A Great Meal!

Do you ever see pictures of food and know instantly you just have to have it? Well that happened to me today. I was looking at the Pioneer Woman's blog and saw her cooking section with these mouth-watering tacos.

I knew I had to make them, so I went to the grocery store and got everything I needed. I decided on beef and fish tacos and homemade tortillas! I'd never made tortillas before, but it was very easy and they were really good!

Here's the spread. Oh yeah, and I made corn salsa to go with it. I mixed together corn, red onion, jalepeno, cilantro, lime juice, and salt. Then the toppings included avocado, red cabbage, tomatoes, cilantro, and red onion.


Here's a beef taco with avocado, red cabbage, tomato, cilantro, and corn salsa.


Here's the fish (tilapia) taco with avocado, corn salsa, red cabbage, cilantro, and a little sauce. I made the sauce from mayonnaise, ketchup, and chili powder. That sauce is also a really good salad dressing! In fact, until I was in middle school or so we never bought salad dressing. We just made it! I still make it now and then because it's good on so many things!


And the corn salsa is really good on tortilla chips!


The verdict? Incredibly good! The corn was my favorite thing. I think I could eat a whole bowl of it by myself! My pictures aren't nearly as pretty as the originals, but the food tasted darn good!

One Year Already?!

I've been blogging for over a year now! Well, one year and 3 days, to be exact. My very first post didn't have a date, but my second post did. I'll count that one as my actual start date. Here's my first blog post (with a date). We'd just settled on our first house a week before I started blogging. And our wedding was coming up in 2 weeks. Needless to say we were a tad stressed out.



But we got married.


And went on a wonderful honeymoon in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee (I want to go back!).


Then we got home from our honeymoon and shortly after that we adopted a puppy to keep Scooter company.


He's grown up since then.


We started a garden that went from this....


...to this in a matter of months!


Our yard started out like this.


And now it looks like this!



There have been a ton of changes over the past year. I'd say this past year was the first year of the rest of my (our) life. The past year was for major changes. This coming year will hopefully be less stressful and more relaxing!

I'm so glad I started blogging. It's so great to be able to look back and see what we were doing a year ago. Pictures are always great, but the text is really neat to have. I can't wait to see what my second year of blogging brings!!

Thank you all of my readers (what are there, 10 of you?) for finding my life interesting enough to read about! I've enjoyed sharing it with you!

Turkey Tuesday

I spent some time with the turkeys today. I moved them into the brooder pen, and moved the chicks into the larger pen.

I just love turkeys.

They were very curious about the camera.


And look at this little punk!! I'm sorry I couldn't get a clearer picture. He's strutting already!!! So cute to see a pint-sized peeper strutting his stuff!

Growing Goats

The goat kids are 7 weeks old now!! Can you believe it? Time sure does fly.

I decided this weekend it was finally time for them to go out and join the big kids. I'd kept them in the barn since I was afraid they'd hurt themselves or be bullied, but they're big and fast enough now to hold their own.

It didn't take them long to start grazing!


I did let them out for a few hours at a time so they'd get used to grazing so it wouldn't upset their stomachs. Sudden feed changes are usually never a good thing.


June really enjoys playing with them! They love her too. They don't know she's Mom, but they like to play with her and jump on her.


I'm undecided on something. My original plan was to keep one goat (the one in the foreground below) and sell one. Then I decided I didn't really need two goats. June provides plenty of milk for us right now. More than enough, actually. So I decided to place an ad for both girls. I found a buyer for the one on the blocks below (which is great because I was going to sell her anyway). Now I'm wondering if I should keep the second girl. At least for a while. I'd love to see how she matures, and I don't have to worry about milking her for 2 years. Decisions, decisions.


See the ram lamb in the picture below? He's really growing fast too. And he's super friendly.


The poor girls have been hot lately! We've had a heat wave and it's been in the upper 80s/lower 90s the past few days.


I sent my clipper blades away to be sharpened today. As soon as I get them back I'll shear Darla. She doesn't have a lot of wool (maybe 1.5"), but I'm sure it'll help.

Plucky Poultry

First off, I have no idea why the text is being underlined, and I have no idea how to stop it. Blogger sometimes does this to me and I'm not sure why. Does anyone know?

As you may know, Wanda has been broody for several months now. She's had a few unsuccessful attempts at hatching chicks. Finally her hard work paid off...sort-of. She had been sitting on 10 eggs that were due to hatch this weekend, (May 2nd.). Oh look, no more underlining. What the heck? Anyway, two of the eggs started hatching early (on day 17 instead of day 21). One of the chicks never made it out of the shell. The other one hatched! I've heard that bantam chicks hatch early, and this is definitely a bantam.

He or she is from an egg laid by my black cochin bantam hen. I'm not sure who the father is. Wanda loves this little chick. She decided to abandon the rest of the other eggs to take care of her chick. I put the eggs in the incubator, but I'm not sure if they'll make it or not.

Devin decided he wanted to name the chick Darkus. So here's Darkus!


In other news, I needed to build a chick brooder pen. I found some extra trim pieces my dad left me so I decided to use that. I built a frame for 4 panels that could be attached together to form the pen. I wanted to be able to disassemble it when it wasn't in use.


Then I used the green plastic "poultry fence" that I've had laying around to cover the frame of the pen.


I set up the panels inside the kennel because I didn't want the goat kids to jump on it. It works perfectly! I made it low enough so I could step over it. Total cost: $0!! Sweet.


Here are the chicks that my friend Becca hatched. Four of them are from her flock, and the rest are from mine.


They're getting big!


Wednesday I received my order of turkeys from Meyer Hatchery. I ordered 15 broad-breasted bronze and 5 broad-breasted white turkeys. I'll be keeping about 8 to raise for us and other family members, and the rest will be sold.


I also got two guinea keets. I went to an auction last week to sell some of my roosters. My friend Becca met me there, but she left a few minutes before me so she wasn't there to stop me from buying anything! I blame her. :-) Just kidding.

Devin named the light colored one "Lightening" and Kylee named the dark one "Tylee" after a boy in her class.


That's all for now. I'll try to do a post later today about the mammals on the property. Right now I need to go be a productive member of society. :)

Who Said Vanilla Is Boring?

As you may know (or not), I'm a tightwad. I just hate spending money when I don't have to. I decided to try to make vanilla extract since the real stuff is so expensive and the fake stuff doesn't taste as nice.

Here's what you need: vodka (or some other mild tasting liquor- some people use rum), vanilla beans, a sealing jar, a knife, and 8 weeks. That's it.


The recipe calls for 3 beans per cup of alcohol. My leftover syrup jar holds just over a cup of vodka, so I used 3 beans.


Cut the beans lengthwise. I also cut mine in half since my jar is short.


Put the beans in the jar an shake shake shake! You can see the little vanilla bits floating in this picture.


Store the jar in a dark place and shake every now and then. After 8 weeks it'll be ready for use! I'm so excited to use this, I can hardly stand it! I'll report back in 8 weeks!

First Project Finished

I finished one of the two knitting projects I was working on. The legs now have a body! I'm pretty sure the person I made this for doesn't read the blog so I feel pretty safe showing you.

I knitted another Fuzzy Lamb for friends of mine who are expecting a baby girl this summer!


I hope they like this sweet little lamb.


Think they look alike?





The pattern is Fuzzy Lamb by Barbara Prime. I used Paton's Classic Wool worsted weight yarn (in for the main color and Maggi's Aran Tweed wool yarn for the contrasting color.