Card Making Maiden

A little while ago, I participated in a card exchange. ( Exchanges seem to follow me wherever I go =) Here are the ones I made,




The purple one is my favorite.

I thought I would mention that my Mom is very good at this sort of thing. She is very skilled in making cards and decorating & things like that. Thanks mom, I could never have done it without you!

Love,

Winter Quilting and Embroidery

My Grandma's B-day was coming up. (She lives WAY out of state.) What should I get her? Mama suggested a Bible cover, I liked that idea so we got out some fabric and cut out a neat little square to embroider the Holy Name onto to put in front. Long story short, we figured that a Bible cover wouldn't work Sooo, Mama, good ole Mama, said "Do you want to make a quilt?" I said, "Yes!" So here it is!

Last night I got a call from Grandma, " Hello?", " I am calling to thank you for the BEAUTIFUL quilt you made me! Now I can snuggle in at night and know that all of you touched this and helped make it! It's like being hugged by all of you at once, and YHVH too!"

Little things matter,

Shaker Cake

This is a simple recipe that we found a long time ago but have not made for quiet a while.
Last night my dad was looking for some thing sweet to make, so he ran across this recipe and decided to make it. YUM! (I made another one today. We had to have a picture, right?!) :-)

2C Flour (we use whole wheat)
1TBS Baking Powder
1tsp Salt (we use sea salt)
1/2C Sugar (we use Rapedura)
1C Oil (we use coconut or grapeseed oil)

1C Juice of choice (or puree or jam)

4 Eggs

~In large bowl mix dry ingredients.

~In small bowl mix wet ingredients

~Pour wet bowl into dry bowl and mix.

~Pour batter into greased 2 qrt pan and bake

~Let cool

May sprinkle with cinn or sugar (optional - we usually skip this)

**This serves as a good breakfast cake for Shabbat. Just make it ahead on Erev. This is not a very sweet cake.

You can use jam, jelly, juice or puree, blueberry, strawberry, peach, apricot, etc. in the recipe. We have made lots of variations and they are always good!

It was originally called "shaker cake" because you can put all the ingrediants in a jar and shake it to mix it, than just pour it in the greased pan. That is a fun way to do it too. It uses less dishes. :-) However this recipe requires a 1/2 gallon jar. I wonder if we might have doubled it at one point. You could cut the recipe in half then it would fit in a quart jar to shake...but then you would use round cake pan or 8x8. I prefer the bowl method myself, I think it mixes better.

I hope y'all like it,

Hailey

Reasons for the Season

Our reasons for (for loving) this season is making snow men,

throwing snow balls, and actually one time we went sledding. 

But this winter, instead of doing activities, we decided to make a 

yummy, sweet, treat called 'Snow Ice Cream' 

First we put some snow in a large bowl,

Then, to make the snow have flavor, we added,

almond milk, vanilla, and sugar.

(but can vary in flavors)

And finally, we mixed all the ingredients in, then had a 

yummy, sweet treat called 'Snow Ice Cream'!

It's a very easy dessert to make if 

anyone has a snow fall. 

I hope you all have some,

that way maybe you can make your very own snow ice cream!

Oh one very important thing, make sure it's fresh

clean snow...

Enjoy!!

7 Days in a Skirt

A friend of my mom's is doing a fun thing on her blog that is called " 7 Days in a Skirt"challenge. We th0ught that it would be fun to try this on TKM. We are going to take pictures every day this week and post it.

This is how it works; we wear 7 different outfits for 7 different days. All skirts and dresses need to be below the knee. The tops should not be sleeveless. The purpose of this is to encourage us to dress femininely and modestly.

It was not realistic for us to post every day, so we took the pictures and downloaded them all at once and put them in a collage. (We hope that's OK!)

We normally dress this way, so really this is no "challenge" for us, but we thought it would be fun to do, in the hopes to encourage other maidens in modesty. We were Tzit Tzit daily and wear leggins under our dresses because we are very active maidens and do not want to compromise our modesty. If you click on the picture it will open larger to get a better look - if you like.

We are hoping that some of you will join us. (But understand if you don't.)

Love,

and sisters

Homemade Sweet Potato Chips

My family loves these! You can make these with regular potatoes too.


First, preheat the oven to 450F


Than wash and slice about 2lbs potatoes, make sure they are thin.

Coat lightly w/oil and sprinkle with seasoning of choice. (We have used sea salt, Chinese 5 spice, and....I can not remember the other one =)

Bake for 10-12 min until crisp.

Enjoy!

Nuts, Nuts, Nuts!

