Silver linings, lemonade from lemons, looking at the bright side and such

We had a carefully planned Saturday.  We each had a list a mile long and planned to go in separate directions and meet back at the house in the evening.  My husband got started with outside chores and I was working on some things in the kitchen, including our meal plan for the weekend. 

I requested a few items from our freezer. First, you should know that our freezer is in the basement and our basement is the old coal cellar of the schoolhouse.  There is an exterior entrance and we usually save up our trips to the freezer and combine it with a trip outside for chores or another errand.

My husband returns to the kitchen and tells me that the freezer has stopped working and we have many, many pounds of partially thawed meat.  We had retrieved something earlier in the week, so we counted up days and took stock of the food and decided that it was all still edible, but we needed to  move fast. I quickly cleaned out our freezer upstairs and we shifted all of the food that was still frozen to a new spot.  That left us with some (a lot! of)  food to prepare.

Between Saturday and today, we browned around 12 pounds of ground buffalo and three packages of buffalo sausage, cooked two buffalo roasts, some soup bones, and a whole turkey, and we grilled about eight buffalo steaks.  I ended up making a few freezer meals and adding a lot of prepared meat to our freezer.

Here are some links to recipes for the freezer meals:

Lasagna casserole

Cheeseburger casserole

Black bean taco soup

Tater tot casserole

For several weeks I had been wanting to do some cooking ahead and the broken freezer pushed me to action.  It wasn't really in my plan and I am still a little grumpy about all of the dishes I washed over two days. We just kept saying, "it could have been worse!" 

The silver lining, the lemonade from lemons, and the bright side is that our new freezer is installed and has several new food items for us to enjoy over the next few weeks.

Christmas is coming!

We were surprised to see snow last Friday!  I was at work and heard someone say that they saw snowflakes.  By the time I looked outside, there was a pretty good snow shower underway.  And, here I was without a coat!

The change in weather got me to thinking about the holiday season.  We just ordered holiday cards from Persnickety Prints and love them!  They have a great sale for early holiday card orders.  If you order before October 31, you save 30% (code EARLY30) and if you order before November 30, you save 15% (code EARLY15).  The already have reasonable prices and the envelopes are included with the cards.  A sweet deal!

On Saturday, I asked my husband to help with a Pinterest project.  The Christmas tree is a lovely scrap wood creation, some pieces with chippy paint and one with a builder's notes scratched out in pencil.  I am considering having my husband paint a message across the "branches."

It's fun to anticipate the holiday season and to begin making preparations.

Vintage finds and kindred spirits

We enjoy speculating about the activities of "normal" people on any given weekend.  We are usually running around with a giant to-do list and tackling more than is even possible to accomplish in a day.  One of us will say to the other, "You know, normal people lay around and watch golf on a Sunday afternoon."  We have not had a relaxing weekend afternoon in ages.  I am not sure it is part of our fabric.

This Sunday's adventure - setting up a booth space at Rerun Consignments in Council Grove.  We decided to take this leap for a couple of reasons - we really like the owner (and have only heard good things about her business) and we need storage space!  We hope that in the process of getting a few things out of the house, we will make some sales and contribute to Darla's business.

We had a furry of activity on Saturday night.  We both had been busy all day and met up at the house.  We had a few things that we wanted to finish and several items that needed to be cleaned and prepared for packing.  A couple of the projects we completed are the 'always and forever' repurposed window frame, the turquoise message board, turquoise photo frame, a jewelry organizer, and a Christmas tree from scrap wood.  We also picked up some awesome pumpkins from a friend - check out the white Cinderella pumpkin we staged in the wine barrel ring sphere.

While setting up our booth, we met a fellow consignor and I think I made a good friend.  I shopped her booth and found so many things I loved.  She has a great eye and I know I will return to pick up a few things for our home.  I love fellow junkers/vintage finders; they are true kindred spirits.

A Giveaway!

It is October and that means a lot of craziness in our schedules and also the flurry of activity to begin to prepare for winter.  While enjoying the cooler temperatures and the beautiful fall colors, we begin to think ahead and prepare so that things will be in a good place when the temperatures get cold.

For my friends who knit, spin and weave, they begin to think about winter fiber projects.  In honor of them, we want to have a giveaway!

Up for grabs:  a sampler of alpaca yarn.  The lucky winner will get four skeins of 100% alpaca yarn.  Our yarns are all natural with no dyes or additives.  The yarn is processed at The Shepherd's Mill in Phillipsburg, Kansas.  (This business is a great small business, small town story!)

These skeins are sport weight and all different lengths (Black, 214 yards. Ivory, 130 yards.  Brown, 191 yards.  Fawn, 208 yards.)  We usually have a skein for each color that is irregular in length because it is the end of the run.  We love to share these with friends and decided to make this year's "ends" the giveaway!

To enter:
Go to our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/prairieschoolfarms
Like the post about the giveaway
Share the post about the giveaway

We will draw one lucky winner on Sunday, October 20.

Don't have Facebook?  Comment on this blog post and tell a friend (via e-mail or any other means).  We believe in the honor system.

Good luck!

Kansas Barn Sale

We are still celebrating a great Saturday at the Kansas Barn Sale.

This event is held each fall near Hesston, Kansas and features vintage, handmade and antique goods along with food, live music, and great fun.  We learned about it several months ago and applied to be a vendor.  We were thrilled to be accepted into the juried show and spent a lot of time working on what we might exhibit.

To complicate things, I was scheduled to be working out of state.  We had a plan.  And, like most of our best plans, things happen.  Just before the show, my husband got really sick and it made it hard for me to feel comfortable being a six hour drive away in the event he started to feel bad again.  So, we made the decision that I would stay close to home and help at the show.  We had a time trying to make decisions about what was the best things to do.  In the end, I think we made the right decision, but not without a lot of our usual chaos and scrambling.  Thanks goodness for my mom and dad who helped tremendously.

On the morning of the show, we set up all of our items and had the chance to really take in the whole event.  It was excellent - the best hospitality, a great crowd, excellent sales, and meeting new friends and reconnecting with old friends.

If you have a list of "must-do" fall activities, please add the Kansas Barn Sale.  You won't be disappointed in the quality of the shopping, the entertainment and great food.

Farm visit thank you

One of our favorite things about owning alpacas is having the chance to share them with other people.

A friend asked if she could bring her son to our house to learn about alpacas.  He came home from school and announced that he would like to see an alpaca.  A friend at school had mentioned the animal and the young man was curious. 

Our friend probably never imagined that knowing someone with alpacas would be helpful.

We had a lot of fun showing off our small herd to the young man and one of his friends.  They had the chance to feed them and lead them around our yard.  We showed them the yarn, rugs and roving that we have made from the fiber. 

It was a great day made even better by this sweet thank you note that arrived a couple of days later.

I have a great deal of admiration for parents who encourage their children to show gratitude.  Writing a well-written thank you note is a very good habit.  We love this family!