Friday, March 15, 2024

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Money is tight.   I think everyone can agree with that statement.  So, this is definitely one of those posts I'm going to try and do every week to, if for no other reason, to make myself feel good about that I'm doing things to save money.  I've got so many things to pay for and our budget is down to brass tacks and there really isn't anything else to cut out, so now it's going to be a matter of thinking outside the box to save the money I need to pay off bills and save up for things we need.  Wish me luck...I'm going to need it.

So, here is the list of things I've done this week.  Enjoy!

1.  Used points for car parts.  


We got a notice in the mail that we had a bunch of points toward parts at the car dealership that we could use for up to 100.00 worth of free parts.  My husband, while trying to replace the injectors in his car (already a REALLY spendy thing to replace), broke a small (but expensive, of course) part in the process (which, from what he was able to dig up online was a really common thing to happen when replacing the injectors).  He used the points that were accumulated to get the part for free.  He got it in and put into the car this last weekend and, finally, after being without a car for over a month, he was able to drive his car again.


2.  Used gift cards to eat out.


We got some gift cards to Red Robin for Christmas.  We are not eating out much, but when we do, we have been using the gift cards to save money.



3.  Mended holes in two pairs of pants, mended a broken seam in my son’s pants, replaced a button on my husband’s work shirt.


My husband managed to tear two pairs of jeans.  I went around the tear with thread to seal up the edges (to avoid the material just shredding and ripping out the mending I'd done) and then, after I had the edges of the material sealed up, I sewed the sides together.  Works well.  Does create a kind of ugly mend, but I've found it holds the best.  


4.  Reused an old patch to mend hole in a pair of my jeans.


This is a good frugal tip.  Patches you buy at like Jo-Ann Fabrics are expensive.  But, go ahead and get one for whatever hole you need to mend up.  Believe me, 9 times out of 10 that patch will actually outlive the thing you are mending., so don't waste it when the item is at the end of its lifespan!  I had a pair of jeans that I'd mended that finally died on me, hard, and I didn't want to waste the patch (I have a few frog patches I really like and will use on casual clothing repairs) as it was still in good shape.  I carefully seam ripped off the patch and have reused it three times now and it's still going.  Definitely have gotten my 3.00 out of that patch over the years.


5.  Moved exercise bike upstairs to get more exercise in.


I had moved our old, very beat, exercise bike out of storage last year to try and get in more exercise, but it was sitting down in the den where I just never got chances to use it.  So, I moved it into our living room to get more exercise on it.  It has worked really well so far and bonus is that my son is using it too and using a bike is one of his physical therapy goals, so I'm REALLY happy I moved the bike :).


6.  Ran out of sour cream.  Strained some plain yogurt to use instead.  No one noticed.


Place a wire mesh strainer over a bowl, line it with some paper towels and then pour in some plain yogurt.  Fold the paper towels lightly over the yogurt and then place the bowl in the fridge for a few hours or ever over night and just keep checking it until it is the right consistency you want.  You can make it into a kind of cheese if you let it sit long enough or you can strain it until thicker and use it as a sour cream substitute.   It works well.




7.  Made brown sugar instead of buying it.


This is way easier than you may think.  I was nearly out of brown sugar a while ago (if you look at the pic above you'll see vegetable stock, so I know this pic was from Thanksgiving) and I looked at the price to buy some more and went, "No way" as it was up to ridiculous amounts.  Instead I bought a 4 lb bag of sugar and used a bit of molasses I had around the house to make my own brown sugar.  


I put about, I'd say, 3 lbs of sugar in my mixer (be sure to go lower with the amounts if you have a less powerful mixer than mine) and then just poured in a few tablespoons of molasses at a time and mixed it into the sugar until I got the color of brown sugar I wanted.  It was SO much more cost effective to do it this way.  I just made some more last week to see me through a bunch more baking in the future and the nice part?  It comes out moist and stays that way, if I store it in airtight container, WAY longer than the stuff I buy from the store.


8.  Shopped around way ahead of time for the prom for my daughter.  Got everything picked out and have been picking them up slowly but surely with credit card points and gift cards.  Got everything really cheap as a result, or free (in the case of her dress).


When we picked up the injectors for my husband's car, I was able to order them from Amazon on my Amazon credit card (not ideal, but I didn't have 800.00 to slap down on injectors otherwise) and so I used those credit card rewards to pick up a prom dress for her (on sale for 27.00 and it is really nice, actually...definitely happy with it), some shoes (20.00), a purse/bag (8.00 after coupon and sale) and a mask for her masquerade ball theme for the prom.  I do need to shell out money for tickets, which I've slowly budgeted for and then hopefully she can go and have fun with her boyfriend without anxiety.


9.  Doctored up canned soup to make things stretch further.


I've turned cream of mushroom soup into Beef Stroganoff via a recipe on the Campbell's site (not great, honestly) and have made it into mushroom sauce (just make the soup with 1/2 the milk called for on the can...works well) to have over pork chops and things.  


