They Only Look Innocent...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

 

Linking up with Tones On Tuesday and Wordless Wednesday.

Sunday Photo - Old Church

This is the old church at Fort Stanton in Lincoln County, New Mexico. I like the stonework on this old building but I really, really like the door!

Check out those hinges!! :)
Linking up with Weekly Top Shot and Your Sunday Best.

PB & J Cookies

Move on over Cowboy Cookies, there is a new favorite cookie in town!
This recipe idea came from the Better Homes and Gardens Special Fall Baking issue which, by the way, has lots of fabulous recipes in it! :)
I have changed it a bit to utilize my Baking Mix. It is a basic oatmeal cookie with peanut butter chips stirred into the batter and a dollop of jam on top. We are not big jam or jelly eaters so I have been using up homemade jam I had in the cupboard. The picture above has two with plum and one with peach.

PB & J Cookies

1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups Baking Mix
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups old fashioned or quick cooking oats, uncooked
1 cup peanut butter chips
Jam or jelly

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat together butter and sugars until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Add Baking Mix, cinnamon and oats; mix well. Stir in peanut butter chips; mix well. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Make a depression in the top of each cookie and fill with about 1/2 teaspoon of jam or jelly of your choice. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for one minute on cookie sheet then remove to wire rack to cool completely. Makes about 4 dozen cookes.
These have become THE cookie at the Farmer's Market recently. I even had a lady call me this week and order two dozen for this Saturday. I hope you give them a try. :)
Linking up with The Country Homemaker Hop, Rural Thursday and Farmgirl Friday.

Mustache Monday - 10/22/2012

Do you ever have days when you just can't figure out what to blog about? I know I sure do!

While visiting Pricilla at The Maaaaa of Pricilla today, I discovered just the bit of fun I needed!

Lin at Duck and Wheel with String has started a new linky party, Mustache Monday! What a hoot! Stop by Lin's blog to see who else has suddenly grown a 'stache!! :)

Sunday Photos - Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium

One of the reasons we took our trip to New Mexico last week was to attend the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium held at the Ruidoso Downs race track. What a fun event!! :)
There were vendors galore and almost constant live entertainment in the grandstand area and the big tent but my favorite things were all outside.
One of these was the Chuck Wagon Cookoff, named "Best Chuck Wagon Contest" for 2012 by True West Magazine. It was VERY a little cold and windy the day we were there but the wagons were awesome and these hardy men and women were cookin' up some mighty fine-lookin' grub!

This barrel was identified as a butter churn. You could make a LOT of butter with this!!

Don't you just love this guy?!? He was so friendly too, lots of kids (and adults too) were lined up to pet him!

A big thrill for us was getting to attend a Craig Cameron demonstration. What a neat guy, he is one of our favorite horse trainers!

We really enjoyed the Symposium and look forward to going back sometime! :)
Linking up with Orange You Glad It's Friday, Weekly Top Shot and Your Sunday Best.

Fall Garland

I saw this project on the Good Housekeeping website this week and since I dont have a whole lot of just "fall" decorations, I decided to give it a try. It was quick and easy and they even have downloadable templates available for the leaf shapes. If you have some kids to help you cut the leaves out it would be even faster! ;-)

I probably could have made it a little "drapier" but I didn't feel like restringing the whole thing. I also used yarn instead of dental floss because I liked the look and figured the leaves wouldn't slide around as much. Jerry even gave it a thumbs up! :)
Linking to Farmgirl Friday.

Rural Thursday - 10/18/2012

When we were in New Mexico last week, we visited the Hubbard Museum of the American West.
Before you even enter the museum, you get to see sculptor Dave McGary's wonderful exhibit titled "Free Spirits at Noisy Water," a string of eight larger-than-life bronze horses bounding down a hillside.
The museum features Western and Cowboy artifacts, Native American artifacts, lots of saddles, wagons and transportation vehicles; as well as educational programming and a changing exhibition program.
Many years ago, when my parents first moved to beautiful southeast Arizona, there was a museum in nearby Patagonia called the Anne C. Stradling Museum of the Horse. I have often wondered what happened to it and all the wonderful items there. Well, Anne Stradling was suffering from poor health in the late 80s and contacted the Hubbards in an effort to find a new home for her massive collection. Her Museum of the Horse is now part of the Hubbard Museum in Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico, proving that it truly is a small world. :)
Linking up with Rural Thursday.

Leaves For Leontien

I am sending these leaves, many hugs, and best wishes to our blogging friend Leontien who is having a rough time right now battling melanoma. Please visit Nancy's blog to view all the wonderful autumn leaves sent to Leontien and her husband Bastiaan and to join us in sending her lots of love!!

Barn Charm - 10/16/2012

Well, it's kinda like a barn! ;-)

We took a trip to Ruidoso, New Mexico this past weekend to visit one of Jerry's buddies and his wife and attend the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium. We also had the opportunity to do a little sightseeing around this beautiful part of New Mexico.

These pictures are of the stables and silos at historic Fort Stanton. The fort was built in 1855 and served as a military fortification, a tuberculosis hospital and a WWII internment camp.

