Monthly Goals: June 2016

You know, really with everything that went on last month I'm overall proud of myself with everything I got done.  Sure, the yard work didn't get done that I wanted, but I managed to nurse my rhubarb plant to the best health it's been in since we moved here (it's actually looking like a rhubarb plant vs. a weed this year!!!), I got a new rhubarb plant and got it planted.  The garden is alive and growing (I might be going to war with bugs here very quickly, but so far we're doing okay).  I got a lot of canning done, earlier than I have done in the past couple of years and in greater quantities which I am happy about.  And I managed to keep my sanity in tact...well mostly ;) despite everything that's been going on.

This month holds a special milestone for me.  At the end of this month my husband and I will be celebrating our fifteen year wedding anniversary.  Doesn't seem like it's been near fifteen years (I'm hoping that's a good thing *laugh*). 

We were hoping we'd be in better financial shape by this point in time, but it wasn't to be.  I have to admit for quite a while I got really depressed that we weren't going to be able to celebrate yet another occasion as I was really looking forward to doing something special for our 15 year anniversary (my parent's marriage was really failing by this point in their marriage even though they stayed married for 20 years, so to me it's kind of a big deal that we're here and our marriage is still healthy).  I've lost birthdays, Mother's Day and other holidays for a long while now and just kind of just took it without worrying about it too much, but this one was bugging me.

Then, I woke up one day, mentally smacked myself upside the head and yelled at the depressed part of me, "SNAP OUT OF IT!"  And I did :).  I mean, really, what is a day in the whole scheme of your life?  Not much.  And the important thing is to take each day and try to make the best of what you have.  Since the mental smack down I started brainstorming on things I could do for gifts for my husband and things using materials we had around here.  Just because we can't go out to a fancy restaurant or something doesn't mean I can't work on making the day a little special.

At first I thought I could at least grill steaks that day, but found we were out of propane.  Even if we had money right now to fill the tank, we wouldn't, we'd spend the money on food or something else, so that was out.  I went through list after list like that and then I finally came up with a plan of sorts.

See, my husband has been wanting to try Dusseldorf mustard for ages and I kept putting it off for a holiday gift or something because buying it wasn't going to be cheap as the only places we could find it was online and since the mustard was imported it was going to be spendy.

So, I looked at the mustard seed I have around here and thought, "Heck, I can make him some!"  So, I started researching last month.  I finally found some traditional recipes in various library books, online e-books and other sources for Dusseldorf mustard...some going back to the 1800's.  I found a couple that I wrote down as a guide to the ingredients and spices involved (which honestly had me a bit discouraged as they called for white wine and wine vinegar...one I don't really have around here other than a couple of splashes for cooking and wine vinegar isn't cheap and I don't have a lot to spare) and then started working on adapting them to recipes that were safe to can and at a much lesser amount (a lot of the recipes were for estate kitchens or farmhouse recipes that made a TON of mustard at one time...like 64 oz of wine vinegar as one of the ingredients).

 I finally settled on one that really intrigued me from an old farmer's wife recipe that had been translated from German that I found that called for "apple wine".  I was like, "Wait, apple wine?  Isn't that apple cider?"  So, I know it PROBABLY isn't the same (who knows if it was translated correctly too from someone's old handwriting and such), but I decided to sub out some hard apple cider I had in the recipe and while the recipe called for wine vinegar I decided to use apple cider vinegar instead (sticking with the apple theme).  I did stick to the spices that all recipes for Dusseldorf seemed to agree on (to a degree...it really did seem to shoot all over the place when it came to what spices were used...probably due to regional availability of ingredients or something).  I then looked up some safe for canning recipes for mustard, subbed out my alcohol for the ones in the recipe (since it was all 5% alcohol by volume...or whatever beer and wine have in them), subbed out my vinegar for theirs (5% acidity all the way around) and I was good to go. 

