What a busy month this is turning out to be. Doesn’t it seem like just yesterday it was Winter and now it feels like Spring, at least this month it does. It’s nature’s trick of course…between the warmth of the sun and the swinging of the tree branches you can pick up just a touch of Winter still hanging in there…it will be back I feel, even if in short moments. Winter is not through with us yet.

This month I tried my hand at making something I had never made before…chicken pot pies. Every Sunday I empty the fridge and clean it out. The chickens love that day. Some left overs are still salvageable.

I had a big mason jar full of chicken soup. I knew I had a bag of frozen peas, and some carrots that were going to go bad if not eaten within that week, as well as some potatoes. So chicken pot pies it was.

I threw everything in a crock pot, chopped up the carrots, and potatoes and added a can of cream of chicken soup, some cornstarch to thicken it up, half a cup of Greek yogurt, one cup of cream cheese, and some extra cubed precooked grilled chicken for extra chicken. Let it cook and simmer and added the frozen peas at the end .

Meanwhile I worked on the pie crust dough, or whatever it’s called…pie dough…you know. Anyway, I went off the recipe my aunt gave me long ago when she taught me how to make home made pies. The trick she told me was to make sure you use ice cold water when mixing up your dough, the less you knead and work, the flakier the crust will be. Kind of like fold, and fold and fold.

We used glass pie dishes we picked up second hand shopping. We were making fruit pies that day, so yummy…oh, and pecan pies, which were her star pies.

She had a way with her hands, pinching and curling the tops like it was the easiest thing in the world to do. When I tried with my clumsy fingers they just didn’t work out the same way.

My pie crust came out delicious though, so that was good. Remembering that special day so long ago, that’s when I decided to take some left overs and try my hand at chicken pot pies. I never had a home made chicken pot pie. The closes to a good chicken pot pie I have had has been those Marie Calendar ones, but that doesn’t compare to a home made pie from your very own kitchen.

I had extra dough left over so I made fruit hand pies and filled them with either fresh pineapple, homemade raspberry jam, or cherry pie filling. The cherry pie filling was from a can. Everyone loved them. I still need to work on presentation, they look a little rough, but hey…it’s home made, what do you expect.

Since we had a bunch of sour dough to make into something, we made that into a giant deep dish sour dough pizza, along with homemade pasta sauce. We added olives, pepperoni and four types of cheese. After baking we topped it off with Oregano and extra virgin olive oil, just a drizzle here and there.

It was just like the pizza my immediate family and I ate when visiting family in Italy. Took us back to Italian road trips with road trip cold pizza. This pizza keeps long and you can eat it for the next couple of days cold if you like.

As for our walking adventures, we have been sticking with walks close to home, which include the little lake.

I have been looking for other areas to walk. I love the Little lake because of how close it is to us, very easy to go to but I would still like to explore other locations as well.

I like to watch the birds from the bird blind. The geese are still around and the hawks are everywhere.

I watched one hawk flying up above us as it held onto a mouse. My husband said maybe the mouse was a friend and he was flying it around for fun and was going to drop it off later. I know he said that to make me laugh…

” That hawk is going to eat that mouse” I gave my husband a look.

The hawk stayed up there flying and flying around for the longest time with that mouse. Maybe my husband was right after all, maybe the two had become friends against all odds and the mouse was on a flying adventure with it’s flying friend.

On our home renovations at the old house-I’ve been continuing to spend more time helping my husband out at that old house. Our son has been very busy at the university trying to catch up on classes. He hasn’t been able to help out on weekends…so mom it is. How many times have I written that. This whole year has been a hard one for sure.

The demolition has begun at the house. The first two rooms we are rebuilding are the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom. We are making the bathrooms much bigger and updated. This house is a very old Ozark folk art home, they call them giraffe homes.

There are not too many around we have heard. Local Arkansans are working to save them as this is part of their history and we just happened to jump on that wagon to try and save one as well. It’s more of a challenge when you buy a historic home to fix up. But it’s also an adventure my family and I enjoy.

I help with construction clean up, organizing building supplies, painting, inventory and archiving old items from all the buildings, as well as being in charge of the Go pro footage I’m helping my husband out with recording the whole process of rebuilding an old giraffe home. I also take all before photos of our work in progress.

In cat news…Pippi my out of control kitten is back to loving the fire place. Now that a false Spring is here tricking us all, the fire place is cold and dark, no longer in service. Pippi jumps up on it and smacks her paw on different places around the fireplace, almost like she is trying to figure out how to turn it on. She’s so funny. Then she gives up and seems sort of depressed. I try to play laser tag with her when that happens, she loves that toy.

There was a cold wet morning one day and I started a fire, Pippi was so happy. It’s warm in our house and we have areas where I have baskets with fuzzy blankets for the cats, but they all love the fireplace the most.

For Valentine’s day this month I made sweet treats for everyone and we went out for a fun shopping adventure into the bigger cities. We are like an hour away from the shopping areas. I found some bargains too.

I always have sticker shock now when I head out to a mall or the nicer stores. We mostly shop second hand.

Home supplies for the house renovations are bought at stores like habitat for humanity, church sales, yard sales and other thrift shops. We do buy new when we have too as well.

My favorite store right now is TJ Max, that’s such a cool store. It gets so packed though. The line wraps around the counter areas and goes out into the floor of the store. They have really unique and nice things there.

At one of the malls we went to there was a Hallmark store.

It has been years since I have been to a Hallmark card store. I loved those back in the day. I would always get a special Hallmark Christmas ornament every year, I still have those ornaments. They had a bunch at 75% off on this shopping trip, so I picked out two. They also had a big after Christmas sale at Pottery Barn, and I picked up two adorable ornaments there as well.

Our free craft kit for the month were tiny plaster hearts I made up. I added wire hanging loops into the plaster so that the hearts once painted could be hung up. My daughter helped me with this project. We made almost 100 kits, then dropped them off at different locations around the community.

And on and on it goes. This newest adventure of ours, each day brings something new, something different. I love the woods, I also loved the desert where I came from, where I was born. And I love the sea, but haven’t gotten to that yet…maybe, who knows. Who really knows what tomorrow will bring. For now, I look forward to wherever God leads us. Life is one big adventure after all. The wheel keeps on turning.

February is turning out to be a very good month.

1 Timothy 6;17 God…”richly provides us with all things to enjoy”.

Prayer request, and these are a couple big ones that come right out of Arizona. Seems a lot is happening there, so please continue to keep Arizona in your prayers. Please keep praying for the capture of the perpetrator or perpetrators of the little girls that are missing and continuing to get harmed.

Savannah’s mother is still missing, so please keep them in your prayers as well. I have a whole bunch of theories for that one that I only share on certain chat sites and pod cast, not here on this site.

A prayer from Arizona that was answered, all in just a couple days too….

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