 Hey friends, I am so excited to be sitting down and filming a video today. I tell you what, if I could even list off, well I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what's been going on in our lives, but this past month has been one absolute circus and that is probably the best description I can have right now of how we have been. I know a lot of you have been wondering where we're at and what's going on and I am actually sitting in my new food seller area and it is really exciting. I have so much to share with you all and we have had so many different things going on. So if you are completely new here or you haven't watched my channel for a while, we recently moved and with the move there was a lot of things going on. So we moved, we're doing some painting and some things in the house which you guys will get to see over on my home channel. So if you didn't know, I have a second channel. It's all about home organization and just home making in general and decor and all of that stuff. You need to take a sip of coffee, hang on. So when we moved into this house, we knew that there was gonna be some things that were geared more and towards just home maintenance and things like that. So we have some of that going on and we also had to move out of our other house. We did give ourself a month where we were in both houses, so or like not in both houses but we were between the two houses. And so obviously there was paint touch up and things like that in the other house and then we had all the projects going on here. So that's just in the home making end of things. And then in the midst of it, in the middle of that month where we had both of the houses or access to both of the houses, my husband and I were planning to go on, it wasn't quite a whole week but I'm just gonna say a week of like a conference, just a Christian conference, something just for personal growth and things like that. We had planned that months and months and months ago and we didn't want to interrupt those plans even though at that time we didn't know we would be moving over that time. So we went to that, it was excellent, it was great, we grew so much, it was just really, really good. The morning after we came home from that, I got sick and I need to say this because before we went to the conference there, we had some children that were sick. So I got sick the week or the day after we came home from that conference and I have never in my adult life been as sick as I have been in the last two so weeks. I got streps throat, I got a sinus infection and I got an ear infection and it all kind of just like happened kind of like that. So I felt like I was maybe getting over the hump of one thing and then the next thing came along and I just cannot remember being that sick in my adult life and I'm talking like in bed all day, can't even function, Cory was like so amazing. We both have our own businesses so we can really work around schedules and things that happen in life and so he had days where he was home and he was cooking and just kind of taking care of the house in the midst of the cooking. You know, we're in the middle of doing these home projects so we had just chaos, chaos. I feel like the house is starting to feel a little bit normal just because I'm coming back to life and like just craziness. So thank goodness before we went to that conference we had gotten, Cory had built all of these shelves for me and we had gotten a bulk of our food seller moved from the other house. You all may have found my channel through that other video that I posted a while ago showing you a tour of my food seller and long-term storage and things like that at the other house. Well, obviously when you move, all of those things have to move with you as well. So this seller is a lot smaller than our previous one and so this one just took some kind of craftiness and just some creativity to really put it together and make it work and it's still not completely together. I know you can see a lot behind me and you can see that it looks like there's probably some organization going on but what you can't see is on the other side of the camera there's a lot of piles and things that have to be cleaned up. So I will be showing you all a tour of this very, very soon but in the meantime there's a lot of home preservation, food preservation projects that I had planned in the planning to get to them and I have the stuff to do them and of course with this whole fiasco of getting sick and I need to mention that I actually have one little one that is still sick. We just like, thank goodness Cory hasn't gotten any of it and he plowed through and was taking a lot of vitamin C and just other things to really keep me afloat. All of that to say that's a pretty big explanation on where I've been. I know a lot of you have been just wondering wondering what happened to me and to be honest I love the community aspect of YouTube and being able to connect with you all each week and just being able to sit in the comments and talk and chat and we talk about our different projects or our home making things that we have going on and I just enjoy all of that so much. So I am so excited. That's why when I said at the beginning I'm thrilled to be sitting here filming this video because I am just excited to get back into the swing of things and be connecting with you all since that's just what I enjoy doing. So I'm