Traditionally, it seems like Dusseldorf mustard is kind of like a dijon mustard but spicier/hotter and is supposed to come out looking like a nice creamy mustard.  Well, my blender wasn't up to the task of making a smooth emulsion of the mustard, so I ended up with a grainier final product.  It tasted good once you got past the heat (1 cup of brown mustard seeds=hot out of the pan!).  I canned the mustard and placed it in the pantry as it is supposed to mellow/mature for 6 to 8 weeks before consuming.  We won't QUITE meet the 6 week mark (since I finally got a chance to make it last week), but I suspect it'll taste good all the same.  But, yeah, really I didn't really make Dusseldorf mustard like you'd get from the store, but I do sure hope it tastes good (seen above before I stuck it in the pantry).

So, yeah, anniversary plans are part of my goals for this month :).  Here's hoping I'm off to a good start!

Monthly Goals:  June 2016


Sewing Goals:

• Work on dress (I pray I have more time this month to work on this)
• Fix husband's work jackets
• Make gift for new niece (she might be getting it for Christmas the way I'm going, but I'm hopeful *laugh*) 

General Goals:

• Work on anniversary plans/gifts 
• Work on emptying and resetting pantry
• Try to work out two week menu plans to better fit with the shopping every two weeks schedule
• Continue to process/can cheap produce if I run into any
• Work on ideas for bulk things to make for breakfast for husband so he gets added protein in his diet (part of doctor's orders)
• Save money (goes without saying really, but I like things to be written down.  It keeps me motivated :).

Cleaning Goals:

• Work on getting stuff weeded and out of den
• Clean out master bedroom closet and reset
• Wash down walls in children's rooms (my daughter is going to help me with this :)
• Clean ceiling fans (this is a monthly chore as the fans get pretty dusty).

I'm sure that I'm missing a few things, but those are the tentative goals so far.  So, how about you?  Got anything planned for this month?

Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

First, I have good news to report (shocking I know!).  The new medication regime for my son appears to be working!  I have him up to three teaspoons of Zyrtec at night and two in the morning (I was actually supposed to do four at night, but I wanted to see how three would do and so far so good!) and we're on a higher steroid cream that really seems to take the itch out of the eczema on his feet and since we started him on the higher dose of Zyrtec at night, so FAR we haven't had to battle hives/welts once.  His skin is doing better (relatively speaking), he's sleeping better (four to five hours straight at night vs. two) and I'm relieved to see the nasty rash on his face finally starting to subside the longer he's on the Zyrtec.

My daughter has started a new summertime work schedule where she has to earn TV time by doing chores and things without complaining (that is a big one for her to learn).  She's up to earning her TV/computer/music (she really enjoys the background noise while she plays more than anything) to about 75%.  Not too shabby, although we have a lot of summer break left to go.  Bright side though is I'm finally getting help to do things like vacuum and other chores, which is wonderful as it's getting things done faster and is thus making me able to spend my time elsewhere on other chores that can get overlooked.

Anyway, onto how the goals went for last week.

Well, it's still a work in progress, but it is getting there.  The pantry is slowly coming together.  My goal, right now, is to empty both sets of wire shelves, resurface the wires surface with heavy cardboard (the grate on the shelves is so wide that jars will tip over on them without cardboard) and get as many commercially canned things OFF of said shelves as possible to give me extra room for home canned goods as I am hoping to need the space this year.

The shot of the one set of shelves is above.  Believe it or not ALL of those boxes in the den translated to what is on the shelves in the picture.  Kind of amazing how it doesn't look like much until it's all boxed up and spread out *laugh*.

I got the top shelf of the other set cleaned of commercially canned goods, but I still need to completely empty both of the shelves, resurface them with better cardboard and reset everything.  Like the canned grapes are just kind of floating on the bottom shelf right now.  I'm hoping to figure out that stuff this week.

I don't think that this was officially on my goals for last week, but I got it done anyway.  The trellis system I concocted is up and working.  I thought it came out looking pretty good myself.

My goals for this week are kind of all over the place.  First and foremost there's this little guy who needs to go into the ground...

