Baby Hat for local hospital for Christmas babies

my girlfriend in Regina,Sask. sent me BAGS of yarn...among all the yarn was this Xmasy yarn...

this is the first of many baby hats I'll be taking up to the General Hospital for their December babies. Have been making baby hats for many years...and I did see a baby wearing one while shopping in Sears! Each newborn is given a homemade hat before leaving the hospital.

Bringing in the Harvest {Freezing Peppers}

We have been very busy lately bringing in the harvest! This is a pretty fun time of year though some days leave us pretty tired too!

  Today was potato harvest day. We did our annual potato gleaning and picked up our normal truck load (The back of the pick-up very loaded!) and stored them in my parents root cellar. You can see more about our annual potato gleaning here. We are so thankful for how God blesses us with potatoes each year!

 But I am not actually going to talk about potatoes in this post. I thought I would share my simple methods of putting up peppers for the winter.

I actually am not that talented at growing peppers. This year the plants looked pretty beautiful and actually they did produce better than ever before but I still just have enough to eat and put in Salsa. But a friend had been given more peppers than she wanted (from a local gardener) and she offered them to me. I gratefully said "yes!" So I was able to freeze some for winter use. Yea!

First you start with the peppers. Wash them carefully.

 Then slice them in half and pull out the center pulp and seeds. And if you, like me, aren't sure if you are working with hot or sweet peppers, then you taste test them. You enjoy the sweet ones you try (the long red and green in the picture were sweet but another one that was almost like them was not!) and about choke on the hot one. On the little ones I just assumed they were hot and didn't bother to taste test them all.

 Then for the sweet peppers I chopped them up with a knife into the medium size pieces that I like to use on pizza and other things of that sort.

 The hot peppers I decided to chop in the food processor. I would have used this for all the peppers put I don't know how to make it do bigger chunks. If I do it for less time it has some tiny chunks and  some peppers that are hardly cut.

 With hot peppers you may want to use gloves especially if you have sensitive skin. Be careful not to rub your eyes while working on these. I am warning you- it can hurt! I like the hot peppers chopped pretty small as most of my family doesn't like big bites of hot things. :-)

  Just put into a bag and freeze. The peppers are pretty easy to break apart after they are frozen so you can freeze them all together and then just get out what you need later.

  That is my simple method of caring for peppers. Do any of you have any more tips? What is something you like to cook using peppers?

Bringing in the Harvest {Freezing Peppers}

We have been very busy lately bringing in the harvest! This is a pretty fun time of year though some days leave us pretty tired too!

  Today was potato harvest day. We did our annual potato gleaning and picked up our normal truck load (The back of the pick-up very loaded!) and stored them in my parents root cellar. You can see more about our annual potato gleaning here. We are so thankful for how God blesses us with potatoes each year!

 But I am not actually going to talk about potatoes in this post. I thought I would share my simple methods of putting up peppers for the winter.

I actually am not that talented at growing peppers. This year the plants looked pretty beautiful and actually they did produce better than ever before but I still just have enough to eat and put in Salsa. But a friend had been given more peppers than she wanted (from a local gardener) and she offered them to me. I gratefully said "yes!" So I was able to freeze some for winter use. Yea!

First you start with the peppers. Wash them carefully.

 Then slice them in half and pull out the center pulp and seeds. And if you, like me, aren't sure if you are working with hot or sweet peppers, then you taste test them. You enjoy the sweet ones you try (the long red and green in the picture were sweet but another one that was almost like them was not!) and about choke on the hot one. On the little ones I just assumed they were hot and didn't bother to taste test them all.

 Then for the sweet peppers I chopped them up with a knife into the medium size pieces that I like to use on pizza and other things of that sort.

 The hot peppers I decided to chop in the food processor. I would have used this for all the peppers put I don't know how to make it do bigger chunks. If I do it for less time it has some tiny chunks and  some peppers that are hardly cut.

 With hot peppers you may want to use gloves especially if you have sensitive skin. Be careful not to rub your eyes while working on these. I am warning you- it can hurt! I like the hot peppers chopped pretty small as most of my family doesn't like big bites of hot things. :-)

  Just put into a bag and freeze. The peppers are pretty easy to break apart after they are frozen so you can freeze them all together and then just get out what you need later.

  That is my simple method of caring for peppers. Do any of you have any more tips? What is something you like to cook using peppers?

Parenting with less stress {Celebrating Birthdays}

 We celebrated our oldest childs' 11th birthday this week (as well as Ken's). It was a pretty laid back celebration but it was fun and it was genuine. It started me thinking about why we celebrate the way we do.

