Pasta!

This is my new pasta maker I got with my birthday money.

I've wanted to try one for a long time.

Connor can eat some of the pasta from the stores depending on the brand.

However, he cannot eat any store bought egg pasta.

So I make homemade eggless noodles.

The only chicken noodle soup he's ever had I have made from scratch.

(I had planned on trying to make duck egg noodles but the ducks died before I had the chance.)

I had no idea how easy it was to use one of these.

It's almost addicting.

I was kind of sad when I was out of dough.

I know it sounds crazy but it was so much fun!

The pasta machine comes with two width options.

A spaghetti type width and an egg noodle type width.

I don't know the fancy noodle names, that's just what they look like to me.

I'm amazed at the wide range of thicknesses available.

I could easily do angel hair pasta and thick egg noodles with this.

I would also like to try making ravioli.

Connor can't eat the store stuff because they all have eggs in them.

And as soon as our ducks start laying eggs, I'm making noodles!

Blizzard

This is what it looks like to cook pancakes by oil lamp.

We lost power early Wednesday morning.

This was not good considering we were in the beginning hours of a blizzard.

Thankfully the power was back on in just under two hours.

It had been a while since we had an honest to goodness blizzard.

This one had lots of wet snow.

And did it ever snow.

And snow.

All day and night.

So we hunkered down.

We did school.

We played with our ducklings.

Aren't they cute?

We read that ducks like peas.

They are crazy for peas.

Like piranhas.

Everyone should have seven ducks in their living room, right?

We are enjoying them but it's nearing time for them to go outside.

I'll spare you the stinky details (you're welcome).

Proof that I finally got all my ducks in a row!

I don't think this was at the height of the storm.

At times the snow would blow across the yard in sheets.

It was difficult getting snow progression pictures because of the wind.

And maybe children playing in it at times as well.

If you look closely, you'll see two robins.

They've been back for a couple of weeks.

I bet they wished they had waited a little longer!

A plow came by last evening.

The small post on the right is for our mailbox...

which the plow knocked off of the post.

(Dwayne temporarily set it on the concrete post on the left.)

We still haven't had a plow down the road since last night.

Our county was pretty messed up.

There was a travel ban for almost 20 hours.

Some of the digging out.

We think we ended up with 8 - 12 inches.

That's our fire ring.

It's over a foot tall.

Since the travel ban has been lifted maybe the plow will show up.

Only time will tell.

This and That

I've fallen behind on posting anything.

I did have a birthday last week.

I'll be honest and say that I was an emotional wreck the day before.

Like a train wreck the bad days come out of nowhere.

Thankfully, I was much better for my actual birthday.

It was nice considering the loss of my dad.

I had several people call me that I don't normally hear from.

That made it special.

It was super nice this last Saturday.

We took the ducklings outside.

We went for our first walk of the year.

It was beautiful.

Pepper was beside herself because we were out on the farm.

There wasn't anything in the tree.

We just wanted to see if she would try to climb it.

The boys had their bikes out.

We can't wait for spring.

This day was just a teaser.

Winter isn't over yet.

There's always a snowstorm the last week of February/first week of March.

Connor really wanted to go barefoot in the soft sand.

We saw all sorts of footprints.

Fox, deer, dog, and boy!

Progress

The ducklings have been growing like weeds.

They are approximately 2 -3 weeks old.

They cooperate as well as young children when it comes to taking pictures.

The camera kind of sends them in a panic.

The stand upright when they run (more like the one on the left).

They look like fuzzy bowling pins.

One of these days I'll get a good picture.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I've been working on sewing a zillion half square triangles.

This is only one set. I've finished three of them.

I have three more to do before I can move on to the next step in this quilt.

While browsing through all the quilting blogs I read, I came across something I decided to try.

A couple of bloggers are doing 100 quilt blocks over the next year.

I decided to give it a shot.

I will print the patterns and put them in a binder just in case I get behind.

Not that it would ever happen!

(I'm laughing too. - After all, I "only" stay at home and homeschool.)

Here a Duck, There a Duck

Everywhere a duck, duck.

Yes, we got seven ducklings today.

We may be a little crazy.

We don't care. :)

They are Indian Runner ducklings.

Five of them are a little over one week old and two of them are only four days old.

They're so funny when they eat.

They go back and forth from the food to the water and back again.

Chickens are messy with their food, and ducks are messy with their water.

They stand in it.

It splashes everywhere.

They ate and drank for almost an hour after we brought them home.

Then they settled down for a nap.

Not Much

So we've hit that time of year when not much is going on.

It's usually chilly and yucky outside which is typical for Indiana winter.

But we've managed to escape the winter storms so far.

It seems we always have a nasty snowstorm the last week of February or first week of March.

Only time will tell if we'll escape without any storms.

What have we been up to?

We made homemade ice cream in zip-loc bags.

It was one of Connor's yummy science activities.

The ice cream was good but someone wasn't so thrilled with the process.

It was a little noisy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have started working on my next quilt project.

It will be lap sized and obviously darker than the one shown on the pattern.

I found this material on a Shipshewana trip with some ladies from church.

It was a fat quarter bundle that I saw and loved the fabric.

I snatched it up not really knowing what I'd do with it...

other than quilt it of course! 

I spent the last several days measuring and cutting.

And measuring and cutting some more.

I think I cut 24 rectangles and 120 squares by the time I was done.

I don't have all of the material I need for this project yet.

At least I have a good head start for when I get the rest!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And in other news... we're getting five ducklings this weekend!

Connor's super excited... Ok, we're all a little excited. :)

It will be good hear the little "peeps" again.

Not to mention that we'll have an overload of cuteness.