April Archives | Page 2 of 4 | Midwestern At Heart

The Coronavirus Haircut… Coronavirus Day 30

We’re in unchartered territory here. Heard that a lot lately? The other day I watched a video of a girl who was crying her eyes out because she couldn’t get her hair done or her nails done and she said, “This is the year of the farm wife.” I kid you not. So supposedly farmer’s wives, daughters, female farmers are ugly and don’t care about their looks. That’s what I gather from that.

When I was growing up, my mom had a job outside the farm (so did my dad… the used that to pay for the farm)… But my mom had her nails done every what is it 3-4 weeks. Whatever the time frame is. I’m not into long nails. They drive me nuts. I tried them for a while. I’m good without them.

Anyway… my mom wore gloves on her hands when she was doing anything around the farm from working horses to driving a tractor to bucking square bales onto the trailer. So when she went to work, people figured she was a “city girl.” Nails were her thing. Nice hands were too I guess. I was a little kid, I dunno. But the point is… I’m pretty sure we all care about our looks to some extent. Whatever…

Now with this pandemic thing… (haha)… getting your hair done is kind of unheard of. I poke fun at my husband a lot. I’m mean like that. I tease him because he’s a little light in the hair on the top of his head. But by golly he can grow it everywhere else it seems. (more…)

Time to Burn it… Coronavirus Day 25

What to do when you’re “stuck inside?” Why not go out and burn leaves and sticks. Right? And only on one of the hottest days of the year so far. 87 degrees to be exact. And I started a fire. Why? Well… because I’ve been wanting this area cleaned up for over a year and no one else would do it.

I had to watch closely because just off to the right of our picture is a hay baler. I didn’t really want to catch that on fire. And you can see the rake. Didn’t want to catch that on fire either. See, you have to be careful. If you could see me, I had a rake in one hand (or was it a shovel? I don’t really remember) and the water hose in the other. I was prepared.

Once I got all this burned, I went behind our garage and continued on. Then I started trying to scrape the leaves from around the garage. That was a little more difficult. I’ll have to keep working on that. (more…)

Time to Play on the Horse Walker (again)… Coronavirus Day 19

When I was a kid, my parents bought this horse walker. What is a horse walker? It is exactly what it says, a horse walker. There have been times we had horses get hurt and we had to slowly bring them back (think physical therapy for people, but for horses). You can put them on the walker and it helps build back muscles. Say you have multiple horses and you need to warm them up or cool them down, you place them on the walker. Say it is winter and you want them to get outside and stretch their legs, hello horse walker.

It’s a machine that helps the horse walk around in a controlled manner.

When I was a kid, one of the arms had a swing put on it for me to ride on. The horses learned how to stop the machine and as a kid, I loved to ride the thing… it was my job to keep the horses walking. (more…)

She’s Saddled – Coronavirus Day 18 (also)

This is Granny. Everyone, meet Granny, Granny, this is everyone.

She is a 2-year-old mare that we have. The youngest horse we have on our place. And it is time that we start doing something with her. She needs to earn her keep. haha. A few years ago I broke Bucky to ride. He was such an awesome horse. We sold him last year and to say I’m a little bitter about this… I am. I hear he’s an awesome horse though and the people who bought him are in love with him. That’s good.

A few years before that I broke Barbie to ride. Now… Once I got her broke, then I got pregnant and was “grounded” from riding horses for 9+ months… so my dad finished her for me. Because of potential complications, the doctors wouldn’t allow me to ride.

But now… we have Granny. That’s her barn name. A barn name is what you call them in the barn, etc… but they also have a registered name. Anyway… (more…)

Book Review – The Beach House – Mary Alice Monroe

I am a huge fan of Hallmark movies. Yes, they tend to be totally predictable, but I love them. With all the turmoil in the world, it is nice to watch these movies and just relax. I laugh every Christmas when the drinking game appears. You know, the one that says do this if you see this person in a movie or find someone with this name, etc. You’d definitely be drunk by the end of like 5 minutes. Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Ha!

Last year at Mother’s Day The Beach House premiered. In fact, I haven’t seen it since, but that doesn’t mean anything. I recorded it to watch at a later date. Here is where I tell you it was a really good movie. I did find out however that it was based on a book by Mary Alice Monroe, so I went on the hunt for the book. Turns out it was in the Kindle Unlimited app, so I took the opportunity to read it.