The time for nut collecting has come! Our pecan tree has started bearing nuts and we, (Me Elijah and Naomi) went out in the freezing cold and collected nuts :-) Thankfully mom said we could have hot chocolate when we came in. It was actually quiet fun! We made up a game that when ever Elijah knocked the tree with the rake we all had to scramble and pick up as many nuts as possible. The rake got stuck up in the tree a couple of times but we got it down all right. A pecan has a little outer pod that falls off when it is ripe. Than there is the inner shell that you have to crack, first we were doing this with wrenches which were not working very well so mom ordered 3 nutcrackers they just arrived yesterday and we are going to use them right now...so I should get off the computer and help=)

This a Drake nutcracker, the type mom ordered, it seemed to work well. It adjusts to the size of your nut,and cracks them fast and easily.

Love,

Tinctures

There has been a cold going around in our house and my mom decided to bust out the tinctures:-)

Here is the basic recipe:

~Fill a Pint jar 1/3 of the way full with dried herb(s) of choice
~Add just enough boiling water to cover the herbs
~Fill the rest of the way full of vegetable glycerin
~Put an old wash cloth in the bottom of your crock pot
~Put lids on the jars of herbs and put them in the crock (our crock pot fits three pint jars)
~Fill the crock pot 3/4 of the way full of boiling water
~Put the lid on and set it to the lowest setting and let it steep for 3 days
~Let cool, than strain and squeeze. Compost herbs or throw them away

Store in a cool dark place. Make sure to label them!

One of the things that is nice about using vegetable glycerin is that it gives the tincture a sweetness, which really helps if the herbs you choose are not so tasty. :-)

My signature is not working, I hope that it will again:-(
Love,
Hailey

Singing Maidens

These are a couple of songs I've learned

to play on the guitar... I'm still learning so

it might sound a bit off.

The second song, "Sukkotah Shalomah"

is a song I wrote.  I was inspired by the

phrase we used as a wall hanging we

created for our Sukkah.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I've learned these two songs on the

guitar, like AbbiYah I'm still learning :-D



 

Quilling Fun

Quilling is the art of rolling paper and pinching at the corners into different shapes. You can do all kinds of things with quilling, like decorating cards, make name tags, decorations of all kinds. I learned about quilling from my Keepers at Home book. Here are some projects that I have done.

This was a birthday card I made for my mom.

This is a butterfly that I made. I found this idea on the website linked below. I have started a cork board in my room to pin my quilling on to have them on hand to give as gifts and to put on cards.

A couple of months ago my new friends AbbiYah and YahChanna (other Torah Keeping Maidens) came to visit our farm. I made YahChanna and AbbiYah two cards with their names on the outside and a Bible verse on the inside. I quilled some flowers around their names. It was my first quilling project and I was pleased with it.

Here is a link about quilling in case you would like to learn more.

Love,

A Dancing Maiden

   these are the girls I met at Sukkot, shining examples to me           

During our Sukkot camping trip I

learned a new way to worship YHWH.

      DANCING!

Yes, dancing in a Hebraic way.

I really enjoyed it.  When we got home I would practice dancing everyday.  And then momma surprised us with two dance DVDs Rejoice In The Dance & Worship Him in Dance.  There are five basic steps in Hebraic dance.

1. Miyim or grapevine
2. Terkasia
3. Yeminite
4. Hopping Box
5. Coupe

From these five you can put them together and create your own dance steps.  Once you know the steps it's really easy.  And joyful to dance for YHWH.

At Sukkot I met some girls that were older and younger than me.  These girls were a good example to me, because they let the light of Yahshua shine through them and made me want to follow.  So I made a commitment to YHWH that I would choose to follow him, walk in Torah.  I'm very grateful for being able to meet those girls and I'm very very happy to give my life to YHWH.

Guitar Playing Maidens

About two weeks, after Sukkot, my Daddy comes

home with this huge box...

What's in the box Daddy?
Such fun trying to figure out what could it be...

First he took out what looked like a backpack

folded up on itself, wrapped in plastic.... huh?

Why did you buy a backpack?

Then as he was pulling out more smaller boxes, I opened

the backpack... and it wasn't a backpack but,

a gig bag for a guitar!!!


Squills of excitement filled the room...

"Daddy, Daddy did you get me my guitar?"

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

OK, I'm going to backtrack a bit and tell
what happen before I received this gift...

almost a year ago...

I started saving my money to buy a guitar,

I thought I would have to save a lot of money to buy a nice guitar,

until a friend told us that the Toys-R-Us store had

guitars for twenty four dollars! I thought

"Gee! I've just got enough money!" So about a week later,

we were at the toy store picking which guitar I wanted, there

were many different colors to pick from,

pink, blue, black. etc. First I wanted a pink guitar,

until I saw that the rosette

it said 'ROCK STAR!' sooo I didn't choose the pink one.
I don't want to be a rock star I just
want to worship Yahweh through music.