Tomato soup I've doctored up to make into vegetable soup with frozen veggies and it has worked okay.  Add in grilled cheese sandwiches and no one complained.




10.  Made fish pancakes for a “fancy” breakfast item with the Christmas gift the son got for me years ago.


These were just regular sourdough pancakes and then I just made them in the fish mold my son got for me years ago for Christmas.  It is the only thing he's ever picked out for me for a Christmas gift, so it was kind of special for me to use it finally to make the shaped pancakes.  Alvah really got a kick out of watching me make them too :).  I just put them into the freezer for now and we'll eat them on the weekends.  I'm planning on making up some vanilla pudding to eat with them this weekend so we have kind of a deconstructed custard filled pancake.  That's about where my skill level lies right now *laugh*.





11.  Used left over beer that my husband drank a few sips of at dinner and made beer pancakes for the freezer out of it.


I made brats and some home made soft pretzels for a special dinner for my husband and he had a rare beer with dinner.  He drank, maybe, 1/4 of the bottle, so I saved the left overs (he had poured the beer into a glass to drink it, so don't be grossed out *laugh*) .  I added some sparkling water to the left over beer to make the proper amount I needed for the recipe (I used this recipe as it looked the easiest) and it came out pretty tasty.  No beer flavor to be had that we could detect, which was good.  I put these into the freezer to also eat on the weekends for my husband as he's always up before the rest of us.


12.  Used leftover bread and made some French toast to put into the freezer (see pic for #11 for visuals).


Some weeks we eat through two loaves of bread in five minutes, it seems, and some weeks it just kind of sits.  Last week was one of those weeks where a loaf of bread just sat.  I put it into the fridge to stop it from molding and as soon as I got the chance I sliced it up and made it into French toast and put that into the freezer.  I am feeling pretty good about putting up so much breakfast stuff as we were out of breakfast items in the freezer, pretty much.  This helps stop my husband from picking things up for a quick breakfast multiple times a week, which definitely saves money (especially as prices continue to rise).


13.  I have also been using more home milled flour and combining it with store bought to make bread.  It is still a learning curve for me as I'm trying to get rise times down and things, but I've gotten a TON of wheat berries over the years from Church members who were moving and things (LDS are big on wheat berries as a main food storage staple) and am determined to start working my way through the wheat to hopefully save money compared to buying it all from the store.  


14.  I cut my son's and husband's hair.


During Covid and the lockdowns, I ended up having to cut my husband's hair for work, since...well...everything was closed.  I got myself a pair of hair scissors off of Amazon and this guide tool (associate link there) and it has been the most invaluable thing to saving money when it comes to my husband getting his hair cut.  It is easy to use and it comes with a nice handy, dandy guide to show you how to make various haircuts by showing you how short or long to cut hair in what sections.  Sure, it's not a professional barber hair cut when done, I know that, but it looks nice to non-professionals.  My husband has also been happy that he can get a trim whenever he needs one versus whenever he can find time to track down a barber to give him a haircut too :).


Saving money is definitely the name of the game this year, so here's hoping every little bit helps.


Hope you all are doing well and hanging in there.  


Enjoy!

Monday, March 11, 2024

Our Trip to Seward, AK (a Few Pictures), October 2023


 Yikes, was I late sharing these.  Life getting in the way and all.  But, enjoy, however late they may be :).  This was actually scheduled to go up last week, but I was down all weekend with my back flared up really bad and ended up getting a migraine from it, sooooo this ended up being later than I wanted it to be.  But, hey, now you get a few posts this week.  Bonus!!  *Laugh*.

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Our Trip to Seward, 2023


I know this is really late getting shared, but I thought I’d still post up a quick post with some of our pictures we got when we went to Seward last October.  Really, you guys are getting so see my pictures from the Sea Life Center, as that was the one indoor thing we did.  The rest of the trip it rained, a lot, so all of my outdoor pictures came out looking like rain and blurry stuff in the background.  So, enjoy the pictures of the fishies and other wildlife!



First, I’ll spam you with some pictures of the birds.
  




My younger sister has always loved puffins, she even had a stuffed one as a child, so I took a bunch of pictures of them to send to her.  




The birds were surprisingly friendly, although I had to try and get pictures of them from a few small angles as those were the places in the exhibit that had roof overhead to shield my phone from the rain.




One thing I wish I could have gotten a shot of was the baby seals.  They fell in love with Alvah and followed him around the tank, constantly watching him and acting like they wanted him to play with them.  It was so stinking cute!  Unfortunately, those were some of the blurry photos that came out looking like I took them under water, so that was disappointing.



This pretty neat looking fish was hard to get a shot of as he was more interested checking out the daughter than looking at me, but I got a few shots in.
 



This guy got jealous (it sure did seem that way) of the other fish getting its photo taken, so kept swimming right in front of my shot and staring at me.
  I laughed and took its picture and then it seemed to happily swim away.



