Happy Fall!

 

Today is the official first day of Autumn! The leaves are changing, school is well underway, and the temperature cools. This Summer has been one of the best! Making new friends, getting closer to others, it's been awesome. Here are a few fun facts from my summer -

Best memory - Probably Mission Arkansas, a mission trip with my church's youth group to Arkansas. I had so much fun and grew so much in Christ.

 

Garden fun - The most we ever harvest from our garden in one day - 33 cucumbers, 66 jalepenos, 102 ground cherries, 3 gallon buckets of tomatoes, and 3 gallon buckets of green beans. We did LOTS of canning! :)

 

One new thing I tried - herb gardening. I loved it!

 

Things I am doing this fall - I am involved in my church's Christmas play (first practice October 5th! It can't come fast enough!) And being involved in American Heritage Girls. AHG is basically girl scouts with a Christian focus - I will post more about it later!

 

Everybody have a GREAT day, week, and fall! If you have any requests for posts - recipes, art, crochet patterns, pictures of my animals, or how I manage my many animals, comment below!

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Man

My main man, the one and only....Elmo. Yup. Elmo the rooster. It just fits. :) He is a bantam golden sebright with WAY to much attitude!

Eggs!

This shows the variety of eggs I get everyday! The green one on the far right is a "normal" sized egg.

Ouch!

I was playing with my cousins on Sunday evening at a family gathering and hurt my foot. Mind you, I'm one of few girl cousins and all of my cousins play football - it isn't hard for me to get hurt!!! I didn’t think it was anything more than a strained muscle until today when our chiropractor expressed her concerns that it might be a stress fracture. We are going to monitor it and see if it gets worse. If it doesn’t feel any better by Wednesday I am going to go to the doctor and have it checked out.

Mint Ice Tea

What is more perfect on a hot summer day then a ice cold glass of sweet mint tea? Not much! This is a recipe from a family friend...easy, simple, and delicious!

• 4 cups of water
• 2 cups of sugar
• 2 cups of fresh mint (Spearmint, Peppermint, Chocolate mint, whatever. I used spearmint and chocolate mint here.)

Bring the water to a boil and stir in sugar until dissolved. Steep the mint leaves* for 8-10 hours and strain. Thats it! This makes a concentrate. 1 cup of concentrate to 4 cups of water. You can freeze the concentrate for later!

*Use only the leaves. Stems make it bitter.

Strawberries!

We picked 25+ quarts of strawberries in 57 minutes, hulling, cleaning, and bagging them in an hour for 13 gallons of berry goodness!

New birdy!

I picked up a budgie (AKA parakeet) friend for Pepe - (Pep-ay). His name is not yet been decided upon...I am thinking of Rio! Top pic is Rio and the bottom is Pepe - who is SO excited to have a friend!!!