Harvest time

I love fall. It's hard to say if I like Fall or Spring better....both are so refreshing. This spring and summer we planted our very first vegetable garden. I quickly learned we have REALLY good soil, as our tomato plants grew taller than me by the first part of July. Had we put another cage on top of the cage this plant was in it probably would have grown even taller. In this garden we grew lettuce, onions, banana papers, chili peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, green papers, and cilantro. It all was great fun. This past week has been sad though. It froze two nights in a row and then again last night. (A few days later). I was shocked to learn that one of my tomato plants survived along with our peppers....I think. Now comes the fun part. Pulling all of the fruit off the plants that died. If you see the picture with all if the bags. Those are all tomatoes and 4-5 green bell peppers. We had a good year.

Oh how time has passed! It is June already! Just celebrated my Dad's birthday this evening and two weeks ago we celebrated my Golden Birthday (I turned 24 on the 24th).  Then two days after we celebrated with all of our family and friends we left for Northern Minnesota to visit Chris' grandparents for the week. We left Sunday morning at 6:00am and made it all the way to St. Paul. We then traveled on the next day to arrive that afternoon.  We stayed with them till Friday at which point we started our way back home by way of the Mall of America and Some State capitol buildings.  We saw Minnesota's, Iowa's and Nebraska's So I have not seen 8 State capitol buildings up-close and personal.  (Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas? Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and I'm probably forgetting one.) One thing on my bucket list is to see all 50, but I think I would settle for 48 if I had to.
The Mall of America was everything that anyone has ever said it was and more.  I was overwhelmed by the massiveness!!! That's pretty much all I have to say about it too. I really can't even begin to describe it. More shopping that any woman could do in one day. Plus and amusement park. AWESOME! I had a great time and am definitely looking forward to the next time we get to go. I'd say I, but there's no way I'd go to that place all by myself.

I did read my last post about tripod and my new years resolution. I had actually forgotten I put that on here, but I've stuck to it.  She now knows "go lay down" and will go lay down out of the way, but close enough to see or hear anything drop to the floor.  She is such a wonderful addition to our family.

Also happening at the Lofstrom residence...
We have planted a salsa garden.  Almost everything we are growing can/will go in salsa. The only thing that won't is our cucumbers and lettuce. I'm pretty excited about it. YUM!
My amazing husband built one of the nicest porches in the neighborhood!!!

Spring Spectacular!
So over the past few months it seems just as we would fix one thing something else would break. It all started with the AC we had a hot spell in the beginning of May (I think) and we quickly learned that our AC was not working fixed that. Then the kitchen faucet started going out.  We knew is needed to be fixed soon since it would constantly drip, which in the winter time we used to our advantage, but over time it got worse. So we ordered a new faucet. The week after that the hot water heater got jealous and couldn't hold her water in anymore and spilled her guts on our floor. Thankfully I had taken most of the hot water when I took a bath, but soon found out that when I used all the hot water she wasn't going to fill back up without spilling most of it on the floor. Wet-tacular! Oh and the wonderful thing about our house is that if there's a water issue anywhere the only way to stop it is to shut the water off to the whole house. So we spent a couple of days without water. Thankfully it didn't take as long as some of the contractors thought it might to track down supplies.  OK....so I guess I'll just tell the whole story.
Sunday night. I decide to take a bath...a nice "hot" cozy bath. I'd been soaking for a few minutes, but realized my water was kind of cold so I turned the hot on to warm it up. Well it wasn't hot....it was colder than my bath water. Chris goes and checks the water heater and finds a rather large pool of water by the water heater. so he shut the water off and I finish my luke-warm bath, and then go assess the damage the next day some people come out and look at it, and give me an estimate. I decide I want a second opinion since the kid looked my age....probably younger and had looked at it for about 30 seconds. The next guy comes and looks at our hot water heater and gives us the bad news that it's toast and a new one like what we have will be around $1.600 which is a specially designed mobile home gas hot water heater. (Rather than venting out the top like normal hot water heaters do, a mobile home one vents out the bottom) He went on to suggest that if we wanted to go that way he wouldn't put it in for us because he thought it was a dumb idea to begin with. He recommended getting an electric water heater, and that's what we did.  While we are out at home depot trying to pick out a hot water heater we run into the plumber and he was able to help us get what we needed. Since we were putting in an electric water heater that meant we had to get the spot wired.  Which the plumber was friends with an electrician and about 30 minutes after we had decided we were going to get an electric water heater the electrician showed up to survey the situation.  He rattled off a bunch of stuff I didn't follow and said he probably wouldn't be back till thursday (this all happening on a monday) Tuesday rolled around everyone was there and working by about 9:00am and they were all done by noon on Tuesday.  So by Tuesday evening not only was our water back on...it was hot too. We've had the water heater for about a month now and it works really well and it is sooooooo much quieter than our old one.

other than trips and fixing things not much is happening in Lofstrom world. Thanks for reading!