We drove down to a boat launch on the other side of Seward, which ended up being a lot of fun as it’s out on a spit that you have to drive to, which ended up being a neat drive to take.   This was a side trip I wanted to take as I wanted to go and actually see the beach.  My husband then ran into an older gentleman who lived on that side of Seward who remembered an old friend of my husband’s family. They had a blast talking to each other about people who used to live in Seward and how it used to be
 set up and things.  While he talked to the older gentleman, the kids and I sat and watched a really amusing squirrel that was running all over the place, but I could never get it to sit still long enough to take a picture of it.


Once we got to the boat launch area we went down and walked on the beach briefly.  It was cold and rainy that day, so I didn’t get much in the way of awesome photos, but I did find a really neat bone on the shore, left over from some sea critter’s dinner I’m sure.


 

On the road trip back, I did manage to shoot a few photos from the road and was impressed those came out well.



Overall, it was a short trip, but it was a lot of fun.
  It was a shame that we managed to go about a week after the town had pretty much shut down for the winter, but we still got to see a decent amount of things and the kids had a lot of fun, especially Alvah.  He had a smile on his face the entire trip and pretty much laughed the entire drive down, which was wonderful :).


So, there you go folks.  My little photo tour of our trip to Seward.  It was a lot of fun and I hope that we can take some more road trips someday, hopefully soon as Alvah had SO much fun on that trip to Seward.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Freezer Cooking List for January (With links)

I decided it would be a good idea to catch up on back blogging before I moved onto the recent events, so I figured I might as well start off big and share the massive list of things I started out freezer cooking with for January and into February.  This list might seem overwhelming, but trust me, a bunch of stuff on the list is really easy to put together (like the marinated meats) and others are as involved as simmering some hamburger in some seasonings for a bit or putting a bunch of ingredients into a bowl, mixing them up and shaping them (like the hamburgers) to freeze and use later.

One big thing that comes in handy with doing recipes like this is clearing a flat space in your freezer where you can put even a sheet of folded up cardboard on top of things to make a flat surface to freeze things on a cookie sheet or something.  I used my small block freezer in my kitchen and froze things flat on my jelly roll pan for the most part, as it fits perfectly in my freezer from end to end so it gave me a nice, even surface to freeze on AND it didn't take up a ridiculous amount of room.  Experiment and do what you can, but freezing things as flat as you can when it comes to meats and things will save you a bunch of room in your freezer later as you can stack them or turn them up on end and you can store them vertically like file folders in your freezer.  

So, here you go folks.  Some of the recipes are from old cookbooks my husband got me (or new cookbooks with no links available), but I'll work on sharing recipes from the old cookbooks in later posts so you can make them yourself if you want :).

Enjoy!

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Freezer Cooking List for January and February 

