A Letting Go...

Raising children is such an adventure. For 19.5 years I have experienced all of the emotions, both high and low, of helping my firstborn son to find and make his way in this world. Today we had the good experience of taking him to the airport, giving him a hug, and sending him into the security check line...alone.

This is his first "solo" trip out of state. He flew from Chicago to Cleveland, where he then located ground transport, the courtesy phone bank there, called for the free hotel shuttle, then boarded it and took it to his hotel, where he checked into his room (we surprised him with a whirlpool tub in the room...and extra $20, but this is a CELEBRATION!) and then walked down the street to the restaurant area for dinner (he decided to go to TGI Fridays).

Bryan is there on business. He is returning to his knife sharpening teacher for some more specialized training, and to make another customized wheel for his sharpening machine so he can re-serrate worn out bread knives. The entire trip, all expenses incurred, will be deducted from his income on this year's taxes. He is also paying for it entirely out of his own earnings...knife sharpening has been a good business out here, so we'd rather invest in more training...giving him more ways to earn money with the business...than to give it to Uncle Sam next April because it was all income and little expense.

He'll fly home tomorrow afternoon, and DH will pick him up from the airport. Then we'll be descending upon Christine's home for dinner, pool fun, and tomato picking! Bryan was a bit grumpy this morning...I think he was a little nervous, since he'd be navigating the whole air-travel-system on his own for the first time...but when he called me from the hotel, he sounded so happy!

I know some have a hard time with the "letting go" process. I'm sure I will cry bittersweet tears when he actually moves away from my home completely...but I thoroughly enjoy the process of releasing my young adults, little bit by little bit, step by step. I pray that this trip and the learning that takes place will be used by God to continue to mature Bryan, and to encourage him on towards his future.

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Friday FarmGirls@Heart...County Fair Day!

"There is rhythm to being a farmgirl. It is the rhythm of working hard when there is work to be done. It is the rhythm of finding joy in the "doing" of the work. It is also the rhythm of slowing down to enjoy each moment." 
~Rene Groom

To join the Fun of Friday FarmGirls@Heart, please include a link to my blog in your post, or grab one of my FFG buttons for your posts and to place in your sidebar! You can grab code HERE.

I'm so excited! Today is the Open Class Sheep Show at our County Fair! Bryan will be showing sheep for Kline Creek Farm, where he works as a "seasonal staff" member; it is where he's volunteered for almost 8 years, but this summer he's on staff as part of his college internship. If it's 8:30am Central Standard Time or later, I'm at the Fair! I have my camera, and I'll be posting photos later on today. So link up your FarmGirl@Heart post, and come back again to see if I've posted an update! I will be visiting you and commenting, it'll just be a little bit later this evening.

Did you:

♥Grow it yourself?

♥Make it in your kitchen using REAL FOOD (not processed food product)?

♥Make it with your own two hands instead of buying it at ***-Mart?

♥Do something with your way of life that's connected you back to this beautiful green earth (what's left of it, anyway!) that God has given us?

If so, you've got the Heart of a FarmGirl, whether you live in the country,

the city, or the suburbs!

Share your doings in a post today, and link it here to join Friday FarmGirls@Heart! 

Here's how to join the fun:

1) Grab an FFG (Friday FarmGirls) Button for your blog and post it in your sidebar so others can join with you. I have 6 styles you can choose from, and you can get code HERE.

2) Write your post and publish it on Friday...be sure to put your FFG Button at the top of your post, and link it to my blog ( http://www.illinoislori.blogspot.com/ ) so your friends will know where to come to join in each week.

3) Add your name and the URL of your post to the "Mister Linky" provided at the end of my post each week.

4) Leave me a comment, and visit the blogs of the other participants listed and leave them comments as well. If you visit and leave comments, you'll be visited and receive comments...it's as simple as that!

Leave a note...I love to hear from you!
Subscribe via email for blog updates: CLICK HERE to subscribe



Thursday Tea Talk with Ruth (7/28/11)

Click the graphic above to join me and our lovely hostess, Ruth,
for Tea Talk each Thursday!

I'm having...Barley and Beet Juice in a simple juice glass.



I'm feeling...unhealthy after a 3 day trip with nothing but restaurant and fast-food. YUCK.

On my mind...decluttering my house and my life.

"But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need."

(I Thessalonians 4:10-12 NASB)

My silly dog, who always likes to come to Tea Talk.

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Tuesday Project Party..."Whispering Again"

Get out your "to-do" list, roll up your sleeves,
share the ongoing fruits of your labor, and encourage others along the way!
Click HERE to get started!

