Crochet Away!

The craft for the Girls Club at my church (for young girls, I think 8-14 years old-ish) is to knit a scarf with this pomp-a-doodle yarn. My husbands aunt Carrie is teaching them, and the rest of us helpers are supposed to help the girls with it. I used to knit back in high school, but that was 6 years ago, so I thought I would brush up on my skills. I bought this pink yarn, and Hosltein yarn, as my friend Heidi would call it (Holstein in the breed of dairy cows that are black and white (yes some are red and white) but the majority are black and white) I tied teaching myself again, not using you tube tutorial videos, but I just couldn't quite get it, so I broke down and relearned how to knit online.

 The yarn looks like the pink yarn above, when knitted looks like the scarf below....

 I got all caught up in this knitting, and remembered that I used to crochet a little bit too, so I went back to the fabric store and bought "normal" yarn to try to re teach myself how to crochet, again I had to go to you tube to re learn :( I remembered real quick how to do a single crochet, and I wanted to learn how to do a double crochet (it took a long time to get it down!!!) Below are examples of how my double crocheting went.....the long scarf was my first go. Notice how it gets wide, then narrow, then wide, and sideways..... I like crocheting better than knitting, even though I enjoy both, but I wanted my crocheted scarf to look good, so I unwound the entire scant of yarn, and started over from the other end of the yearn, and the little square is that start of my hopefully better looking scarf :)

None of my scarves are done yet, they are all in the process, and Leon saw that I had bought more yarn and got worried that there would be 10 unfinished scarves all over our house, but I promised him there wouldn't be, so I better get busy! I don't know what I'm going to do with them all, I don't really wear scarves, but maybe I will start :) Crocheting is also a great way to pass the time when waiting for your computer to take 10 minutes to upload 4 pictures :)

Homemade Beef Summer Sausage (In winter lol)

I have been wanting to post this post for a long time, but I got busy with the holidays..... Anyways, this morning I woke up feeling very well rested so I made supper, did the dishes, and folded laundry, all before 7:30! (I had to make supper this morning, because I work till 6 tonight) Then I decided to post this :)

For Christmas this year, I made summer sausage for my siblings, instead of buying expensive Hickory Farms Stuff! The recipe calls for venison, but I didn't have any at that moment, so I used beef from my huge ground beef collection. This is a SUPER easy recipe, everyone should try it at least once!!

Yummmm.... (this is the finished product)

 First you will need to thaw out 4 lbs. of ground beef, I put mine in the bowl open end up so meat juice didn't spill into my refrigerator.

 You will need to mix up the 4 lbs of beef and 1/4 cup of tender quick (it is a meat curing salt, fount at most grocery stores, except the Fred Meyers in Portland!!!)

 Mix, mix, mix......Then cover it up and put it in the refrigerator over night.

 On the next day, you will only need 5 things...... A stove, a broiling pan, pepper, liquid smoke, and garlic powder. O you will also need 4 hours to be at home :)

 Mix 2 teaspoons of the pepper, 2 teaspoons of the garlic powder, and 2 Tablespoons of liquid smoke, then mix, mix, mix again, and roll into logs. When you get the sausage out of the oven, pat them down with paper towels to soak up the very little grease from the logs. (You can do this right away, the logs are not that hot when you pull them out of the oven)

Cook the summer sausage at 225 degrees for 4 hours WARNING: It will make your house smell like liquid smoke (I kind of like it :)......)

I just HAD to post a picture of the sunrise this morning, it was GORGEOUS!!!

Shipping Cows

Today Leon, his friend Arlin, and I shipped their cows. We had 22, but 2 died (this was a horrible winter for cows!!) It was a BEAUTIFUL sunny brisk morning, perfect weather!

 Leon dropped me off at the far east end of the field to start pushing the cattle towards the corrals, while they set up some panels.

  Everything was going great, the cattle were moving nicely, and I was mosy-ing along behind them taking pictures of the beautiful December day. I got the cows to the gate they needed to go through to where their water, and mineral tubs were, so this shouldn’t have been hard to get them to go through the gate, they do it all the time….. 

This is the cattle in the corner looking at me.. the second red calf from the right is the dumb one!!

 Well not today, maybe I just wasn’t intimidating enough. They all stopped and looked around, so I just stood there, waiting and thinking that at least ONE cow would go through the gate on it’s own free will, then the rest would follow. There is one stupid red steer that likes to just run around and mess everything up, today he did just that, he was looking right at me, and all of a sudden he decides to just kick, jump, and take off, past me, to the COMPLETE opposite end of the field, where I had started gathering them from…… I wasn’t really upset, I enjoy walking around a field with cattle in it, I’m not being sarcastic here, I really do enjoy it. 

 This is the cattle running....