  • Freezer Friendly "Korean" Beef. Haven't eaten this yet, but the meat tasted great before I threw it into the freezer, so I'm hopeful the final dish will be delicious.
  • Cuban seasoned, pork or turkey for melts/fancy sloppy Joes I made this with ground pork and simmered it in the sauce for a while.  It came our powerful tasting, but I'm hoping that once I defrost it and simmer it with some added water to reheat it, it will make some yummy sliders for dinner.  Here's hoping!
  • Ground beef sauce (German)/stroganoff base (from German Meals at Omas Cookbook, Affiliate Link).  I couldn't find a good equivalent recipe online, so I linked to the cookbook I used.  
  • Hamburg hamburgers I froze these after shaping them into 6 patties and then when I prepared them I baked them in the oven covered with marinara sauce at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes.  They were SPECTACULAR!  I did not cover them with the breadcrumbs before baking, though :).
  • Meat sauce for Italian dishes (just winged this one with stuff I had around the house)
  • Chili (made and froze the entire recipe.  Works well).
  • Sweet and sour chicken Just mix up marinade ingredients for the pork and pour over chicken chunks instead.  I used boneless, skinless, chicken thighs and used 6 of them to make the marinade.  Put in freezer and then when you go to make it, defrost overnight in fridge.  I then did the rest of the recipe as written but used a can of pineapple, a can of carrots and some green bell peppers I had cut up and put into the freezer for later use...those I eyeballed.  Came out better with the chicken than it had with the pork the recipe called for.  Will DEFINITELY be making this again!
  • Teriyaki chicken (I made the marinade, poured over chicken pieces and froze.  After it was defrosted I fried it in a skillet and made the terriyaki sauce to go over the top as well.  It came out wonderfully...we had it a few nights ago.  Will put this on the freezer rotation as well).
  • Hawaiian chicken.  This has quickly become one of our favorite recipes.  Just mix up the marinade, throw it in with the chicken thighs and freeze.  Once defrosted you can bake it or grill it.  It is great grilled, but it bakes up awesome as well (to bake I just dump it in marinade and all and bake it like that....works great).  I like to serve it with a can of tropical fruit and some rice I've cooked in coconut milk for a really fancy dinner.
  • Schnitzel chicken (pounded chicken thighs flat in gallon sized freezer bags and then just put those freezer bags into another gallon sized freezer bag.  Labeled said bag and froze so I have a really easy way to make schnitzel for dinner...or chicken piccata if I have the urge.  Just did this when I was making schnitzel for dinner one night.
  • Cream/white sauce (this is from a freezer cooking cookbook my husband bought for me at a used store for Christmas that is from the 70's.  I'll share the recipe in a later post if it turns out when defrosted).
  • Baked nine grain cereal (I just looked up a freezer friendly baked oatmeal recipe and I made it with my 9 grain cereal mix instead.  I'll let you know how it turns out when I bake it).
  • Process oranges into orange juice (made some of the oranges into cranberry relish and others I just juiced and froze in ice cube trays.  I then put the cubes into some quart mason jars in the freezer so I have small amounts of orange juice should I need it for glazes or something).
  • Cranberry relish (made a bunch of this out of frozen cranberries I dug out of the depths of my freezers and the oranges in the fridge.  I am going to serve it with roast chicken and things throughout the year).
  • Process picante sauce (had a huge jar of picante sauce I got super cheap on Amazon a while back and it was approaching its expiration date.  I put it into freezer containers and froze it in about 1 1/2 cup to 2 cup portions to serve with chips and things.
  • Oreo cookies/monster cookies. I bought some black cocoa powder to make into oreo cookie applications to try and get Alvah to eat more home made food.  I tried these because they had good reviews, but I have to say I was underwhelmed.  My daughter liked them, Alvah wouldn't even try them, but to me they just didn't have the depth of flavor I was expecting and they did not taste like oreos.  Back to the recipe drawing board.
  • Chocolate chip cookies.  These sourdough chocolate chip cookies are awesome.  I didn't make the recipe as written, though.  I just made the recipe like you would a traditional cookie recipe (cream together butter and sugar, add eggs...and sourdough starter.  Then add your dry ingredients and mix again and then stir in chocolate chips...and I added the typical bag of chocolate chips to the recipe.  I DID refrigerate some dough and froze some dough and both ways turned out great.  Will definitely make these again.
  • Thumbprint cookies. Made some and just kept at the frozen stage.  Baked from frozen after putting the jam in them and they turned out great.  Got a ton of jams and jellies to use up, so am putting this one into rotation.
  • Chocolate ice cream (easy no cook recipe).  This is AWESOME, so easy and scoops so easily!  My family loves it.
  • Strawberry ice cream (easy, no cook and no eggs).  Another awesome recipe I found.  Definitely a keeper.
  • Applesauce bread.  We have found we really like applesauce bread.  I had tried Jessica's Recipe at Three River's Homestead, but wanted to try another recipe.  I actually think I like Jessica's better, but this one wasn't bad.
  • Carrot cake bread. We are eating this right now, actually.  I made a cream cheese frosting to go on top of it and we are eating it for desserts.  I had a bunch of carrots that were going floppy in the fridge so this was a great way to use them.  I didn't want to make a huge cake, so I looked up if there was a sweet bread I could make instead and this popped up.  It is tasty, so I'll keep it in mind if I need to use up carrots again.
  • Sourdough Cranberry scones. I used the basic scone recipe, but added some canned cranberries I had in the pantry to them.  I'm going to make an orange glaze to go on top of them to serve.  