 We have made some choices concerning our children's birthdays that are not really typical but they have worked well for us. We have never had one of those birthday parties where we send out cute little invitations, prepare a bunch of little favor bags and then have a houseful (or restaurant) of little kids. I don't think there is anything wrong with that sort of thing but we do have our reasons for doing things differently.

  I thought I would share what we do and why. Not to make you feel guilty if it is different from you, nor to have you feel sorry for us or our kids if that is your reaction. I simply thought I would share so if you were wondering if it would work to scale things back and if others have done it, then you will know that the answer is "Yes!" and it works and we have fun with less stress.

What we do:

• We give gifts (usually fairly simple, often homemade) in the morning before breakfast.
• The Birthday person gets to pick the menu for the day.
• We have a birthday cake. The Birthday person chooses what they want and usually I bake it (unless my Mom or sister does).
• We have my parents and siblings over and every so often somebody else of our friends from church.
• We often alter our schedule a little in a effort to do some fun activity. Not necessarily hard or expensive. For Mara's birthday we had a picnic for Ken's we played games and he came home a little early to play catch with the boys.

 We have chosen not to do the normal party thing. I have some reasons on why we have made that decision. You may or may not agree with me and that is perfectly fine but I thought I would share.

• I don't really like all of the gifts that come with big parties where you invite lots of other kids. We try to keep the number of toys that we own within a reasonable number, and really try to have ones that they truly enjoy and use. My observation of normal birthday parties is that the birthday child gets tons of toys that may or may not be his/her style.
• We haven't allotted  the time or money for the big parties. We could I suppose (though I know the parties I have seen around here can cost a lot when you rent out a pool or whatever) but we have chosen to use our time and money in ways that we enjoy more.
• I have observed children that were totally overwhelmed by parties given for them. To many people, to many gifts and so on. I didn't want that for my kids.

 I guess what it all comes down to is I like simplicity and I don't like waste. I know not every birthday party is that way and I have seen some super cute ideas out there (that do tempt me for a minute to throw a party!) but over all what we do works for us and I am quite happy.

Now I am curious, what do you do in your family? Why have you made the decisions that you did?

 

Parenting with less stress {Celebrating Birthdays}

 We celebrated our oldest childs' 11th birthday this week (as well as Ken's). It was a pretty laid back celebration but it was fun and it was genuine. It started me thinking about why we celebrate the way we do.

 We have made some choices concerning our children's birthdays that are not really typical but they have worked well for us. We have never had one of those birthday parties where we send out cute little invitations, prepare a bunch of little favor bags and then have a houseful (or restaurant) of little kids. I don't think there is anything wrong with that sort of thing but we do have our reasons for doing things differently.

  I thought I would share what we do and why. Not to make you feel guilty if it is different from you, nor to have you feel sorry for us or our kids if that is your reaction. I simply thought I would share so if you were wondering if it would work to scale things back and if others have done it, then you will know that the answer is "Yes!" and it works and we have fun with less stress.

What we do:

• We give gifts (usually fairly simple, often homemade) in the morning before breakfast.
• The Birthday person gets to pick the menu for the day.
• We have a birthday cake. The Birthday person chooses what they want and usually I bake it (unless my Mom or sister does).
• We have my parents and siblings over and every so often somebody else of our friends from church.
• We often alter our schedule a little in a effort to do some fun activity. Not necessarily hard or expensive. For Mara's birthday we had a picnic for Ken's we played games and he came home a little early to play catch with the boys.

 We have chosen not to do the normal party thing. I have some reasons on why we have made that decision. You may or may not agree with me and that is perfectly fine but I thought I would share.

• I don't really like all of the gifts that come with big parties where you invite lots of other kids. We try to keep the number of toys that we own within a reasonable number, and really try to have ones that they truly enjoy and use. My observation of normal birthday parties is that the birthday child gets tons of toys that may or may not be his/her style.
• We haven't allotted  the time or money for the big parties. We could I suppose (though I know the parties I have seen around here can cost a lot when you rent out a pool or whatever) but we have chosen to use our time and money in ways that we enjoy more.
• I have observed children that were totally overwhelmed by parties given for them. To many people, to many gifts and so on. I didn't want that for my kids.

 I guess what it all comes down to is I like simplicity and I don't like waste. I know not every birthday party is that way and I have seen some super cute ideas out there (that do tempt me for a minute to throw a party!) but over all what we do works for us and I am quite happy.

Now I am curious, what do you do in your family? Why have you made the decisions that you did?