I absolutely love these silos! There was a wall around the stables and silos so I had to take pictures as best I could.

Linking up with Barn Charm.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

It seems I'm making up for a lack of recipe posts lately! ;-)

There is a recipe for Sweet-potato Biscuits in the November/December issue of Hobby Farm Home magazine. It sounded pretty good to me...except for the brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. I had some leftover sweet potatoes from making Sweet Potato Rolls for the Farmers' Market and so I decided to try making "regular" sweet potato biscuits to see how they would come out. Well, they are YUMMY!! They are light and moist and have just enough sweet potato "sweetness" without being pumpkin pie-ish.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

2 1/2 cups Baking Mix
6 tablespoons cold butter cut into little cubes
1 cup mashed sweet potato
1/4 to 1/3 cup milk or buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Place Baking Mix in a bowl; cut butter into Baking Mix until it resembles small peas. Make a well in the center and add the sweet potato and milk all at once. Start with the lesser amount of milk and add a little more if your dough is too dry. Stir together until a soft dough forms. Turn dough out onto a well floured surface OR you could use your handy-dandy pastry cloth! Dust the top with additional flour. Knead gently 8-10 times. Pat dough to about 1/2-inch thickness and cut out biscuits. Gently push the dough back together and keep cutting out biscuits until all the dough has been used. Place biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown. I like my biscuits a little crunchy on the outside so I bake them for the longer time.

By the way, they make wonderful egg sandwiches. :)

Linking up with the Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop and Food on Friday.

Green Tomato Spice Cake

Yep, you read that right...Green Tomato Spice Cake!! :)

My blogging buddy, Teresa at Eden Hills posted the recipe recently for this cake and I just had to try it. Wow, I'm sooo glad I did and so is Jerry!! He was pretty skeptical when I told him I was going to make a cake with green tomatoes but once he tried it, he ate almost the whole cake! He even had some for breakfast this morning! LOL!!

This is a great way to use up the last of the green tomatoes from the garden and something different than green tomato relish. I highly recommend this cake and her Peach Pie Cake, if you haven't already tried it. Thanks for the great recipes Teresa! :)

Linking up with The Country Homemaker Hop, Rural Thursday and Food Friday.

Sleeping Frog Farms

I wanted to share some more of the photos I took last week on our tour of Sleeping Frog Farms. I have serious garden envy but I also realize that they are professionals and I certainly am not!! LOL!! It was so nice to be able to tour their farm and learn from these wonderful people. Besides the produce, they have laying hens, dairy goats, honey bees and earthworms. They also offer an intensive internship program for anyone wanting to learn how to start their own Certified Naturally Grown farm.

This is my favorite picture, Elijah Blue in his froggie shirt with one of the many friendly barn cats! :)

Sunday Photo - 10/07/2012

I got to go on a farm tour yesterday to Sleeping Frog Farms, an intensive 75-acre farm nestled in the Cascabel corridor of the San Pedro River Valley, founded on permaculture design and biodynamic growing principles. What an amazing place this dedicated quartet of young people have created here in the high desert!
This Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly thinks the zinnias they have planted are pretty amazing too! :)
Sharing with Orange You Glad It's Friday, Weekly Top Shot, Straight Out Of the Camera Sunday, Your Sunday Best and Mandarin Orange Monday.

Photo Art Friday - Figures

Ever since my parents moved to beautiful southeast Arizona in the mid 80s, I have been fascinated with Native American petroglyphs and pictographs.
My ex-husband and I took a week long trip to Moab, Utah many, many years ago that included a backcountry jeep/camping/hiking tour of the surrounding area. Our guides took us to some amazing places with awesome rock art and artifacts. I honestly don't even remember having a camera along on the trip but I did purchase this lovely piece of art that is a representation of the petroglyphs created so long ago by the Native Americans who lived in the area.
When Bonnie suggested the prompt of "Figures" for this week's Photo Art Friday, this was the first thing that came to my mind. The rock is actually mounted on a piece of cream colored poster board, matted, framed under glass, and hangs on the wall in our living room. I used Nancy's texture Betty by el vigilante as the background and then added a photograph of my rock art and edited with Pixlr.

Flower Art Friday - 10/5/2012

For Flower Art Friday this week, LeAnne suggested a pink theme in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness month. I decided to make some pink tissue paper flowers to use. I knew saving all that pink tissue paper from Victoria's Secret would pay off eventually! ;-)

Wordless Wednesday - 10/03/2012

Every once in awhile, he charges me...
Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Tones On Tuesday and Rural Thursday.

First Of The Month - October

I'm joining Jan for her First of the Month meme all this year. Here are the ground rules per her site: "The goal is to capture one thing repeatedly on the first of each month. It can be a landscape, a person, an animal, a project; whatever your focus is, is fine. It can even be a record of where you are each First of the Month."

 

Daphne is seven months old now and I noticed her "kid" collar was getting pretty tight so I changed it out for her brand new, yellow, big girl collar today. It's still just a little big so I shortened it a bit. I also introduced her to apples today, she sniffed them but wasn't particularly interested so Nike got to enjoy them all. She didn't mind a bit! ;-)