Sweet Local Honey on a Hot Day

We recently spent a few hours one Saturday morning touring a local farm and learning how honey is made.  While I believe that like any sweetener, you should use honey in moderation, there are some health benefits to using raw honey. 

 

 

We came home with a few jars.  I serve it over homemade yogurt and in my no-bake granola bars.  It is also wonderful to use as a facial cleanser!

 



The farm was so beautiful and quiet.

 

 

She was getting a little tired of posing at this point . . . .

 

What a wonderful way to spend a few hours learning about and enjoying the beauty of local real food!

 

 

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Our Little Girls are Getting Bigger . . .

Last week, we celebrated a fourth and sixth birthday. 

How did we go from this:

to this:

And this curly-haired little girl:

to this big girl?

We celebrated with an ice cream bar with lots of yummy toppings.

They were thrilled to open a few presents.

And I spent the day thinking about how the days are long but the years fly by  . . . .

Happy big girl birthday to our Bubbles and Mar-bear!

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Happy 4th of July!

We spent the morning cheering Daddy on in his 5K

Now on to some grilling, swimming, and fireworks!

Happy 4th of July!

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My first 7 Quick Takes

1.  I love reading Conversion Diary.  This is my first shot at 7 Quick Takes . . . I am kinda excited.

2.  I am absolutely enjoying the summer break.  With lots of free time, I have been cooking and baking like crazy.  I recently attempted my first sourdough bread.  It was very easy and just as good, if not better, than anything I could buy in the bakery.



3.  I also made an Italian hearth bread after I found this stone baker at a yard sale for $3.  It is $50 on Amazon.  I LOVE a great yard sale find!!

It was delicious warm and slathered with grass-fed butter!  It did not last long . . . .

4. Summer break is really treating us well.  We love the simple pleasures of getting up a little later, staying up a little later, simple meals, the pool, the library, the summer rec program, and soon some VBS.  And who doesn't love the sprinkler?



5.  Sticking with the summer theme, I have not been in the mood for hot coffee on hot days.  While I have switched to decaf in the last month, I still enjoy this daily break.  So I started cold brewing coffee to make iced coffee.  Soooo good over ice with a tbs. of sweetened condensed milk and some whole milk!  This truly tastes like summer. Here is the recipe: http://www.theyummylife.com/Iced_Coffee

6.  So we now have a boy.  I never thought I would enjoy having a boy so much!  I love to sit and play cars and trains with him on these lazy days of summer.  And he is such a BOY.  Do not tell me that raising girls and boys is the same.  There is  a big difference  . . . but a beautiful difference.  I love my little guy more than words can describe.



7.  Speaking of having a boy, they are tearing up and repaving our street.  It is very noisy and messy.  And apparently, 6:15 a.m. is a pretty good time to start working.  But he does not care.



He will spend hours watching this.  My girls could care less :)

7 Quick Takes is hosted by Conversion Diary

Coming Back

After taking a two year blog break, I have decided to come back to my blog that I loved writing.  In April of 2010, we learned that we were pregnant with baby #5.  Pretty soon thereafter, I was feeling pretty sick and very tired so I decided to put my blog to the side for a while.  On January 25, 2011, our sweet baby boy was born :)

And yes, you read that right.  He was 9 pounds, 13 ounces born naturally!  The past 16 months have been an absolute joy for us.  His big sisters love him dearly.  It is so much fun having a boy in the house! Here is our big boy today:

Our girls are growing so fast as well.  Here they are today:

So, we are still very BLESSED and very BUSY!  The last two years have been tiring but I have been enjoying cooking and homemaking as much as ever!  In the coming months, I hope to post some great recipes and projects that I have been working on :)  Hope to see you soon at Blessed and Busy!

Time in our home is flying. Just eight short years ago, Dan and I married. Less than a year later, we learned we were pregnant with our first daughter. Grace arrived in early 2003. Fifteen months later, Erin joined our small family. Two years later, Mary was born. Two years and one day after that, Anne joined our much larger family. We truly are Blessed and Busy. I have been thinking for the last few years about how to document our family life. I do not take very good or very many pictures . . . nor do I find the time to actually print the pictures. I rarely remember to pull out the video camera. And just forget about scrapbooking. I find that lately, I have been using a social networking site as a way to share thoughts and pictures of our family with our extended family and friends who live all over the country and all over the world. Something did not feel right about sharing our memories in that way. So I decided to start this blog to document our family memories and photos through everyday stories of parenting, Catholicism, cooking, baking, homekeeping, gardening, crafting, decorating, schooling, reading, and volunteering. And hopefully along the way, someone will stumble across our blog and maybe learn a little something new!