Fairytales!

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who lived in a perfect little castle with an awesomely cute little family. There was just one problem with this castle... the laundry room. It had been on the princess's list for months to organize but there were children and Chief wounded knee to tend to. Then one day a magical friend appeared with a new cabinet and some highly refined organization skills! Ta Da!

The beautiful princess thought her Laundry room dilema was solved! So together the magical friend and the beautiful princess began to ready the room for the new cabinet... But much to their horror their arose an evil villian! BLACK MOLD! It was everywhere and so very powerful!

The beautiful princess was scared and upset! But the magical friend was fierce and quickly found the tools to combat the evil Black Mold! Together they hammered and dug and swept... and measured and cut and cursed... and taped and mudded and caulked! They with their magical tools they defeated the evil Black Mold and once again Good triumphed over Evil!

The End


The moral of the story? I HATE DRYWALL!!!! But I love the beautiful princess and so must stand fast with here against the forces of Evil!

Man we are hard core with our fix it skills again! You and me against the world Jalee!

It’s chicken, parsnip, and zucchini thyme

1 yellow onion, diced

3 medium parsnips, peeled and diced

1 medium and 1 small zucchini, diced

2 Tbsp olive oil

fresh ground pepper (with dried lemon and orange if possible)

small pinch of salt

small bunch thyme

1-2 chicken breasts

In a frying pan, heat oil until hot. Add the onions and pinch of sea salt. Sautee the onions until they begin to caramelize. Add parsnips and cook, stirring, until they are slightly soft. Add zucchini and cook stirring until parsnips have cooked through and zucchini are slightly soft. Make a hole in the center of the vegetables and add the chicken breast. Add thyme. Let the chicken breast sear on both sides, then cover it with vegetables and allow it to cook through on medium heat until it is firm to the touch. Season with orange/lemon pepper.

Cookie pudding

1- 3 oz package vanilla instant pudding
1- half pint carton buttermilk- mix those together then add:
1- 8 oz. Cool whip
1 can pineapple tidbits- drained
1 can mandarin oranges- drained
1 package fudge stripe cookies- broken up
Double that if making for a party or big family.

Making Jam!!!

Okay so we are now doing the Bountiful Basket thing every other Saturday. (you can do it every Saturday, we just don't) So last week they had strawberries offered so we both bought a flat of them as visions of strawberry jam danced in our heads. So on Monday we set out to make jam. I am so proud to say... SUCCESS!!! We made both freezer jam and bottled jam. We may have ran out of bottles, but the up side of that was we just ate more jam! It turned out so good. In the words of Jalee..."Why haven't we been making jam all this time?" I dunno but I sure am glad we learned how from my momma! Thanks mom for helping me and Jalee be Betty Homemakers. (And thanks to you to dad for teaching me some redneck Magiver skills)

Fixing the Icemaker

So after a lengthy battle with home depot that we won't go into for fear of libel charges, I finally got my fridge! A month after it was ordered. When they originally told me 6 days. Anyway...

The fridge got delivered while I was at school I came home to take a look and lo and behold, NO ICEMAKER!! I immediately called and at least this time was treated properly. They ordered and icemaker and would have it installed. So we waited.

Then on Thursday the appliance repair man came to install my icemaker. After getting it all squared away in the freezer he got behind the unit to connect the line. He called me into the room to tell me that the line was bad and would leak because he couldn't get the paint off of the end. and since the line was tiled into the floor my husband would have to tear up the tile and install a new line.

I was not excited about this venture, but I knew we could do it. I called Shaunna to tell her. she said, "Well why don't we hook up the new line to the old one and feed it through the whole in the floor before we tear up tile?"

HELLO! Why didn't Mr. Appliance man think of that?!?! So that was our plan. Shaunna bought some tubing and headed over. She got here and looked at the line and asked, "Are you kidding me?!? Get me a knife! I'll clean the paint off this sucker!! Then she looked at it and said, why don't we cut this line down an inch and add a new fastener?"

I was like, seriously? Are you telling me that this is like TV cable and we can just cut it down and reattach the end piece and the Mr. Appliance guy couldn't figure that one out?!?

So Shaunna did it.

And I found the water valve in the laundry room downstairs, turned it on, and voila!

What my life would cost without Shaunna around!!!?!?!!

Gardening

We moved into a new house, WITH A YARD, and started our first garden!

We have started as beginners with only 4 rows of plants, and 1 type per row.

1-Romaine Lettuce
2-Carrots
3-Bell Peppers
4-Tomatoes

We planted March 15th.

So far we have a LOT of lettuce sprouting, one bell pepper plant, and 2 tomato plants.
I really wanted tomatoes, so in addition to filling the tomato row to the brim, I planted 4 plants inside that I could transplant if the other ones didn't make it. Two of those are sprouting. we will transplant those within the week. Tomorrow I will do some weeding and take a picture or two of our new garden.

Moms are sooo awesome

Two moms is better than one right!?!