What I have been doing

Since it is Friday I thought I would let everyone have a little peek into what I have been working on for my store and some of the ideas that will be showing up soon.

Here is an eReader, iPad or laptop cover. You can pick a different material to fit just for you.

Different print inside

A wonderful warm and soft afghan in teal and cream

Blue, cream and brown stripped scarf

Shells and stripes scarf

A fun set for teens

I love this material and it is being made into a crib set, this will be the material for the crib skirt

This is the material for the crib bumper

This one for a crib sheet

Another crib sheet

So this is just a few of the items that I have been busy making, stop by My Twisted Stitches to see everything that I have available.

Now things on the ranch have not stopped either, I even have new baby chicks! One of my chickens has been very confused by the warm winter weather she sat on her eggs and hatched two babies!

Here they are! She finally let them out long enough for me to get some pictures

Then it was back under momma to get warm

One last glimpse!

Momma in the sun

Well I hope that everyone is well and have a great weekend!

New Year, new cookbooks, new recipes

Well we are almost two weeks into the new year and we are cranking right along here on the ranch. I love this time of year partially because everything is covered in snow and it feels like winter. This year no such luck. We have gotten 3 good snow storms for a total of about a foot of snow and it is all gone already. We have been in the 50's for highs and that is very unusual. The cows are enjoying it but if the weather doesn't chance soon they won't be enjoying the weather come spring and summer.

My big excitement is my new cookbooks I ordered after Christmas. I love new cookbooks, nothing better than looking through them and finding new recipes to make and discovering new favorites. So what cookbooks did I order? Here they are and they are great cookbooks with wonderful recipes, photography and great stories to go with the food.

This is so far my favorite of the new cookbooks. There are a ton of great recipes that any cowboy would love or kids and non-cowboys for that matter!

This cookbook is the product of two mom's trying to find and fix food for busy families. The ingredients are basic but the flavor in the cooking is anything but.

Again a great cowboy cookbook. Trying to find new and creative ways to fix a freezer full of beef requires a variety of cookbooks and this one looks to provide new and tasty beef recipes.

I love old recipes but sometimes the ingredients are hard to find in today's grocery stores. This cookbook takes the recipes that the pioneer's brought with them and updates them for today. I have to admit I bought this one solely based on the fact that it had a recipe for salt water taffy. I am happy to say that there are numerous recipes marked ready to be made in the next few weeks other than taffy.

My next cookbook purchase will come in March and I can't wait for it, but I guess I will have to since it doesn't come out until then!

So until then I will be busy cooking up a storm with my new recipes in hand. I will be sure to share some of the recipes, but these cookbooks are well worth having in your own kitchen.

Hot Spiced Apple Cider

Well I mentioned my spiced apple cider the other day on my Facebook page and I have had requests for the recipe so I'm sharing it here with everyone. It is a supper easy recipe to make and it will have your whole house smelling wonderful for hours.
I make mine in the Crock-pot but you can just as easily fix it in a pot on the stove top. I also make a ton of it because before you know it, all the cider is gone!

64 oz bottle of apple cider
1 large orange sliced
2 cinnamon sticks
1 teaspoon whole allspice
1/2 tablespoon whole cloves

Put all the ingredients in your Crock-pot or pan, heat to boiling and then turn down the heat to warm on a Crock-pot or simmer on the stove. Enjoy the taste of the cider and the smell in your house.

Enjoy this with your family this holiday season. May the blessings of the season be with you and yours and continue into the next year. Stop by Fresh From the Farm linky party for more great recipes.

It's December WHAT!

I am not sure where all the time has already gone in this month. I mean really by the second weekend of December my house looks like an army of elves lives here. The tree is up and decorated, the lights are strung, all the Christmas decorations are up in every room of the house.
This year, there is a tree in the living room, still not decorated and the only Christmas decorations that have made it out of the closet is one wreath hanging on the back door and my Nativity scene in the living room. I'm not looking at the calendar and seriously wondering if it would really be worth it to drag all the stuff out of the closet and decorate.
Okay, yes it would be worth it, but just where am I to find the time? Think one night this next week I'm going to fire up the Christmas movies, make some hot chocolate and go on a decorating spree once everyone else goes to bed.
I do know that at least by the time that I go to bed tonight the tree will have at the very least it's lights on. Right now it just looks like we built our living room around a large pine tree that we forgot to cut down!
No I'm not posting pictures of that because it is just very sad looking right now, but I will have pictures once my living room has it's Christmas decorations showing.