So I walked back to gather them up again, I finally get a head of them, and start to turn them around, and Them I see Leon and Arlin coming up the field to help me, YAY! :) 

 We started pushing them back towards the gate again, they get to the gate, and that dumb red steer looks up, and looks at me or past me, and he started running down the fence line to try and get past me, well I was NOT going to let THAT happen! I ran across to fence and I start jumping and waving my hands, tying to be intimidating enough to turn him and all the other calves that were following him around, and it WORKED!!!! SUCCESS!!!!! We got them back into the corral, and they go quite nicely into where the panels were set up, and by this time, I was lagging behind, trying to catch my breath, it’s a hard thing to do in 35 degree weather, and the guys closed  them in the pen. 

 This little black heifer is Cookie! We got her from Leon's neighbor Bob Cook, hence the name Cookie :)

 We loaded them up and took them to the feed lot where we sold them.We had to weigh them in 2 separate groups because they all couldn’t fit on the scale. We had no problem with the first group, and he second group did fine, until we were running them back to their pen, and one of the gates wasn’t latched all the way and 4 of them pushed through and ran down the LONG ally, so Leon and I took off running as fast as we could after them, and finaly got them turned around at the end of the alley, once again after they got turned around I was lagging behind trying to catch my breath :)  

 This is the river that borders the field the calves were in.

 This is my studly husband being studly :)

 This is our cow dog lol....not really :)

Anyways, go them all taken care of and settled in, then we all went back to Leon’s shop to droped off our 3 heifers at the barn until we can take them to the auction, but maybe I can convince Leon to hold off a while, I like having them around :)

My BIG Chickies!

This is going to be a really short post, more like an update, for those who care......

Here is a really bad picture of my chicks. The buff that I think is a rooster is the one right under the lamp looking at "8:00" in the middle of the picture.

I haven't seen my chickies for probably 2 weeks, and they are HUGE, to me at least! They look like real chickens now, not "nasty teenage, pimply, half fuzz, half feather" chickies, as Leon's friend would call them at about 5 weeks old....
None of our chickies have died, I'm pretty happy about that , because everyone who has ever raised chickens, and has given us advice said that you will probably loose 1 or 2, I just hope my dog wont kill them, I might need to invest in a shock collar for him...
We have this one chick that doesnt look like any of the rest of the chicks, it is brown, with kind of red highlights on it's neck, maybe its a hyBIRD lol I mean hybrid (dumb joke......) I also think that one of the buff orphington chicks is a rooster, it is way bigger than the rest of the chicks, and it's comb is really red, and a little bit bigger than the other buff's combs, I guess I willl just have to wait and see!

I'm so proud of my growing, stinky, feathery friends! :)

Portland Christmas Concert

The other day, my parents hosted a Christmas concert in the Historic Coleman-Scott House that they live in, which has been in my family since it was built in 1916, I am the 5th generation to have lived in the house. The concert featured my mom's friend Janice Scroggins, an award winning jazz pianist, her daughters, and the quartet from church my hubby sings with, that sings at the Salem prison once a month! Here is a link to a little article about the concert. http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/12/coleman-scott_house_holiday_ja.html 

There were supposed to be 5 guys, but the other tenor got sick, so Leon was the only tenor, he was a little nervous, but he did GREAT :) The whole group did great!! They opened up the evening with a melody, with about 5 different common Christmas snogs (I cant remember what they were) then my mother introduced the quartet and thoroughly embarrassed my hubby, calling him "Sonny" I thought it was cute, but he was embarrassed :) The guys then sang "One Scarred Hand" not sure who wrote it, and their last song was "Jesus is Coming" (I really like this song!) not sure who wrote it either :) The lighting was a little dark ,and I was far away, I wish the pictures were better looking.... Also, I tried posting videos of the guys singing, but it didn't work :(

 These are the guys, (Left to right) David, Arlin, Leon, and Dean.

 This is Janice Scroggins, I think she is a 5 time Grammy nominee for Jazz piano.

This is Janice Scroggins at the piano, and her second oldest daughter is singing.

 the lady singing in this picture is her oldest daughter.

We all left at the "intermission" so we could get a head start on our hour and a half drive home, and on the way home we stopped in Salem at The Roadhouse restaurant for some yummy beef, and steaks to fill our bellies. I have to learn how to make their rolls, they are so light, and fluffy, and they get served with the best whipped honey butter.....mmmmmm :) maybe I'll try to duplicate the rolls after Christmas.

It is kind of neat to see people who have never been to my parent's house react to it. I was stationed at the front door to take money, and check people in, and they all had the same look when they walked in, of amazement. I think sometimes I take the house for granted because I grew up going there to see my grandparents, and the house has always been a gathering place for my family, and I think it always will be.

