Ice Cream in a Bag!

This one's all over pinterest. 

And it really works!

First, take a sandwich sized baggie.

Place inside -

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup half and half

Seal tightly.

Next, take a gallon sized baggie.

Place inside -

ice cubes until about halfway filled

1/2 cup rock salt

Place your small baggie inside your large baggie.

Seal tightly.

Then you, 

Shake!

Shake!

Shake!

And shake some more.

For five minutes.

Then take your small bag out and rinse it under cold 

water to get the salt water off.

Open your bag, pour your ice cream in a bowl

and dig in!

Tasty summertime fun!

Linked to From the Farm Blog Hop #41 

Farmgirl Friday #116 

Flubber!

My niece and nephew are staying with us this week 

and we've been having lots of fun.

Today we made some homemade flubber.

I had never made it before so as we were stirring it up

I kept telling them if it was a flop, 

we'd just make some homemade play dough. ;-)

But it wasn't a flop!

It was so easy and really cool.

This is what you need -

3/4 cup cold water

1 cup of glue

(I emptied several partly used bottles in our craft closet, 

plus some craft glue I had on hand.  We had just enough to make a cup!)

food coloring

1/2 cup hot water

1 teaspoon borax

In one bowl combine the glue, cold water and food coloring.

In another bowl combine the hot water and the borax until the borax is dissolved.

Then add the hot water mixture

to the cold water mixture.

Stir!

It will immediately start coming together.

There will be some liquid left over and that's okay.

My niece, 9 1/2 years old, played with it for about 30 minutes. 

My nephew, 6 years old, was fascinated for almost an hour 

before he left the table and he's kept coming back to it throughout the day.

Even the bigger kids at my house have had some fun with it. ;-)

Linked to Share Your Cup Thursday #64 

From the Farm Blog Hop #41 

Farm Girl Friday #116 

Sweet Scenes from Spring Break

.:chess:.

My talented Daddy (builder of the hearth bench and the barnyard stool)

made a beautiful, heirloom chess board for our family for Christmas. 

On his last visit he brought me a little matching

box he had built...

to hold the chess pieces. 

The chess board is getting a lot of use this summer!

My son and I decided to start a summer long chess match.

Every time we finish a game, we just start another 

and play whenever we both have time.

Nine games in so far...

I'm down by one game. 

He's good.

He's been good for awhile. :-)

~Touring Gruene~

"Gruene (pronounced “green”) is a town in Comal County, Texas. Once a significant cotton-producing community along the Guadalupe River, the economy is now supported primarily by tourism. Gruene lies entirely within the city limits of New Braunfels. Much of Gruene was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 21, 1975.  Gruene's history begins in 1872 when first generation German American farmer Heinrich (Henry) D. Gruene purchased 6,000 acres of farmland three miles north of New Braunfels along the Guadalupe River. He built his house and planted his surrounding land with cotton. In 1878, Gruene opened a mercantile store to serve the several dozen or so families sharecropping on his land. The town benefitted by its location along the stagecoach route between Austin and San Antonio, the store thrived for many years and stimulated local commercial growth. Gruene Hall opened in 1878, and the Thorn Hill School and three large cotton gins soon followed. By the time the International-Great Northern Railroad was built across Comal County in the 1880s the small community was bustling with commercial and farming activity. By 1900, Gruene was a prominent banking, ginning, and shipping center for area cotton farming. Though it never had a post office of its own, the community did possess two freight rail stations by the 1910s. Gruene was decimated, however, by the boll weevil blight of the 1920s, and further doomed by the effects of the Great Depression. By 1930 the population had fallen to 75, and post World War II highway construction bypassed the town. By 1950 Gruene was essentially abandoned and had become a ghost town. As a result of the restoration of area structures, such as the Gruene Hall and old mercantile store, Gruene began a re-birth of sorts in the early 1970s. Redevelopment and restoration of the area continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s and today, and though no longer an autonomous community (it was annexed by New Braunfels in 1979), Gruene maintains a thriving tourist business. Many original structures from the town's heyday still exist, including the Gruene Family Home, a Victorian-style edifice built in 1872 which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and today operates as the Gruene Mansion Inn. A historic water tower rises above Gruene Hall, and other buildings at the heart of the district have been renovated into shops and restaurants." 

~above taken from www.wikipedia.com~

~Tubing the Comal~

The Comal River is the shortest navigable river in the state ofTexas and in the United States. Proclaimed the "longest shortest river in the world" by locals, it runs entirely within the city limits of New Braunfels in southeast Comal County. It is a tributary of the Guadalupe River. The Comal begins at Comal Springs in Landa Park and flows 2.5 miles until its junction with the Guadalupe.  The Comal was originally called the Little Guadalupe in early Spanish accounts. After Spaniard Pedro de Rivera y Villalón identified the longer river as the Guadalupe in 1727, the Comal was given its current name. The name means basin or flat dish in Spanish.  The river is also one of only two rivers to host the fountain darter, a fish now in danger of extinction. The only other river inhabited by the darter is the nearby San Marcos River.

~above taken from www.wikipedia.com~

The pool is open for the summer!

We had a lot of trouble keeping water in our pool last year 

at our new place. 

The ground looked level, but it wasn't!

This year Mr. H. spent several days preparing a level spot 

before he sat the pool up for the summer.

And, of course I was fascinated with the process!

First he used stakes and string to lay out the boundary 

and see how much drop there was in the ground. 

Then a dump truck backed through our yard

with a load of dirt.

It backed right up to the string boundary,

and dumped the load of dirt that Mr. H. had ordered.

It's too bad my four year old nephew wasn't here.

I have a feeling he would have thought the dump truck

was pretty cool. ;-)

Then Mr. H. removed the string and stakes,

and made a permanent form for the pool area.

Then it was time to spread the dirt!

He made an nifty little contraption to level the dirt.

When the ground was level,

he spread out a tarp 

and set up the pool.

And now I don't have to spend my summer

hollering at children to not lean on the side of the pool!!!
Which I might have said once
or a thousand times last year.;-)

Thank you Mr. H.!!!

The pool

is open!