I didn't have my photos of the muscadines I picked. Today I worked on starting some wine. Pictures of it will come later. But to give you an idea of how to begin. I smushed up the muscadines and put in some crocks that are about a half gallon size. I added a cup of water to each crock along with a cup of sugar and stir well. Covered them with clean pantyhose and put on the top of my refrigerator to ferment. 

Once they go through the first ferment cycle, I sill strain and put juice back in crocks with more sugar and let it ferment again.

While Sonny was recovering from surgery I bought a Shark steam mop and man do I love this thing. It makes it so much easier to mop floors now.

It is well worth the money spent. 

Also while Sonny was recovering I slept on our sofa for about 3 weeks. The last night on the sofa, I got up while still dark and walked to shut the bedroom door so I wouldn't wake him when I turned on lights. I ran into our laundry room door which has a stop in it to keep it open so I blacked my eye and made a knot and huge bruise on my boob. Thankfully the bruising is gone now but still have the knot. 

Really at first it looked like eye shadow.

I guess I'm getting old as I tend to wander around at night which is not good. While taking Kinzey out early one morning, I saw this little critter. 

At first I thought it was a bird nest, but it happened to be a little wren. See him in the faux grass on the left side of photo. I had been watching a large spider but the rains had washed it out so found this cutie instead. 

I will be back later next week and will start posting photos of junk journals I'm in the process of making. I'm having so much fun making such a mess. 

It has been another long time since I've posted. Been too busy with life. Sonny had one of his knees replaced. And he has done marvelous. Has really gotten back to walking and doing around the place and it has only been 5 weeks. He has his other knee scheduled for December. It has taken all my energy with helping him. 

We had to let the outside yard work and garden go as I can't physically handle it. Also with late freeze and June drought our fruit and garden harvest were awful this year. Only fruit we got was about 1/3 the blueberries we normally get. Strangely we got an over abundance of muscadine grapes.

We got our German shepherd in December. She was born on Halloween and is fitting as she can be such a monster at times. She is now 10months old and weighs 80+ pounds. We had her spayed at the spay clinic in July and it seems to have settled her some. She is still a handful though. 

The first bed we bought her, she shredded.

We keep her outside during the day and in her crate at night.

I've not hooked a rug in over a year now but have mainly worked on quilts. I've made 2 baby quilts for gifts for young couples in our church. And finally finished the star top and have it at the quilters to be quilted. I hand tied the baby quilts. I also hand quilted 2 star baby quilts with left over blocks from my big quilt. 

We were rather busy with church this past year as well. Sonny was teaching Wednesday night Bible study and I was doing a weekly ladies Bible study at our house. But with Sonny's surgery, we ended our work at church. The church had their annual elections and we both stepped down. I am continuing to make the bulletin each week and help the children teachers when needed. I hope to get here more often and post more. 

I see it has been since September since I posted. I've just been too busy and staying off the internet. Our service we have limits our data usage and includes our phones so hoping after the first of the year I can change that to unlimited and then can come on here more. The pictures below are not in order as they happened since September but will try to explain each one.

We recently got a new addition to our family. This is Miss Kinsey and she is a German Shepherd. Sonny's middle sister gave her to us. It has been some years since we have had a puppy. Those big wire kennel cages are wonderful.

In September I set up a display booth at the fair again this year. It was much better than last year. I found out they gave ribbons to the best ones but I wanted to keep ours simple so it wasn't as elaborate as others.

In October Sonny and I went to Little Rock to begin his surgery for knee replacements at the VA hospital. Well it didn't happen. We spent the night in one of the worst hotels I've ever stayed in. I won't go into detail about it. Then at 5:30 we took the shuttle to the hospital where they wouldn't perform the surgery because he had a 3 week old chigger bite on his knee. So we had to wait on our ride and then after the disappointment and anger of it all, Sonny had decided to use Medicare instead. Well seems he can't have that done until he enrolls in it and then it would be July before he could get scheduled and so looking at going through another year of waiting. So he changed his mind and has rescheduled for Jan.9. This will just be the starting process again as we have to start all over and will probably be in February or March before it happens. 

In November we fired up the smokehouse and smoked 5 turkey breasts, 2 hams and 20 tubes of summer sausage. The turkeys and hams were for our church Thanksgiving dinner. 

In between all that we drove out to the little cemetery where we have decided to be buried. I love old churches so it has this little chapel on the grounds. 

The end of November we celebrated Sonny's 72th birthday with kids and grandkids. 

We also had Christmas pictures taken for a change. I really want to try to do this each year. My sweet daughter-in-law Carmen is great with cameras so she did the honors. 

