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mamakay

managing a household of 10 by the grace of God

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Zones

March 6, 2014 by mamakay Leave a Comment

20140206_163139

I have divided our home into 5 zones:

  1. Living Room/Dining Area
  2. Kitchen
  3. Library/Playroom
  4. Bedrooms
  5. Big Room (This room is our Entry Way, Family Room & School Area)

We spend 30-45 minutes each day working on the particular zone for that day. I assign different smaller jobs to each child and pick 1 or 2 of the younger kids to be runners (take things were they belong). We get a trash bag and remove all the trash from the area. Then we pick up anything that doesn’t belong in the area and the runner takes them to their proper location. We then pull any furniture out that we can are pick up under and behind it. Next we wipe down the surfaces. Finally we sweep or vacuum the floor and then move everything back in.

After we consistently did this for a couple of weeks it was amazing how little time it takes to thoroughly clean the room. One week it only took 15 minutes to the living room/dining area! Everyone was so thrilled! I haven’t had nearly the trouble getting everyone to help on zone cleaning ever since!

MamaKay

Filed Under: Homemaking Tagged With: 15 Minutes, Amp, Area Kitchen, Bedrooms, Dining Area, Furniture, Jobs, Kitchen Library, Little Time, Living Room, Playroom, Proper Location, Runners, Surfaces, Trash Bag

Thanksgiving 2011

November 24, 2011 by mamakay Leave a Comment

This year I am so thankful that my girls are getting big enough to be a great help preparing our Thanksgiving Feast!

 

Here is this year’s menu (partially for my own reference):

Roasted Turkey from Smockity Frocks

This is similar to the Alton Brown version I usually make except you cook it at 500 degrees the whole time but put water in the pan underneath. I put an onion, apple and fresh herbs (sage, thyme, & rosemary) in the cavity. We roasted a 23 pound bird in 1 1/2 hours & it was so yummy! Crispy skin on the outside & juicy but cooked on the inside!

Cranberry Apple Sausage Dressing from Allrecipes.com

Everyone enjoyed this but it was a little dry. I think next time I will double the broth.

 

Mashed Potatoes (10lbs)

Sweet Potatoes with Roasted Marshmallows

I cook the sweet potatoes then mash them with butter, a little orange juice and pumpkin pie spices. We then put the mixture in a 9 x 13 pan and top with mini marshmallows. Bake for 30 minutes at 350.

Green Bean Casserole

1potato made this recipe this year. We made our own white sauce instead of using cream soup and added some sour cream to thicken it up. Then we mixed in greens beans that we boiled for 5 minutes and some fried onions. Baked for 30 minutes at 350.

 

Butterhorn Rolls from Balancing Bedlam and Beauty

These are a family favorite. We baked 4 dozen rolls and saved the rest to make cinnamon rolls  later.

Grandma brought the applesauce and cranberry sauce.

Pumpkin Pie

We roasted a pumpkin we grew this year but it didn’t taste very pumpkiny.

Apple Pie

I’ll have to post this recipe separately sometime. It is a wonderful recipe that uses 4 pounds of apples in 1 pie. It’s a little extra effort but so worth it!

Apple Cider from my uncle’s apples and my cousin’s apple cider press. YUM!

 

 

We had a wonderful day as a family and enjoying the fruits of our labor. We were able to incorporate many things that we grew ourselves and made ourselves!

Thank you Lord for the abundance you have provided for us and the time we had to spend as a family working and enjoying the day together!

Filed Under: Holidays, recipe Tagged With: 30 Minutes, Alton Brown, Amp, Apple Cider Press, Apple Pie, Apple Sausage, Applesauce, Butterhorn Rolls, Cavity, Cinnamon Rolls, Cream Soup, Fresh Herbs, Fried Onions, Green Bean Casserole, Mash, Mini Marshmallows, Mixture, Onion, Orange Juice, Pound Bird, Pumpkin Pie, Rosemary, Sausage Dressing, Smockity Frocks, Spices, Sweet P, Sweet Potatoes, Thanksgiving Feast, Whole Time, Wonderful Day

Meatballs

November 22, 2011 by mamakay 1 Comment

Ingredients

6 lbs ground beef (or a mixture I like to use 1 part beef, 1 part pork & 1 part venison)
2 cups bread crumbs
1 cup finely diced onions
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 cups tomato sauce
6 eggs

Mix the ingredients together. Using a small scoop make meatballs and place them on a cookie sheet. (It is really important not to handle the meatballs very much as it makes the fat melt on your hands & thus dries out the meat.) Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees until cooked through. Remove to another clean pan and after cooling place in the freezer to flash freeze. (This takes an hour or so but it can wait on you.) After they are individually frozen put meatballs into bag.

These work great by themselves, served with BBQ Sauce, Sweet & Sour Sauce, in Stroganoff or with Spaghetti.

Makes approximately 120 meatballs

Filed Under: cooking day, recipe, whole foods Tagged With: 15 Minutes, Amp, Bread Crumbs, Cookie Sheet, Diced Onions, Dries, Eggs, Freezer, Garlic, Ground Beef, Meatballs, Mixture, Scoop, Spaghetti, Stroganoff, Tablespoon Garlic Powder, Tablespoon Salt, Tomato Sauce, Venison

1000 Gifts – Made it!

October 4, 2011 by mamakay Leave a Comment

After beginning my list of 1000 Gifts (inspired by Ann Voskamp) in November of 2006 I actually completed my list. (I have been ever so much more diligent in adding to my list over the last year.)

