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A heritage skill that i have been given by my mother and grandmother is crochet, and i am very grateful for it.  I love having it.  In addition to having a great (and cheap) hobby for relaxation, crocheting is a great source of homemade and often very appreciated gifts.  Not to mention, again, cheap. Right now, my crocheting hobby is very cheap.  Over the past two years, i have accumulated an entire chest full of free yarn.  Two different people gifted me with entire trash bags filled with old, unused yarn...one a friend, and one a freecycle member.  This makes it very easy for me to give inexpensive, unique, heartfelt, hand made gifts that cost me nothing but my heart, thoughts, and labor.  A labor i love. This weekend, i had a one-year old's birthday party to attend.  While i love this particular one-year-old, i had a hard time deciding what i should give him for a gift.  One-year-olds are tricky like that.  I started looking and came upon a crochet project i have never done be

Incubating chicks -- i started a new hatch on Friday.  Twenty-four new eggs. Broody hens incubating chicks -- i have a new broody hen, who is safe in the brooder, and i gave her seven eggs on Friday night.  She took to the move immediately and never protested.  What a relief! I have a hunch i won't see those eggs for even a second until they hatch.  She's a very determined and steadfast mother hen. Sassafrass -- This morning, i went sassafrass root hunting.  Since it grows a little more heartily than the weeds here, there was lots to be found.  Grand fun.  Grand smell.  I'm going to try some tea this year i think.  If it tastes as good as it smells......yum! Cold weather.  It was 40 degrees this morning.  I had to get out my long sleeved t-shirt winter clothes so i could go outside and take care of my animals.  Cool weather makes me want to do stuff.  I love it.  Let me clarify.  I love Texas' cool weather.  I do not love the cold weather of the norther

On a rare political note, this morning i got to see a video of the House Minority Leader, John Boehner, in his Weekly Republican Address, and i fell in love . . . in a political way. Then i did some searching and found his speech to the House, which he gave in March, before they voted on the health care bill.  And i fell in love again. I like him because he doesn't seem to mind telling the truth in clear, succinct words, and because he seems to understand the meaning of the word, "representative."  So i thought i would share.  I don't consider myself a Republican, or anything else with an official name.  I simply believe in the original Constitution of the United States - and in the right to vote in officials who support my Christian World View.  Nuff said. Also, Tuesday is election day.  If you haven't already, i hope you'll get to studying your local sample ballots and learn about who you're voting for in every level of government.  It's important

I have splinters in my fingers, soreness in my shoulders, pain in my butt muscles gluteas maximus fanny, and satisfaction in my heart. I believe i've mentioned our chicken management issues lately.  In addition to the numbers i've mentioned, i should also tell you that my younger chickens have not figured out where to go to sleep, and i have spent nearly every evening for the past couple of months moving between 12 and 33 chicks from some unsafe, unsheltered place where they insist on sleeping, to some place safe.  This is an evening ritual which quickly grows old. Also it has a solution. Once a chicken recognizes a certain place as home, he or she will go back to that place to sleep.  Happily, one can teach a chicken where home is by locking it into "home" for about a week.  After that, she will go home at dusk unless something happens to sort of reset her "home" button. I want all the chickens to see the coop as home, but i don't want to loc

Before i started writing this post, i had to go and look to see what my blog looks like right now.  I couldn't remember in what state i had left it.  I have spent a large portion of today attempting to discern the mysteries of blogger code and the "easy" methods in place to help you do whatever you want.  I have used two programs i had previously never heard of, learned a couple of new computer skills, and still have not succeeded in affecting the appearance of my blog. Perseverance.  I must persevere. Additionally, at the end of our food supply before pay day, i have discovered a couple of handy shortcuts for tastier food when supplies are minimal. Handy shortcut #1: A can of spam can season a couple of pots of beans pretty nicely. Handy shortcut #2: After i nicely seasoned a pot of beans using Handy shortcut #1, i managed to scorch it, making it inedible to humans and very appetizing to some very lucky dogs.  That was my chosen side for this evening's me

