a few pictures of two lambs that me and my friend Codi picked up recently ( she will be keeping them on her property with us living in town). We both got two male lambs to butcher in the fall.... YES, I know, it's gonna be hard! BUT, we are determined to learn and feed our families! We will see how it goes!!!

Letter Tag Toy gift!

Here is a quick pick of a bean bag tag toy I made for a recent new addition to our congregation, Josie! This was my first attempt at something like this, I think it turned out kinda cute!! Next time I will probably do some polly fill for a pillow type toy, that or two layers of fleece! Crafting is so much fun!

My Happy Saint Patty's Day and Birthday!

Well once again Saint Patty's day was upon us and, as it is every year, my birthday! We had a really great time that day as it was unseasonably warm! We all got in our green and got ready for the parade downtown. Here are some pics!

Me and my hubby waiting for the parade!

Hmmm... not sure what excited my little man in this one!

Show me your teeth!

My two sweet ladies VERY excited!

Ok, here come the fire engines!

choo choo...

There's the saint himself! VERY OLD!

Pretty rainbow!

Hope you all enjoyed your Saint Patrick's Day too!

New craft on Kelly's Crafty Creations!

So I finally actually got a little bit of time to do a little bit of crafting!! I made a outfit and head band for my sister in-laws new baby Skylar! Check it out at Kelly's Crafty Creations!

Make your own Bathroom Scrub!

I follow a great blog called Econobusters with Molly Green ( you can find her HERE. This mornings email had a great non-toxic bathroom scrub recipe that I wanted to share with you! Here ya go!

Make Your Own Bathroom Scrub



Photo Credit: Dena Wood

Supplies



Old squirt bottle
1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 cup borax
1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon lemon juice



Directions

Add baking soda, borax, and salt to your squirt bottle.
Mix slowly as you sprinkle in the lemon juice a little at a time.
Once everything is in, put the lid on the squirt bottle and shake it up until it is mixed completely.
Now you have a great non-toxic scrub for your toilets, showers and tubs!

There are ALOT of more recipes for ALOT MORE homemade cleaning and beauty products that I use. I will try to get more up on here and the week goes by! Enjoy this one!

Make your own McMom's Breakfast sandwiches!

Ok, this is just such a wonderful idea I had to share it with you! The blog Homemaking on the Homestead
had a wonderful post today on how to make FREEZABLE "McMom's Breakfast sandwiches"! What a WONDERFUL idea!! I am going to try these out tomorrow sometime I think. I also found this recipe HERE to make YOUR OWN Whole Wheat English Muffins! I will give this a shot and let y'all know how it turns out!! Here's prayin it does!
God bless!

My FAVORITE Beth Moore story

This clip of a story from Beth Moore has EVERY CHANCE of enriching your life, faith and love for Jesus Christ. Enjoy it:)

Starting seeds inside... any ideas???

Well, it's about that time. It's do or die, now or never! I desperatley want to feed our family some good TASTEY homegrown produce this year and feel determined to figure out how to do that as cheeply as possible!! SO, that meens.........seeds. Now, I've had many a friend try the seed thing, have it work inside, go to replant and have devistating results! SO, calling all GREEN THUMBS!! MUCH ADVICE is needed! When to plant, what to plant, how to plant, how to replant etc etc etc.... PLEASE if anyone has any hints or tricks of the trade NOW is the time to sound off!! GOD BLESS ALL OF YOUR GARDENS THIS YEAR!!

Today I decided to try my hand at something I have never had or made, Eggplant Parmigiana:) This is my Grandma's Favorite meal, so I thought, why not! I also made stuffed Mushrooms and whole wheat spaghetti w/ sauce. For dessert I made another new recipe, SNOW ICE CREAM!!! Recipes to follow:)

Sammy helping me with the spaghetti and marinara sauce:)

These are the stuffed mushrooms before there cooked. For these I just took at 1/2 teaspoon and scooped them out, then added a small piece of string cheese in each of them. The I added the minced stalk of the mushroom, a few tables spoons of Italian style breadcrumbs and about 1/3 cup of cooked Italian sausage. Then I just put them in the over with the eggplant after the sauce and cheese was added for about 15-20 minutes. I would probably add a small bit of butter on top of each one and then maybe a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Still, these were yummy:)

This is the egg plant baking before the sauce. The recipe I used is HERE and I actually thought it was quite yummy. Will have to work on the rest of the family though..... there all still wondering..."where's the beef!"

added the sauce and cheese, then put it back in with the mushrooms.

All done!! YUM!


This is the finally plate:) I dig it:)

And to finish, the most wonderful yummy I never knew about till now! SNOW CREAM! Here is the recipe, cause you MUST make this!
1 gallon snow
1 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups milk
Directions
1.When it starts to snow, place a large, clean bowl outside to collect the flakes. ( I just scooped up some in a bowl that was fresh and untouched) When full, stir in sugar and vanilla to taste, then stir in just enough milk for the desired consistency. Serve at once. ( we left our bowl in the snow till after dinner)

(i used white sugar and whole milk this time, would like to try skim milk and honey next time though:)
We also added one of those small tiny packets of koolaid mixes ( the ones that are 15 cents) to give it a special flavor. Watermelon cherry. OH MY GOODNESS~! This is SO YUMMY PEOPLE!!! And just look ( if your in Kansas ), there is TONS of snow outside just screaming to be snow cream! MUST TRY!!