Over The River

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I am sure my childhood memories of a wonderful weekend with family has something to do with how I feel about the holiday.

Every other year, we piled into the car and headed over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house. It was actually over the wintery, snow covered mountain pass... It was picture perfect in my mind. When we arrived at Grandma's house, we were greeted with hugs and kisses from the grandparents, and at least a couple of aunts and uncles, and a housefull of cousins.

My grandparents house was not fancy, but it was filled with love. There were 2 big rooms, one was the dine-in kitchen with a wood cook stove. The other big room was the living room with the pot belly stove in the corner. She had 1 tiny bathroom, 3 bedrooms, and a big, back porch room with the old fashioned wringer washing machine, and plenty of space to hang clothes to dry in the winter.

My grandma loved to bake, and she went into over drive when she knew we were coming in for the weekend. She prepared every kind of pie you can imagine. As soon as the car was unloaded we gathered around the old fashion kitchen table for cold fried chicken, potato salad, and at least a dozen pies. Grandma's fried chicken was the best... even cold it was super yummy. My family bought Grandma a new electric stove, but she always cooked on the wood stove. I was convinced her chicken was the best because of that old wood cook stove.

When the family all came home for the holidays, the house was brimming with love, laughter, and people. Us kids slept on the floor. It was like one big slumber party with girls whispering and giggling in the living room while the boys were snoring in the kitchen.

Bright and early in the morning we would wake up to Grandma singing southern gospel in the kitchen...

Everyone pitched in to help prepare for the dinner. The table was extended with a couple of fold away tables with plywood on top and covered by a tablecloth. It was centered in the middle of the kitchen. Chairs were brought in from the storage building, so everyone could sit around the table. Grandma's every day dishes were the gold lusterware. I always thought it was such a pretty table.

Our traditional dinner was fairly basic. Roast turkey, and duck, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, potatoes, green beans, salad, olives, and cranberries. We had ice tea, and the adults had coffee. Grandpa or one of my uncles offered up a prayer of Thanksgiving and then we spent a couple hours around the table visiting, and sharing stories of long ago...

I cherish my memories of simple holidays... it really was about family and giving Thanks to our Lord.

Cute Holiday Projects

It's late in the season, but I still want to make a few projects this year. I found a super easy tutorial for sweater socks. They are adorable! I love the big chipboard monogram she made to go with the socks. I think I can manage to whip out a few of these before it's time to deck the halls.

Long Break Is Over

I have missed writing! I've been using facebook to keep up with family and friends, but I really missed getting in here and writing and catching up with my blog friends.

I laugh at myself as I sit here trying to figure out what I want to say. Before I logged in, I was back in the pantry looking at all those canned foods, and for some reason, I had this wild thought... I want to write. I have a million thoughts. About canned food? Noooo. Stuff. Life. Chickens and coyotes. Bears. Star filled night skies. Cowboys and horses. Life in the country. My poor pitiful garden. I have so much to say!
So I came in here, logged in. It took me awhile to remember how to get into my blog here... really. Maybe the distraction of figuring it all out has given me a writers block.

I will get this figured out... I see I need to make a few updates to the website. But I really do have so much to say!

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Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap Recipes

I'm truly interested in making my own laundry soap, so I did some more research online. I found a detailed recipe with more information about the ingredients, consistency, and cleaning results from the homemade laundry soap.

My washing machine is a front loading high effeciency machine, and the website goes into more detail about using the laundry soap in an HE machine. For the informative page I found go here: Making Homemade Laundry Soap by Crystal Miller.

Duggar Family Laundry Soap Recipe

I just love watching the Duggar family. In case you aren't familiar with the Duggar family, they have a their own television series on the discovery channel. They are the large real life family with 18 children (nineteen children, now that their son Josh is married). I accidentally came across their family recipe page and found a recipe for laundry soap. I can't wait to try it out. The recipe for Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap - Front or top load machines is located here: Duggar Family Recipes It's super inexpensive for a batch and for the front load washing machines, one recipe makes enough for more than 600 loads of laundry! That's a lot of laundry.

Easy Home Baked Bread GMA Recipe

I have been thinking about baking bread, but I don't look forward to kneading it. So this morning, when I watched Good Morning America's segment featuring a no knead bread dough, I was excited to see there are easy methods to baking bread at home.

I wanted to save the link for future reference and figure other people might be interested in learning to bake bread too. Save Money Bake Bread At Home - No Knead Bread Dough Recipe

I am excited to try this! I'm sure it's fabulous, since it's a recipe from Chef Sara Moulton, but I'll write a review later. If any of my readers have tried this recipe, or have another one, please post a comment with your review. Thanks!