Twas the month before Christmass...

Twas the month before Christmas*

*When all through our land,*

*Not a Christian was praying*

*Nor taking a stand.*

*See the PC Police had taken away,*

*The reason for Christmas - no one could say.*

*The children were told by their schools not to sing,*

*About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.*

*It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say*

* December 25th is just a ' Holiday '.*

*Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit*

*Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!*

*CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod*

*Something was changing, something quite odd! *

*Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa*

*In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.*

*As Targets were hanging their trees upside down*

* At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.*

*At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears*

*You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.*

*Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty*

*Are words that were used to intimidate me.*

*Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen*

*On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton !*

*At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter*

*To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.*

*And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith*

* Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace*

*The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded*

*The reason for the season, stopped before it started.*

*So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'*

*Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.*

*Choose your words carefully, choose what you say*

*Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS ,

not Happy Holiday !

Please, all Christians join together and wish everyone you meet MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Christ is The Reason' for the Christ-mas Season!

(Somebody emailed me this. It's not mine...)

Just some comments

I woke this morning at 8 am and made myself get out of bed. Wasn't too hard. I've been trying to get up earlier than my body would like me to. The Jolly Good Fellow keeps me up so much at night sometimes I feel like I haven't really fell asleep at night. Hence the need to sleep in-but that doesn't really work very well for order in the home.
I have put up a few more good links on my blog. I like to do that so I remember to read those blogs or go back to those sites. Otherwise I forget about such things. My memory is getting worse and worse...I realized I forgot when I bred the two rabbits, now I have no idea when they are going to deliver. Darn, I did that ealier in the year and obviously forgot to learn from my mistake.

Oh, well. A little drama on the homestead.

I'm taking a break from sewing right now. I have to make some costumes for The All Saints Day party at the Church. I'll take pictures; hopefully I'll remember to put them up.

Homesteading today has been down forever, and I've just realized how addicting that forum is. I was planning to ask how to make a cape/mantle thing but obviously couldn't-because they are down. Sigh.....I'm going through withdrawls. Oh well, I've been browsing the 4 real learning site instead when I get the chance to. Probably better for me.

I'm still working on cleaning up the house and de-cluttering. We did take a huge amount of stuff to The Salvation Army store in town. We have much more to do. I want to wash the walls. I want to paint my foyer a nicer green. I don't like the dingy avocado anymore. My kitchen looks so nice and clean it makes the rest of the house look sad.

Oh, I have some really awesome news! My dear hubby's brother is going to be ORDAINED to the priesthood on Saturday. Pray for him as he begins this vocation. He is a monk in Italy. He will be Fr. Thomas. (right now he's Brother Thomas.) Amazing, isn't it? May God Bless him!

I told my children that the Priesthood puts a special Mark on his soul, and all the Angels in Heaven would be able to see that mark and see that he is a Priest. They were suitably impressed.

O.k. all for now. I need to make cookies for a friend and go sew some more as well as get the kids doing some crafts....before I leave today.

We made applesauce

Applesauce

(to the tune of "Yankee Doodle")

Peel an apple, cut it up, cook it in a pot. When you taste it you will find it's applesauce you've got.

Here is Lady M, cutting the apples with me. She's such a good little worker. Canning and bulk cooking can be fun for children to do with mom and dad. It seems to me that children recognize when their contributions (helping out) are needed and they can take a very special kind of pride in doing so. Helping out isn't just busy work for them. This is teaching them real life skills. This is great for developing self confidence and independence, and planning skills (logic.) I try to have the children help me as much as I can get them to do. They like canning with me. They see the mountains of food (apples, in this case, but it could be anything) and it's an adventure to wash, rinse and cut the apples and put them in the pot. They are happy when their part is done especially if they persevered through it when it became tiring or boring.
Here they are working together at washing the apples. We had about 6 grocery bags full of them. Our friend Lynne allowed us to pick them from her tree. (Lovely Lynne, thank you so much!)

A Little Red Apple

A little red apple
Hung high in a tree.
I looked up at it,
And it looked down at me.
"Come down, please," I called.
And what do you suppose?
That little red apple
Dropped right on my nose!

My dear husband, agile man that he is, climbed her tree and shook them down so they literally fell like rain.

