Summer of '17 Photo Gallery #1

 

No words, just early summer pics of our not-so-preppy mountain farm life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It's hard to believe we're already in the last week in June.  I need summer to slow down.  Have a great week, everyone!

A Strawberry Jam Making Party!

 

I browse through the home and decorating magazines at Barnes and Noble and admire the elegant dinner parties featured.  I save boards full of lovely entertaining pins on Pinterest.  I love looking at the elegant table settings on Instagram and various blogs.  I sigh and think about how much fun it would be to host some of those parties for a dozen friends or more.  But then I look around at our lived-in farmhouse and know that at least for now, that just isn't going to happen.  So I have decided to start gathering people together here in a way that does match this century-old farmhouse and our little hobby farm and do some of the things most of our ancestors did here in the Appalachian Mountains 100 or more years ago...with a twist.

 

I decided to invite some school mom friends over for a dessert wine/liqueur-tasting and freezer jam making party.  While wild thunder storms raged outside our walls, we ladies were safe and dry inside sipping Moscato, mashing strawberries, and swapping school stories.

 

Freezer jam is super easy to make, and you can use any berries in season---or peaches if you add some lemon juice.

 

For a double batch, you just need to remove the stems of one and a half  pint-sized containers of  berries.  Then mash them with a potato masher.  They should be chunky.  This equals approximately 3 1/3 cups of mashed berries.

 

After that, all you need is 1 1/4 cups of sugar and 4 Tablespoons of instant pectin added in.  Stir for three minutes, and pour into your freezer containers.  Within thirty minutes, the jam is set. 

 

A double batch fills five half-pint containers.  You can store it in your refrigerator for three weeks or in your freezer for a year.  This just doesn't get any easier, and the jam is full of color and flavor and nothing like what you get in the grocery store.

Bringing friends together over some snacks, desserts, and wine or Stoli vanilla vodka makes this homemaking task fun, and before you know it, hours have passed by.  You get to share this amazing jam with your family, and they'll never know that it was so effortless and so much fun to make.

I do believe this will be an annual event at the Preppy Mountain Farmhouse.

Comfortable Summer Dresses for the Middle-Aged Mom

 

There's something about summer that makes me want to wear more dresses.  This year I'm all about comfort and ease, yet I still want fashionable and feminine, and I love fabrics that flow.  If you're a busy mom looking for a summer wardrobe that requires little fuss, but still provides style that flatters, take a look at what I found for very affordable prices.

 

Starting off with this long pullover dress that Hubby got me for my birthday this year, this dress is made by Chaps and was purchased at the Bonton, but I've seen it at Kohl's as well.  This is easy to wash, pulls over my head, and is incredibly comfortable. 

 

I wore it on my birthday to pick up children from school and run errands, and I wore it on a shopping excursion with our teen daughter to celebrate her 15th birthday a week later.  I love her t-shirt dress too, found at Target.

 

This bright pink Rose & Olive dress just made me think of spring/summer when I saw it at TJ Maxx.  It also just pulls over my head and drapes my body without clinging.  And no dry cleaning or ironing necessary.  That's a must in my house.

 

It's the dress I wore to church on Easter Sunday, but I'm sure I'll pull it out often.  Can you tell this was the first time we used the self-timer on my new camera? 

 

A friend of mine introduced me to an Internet boutique called Ali & Edi which is where I got this paisley tunic dress.  Their dresses are American made, of high quality, and are stylish yet easy to maintain.  Right now they're having a clearance sale with amazing prices, so go check them out.

 

I loved this dress so much that I wore it for our daughter's First Holy Communion, and two weeks later I wore it again for Mother's Day.  The carnation I'm holding was a gift our sweet ten year-old son bought for me on the way out of Mass from the local Boy Scout troop.   

 

I was looking for a casual sundress, and I found this navy blue Croft & Barrow knee-length dress at Kohl's.  It's light-weight, machine washable, and loose without looking frumpy.

 

I wore it to my younger sons' end-of-the-year pool party on a 93 degree afternoon this week.  I won't say it kept me cool, but aside from being in a swimsuit myself, it was probably the coolest thing I had to wear in public.  And hey, how farmy of a pic is this with our greenhouse and wheelbarrow in the background?  Keeping it real here at the Preppy Mountain Farmhouse.

 

I tried on eight dresses at Macy's this week, and I loved this one best of all.  This is so different from anything I have hanging in my pine wardrobe, but it just screamed "Summer" at me.  The colors remind me of popsicles, jello, and Skittles.  It's by Calvin Klein and was greatly reduced the day I bought it.  Gosh, I look annoyed with the child taking my picture.  I was really just squinting, but this confirms that I could have never hacked it as a model.

 

This dress is loose, airy, and light.  I haven't had a chance to wear it yet, but I think it could work for a number of outings depending on how it was accessorized.  The light lining underneath keeps it from being see-through and from clinging. 