gonna touch on the house really quick and you guys can jump on over to my home channel to get all the updates on that there because you're gonna see projects going on and things like that. So we got permission. We are renting this house and we have mentioned to the owners that potentially we would like to purchase this place. We're not exactly sure but there was just a few things particularly with the kitchen that we wanted to kind of just update, get cleaned up, give it a fresh face and so that is a lot of what we're working on right now and as you guys know, the kitchen is the heart of the home and I feel like when that is not put together the way that you want it to be it can be a little bit chaotic and just trying to work around what you can cook and what you can't cook or you know those sorts of things. And so we have that going on and I still haven't completely gotten the house organized. I actually was just last night getting some of the last boxes kind of gone through and stuff which is very unusual for me when I move I like to be in my house and set up like in the first week or two. I just don't care to drag it all out. I just want everything to be put away. I don't like to be digging through boxes. So that just goes to show here we are over a month in to this house and we're just now getting things kind of wrapped up on the organization or not or complete organization but just putting things kind of where they need to be if you know what I mean. So as far as food preservation and gardening I am so excited in the next couple of days Corey is going to kind of get the garden planned and tilled out up behind our house and we're not going to do a really big garden. We just decided Corey just told me the other day he said I think with just everything that's happened through this move and whatnot I think having something don't bite off more than you can chew and I totally think he's right. I think we're just going to go for something that is in moderation and just really take it as a learning year on gardening and all of that kind of stuff for this property. Since obviously I've never grown anything here I don't know what it's going to bring but I do have one great treasure and that is an older lady. She actually lives out the lane. She used to live next to this house and now her grandson and his wife they live there. So the garden that is on their side of their property is very much in the same place as where we'll be putting our garden. So I and she has been gardening this for, I forget what she said, I talked to her yesterday I would think like over 50 years. So she can kind of give me some tips and tricks on what grows here well and just maybe some problem solving if I run into any issues. And I know that one of my biggest battles here may be rabbits. So because this is our first year and we're not sure what the future holds we don't really want to put up a fence or anything yet possibly next year we'll see where we're at by then. So I think I may be trying to, you know weave through some old fashioned ideas on how to deter rabbits. So we'll see how that goes. As far as food preservation I haven't done a lot in the last couple of weeks due to all this stuff. However, I did get a five gallon bucket of maple syrup because this would be kind of the mid to tail end or like kind of when our maple syrup is ready in our area. And I have been wanting to do that. Last year I got a five gallon bucket of honey and we definitely haven't even went through half of that yet. So I know that that's gonna last me a while it's down here on the shelf in some court jars. But the lady that I got the maple syrup from she told me how I can go ahead and store and seal my maple syrup in my pints or courts. So that's gonna be a project coming up. I have all of this stuff to do baked beans. We love our home can baked beans in our house and I have been out of them for a couple of months now. And so that's something that I have coming up and just I have frozen apples, lots of things. But today, today we are going to squeeze some lemons and I thought it was kind of a funny little pun here on when life gives you lemons because I feel like in the last couple of weeks I've just had the lemons in my life and my mom actually found these for a really good price at Costco. And so, and I know wintertime is generally which we are into spring now but wintertime is generally when you wanna purchase citrus. It's often whenever it's in season. And so I have actually done lemon juice. I've canned lemon juice before and it's extremely convenient. I love having it canned but I am just not up to a canning project today. So I'm actually gonna pull out some of my freezer containers and we're gonna juice these up and put them into the freezer. And then I would like to get another larger box of lemons and probably canned those. But these were just a great price and I haven't had lemon juice for a while and it's going to be amazing to be able to pull out some lemon juice out of the freezer over the next couple months as the weather warms up and make some lemonade. And you all know actually right here I have some of my canned strawberries and so you can make amazing strawberry lemonade. And one thing that I'm actually testing out today and I'm glad I don't have too many lemons to do this with is I got a electric, electric, automatic, I don't exactly know what the right term