Total Odds and Ends

Not a lot of time to post, but wanted to add these odds and ends.  I've been talking about purging the house for some time now.  We've done some work, but it has been taking WAY too long.  So I had to lay down the law :-)  No going anywhere, or having people over UNTIL ***ALL*** the purging is done, in every room of our house.  So there :-P  I know it is going to be a whirl wind couple of weeks until the new year.  I have a lot of new things planned to be added into our school semester, one of which is not spending all day doing chores!  I think the girls are excited about some of the new things.  I am sure some of it won't be so exciting.  Isabella told me last night she was excited to start a Book of Centuries, a Book of Firsts and for us to put on a play.  The girls were talking last night which book (one of their literature books or a Shakespeare play) that they want to do.  I told them they would make up the play, make costumes, and that we could get some white sheets from the thrift store for them to paint scenes on.  Anyways, all of this will not be accomplished if we find ourselves having to constantly clean the mass messes around here.  I told them that after the purging we will be instituting a schedule for school time so that one girls will be with the boys at all times.  It's the little guys that make the most messes.  Both those measures should help.  Off to exercise (making progress!) and clean.  Here are some odd placed pictures:

 After we made our jars we set them out on our porch one night.  We stood out there for a prayer time and then made some hot chocolate (half gaps legal...no cocoa is allowed, but we used almond milk and  honey for the other ingredients).  I've really enjoyed having these colorful jars around.  We need to light them up again.  We've just been so busy we haven't thought about it.

 Another picture of jars.  Are you all getting tired of seeing our jars yet :-)  Hopefully  not.  There are more jars below...but with a different purpose.

 Ahhh, now this would be some great jar content!  Fermented salsa.  I made 6 quarts, and all of it's gone.  Granted this picture is older...maybe a month or more.  That was a lot of chopping!  I bought some more ingredients to make up a couple more quarts.

 I was having a huge fermenting/whole foods cooking day that day.  Along with the salsa I was making yogurt (in the green crock) and chicken stock in the black crock.  I also was soaking beans and making a new fermented beverage....

 Beet Kvass!   I have one word for it...YUCK!  Ha!  However yucky it is it is supposed to be a huge liver purifier.  I keep forgetting to drink it because it's so unpleasant.  Maybe it's saltiness has subsided by now?  One can hope.

And this my friends is what my kitchen looks like when I do a whole bunch of fermenting and cooking.  Don't worry, it got all cleaned up....a few hours later :-)