Oh, I love the color blue... but the flames made

it look more boyish than girlish... soooo

I moved on to the next color... natural... hum... well that's more like me.
So natural it was, and this is what it looked like...

Once I got it home and started fiddling with it,
I realized that maybe it wasn't such a good
deal after all. It never stayed in tune, well actually
I don't think it ever was in tune... now, I understand
that if your going to invest in a guitar and be
serious about your playing it's best
to spend more money for a better
guitar.

I was wanting a nicer guitar, but spent my money on
the toy one. So I asked my Daddy if I were
to learn three songs on this little guitar would
he be willing to buy me a nicer one?

He said it was a deal!! Yes!! now all I had to
do was to learn two more songs, I had already
learned one, 'How great is our El'

But, soon I became discouraged because no matter,
how well I learned the songs, if the guitar is not
in tune, it sounds terrible. Soon, the guitar
was left in it's box over in the corner. I didn't loose
interest but was discouraged, because I love
beautiful music and the only time the
guitar made beautiful music is when
it was in it's box, lol.

One month ago....
I found my encouragement, my
inspiration at Mousetail Landing State Park.
It was during Sukkot, the Fournier's were
hosting the gathering and nearly each
night we would all gather at their
campsite for worship, testimonies, and
fellowship.
It was the worship time and the beautiful
worship music that inspired me.
I wanted my family to worship
together with music like the
Fourniers. I wanted to play
like they did. So I committed
myself to learn those two songs
and get my 'real' guitar. And that's
what I did. When we got home I had my guitar
in my hands as often as I could. I practice,
no matter how horrid it sounded and
I learned my three songs :-D

Then I had Daddy listen to all three songs and
reminded of our agreement.
He said, 'well, we did agree and you did fulfill your end
of the bargain so I guess I'll have to get you your guitar"

I thought for sure we would go guitar shopping the next
day or two. But no, I asked again and he said
he'll take care of it and not to worry about it.

about two weeks ago...
here is what was in the box

1. Full-size Solid-Top Harmonia nylon string guitar.

2. Soft guitar case with shoulder straps and a zip compartment for music.

3. Guitar stand to use when your leaving the guitar out.

4. All four volumes of Jean Welles Worship Guitar Class DVDs

5. All four Books for the four volumes, plus $40 bonus e-books.

6. A Music Stand that folds up for easy transporting.

7. An easy to use Guitar Capo - Planet Waves NS Capo.

8. A DVD showing you how to Tune and String your guitar.

9. A string winder that makes changing guitar strings a snap.

10. The Planet Waves Chromatic Headstock Tuner. It tune any string instrument with a head - guitars, bases, violins, banjos on and on. It's accurate even in noisy environments.

and that is the story behind the gift box

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

On a final note YahChanna has inherited my Toys r Us guitar. With the Chromatic Tuner we are able to tune both guitars and you know what, that little guitar sounds pretty good now!!

So I have or should I say we have exchanged our recorders for guitar lessons and now on Shabbat's or in the evening we can sit around play music, sing and worship together as a family, just like I had hoped we would :-) Because now I have learned not only three songs but seven so far. Yahweh is good to his children!!

Here is the long awaited carmel recipe, taken from our favorite recipe book http://www.allrecipes.com/ hope you enjoy them :-D

Ingredients:

2 cups white sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup corn syrup

1 cup evaproated milk

1 pint heavy whipping cream

1 cup butter

1 1/4 teaspoons vanill extract

Directions:

1. Grease a 12x15 inch pan.

2. In a medium-size pot, combine sugar, brown sugar, cornsyrup, evaporated ilk, whipping cream, and butter. Monitor the heat of the mixture with a candy thermometer while stirring. Wehn the thermometer reaches 250 degrees F (120 degrees C) remve the pot from the heat.

3. Sitir in vanilla. Transfer mixture to the prepared pan and let the mixture cool completely. When cooled cut (we used a ruler and pizza cutter) the Carmel into (strips then into) small squares and wrap themin wax paper for storage.

** with our second time of making these we added peacans and heath bar pieces.

It's dinner time!

This time I made:

Spaghetti w/ Meat sauce
Garlic Toast
Chocolate chip Cookies for dessert


Love,

Candy Making Maiden

We needed caramels for our pie tonight, we didn't go to the store

to buy them because what they had put in the caramels, so

we decided that we would make our own!

First we mixed all the ingredients, poured them in a pan,

then turned the pan on and began to cook it, and stuck a

thermometer inside. Then, we waited till it reached 250 degrees.

Once it reached 250 degrees, it looked like this! and
increases three times it's size.


Then we poured it in a lightly greased pan, and waited
for it to cool.

Once cooled...

we sliced the caramel into strips

then cut them into squares

And now! here they are! All nice and wrapped up!

Plus their good tasting too!