I scream, You scream, We ALL scream for Ice Cream

Yay its that time of year that fresh ice cream is the best. And what is even better is that we have our own cow and can make fresh homemade RAW ice cream. It is to DIE for. We also made up fresh strawberry topping to go on it and that was just awesome too. The next batch we made was strawberry ice cream again using our fresh strawberries. It is just the greatest after a hot day working outdoors to sit down and have a bowl of ice cream!
Our recipe for Raw Ice Cream is
1 qt fresh whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Add to your ice cream maker and thats all!

For the strawberry we used the same recipe as above and mixed in 1.5 cups pureed fresh strawberries. Again super easy and way too yummy

Our strawberry topping for our ice cream is just cut up strawberries that are then coated with sugar and set to rest for 12 to 24 hours in the fridge.



On another note the moon looked wonderful last night and was so pretty I couldn't resist this awesome photo op before heading in for the night to relax.

Preschool Graduation, baby chicks and strawberries

Another busy title today!
On Tuesday my oldest graduated from Preschool. What an accomplishment and how quickly she has grown, it seems like just yesterday I was trying and hoping so much for a baby of our own. And now that baby is getting ready to start Kindergarten.



Isn't she adorable!

All the graduates!


And here she is with her bff

And on other farm news!
The new baby chicks are a week old. They have grown a TON, about double the size they were and they are starting to get real feathers.


And our strawberries are coming on great. The patch we are picking from is our June Berries, we have another patch started that is the everberry type. These we are enjoying fresh and I also made some up for ice cream topping but that is another post.

Kitchen, camera theives and kittens

What a title huh, well its been a pretty special day for us around here. Last night the kids got the first taste of fresh out of our patch strawberries. But I didn't have my camera so we will have to talk about that more maybe tomorrow, or the next day since my oldest graduates from preschool tomorrow night. What a sad but fun day!
I had a special request to show photos of my kitchen. Its not huge, but I love it. It is set up so nicely, I have lots of counter space and its easy to get to everything when you are cooking.
Here is my catch all counter. I keep my computer (a netbook with wireless) over here along with the hubbys coffee pot. No food is on it normally unless we have company and then we completely clear it and use it for serving.

Looking from the main door into the house into the kitchen. There is the peninsula that separates the kitchen from the dining area. I love this for the kids to be involved in the cooking. We have plans to remove the cupboards from above to make it more open and add some lights and a breakfast bar to it in the next few years.

From the dining room back into the kitchen, like I said its not real big but set up so nicely. Its dated in the cupboards but I think it is fitting the lifestyle we live.

And not a great picture but this is from the catch all counter looking at my sink. There is a glass shelf that hubby added for me that I absolutely adore. It is the greatest place for putting a few plants and the glass birds from my grandmother seemed to be a wonderful addition as well.

In other news my kids got ahold of my camera again today and these were the two keepers that the took. I think that Nevaeh took this one of Carter

And here is a silly one that was taken of Nevaeh, she is all the time trying to get us to take pics of her with her tongue out lately.

And last thing of the day is a surprise with my daughter tonight, we went out to do chores and Araya came yelling over "mama this is really important" "ok Araya whats going on?" "Carter and me were over by the barn and there was a grey kitten coming out from under where Harvests Kittens are" "Really? Well lets go take a look" So we head back to the barn and sure enough there is a cute little grey and white kitten tailing behind a black mama cat we have that won't let us mess with her but keeps herself knows as well.
So I go to check on Harvests kittens since we were in there and there was a mysterious kitten in there. I pick it up and this is what we had

There are actually 3 kittens, 2 like this one and a grey and white one!

