Pioneer Woman at Heart

I said we were getting a "slight" warm up, but it's a smidgen of warmth.  The temperature today is 0°F with a windchill of -11°F.  The wind has settled, but they are saying we may get a teensy bit more snow. Oh boy!  Why I cannot have magazine subscriptions.  I used to LOVE getting magazines from my Mom, after she read hers.  I haven't had magazines around since Mom passed.  I picked these up at the library book sale for free, but that was a year ago.  The magazines are all Cook's Illustrated magazines.  I have moved them from kitchen table, to end table, to coffee table and back to kitchen table.  Sigh.  The magazine shuffle madness must end!  I am forcing myself to get thru them, and pass them on.  Good grief.  However, it is part of my "take back the organized house" mode I am currently in. Is there something you "shuffle" around for one reason or another? On to the cleaners part of the post. . .   I have been usin...

I made homemade hair detangler last year, and used it all year long. I even bought a small spray bottle for traveling with (and it worked great).  I have added lemon essential oil to it now. I discovered a hair brush, after my hair dresser used one on my hair one visit.   It's called a detangler brush, and they do exist in your big box stores.  I bought one, and wow!  I can brush out my hair much more easily with this tool (it's a small brush, but hard to tell in the photo).  Not sure how they make the brush, but I use a lot less homemade detangler now, and it takes a lot less time to brush my wet hair out with the detangler brush.   Remember the homemade face toner? As well as the homemade face serum?  I am still using both, and love them both.  In fact, the serum (I made my own rosehip oil for it first), is said to reduce scar damage, and help the skin grow new skin cells.  I used it all year on a very small scar on my chin and it's ...

The rain has not left us yet.  It's been on and off for days here lately.  The chicken run has been flooded more than once, and is now a muddy swamp mess.  I tossed some straw down, to keep from bringing in a muddy mess, but it's still a squishy, sludgy, chicken run. The weather-man keeps promising sunny dry days ahead, but who knows when they'll arrive again.  I just keep telling myself, that the spring herbs and garlic are loving the rain. However, it has been cold here as well.  The wind chill this morning was 29°F.  We had a freeze warning.  The sky has been showing some strange coloring as well. The sun was not out when I snapped this photo, but.... The ornamental apple trees are producing blossoms already.  The trees are very pretty, but the birds plant way too many of them. Are there any Yerba Mate tea drinkers here?  I tried loose leaf for the first time.  It is so fine, it was coming out of the sides of my larger tea-ball, so I ...

  I hope you all had a nice Easter weekend.  We had some excitement going on here so to speak.  First the power went out for several hours, along with an internet outage.  They could not locate the cause, or at the point of powering back on, did not disclose why they both went out of service.  It was a good spectrum of an area to lose both services. Secondly, we had to cancel our weekend plans. My husband was on the forced overtime list at work.  He worked the entire Easter weekend.  Hence the unfinished home repairs.   Thirdly, two very suspicious looking people landed on our front porch.  No vehicle, no cell phone (according to them), and their story was that they were "left by the side of the road"  and wanted to use my cell phone or call for a ride etc.  They also said they were from another state, and not from around here.  I was not about to do that, so I shut and locked the door, and called the Sheriff.   ...