Annika's 3rd Birthday

Pictures from Annika's 3rd Birthday party. She wanted to Strawberry Shortcake Cake. And lots of balloons. Her brothers picked out special gifts for her- crayons, an umbrella, candy....

Squash Carving

This year we decided not to buy pumpkins, but to use what we had growing in the garden for our jack-o-lantern carving fun. We have a bucket full of jack-be-little pumpkins that the kids have been painting and carving and decorating with. Annika used one of them as her tiny jack-o-lantern.

It was a little small to get a spoon or hand in to scoop out the seeds, but luckily the chickens were around to lend a hand, or beak...

Cohen and Lakin let the Kamo Kamo squashes get very mature in the garden. Kamo Kamo's are like a summer squash when they are picked young, but as they get mature the begin to turn orange and become more like a winter squash. I love the look of them!

Cale's monster pumpkin plant put out a few more flowers after his big ones were picked. One of the pumpkins ended up sitting in a fence and grew itself stuck, so he destroyed it....But the other turned into a nice sized pumpkin to carve.

Here they are, all lit up!

Carving Big Jack

 

Remember Cale's big pumpkins? One exploded all over the house before the fair, and for awhile we weren't sure his second was going to make it, but it did. And it made it back home. The fungal infection that was invading the stem stopped and he was hopeful that the pumpkin would make it to Halloween. But then....the chickens got it... 

See that hole that goes all the way through to the inside cavity? It's from the chickens pecking and pecking and pecking all day long.  So it was carving time!

Because of the location of the hole Big Jack's face had to be facing a different direction than planned. The hole was incorporated into his mouth, and he's facing the sky.

As you can see the chickens were very excited about carving. I believe a couple even tried to go inside once the top was off.

And here he is all lit up!

Cale's already making plans for next year- and now's the time to prep the soil. Last week we heard that a new world record was set- 2032 lbs!

September Wrap-Up

September seemed to fly by this year. Summer was left behind and the leaves are starting to change little by little. Here's a recap of September around our house.

This month started all about the fair. I shared the kids' entries, but I never shared the results. We took a trip the the fair one afternoon to check out animals and exhibits....and yes, to check out how their entries did.

We picked up their exhibits and their ribbons a few weeks ago. They did well! And are excited about next year- and about the checks they will receive in the mail next month. Just to give you an idea- the blue ribbons pay $10, red ribbons pay $6 and white pay $4. So yes, they will get a pretty good paycheck!

We ate watermelon. Lots of watermelon. These are Rylan's Orangeglo. They are very pretty and sweet too.

Rylan saved up his money again. This time he was saving for a self propelled lawn mower. He talked Cohen into helping to pay for the last little bit, so they share the mower. It's win-win since they seem to love to mow and Paul doesn't have a lot of spare time to do it!
 

And we ate more watermelon.  I think we've eaten one a day for most of the month. Half for lunch and half for snack.

We took a trip to the Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary. We only saw a couple birds- my crew isn't exactly patient or quiet enough for bird watching- but we saw a few blue herons. And a muskrat, turtles, fish and this caterpillar.

We have been harvesting just a few of our sweet potatoes. So far it looks like it will be a good harvest. The garden is winding down- still peppers, okra, eggplant and beans and a few late planted summer squash plants.

We went apple picking for the local food bank. The orchard donates over 100,000 lbs of apples every year- they just need help with picking!

 

This Saturday was National Hunting and Fishing Day, so we drove down to the Center for Wildlife Education in Brevard. 

They had archery, bb gun target practice, fly fishing instruction and casting practice.

We have family visiting this week. Tonight we cooked out- burgers, hot dogs and s'mores around fire. The perfect end to the month!
 

And if you haven't been over on The Free Range Life, head over there to read the following articles:

• How to Make a Quick Shelter Out of Pallets
• 6 Quick and Easy Pallet Projects for the Homestead
• Soil Nutrient Deficiencies and How to Fix Them
• How to Preserve Eggplant
• The Many Uses and Benefits of Oregano

And that is it for our September! Did you do anything fun this month?