Today was such an exciting day! I spent countless hours remodeling my blog only to find it still wanting for improvement. Then i took a nap. After i woke up, i experimented with some crafting and then discovered that our kitchen had been taken over by flies in plague proportions.  Flies everywhere!   Flies! So my GSSH put up some fly paper, and now most of the flies are dead or dying while stuck to fly paper.  Sorry flies. That was my very awesome crazy stupendous exciting eventful day! There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven.  A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.  A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to rebuild.  A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.  A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away.  A time to search and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to throw away.  A time to tea

Hello Friends, I am about to do some remodeling here on Humble Ambitions, so if you check in for updates and find cotton candy stripes covered with purple polka dots, or the print of the post has turned to neon green, please bear with me.  I'm working on it.  I promise not to leave it like that. It seems the template i'm using is now badly outdated, so for ease of technology (ease later, not so much now), i am going to change out a few things. Hopefully we'll be back to some state of normal in about 24 hours. Thanks for stopping by, even though this is a very short and anticlimactic post.  If you do, however, have some complaint or frustration, or suggestion as to the design of this blog, this would be the time to shout it out, and i'll see what i can do. Here's your inspirational scripture for the day: Don't just pretend that you love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Stand on the side of the good.  Love each other with genuine affection

I feel like i got a lot done today, and at the same time, i had a pretty easy day. Nice.  A twofer. In addition to using my pressure cooker/canner to cook down bones to feed to the dogs, and watching helping GSSH clean up the front yard a bit, i've been doing some mental and written organizing. Chicken organizing. Lemme splain. Because i went a little nuts with my incubator when i got it...willy nilly producing tiny chickens without regard for how i would house them when they turned into flighty winged pigs, we are bit overrun right now. I have 23 adults, one 10-weeker, twelve 8-weekers, and twenty-one 5-weekers.  Are you adding that up?  That's fifty-seven chickens.  And they grow up.  And want to be fed! Therefore, i had to unplug the incubator and get a brain about myself before bringing more cute little fuzzy eggs with feet into this world.  The incubator has been unplugged in the corner of the living room for weeks now, which is very sad, and today i figured

I've been leading up to this day for quite some time. It's really quite a day. In June, when we conducted our long-awaited summer slaughter , and i started collecting chicken feet, i thought about this day. Also, in June, when we ordered our All American Pressure Canner , from the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, i thought about this day. Even way back then , the very first time i ever turned a chicken into dinner, i was thinking about this day. Drumroll  please. Today, i canned chicken stock .   I know some of you are wondering why that's all bold and underlined, but it's important....really. Here's how. (For those of you who just checked out because i'm giving directions about chicken stock, please stick with me; there's a story in here too.  Thanks!) I started with 15 chicken feet, 8 chicken necks, and 8 chicken gizzards.  These were frozen in June, and i started thawing them on Tuesday. I'm taking some cues from a fellow who calls

I thought i was going to talk about chicken stock today, but alas, my stock is in the fridge, and my pressure canner is still being considered.  It is obviously going to require some courage to use it.  I don't want to mess anything up.  I didn't get to the pressure canner stage until this afternoon, and while i was re-reading the manual, i decided that pressure canning could wait until a fresh start first thing in the morning. In the mean time, i made pear cobbler, sweetened with corn syrup, and it used up every last bit of my flour.  That's kind of nice.  That i had enough flour for a really big cobbler, that is. When i was thinking, the other day about being thankful for what we do have instead of being wistful for what we don't , i stumbled over this blog entry , at the Livesay's blog, whose writer was thinking something similar.  Having grown weary of hearing family members (as i understand it) complain about having "nothing to eat," the the pare

As i've mentioned, there are things i've been meaning/wanting to do that i haven't been doing. Things like using all those chicken feet in my freezer to make chicken stock. Things like learning to use my monumentally expensive pressure canner....to can things like chicken stock. Today, i became thankful for our recent "misfortune" of losing grocery money.  Because when we're in a predicament, my wheels start turning, and i start thinking about how to make something from nothing things they're not normally made from.  I think that's called resourcefulness. For example, i read just last week about how the fat skimmed off of chicken stock before it's canned, can be refrigerated and used in place of butter in things like rice and mashed potatoes.  And i thought, "i haven't made my chicken stock yet.  I should do that." Or for another example, while evaluating our supplies, i noted that we had just about enough sugar to sweeten