Olabelhe dress's with a twist

So my oldest graduates preschool next week and what better time to make some pretty dress's for the girls. I knew the style I wanted but didn't have the EXACT pattern I needed, however with a little tweak here and there I am beyond happy with how they turned out.
Dawns patterns are so sweet and timeless that I need her entire collection. Her attention to detail can not be matched in my opinion.
I took the Amelia pattern from Olabelhe that I love so much and made it up. Adding some adorable rick rack to where the bodice meets the skirt. From there I continued as it said up until the point where it said to add elastic to the bottom to make it bubble. I was twirly and frilly so instead I added lace.



The results were so adorable that I had to make one for the younger daughter as well.
For hers I had some adorable baby nay fabric that just screamed to be used and I used some wonderful buttons I had gotten from Tessa Ann. They are handmade and oh so fun. I can not wait to use more of her buttons on other projects, she is great to work with when it comes to customs as well, and they are good for so much more than JUST sewing, so be sure to check her out.

Blessings

I feel so blessed to have such a wonderful family. Last weekend we were lucky enough to do some pictures with the whole family on my side. They include my mom, dad, siblings and my niece. My hubby was working so he wasn't included but all in all I love the pictures


And then we got a photo of my grandfather, my father, me and all my kiddos. What a blessing to have 4 generations in one picture

Family Pictures meets Tie Dye

Today we went to my mother in laws house and I wanted to do some family pictures and see about getting one that is good enough to put on the way. Well for this I am pretty crazy and want everyone to match, so I dyed up shirts for the whole family in red white and blue tie dye and we had a lot of fun. However I will tell you that it is nearly impossible to get all 3 of the children looking at the camera and smiling at the same time, but we did our best and got some really fun shots.


Then later in the day I was playing in the grass with the kids and the husband was able to capture these wonderful shots. I am thinking these are totally frame worthy as well!



We have more great photos but they are for another day. Mom was on a photo kick and made the girls change clothes even. I am just as excited to share those so it will likely be tomorrow!!!

Flowers

Flowers make me smile and this spring has been a spring of surprises. We purchased our home after most things had bloomed last year so we didn't know what all we had. I was happy to discover our first open bloom on the Iris yesterday, tho the wind was very hard on it. The clematis bloom opened this morning and is beautiful as well. There are many others bloomed out as well, some I know what are, others I am not sure. Its been great to move things around to where we want them, discover what we have to work with and enjoy the sights and smells of the beauty as well.
purple roses we planted this year in the rose garden


yellow phlox

Dianthus

More to come another day!

Our little piece of paradise

I thought I would share a glimpse into where I call home. We have a ranch style house with a pole style barn, 2 corn cribs (1 has been sided with tin to make it waterproof) an old milk barn, a chicken coop, and what I call my garden shed which is really a small storage shed. There is also an old sow house that is not in very good shape that we will be taking down this summer along with 2 other small sheds.
There are many small flower beds that we are in the process of changing around and eliminating some, almost 4 acres of land and a rather large strawberry patch that we can't wait to harvest this year!!!

A fun treat

Yesterday we decided that since Daddy took the day off from work. One thing that the girls are always asking to do is have a picnic and play at the park, so with a beautiful day and all of us home, what better day could we ask for.
So I fried up the last chicken we have in the freezer (for now, but not for long) and made a bowl of potato salad. We took juice and iced tea along to drink and a blanket to sit on and away we went. The kids had so much fun and so did mom and dad.
After we finished eating we played on the playground.

Carter has absolutely no fear. There is one slide that is way up there, it is probably 10 to 12 feet in the air and he loved it.

We spent a lot of our time playing on this slide and it was so fun to see the smiles from the kids


From there we decided to add to the treat of the evening and went to the local Ice Cream shop Sweet Treats. They have all homemade ice creams and it is just wonderful!!
Carter had his first cone all by himself and he was in heaven!

They all enjoy swinging on their swing before we leave and always do.

It was an all around great day. We were able to finish up some things on the farm, There is now new entries into the barn, we were able to burn the large pile of tree debris from our hail storm last summer and laundry washed and dried on the line. Plus I was able to to get most of a dress sewn up for Nevaeh, but thats a whole nother post that will come later.