This Tuesday morning I am actually on the road with my youngest son, Nathan, who will be 18 in September, and my hubby. We are coming home from a campus visit to Iowa State University, where Nathan has considered the Engineering College. Though it's a great school, for various reasons Nathan feels it is not a good fit for him, but he will keep it tucked in his "back pocket" in case his top picks do not work out. Nonetheless, it's been a great trip since this is my dh's alma mater! We've had fun visiting his old dorm, his old frat house, and the design center where he spent sooooo many hours, months, and years (he's an architect)! Memory Lane is sure fun.

In addition to getting this major summertime-before-the-senior-year-of-high-school-task completed, before we left I forced myself out of my overwhelmed paralysis, pulled out the Whisper Mill and the Bosch Universal mixer, and finally ground up some flour and baked some bread. I have not done this for close to a year, I'm sad to admit. Gosh, it tastes good!

Next week I should have something more impressive to report...but with a road trip this week, there wasn't time to photograph and complete the bigger projects on my list. Next week will see me in the kitchen again...BIG TIME!

HOW TO JOIN: I'm looking forward to reading what you've been up to! Grap a TPP button for your blog, link your post back to my blog (http://www.illinoislori.blogspot.com/), and complete the Mister Linky below so we can all visit! Your post can be a description of what you plan to work on in the coming week, so don't feel you have to have a project completed in order to join. This meme is about the process as well as the finished product!

Visit other participants, and leave comments of encouragement...I'll do the same for you!



Leave a note...I love to hear from you!
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Welcome to the Tuesday Project Party! (Starts 7/26/11)

Get out your "to-do" list, roll up your sleeves,
share the ongoing fruits of your labor, and encourage others along the way!
Click HERE to get started!

If you're like me, there's a project in your home that needs doing, and you need some help in the "getting started" category! Let's work together on our home projects, be they large or small, and share the progress each Tuesday! Encouraging comments to one another should be a BIG part of this one!

PLEASE put the Home Project Party button on your blog, and on each blog post you write, and link it back to my blog so others can find us and join in! Use this EZ code:

<a href="http://illinoislori.blogspot.com/2011/07/welcome-to-tuesday-project-party.html/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy360/kevloril/meme%20buttons/ButtonTPP-1.jpg" alt="Plans4You" /></a>

Link up each Tuesday with the Mr. Linky I'll provide...your first post can be a description of what you plan to work on in the coming week, so don't feel you have to have a project completed in order to join. This meme is about the process as well as the finished product!

Visit other participants, and leave comments of encouragement...I'll do the same for you!


Leave a note...I love to hear from you!
Subscribe via email for blog updates: CLICK HERE to subscribe

Friday FarmGirls@Heart...Heat Wave!

"There is rhythm to being a farmgirl. It is the rhythm of working hard when there is work to be done. It is the rhythm of finding joy in the "doing" of the work. It is also the rhythm of slowing down to enjoy each moment." 
~Rene Groom

To join the Fun of Friday FarmGirls@Heart, please include a link to my blog in your post, or grab one of my FFG buttons for your posts and to place in your sidebar! You can grab code HERE.

If you live in the U.S.A., more likely than not you are in the grip of a massive heat wave. Here in Chicagoland, Illinois, our thermometers are reading in the upper 90's and have hit the 100 degree (37.7 degrees Celsius) mark. Factoring in the incredibly high humidity, the body feels that it is 110-115 degrees (43-46 degrees Celsius) out there. All week long, Bryan's been working at Kline Creek Farm every day, all day. It's an 1890's living history farm where they do all the work of the farm in 19th Century style...and costume! Needless to say, it is really, really hot out there. I pray a lot for him and others I know who have to work outside in this heat; PTL that he's come home each evening a little more tired than usual, but otherwise feeling fine. I think he stops at the Dairy Queen that's just a quarter-mile from the farm every evening on his way home to get something icy.

Last week was Kline Creek Farm's annual "Thank-Q BBQ" picnic dinner, an event where they provide a delicious BBQ'd feast for all the Farm's volunteers and their families. Farm staff are there, as well, since they are the ones saying "thank you!" Bryan has been both this year...a volunteer from July to April, then a staff-member ("seasonal staff," to be precise) from May until now. I've been attending these BBQ's for 8 years now, I think.

It's amazing to look back over the years and see our involvement with this amazing place that has such a shaping influence on my son. I love it there...and I miss it, desperately sometimes.


May 2005 - Nathan (standing) and Bryan (up a tree) pruning in the orchard at Kline Creek Farm



Winter 2010 - Bryan leading Annie, the Percheron draft horse, out of the barn at Kline Creek Farm

 Today I plan to organize and declutter my air-conditioned house. My focus will remain largely on the closet that holds almost 10 years-worth of homeschool stuff. I may need to take my horse and buggy (just kidding...it's a station wagon) to the store to buy a couple more plastic storage buckets. Wow, it's a LOT of stuff! Then there are those cloth napkins waiting to be cut out and hemmed...and much, much more that is too overwhelming to think about!