Apples

Apples, apples, one, two, three,
Apples for you,
Apples for me.
Apples for big,
Apples small,
Apple trees tiny,
Apple trees tall.
Apples sour,
Apples sweet,
Apples, apples, are nice to eat.

It was beautiful to watch the children diving for them and see their awe at the bounty of apples. It was a new experience for them. Fruit trees are lovely things.




I like this picture of the apples in the wash water. The apples were not perfect grocery store apples, so we had to wash and trim away any bad spots.

A squiggly little worm into my apple bit. He chomped and chomped until the core he hit. I asked him why he did it, And thought it sopunds absurd, He said, "I love apples." Now that is what I heard.

We were left with 5 pots of good pieces to use for apple sauce and apple butter. I'm so thankful for this fruit and for the experience of making the applesauce. My children blessed me as we worked together. It was special sharing of time.

I don't have a picture of the finished applesauce but it came out a lovely, rosy pink. I was just thinking that apples can make a metaphor for life. The Lord can trim our bad spots away until we are left with the good parts of the apple. When processed, they make a sweet applesauce. So if you have bad spots- don't despair, there is often enough unblemished flesh to make something that is "good."
It is good to enjoy the simple things in life. Right now I can't do a lot of fancy projects and curriculum with my children, but I am learning to have a spirit of adventure with them as we do what we can do together.

I Like Apples

Red apples,
Big apples,
Good apples,
Yummy apples,
Any kind of apples,
I like apples!

An apple on the tree,
An apple in the basket,
An apple in a fridge,
An apple in a store,
I like apples!

Things I've been doing lately...

Nothing...................................just kidding.

bit it feels like nothing.

Well, besides homeschooling...(thinking, thinking.....) Oh yes, Let's see. We made some medicinal tinctures. I tried video blogging about that but I was making a cayenne and jalapeno tincture, and did you know, that when you blend hot peppers together like that they become something very close to a pepper spray? (Do you know how I learned that? The hard way, of course.) So my video went like this:

(in my normal squeaky voice, while blending the peppers.) Hi, this is Jo-...choke-gasp....I'm make- cough, cough, cough!... (blow nose, wipe eyes...) medicinal...cough....arrgh!

Not a very good start at video blogging. I'll have to try some other subject.

Let's see. What else have I been doing? Not too much online these days. No time....A few weeks ago we painted my kitchen green. A nice lovely soft green. I really like going green. It goes well with the cabinets and my Frank's Sourkrout cans. I have an aloe in one can and I tried lavender in the other but it died after getting frosted. So maybe I'll try something else instead....The sourkrout cans were what made me think of green as a kitchen color. Now I'm noticing Green Things everywhere...and I'm even thinking of making some Green Things for my kitchen.

Currently, I'm going through a spasm of de-cluttering. And then hopefully I'll go on to organizing some messy areas up. This is in my spare time, what little there is of it, right now. If I'm not cleaning something then I'm crocheting. Right now, I'm working on a leg warmer pair for Little Ginger.

We stopped milking the goats for this year about 3 weeks ago. I'm working to get thier hooves trimmed and pretty soon I'll be giving them the pre-breeding care they need. It's really sloppy at the barn right now and not very pleasent. The kids and the man of the house cleaned the rabbit house and chicken coop up today while I visited with a friend.

So...that's all I've been up to besides the usual things...

What I really need to do is complete a video blog or do a project for this blog, or for the farm blog. I haven't even been taking pictures lately. Gosh, I have so many plans but haven't been doing them...well that's typical Jo, I have more ideas and projects than I'll ever complete....

I've done more Saints day and name day parties the last few months than I have for a number of years. I even invited a friend and her children over and we made a giant Rosary, complete with frosting and decorations for Our Lady of the Rosary. It was a lot of fun! It was one step closer to bringing the Faith alive for all the children present.

Well, I need to go and make dinner. Bless Up, Jo

More modest clothes links...

Here are some more modest clothes links. I recently bought a few skirts for Lady M from mycullottes.com and I really liked the quality.


http://www.upstreamgirl.com/searchresult.aspx?CategoryID=32
http://www.marmeedear.com/store/
http://www.myculottes.com/skirlots.html
http://www.butterandhoney.com/category/sale.php

Here is another website regarding foodstorage and recipes. I like this one.
http://theprudenthomemaker.com/default.aspx