There's cabbage to can (it's salt curing in the fridge right now), pantry work to do, sewing projects to get done, monthly plans to make for next month and other stuff.  So, let's get to it shall we?

Sewing Goals:

• Get at least two projects accomplished.  

Gardening Goals:

• Plant baby rhubarb plant.
• Cut dead out of raspberry patch and try to control and save what raspberry plants are left (hoping to work on that tomorrow afternoon...here's hoping anyway).
• Fertilize garden.

Pantry Goals:

• Empty second set of shelves completely, reline shelves with better cardboard, reset shelves.
• Stack commercially canned goods in pantry, probably in boxes by like type, so that everything is still accessible without use of wire shelves for commercially canned goods.

Canning Goals:

• Can cabbage.

Freezer Goals:

• Make lemon curd.  Freeze for future desserts.

Cleaning Goals:

• Shampoo downstairs carpets.  
• Empty part of pantry and start to scrub floor (more just to keep it as sanitary as possible in there).
• Deep clean bathrooms.

General Goals:

• Figure out monthly goals for June.
• Figure out shopping plans for June.

And there you are folks.  What I was up to this last week and what I'm (hopefully) going to be up to this coming week.  You up to anything fun?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

The above is the first Johnny Jump Ups to appear this year and they grew right through a crack in the concrete.   Good life lesson there.  If you have enough will, skill and faith, you can find ways through things people never thought possible.

This week has been busy, we got news and it's all across the board on good and bad.

The worst news is that I got a phone call from the Health Insurance Marketplace earlier in the week informing me that my daughter was still on Medicaid so I had to drop her off of her current insurance since she can't be on both at once.  News to me that she still had Medicaid, so I ended up having to drop her off of our insurance when we got officially approved for Medicaid (we were in a "wait to be approved or not" holding pattern until someone would look at the application and after a few phone calls and jumping down people's throats we got it done as I wanted her dropped or approved pronto so I knew she had insurance one way or the other).  Now being on Medicaid was okay I figured as at least more was covered on it than on our insurance.  Au contraire mon fraire!

Nope, Alaska decided, in all of its infinite wisdom to use people as political pawns to get the multitudes of taxes passed and to grab our PFD...their way.  They made an announcement yesterday morning that Alaska State Medicaid was "broke" and would no longer be paying providers any money until further notice due to the "financial crisis" in Alaska.  So, this announcement doesn't just mean that my son's therapists aren't being paid by my son's insurance (since TEFRA runs through the state first) and are going to have a hard time making it, but this also means my children's pediatrician won't be paid by our insurance, our pediatric dentist won't be paid by our insurance, our pharmacy won't be paid...the list goes on.  Our local hospitals are panicking as their NICU units are pretty much funded by Medicaid and they don't know how to keep them open.  I am FURIOUS about this.  I spent the entire day pretty much e-mailing and calling every state rep I could get my fingers on to tell them what I thought of them.  I would have dealt with them doing co-pays for therapy or other medical services.  I would have dealt with them not covering certain prescriptions.  But, nope, they do this instead.  Right after they force me to drop my other insurance for Medicaid for my daughter on top of everything else. 

This is just plain USING people's need and desperation to get things passed that people didn't want (citizens wanted the government to cut spending across the board, or cut out wasteful spending of which we have TONS, but they stop paying this instead).  I notice that the state reps are still being paid and their benefits are still rolling just fine.  Primal scream therapy isn't even enough right now.  Just....grrrrrrrr!!!!!

 Anyway, let's work out of the dark abyss.  My son's eye appointment went okay and he was REALLY good waiting, which I was impressed by.  The eye doctor said he's progressed into actually being near sighted now, but still isn't so bad that we have to force glasses on him yet, so we'll wait another year and see.  I am not looking forward to that fight when we get there, let me tell you.