  • Freezer slaw. I had some coleslaw mix in the fridge.  I was planning to make fried chicken and make cole slaw and use the other bag to make egg rolls in a bowl for dinner one night.  And then we all got sick and took forever to get well and I could not figure out what to do with the coleslaw before it went bad.  So, I looked up freezer coleslaw and this popped up.  We have eaten one bag of it.  It IS good!  Don't get me wrong.  It just does not taste like coleslaw and I don't think adding mayo to it would make it taste like coleslaw either.  But, it IS a REALLY good pickled cabbage.  I am putting it onto my "make it again" list because it is tasty.
  • Sausage pancake rolls. My husband found he loved the pancake sausage roll things from the gas stations and it was becoming a bit of a habit.  So, I looked up this recipe and saw how it would be pretty easy to adapt any pancake recipe so long as you made the pancakes a bit flatter/less fluffy by adding more liquid to them.  So, I actually made a batch of my favorite Classic Sourdough Pancakes and then made up a container of breakfast sausage links from the store.  I froze the wraps on my jelly roll pan and then once frozen I wrapped each one in aluminum foil and put them into a freezer bag so he could grab one easily.  His work has an air fryer available in the employee lounge so he'll reheat them in that or take them out of the foil, wrap them in some paper towels and put them in the microwave.  I was able to fit two sausages per pancake and made a total of seven wraps per package of sausages.  My husband LOVES these.  I've already had to make another batch of them.
  • Pancakes. I've since actually used another recipe of these to make waffles as we are pretty much out of breakfast things in the freezer.
  • Breakfast bowls. Once again for my husband.  I actually make these quite often, place individual portions in quart sized freezer bags, make them flat and place them in a gallon sized freezer bag.  This way my husband can grab one, break it up, place it in a bowl and microwave it for breakfast in the morning before the rest of us are up and about for the day.  I made these with homemade frozen hash browns that I make and put in the freezer whenever I need to use up some potatoes.  This hash brown recipe turns out great for me every time.  I put the potatoes in a single layer on a baking sheet to freezer and then put into gallon sized freezer bags.  Works great.
  • Soft pretzels. I made these for a special dinner for my husband one night and it makes a ton so I froze the left overs.  These turned out GREAT and are now my favorite pretzel recipe.  On anything Farmhouse on Boone with sourdough, I end up making a highbred recipe and add some instant yeast to the recipe and skipping the long ferment periods.  I usually add 1 to 2 tsp of yeast to a recipe so I can do a short ferment instead.  It works great, still gives you a wonderful texture to your baked goods from the sourdough and works within the confines of my busy schedule.
  • Breakfast sandwiches.  I make these with some home made Sourdough English Muffins and then just add ham, egg, cheese or sausage patties and cheese and then wrap in plastic wrap and freeze.  My husband will take these and microwave them at work to reheat them.  
  • Ham and cheese strata, 2 (leftover ham, getting older eggs and leftover bread bits).  I made two of them since I had a ton of sourdough bits to use up and then I poured the mixture over the ham and bread and froze them.  I'll defrost them in the fridge overnight and then bake per the instructions.
  • Frozen blueberry muffins. I have made these many times before.  It makes a lot, but it is a really great recipe and freezes beautifully.
  • Farmer’s meatloaves.  Another recipe from my 70's freezer cookbook.  I'll definitely be sharing this recipe later.  I made one of the meatloaves (I made two and froze them raw) and we had it for dinner one night.  It was awesome and my daughter LOVES it.  It contains vegetables in the mixture even, so is a great way to sneak more of those in.
  • Chicken pot pie casserole, 1. This is a recipe I ran across on YouTube and is a pour over pie crust recipe for your pot pie.  So, I made one of these to try.
  • Chicken pot pie base, 1.  I made just a chicken pot pie sans the upper crust in case we don't like the pour over pie crust.  I figure I'll make a good old biscuit crust if the other recipe isn't to our liking.
  • Chicken pot pie filling, 1.  This I froze in a freezer bag and will use as a quick chicken and dumplings base, or a chicken pot pie filling, or just as a creamy chicken soup when I defrost it.
  • Baked beans.  I found a ham hock in the freezer and a ham bone, so I cooked those in a slow cooker all day, removed the meat from the bones and then I tasted the stock and Oh My GOSH!  It was SO wonderful!  So, I refrigerated the stock overnight.  The same night I rinsed and sorted and then soaked a bunch of pinto beans, figuring I'd make ham and beans for the freezer.  But, once the beans had cooked in the stock all the next day they were SO, SO good, I had to do something with them.  So, I made them into good old fashioned maple baked beans (a staple of my childhood in Maine :).  I just took the seasonings in the recipe I linked and added them to the beans until they tasted awesome.  I then put the beans into about 2 cup portions to use as side dishes with dinners and put them in the freezer.  We've eaten one container so far and they are SO good!  Sure pinto beans aren't traditional baked bean fair, but you know what...doesn't matter they still taste delicious!
  • Chicken stock, I dug out all of the chicken carcasses I had in the freezer from rotisserie and regular chickens and made a big batch of chicken stock for the freezer.  Glad to have it in there and it turned out really well.
  • Ranch style beans.  I rinsed, sorted and soaked about 6 cups of dry beans overnight in a big bowl.  I then split the beans between my big slow cooker and my electric pressure cooker.  In the pressure cooker I pressure cooked just plain pinto beans and salt and just made regular beans to freeze to add to soups and other dishes.  The rest of the beans I placed in my slow cooker and turned into ranch style beans, which I then put into the freezer in containers to use as side dishes later.  My friend in Texas turned me onto Ranch Style Beans years ago and I managed to find them and try them here and fell in love with them.  So, I decided it would be nice to have them in the meal rotation.
  • Plain pinto beans (see the Ranch Style Bean explanation above).