is, citrus squeezer. And so I wanna test that out. I haven't gotten to use that yet and I wanna see how well it goes. A lot of the reviews online said it was really successful and did a really good job. So I wanna try that out and see how difficult it is. If it's really easy then I definitely probably will buy another really large box of lemons. You might be curious where I'm sitting because there's a lot of light coming in. So there's actually a door that walks in from ground level into our cellar. And right now the sun is just shining outside. I'm looking out and the girls are playing out there. They have a, it's our long lane. They have a place to bike and they have just been thriving and loving life out here. And if you guys missed it, we moved out pretty far outside of town and it's just what our hearts have been longing for and I'm just so happy about it. The other thing I'm looking at is there's actually a plum tree that has been planted and it is in full bloom out there. And I'm so excited to see if it actually bears fruit and if the fruit is good and see what kind of projects we can do with those this year. Anyways, let's go upstairs. We're gonna get this lemon squeezing going and make some lemonades out of lemons. And I just wanted to sit down and give you guys a quick little update because I just, I'm so ready to get back to doing videos and also just honestly cooking. I have done some cooking throughout this craziness but we've also done a lot of just eating, grabbing takeout and stuff like that. And so getting back to homemade meals and I know that even Corey keeps telling me I'm so ready to just have homemade meals because if you guys know we eat a lot of homemade food and so just getting back into our normal swing which you guys will see in the next little bit and I also wanna get into the gardening and just day in the life kind of videos again and what we eat in a day and just I feel so, oh, there went a butterfly. I feel so revived by moving out here. I really, really do. Like it's just given our family just a whole new step in life and we've just really, really been enjoying it besides all the sickness and everything. We just feel like we're free and we have all this freedom and we also have some amazing neighbors and I could just sit here and ramble but we're gonna go and squeeze some lemons. All right, so I'm actually in our sun porch area. I figured the sun is shining. We're gonna be juicing lemons. I couldn't figure a better spot to do this. We are going to just cut the lemons in half and then I have this thing and I have it plugged in over here but it's essentially just like a pitcher with a big woman's squeezer on top. It does have like a little lid and I think there's actually more than one size here. I think you can take this off and actually make it smaller. I just touched it and turned it on, I guess. So I guess you just apply pressure and that allows it to juice and then to put it in the freezer, I love these freezer containers. Sometimes people sell them at delis where you can just get them but I actually just get them in packs on Amazon. I can leave them linked below. I have a one cup size and then this is a two cup size which of course would be a pint and then I also have a quart size as well which is excellent for freezing soups and things like that. I'm gonna go ahead and try it with this size piece on here and if it doesn't seem to work, then I'll do a smaller one. These lemons are not huge, huge, but we'll see. Oh, wow, that is so easy and it's so efficient. Can you guys see how well it cleaned the lemon out? Oh, this is gonna take no time at all to do. I just went and grabbed a bucket to put all of the rinds in. This whole process was so incredibly simple and I didn't film it but I actually had my daughters come in because they were asking if they could do this too and it was really easy for them to do. So I think that I definitely wanna get some more lemons and make this a bigger project because as you're gonna see here at the end, I actually ended up with six pints of lemon juice which doesn't seem like that much for the amount of lemons I have here. So that tells me that if I want to put lemon juice away in a greater quantity, particularly if I'm canning it because I would have more space for canned lemon juice, I am going to need a lot of lemons. The other thing that was nice is on the side of the pitcher, it was telling me how many ounces I had. So once I had 16 ounces or a little less because I wanted to leave some head space for the fact that I'm freezing them, then I could just fill up a container and keep on going. I am really thrilled for a lot of the projects we have coming up particularly with the garden and just preserving food from that. And I also just got a freeze dryer so I am starting into freeze drying certain things which is exciting and fun. So definitely stick around, I'm gonna be posting a lot more regularly now that I'm feeling so much better. Thanks a lot for hanging out with me today. I know this was a simple little project but I wanted to show you all that even if you are not doing big projects, just doing small ones here and there like this one always helps to keep your freezer and your shelves full. So if you're new here, don't forget to subscribe, give this video a like, leave me a comment below, I will be responding to comments and I'll see you guys in my next video.