{Soap making}

{Soap making-trial and error}

    Wow, it has taken me a while to post these! For the past two days I have had problems with my Internet connection, so that was a set back. School has also kept be pretty busy, and sewing my costume for the Folk Festival *coming soon*. Finally I found time so I am posting all that I can..
    About two weeks ago Mamma's friends Mary and Michelle came over so they could all make soap together! It was really fun to watch because I have never made soap before. Did it turn out well? Well, um, not really.

                                                                       {Round 1}

{Delany measuring out the Coconut Oil}

  

{Measuring out the Lye in full safety gear}

{I guess you could say that the soap making didn't really work the first time.
The soap wasn't tracing, and then it finally started to! We poured in the essential oils
and then it got all weird and gelly. Hmmm.}

                                                                         {Round 2}

 Round 2 soap making went very smooth and the soap turned out great!

{Delany cutting the soap into bars}

{The bar of soap right out of the mold}

{Tammy cutting the bar of soap}

{Ready to use bars of coconut oil soap! They are not perfect but it works really awesome!}



                                   Sorry about some of the pictures being out of order but sometimes blogger does whatever it wants! Till next time...............................

           

{Allison Woods}

     A week or so ago we went to a really fun event! Allison Woods is something that a local group puts on every year. What is it? It was a "reenactment" (no battles) of the French Indian War, Revolutionary War, Civil War, WW1, WW2, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnam. * I am not sure if they are in the right order*. They had people in costumes, vendors selling atiques and other items, and food! It was a really cold day, it took us by surprise actually! It ended up being 54 degrees with no sun........ We met up with two families from our homeschool group and took the tour together. So here are some pictures, I didnt get a whole bunch because there were always big groups of people everywhere so it was kind of hard.

{Our friends brother wearing vintage driving goggles}

{Dancing *or attempting to dance* the Virginia Reel}

{Delany and Mrs. Elena}

{Handmade bonnets}



Fall is here! *almost*

    Hello! Fall my favorite season is approaching and I am totally psyched! The high today was 76 degrees.......awesome.
So, even though it is a bit early *teehee* I decided to go ahead and make the blog design a bit more "fall-ish".
Some of the reasons I love Fall.
1.The cool weather makes it more pleasurable to go outside
2.Sukkot is in the Fall
3.The trees in the yard look so pretty with the orange, red, and yellow.
4. Hot cocoa
5.Fires in the fireplace
6. Time to get out the sweaters!
And so many more, well dinner is calling! 'later.

Something unexpected

     One day, not very long ago, something strange occurred. You probably saw it on the news, but then again, if you are like us who don't watch much TV, maybe you didn't. Your friend might have told you about it because it happened to them, but then again, they might not live on the east coast. Do you know what I am talking about yet? Well, of course you do, so there is no need to tell you!
Whats that??
You don't know what I am talking about? Well, then, why didn't you say so! Here goes......
     I was sitting at my desk listening to music and browsing a magazine when all of a sudden I could hear a low rumbling in the distance. Not paying attention I turned the page and kept on reading the magazine. In less than a few seconds the ground started vibrating and the shaking harder. "Hmmm, that's weird", I thought "why is the ground shaking"? I turning over in my mind many possibilities, none of them seaming plausible, until I suddenly came to the conclusion that, yes, it was an earth quake! I mean, the plates were shaking in the cabinets! I turned around to look at Delany, who was sitting next to me, and said "Delany its an earth quake"!! We both ran towards the front door, arms flailing and yelling "EARTH QUAKE"! We were invisioning the earthquakes we had seen in movies, pictures falling off the shelves, the ground splitting in two, and we were pretty freaked out. We got to the front door were Momma was, she was on the phone and though she felt the shaking, she thought it was "just her" and dismissed it as nothing. So we pulled the door open and we said " Momma do you feel that"!
    Haha, well, believe it or not, this all happened in about 35 seconds! Crazy. So, maybe we were a bit dramatic, but hey, it was our first earth quake! Oh, BTW it measured as a 5.8.
The End