 

This final dress is one I'll wear on the cooler summer days we sometimes get here in the northeastern U.S. and probably into the fall.  It's Dana Buchanan, and it's similar to another light pull-over dress I wear frequently.  Comfy, easy to wash, and no ironing necessary.  My kind of dress.

 

I found this at Kohl's on sale, and it was super cheap.  It's been too hot here this week to wear it yet, but I'm sure it will get plenty of use.  It's the only item in my wardrobe with cutout sleeves like this.  I'm venturing out of my comfort zone a little in my middle age. 

Each of these dresses was purchased for less than $100.  Most were under $50.  Style, comfort, and easy care for a middle-aged figure at affordable prices.  

And that concludes my annual summer fashion show from the boondocks in the Alleghenies.  I hope you all are enjoying your early summer as much as I am.

Our Farmhouse Porch in the Summer

 

 During the seventies, the weekly TV show "The Waltons" was a hit at our house.  I loved their big family, their white farmhouse in the mountains, and especially their huge front porch.  I remember Grandma shelling peas while sitting on the porch rocker, Mary Ellen complaining about her life while lounging on the porch swing, and Mama greeting everyone with a smile on her front porch as she welcomed them in.  I dreamed of having their life...but maybe with a bit more money and some nicer clothes.  

I had a vision for our own front porch many years ago when I got our large porch swing as a Mother's Day gift, which was much more enjoyable than the clothesline I received for that same holiday a couple of years earlier.

 

The vision continued as I received my first porch rocker for another Mother's Day gift and had the porch floor replaced in 2014.  Then in 2015 we finally repainted it, and this year I woke up on Mother's Day to a second porch rocker so that I now have the symmetry my OCD self yearned for.

 

After acquiring the porch rockers from Cracker Barrel, the final part of my dream involved sheer white curtains.  This proved to be a more challenging task than I ever imagined because there are iron poles connected to either ends of our porch.  Those poles can't be removed, and their height and width aren't your typical window size.

 

I figured I could either buy shower curtains or long drapes with grommets.  That way I could attach them with shower hooks.  It turned out that none of the shower curtains were long enough, and I would have to purchase at least three window panels for each side.  I didn't want to spend a lot of money since these would be outside in the elements all summer.  I thought it would be easy to find what I was looking for.  I was wrong.  I went to TJ Maxx, Home Goods, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, but I couldn't find what I wanted.  Everything was either too thick or too expensive or not the right size or there weren't enough in stock or not grommet style.  So I finally patronized the one story that everyone else I know frequents but that I avoid at all costs: Walmart.  And it was there that I found the exact sheer panels I was looking for with the grommet openings for only $7/panel.  And as luck would have it, they had exactly six of them.  Then my daughter and I found these cute shower hooks that we thought would look perfect to hang them, so we bought three packages of them too for $8/package.

I was so excited to get home and hang these curtains on these shower hooks that were rust-proof and guaranteed to not slip out of the shower curtains.  What was I thinking?!  These work perfectly with shower curtains that have slits for openings, but they are obviously not made to hold grommet-style curtains.  This was definitely one of my most daft moments.  I ran upstairs to our bathroom and tore down our shower curtain so I could use the cheap, round, clear plastic hooks.  Then I searched the bathroom closet because I knew I had extra hooks in there.  Unfortunately, they were the same style as the ones I just bought, only very corroded.  So I hurried up to the cabin and took down that shower curtain as well.  I still needed another twelve round curtain hooks.  I turned around and there on the shelf was another package of mismatched shower curtain hooks...but only nine of them.  I brought them all down to the house and hung the curtains with what I had, dreading to go back to Walmart to buy yet another package of these stupid hooks.  You can't just get them individually; it's a package of twelve or none at all.

 

So with the aid of my youngest daughter (who had Cowboy Day at school that morning), we hung the curtains and did a quick photo shoot with three grommets not attached to the iron pole.  And the hooks were of all different styles and colors.

 

That evening I had to take our son and his friend to a middle school dance, so after dropping them off, I headed back to Walmart.  I had a great time because I had my best friend along, and we chatted and chatted, not really paying attention to anything around us.  We just enjoyed some girl time out away from most of our children (my teen daughter tagged along in hopes of a trip to the mall.)  I went through the self-checkout line and bought the $1.26 package of clear, round, plastic curtain hooks, and shoved the receipt in my purse as I eyed the tiki torches near the exit and continued talking with my friend.  It was a fun night for all of us, but when I got home and looked for the shower hooks to finish hanging my curtains, I couldn't find them anywhere.  And I realized that I left them at the checkout in Walmart while I was busy conversing with my friend.

 

So the next day I went to Ollie's and bought the same hooks for 

$.95 and kicked myself for not shopping there for them to begin with.

 

The curtains were hung, and my vision was complete.  However, I hadn't given much thought to how I would keep them in place.  The winds just whip them around everywhere.  My friend told me her aunt sewed rocks into the bottoms of her porch curtains.  I placed some of our larger river stones in the bottom pockets of these sheer drapes, but all that did was create noise as they scraped and rolled across the porch floor.  Then when it got super windy, they flew up and around, and those river stones went flying.  My white sheer curtains became weapons directed at anyone out there on the porch.  So I've given up and just allow them to float and wave and fly wherever the wind takes them.  Porch sitters just have to get used to the curtains brushing over their shoulders or their heads as they sit and read and drink their coffee or G & T's.

