I am so excited! My brother in law Travis is making me a cutting board. I've always wanted a really big chopping block and now I'm getting one. It is going to be 23"x23" and will fit on my counter right beside my stove. I will post some pictures when I get it.
Eric is out riding. Morgan is not here and I really wish she was. I really miss her when she's gone.
I'm trying to decide what to do first. I have all kinds of projects to get working on.

I have been thinking alot about my life and the way that I live it. I have a great life but there are a lot of changes that I want to make. First off I am going to get my house in order and organized. It's clean, very clean, but I hold on to every thing. I am going to find a church that I feel that I am learning what God wants me to. I am going to start cooking two meals every time that I cook so that I can have a stockpile in the freezer. I do have to start back to work in January, so if I have things in the freezer my family can still have a healthy meal every night. I am going to start exercising every day. I need to start taking better care of myself. I don't want to become one of my patients. I really want to be a happier person this year. I am really going to start working on selling things on my etsy site. I would love to not have to work at the hospital any longer. If I could just go in and take care of my patients and spend time with them and not have to worry about the paper work and who is watching over my back, I would love my job. But its not that way and it never will be. We have talked about trying to have a baby this year. I am so very excited about this and scared to death at the same time. I have set guite a few goals for myself this year. I want to learn some new things, rug hooking, knitting socks, I want to grow some new things in the garden, and I want to find new recipes to make with what I grow. I plan to make all sorts of salsa's, jams, jellies, chutneys, and things like that for Christmas gifts next year. I have received some very good cookbooks and canning books over the last month or so that is going to help me with that. I also plan to get my recipes organized, in binders and on cards. I want to get rid of my magazine collections and make room for other things. So I plan on making a big scrap book of the things I like out of the magazines that I have and recycle the left overs. I am now a Stampinup Demonstrator, so I will be having some Stampinup camps here at my home as well. Its going to a busy and fun happy organized year! Oh and I get to split up my weekends between Eric and Morgan. He will be racing every weekend from February to April for the Wake Forest cycling team. Morgan will playing volleyball during that time and then go straight into soft ball. I won't have a single free weekend this spring. Oh well.

I got a really good cook book for Christmas from my husbands Aunt Kathy, Stirring Performances. I made a blueberry pound cake yesterday. It was so good.

Blueberry Pound Cake
1 pint blueberries
3 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks butter, softened
2 c sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325. Toss berries with 1/4 c of the flour and set aside. Sift remaining flour with baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a mixer, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and veat until fluffy. Fold dry ingredients into batter until well blended. Gently stir in berries. Turn into a greased and floured 10-inch tube pan. Bake 1 hour and 15 minutes, until cake tests done. Cool cake in pan for 10 minutes before turning onto cooling rack.

Enjoy!

By the way, the sour dough pancakes were very good. They tasted like buckwheat cakes. The bread turned out very good as well.

What a wonderful Christmas! It has been an absolute blessing to be able to spend time with my family. Of course all of the great food was nice too:) My dear husband was so generous and thoughtful this year, as always. He gave me a down jacket, an immersion blender, an enamal coated cast iron frying pan, a pink t shirt that has a tractor on it, a white gold necklace with a heart and a set of family rings that are white gold with his, Morgan's and my birthstones. He said that they were left individual to be able to add too them easily. The jeweler made a mistake with them, so I get them in a few days. Morgan gave me a picture album with some beautiful pictures that she had her cousin take of her, I love it. She is so beautiful. She also made me some pot holders. She did an absolute beautiful job. My mom and dad gave me a grinding mill and a bag of wheat, bread pans, round cake pans, a pink john deere sweatshirt, cook book, crocheted dish cloths.
I can't wait to use my grinder! I also can't wait for things to start to get back to normal around here so I can start some new projects.
My sister got her first sewing machine, she is so excited. I am so excited for her. She also got her very first computer, which will be here in about a week. She is so excited to have email and to get on MaryJane's farm. She's a little tired of hearing my mom and I talk about it, so now she gets to as well.
I hope that you all had as wonderful a Christmas as our family did.