Candy and Cookie Creations!

It is a holiday tradition for my mother in law to do candies and cookies with her friend Joyce. This year it was them, Joyce's mother, daughter, and daughter in law, and my sister in law and I, who made them this year. I fully intended to take pictures throughout the whole day, but I failed, and I'm sorry. I had asked Leon what he wanted me to make this year and all he said was that he wanted coffee truffles, of course I hate coffee and it is the only thing he wanted..... What I decided to make was caramel filled chocolate candies, butterfingers, chocolate covered pretzels, and saltine toffee.

 This is my nephew Jared, all too eager to be this close to so much sweet treats :)

Here is MOST of what all we made, there were still some of my candies in the kitchen.

 The ladies dividing out the goodies. After all the yummy stuff is made, we divide it out between each lady, that day there were 6 of us, but Joyce's mom didn't want much candy, so she got the odd leftovers when the candies weren't able to be divided equally.

 This is my other nephew Randy being bad....

 and this is good Randy..... (he never really is bad though)

 Here is the saltine toffee I made, it has a wonderful salty sweet flavor!!! Super easy!! (I will post the recipes at the end of the blog!)

 This is a ginger snowman cookie my sister in law made, I think it is sooo cute!!!!

 In this container ais the saltine toffee I made, the crunch toffee that Regina made, russian tea cakes that Joyce made, and the snowmen that Janette made.

 I think theses are called missionary valls, that my mother in law made, it has peanut butter and cheerios in it, and then dipped in chocolate :)

 This is my truffle container, the big brown ones are only some of the coffee truffles (each lady got 42!!!) The green ones are mint oreo truffle that I made, they are not that pretty, but they MELT in your mouth!!!!

 These are my SUPER EASY EASY butter fingers.....

 And my chocolate dipped pretzels.....

 These are caramel filled chocolate candies....

 I had a mold for covering long pretzels with, and that is how I made these, the molds use a TON of chocolate, so I only made a few of these.

 This is the yummy chocolate pizza that Joyce made!!!

 Here are the FUN and delicious hay stacks that Regina made....

These are my chocolate covered filberts that I made.

 This is my bounty for the day!!!!!!!!!

And finally the mess, this picture doesn't do justice, because we were doing dishes on and off all day, but here is a good snapshot :)

Recipes

Butterfinger

• 16 oz candy corn
• 16 oz peanut butter
• melted chocolate to coat with

This is a super easy recipe. Use pound per pound of the peanut butter and candy corn. Melt them in the microwave, on high one minute at a time until melted. Line a 9x13 pan with wax paper, and pour peanut butter mixture in the pan, let cool till firm. Slice into however big of pieces you want, the separate and dip into melted chocolate! THAT'S AL!!!!!

Mint Oreo Truffles

• 1 pkg of mint oreo cookies
• 8oz cream cheese
• 16 oz white chocolate
• green food coloring
• mint extract

Crunch up the oreos then mix in softened cream cheese mix WELL. Let cool in refriderator for an hour, or until firm. Melt chocolate, add food coloring to desired color of green, then add a few drops of extract (depends on how strong you want the truffle to be). Make little balls out of the oreo mixture, then cool again for about 1/2 hour in refridgerator. Then dip into chocolate and let cool in wax paper lined pan.

Caramel candies

I got a big brick of caramel from my friend, who got it at Cash and Carry (a local Eugene restaurant supply store) The caramel is hard, but you can easy tear off a small piece and roll into a ball. I got a candy mold in tha shape I wanted. Melt chocolate wafers, and pour a little bit of the melted chocolate into the mold and with a baby spoon or the Wilton candy pain brush, spread the chocolate up the sides of the mold, then put into the fridge for a few minutes, until hard, then put a little caramel ball into the middle, fill the rest of the mold with chocolate and then put back into the fridge for a few more minutes, then pop out onto a soft kitchen towel.

To make the chocolate covered filberts, just add a filbert instead of caramel. And for the chocolate covered pretzel, do the same thing with the chocolate, but with a pretzel mold, and add the pretzel.

Saltine Toffee

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 40 saltines
• chocolate wafers

Line a jelly roll sheet with foil then spray with cooking spray, and lay out the saltines. Heat the brown sugar and butter, on medium low heat until boiling, then simmer for 5-6 minutes, then pour over saltines, and spread out. put pan in oven at 350 for a few minutes, until the toffee starts to bubble, pull out and spread chocolate wafers over top, then cover with foil, to help the chocolate melt. When chocolate is soft, spread over the toffee, let cool, then cut and serve :)

I have TONS of candy and cookies from the day's festivities, so if you'r arounf my neck of the woods, feel free to stop by and grab some!:) (seriously!!! I dont want to eat ALL of the goodies!!!)