A Great Giveaway!

I have been drooling over these dvds for awhile now. I just told my mom that we needed to invest in them because they look so cool! If you have never seen them they are an eight dvd collection on homesteading skills from The West Ladies, a mother and her daughters.

They include such things as Bread Making, Candle Making, Gardening, Canning, Cooking, Dairy Delights, and Soap Making. I would love to have the whole set someday. Over on

New Life on A Homestead she is giving away all eight dvds one to eight different people. Go check them out and her blog is really cool!! I sure hope I win one!

My New Header!

My sister has photoshop and she told me to send her some pictures and she would make a header for my blog. I really like it. It makes me want photoshop too. She did one on my moms blog over at http://www.sunnymorningfarm.blogspot.com/ and its really cool too. I realized while going through my pictures that I'm not a very good photographer. I just need to take more pictures of everyday stuff instead of waiting for a reason to take a picture. I got my cool new camera for Christmas that I'm still figuring out how to use. Now I just need to use it more!

Thanks Robin I love it!!!! Check out hers over at http://www.fonvillefarm.blogspot.com/ .

My First Blog Award!!!!

I'm so HAPPY today! Ourgangof7 gave me my very first blog award. I'm so very excited! Thank you so much!! Go over and check out her blog and hear the stories about raising 7 kids!




Now I'm supposed to list 10 things that make me happy. Let's see if I can do this.



1. My wonderful, hard working husband. If you know him you know he has a great sense of humor and is always joking and picking on everyone. Even though sometimes he doesn't know when to stop the picking, I defiantly miss it when he's not around. He such a great guy and I'm incredibly lucky to be married to him.


2. When Emma sings. She got a MP3 player for Christmas and my mom put a bunch of older country music songs on it for her. All the songs that I loved as a kid and still do. Her favorite song is "Swinging". Its so funny to hear her sing it at the top of her lungs when she thinks no one is listening. She really has a beautiful voice.


3. Colton's smile. He is such a sweet, cute boy with the biggest heart. I pray that he always stays this way. He is nice to everyone and wants to make everyone happy. I love to see his big smile. He is always smiling:)


4. Hanging out with my mom. We have so much fun together and laugh all the time. We spent the day together last Saturday and had a blast shopping and antiqueing. Everytime we are together one of us says at least once "I think I'm going to pee my pants", from laughing so hard. I'm so blessed to have such a great relationship with my mom!


5. My beautiful niece. She spent the day with me yesterday and we had a great time. She is fifteen now, its so hard to believe. She will be grown up before you know it. I pray that she stays as smart and wise as she is right now and always makes good decisions.


6. My chickens make me so happy. I have let them out the past couple of days and its so funny to watch them run around the yard and eat bugs. They also gave me eight eggs yesterday, the most for one day ever. I hope the keep it up.


7. Hanging clothes on the line on a pretty, sunny day. It was sunny yesterday and hung clothes out but it was too windy and they blew off. But it helped my mood so much just to get out there and hang them up. I love how clothes look hanging on the line.


8. My dogs Chi-chi and Cody. Chi-chi is our little Mt. Fiest that we got last year. She is so cute and spoiled rotten. We don't keep them inside, but everytime you open the door she runs in and lays on the floor in front of the wood stove. She knows if she is real quiet and lays still we will let her stay in for a little while. Cody is our Golden Retriever, he's 12 years old and he acts like Chi-chi's daddy. It's so cute to look out and see Chi-chi sitting on top of Cody's back or under his neck with his legs around her like he's hugging her. They are such sweet dogs.


9. Family. I am really blessed to have such a wonderful family and my husband's family. We spend lots of time with our families and are really happy to have them all in our life.


10. A quiet day. My kids were out of school for semester break Monday and Tuesday. I had them and the three kids that I babysit after school here for two days. It was loud, and very busy. I felt like all I did was cook and wash dishes all day. Today they went back to school and its sooo quiet. I just sat here this morning and basked in the peace and quietness!!!!



Now I get to pass this wonderful award on to some of my favorite blogs. This is very hard because I love so many, this is just a few of my favs!! In no particular order.



Sunny Morning Farm this is one of my favorites because it is written by one of my favorite people, my mommy. Trust me you will love her blog. She's a total nut and very creative and she talks about me alot what more could you want.


Fonville Farm this is my sisters blog. Now that she has moved far, far away to Georgia this is one way I can keep up with her exciting life. She is expecting a baby so check it out often for baby updates.

Vintage Rose I just discovered her blog last week and have checked it out everyday since. Its so cute and her daughter is absolutely precious. I love how she lives so simply and for the Lord.

Our Crazy Farm Terry is so funny and has such a cute blog. I love hearing about all of her kids, goats and horses. She has a very busy life and seems to have so much fun.


Coffeteabooksandme I love reading this blog. She has such good post on stocking a pantry. I like her book reviews too.



Lovin Country Livin Amanda is such a good Christian lady and her blog is so uplifting. I have known her for years and she is exactly like you see on her blog.


More than Survival, Choosing a Simple Life I love going to this blog. I have learned a lot about simple living from Heather. I love when she posts because it always seems to apply to my life.



