Baking, Remodeling and Jacey!

Let me go ahead and apologize now. I have gotten so far behind here and have so many pictures, I just want to get them all posted. They are probably not going to be in order at all. I am probably not going to write a lot. I hope you enjoy looking anyway.......
Here are some yummy whole wheat cinnamon rolls and peanut butter brownies we baked one day. We have been milling wheat to make our own flour!

Lots of pics of Jacey!! She has changed a lot since these pictures but I want to show her off anyway!

Sleepy baby!

Ian is so in love with his little cousin. He can't wait to teach her lots of lessons about life!

Here are some pictures of the remodeling we did. Johnny came over and we closed in part of our garage to make a new school/computer room!! These are totally backwards...sorry...this is inside the room in process....

Hanging the sheet rock on the outside (in the garage)

Sheet rock on the inside of the room

Ian had a good time "helping"

Aaron helped cut the sheet rock

While the guys worked, we played with Jacey!!

Cutting the hole in the wall for the door!!

The beginning of the hole in the wall!!

Aren't these the prettiest little lips ever?

Framing the walls

One post down.....lots to go!!

Christmas Baking Day!!

We spent the Tuesday before Christmas baking. Even though we cut way back on the amount we normally make, it was still fun!! We had plenty of goodies too!!

The Snickerdoodles! This is just one of the kinds of cookies we made.

Stiring the fudge!

BREAD!!!!!!!!!

Fun School

We had fun doing something new this week!! We made homemade bread!! We all had so much fun and it was VERY YUMMY too. Doing this brought back so many memories of my childhood. While we were growing up, my parents always made all of our bread. It started out being my daddy who was the bread baker, but one day, mama decided she would try her hand at it and when it turned out well, dad thought she should take over that job. Mondays were bread day and it was always so nice to come home from school to our home smelling SOOOO GOOD!! Mama would have lots of bread made but always made sure she had a loaf just coming out of the oven when we arrived. She would slice it while it was still warm and spread some butter on it for us. MMMMMMMM MMMMMMMM GOOD!!
So, on to our bread day!! I decided Monday would be a great day to try my hand at bread baking. I wasn't sure how much the recipe (which happens to be the recipe mama used way back when) would make so I just made a single batch.
Here it is in the bowl ready to sit for about an hour to rise.......

and, this is what it looked like after the hour was up!!



Morgan got the fun job of "punching" it down after it rose!!

Of course, everyone had to get their hands in it though!

We ended up with 3 loaves and 9 cinnamon rolls out of that batch.

I also bought some whole wheat flour but I only had enough yeast left to make a half a batch. Here is Kristen kneading that one....

Aaron kneading it too!

The half a batch of wheat dough gave us 2 nice sized loaves. We kept one and took one over to one of our neighbors. I ran to the grocery store that evening to pick up some more yeast!!

Day two of bread making!! Tuesday morning, Lil'Rob arrived and we jumped right into our bread baking adventure again. We wanted to give a loaf to Mrs. Lisa's family (neighbors) and also to Ms. Stephanie and her family. We decided to make a double batch this time!! Here are Ian and Lil'Rob stirring the dry ingredients....

Concentrating hard!

I think they had fun with the flour!

Momo wanted to try kneading this time!

This batch made 3 regular loaves, one cinnamon loaf, 12 dinner rolls, and 20 big cinnamon rolls ( and 4 small pretzels too!!). It was so much fun and now that we know we can do it and we have enjoyed homemade bread all week, I think this will become a regular thing around here!! PB&J and grilled cheese sandwiches on homemade bread are the best!!!