You'll notice a bunch of beans getting cooked around here.  I got some free food storage from people who were moving a while back and then I got some gifts of beans over the years from friends and things, so I have a lot of beans in my food storage.  I finally decided it was time to start using them and making my grocery budget stretch, so that's why you'll see me using a lot of beans, especially pinto beans :).

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Goals for 2024

 


Hey all, 


Just a quick note before I start our regularly scheduled posting here.  Posting has been delayed, again...it's been a real cruddy start to the year when it comes to stuff breaking around here (I'll get more into that below), so we've been busy rushing here and there and to and fro trying to find parts to fix things and stuff.  My plan, at this point, is to basically start posting regularly come the beginning of March.  I'm going to work on getting posts buttoned up around here for the next couple of weeks and then I'm hoping to release at least one post a week starting in March.  Hopefully that will get me back to, finally, being more consistent with my blog and not worrying people when I go over a month between posts.  I think I got a decent start on that, so here's hoping I can keep it up.  So, yeah, stay tuned and we'll see if I fail at my blogging goals again *laugh*.


And now, onto the post!


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Goals for 2024


So, 2024, so far, has started not in a fun way.  Let me just do q quick recap on that one for you…

My washing machine stopped spinning correctly, so I end up having to spin the laundry at least twice so it is not sopping wet going into the dryer.  My husband is pretty confident that the washer is just plain worn out.  We do a lot more laundry than most folks and so we abuse our washer and dryer pretty hard, but combine that with the fact that the washer is 40 years old and…yeah…it’s tired.  Hopefully my husband can get another machine running before the current one dies.  I’m just limping it along at this point. 


My dryer wasn’t drying well, at all, and it would take me four times putting clothes through to get them tossed in air enough to get them dry.  Turns out, for some reason that baffles us (as it has worked fine for a long while before this problem popped up), the outside dryer vent screen kept getting clogged up with lint and was choking off air to the dryer.  I finally got fed up trying to dance around 6’ snow banks out in the yard to clean it, and just removed it.  I know I’ll have to watch for birds trying to make nests and things in there now, but man…I just don’t have the bandwidth to try and figure out a way around the problem other than that.

Our snow blower started self destructing and was plain out of commission for about a week before my husband could jerry rig it to hopefully last the rest of the winter.  This has been a really snowy and cold winter in South Central Alaska.  We are breaking snowfall records, which everyone is SO thrilled about after last winter…har.  We are all just counting down the days till Spring as the plows are running out of places to put snow at this point in winter and we still have months of winter left.  Not ideal.


My husband’s car broke down.  Hard.  We are now waiting on parts, which has been a pain and the parts weren’t cheap to begin with.  My husband is going to have to do the work himself to save money as he doesn’t want to pay the nearly 3000.00 the garages wanted to do the job.  At least we have home visits for speech therapy so my husband has been taking my truck to work the last three weeks. 


My kitchen faucet has just given up working right.  We’ve replaced the sprayer on the sink, twice, in the last year, and it just does not work right for very long before it will just not turn on and you have to sit there and basically beat on the faucet to get the sprayer cartridge to give you water.   So, we finally broke down and ordered a new faucet, so we’ll have to install that (it came in the mail today).


The top rack of my dishwasher broke due to plastic fatigue and tried to collapse onto the bottom rack of my dishwasher randomly one day.  It was a miracle nothing broke as the dishwasher was full at the time.  Trying to figure out what replacement parts to buy was a nightmare for me, but my husband figured it out and we ordered the parts.   In the meantime my husband did wonders with zip ties and managed to keep the dishwasher together until the upgraded (metal versus plastic) parts came in the mail.  Hopefully he can install the new parts this weekend and the dishwasher will be in working order again as you have to be careful when opening the dishwasher so you don’t break the zip ties.


We walked out of a store to find our rear taillight in our truck had gotten broke while we were in the store.  The person who hit us and broke said tail light did not leave a note.  So, we have to pick up the replacement taillight today so we can install that.  


And to top it off, I walked into my laundry room to over an inch of water on the floor, slowly draining into our floor drain and my daughter and I finally figured out it was coming from the hot water heater, more specifically the supply line pipe that comes out of the hot water heater and feeds into the wall.  It had popped a leak in the top of the pipe coming out of the wall and was spewing water EVERYWHERE.  I need up turning off the hot water completely just to help stop the gallons of water that were dripping into my laundry room super fast (I tied a dishtowel around the leak, so that it would drip instead of spew everywhere).  Thank goodness my husband was able to get that working last weekend, but it sure wasn’t a fun weekend for him for sure.  


Anyway, it’s been a year so far.  And we are a whole two months in.  Not great.  I did decide, when I found out the Lunar New Year was this month (I think it was like the 10th), that I was going to aim for that to get my cleaning and organizing done (since we were sick at the end of December) and just aim to start the new year with the Lunar New Year instead.  I feel pretty good as I did get a bunch of stuff done in the way of cleaning and organizing before the Lunar New Year, so I’ll try and share those projects here in a later post.


But, yeah, let’s get onto the goals I set myself for this year. 