If you’ll notice, my last book ended in January. So doesn’t this look funny that it is now April? Well, this was an extremely good book but it was hard for me to get into. It was interesting to see the similarities and the differences, book to film. They always say the books are better and I think this was the case. Although I pictured the movie characters as I was reading the book. (more…)

Just Retired Tiered Cake (Vanilla)

Just Retired Tiered Vanilla Cake

I sure hope you didn’t try to come to my blog last week. I woke up on Wednesday and would have sworn it was April Fool’s Day (by the way, I hate that day). When I came to the blog, it redirected me to some weird website.

It was trying to get me to click on a button to back up my Window’s machine. Well joke’s on them because I don’t have a window’s machine. But whatever. Anyway…

Over the weekend, I was able to knock 2 things off my Baking/Cooking Bucket List. I made a tiered cake which I haven’t done since I took cake decorating classes. And 2, I made a mirror glaze cake.

(more…)

#BlogApril

Hi! So I didn’t do #BlogMarch. I guess I forgot. That’s okay… This is mainly done for just me. Although, it’s a great way for you to see what blog posts you missed. You’re welcome. I’m also debating redoing my Cook with Me page because… it’s a pain in the butt. Grrr… Don’t ask. I guess blog work is never done.

So here’s a funny… I just forgot what I was going to type. Funny, right? haha. Oh… This thing says I write in too much passive voice. The thing is… that’s something I got “in trouble” for in Grad School. You’d think I’d learn not to write in Passive voice but apparently not. ha! Let’s not focus on my passive voice… instead, let’s move on to the top blog posts of April 2018.

The Duck Race

If you’ve been paying attention to the weather around the country any this week, then you’ll know the Midwest was supposed to get hit with a HUGE potential of Severe Thunderstorms/Tornadic weather. I woke up this morning to a HUGE bang of thunder. I always say that all we need is a good thunderstorm and all trees just blossom BAM! Yup, I was right.

The other thing to note is we’re on baby watch 2018. No… not me. The horse’s sillies. One mare is 1 week overdue and the other is about 2 weeks out. With crappy weather like this, I halfway expected to walk out and find 2 babies on the ground. So far, notta.

But there is a light rain going on and by the time I was done feeding critters, I’m kind of soggy. Which reminds me of a day not too long ago that I got soggy. Let me explain…

Jared carrying me to shore on his back. Tori walking along side.

The Duck Race

A couple weekends ago we were helping out with Trails for Kids. One of the events to raise money is the Duck Race. We sell little toy ducks that float for $2/each or 3 for $5. Then we go to Sugar Creek, the creek that runs right alongside the campground. We dump them in, and the winner wins half the pot of money collected. Easy enough, right? Sure… (more…)

Just at Your Fingertips

Every so often it feels like something is just at your fingertips but also just out of reach. The saying is always that if one door closes another door opens. Or how about, if it isn’t meant to be, something else better will come along. Those are the things I’m hanging on right now anyway. But at the same time, I guess I’m okay with it all. I don’t want to go into many details right now. In time I will, promise. And I’m the jerk who gets mad when people do this, but right now… that’s where I am. Just enough information to intrigue someone and make them say, what gives, but not enough information to actually fulfill that question.

Shame on me for being a hypocrite.

A story

So here’s a story that is constantly rolling around in my head.

I went to Church one Sunday and the preacher was discussing a couple from a previous church placement. They were an elderly couple that he always remembered. They always held hands or he had his hand around her shoulder. She always had her head on his shoulder. He said at first he was taken back by so much affection shown toward each other while in Church. (more…)

Royal Date

Recently I was reading a blog post on the Top books to read in Spring 2018. Of course here lately it seems like I’ve really gotten into reading so I needed to check out what her suggestions were. One was Royal Date. I thought, okay, I’ll bite. I have a 30 day free trial on my Kindle for Kindle Unlimited and this book was on there so I thought, why not… Although it’s only $1.99 to buy I think so it’d totally been worth it buying it either way.

Royal Date

This Cinderella didn’t plan on a prince…

Kat MacTaggart is a girl who has a plan for everything—including her holiday ski trip to Monterra with her best friend. Everything is going according to plan until she finds herself careening out of control down a mountainside and being rescued by a guy who looks like Superman’s hotter Italian cousin. (more…)

Top 5 Blog Posts of April 2018

The Duck Race

A story