Last Sunday I started my very first ever sour dough starter. I got the recipe from my favorite book Mary Jane's Ideabook. So after feeding it everyday all week, today it was ready to give up a cup. I was not able to bake a loaf of bread today, maybe tomorrow. But what I did do was make some pancake batter for in the morning. Yum, yum!
Tomorrow is the first of our Christmas get togethers at my Aunt Wanda's house. I love seeing her. Then we will open gifts here early Christmas morning before going to breakfast at my Mom and Dad's house. Wednesday and Saturday with Eric's family. Eric is off work all week, I hope that the weather stays nice so that he can go riding. He's so much happier when he does.
Merry Christmas!!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a very disorganized person. And very messy at times. Especially my car, sewing room and closet. I come from a long line of pack rats. One of my goals this year is to get organized and stay organized. I started some of that today in my sewing room. I cleaned out the closet there and put in some shelves to nicely stack folded fabric on. I moved a book shelf into my room and went through all of my books, I have a stack to take to the library to donate and some to give away to anyone else who wants them. I also have a ton of nursing text books that I will never use again, don't know why I thought that I would and did not get some money back by selling them back to the bookstore 3 years ago when I was in school. I go back to work on January 7th, I plan on tackling a room everyday (that we are here) until then. I am just so tired of being cluttered.
We are planning on trying to get pregnant this spring, so I want it all done by then.

Well we are home and I have been a busy little bee. I have been wrapping Christmas presents, of course I still have some to finish making. I rearranged my sewing room to give me more space and a better cutting area. I have been so inspired by some other bloggers that I have been reading. They seem to have it all together and it makes me a little envious. But the only way to get over that is to get up and do it myself. Maybe someday someone will be saying that about my blog.

Last night I made the most scrumptious chicken pot pie. It is so simple and the recipe makes 2, so we had one last night and the other went into the freezer for later. I am really trying to get things lined up to make healthier dinners for my family. I have always had a garden and frozen what I could and did some canning. But the canner I have I purchased for $5 at a yard sale, it is big enough to can 5 quarts, but I can't get a new seal for it. So for now I've only been able to do hot water baths. I'm hoping to get a new canner before this summer. I am going to just save my money and pay full price (something that I really hate doing). But it will save me money in the long run, so it's all worth it. Here are some pictures of the pie from last night. I will post the recipe for anyone who is interested.

This morning I awoke to an ice storm. It was very pretty. Only because it had already stopped raining and had warmed up. It's almost gone now.

Well, we're in Norfolk. It's beautiful weather, 75 degrees today. We've been having a nice time, although I can't wait to get back home.
Tomorrow I get to meet my very first Farm Girl from MJ's website. Nance in France and I are going meet up for the afternoon. We spoke on the phone and she is so nice, I can't wait!

Wow, I have been busy this week. I made a trip to Winchester, in the snow (the first one of the year), to make a beautiful basket with Joanna. I will definately be going back, it was so much fun. I got my stampin up kit, and have not had any time to play with it yet, but I will tomorrow and this week. I have just about all of my Christmas presents. There are still a few that I still need to make, and of course I still need to wrap them. The tree is up and decorated.
We had our Farm girl cookie exchange this afternoon. And oh can these girls bake. I have never had such wonderful cookies, and all at one time. We had a wonderful time. Our next meeting we start our quilt blocks. I'm so excited.
Tomorrow I will be going to Bonnie's to work on my stamps and make some cards and projects. Then we leave on Monday to go to Norfolk for a meeting for Eric's work. We will be home on Friday. I am happy to have some time with him, however I will miss Morgan. But she is 13 and acts like she does not need me anymore. I know she does, I just wish she wanted to.

We saw The Nutcracker last night, it was beautiful. We really enjoyed it, although I started getting a headache from someones perfume. Which made me get very sick by the time we got home. But I did feel better this morning.
My husband must really love me. This year I decided to do the "green thing" and get a balled Christmas tree that we can plant in our front yard. It did not look so big at the lot, but when we got it home well that was another story. It took quite a lot of pulling, pushing and tugging to get it inside. But it is up and will be decorated tomorrow. I was good and let Eric take a nice nap afterward while I made him a homemade chicken pot pie. I really enjoy doing things for him like that. I wish that I could do more.

I have been home for a few days and getting all kinds of stuff done. I am off for a month and it hardly seems like enough time for me to get everything done that I want to do.
But I found some inspiration this morning, although I get inspiration every morning when I get up and read my bible and do my morning prayers. But I found a blog that is so spiritual and uplifting, I will definately be reading again. She is hosting a giveaway on her blog, if you go here and leave a post she will enter you into her drawing, elizabethssimplejourney.blogspot.com.

I had my niece and nephew spend the night with Morgan last night. So tonight I am supposed to have a date with my wonderful husband. Not sure yet what we'll do. Tomorrow we are taking Morgan to see The Nutcracker. I'm so excited!