Fresh Ground Buckwheat Pancakes

So, I am the very proud owner of a Country Living Grain Mill. I know grinding your own flour isn't everyone's idea of fun, but for the sake of self-reliance and food quality I bought one (oh, and it's fun!).

Whole grains just hold up better than ground. A feed salesman recently told us that chicken feed isn't worth keeping more than one month because the cracked grain loses most of its vitamin content during that time. Think about it, how long has that bag of flour been sitting in the grocery store? If he wouldn't feed two month old (since milling) grain to chickens why would I feed flour that's God knows how old to my family?

Pancake time! The recipe I use for buckwheat pancakes is a lightly modified version of Best Buckwheat Pancakes from allrecipes.com. To decide how much to mill I assumed (based on measurements from The Bread Baker's Apprentice) that the 2-1/4 c of each flour called for in the recipe would be about 5 oz of whole grain. So I loaded up my mill's hopped with 5 oz of red winter wheat and 5 oz of buckwheat.

Grains in the hopper.

Painting a Bookshelf and Making Some Sausage

I have been doing things, just not writing about them. So we'll start with painting the bookshelf. My husband make me a lovely bookshelf for Finn's room. I started off by painting it the same blue as almost everything in our kitchen because it was what I had around and I like it.

Next I found a couple Winnie the Pooh pictures that I liked. I decided to do a Winnie the Pooh theme for his room since it's something he can enjoy into his elementary years and it doesn't annoy me as much as the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse art.

Bobbin Roll

Finished my bookmark! The best was when my 2-year-old son picked it up and stared at it and then announced, "Pretty!" 

So, last night I was winding up some bobbins for my next project (boy do I need a bobbin winder!) and I decided that I was sick of storing my bobbins in the plastic zip top bags they came in. So, I jotted down some measurements and came up with a plan for a bobbin roll which I made this morning.

Goat Babies and Lace

I think everyone who knows me knows what's been keeping me so busy and not updating my blog for the past few days, goat babies! Saturday morning I went down to the barn and found not one, not two, but three brand new (still slimy) kids in the pen with Marty. I let Clover out and toweled off the two goats she hadn't gotten to and all looked well. She let all three of them nurse that first day.

Making Liquid Laundry Soap (Day 2)

 Your soap is still settling, but you want to get something done. Time to make your label!

Morning of day 2, very cloudy.

Making Liquid Laundry Soap (Day 1)

This was one of the two projects I tackled yesterday. I made laundry soap for my own family the year before last, but after I ran out of potassium hydroxide I switched back to store-bought. I decided this summer to get back into making liquid soaps and even sell a few. The first of these is my liquid laundry soap.

Watch This Space

I still don't have anything crafty to post yet, but this will be changing soon. I got my order of soap supplies yesterday and now I can make this year's soap batches. Yay! I have three new kinds of lip balm to make plus a lot of different kinds of soap. I'm going to make more lotion too, including more 1 oz jars and then I'll put together some little skin care kits (1 oz lotion, guest sized bar of soap, and maybe bath melts or some other bath thing). I also want to make a batch of bubble bars. I have all the ingredients I need to make solid bubble bath. I just need to whip some up.

I'm still waiting for my goat Marty to kid. They say 145-155 days from sexytime, which for her is Feb 24th - March 6th... Whenever you're ready girl! Of course there will be pictures, assuming all goes well.

I will be able to  start adding gardening stuff to this blog soon too. I can't wait to get out there and start playing in the dirt. Step one, spread manure!

As far as lace making and such, I haven't been able to get anything done the past few days. Alice wasn't cooperating on the days that I had off from work and yesterday I was too tired after my shift to do anything. I'm still not 100% after being sick. I'm not used to having to take it easy for so long after something simple like a 24 hour bug. Part of me thinks it's because I'm spending so much of my energy making milk for little miss. Part of me thinks I'm getting seeing the first effects of getting older. I refuse to give in to this getting older nonsense.

Goal Setting

I've been sick/super busy lately. I know, it's not a great excuse, but in lieu of an actual post, here's a video on goal setting:

Goals

Makes you wonder about how social media is affecting people's ability to reach their goals. If everyone tells all their friends and family everything all the time (including what they had for breakfast each day) is announcing their goals in the same way reducing the probability of those goals being achieved?

Also, in case you were wondering how I got thinking about goal setting, here's a video on psychology and weight loss.

Weight Loss

I hope these videos are interesting enough to justify me not posting anything craft related.