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May 12, 2025 – Handmade Mother’s Day Card

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Happy Mother’s Day – 1 day late! I had a very nice, full Mother’s Day weekend. Saturday morning we were up bright and early to go to breakfast with my DD #1, her husband, DD #2, and DH at Copper Penny in West Bend. Afterward, just us girls wandered around one of the local thrift stores and found some interesting and questionable items. That’s why we go! Next stop was Hobby Lobby for craft supplies.

In the afternoon, I took DD #2 to help with her school’s plant sale fundraiser. It was a beautiful day, yet DD had a pretty bad attitude and wasn’t cooperating very well. We sorted out all of the plants, then I took her home. I came back to help with plant pick up. We ended the day with DH seasoning our new grill and making smash burgers. I also had a pretty nice sunburn on my neck and shoulders. 🙁

Sunday morning we headed off to church, Bible Study, and Sunday School. It was the last day of Sunday School and the kids sang in the late service. After church we headed to my mother-in-laws house to have lunch with her, our cousin, and her kids. We ate, drank some nice wine, played games, and talked. It was great! We came home, DD made steaks and mushrooms on the new grill, and I went and practiced pitching for our coed softball game this Tuesday at the ball diamond near our house.

Mother’s Day Gifts!

I love ALL of the gifts and everything my family did for Mother’s Day this year! Not pictured is a green beaded bracelet DD #2 gave me in the card she made at school. She has really gotten into working with pony beads lately and made me one in my favorite color. I also LOVE the flower cards they made for “Mum’s Day”. I think we will make a few of those together in summer!

Handmade “Mum’s Day” card from school. (We aren’t British!)

I hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day this year! May is looking to be a beautiful month. I know many farmers in the area planned on planting during Mother’s Day and celebrated with a nice lunch during a break. Many people are outside working in their yards and gardens, and our garden is rototilled and waiting to be planted. I pray it’s a wonderful growing year!

Have a Fantastic Monday!

Missie S.

March 28, 2025 – Spring Break, but we could use a Break from Spring…

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Hello! Fancy meeting you here (on my blog that I have a difficult time keeping up with)! Things are moving! Not fast, not slow, but they are moving right along. I am working on sock monkeys, but mostly homemaking things. This month I tried my hand at making yogurt in my crock pot and it turned out pretty nicely! I will share more on that later, but I am really glad I started on that. The yogurt is so delicious, more healthy, and cheaper to make than buying it from the store. I have also been making all of our bread, sourdough and regular white bread. I have been making bread for years, here and there. I have committed more time to this, however, after learning more about all the garbage they add to our cheap bread. Enough of that. We are doing better.

At the beginning of the month I started my tomato and bell pepper seeds. I still need to start some marigolds and other things, but I am so excited for my garden! When I am feeling down during one of our gloomy Wisconsin spring days, I look at my plants and think about my garden. Not so much about all of the weeds I’m going to pull and bug bites I will get, but pretty flowers and yummy veggies. 😀

Tomato (round pots) and Bell Pepper (square pots) seeds started on March 4, 2025, and 24 days later.

I also tried something new this year: winter sowing. With winter sowing you start your seeds in a mini greenhouse, like a milk jug or other plastic container with a lid. You plant your seeds in some dirt, cover the container, and put the container (greenhouse) outside where it is a little sheltered, but gets some sun. As the days warm up and cool down the plants germinate and grow like they would outdoors. You do winter sowing with hardy or semi-hardy seeds. For my first year experiment I planted two containers of broccoli, two containers of radishes, and one container of snapdragons. We will see how that goes. I can’t wait!

Winter Sowing 1st Year – Broccoli, Radishes, and Snapdragons

We are wrapping up spring break at DD’s school. Earlier in the week we enjoyed two nights at a waterpark in Wisconsin Dells. We had a blast! DD is at a friend’s a house and will be coming home in a few hours, so I am off to get a few things done before then.

I hope you are having an excellent Friday and looking forward to a great weekend!

Missie S. 😀

January 17, 2025 – Cleaning up Christmas and Working on Taxes

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Happy New Year, All! Ah, but this month is filled with suck! I started the new year off sick. It took a while to get motivated to get anything started or done. Now that we are in the 3rd week of January everything is moving again.

Honestly, I didn’t have a merry Christmas. I sang along to Christmas songs, we watched Christmas movies, I baked Christmas cookies, we went to Advent Church services, and did a little Christmas shopping. I just didn’t feel the Christmas this year, despite everyone reminding me of the true meaning of Christmas.

You could really see the lack of Christmas in the decorating of our Christmas tree. To start, we got the (real) tree two weeks late this year. It was a beautiful tree and I treated it very well. It drank until the very end. I got the lights on, the multi-colored ones I don’t really care for, but they must be on with the star. I put the tree skirt on and ornaments that we made or were given this year. Otherwise, we didn’t put another ornament on the tree. And it was ok. I really just want the smell of the tree and the lights on at night. We decorated around the house pretty well and DH put up lights outside. There was definitely something missing, though.

Our Christmas tree 2025 – The most beautiful shape ever, but I hate those lights!

I have been working on taking Christmas down. We got a little impatient and put some Valentine clings up in the windows already. This morning I removed the star, lights, and few ornaments that were on the tree. It will go on the burn pile over lunch. It is done, poor thing!

Poor Christmas Tree! I will miss your lights at night. January is lousy!

While I was packing away the star, in its original box, I noticed in the corner it’s printed the star came from Kmart for $6.99. I believe I purchased that star back around 1999? 2000? I’m not sure exactly when I got it, but I remember Kmart, and I miss Kmart, and all the other neat things that used to be and are no more. Like Shopko. And it looks like Joann Fabric is on the way out too. It made me wonder about how things will look this time next year when I am putting Christmas away. What other stores may be gone, which people might not be with us next year, what will this year look like? It’s kind of worrisome but also kind of exciting too.

Our OLD Christmas tree star that I love!
Remember Kmart?!

I guess I just have to work harder at feeling Christmas-y next year. Life is what you make it.

I am going to wrap up putting Christmas away and get started on my taxes soon. The fun never stops! 😀

Have a Wonderful, Productive Friday!

Missie S.