New Years Resolution

Tis the season of making goals and planning out the new year.  I'm sure you all have a list of everything you hope to accomplish this year, as do I.  The biggest goal on my list is to not feed my dog whatever I happen to be eating at the time even though she looks at me like this

any time I sit down for a snack or a meal. We are working on "Go lay down" and it works for a little while, but if I jump like i dropped something she is at my feet in a split second to sniff out what it is that i may have dropped. I find it very interesting in the few months that we have had her how well she knows us already and knows how to work us over to get what she wants. This year however I will not bow to my dog! I am her master and she will be doing what I want.  My goal is to not give into her adorable face, and her stubborn beagle side of her.  I will prevail!!

All is well at the Lofstrom house hold, Christmas was good, and we are having a pleasant New Year so far.  We are thankful for the many blessings in our lives.  The past one that I'm still rejoicing over is our new washing machine.  We had been saving up to build a porch before winter....well it's now January and it's been winter for several weeks now.  Inbetween Christmas and New Years our washing machine started to make weird noises, it was old when it was given to us and it had multiple owners before us....nedless to say it was no surprise it was now starting to act its age.  I got online to look for a new one.  We could have repaired it, but why spend $150-$200 on an old one when you can spend $500 - $600 that we had in savings on a brand new one?  So we got a good deal on a brand new high efficiency one.  I like it.  I think what i like most is how it doesn't shake our entire house whenever it goes into the spin cycle. But that's about all that is new around here, and a new washing machine is about as exciting as it gets =)

Merry White Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. We were blessed in many ways. All of my grandparents are healthy. I think I was most blessed by being able to be "home" we didn't have to travel so we slept in our own bed and got plenty of rest. Not that I don't like traveling, but to completely miss out on all the craziness of traveling this time of the year was nice. The first time for me in over 4 years.
We still have snow...its been here for a week now, but I'm not complaining. I love it! Here are pictures of it. The green tree you'll see was something my sister and I made on the first day after it snowed. The rest are self explanatory. Huge drifts that go up to our waists....stuff like that.


And the truck in this picture is something Chris and I are still praising God about.  Since we traded off his truck last year sometime he has been hoping to get one again, but we didn't know how to make it happen.  Someone in our church gave us this a few days before Christmas.  Completely paid for! God grants us the desires of our heart, and it is faithful when we are faithful.

snooooow!

We got snow!!!! I'm thinkin it should be a white Christmas which makes me very happy.  What's even better is that by Sunday all the roads will be clear so everyone can travel, but we should still have a pretty nice blanket of snow on the ground. 

here's another picture.

Snow make me happy! I think it makes this time of the year so much more pleasant, and give it a reason to be miserably cold.  I hate it when it's cold just to be cold, but if it's cold because there's snow on the ground that's different.  

I think the highlight of my day so far was seeing my dog in the snow...she does not like the snow at all. I'll have to post the video I shot on my phone a little later. I'm currently on my computer posting.  I'll probably have more pictures to post later on when and if I get out and about. which I doubt that I will.

December update

So I got up early today and I've got a few minutes to update my blog.
I'm learning so much about dog personalities lately and I think my dog has two since she's a mix. Some days she acts like a blue healer, very chill and sweet but pretective. Then other days she acts like a beagle, her nose gets her into all kinds of trouble from chasing cats (as she did last night) to getting into the trash cans, and who knows what else. Her mood/behavior also depends on the weather. I have learned she hates the sound of rain on anything metal....weird I know. I say all this just to say that I love my four legged friend personality quirks and all. Who would want a dog without personality?


Home is going well, we have our Christmas tree up. No lights outside yet...its been too cold or Chris has been hunting on the weekends. Two weekends ago (from this coming one) he shot his 1st Kansas deer.

Then the weekends before that was pheasant season.....so needless to say the inside of our house is very festive, but the outside....not so much.  With all that cold our heater has been special. Working here and there waking up some mornings to a 59 degree house not the most plesant. Heater guy came today and hopefully fixed it. It's always encouraging when they say "well I think that should fix it..." haha .....
Well my few minutes are gone now. It's now time to grocery shop...on to Wal-Mart and Dillons.

Baking experiments and budget savers

Hello,
So I'm sure we all have noticed the ever climbing prices of the world system which means we all are looking to save everywhere we can. Thanks to some friends and some great recipes I've found digging through books and old card sets I have found easy to make very affordable meals. The one in this pic below are of my first experiencement today. They are of my version of what someone told me about, called Homemade Hot Pockets. I used some mystery meats I got from a food program at our church, cheddar cheese and 2 crescent rolls pressed together. They weren't too terribly time consuming. I like how cheap they were! I got the cheese on sale, the c rolls on sale AND the meat was FREE! So rather than paying about $5 or more for 2 I paid about $8 for 4 packs of c rolls, and a 16oz block of cheese. Yep good deal I know....not great, but pretty good.
More to come