For those of you who didn't know (which is probably a good portion), Adam was very attached to his pacifier. That was more of my fault than anything. Once I realized in late October that I was using it as a crutch for silencing the whining, I was able to let go. Adam has asked for it no more than half a dozen times since we took it away.
Yes, we went cold turkey.
You may think it sounds funny, but I had a harder time taking it away from him than he did having it taken. He cries when we put him to bed sometimes instead of just rolling over to cuddle into his pillow with the plug, but there are a good amount of times that he just goes right to sleep, no fight, but it depends on how tired he is. Goodbye dear plug, until the next one.
I got into the canning craze that seems to happen around this area beginning in August and going into November. Normally young moms who are doing the canning by themselves only get their legs and feet wet. Nope, not me, I dove in head first. This is just to document one of our adventures with canning. We canned pears, peaches, and plum jelly that day. These pictures are from the plum jelly. We had an overflow situation. Oops!
Not to worry, despite the fact that we probably spilled around 2 quarts, we still had 20 pints from the batches. They didn't set though, so it's now plum syrup which goes great on breakfast foods, ice cream, and a few other things.
Thankfully, I didn't have to clean this up by myself, Travis was helping and taking pictures. He was home on this particular day, and boy howdy, if I hadn't been laughing, there probably would have been a few choice words.
Yup I know, I'm nuts. But I loved it! I had a blast! You know what else we/I canned? Nectarines, tomato juice (wonderful for scratch tomato soup and scratch sloppy Joes), sweet pickles (My great grandma's recipe, delicious!), salsa, huckleberry and nectarine jam, apple jelly, applesauce, apple pie filling, and did I mention at least 10 gallons of freshly pressed apple juice? Thankfully all of the apple products were free! And there were a ton of apples! The only thing I had to purchase were the jars and tree fruits. I'm proud to say that everything else came from my garden. That doesn't even include all of the vegetables that I froze; peas, corn, green beans, and carrots.
Talk about a money saver! I guess it wasn't exactly a money saver this year because I had to purchase I don't know how many jars, but next year will be better. I want to grow a bigger garden so that I can add more to my food storage and enjoy even more of my labors. The garden was my thing this year because we were in school, Adam helped almost every time I weeded it and watered. Travis helped with the planting and watering when I was gone for two weeks. Next year will be different because I'm definitely going to need the help if it's going to be bigger! Love you hon!
I am so proud of you. You jumped right in and accomplished a ton. I bet it feels great to go into your storage room and see all those bottles. My regret is that I gave all those jars away a couple of years ago when you could have used them. The only consolation is that they went to families who really needed them and are using them. Sweet and Sour.
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