Food

It seems my existence revolves around food.  Whether it’s eating it or preparing it for somebody else, it’s always in my forethoughts.  What shall we eat next?  What can I do to keep everybody eating their veggies?  How can I keep loosing weight?  What’s for dinner?  Jesus said not to worry about what we will eat or drink, but rather we should trust God, who knows we need these things.  I’ve been trying to take that approach and let my food prep be more spirit-led if you will.  I still make grocery lists and I still plan ahead (at least weekly) but I try to keep some things unplanned, so I can practice NOT worrying, instead I practice listening and letting the Holy Spirit inspire me.  It’s kind of fun, because surprisingly, He always gives me a good idea!  Always!

We joined a CSA this year.  That stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  Every week we get a gorgeous box full of organic, locally grown veggies and sometimes fruit.  It has been a tremendous blessing!  I don’t always know what to do with the bounty I get, but I’m learning!

Roasted CSA veggies with butter and seasonings.  Scrumptious!

I’ve got tomatoes coming out of my ears!  I find them in my CSA box, in my own garden and my neighbor brings them over!  So I decided to dehydrate some.  I read that I can pulverize them and use the powder to make tomato sauce and tomato paste.  They turned out so pretty that I might just keep them this way.

Besides tomatoes, I’ve been dehydrating apples, nectarines and pears.  I find dehydrating to be the easiest way (besides freezing) to preserve food.  No sugar is needed and I can just keep everything right in my big pantry.

I’ve also been freezing onions, peppers and berries.  Squash season is starting, my absolute favorite!

Bless the Lord , O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all his benefits; who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. Psalm 103: 1-5

He forgives, heals, redeems, crowns and feeds us! 

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Keeping my Treasures Warm

So every summer I go garage saling.  Every summer I find warm beautiful winter jackets.  Every summer I try to prepare for the coming winter and every summer, I get too many jackets!  I was over at a friend’s house who was going through clothing, she has a mega-sized family so it was a lot of clothes and I found a really nice jacket in her stuff for Bubble Gum and came home and realized she needed it but that Laffy Taffy had 3 jackets.  He doesn’t need that many.

And so the sorting began.  I started by going through  the house:  garage, front coat closet, back hallway, laundry room closet and totes and found all the coats or jackets that had been left out since early spring when it was still cold or stored away for the future.

Then I started hanging up jackets in birth order starting with me and working my way down to Marshmallow.  That hot pink coat near the wall is my winter jacket.  Next comes Chocolate, he has a winter coat, a fall/spring coat, a jean jacket, a leather coat and a pair of snow pants.  He’s set.  Everything in his size that I don’t need is going out of my house.  Next is Strawberry.  She has a winter coat, jean jacket, spring/fall jacket and snow pants.  She’s on the look out for a trench coat from a thrift store. Everything else in her size is leaving my house too.  And down it goes. 

To deal with the left over stuff, it went in one of four places.  Either here (my laundry room closet), these are coats that are VERY nice and someone will be able to wear in the next couple years, like Adrielle or Jonathan.  Or they went in the basket you can see with doll chairs sticking out, I’m taking those to Once Upon a Child because I don’t have friends with baby girls. 

Or into a bag for donating.

Or in this pile to take to the beach for my friends to dig through.  There are many coats in here, including nice coats that were mine but are too big now.  It’s so fun to be able to share our blessings with people!  I love seeing all the coats and jackets and snow pants lined up, knowing that my family will be warm this winter.  And now I don’t have to look for coats at garage sales anymore this summer!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Changes

If you follow me on Facebook you may have heard my recent rant about Google.  Annoying is all I can say.  They don’t like it that I don’t have a “real” name and I’m not popular enough to keep my pseudo name in their Google + environment.  Well, Google, guess what?  I’ve been blogging longer than Google + has been around…Anyway, I did appeal, they rejected me, so I have not other choice than to leave Blogger. 

Remember when I mentioned that Strawberry will be learning computer programing through Team Tree House?  One of the things she is learning is how to code a WordPress Blog.  It makes sense for me to move for a number of reasons, one being the aforementioned issue, the other being I’m going to have to start paying blogger because I’ve about used up all my picture storage and pictures are a huge part of blogging to me, but I DON’T want to pay to blog!! 

So in my very limited free time I have been working on a new blog, with a new name and a new design.  I think I may loose some readers during the switch, but that’s okay.  Follow along if you want, but please don’t feel like you have too!! 

I’ll give you lots of time to make the switch in whatever reader you are using.  I’m not quite ready to reveal the new title, but I love it.  And just like I feel like changes are happening in my own life the new blog will reflect the same changes.  It’s still just me though, blogging about things that make me happy, a new title, a new chapter, a new decade in the life of the Taffy’s!

Thanks for reading here, it blesses me to no end!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

When winter gets long…

This is the weather graphic is for my suburb.  Today the high is 9.  Yeah.  We are about halfway through this winter and sometimes at this point we start to get a little stir crazy.  See that sunshine there, well it looks warm and inviting outside, but it’s not really and the sunshine just makes us want to go out there all the more!  So what do we do?  How do we cope with the endless winter weather? 