In the two years that we have lived here in this house, in the country, in the beautiful woods, i have mostly been in a beautiful state of everything-is-wonderful-and-happy-and-getting-even-better .  Well, there were moments.  When my entire flock of chickens died one by one to woodland critters that i couldn't seem to guard against, there was some definite gloom.  And i think there were some other moments, but other than the chicken thing, they were pretty easy to shake. But the past few days, there has been an unhappy, unreasonable, sticky gloom hanging out at my house, and i'm getting ready to take it out! Some things that aren't very fun have happened.  My dogs are ill, and that makes me sad.  And then yesterday, my husband's wallet decided to go for a walk in the grocery store parking lot with our grocery money and was kidnapped by some party that didn't see fit to return it.  That kind of stinks. But we can deal with all that stuff.  We've dealt with m

This past week, i encountered one or two possibly contagious people with random cold symptoms, one of whom i kiss on the lips from time to time.  Then yesterday, we went to spend time with family, and GSSH's mom was obviously ill and possibly running a fever, but socializing anyway. I sometimes imagine myself to be invincible to disease and sickness, but when i get sick, i have to come to the understanding that the germs came from somewhere. Recently, i have been catching someone's germs, seemingly every couple of weeks, so this morning when i woke up feeling like i was going to feel like my mother-in-law in a few hours, i sent GSSH to the store for my favorite sickness preventative, Airborne.  I LOVE that stuff!  Back in the old days, when i was encountering the coughing sneezing sniffling public on a daily basis, i used airborne a lot, just to stay strong and healthy.  If you're not familiar, Airborne is just a giant tablet (sometimes a powder) that you drop into your

Yesterday, i had the uncommon enjoyment of visiting with my Lyndsi.  Lyndsi is my first cousin's daughter, a.k.a., my first cousin once removed (that's for genealogy nerds like me).  Anyway, Lyndsi, who is very dear to my heart, left us for the Pacific Northwest a couple of years ago, and yesterday i got to hug her neck and see her smiling face for the first time in too long. I also got to meet her fiance, Matt, who was well-liked by everyone who met him.  A great relief to us all.   Good job, Lyndsi, bringing home such a sweet guy! And that was slightly less wordy than usual Thursday.

Recently, i was offered a chance at an opportunity to possibly write for a much larger publication than this here Humble Ambitions. Being a person who thinks in my heart that part of my purpose on this earth is to write things for the benefit of others, i jumped at the seeming opportunity to "expand my circle," so to speak....so i did speak. It's funny how when i have a desire or some dream welling up inside of me - and i put it before God - and then an opportunity presents itself, i assume the opportunity is from God before i ever ask Him.  Does that make sense? We have to be so careful to obey God in every step along the way to our dreams and desires and God's will -  because the enemy is eager to entice us to one side or the other....away from what God has for us. I've done this before - disobeying by means of rationalizing that some opportunity must be God answering my prayers, while hearing/feeling a stern warning in my spirit.   Don't go there

Usually, i am the flag waver at the very front of the "Autumn is Finally Here" train, but this year, i seem to be behind.  My part of the country doesn't get a lot in the way of traditional fall colors, but this year we seem to be especially behind.  A very large percentage of the blogs i read have long since announced their welcome to autumn, and now it's my turn.  I had to do a little searching, but it's my turn.  So i took a walk through my woods to share a few of my favorite things. My very, number one, mostest ever, favorite sign of fall at my house is this unusual flower, Euonymus americanus L.  It also goes by the names American Strawberry-bush (don't eat these strawberries please), Strawberry bush, Hearts-a-burstin' (which is really fun to say, especially if you use a thick country accent), Wahoo, and Bursting heart. Here's a somewhat blurry picture. that shows how pretty it is up against the white bark of the Eastern Hophornbeam tree. Here