I have been really working on getting more organized and streamlined around here.  The goal is for a few different reasons.  One is a reduction of stress in trying to find room for things that I need.  And two is just to be more organized so that I don’t feel like I need this or that new thing to hopefully make things work better around here and so I can hopefully save money and pay off some debt.  I still have medical bills from last year sitting on credit card, my fridge is slowly wearing out, I need to get new gutters on the house and I NEED to start getting things accomplished for the sake of my sanity if nothing else.  So, that is the basis for my goals this year.  Save money, pay off debt and get stuff done.  Period.


So, here are my goals as they stand at the moment.  The list isn’t super long, but trust me there is a bunch of involvement in the list, so I definitely have some stuff to share on this stuff.



1.  Start Freezer Cooking


I have messed around with freezer cooking in the past.  I’d get enamored with the idea and would really want to try recipes this or that blogger was making (or now a days, bloggers and vloggers) and I’d make a bunch of different recipes that, honestly, most of the time my family wasn’t fond of.  But I loved the idea of simplicity in cooking, so I’d do it for a while and then just give up on it.


This time around, I decided I needed to do freezer cooking, but for real this time and get a good system down.  My daughter has had work pick up again, my son has a speech therapist come twice a week and stuff.  My life has gotten busier and with also making all of our baked goods around here…my days are really busy.  So, I wanted to make meals that I could pull out for busy nights or days where the son hasn’t slept for weeks and I’m exhausted.  So, first, I pulled up the old freezer inventory sheets I wrote up pre-2020 craziness, and went over those to see if there were things I wanted to keep from those Idas.  I then sat down and figured out what things I could prepare in advance that my family would definitely eat and added those to the list of things I wanted to make.  I also made a list of things that we had that needed to be used up (like for January I still had a bunch of pears and oranges in the fridge that my family wasn’t eating and were going to go bad, so I made sure to put those on the “make these into something” list).  And I sat down and figured out what recipes I had bookmarked in cook books or online that I had really wanted to try making and picked out the ones that were made to be frozen or could be frozen and added those to the list too.  


I then organized my freezers to make my life easier.  My fridge freezer is where I am putting things like soups in smaller containers or sauces, as I find putting those in my upright freezer downstairs just leads to them getting shuffled and then they fall out and get broken.  And I found that the freezer containers I ordered from Amazon stack perfectly in my fridge freezer so that was a definite win on my part.  


The small block freezer in my kitchen is for baked goods.  I put sweet breads, waffles, pancakes, bread based snacks (like pretzels) and other things in there.  This keeps the stuff on the top of the freezer from being too heavy and crushing the bread products below them.  With all the sourdough baking I do now a days, this is important to me as I want to make sure those things are rotated, used and also protected from harm.   I also am keeping my nine grain cereal in there that I bought last year (love it, but find myself only eating it in winter, so I go through it slow), so I know what is on the bottom of the freezer and things aren’t getting lost that way. 


The upright freezer downstairs in the laundry room is where the majority of the freezer meals are going.  It has basically become a freezer meal, frozen fruit and vegetable and butter freezer with a few other miscellaneous things in there.  I’m still working through things in the freezer, but am feeling darned good about my progress.  


The den freezer is primarily my meat freezer now a days.  I do keep my husband’s freezer breakfast items I make in there for him to be able to easily grab something on his way out the door to go to work.  I still need to pull everything out of the den freezer and defrost it this Spring as it has gotten some pretty good ice build up on it and I am collecting boxes to use to organize the freezer better when I do that as I am determined to waste NOTHING if I can help it and the best way to rotate through everything is being able to easily find it and see what you have.  


Also, just a disclaimer here for those thinking that I might start doing some like major freezer cooking days like you see online?  Sorry but that isn’t going to happen that I can see around here.  I’m too busy and too tired to try that.  What I did do during January was I worked really hard to get a few things done per day if I could and just mark a few items off of my list (I’ll share my master list with links in my beginning of 2024 freezer cooking post).  Also, any new recipes I try, I'll probably do a quick summary of what we thought of the recipes as we try them, not only for the curious out there on how those recipes taste, but also for me as a reference to look up at a later date :).


Getting into freezer cooking and keeping up on baking with more sourdough are basically my two goals for the kitchen for this year when it comes to cooking.  


Other kitchen goals (okay, goal as there is only one):


Organize and simplify.  


My kitchen was a deconstructed mess, or so it felt and I was getting really frustrated with it.  You had to go basically into the living room to get flatware for dinner, my appliances were all over the place and my counter space is limited, so I felt like I was tripping over everything.  So, I've been working really hard on getting appliances put away and out of the way unless they are in use.  I gutted my hallway closet (again) and am working on getting all of my appliances into it and out of the way to free up space around the kitchen.  Exceptions to this rule are the coffee maker (it has a timer so my husband has hot coffee in the morning to take to work), the electric tea kettle (I use it tons during the day to make myself cups of tea and stuff) and my mixer (weighs a ton for one and I use it nearly every day, for two).  I'll share the final results when everything is done, but at least I'm making progress :).


