You might have seen me mention on my Facebook page that Ashleigh found me a bread machine for $5 last weekend from a garage sale. I have made 2 loaves of bread already this week! It’s totally amazing. The first was a small loaf using the recipe in the book that came with the machine. I did not take a picture of it, and I ate it all within 48 hours (Christian helped).

The second loaf I made from Ashleigh’s recipe:

This was a larger loaf and the bread is almost exactly like store-bought. I had a sandwich made from it today!

In other making-my-own-food news, some kind of animal has gained access to our back yard despite our 6 foot wooden fence enclosing the entire yard. When I went to check the plants after this week’s storms, all of the sproutlings previously in this picture were gone completely. Even some of the larger plants looked like this:

I actually suspect our very own cat, who likes to roam a bit outside when the kids are out there playing. She enjoys eating green things and then barfing them up in unexpected places in the house. But, she is also very fat and sedentary. I can’t see her climbing up into the raised bed just to chew on green things when she is typically perfectly content chewing on grass, which is more on her level.

What is eating my plants?!! I will kill it!!

If you are going to BlogHer 2012, I am SUPER EXCITED that my friend Jill from BabyRabies and Gina, TheFeministBreeder whom I cyber stalk will be leading a panel called “Pro Tips: Branding and Blogging Professionally”. See all the Room Of Your Own topics here. I hope that I get to mic-wrangle at this session!

I am also excited (although not AS excited) about the session called “Celebrate Your Small Blog”. I went to one similarly named at BlogHer 2010 and it was very encouraging. As wonderful as I truly believe my readers are, you guys are a small bunch compared to what most bloggers can report. I am very thankful for each and every one of you!

We are now on track to get two chickens and a chicken coup from some friends of my parents a week from Saturday! Little Sir is going to be so excited when he sees the chickens. We have talked about the chickens we are going to get a lot in the last few weeks. He just loves farm animals. I am excited to have fresh eggs from our back yard! Not as excited about chicken poop, but it kind of just comes with the territory.

The Schwann’s man just knocked on my door and I didn’t answer it. I am out of grocery money AGAIN. I always feel bad telling him “no” because he doesn’t take it well. He isn’t mean, he just seems so genuinely crushed.

I have heard that it is going to get up into the 90’s later next week. I guess that means we missed our window for camping AGAIN. Our children are not going to know anything about camping until we drag them on trips as teenagers and they complain the whole time. Or was that just me as a teenager?!

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Well that’s all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.