Gluten Free/Dairy Free Cereal Bars

If you are like me then you love picking strawberries and making jam. If your family is like my family, you may eat through two, maybe three jars in any given 12 month period. What's a girl to do with 9 extra jars of jam?

Make CEREAL BARS!

(Gluten Free/Dairy Free) Cereal Bars from the store are insanely expensive, I think around $5 a box, though I haven't had the courage to look recently so I can't be sure.

This test batch I whipped up this morning cost me approximately $3.50 for probably around 4 times more bars, it's worth a whirl. Here's the recipe:

2 cups of oats
2 cups of gluten free flour
2 tsp of xathan gum
1/2 cup of brown sugar (or agave or honey)
1 tbsp of vanilla
1/2 cup of soften butter (or vegan margarine)
2 tbsp of almond milk

250ml of jam of choice.

Mix up the oats, flour, xathan gum. Add sweetener of choice and vanilla. Mix. Work in butter with a fork. Use the milk to bring it all together.

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Spread 3/4 of mixture on a baking sheet (I used parchment paper to keep it from sticking) and press down until firm. Spread your jam over the bottom layer. And sprinkle the remaining 1/4 of crust on top.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until bars are golden brown. Let cool and cut into long bars.

They taste oh-so-good!

Christmas is Coming!

I put up the decorations today to start off the holiday season. This year I added some decorations to the windows, glass Christmas balls tied to satin ribbon. It was so easy and I think they add a complete look to the room.

My year round decorating has a real country, primitive feel and gradually my Christmas decorations have followed suit. I wasn't always sure what 'look' I was going for and it took me a while to find my style. I use a lot of natural branches I found in the woods that have fallen. I never take from live trees. I hit the mother lode  this year when I found the local utility company had cut some evergreens under a hydro line and left the resulting branches in the ditch. I snagged a bunch of branches and through them in the back of the truck.

My growing village

Over all the decorations took me 2 hours to put up and I am very pleased with the result.

My porch is decorated as well with garland and bows but the temperatures warmed up and the snow all melted. I will take pictures once it snow again.

Sharing the Harvest With the Birds

Recently my kids and I invited some homeschool friends over for a potluck to celebrate Harvest time. These gatherings are a new thing for us but one that I hope we can arranged every few months to recognize the season.

As a group we made hand churned vanilla ice cream and some lovely, bio-degradeable bird feeders.

It's quite simple. Take a small-ish pumpkin and cut off the top to make a bowl. Using sticks gathered from trees, press them into the flesh to make perches for the birds to sit on. Use jute string to suspend them. And fill with bird seed.

Within a day the birds had found our stash and it provides hours of delight watching the bluejays, chickadees and sparrows come to feed on our back deck.

My New Blog!

    I get this feeling that people think I am highly productive. I admit I have a lot of interests but I always feel like none of them get their fair share of attention. I`m a flitter-er. I run from one direction to the next as my attention span and interest allows. I could be elbow deep in my veggie garden yanking carrots while my brain is plotting out the next five chapters of my novel. My mind never gets quiet.

     Ever.
   
    I use to have three blogs, one for my homeschool activities, one for my `homesteading`activities and one for my writing. While I still have one dedicated to my writing, I found it hard to keep up with both a homeschooling and a homesteading blog. Like I said, my interest waxes and wanes. For a while I struggled with finding interesting topics to write about and after months of neglect I gave up both. I caved under the pressure of being fresh and spunky.

    Enter amour stone in my front garden (I swear it just jumped right out in front of me). One visit to the emergency room later and I had a pair of crutches and one very swollen appendage. I sat for a week on the couch unable to do much more than watch television since reading and writing seemed impossible with the amount of pain I was in. I did however begin thinking about my neglected quilting projects. I was reminded of intended homeschool lesson plans and activities. I began to wonder if I could have a unified blog to chronicle my haphazard attentions and Willow Hill was born.

    Willow Hill is the name I gave my house when we moved in two years ago. If you are a fan of Lucy Maud Montgomery like I am then you know any good house deserves an equally good name. I decided on Willow Hill since one of the most enjoyable features of my yard is a lovely, large willow tree. I have always wanted a house with a willow tree. The tree also happens to be my children`s fort since they can climb in and up without ever being seen. And since my house and my children are my life I saw it only fitting that my blog honour them.

 

 Some of the topics I plan to write about include: quilting & sewing, homeschool projects & ideas, (amateur) interior decorating & (equally amateurish) landscape design, vegetable gardening & preserving, scrapbooking & card making, recipes & gluten free living, and any other random topics that pops into my pretty little head. Don`t say I didn`t warn you!