One thing at a time, praying throughout the day for Bryan and all of you who may be out in the oven that is the U.S.A. today.

Did you:

♥Grow it yourself?

♥Make it in your kitchen using REAL FOOD (not processed food product)?

♥Make it with your own two hands instead of buying it at ***-Mart?

♥Do something with your way of life that's connected you back to this beautiful green earth (what's left of it, anyway!) that God has given us?

If so, you've got the Heart of a FarmGirl, whether you live in the country,

the city, or the suburbs!

Share your doings in a post today, and link it here to join Friday FarmGirls@Heart! 

Here's how to join the fun:

1) Grab an FFG (Friday FarmGirls) Button for your blog and post it in your sidebar so others can join with you. I have 6 styles you can choose from, and you can get code HERE.

2) Write your post and publish it on Friday...be sure to put your FFG Button at the top of your post, and link it to my blog ( http://www.illinoislori.blogspot.com/ ) so your friends will know where to come to join in each week.

3) Add your name and the URL of your post to the "Mister Linky" provided at the end of my post each week.

4) Leave me a comment, and visit the blogs of the other participants listed and leave them comments as well. If you visit and leave comments, you'll be visited and receive comments...it's as simple as that!

Leave a note...I love to hear from you!

Subscribe via email for blog updates: CLICK HERE to subscribe

Thursday Tea Talk with Ruth (7/21/11)

Click the graphic above to join me and our lovely hostess, Ruth,
for Tea Talk each Thursday!

I'm having...Green Mountain's Island Coconut Coffee, in my Hawaiian Hibiscus Mug.



I'm feeling...tired, frustrated, and a bit overwhelmed by a too-long-to-do list that shuts me down.

On my mind...trying to find serenity here in suburbia (my years-long adventure, which named my blog!).

"Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.  I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.  I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."

(Philippians 4:11-13 NASB)

My silly dog, who always likes to come to Tea Talk.

Leave a note...I love to hear from you!

Subscribe via email for blog updates: CLICK HERE to subscribe

Friday FarmGirls@ Heart...CROP FAILURE!!!

"There is rhythm to being a farmgirl. It is the rhythm of working hard when there is work to be done. It is the rhythm of finding joy in the "doing" of the work. It is also the rhythm of slowing down to enjoy each moment." 
~Rene Groom

To join the Fun of Friday FarmGirls@Heart, please include a link to my blog in your post, or grab one of my FFG buttons for your posts and to place in your sidebar! You can grab code HERE.

Weeeee-elllll, what can I say? Guess I'm really just a FarmGirl at heart, afterall! For the 2nd year in a row, my patio-grown veggie garden is a failure. Three years ago, I had delicious romaine lettuce ALL SUMMER, plenty of green beans, and small but plentiful patio tomatoes.

This year's line-up of failures:

Bok Choy (I don't know how to grow this stuff...it never got big, and then flowered. I tried to break off the blooms, but they got faster than me).

Sugar Snap Peas (the real heartbreakers...we got 19 spectacular, sweet snaps, which we stir-fried for 10 seconds in olive oil and just a pinch of salt. I wanted a hundred of these!).

Romaine Lettuce (got too crowded in there while we were in Florida...never got big, and what's here is tough and bitter).











There are two things that I think happened here. First, I didn't get enough fertilizer in the pots. Second, I know that when I had my bumper crops initially, I used the soil from Garden Supply Company that was specially made for self-watering containers, which is what these are. I didn't want to pay to ship that stuff the last couple of years, and I also wanted to use "organic soil," which you can buy at hardware stores now.

I have, to my GREAT disgust, learned that the famous brandname's "organic" potting soil is treated human manure. That sure isn't what I thought I was buying! So next year, my patio pots will have the soil I used the first time around, and plenty of fertilizer mixed in that.

THAT SAID, all is not lost...we have a bumper crop of sweet, delicious raspberries. The last two days Nathan and I have picked enough for our family to have a full ramekin of these red treasures with our supper, plus lots more. I plan to make little hand-pies with them...our favorite treat! We have 3 raspberry bushes that have matured over the last 5 or 6 years. We get two harvests from them...the first and largest in early July, the second in about September. What a scrumptuous blessing!

Did you:

♥Grow it yourself?

♥Make it in your kitchen using REAL FOOD (not processed food product)?

♥Make it with your own two hands instead of buying it at ***-Mart?

♥Do something with your way of life that's connected you back to this beautiful green earth (what's left of it, anyway!) that God has given us?

If so, you've got the Heart of a FarmGirl, whether you live in the country,

the city, or the suburbs!

Share your doings in a post today, and link it here to join Friday FarmGirls@Heart! 