Here are some of my final entries:

957. A beautiful harvest yesterday: tomatoes of all kinds, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, & lemon cucumbers

964. Apples ripening on the tree

967. Waking from a nap to a cool breeze blowing in the window

977. Great Grandma celebrating birthdays with us

988. Van is paid off!

991. Homemade Apple Cider

994. Circle Time Restored

999. Sharing Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts with the ladies at church

1000. Made it to 1000!

I am only beginning. I already have a new journal for my next 1000 gifts.

I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders.
Psalm 9:1

Filed Under: 1000 Gifts Tagged With: Amp, Apples, Blowing In The Window, Celebrating Birthdays, Circle Time, Cool Breeze, Gifts, Grandma, Heart, Homemade Apple Cider, Nap, O Lord, Psalm 9, Tomatoes, Voskamp, Yellow Squash

Homesteading

June 1, 2011 by mamakay 1 Comment

We moved to Montana last January with plans to homestead. After much work and many false starts we settled on a nice piece of property just outside of town with no restrictions. We have 1.33 acres. The property came with several trees including 6 large cottonwoods, 1 pine tree, 4 plum trees, 2 apple trees and 1 unknown tree :). We have a pasture with 3 irrigation ditches running through it. There is a small barn of sorts as well. We also have a well.

Our goal is to have a sustainable homestead that will provide food enough to feed our family with exception to a few things we can’t grow (i.e. wheat, coffee, some fruits, oils, etc…) and have enough to sell to support our family. We intend to use as many permaculture ideas as we can and to use intensive grazing using multiple animals. So far we have 50 chickens (half for meat & half for eggs), 3 rabbits (for breeding, possible eating & for fertilizer), a dog for herding, watching & playing and 2 kittens for mousers. We plan on adding sheep, a cow for meat, dairy cow and maybe a goat.

While in Arizona we planted several raised bed gardens and last year we used Grandma’s 20 x 40 ft row garden. This year we have greatly expanded our gardening. Several things are experiments and we had to break lots of new ground so we will be fighting grass all summer.

Here is a list of what we’ve planted:

Potatoes: Yukon Gold, Red, & Russets in potato bins

6 crowns of rhubarb

25 raspberry canes (thanks to a friend who gave us her thinings)

2 blackberry canes

2 blueberry canes

75 strawberry plants (again thanks to a friend) planted in mound planters

8 crowns of asparagus

Herb Mound: Chives, Lavender, Basil, Thyme (English, German, Orange & Lemon), Parsley, Mint, Echinecea, Yarrow, Chamomille, Rosemary

Onions: (some for storage & some for green onions) white, yellow, red and Walla Walla

In our backyard beds we have:

Lettuce (multiple kinds)

Beets

Broccoli

Peas

Kale

Swiss Chard

More Onions

Acorn Squash

Carrots

Spinach

Lemon Cucumbers

Zucchini

Sweet Peppers

We also have tomatoes planted in Topsy Turvey Planters & some in the garden

Out the other garden plot we have:

A 3 Sisters Plot with Corn, Pole Beans and Butternut Squash

A Pumpkin patch

Zucchini

Yellow Summer Squash

Watermelon

Cantaloupe

Rows of Carrots, Peas, Green Beans & Yellow Wax Beans

We also have planted a patch of Sunflowers in front of the fence.

I hope to keep this blog updated regularly this summer as things grow and we take dominion over this plot of land that the Lord has given us dominion over.

Link here to see more gardening posts:

Filed Under: Homestead Tagged With: Acorn Squash, Amp, Apple Trees, Basil Thyme, Bed Gardens, Chamomille, Chickens, Cottonwoods, Dairy Cow, Fertilizer, Ft Row, Goat, Grandma, Green Onions, Homestead, Irrigation Ditches, Kittens, Mousers, New Ground, Orange Amp, Pasture, Pine Tree, Plum Trees, Potato Bins, Rabbits, Russets, Sheep, Strawberry Plants, Walla Walla, Wheat, Yukon Gold

2/25/11 Blessings from Above

February 25, 2011 by mamakay Leave a Comment

We had a wonderful week in Arizona albeit crazy trying to see so many people and get so much accomplished in one week.

Here are some of my gifts from the last couple weeks (#456-511)

457. A fresh blanket of snow.

458. Laundry: 10 loads in just one hour.

465. A trip to Arizona

466. Spending good time with my mom.

465. Getting together with friends that I haven’t seen in over a year and having it feel just like normal…

466. Enjoying a sky ride over the zoo with 4potato

471. Feeling loved and missed.

477. French onion soup with a friend!

478. Sweet potato fries – yum!

479. Bringing home a bucket of lemons picked right off the tree.

480. Shopping at Fresh & Easy

481. Shopping at Sprouts

482. Getting my haircut

483. Getting contacts!

485. Safe Travels

486. Time to talk & dream with my dh.

490. Hope of friends visiting us here.

491. Feeling good about moving to Montana

492. Bringing home the rest of our stuff

493. Washer is fixed!

494. Furnace is fixed!

497. Having multiple sources of heat in this house!

502. The sun shining and making the snow sparkle.

503. Taxes completed!

507. The smell of fresh bread coming out of the oven.

509. A husband that works so hard to provide for us.

511. Grace!

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Filed Under: 1000 Gifts Tagged With: 511, Amp, Blanket Of Snow, Blessings, Bringing Home, Couple Weeks, Dh, French Onion Soup, Furnace, Good Time, Haircut, Laundry, Lemons, Moving To Montana, Safe Travels, Sky Ride, Sources Of Heat, Sparkle, Sweet Potato Fries, Yum

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So glad you stopped by. I am a Christian wife and mother of 8 in the middle years. My kids are aged 4 to 20 and just about every 2 years in between. I write about our life as a big family, what God is personally doing in my life, food and books.

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