A fun afternoon in the snow

What ranch kids (and dad's) spend the afternoon doing after all the work is done? They tie an inner-tube to the quad and have their daddy pull them around the driveway in front of the house of course!

They had a blast, then it was inside to warm up with some hot apple cider.

I'm linking up with Fresh from the Farm and her Photo Friday linky party. Stop by for a visit and some great pictures.

A snowy morning

Good morning from snowy New Mexico! The snow finally decided to show up early this morning. Left to put out blocks and break the water for the cows this morning and did not take my camera because the snow had not started yet. But by the time we were done it was coming down a good pace and me with no camera!

Did take a few pictures from the house when I got home.

I love how the bluffs look with snow on them

The girls are working on school, so I'm getting caught up on some paperwork and computer work and then baking is on the agenda for today.
 So what is  on the schedule for baking?

First up is this yummy Cranberry Apple Bread, love to use cranberries this time of year in my baking.

Next I think will be my version of a Fruit Cake. Now this is not your traditional dry candied fruit filled cake. I use dried cranberries, cherries, fresh apples, canned pineapple and raisins. The recipe calls for only 3 cups of raisins but I split that 3 cups total over all the different fruits and cut the 3 cups of pecans down to 1 1/2 cups walnuts. As for the brandy you can make the cake without it, just add 1/2 cup water and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract in it's place. I love this cake as there is actual cake to the fruit cake part.

Also on the schedule is eggnog this time of year. This is when having your own chickens and extra eggs comes in handy! Last year for the Christmas season I was going through 18 eggs a day! Glad I did not have to keep buying them at the store.

Well the snow is still falling and I'm off to bake, have a great weekend everyone and if you are baking this holiday season let me know what you are baking. Share some pictures or recipes on my Facebook page Tales of a Ranchers Wife of your favorite holiday recipes.

A vistior for the day

Ryan Goodman from Agriculture Proud is asking today for those of us in the farming and ranching world to share, honestly, how we would do things if someone who was not a farmer or rancher was to follow us around for a day. Wile I would hope that the answer to that question would be we would do nothing different, that is sadly not always the case. I can say for us though we do nothing different, other than go a little slower and explain a lot, when we have visitors to our ranch.

For those that don't know we are located in Northwest New Mexico and we run a commercial Hereford/Angus cross beef cattle ranch. It is not a big ranch by many standards, we are only around 30,000 acres and have 150 head. My husband is the 4th generation on the ranch and that makes our two girls the 5th. We do all the daily work with just our selves and one wonderful man, Alan that works just as hard as we do. When time comes for us to gather, brand or ship that is when we call in reinforcements, mostly family to come and help fill in the extra spots.  It is not always family that comes and helps though as we have hosted some exchange students from Germany and Korea one branding and this year two of our local missionaries came and helped out during shipping time.

Here are our two missionaries. Elder Totten, on the right had never before been around cattle so this was truly a new experience for him.

Elder Hunsaker had never helped work cattle before, but it did not take long before he was an old hand at it though

Even Elder Totten got in the spirit of things before the end of the day

Working cattle in pens and corrals is not the easiest thing to do even with a group of experienced cowboys, add to that two young men who have never worked cattle before and you could be in for a world of trouble. But we look at it as a way to share what we do on a daily basis with someone who would otherwise never have that experience. Showing those outside the ranching industry just what we do on a daily and yearly basis is important. It lets them understand what goes into raising and growing healthy, good quality beef cattle. It also gives us another voice to share our story with those that we may never meet, but they too have a better idea.

I love having new people come around and show them our ranch, it is something I am very proud of. I love answering all their questions about why we do this and why we put cattle in certain places. The answers are always honest, they are sometime hard for people to hear, such as when can't always save every animal that is sick or injured. One thing that I can't wait to start is once I have my own elementary classroom is having the class visit the ranch and see first hand us working with the cattle and sharing with the kids just where it is that the beef they see in the grocery store comes from.

I am proud to be a rancher's wife and I am proud to say that when we have in the past shared that with people we change nothing that we do from when they are not around.

Make sure and stop by Agriculture Proud for a continually update list of other blogs writing about this topic today. We are happy to have you visit!