Homemade Flour Tortillas

Goodness gracious. Homemade flour tortillas are quite delicious. Earlier this week I mentioned how I was shocked that within a period of about 12 hours my family ate the package of 20 tortillas I had just bought. So, last night we went to a family get together for my uncle's birthday and tacos and fajitas were being made... we didn't have tortillas. (Actually that isn't entirely true, my sister brought a package over. I want to be a hero in this story so I am trying to leave that part out.) I had about 2 hours before the eating was to commence (in reality we didn't eat until like 4 hours later...always expect this when you eat with my family.) Since I have never made flour tortillas before I consulted The Pioneer Woman and found this recipe. It took me almost exactly 2 hours to complete the tortillas and they were absolutely scrumptious. Only thing I would do different is make more and add more salt (I didn't have kosher salt and made the choice to lower the amount when I substituted table salt). Supper ended up being delicious and no one really made a fuss over my tortillas although they did stuff them down their throats without complaint. T liked them and I saved some dough and made fresh tortillas for our breakfast tacos this morning. He told me I was amazing; what else do I need?

I don't think I have anything I want to write about at this time other than tortillas. The tortillas made me happy and I thought they could possibly make you happy too.
Mama

Lovely Weekend

This weekend in a list.
1. Boys camping =quiet time for Mama from 8:30pm to 11:30pm (when I fell asleep)
2. Grocery shopping and eating breakfast with my father-in-law at 7:30am, Saturday
3. Laundry (every waking hour in my life)
4. Clean kitchen (almost as often as laundry)
5. Stunned that my family consumed 20 tortillas in half a day
6. Sundays are for rest and also spending lots of time in kitchen...
7. Bake bread
8. Go to sister's house to look at lambs and become envious of her flower garden
9. Try not to devour all the bread while slicing it
10. Make pizza
11. End weekend watching Die Hard 2: Die Harder cuddled up with T and snicker
      at the 1990s.

Hope your weekend was just as wonderful as mine,
Mama

I've Got Average Hopes

I had an unusually busy week last week that prevented me from posting much. I had errands to run and God-daughters to see. This weekend we got part of our raised beds done and I planted my tomatoes, peppers and squash. This coming weekend we hope to finish the beds and get everything else planted. We are so excited about this garden. I think it is most likely due to the fact that it's going to be so darn easy to care for. The beds themselves are on a raised form making them waist high for my giant self. T must have heard me complain too often about bending over to pick green beans and squash. This year I had changed my ways and bought pole beans so I could prevent that squatting down stuff, needless to say the beds that hold my beans and okra will not be waist high! I'd have to drag a ladder around with me to reach anything. I'm feeling pretty good about this garden. I hope it can save me some money on veggies this summer and if I do really well I can even freeze or can things to cut costs on my winter spending!

Speaking of trying to save money.... I have boxes and boxes of clothes that my kids have outgrown and I'm going to attempt to sell those clothes this week at a consignment shop. I hope they need boys clothes because I'm saving most of my girl stuff for my God-daughter. It'll be my first time selling anything to a consignment shop and I'm not anticipating a big return of moolah, but anything helps. For example, I have sold books before and I had high hopes of a big return and was fairly depressed that I received less that $6 for a pretty nice arm load of books. I'm fairly certain I had spent at least $50 on those books, so not cool. I don't like being disappointed so my expectations are quite low for these clothes.

Yesterday was the first day of Spring! Our windows have been open for a couple weeks now and I'm enjoying it. My pizza dough also rises better now that it's warmer. I think everyone can appreciate that. I am obviously running out of things to say and I'll take that as a hint to go put some real clothes on and get to work around here.

Still in my pj's at 11am,
Mama

You Know it's Spring When...

It's Spring Break around here and it's showing. Meaning when I go to town there are an abundance of children running circles around their parents in the grocery store.All of the feed stores have their signs out promoting the baby chicks and ducklings and bunny rabbits they have inside. The seasonal section in the stores are packed with Easter eggs, cheaply made baskets, chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chicks, and a nausiating rainbow of pastel colors. Nevermind my aversion to those things though.

Spring time brings babies, right? You know, lambs, chicks, calves, foals... So how fitting that one of our sheep had a lamb Sunday afternoon. She is a proud mama to a baby boy. It looks like several of them are pregnant. We went over last night and met my sister to look at the lamb. I noticed that one of the other sheep looked like she was going to lamb in the next day or so. It's all so exciting! It did bring back some bittersweet memories from our lambs last summer, but I won't let that prevent me from looking through my baby name book again. My sister is calling him Dinner. I don't think so.

Oh Sping, I love you. Everything is turning green and things I've planted are actually growing. We had such a nice weekend. We went to Lowe's and I got lots of seeds and not a lot of actual plants. I got three tomato plants, three pepper plants and a strawberry plant. I would like three more tomato plants and maybe a few more pepper plants. I wanted to get flowers too, but I didn't get around to looking at the perinials before the kids started trying to destroy the plants I had already stuck in the cart. It was a nice lesson for me to learn, "When buying live plants do not bring your children". It still ended up being a very relaxing weekend. Big D and I planted his carrots and that was about the most "work" that happened.

On the other hand, I actually got all of the kid's clothes put away yesterday. It was no small feat either, but that's what happens when I keep doing laundry and keep not putting the clothes where they belong. Today I am working on my own clothes. I wonder if I could paint my room today. Oh, I was putting my clothes away, right. I need to clean up the front of the house too, you never know when an unexpected guest will arrive.

Sping Cleaning (not in the least),
Mama

Grow Me a Green Thumb

This weekend is going to be a must for gathering my veggies and seeds and any extra dirt I need. Honestly, if I don't start now I will most likely never get it done. The Lowe's in town is having Burpee and Ferry Morse seeds packets BOGO and veggie four packs at $1.79. That's a really good deal for me... so I'm going for it.