Here's how to join the fun:

1) Grab an FFG (Friday FarmGirls) Button for your blog and post it in your sidebar so others can join with you. I have 6 styles you can choose from, and you can get code HERE.

2) Write your post and publish it on Friday...be sure to put your FFG Button at the top of your post, and link it to my blog ( http://www.illinoislori.blogspot.com/ ) so your friends will know where to come to join in each week.

3) Add your name and the URL of your post to the "Mister Linky" provided at the end of my post each week.

4) Leave me a comment, and visit the blogs of the other participants listed and leave them comments as well. If you visit and leave comments, you'll be visited and receive comments...it's as simple as that!

Leave a note...I love to hear from you!
Subscribe via email for blog updates: CLICK HERE to subscribe

My Journey to Honest Food...Think Those Eggs are Organic??? Guess Again...

80% of today's "organic" eggs are factory-farmed. Think those organic eggs from your Whole Foods Market are the real deal? Better have a look at this:


Here is the Organic Egg Scorecard...you'll need to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list to learn about your Egglands Best, Horizon Organic, and Land O Lakes products.

Please, please, please...

• Buy your food from a local farmer if there is ANY way you can do it.
• Whole Foods (in my opinion) is no longer an honorable source of family-farmed foods.
• Find a small-scale farmer...shake his/her hand...support them in their efforts to maintain the small, private, American FAMILY farm. Pray for them.

Leave a note...I love to hear from you!

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My Journey to Honest Food - Interview with Farmer Brad

I have watched many interviews with Farmer Brad of Home Sweet Farm. This is a really good one, it's very brief, so you DO have time to watch it.



Do you have just 9 more minutes? Learn more about how to recognize Honest Food with Farmer Brad:

Please, please, please...

• Buy your food from a local farmer if there is ANY way you can do it.
• Whole Foods (in my opinion) is no longer an honorable source of family-farmed foods.
• Find a small-scale farmer...shake his/her hand...support them in their efforts to maintain the small, private, American FAMILY farm. Pray for them.

Leave a note...I love to hear from you!

Subscribe via email for blog updates: CLICK HERE to subscribe

Friday FarmGirls at Heart...Fabric Napkins

"There is rhythm to being a farmgirl. It is the rhythm of working hard when there is work to be done. It is the rhythm of finding joy in the "doing" of the work. It is also the rhythm of slowing down to enjoy each moment." 
~Rene Groom

To join the Fun of Friday FarmGirls@Heart, please include a link to my blog in your post, or grab one of my FFG buttons for your posts and to place in your sidebar! You can grab code HERE.

Today has been one of taking care of my parents' finances. Not too "farm-like," but very much a reality of anyone's life who is helping older parents. But all farm-y-ness is not lost...this week I enjoyed a trip to my local Hobby Lobby store to buy some fabric for cloth napkins I am making. I want to do away with the paper napkins that have been filling my trash can for years and years. I plan to make 16 cloth napkins, and just use and re-use them. There will be plenty for company and for our own personal use! If we go over 16 on the guest list, then I'll buy a small package of  paper napkins for that occasion.

 

Here are the fabric patterns I've chosen (very little light/white, these will get stained!):

I will make 4 of each pattern. They will be about 14" square...nice and big!!! My camera isn't an expensive one, so the colors aren't quite true...the bottom one is a nice, chocolate-y brown, and the greens are more grass-green that the sage-green that shows up here. The top fabric is a lovely cranberry red, not so burgundy-looking.  They will look really nice in my kitchen! (My home totally lives for autumn, color-wise!)

 

I'll post a pic when I finally get them sewn, and they are in their new home downstairs. Let me know what you're working on!

Did you:

♥Grow it yourself?

♥Make it in your kitchen using REAL FOOD (not processed food product)?

♥Make it with your own two hands instead of buying it at ***-Mart?

♥Do something with your way of life that's connected you back to this beautiful green earth (what's left of it, anyway!) that God has given us?

If so, you've got the Heart of a FarmGirl, whether you live in the country,

the city, or the suburbs!

Share your doings in a post today, and link it here to join Friday FarmGirls@Heart! 

Here's how to join the fun:

1) Grab an FFG (Friday FarmGirls) Button for your blog and post it in your sidebar so others can join with you. I have 6 styles you can choose from, and you can get code HERE.

2) Write your post and publish it on Friday...be sure to put your FFG Button at the top of your post, and link it to my blog ( http://www.illinoislori.blogspot.com/ ) so your friends will know where to come to join in each week.

3) Add your name and the URL of your post to the "Mister Linky" provided at the end of my post each week.

4) Leave me a comment, and visit the blogs of the other participants listed and leave them comments as well. If you visit and leave comments, you'll be visited and receive comments...it's as simple as that!

Leave a note...I love to hear from you!
Subscribe via email for blog updates: CLICK HERE to subscribe