 

A few finishing touches were added.  Two hanging baskets arrived from my children as additional Mother's Day gifts this year.

 

And when I couldn't decide what to place in the empty space next to the front door, I decided to use the picnic basket we got as a wedding gift and my husband's work boots that are a bit scruffy but not currently coated in manure.  The food was just for the photo shoot, of course; most of the time it's filled with one of our annoying cats who end up using my porch displays every season for their beds.

 

Now my vision is complete for the summer where our front porch is concerned.  This is where I chose to celebrate my 48th birthday this past week as I relaxed in a sundress with a glass of Chardonnay in the early evening.  I suppose this is my version of being on the Waltons' porch in the Appalachians, only with wine instead of the Baldwin sisters' "recipe."

Country Weekends in the Summer

 

 This is what our weekends have been looking like so far this summer.  

 

 Our twelve year old son dug us a much bigger fire pit, so we've been having campfires galore.

 

 With so many flowers and shrubs blooming, the bumblebees are swarming around our farmhouse.

 

 And with so many summer birthdays around here, our resident cupcake baker has been quite busy.

 

This weekend she made chocolate cupcakes stuffed with her special peanut butter frosting, topped with chocolate shavings.  They were to die for and worth every gram of carbohydrates.

 

 Our grandson has been cruising and crawling around, and fortunately, we have many energetic bodies to keep up with him because he is busy!

 

All kinds of things are hatching out and metamorphosing. 

There have been some tricky puzzles that only a few family members could solve.  She, by the way, figured out to open this almost immediately.  It was putting it back together that made everyone a bit crazy.

 

We've had some adorable baby interactions going on between the species.

 

 It wouldn't be a summer weekend without plenty of front porch sitting.  But I'll have more on that in my next post.

 

 How did you spend your weekend?

Ugly: This is my Summer Book Recommendation

 

I don't read too many autobiographies/memoirs, and when you're trying to find a good one for your fifth grader to meet the requirements for his class's 30 Book Challenge before the last week of school, they are hard to come by.  Fortunately, our son's friend told him about this book, and it was in the school library.  Our ten year-old boy doesn't really like to read very much; he'd rather be running and climbing trees and building with Legos and playing Minecraft.  He was not at all thrilled that he was required to read 30 books this school year, and they had to be of different genres yet to boot.  We have shelves and shelves of books for all ages in our old farmhouse, but we really didn't have many memoirs that a preteen would be interested in reading.  I was relieved when he checked out Ugly by Robert Hoge.

This story caught his attention from the start.  We had watched some episodes of Call the Midwife, so he was familiar with babies born in the 1960s and 1970s being born with major malformations due to medicines pregnant mothers were often given before the medical experts knew there was a link.  We all cried together when we saw one particular scene where a baby girl was born with no arms, no legs, and only part of a trunk and head.  The attending doctor and nurse left her abandoned on a counter in front of an open window to speed up the process of a "natural death."  One of the sisters/midwives discovered her there and wrapped her up in a blanket and held her, soothed her, and baptized her until she took her last breath.  She was able to console her mother who hadn't even had a chance to see her baby by telling her that the baby felt loved in her dying moments.  I went through half a box of tissues that night.

Robert Hoge was one of those babies born in Australia in 1972 with only partially formed legs and a large tumor growing out of the center of his face which left him with no nose and eyes on the sides of his head.  He was the youngest of five children in a working class family, and his parents didn't take him home from the hospital immediately.  In fact, they weren't sure they were going to take him home ever, but they finally asked his siblings what they would like to do, and they unanimously voted to keep him.  Once they made the decision, his entire family was committed to giving him the most normal life they could.

His story is not one of sorrow, but instead, it's a very straightforward account of his childhood and the various incidents that made him who he is.  It's geared toward adolescents and juveniles, so it's an easy and quick read, but it holds your attention as you find yourself routing for him on field day, on a bicycle, in the swimming pool, and on the playground.  There are plenty of humorous tales interwoven through his examples of overcoming adversity.  I won't spoil the ending for you, but he ends his memoir at the age of 14 when he is given the choice of whether or not he will have one final surgery in an attempt to make him look more "normal."

Our son talked about this book in the car and at the dinner table, and he urged me to read it.  There are very few books that he recommends to anyone, so I was intrigued.  I put it off because I'm already in the middle of several other books, as I always am, and I wasn't looking forward to reading another children's book.  However, I promised that I would read it over this Memorial Day weekend, and I finished it in two days.  Afterwards, I did a Google search to see what this guy actually looks like and what his life is like now.  Again, no spoiler alert from me.  You've got to read his book first and resist the temptation to find him on the Internet before you do.

I promise that you won't be disappointed.