My arm that is, good ol lefty.
I’m doing fine but life is different right now. I can’t do anything fun.
Sorry! Still no pics of lambys but they sure are cute! We have one more, making the count -
Manhatten single ram lamb, mimosa ram and ewe, piper ram and ewe, tassell – ram.
I had to write it out to get it straight in my head. Anyhow, so 4 rams, 2 ewes and two more ewes left to lamb.
I still weigh 220 pounds gah!
BUT I measured my self and my measurements are now 42,37,45 so I’m down from 43,39,48 – Heh, I lost one, two, three inches for a total of 6 inches! So I am making progress! Yay!
Well I an feeling better and making some good changes. I look smaller, but I weigh the same. I am actually jogging now, but had to stop because I overdid it and my knees were hurting. So I’m slowing it down.
On another note, lambing has begun.
so far 2 girls, 3 boys – all spotted.
I has a shame.
I have gained weight since the baby was born. I am now back to my pre birth weight.
So I am going to do these things this week. And next week hopefully I will do something better.
I weigh 220 pounds today. I wear a size 18- my measurements are 43, 39, 48 – hoping to see some of these numbers smaller next week.
I am going to eat breakfast everyday for a week.
I am going to only snack on fruit/veggies
No sweets
I’m going to walk and say a Rosary 3 times (takes about 20 minutes)
I’m going to drink 64 oz of water
I’m going to try to eat only until I am no longer hungry.
Seems daunting now that I wrote it out.
I will also be posting a picture soon, so that I can track my progress there too.
I love biscuits.
I love gravy.
Biscuits with gravy is a beautiful harmony that is truely a sign that God loves us. Anything that tastes that good, ya know like chocolate, and coffee and biscuits and gravy is a blessing.
For most of my adult life I have attempted off and on to make good biscuits. I did the ones off the box of bisquick, and scratch biscuits, ones with all purpose flour and ones with self rising. I used buttermilk and plain milk, shortening verses lard versus butter. I tried everything that everyone suggested and never had that great a biscuit. I finally just fell back on my Granny’s recipe of opening a can lol. But as things get more expensive, biscuits are not cheap anymore and do you realize that a batch of biscuits costs about 25 cents to make?
I know the secret and there are two that really matter in my opinion. First of all, don’t over mix, it can make the crust too hard, but most importantly you need to actually make a very thick batter not a dough.
So, handle it only as much as you need to and add enough milk that it is super sticky and soft and you will probably be doing good.
Here we go biscuit tutorial 101 (Wish I had found this 18 years ago but oh well hard lessons learned are lessons not soon forgotten.)
First off, heat the oven to 425
In a bowl combine
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tea salt
1 1/2 tea sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
and whisk this very well together or sift it several times to combine. cut in 1/3 cup butter flavor shortening, lard, reg shortening or butter or a mix of any of these into the flour until you have pea sized pieces. You can use a pastry cutter or your hands – whatever you like.
I always used a pastry cutter but my friend Bess does it this way with “the one God gave me” and I kind of like doing it this way. 
When your done, make a well.
Then, stir 1/3 cup buttermilk with 1/3 cup reg milk and add two or three extra tablespoons of regular milk. Drizzle this over the crumb mixture tossing it all together lightly.
Once it is nice and wet/sticky – (you may not quite use all the liquid) Here is what mine looks like, it’s really soft, wet and sticky. Like thick batter.
Turn it out on a well floured surface, if you don’t need alot of flour, you don’t have enough milk in it.
Pat it – keeping flour on your hands and sprinkled on top to 3/4 inch to 1 inch thick. Here’s another newsflash, they don’t rise, they are about the same thickness as you roll them, so make them as thick as you want them to be, then the baking powder will basically make them airy and fluffy, but not much taller.
Cut the biscuits, and do not twist as you cut, push straight down.
Put them on a lightly greased dish, I also blow off the extra flour on top and spray with cooking spray - bake 10 – 12 min on the top shelf.
Life is good with good biscuits. They take about 25 minutes start to finish…so not abig time commitment either and I think I’ll try wholewheat and olive oil to see if I can make a healthier biscuit.
And here is a cute picture of Mr Vincent man.
A picture of the girls dresses I spent the last month making by hand
The fabric is SO pretty, it doesn’t show up well here – here is Elizabeth dress I also made for her first communion that was canceled….we don’t know when she will get to have it, but we should find out this week. I still have to put buttons on it, and then it’s done.
A close up of the collar and fabric so you can see the beautiful embroidery. It really came out lovely.
Ta Ta For Now!
I bought the deluxe set of Hooked on Phonics. It was $80 or so on ebay for grades K-2. Not bad I thought and I am really happy with it!
If you homeschool, this is absolutly the reading program to get. The deluxe system has more books for reading and the workbook is the most vital part. I haven’t even used the cd/audio parts, I do these with the kids and just say the sounds for them.
It really is a great product, and if you want to look at purchasing one, email me and I will send you the username of the lady I got mine from, it is the older version but more than half the price of the new one. Totally a great buy!
They also have an infant version and a toddler version. I am of two minds about this. First I do not usually do any school stuff with the little ones. I figure they have plenty of years of school. However, kids like William do not need to learn letters and stuff so much as they need to learn to sit. To be quiet. To listen and follow directions.
He and Julianna want to do school work like the big kids, but don’t have the ability to keep up obviously. So I am thinking about getting these for them, as a way to practice sitting, following directions and such. William already knows the letters, B, D and W. lol. He learned those on his own at some point.
Vincent is doing well, I am pretty tired still. I am going to try and take some current pictures of all the kids and maybe do a post on each kid, talking about how they are, and what they do.
I have been spinning alpaca and I love this fiber. I want to blend some with some beautiful lamb fleece I have in a bag. My fleeces were so beautiful this year!
born: 01/10/10
8 lbs 5 oz
21 inches long
Dreaming of dinner.
Lets see, how did I get her to give me my dinner again?
You WILL give me my dinner *Jedi Arm Wave*
Hmmm, that darn strong minded Mama…
Thick oriental accent – You will give me my dinner now or I will take it by force! Do not question Ninja Baby!!!
Oh NO! That just made her bring the new diaper, I hate the new diaper, now I’m gonna be cold!
OH NOW I remember!
(No baby was actually made to cry for this picture series, he’s yawning 
