Yummo.....S'mores Bars

Who says you can only eat s'mores around a campfire? Here's a recipe that's sure to make your family happy. Mine can barely wait til the pan is cool enough to dig in. I can't take credit for the recipe as I got it from someone else on the internet a few years back but thought I would pass it on. So if you find yourself hankering for some s'mores, whip up a bunch.

S'mores Bars

3/4c butter
1 egg
2/3 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp salt
3½c small marshmallows
½c flour
18 whole graham crackers (crushed)
8 milk chocolate bars (1½ oz size)

Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add flour and salt. Stir in crushed graham crackers reserving 1 cup. Mix. Press mixture into bottom of a greased pan. Arrange chocolate bars in a layer over top graham cracker mixture. Sprinkle marshmallows. Sprinkle reserved crushed graham crackers over marshmallows. Bake 25-30 minutes @350 or until golden brown. Cool in pan on wire rack 10 min. Cut into bars. Cool completely.

Be Sure To Hurry Over to The Rusty Thimble

Brenda of The Rusty Thimble is having a great giveaway for June. Be sure to hurry over and enter as she's drawing the winning name out on June 15. Sure looks like some wonderful prims just for entering...don't know about you but I sure love to be the winner.

Pond Building 101

This picture is how we ended after our first day of wall construction. Josh was completely worn out from moving and placing the rock in just the right place. Building a stone wall may not look like it's a lot of work but it is. The stone have to fit sort like a puzzle next to and on top of each other.


We decided to go with a pre-formed pond as oppose to a site built one. Too many problems exist with a site built pond and since we weren't having a huge pond, the pre-formed one fit the bill.

My birthday day, Josh was renewed with vigor, so he set out to dig the 2 foot deep area the pond needed. A few hours and many root removals later, the pond insert fit.



Time to backfill around the pound, making sure it was level. Thank goodness for strong youthful backs!










With the pond in place,the rest of the wall could be built. Then came the waterfall construction. Or should I say frustration!


Josh built, tore apart, rebuilt the waterfall so many times that day. Trying to get the water to fall just right from one stone to the next can be tricky.



After trying and trying again Josh has given up temporarily. Hopefully he is thinking out his next plan of attack. The hubby says that he will help him with the design later this afternoon, so hopefully there will be a successful waterfall. We even have our first visitor to our pond, a small tree frog. Wish I could get a picture of him but he's about the size of a quarter and blends in too well with the pond right now.

One of the things we did get accomplished was to ring our front street tree with a stone retaining wall. I planted some impatiens and transplanted some hostas in the new bed. I think it looks rather lovely.

Check Out Painting Thyme Needfuls Great Giveaway

Be sure to stop by Painting Thyme Needfuls blog. Lynn is having a wonderful summer themed giveaway in honor of reaching 300 followers. Hurry as the winners name will be drawn out on June 21st. I sure am hoping that I am the lucky winner.

My New Flower Bed Day 1

A year ago, I decided to remove the old tired looking shrubs that were in the front of our house. I don't know what held me back from doing it sooner...well that's not quite truthful, I do know. We didn't intend to be living in this house too long, so we did nothing for the first 5 years. Whether we live in this house for another 5 years or 5 months, I decided it was time to do something that I would enjoy.



Who knew it would take another year before the foundation bed would get planted. The delay was mostly due to the selection of shrubs that we wanted being unavailable until this spring again. So when hubby and I stopped at the nursery 5 weeks ago and they had what we wanted we purchased the shrubs. Then came the looking at stone for the bed walls. We looked at a few different ones and ended up with a colonial grey stone. So now it was just finding the time. Well this past weekend was perfect. Hubby and the boys got caught up on all their lawn service lawns and had Sunday free. So off we went to buy the stone. Couldn't buy it before we were ready to use it as the darn pallet of stone weighs 1500 pounds and it has to be loaded off one piece at a time.


Anyway, we brought the shrubs from the backyard where they have been patiently waited to be planted and began to lay down the stone.




The boys worked on laying out the wall and made some pretty good progress on Sunday. They got both the top tier and the second tier along the front of the porch built.



Instead of building the wall all the way up from the ground in the back with my expensive wall stone, we used cinder blocks as the foundation. Once the dirt is back filled in, you'll never know the difference. Work had to end because we were at the point where it was getting dark and were where the pond needed to go....yep, we putting in fish pond too. Really it was the hubby's idea to put in a fish pond. Of course there was much discussion on what kind of fish pond we were putting in...whether it was going to be built from scratch or a preformed one. I'll post more tomorrow on pond building 101 tomorrow!

Summer Celebration at The Old Farmhouse

The etsy group that I belong to is having a summer celebration to kick off the season. Each team member was eligible to enter 3 items in the celebration. I was only able to get 2 entered this time due to time constraints. Of course no summer celebration would be complete without a patriotic entry on my part.




And of course summer isn't summer without time spent by the pool. I had a request to do a "pool rules" sign so I put one together that has some common sense rules and which can also be personalized.

