Updated Blog Design

Did you notice?  Does it stand out?  Have I gone out of my mind?  What in the world could I be talking about?

My new blog design silly!  I just love it.  And look at some of the cool features:

                                    My new heading. Isn't it perfect for my site.                                              

My social icons. Love!

                                    And I even have a button!!!



Can you tell I'm excited.  I think it's all perfect and fits so well with my site. Now before you ask, no, I did not do this myself. I only wish I were this creative.  

The genius mind behind this is Tiffany of Sunglasses and Starbucks.  I found her through a blog hop that she was co-hosting.  Then upon checking out her site, I read that she does FREE custom blog design.  My lucky day.  Did I have a job for her:)  

Can you believe that she did this in 2 days?  2 days I tell you!  All I had to do was fill out a form with basic information, just a couple of questions. Every thing was done by email, and she was in constant contact. There were a couple of small hiccups at the end but nothing she couldn't fix.

All in all, everything went smooth as could be. If you have a site that needs a makeover, I highly recommend Tiffany.  

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Say Not Sweet Anne

Treehouse

If this were in my back yard, you can believe that I would practically live in it.  I take that back......I WOULD live in it.

Falcon Perch TreeHouse, Hampton, New York

From: 1,000,000 Pictures

When You're Hot, You're Hot

This came through on facebook, and I thought it was so cute I had to share it with you.  Poor little feller.




This summer when it got so hot in Missouri, one woman started putting bowls of ice out for the squirrels in her yard. This little guy was so grateful, he fell asleep cooling off on top of one.

From:  Interesting Amazing Facts

The Incredible Edible Egg

If you read last month's post, My Chickens, you'll remember that I was hoping that my babies would hurry and start laying eggs.  They were 20 weeks old at that time.

Well, at 21 weeks, my little white Queenie started laying every day.  She was the only one.

Last week, I started getting a couple more eggs each day.

Now at 24 weeks, I get 4 eggs a day, one from each of my 4 hens.  

Yay... I'm a proud mama!  I love all my babies. And my breakfasts too.

Handy Tip #5

This tip is about buying ground beef in bulk.  It's usually cheaper per pound when you buy larger packs.  The problem is, it can ruin before it is all cooked up.  Right?  Here's my solution.

This is a 3 pound pack.

I cook the entire pack all at once.  Usually I will go ahead and add my chopped onions and bell peppers.  This time I didn't because I am using most of it for tacos, and I prefer my onions uncooked.

How do you like my iron skillet?  I couldn't live without it.

As you can see, it makes a lot of grease and it's only half way through.  I go ahead and drain this out, and then do a final drain once thoroughly cooked.

At this point, I will turn the meat every so often to help it dry out and cool down faster.

While I'm waiting on the meat to cool, I label my ziplocs.  These are just regular quart bags that I put 1 pound of meat in per bag. Normally, for this 3 pounds, I would have 3 labelled bags.  Right now though, I'm going to be using 2 pounds for Tacos tonight, so 1 bag is sufficient.

I put one-third of the meat (1 pound) into my bag.  Before sealing, I push all the air out.  It helps to fold the top half over and seal most of the way. Then kinda lean onto it to help push the last of the air out.

This is about one inch thick.

Nice and flat for stacking.  Although I wouldn't stack them on top of each other until they are frozen.  That's for safety reasons.








Now my next meal already has the meat cooked.  This is so easy to pull out at the last minute and add ingredients to for a quick meal.  Very handy when you haven't taken anything out to thaw ahead of time.

And one more thing...doing it this way means that there is no more grease to mess with later.  This comes out very lean.  Win-win.