Granny's Best I have just discovered this blog and I really enjoy reading about all of her goats and seeing all the pictures of them.


PlainandJoyfulliving I love reading her stories about their journey to simple living and seeing the craft projects that she does with her kids.



And last but no least is


Nancy of Southern Blessings. She always leaves the nicest comments on my blog. I love reading her stories about her children and her chickens.



Please go and check out all of these ladies blogs I hope you like them as much as I do! It was really hard to decide which blogs that I wanted to pass this award too. This is just a few that make me really happy!

Guineas For Sale!!!!

I just finished cleaning out the chicken coop. I'm pooped now (haha I'm so funny)! It was soooo nasty. I can't believe I let it get so bad. There was at least six inches of chicken poo in places. I can finally see the floor and get the door all the way open. When it was so cold the poop would freeze to the floor and I couldn't get the door open!

The guineas stay in the chicken coop with the chickens. Guineas are nasty. Their poop looks like dog poop. They are so nasty, and noisy. They annoyed me to death while I was trying to clean out the coop. I let them out to run around outside and they all flew on top of the coop and made so much noise the whole entire time. I'm sure my neighbors were ready to kill them and me for having them. If your interested in some really stinky, nasty, and annoying birds I will sale you some really cheap!!

Time To Pull Out The Shorts!!

Wow after weeks of 20 degree and below weather it finally hit 45 degrees today. It felt like a heat wave. Its the first time in weeks that I could feed my animals without being dressed like an Eskimo. I seen several people wearing shorts today. Not quite that warm for me yet, but I never thought I would think 40 degrees was warm! I know it is much, much colder in other parts of the country, we just haven't been used to weather this cold.

I'm really glad its warming up maybe it will help with people's electric bills. Appalachian Power Company, our only power option in our area implemented a 15% rate increase. I heard of so many people's bills going up over $200 dollars in one month. Lots of people had $500-600 electric bills. This is not right. Ours went up from $148 last month to $192 this month. That's not a huge difference, but we heat with wood heat and I don't think it should be that high. I really feel sorry for elderly people or for all of the unemployed people that are having to pay a huge electric bill. Something really needs to be done. I'm just wondering how much is power in other parts of the country. I think ours is so high because we have no other option. Well other than going off-grid. If only I could convince hubby...ha...ha...ha!

Winter Games!!

My parents taught the kids how to play the card game Rummy over the weekend. Needless to say we have played it about five hundred times this week. They love it, so do Travis and I. Playing cards, board games and working puzzles are always fun when its too cold to do anything else. Its all fun and games until Emma looses though. She is such a poor sport (I have no idea where she gets that from....maybe her dad!)

Our favorite board game is Monopoly. If you have about 12 hours to spare!!

I'm Dreaming of This....

(Hawaii)

It got up to a whopping 20 degrees today. I can't remember it ever being this cold for such a long period of time before. We had to buy bucket warmers for the chickens and goat water to keep it from freezing. It is so miserable. I'm keeping myself warm and happy by dreaming of one day going to Hawaii. I wish I was there right now with "My toes in the water, *** in the sand!"
How are you staying warm in these frigid temperatures?

My Top 10 For 2010!!

It's the year 2010! Wow can you believe it? Do you remember 10 years ago when Y2K was coming everyone thought the world was going to end? I always thought by the time the year 2000 came we would have flying cars and everything would resemble The Jetsons, with our own personal robot. Well 10 years later we're still here. The world hasn't ended and no flying cars or robots (at least for normal people).

I have been thinking a lot about my resolutions for 2010. Well resolutions, goals, ideas, plans, hopes, dreams and aspirations. All of the things I really want for this year. I don't like making resolutions because I think I'm doomed to fail. This year I hope I can keep these resolutions at least some of them (for more than two weeks).

1. Make more time for the Lord. Read my bible a lot more, pray more, give my worries and problems to the Lord instead of trying to handle it on my own. Teach my children about the Lord more and pray with them more. Become the Christian I want/should be.

2. Lose 30 pounds by July. I have been dieting for a few months.....was dieting until Thanksgiving. I got really sidetracked with the holidays now I need to get back into it. I would like to lose 30 pounds by July for vacation.

3. Get organized. I have really been trying to do this the last few days. I need some serious help in this area. I would love to have a really organized house.

4. Stop procrastinating. I have gotten so bad about waiting to the last minute for everything, especially girl scout stuff. I used to not be too bad about this but now I'm awful.

5. Pay off some debt and get finances in order. I don't want to pay any late fees or charges because of number 3 and 4.

6. Be a better wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend. This should be closer to the top of the list. I really want to treat everyone in my life better and be someone that they all can depend on.

7. Learn to sew and do it. I kind of know how, but I never do it. My mom gave me a sewing machine two years ago and I have only used it about 4 or 5 times. I want to dust it off and get started and make some fabulous things.

8. Learn to crochet and knit.

9. Live more simply.

10. Love More and Laugh More!!!

I'm sure there is more but this is my top 10 for 2010! So whats yours?