I have been envisioning my backyard and front flower beds today and I really hope to score some awesome deals on some perennials. I have in mind (and definitely subject to change) : Texas Sage/Purple Sage, Echinacea, Salvia, Purple Hearts and  Blue Plumbago. I just realized that all of those plants are either purple or light blue, however, I am also hoping to plant some Blanket Flowers and Sun Flowers. My zinnias are already coming up so I should have a good range of color. On a whim I bought a Starry Night Viola while in town Monday. It's pretty and supposedly a perennial, but I haven't looked it up. I probably need to so I know how and where to plant it. Coincidentally it has purple blooms with a white heart. What is my deal with purple?

I don't want to go overboard this year. If I start small and have a successful year then next year I can add to it. If I end up killing everything then I guess I'm doomed, and I will have to stare at Bermuda grass and a single "knock-out" rose bush for the rest of my life. I have, in vain, researched native plants, "hard-to-kill" plants, drought tolerant plants, plants everyone can grow... Please don't let me be the one to kill the "hard-to-kill" plants. That would be too devastating.

The Green Thumb is not to be taken for granted people,
Mama

Chickens and Other Randomness

I've got a few more chickens to care for now. My sister has about 12 or is it 13 chickens that needed a home until she can get a coop built for them. I told her to bring 'em on over because we have the room and what's 12 more with the 19 I already care for? Maybe I collect a few more eggs and dump out a little more feed, but in the end I'm doing the same thing I do everyday. She has some exotics and some regular old barred rock chickens like us. I'm pretty sure we'll be able to tell them apart when we move them. Her chickens have been pecked on and they are a bit thinner than ours due to cramped quarters at their previous home. My sis researched this and found some good solutions to the pecking and we hope they work out cause seriously, her exotics are missing tails. It's a sad sight. I believe that I can get them healthy, even though I really know very little in regards to doctoring chickens. I can put some vinegar in their water, dust them with talcum powder, give them ample space, plenty of grain... if any one has any other suggestions feel free to comment below!

Our weekend was pretty nice. I caved and bought Bambi. The kids liked it ok, but not so much that it's all they want to watch. I thought it was kinda strange myself. It had been like 10 years since I've seen it and though I liked it just fine I found some parts a little odd and some characters seemed...weird. It's a lovely movie...but I'm an adult now and things change. The boys have been hooked on Ratatouille and like to pretend they are making soup in the dogs water bowl. They have been instructed to make soup elsewhere cause that's gross. We rented Inception and it was really good. I feel like I'll need to watch it again so it all makes sense though. I had three children begging for my attention in some detailed background parts of the movie... that's what I get for watching it before bedtime though. I made pizza Sunday night like always and like always it was delicious. The boys played soccer until it got too dark to see the ball while their little sis rode around on Daddy's shoulders. I made the delicious pizzas in peace and quiet. Thanks T. (Little Rose is still cutting teeth and she won't get me any peace. Or quiet.)

I have chickens to heal and children to feed and entertain. Mama's gonna be busy today. Big D (my 4 yr old, I can't remember his blog name right now) wants to plant carrots. We will see.

Someone needs a nap and I need breakfast,
Mama

(P.S. spell check says I spelled quiet wrong. It wants to correct it with "quiett" Um, no thank you.)

A List

I like making lists of things to do, accomplish, finish, re-do, fix....
I don't always follow the list though. It usually gets shoved in with an ever growing pile of papers and disappears. Then I find it approximately 3 months later and start making a new list. Monday I made a list. I keep thinking maybe I can follow this one, it's not a lot. My mom always makes lists and always crosses things off throughout the day. What a feeling of accomplishment that must bring! I want that! So, here's my list I made complete with the crossed off items I've done. It was meant for Monday, but at around 11am I decided it would be my list for the week. I'm a go getter, that's for sure.

- Put laundry away (not crossed off, because it's every day, but I have been keeping up)
-Move cow feed
-Clean washing machine It's GROSS
- Remake bed
- Make cookies for C.
-Sweep/Vacuum/Mop (I sweep daily)
-Find small sugar jar (I didn't lose it, I need one)
-Take nails out of deck rail (I'm halfway!)
-Check PO box

I think I need a break. From list making.
Mama

So It's Not a Real Bird?

Yesterday was such a beautiful day! I hope everyone had the chance to go outside and enjoy it. It looks like today is going to be just as nice. The boys spent hours outside digging in the sand and planting things with me. They helped me plant some zinnias and basil in my front flower beds. I went to our backyard and planted some morning glories in the hopes that they will climb up deck railing and provide some shade in the afternoons for us. I even followed the directions to nick and soak the seeds to hurry up the germination process, which I hope works, because last year I just stuck those seeds under some dirt and nothing ever happened. My cilantro and spring onions have emerged and they were just dry seeds 2 weeks ago. I am really excited that they are growing, but I don't want to do a happy dance or anything because I still have plenty of time to somehow kill them.
In other news, the horses are annoying me, I think the blue bird that always stares in our window is a high tech spy device, my kids eat all day long, Little Rose cut a tooth and I think she's cutting another one, which always makes for fun times.  Not much going on here. I saw on Yahoo about these insect or bird looking spy things and now it all makes sense why there's always a blue bird staring in at us. From almost every window. At all times of day. So go ahead and put me on a list, it's not like I'm not on there already. Here's the link to the CBS news article: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/28/ap/national/main20037482.shtml

So, on that note, I will go talk to my little spy friend and let him know that I'm on to him.
Watching you very closely,
Mama