And best news is our oldest 2 granddaughers are getting married. No dates set yet. The picture shown is the one who lives closest to us. Other lives in Arizona. 

Kinsey

on our way to VA hospital. Hate city traffic. 

Sonny smoking meat for Thanksgiving.

The small chapel at our cemetery. 

Fair booth display

Sonny's 72th birthday with son and granddaughter...goofing off. 

Our granddaugher Nicki and boyfriend Kolin...soon to be married. 

Our Christmas photo

Rugs For Sale

I was having so many problems with etsy not depositing my money into my bank account so I closed out my store and decided to try to sell here on my blog. I have posted my "Garden Run" rug to the right with a paynow button if you are interested. But here is the bigger photo of the rug. 

It is traditionally hooked...that is it is hooked with a heritage hook on cotton monks cloth backing using 100& new, hand-dyed, and recycled wool strips. It is bound in wool and has hanging rings on the back for hanging on a wall.

You need to take care when cleaning your rug. Do not ever use bleach or bleach products on the rug as bleach melts wool. Also do not machine or hand wash the rug. The water and agitation will make the monks cloth sag and fray. 

To clean: Spot clean only. Shake gently and vacuum lightly. To deep clean and if you live were there is snow...lay in clean snow for an hour or 2 and then dry and block.

To block a rug...lay on a hard surface...(I use my wood floors). Lay a damp towel over entire rug. Using an iron without steam and set on highest setting, press going up and down (not sliding your iron around) several times over entire rug. Remove towel and let it sit and dry preferably overnight. 

Just a few more shots. Still staying busy but finally summer work is slowing down. We are finished with the garden and all the "putting by" of fruit and veggies so now I can concentrate on my crafty things for a change. Looking at maybe recycling my clothes into something new for me to wear.  

But on with the photos......

We thought we would only have a couple of bushels of apples this year but we got 4 bushels. I put one bushel up into apple sauce and another into jelly. The rest we gave to 2 of the sons to use. 

This is the overflow of our pantry area. Most of this was canned this year and there are cases stored towards the back of the shelves and then you can't see but many more stored on the floor under all the shelving area. So we are prepared

This was my sweet potatoes. I love the faux sweet potato vines to use just for decorations and so easy to grow...but this year decided to grow my own REAL sweet potatoes from slips I grew on my windowsill. Well either a deer or a rabbit decided to have the vines for dinner. The plants are still alive and putting out new leaves so I will leave them for awhile until I harvest. 

This is my little sweetheart...Fredrick VonBlackballs. He is a chihuahua and he was a rescue dog. He and Lulu (below) are both around the same age and thinking maybe about 10 years old. He still has his moments where he thinks you are going to beat him but we never have but think it may have occurred before we got him. 

This is LULU and is a totally mix breed. She is also a rescue dog but so so sweet. She loves to hunt the squirrels and rabbits in our yard and especially loves to ride in our ATV. Both she and Freddy are outside dogs as we don't plan to ever have an inside pet due to hair and allergies. But we couldn't love them more. We have a dog house for them on the porch of our sunroom building and then in winter we move it inside the sunroom building and keep a heater running so they are kept nicely in cold weather. In fact the summer heat we have is harder on them than the winter cold. 

Busy time around the home

The weather has been so nice for August. We really haven't had a hot summer. Most mornings it is rather cool and we have had so much rain this summer that the grass feels like plush carpet and of course has to be mowed quite often.

Sonny and I sit on the porch most mornings right after the sun comes up and enjoy the view. I love this time of day with the morning sun peeking through the trees. 

View from the porch. 

Field across the road with the cows. 

closer view of cows. 

I love this speckled cow. I think she is my favorite.

We harvested the apples and pears and I made lots of jam. I ran out of sugar and won't be back to Sam's to get more for a few weeks so I just juiced a few grapes and froze the juice to get ready to make into jelly. I still have stone or wild plums yet to juice.
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Homeplace

Just a few shots from around the homeplace.

I missed the wrong caption under this photo in last posting. This was a few of our peach trees when heavily loaded with fruit....not muscadine grapes. 

I love Spider Wort. This time of year it is about the only thing that blooms and the blooms are my favorite color.....blue. 

This is close-up of Spider Wort bloom. I hear Spider Wort is also edible. 

Our walk through to the patio area. This is an overgrown muscadine but rarely has fruit as it is too shaded. We do keep it trimmed back or it would grow all the way to the ground each year. 

This was a huge visitor hanging from our gazebo. Meet Mrs. Spider. 

We finally got our first egg from our hens. They are only 5 months old and have laid 2 now. We are so excited. 

This egg was so small but perfect as all things are in God's kingdom....


And as always........