Ross visit and the Biltmore

      Well, I am a little out of date as far as posting goes *oops*. We just started school last Monday and getting into routine hasn't left time for much else, so this got pushed down to the bottom of the list! Ok, here goes.     
     The day after the Civil war Reenactment our friends the Rosses came up to visit us. *much excitement*.  Having left at 4:00 am they arrived about 2:30 pm and we got right down to the fun!! We have this huge black tube that we get inside and roll each other down the hill. Well, we were all a little (ok a lot) sore the next day, but it was totally worth it!! And of course, what would a visit be without a couple hundred crazy/goofy photos? Ok, maybe that is a bit dramatic but anyway...... While they we were here we took them to the Biltmore (if you have never been, well, you should go) and they were totally amazed with the size of this incredible house! Getting caught up in all the excitement I forgot to take a picture of the front of the house so that you could see what I was talking about. *oops*. Delany will post some later I am sure :-)
Ok, so time for the pictures!

Eliana and Tammy

Momma and Olivia

Eliana holding Mocha

Tammy and Eliana

Spinning

Delany and Olivia being goofy :-)

Tammy, Eliana, Delany

Eliana waiting for everyone to play Apples to Apples

Delany and Atalya

I told myself I wouldn't post this one, but I just had to. We did a Romeo and Juliet
play and we didn't have a boy, so guess who got elected? Thats right, yours truly..
So, we whipped out a brown eye liner pencil and drew on a mustache and bushy eye
brows. Oh great.                                                                                                                       

*from top left to bottom right*
Eliana, Delany, Olivia, Tammy, Atalya

A *traditional* pose for us. :-)

Ok, so those are the pictures we took at the house, here are some Biltmore pictures.

The amazing gardens, some of them anyway!

A beautiful rose!

The Huge greenhouse and a wall of roses

Messing around in the gift shop. Lovely

All of us piled on a wagon.

A picnic at a very picturesque place on the Biltmore grounds.

The whole group, minus me :-)

So, that concludes our visit with the Rosses!
 

Civil War Reenactment

A funny thought.
    I love Civil War Reenactments, they are so fun! You get to dress up and pretend you are someone different, its like living in that era for a day. But, when you think about it, isn't it kind of morbid? I mean, hundreds of men died, it was a horrible thing, and we are reenacting it?? Oh well, just a though!
    A week ago we went to a civil war reenactment, and had so much fun!!! We all made dresses, Delany made one for herself, and I made one for my mom and myself.......... Something I learned, you don't use two different blacks to make a top! I didn't quite have enough of one black, so I whipped another one out of my drawer (I was in a hurry so I didn't even think about matching them up!) and made the top. Big mistake.
We get there, get dressed and mamma's tops looks really funny. Ugg! At least they had something she could borrow :-). Anyway..............

    We were inside the house helping with the kids crafts and answering questions, most of which we didn't know the answer to because we were not expecting it! Something else we were not expecting was people asking to take a picture with us! That was funny :-)
    (The reenactment took place at Latta Plantation, a cute 2 story house built in 1800 by James Latta sitting on 240+ acres.)
So, here are some picture, enjoy!!!

Tammy and Delany at a tea party.

The battle is beginning

Sherry, Delany, Tammy

The well house

The kitchen, it was separate from the house because it was expected to burn
down ever 5-7 years!

The slave house.





Latta Plantation House

Momma in her Civil War dress

The carriage house.

Marlee's Visit

    Wow! The past three weeks have been really, really busy for us! I haven't posted in forever, so this is what we have been doing!!!!
    Three weeks ago our friend Marlee was in town for a few days and came to visit us....... We met them at the bowling alley and enjoyed a couple very fun, and crazy, games. I am not going to post any pictures of that because, its kind of embarrassing, Haha! So after bowling we brought Marlee back to our house and we ate dinner, watched a movie (Ice age 3, so funny!), and stayed up late talking :-) We also had a ton of fun the next day, here are some pictures!

At the Bowling Alley!

The next morning, attempting to use the melon baller :-)

How are we supposed to do this??

Delany, Marlee, Tammy

Our beautiful creation! Ha.

And the sticky mess :-)