Death by Cake aka Birthday Week

 My first 3 boys were all born within 5 days of each other. Cale on August 8, Rylan on August 9 and Cohen on August 12.  Three birthdays mean 3 birthday cakes, and my boys have very rich tastes! Over the past few years they have moved away from fancy, carved and decorated cakes and moved on to cakes that are all about flavor. But I think this year....took the cake.


We started the week with Rylan's cake, which accompanied us to Tennessee to celebrate with Paul's family. His choice was a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cake. It was a yellow layer cake with icing and cookie dough balls in between the layers, frosted with butter cream icing and topped with a healthy layer of homemade chocolate chip cookies!




Once that cake was finished off, we had Cale's cake...

 

It is very similar to his cake from last year- chocolate cake, peanut butter icing, chocolate ganache and peanut butter cups all around. The main difference came on the inside:

 

See that in the middle? It's not icing between the 2 layers of chocolate cake, it's peanut butter cheesecake! One slice could make some one slip into a sugar coma.

Cohen wanted an ice cream cake this year- with coffee and chocolate ice cream. His was a brownie crust then the coffee ice cream topped with chocolate ganache then the chocolate ice cream topped with a whipped icing and chocolate chips.

We are now taking a short break from anything sweet! Except for the fact that they all bought each other candy as birthday gifts.....

{Review} Saving Memories Forever

 I am a memory collector. Most of my memories are on paper- collections of photo albums, movie stubs, scrapbook pages, articles, etc. Some are computer files of pictures or video clips or my blog posts. But with the exception of those few video clips of my kids as they grow up, I don't have a lot of oral memories collected. Enter Saving Memories Forever.

Saving Memories Forever is a smartphone application and website designed to help record, save and share your family's memories. They have a free version if you want to try it out and a paid version if you want unlimited stories, storytellers and less restrictions in general.

How the Product Works:

The first step is to sign up- which can be done by downloading the app onto your smartphone or by going to their website. Once you are signed in you come to the storyteller page. I was given a premium subscription to help with my review, so I was able to have unlimited storytellers. You can add your storytellers, a picture and all of their information from this page.

When you are ready to record your memories, choose your storyteller and then you will be prompted to choose a category for your story. Most of the categories are age related, though there are some general categories like jokes- which my kids enjoyed, and now I have tons of knock, knock jokes to remember this age by! Once you choose your category you will be prompted to choose a question. These questions cover all sorts of topics from vague to very specific (great for those like me, who might not be able to come up with  your own story off the top of your head with out a prompt!)

 And then you are ready to record! Press record and go! Once the recording is done, you have the option of rerecording if you need to start over or uploading the story to the website for storage and later listening.

On the website you can listen to your saved stories, add tags for easier searching, transcripts, or photos to the story.

The Bottom Line:

 

I love the idea behind this product. I love that it is portable and that you can record memories as they come. While visiting grandparents, siblings, cousins, old friends, etc. you can capture these stories in  each individual's voice. You will be able to hear your grandfather tell that old story, the one he told a million times, long after he's no longer around to tell it.  The bonuses of being able to add photos, transcripts, recipes and other documents to your stories make it even better and more expandable. Almost like a verbal scrapbook.

I personally prefer a more paper/visual scrapbook. I like to look at pictures, read old letters or read through journals. But even though I would probably never be my own storyteller, I know lots of people who would.

The app worked flawlessly on my phone. I had no trouble downloading, opening or recording from my device and I had no trouble accessing my files on the website. I even downloaded it from my husband's phone, which has a history of restarting itself often, to see if the app would cause any issues- and it worked fine on his phone as well.

So if you are headed to a family reunion this summer or just simply want to remember what your daughter or son sounded like when they were 1 yr, old this app can do that for you, and you will never have to rely on your own memory, which tends to fade with time.

Where to Get it:

You can download the apps from the iTunes App Store or Google Play, and is listed under Saving Memories Forever. As I mentioned you can try out the free version or opt for the paid subscription for $3.99/month or $40/yr. If you would like to know more about the differences between these 2 versions visit the Saving Memories Forever Website for a breakdown.

Love

 Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero.

 - Marc Brown

A brother is a friend given by Nature. 

-Legouve