Jennifer Beckstrand

Easy Chili for a Cold Day

Jennifer October 02, 2017 1 Comment

By Jessica Knowlton This is an easy and delicious recipe for a cold day. You can use ground beef or half ground beef and half sausage. The sausage gives it a little more flavor. I love serving it with cornbread muffins or French bread slices. It's a hit with my family. My two year old even eats it!

New Review for Return to Huckleberry Hill

Jennifer September 25, 2017 0 Comments

I Spy Quilt

Jennifer September 18, 2017 2 Comments

By Allison Sharp Have any of you ever played “I-Spy?” Before the age of electronic toys, I would play this game in the car with my children. “I spy with my little eye a … blue car.” The children would then look around until they saw the blue car, and the first one to see it would be the next person to “spy” something. Even better than the game is an I-Spy quilt (mostly because...

Surgery on the Cow

Jennifer September 11, 2017 0 Comments

By Richard Gappmayer Years ago bales of hay were secured with wire. Yes, metal wire. One of my father's cows became sick and would not eat, so he called the veterinarian. The vet thought that the cow might have been poisoned by fragments of this hay baler wire. The cow was put in a stanchion, and the vet prepared to operate on her. I don't know if he gave her an anesthetic, but she stood there...

Time for an End-of-Summer Dessert

Jennifer September 04, 2017 0 Comments

Summer seemed to fly by this year! Is it just me, or are the years getting shorter? Maybe the Earth is speeding up on its axis. Whatever the reason, summer is almost over, and it's time for your end of summer get-togethers. This recipe appears in The Honeybee Sisters Cookbook and is perfect for entertaining. The calzone can be cooked outside on the grill on a pizza stone. That's something Amish...

Safe House: A new book by Shannon Symonds

Jennifer August 28, 2017 2 Comments

I met Shannon Symonds at the funeral of my friend Stacy who passed away from cancer about two months ago. Stacy was Shannon's sister and a beautiful person taken from us too early. Shannon is just as lovely as her sister, and I was touched by her poise and loving spirit at such a difficult time in her life. Shannon told me that she was on the verge of publishing her first book. That got me...

Spread Some Back-to-School Love

Jennifer August 23, 2017 1 Comment

It's back-to-school time, and there is a lot of excitement in the air. I created these two handouts for the young women in my church group because I wanted them to know I was thinking about them in what can be an exciting and stressful time. We passed these handouts out to their homes the day before school started. I found SOBEs at the store for a dollar a piece. Last year, I bought Koolaid...

The Chicken Chronicles: Hatching the Beautiful Hen

Jennifer August 08, 2017 13 Comments

By Jennifer's sister Allison Sharp Last month, I told you the sad-but-true tale of one cowardly rooster and two deceased chickens. I was particularly saddened by the death of the beautiful hen, a Polish chicken with feathers that looked like one of Phyllis Diller's hats. In the photo below, she is standing next to the cowardly rooster. Love her feathers! My husband decided to try hatching three...

Finishing Some UFOs

Jennifer July 17, 2017 2 Comments

By Allison Sharp In the quilting world, UFO stands for UnFinished Objects, and most quilters have several lying around, just hoping someone will work on them. One of my goals for the summer was to get rid of some of mine. Here’s the first: This is a hand-embroidered Christmas wall-hanging that my daughter made when she was 13, about 15 years ago. I wanted to display it at Christmas, but the...

The Great Rooster Rescue

Jennifer July 10, 2017 4 Comments

Written by Jennifer's sister, Allison Sharp. Yesterday morning, after my husband had left for work, he called me. “Have you been outside yet?” “No.” “Walk out the front door and look in the window well.” As I got out of bed and walked down the hall, I noticed that the rooster seemed especially loud that morning. He lives in the back yard with the four hens, well away from the house,...