We plan!

We get out all our seeds and take inventory!

              We get out our garden notebook and draw!

We get on the computer and visit the land of the living, living things that is.  Seeds. Plants.  What can we grow?  What can we plant?  Show me some GREEEN!

We figure out where everything goes.  What can we plant here, how about here?  We use post-it-notes so we can change our mind.

We ordered organic seeds and 10 (yeah 10, my husband doesn’t do anything small) elderberry bushes.  Still not sure where all those are going to go, but who cares!  They are coming!  My husband also bought worms of all things, and they are happily munching away in a container on the counter in the kitchen.  That right there is love in action.

Here’s my garden pin board if you want to see some more inspiration:  http://pinterest.com/mrstaffy/garden-backyard/

We want to try the potato towers and the sunflower fort, do you think the neighbors would mind if we put the sunflower fort in the front yard?  Our backyard is pretty full!  ha!  An outside chalkboard for the kids and gutter gardens on my little deck to keep the spinach safe from the bunnies.  So much inspiration! 

I wonder how many other people have spent a long winter’s Saturday planning for the time when the earth warms up and the worms wake up and life springs forth!  Probably more than we can imagine!

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

What does love look like?

Love has a lot of faces and Valentine’s Day always gets me in the mood to share my love and show my love to the people around me.  In our house, the kids have come to accept that Valentine’s Day is a holiday for married people, after all, the history of St. Valentine’s has to do with keeping marriage lawful.  Still, it’s hard not to succumb to all the pink and heart and chocolate and diamond advertising everywhere.  And I do enjoy making them a delicious treat and flooding their ears with terms of endearment.

I’ve given up having expectation about Valentine’s Day.  There just isn’t really any point or the point is to express my love to others, not expect to receive love from others.  That being said, my husband has pretty much astounded me this year.  I’m mean, really astounded.  He read my blog post of about my longings and set to do something about it. What?  I’m still so surprised at his thoughtfulness and generosity.  I didn’t get a diamond or a trip to Hawaii, I didn’t get an elaborate date night with loads of pampering  and culinary indulgences.  I got a freezer full of meat.  Yup, you read that correctly.  Meat.

             

I took these pictures before he was actually done.

And while on the surface that might seem really bizarre, it’s so amazing that I fear I can’t express my gratitude enough. 

Not only did he plan out what to buy, he bought it, then repackaged it (with my input) in portions that would be helpful for our family.  He cooked, cut, washed, labeled, stacked, counted and prepared all this meat for me.  He saved me so much time, so much money from my normal weekly food budget.  He wrote a blog post about it here.  You can read it from his perspective, complete with charts and prices and what we packed up, specifically.  Amazing!

So now our family joke is that I don’t get diamonds for Valentine’s Day, I get a freezer full of meat.  Well, I already have all the diamonds I’ll ever need and a freezer full of meat satisfies my longing for simplicity.

I’ll be forever grateful. 

So for me, this Valentine’s Day, Love is Meat.

I shall eat of it daily.

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

Wordless Wednesday

Father’s Day Banner

Before I share with you our fun Father’s Day, I wanted to share the banner that we made in honor of my husband, the BEST Father for my children! 

We started out cutting triangles from cardstock.  Then I painted each of the children’s hand, left and right and they made their hand print on the triangles.

Even the BIG boys let me paint their hands!  They are good sports and were actually happy to participate!

Banana Taffy’s Big Ole’ hand barely fit on the triangle!!

When they were all done, we had this.

After the paint was dry, I outlined the hand prints with a black marker and then Strawberry Taffy painted the letters on each triangle that spells out “Happy Father’s Day!”

                    

After that paint was dry the children wrote messages to their daddy on the back of their hand prints.

Next, I laminated the triangles and Strawberry tied them together and hung them up, like this:

Mr. Taffy LOVED it!!  He had so much fun reading the messages on the back.  We’ll be able to bring this out each year and the kids will love seeing how their hands have changed.  Seeing all those hands up there, in all those different sizes blesses me more than I can explain!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Buffering Swords

I think my children are somewhat creative.  Given the proper tools and freedoms they can come up with some pretty awesome ways to spend their free time.  For a few years now their favorite thing has been to make buffering swords out of Fun Noodles, PVC pipe and duct tape.

  

The noodles with the hole in the middle are the best. 

They’ve created all manner of games and challenges with these things.  But basically they cut up the pipe, wrap it in a fun noodle and wrap it in duct tape and proceed to pummel each other.  Good exercise and loads of fun!

3:1 doesn’t seem quite fair…

No babies were hurt in the taking of this picture, it’s totally posed.  Isn’t her skirt adorable?  Such a little girl!

Just look at the form, makes a mom proud.  lol

So next time your children need a little challenge and have some extra energy to burn, buy a couple fun noodles and PVC pipe and duct tape, show them these photos and let them use their imagination to build all manner of weaponry.  Then let them have at it!  I love watching them, it totally makes me laugh!  Especially when Daddy plays along! 

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy