What I'm Loving Wednesday Tired Style

I'm loving that harvest has started in my neck of the woods! It's still early in the season, but I did catch Dad unloading the last of the corn in his first field last week.

Unfortunately, the crop has been affected by the drought that many of us experienced this summer so harvest will probably be much quicker this year. However, we are thankful that there IS a crop out there. Many farmers can't say the same this year.

I'm loving that I have the next four days off of work! I have a silly habit of hoarding my vacation time until the end of the year (our year end is 9/30) and then having to take several days off so as not to lose them. Luckily, I work for corn & soybean farmers and they are a bit busy right now (see above) so our office slows down a bit this time of year.

I'm loving that I spent my first day of vacation with my two nieces and one nephew as a stand-in babysitter. We built a cool sheet tent behind my big red couch. Why? Because my nephew asked me to.

We had a good time, even with my youngest niece deciding to "paint" herself with her own poo (sorry for the oversharing but I had to) during her afternoon nap.

I'm loving that my baby sister asked me what I got done today. I told her that I watched a 19-month-old, 23-month-old and a 4-year-old. That's what I got done today! That and some browsing on Pinterest...

I'm loving that Starbucks has decided to load their free drink rewards coupon (that will come after 12 drinks, not 15) right to my card instead of sending me a postcard. I swear that I don't always get them!

However, I'm quite sad that they are taking away the free syrups. I may have to start re-considering my signature drink OR try to re-create it at home like I did this morning...

I'm loving that I spent last Friday night with a handful of ladies - both farm gals and not - touring some wonderful farms in Johnson County, Indiana - including Keegan Poe's farm in Franklin. He talked to us about how he raises his cattle, how he sells freezer beef, pork & lamb direct to consumers, and we visited the pasture to meet his herd, including this gal (or fellow, I'm not sure).

We finished the farm tours at Mallow Run Winery in Bargersville and learned that unlike the corn and soybeans, Indiana wine grapes endured and even flourished in this summer's drought. After the tour of the vineyards and the wine-making barn (not sure what to call it), we even got to taste! Yum.

I may or may not have taken 4 bottles (the box fits 4 bottles!) home with me and wishing I bought a couple others.

I'm loving linking up to What I'm Loving Wednesday over at this kind of love.

On My Doorstep

After what can only be described as an "adventurous" drive home (Baby Sister and I swore each other to secrecy), I was excited to see this waiting for me outside my garage door.

The Last Boyfriend: Book Two of the Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy (The Inn Trilogy)

Even though I have been using the Nook and Kindle apps on my iPad to read more books lately, I am still a huge believer in books. I sit in front of my computer all day, use my iPad to take notes in meetings and am forever on my iPhone.

So the last thing I want to do to unwind in the evening is to pull out my iPad to read. My eyes need the break from brightly lit screens.

Don't get me wrong, Leah over at Beyer Beware convinced me to read the sample of Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle: Fifty Shades of Grey; Fifty Shades Darker; Fifty Shades Freed through Amazon and I ended up buying the trilogy and reading them back-to-back-to-back on my iPad.

But, I am equally excited to dive into Nora Roberts' second book in her The Inn Boonsboro Trilogy. Thanks to Amazon Prime (have you signed up for the free one-month trial yet?) this book landed at my door the day it was released with free shipping and for a good price.

Since I have my month of free 2-day shipping, I may have jumped online last night and ordered a gift for a baby shower later this week. Cross your fingers that 2-day shipping, means 2-day shipping! There also may be some toilet paper making its way to me too. How weird and random is that?

Do you use Amazon Prime? If so, what are your favorite deals?

What about Overstock? Any other good sites out there?

Please share. I have 20-plus days left with my free membership so I want to take advantage!

NOTE: There are affiliate links included in this post. Nora Roberts, E.L. James, and their publishers do not know who I am so they didn't ask me to mention them. Though, if Nora Roberts happens to read this, please know that I am a HUGE fan - have been for years...ever since I found one of your books in my grandma's shed as a teenager! 

Easter Egg Hunt Fun

We had a wonderful Easter this year.

After an early church service, we headed to the farm for Easter brunch. We filled the house with family. Just counting my immediate family, we are at 15 people. Add in a couple of aunts, uncles and cousins and we were in the 20s.

It was a GREAT day. We just don't spend as much time with our extended family now that my grandparents are gone and I miss it.

But in the end, it's all about these girls and boys...

(Note: Baby Sister wants me to point our that her little girl 

DID wear a jacket for the hunt...she was inside when we 

decided on an impromptu photo shoot.)

I made my sister snap a shot of my oldest nephew with me.

I can't believe how grown-up he looks these days.

It was a beautiful - yet windy - day for an Easter Egg Hunt. I'm sure not a lot of folks have as big of a yard as we do for a hunt. Eggs were spread far and wide but I think they were all found.

The cell phone was NOT hidden in the yard.

This is my favorite photo of the day...I'm not sure why.

These are only a FEW of the many photos I snapped yesterday. I'll bore you with bring you more as the week goes on.

 The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. 

Psalms 118:22

Stand In Parenting Fail

So, I recently experience life as a single working mother aunt while Baby Sister and her husband spent a week on a cruise ship. I only had her for four nights (I don't think my sister trusted me for any longer than that).

I'm used to just taking care of myself - and then probably not that well - so having a 15-month-old added to the mix was quite the experience.

I'm happy to report that she is alive and well, but that's about it. 

Here are a few things that I failed at as a stand-in parent:

• Baths...she may have only gotten one, on the day before her parents were due back.
• Feeding...she may have eaten a lot of Puffs, bread and crackers (she just wasn't into the green beans and carrots).
• Nose wiping...the daycare was probably appalled at the dried boogers on the girl's face when I brought her in the morning. On the bright side, the boogers were gone when I picked her up! (Sorry for mentioning boogers...but it's kind of fun to say and write. Boogers!)
• Hair...major fail on this end. She has very fine blond hair and the ladies at daycare usually put it up in cute ponytails all over her head.

Here's a very grainy photo of what her hair looked like after daycare...should have gotten a shot of it from the back.

Here are some photos of her hair that night when I took the ponytail holders out...

Unfortunately, I waited until right before bedtime to take them out so she went to bed looking like this and you can just imagine what her hair looked like the next morning! 

I'm pretty sure the ladies at daycare will have something to say to my sister about my stand-in parenting skills!

Pumpkins, Cows, Straw and Corn, Oh My

A trip to Kelsay Farms each October is becoming a tradition. 

This year, Baby Sister and I took her daughter and our two oldest nephews with us for an afternoon of fun on the dairy farm where we, of course, saw the cows.

The farm is just outside of Greenwood, Ind. and is a working dairy farm. They open the farm to the public every weekend (Friday night to Sunday evening) in October.

They do a great job providing lots of fun activities for all ages, including a corn maze.

But, it's all about the straw and the corn box when my nephews are there.

The photo above does NOT do the straw mountain justice. It is HUGE with tunnels and slides. It's a perfect place for boys to run around, make friends and play tag.

They expanded their corn box this year (think sand box but with corn) and it was a happening place.

My only complaint about the whole day is that the boys brought a little too much of the fun home with them...

Not sure if you can see it, but there's corn all over my floor...from his pants pockets! Oh well, he picked it all up, though I'm not sure where he put it...

This was supposed to be a Wordless Wednesday post so I'll wrap this up with some other fun photos from the day. Enjoy! If you want to know more about Kelsay Farms, visit their Facebook page!

Moo-Choo Express!

Pumpkins!

"I love my pumpkin!"

Calves...23 days old.

"Bye calves!"

Tuckered out!

Kelsay Farms did provide me with a couple of admission tickets to the farm but the thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are my own, of course.

Chocolate on Your Beef Roast

My Baby Sister and one of my BFFs recently BOTH became "chocolatiers" for Dove Chocolate Discoveries...think a Pampered Chef party but with chocolate, lots of chocolate...DOVE chocolate!

I offered to host the first party for Baby Sister...of course, I promised to host the party in August and it didn't happen. However, I did get myself together and we had the party on Saturday. My BFF even came over from Ohio to help out!

It was a great excuse to have some family and friends over to my condo. For many of the guests, it was the first time they'd seen my place.

(Side Note: My mom and I argued on how long I have lived in my condo...I said 2 years, she said 5 years. I looked it up tonight and it's been just over 3 years, so we were both off!)

Unfortunately, I did get any photos of the wonderful chocolate mousse, mudslide chocolatinis, white chocolate meyer lemon cake and more...I was too busy sampling and trying to be a hostess.

(Side Note 2: The milk chocolate fondue was a HIT with both the adults and the kiddos in attendance.)

I did snap a couple photos of Baby Sister prepping our main dish of the night...Shredded Beef featuring a couple of the Dove Savory Selections.

We started by putting some Sweet 'n Spicy Cocoa Rub on a couple frozen beef roasts I had in the freezer.

When we thought we added enough rub, we dumped on some more...just because we could.

We also added a can of regular Coke to the bottom of the crockpot. Then I set it to High and let it do its thing for 6 hours. The roasts weren't quite as tender as I wanted them to be after 6 hours, so I left it on high for another hour or so.

Then I started forking the roasts apart so my guests could make mini shredded beef sandwiches on King's Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (I love those rolls).

We added some of the Dove Sweet 'n Smoky Chocolate BBQ Sauce to our sandwiches and they rocked!

The sandwiches were a great savory addition to what was a very sweet tasting party!

If you live in Central Indiana and are interested in hosting a Dove Chocolate Discoveries party of your own, send me an email and I'll connect you to Baby Sister! If you don't live around us, check out their website for a chocolatier near you!

Sunday Brunch for Supper

I LOVE breakfast for supper.

I love the idea of breakfast at any time of the day, except in the morning. I don't normally eat breakfast (yes, I know that is not good for me) but I do love breakfast foods.

So, I decided to fix not one, not two, but THREE brunch recipes from Gooseberry Patch's Christmas Kitchen as part of my In the Kitchen project! I made Baby Sister help me make these and then shared them with her family tonight.

I'm sharing two of the dishes we fixed tonight and will share the third later this week.

Here's recipe number 7 in my journey to cook 10 recipes from this book...Tina's Creamy Bacon Crescents. As you might recall, my goal is to stick with recipes with less than 5 ingredients...this one had three!

These were super easy to make...however, we questioned when they were done because the bacon wasn't quite crispy when the timer went off at 20 minutes. But, they were yummy. I didn't use a whole container of cream cheese so the flavor didn't come through as much as it might have if I layered it on thicker...next time I'll add more!

For the "main course,"  I decided on Scrambled Eggs in Toast Cups. You'll notice the recipe below has 9 ingredients and we added bacon (had some leftover from the crescent rolls) so that's double my ingredient limit!

These were a bit of a challenge, though Baby Sister did most of the work on these. I bought "very thin" white bread but it was still a bit hard to cram them into the muffin tins.

As I said before, we added bacon and left out the mushrooms. I'm sure you could add diced (I wouldn't do chopped) veggies to this if you'd like.

These were both very yummy and the toast cups would be a fancier version of a breakfast casserole on Christmas morning.

Just two more recipes to share before one lucky reader wins her/his very own copy of this Gooseberry Patch cookbook.







Special thanks to Gooseberry Patch for providing me with this great cookbook to try and share with you. If you would like to purchase this or other cookbooks, please visit their store. If you would like to see other great recipes, check outwww.realfarmwivesofamerica.com.


Also, linking up to...

Amazing What You Can Find

Baby Sister came over to help me clean my house today.

It's amazing what you find when you start cleaning...

Remember our family vacation to Disney last summer?

I found the Photopass case in one place and the Photopass CD in another, of course!

I have no idea where I got this cow cookie cutter (probably from a trade show along with handfuls of pens and notepads) but I know who I'm giving it to...here's hoping I see Jent on Monday!

Guess my godparents DIDN'T get their Christmas card with the note that I made a donation to their alma mater (the same college my mom went to) instead of buying them a gift. Oops.

And then there's the work camera that was in the bottom of a suitcase I took on a business trip earlier this spring...the same camera that I SWORE I gave to a co-worker and never got back! Double Oops!

All of this was discovered downstairs...who knows what I'll find when I tackle the piles of clothes and stuff upstairs!