 I gutted my kitchen drawers and went through things kind of ruthlessly to only keep the things I use.  I have too little space to collect things I don't use.  I did keep a few things that my husband bought for me and stuck those in the back of a few drawers, but between the organizing and the windfall of finding a bigger in-drawer knife block to hold all of my good kitchen knives, I was able to reorganize the drawers in such a way that I was able to put the flatware into the kitchen to make accessing it easier.  It sure does make scrambling an egg easier when you can get a fork just by opening a drawer instead of having to walk around the kitchen table to get one :).


I did a few other things, but will share that when I finally get everything done and will work on doing a quick kitchen tour (I'm waiting on getting the kitchen faucet in right now as the kitchen is a mess because of it as I have to keep things from around the sink in the hope my husband can get the new faucet in soon).


I'm working on all areas of my house this year (I actually started late last year, but am still going strong) to get things just cut down, streamlined and working better.  I'm tired of everything feeling cluttered no matter what I do, so it is time.


Sewing Goals:


These goals are kind of simple, but are going to be a challenge for me to find time to do them.  But, they need to be done, so I'm determined to get them done.


1.  Make tablecloths.


I have looked and looked online and at the used stores for the last year to find more tablecloths without luck.  My table was my husband's grandfather's, so I try really hard to take good care of it and with Alvah...well tablecloths are the way to go until I can redo the finish on the table and put about 20 coats of poly on the top of it to protect it.   Our tablecloths are getting pretty worn, so I want to try and make some more to put into rotation.  I want to use a couple of our old tablecloths that fit both our table when it is at its smallest setting and also when there is a leaf in the table as a guide and make sure I make the tablecloths oval versus rectangular.  The rectangular ones work, but are a pain as I'm always folding corners up and under the tablecloth so the corners aren't dragging on the floor and looking weird, so I'm going to try my hand at making oval ones.


2.  Break down son's crash pad into chairs.


I bought Alvah a crash pad for Christmas years ago without really thinking about how much room it would take up...I just saw it was cheap and would ship to Alaska and I knew that Alvah loved crash pads at occupational therapy, so hey, why not?  It is huge, it is heavy and, most important, Alvah doesn't use it much anymore.  The cover is breaking down from age and the interior pillow case that holds the memory foam panel stuffing is just gone, so I thought a interesting way to repurpose it would be to make kind of like crash chairs/bean bag like chairs out of it to save it.  So, that project is on my list this year as well.




Garden Goals:


This I am actually quite excited about.  The big breakthrough on the garden front this year is that the dump has finally raised their prices enough that getting weekly garbage pick up was basically the same price as doing our own garbage drops, so we signed up for garbage service for the first time in over a decade.  It is great having the garbage get picked up every week now, it saves my poor husband time and physical exertion (doing the garbage was really starting to kill him as he gets older and with the snowfalls this winter...it's been awful) and, the big one for the garden, I got rid of all of the garbage cans that were on my deck taking up space AND it stops my husband from having to dance around the old garden beds to haul the garbage cans.  So, my husband actually brought up the idea to start planting in the old garden beds again and he can now put up fencing to keep the animals out since he doesn't have to worry about the garbage anymore!  


I took about 300.00 out of our tax return and decided to invest it in our deck and garden for more enjoyment during the summers as really, so far, we haven't been able to get much enjoyment out of our deck...I mean it's been over 10 years since we moved here...it's time to use the darned deck.  So, I bought these planters (Affiliate Link!), 2 of them, to put around the deck.  I decided on these to try and stop the planters from leaving wet spots on the deck that don't dry out and can lead to rot on the deck.  Once the deck gets refinished this summer (I hope the weather allows it this summer), I want to protect it from harm, so I'm hoping these beds will help to accomplish that.  This will also, hopefully, be easier on my back and I can wheel them around if I need to, to protect them from falling hail or something. 


 I'm not sure what I'm planting yet, except tomatoes are definitely on the list.  I want to plant yet more patio tomatoes this year.  I didn't get many ripe tomatoes last year, but the green tomatoes made really good relish and chutney (green tomato chutney has been awesome in cooking!!!), so red or green tomatoes...I'll take them this year.  I also broke down and got a second set of patio furniture (affiliate link) so we'll have four places to sit out on the deck for all of us.  My son loved sitting in the one set last year, so I'm hoping with four chairs we can all enjoy the deck this year.

I used the rest of the money I had taken from the tax return and bought some random things I needed for the kitchen (pot holders, another ice cream scoop, another pizza cutter, things like that) and do not regret doing it.  Hopefully all of the parts from the planters are in the box or that could get interesting later on since the return window would definitely be closed by that point.  Here's hoping!

My only financial goal this year is to pay down debt and pay off bills, so I don't see the point in doing a different section for that.  Here's hoping I can get things done on that front.

And there you go folks.  My basic goals for this year.  I'm really determined to get these things accomplished this year, so hopefully I can get it all done. 

How about you?  Any goals for 2024?