So if you have time, stop by etsy and check out all the summer celebration offerings that the OFG group has put together.

Supply Swap

A crafter can't have too many supplies now can she? I belong to an etsy group, Old Farmhouse Gathering and the gals decided to have a supply swap....not that I need anymore but I figured what the heck. My partner was Bette from Tomorrows Treasures. Bette is a sewer as well as a pattern designer and she also has a notions selling shoppe on etsy...whew! Three shoppes here and I can barely keep up with one! Anyway be sure to check out all of Bette's shoppes.

I've got to say if I had to pick one item out of all that Bette sent, I would have to say the flat head cut nails are a favorite. Can't wait to rust those babies up and find a use for them.

Men Are Definetly From Mars

I don't know how men think! And maybe after this post I don't wanna know either! LOL!


Ok, you see the car in the first picture? That's my run around do errands car. Not too big, good on gas and gets the job done.




Ok, hubby does lawn service and has a large Dodge Ram 2500 diesel to drive. Well he comes home the other day and tells me the starter blew up! He said they heard a large bang and smoke poured out from under the hood where the starter is. So he had to jump start the truck to drive it home...thankfully it's manual and he was parked on a incline. Ok...not that this is the illogical thing, cause that all made sense. What doesn't make sense is why he played around for the past 3 weeks thinking what was wrong with the truck was first a broken battery cable, then a dead as a doonail battery and then finally maybe the starter.


And if that wasn't enough....why does he think my little car can be used for his lawn service? As you can see, not only did he think so, but he had the middle son Josh, on board with the idea. So after much discussion and consideration, the mower was loaded into the car. Of course, I should have taken pictures of all the attempts at putting it in this way or that way but didn't....just got the final results.




Anyway, the hubby got his lawns he needed to get done, finished. It rained today so my little car got a reprieve. The starter is suppose to be delivered tomorrow and all should be right with the world again...well maybe!

1500 Sales, Mother's Day....what a week!

It's been one of those weeks...I finally reached a milestone on etsy....1500 sales! WooHoo! The little things that make us happy! LOL! I set "goals" for myself and this was one...so off the list it goes and the bar needs to be raised higher. I know I have friends that think I'm "nuts" and maybe I am, but I find that goals help keep me on track.

Friday, the hubby was working on the lights for our enclosed utility trailer as they weren't working and we had a craft show the next day. After replacing almost every connector, 4 hours later, it still was a "no-go" so we missed our show...can't drive without lights. Guess he's gonna have to rewire every light individually before my next show. UGH!

I got the most pleasant surprise. He brought me home those 4 lovely hanging baskets of geraniums you see in the picture. They were part of my Mother's Day gift. Aren't they gorgeous? Not having anywhere else to hang them, I had come across the 4 hook porch planter at Home Depot a few days back and thought it would be a perfect addition to the front porch along with the geraniums. So a trip to the store, a couple of turns of 2 wing nuts and voila!

Saturday brought "date night" with the hubby. We took Sean and Ian to see "Iron Man 2" and to get a bite to eat at our favorite pizza place, Carmines. Loved the movie, as Robert Downey Jr, ain't too bad on the eyes. The movie was over when it just seemed to have started...maybe had more to do with the star! LOL!

Sunday morning started with breakfast of homemade waffles being cooked for me. We even had leftover chocolate covered strawberries. Josh had made a special annivesary dinner for his girlfriend Mariya, the night before so that's how we had the strawberries. Wow! What a change. Living in a house full of males, it's rare when they cook anything for anyone including themselves! So that was really nice. They also cooked dinner for me, which was chicken quesidillas, a favorite. Hubby didn't do too bad with minimal direction.

What a pleasant change of pace for me. I won't say that they are thoughtless, but I can't say they are always as thoughtful as they were yesterday. Wonder what they have planned for my birthday in a few weeks? Hmmmm...guess I'll have to wait and see.

No Soliciting!

There's probably not a spring day that goes by, where someone isn't knocking on my door selling something. While I don't like taking a hardline and saying no to anyone, most requests do get that answer. It's so difficult these days to figure out who is legitimate and who is just running a scam...I know kinda cynical, huh? But statistics have shown that those that have a different view, are usually the very ones that are preyed upon and taken advantage of.

I have memories from my childhood of many door-to-door salesmen and delivery people. One notably, that I'm sure we all remember, was the "fuller brush guy". He's been immortalized in films, comedy spoofs, and even in Disney cartoons. Alfred Fuller had the right ideas to sell his product...bring it to your customers, demonstrate, and stand behind your product. These simple principles have made Fuller Brush Co grow from a initial investiment of $375 in 1906 to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars today.

American entrepenuerial spirit was patterned after Fuller's success. Many businesses that started out as door to door sales have grown to be extremely successful but as previously mentioned so have the scam artist. So if you come and knock on my door and I say no, don't take it personally, I just don't do door nor phone solicitations.

For those that prefer a more gentle reminder here's another one of my no soliciting signs that you can find for sale in my etsy shoppe