My husband was feeling funny again earlier in the week, so I got him into see the doctor.  Turns out the doctor said basically he's getting older and just needs to eat on a more regular schedule from what he could see, but he also is like 99.9% sure my husband has sleep apnea and they want to do a sleep study on him.  I have no idea what our insurance will cover when it comes to all of that, but if it helps my husband sleep better (he's always slept rotten) I'm for it.  Our new doctor is going to see what they can get insurance to cover, so we'll see what they find out.  At least with insurance our doctor visit only cost 80.00 compared to the near 300.00 it would have cost without it, so yay for that.

And yeah...I think that brings us pretty  much up to speed for the week so far.  Let's get onto frugal things for this week (I need the upper *laugh*).

1.  My son's OT asked if I'd like a baby rhubarb plant she had sitting outside.  I said "Me want!!!" (picture waving arms and everything...yes...this is actually how it happened *laugh*).  I talked to my husband as my one friend is going to give me her rhubarb plants later in the year and we're working on where to put a nice rhubarb patch.  I'm so excited!  I love rhubarb and am really looking forward to having a bunch of it :).  And I might very well be the only Alaskan to ever say that *laugh*.

2.  I canned Taco Sauce this week using materials I already had on hand.

3.  While rearranging/organizing my pantry I pulled every single jar that I could find that was empty/not being used and washed them in the dishwasher.  I'll wash them again really well before I can in them, but I like to be careful.  I found quite a few though, which I was really thrilled with as those will definitely come in handy later.

4.  We took advantage of the nice weather the last couple of days to do something fun with the kids.  We ate out on our back deck last night.  My husband wanted to make sure we didn't have to worry about my son running up and down the stairs (the deck is on the second floor) so he screwed one of the free pallets he had to the opening at the top of the stairs on the deck.  It was the perfect "boy barrier" and allowed us all to sit and eat without worrying about a kid running loose, it can easily be taken down and it was easily made with materials we already had around the house.

5.  I spent a lot of time the last week watching things on You Tube (I started "Tudor Monastery Farm and then went back and started watching "Victorian Farm" again before I finished it.  Oops *laugh*).

6.  I have been searching a lot online and for a change actually had decent luck with Swagbucks as I searched, so I actually made some goals the last week on them.  Yay!!!

7.   Other than necessary appointments, we stayed home this week.  This conserved gas and stopped us from spending money we don't have.

8.  I took help that was offered this week.  It wasn't easy to do it, but sometimes you need to admit that you can't do it all by yourself.  I'm still learning that valuable life lesson.

9.  I woke up every morning this week and made a point to thank God that I had woken up that morning, that I have a roof over my head and that I had my husband and kids.  It really does help to root you down when you start out the day being thankful.

10.  I've been saving my coffee grounds and used them to compost the garden a bit earlier in the week. 

11.  I thinned my pea plants today and used the sprouts I had pulled to make myself a salad for lunch.  They were really tasty!

And here's an update on the garden, while I'm on the subject!

Things are finally starting to grow from sprouts to actual baby plants.  I'm am so thrilled each time I go out and check out what has grown up a bit overnight.  The only things that aren't really up to the point I'm comfortable as they are still looking straggly are the carrots and the bunching onions, but they are up and growing.just teeny still.

I am so so thrilled that the rat tailed radishes are growing so well and fast (the plants on the right...they are even bigger today).  I was nervous they weren't going to pop up and I was so looking forward to growing them once I read how many radish pods you could get per plant, which could mean a really good amount of pickles to can, so I am super happy to see them growing so well :).

The first bunch of lettuce is starting to really take off as well, so I was happy to see that growing as our salads this summer are dependent on that and the spinach growing as well.

Speaking of which the space saving hybrid spinach is doing great (seen up front there).  The swiss chard is finally starting to come up better (middle row, it's bigger now too) and the pea plants were ready to actually thin to the allocated four inches apart today.  I figured out some materials around here to make a trellis system for the peas out of and am planning on adding that in tomorrow (I'm just going to use some old vertical shelf brackets we don't use and some twine or yarn to make them...they'll be protected under the eaves of the roof so I won't have to worry about the rain rotting the yarn or anything, so I figure it'll be fine).

The herb planter.  The sage seeds I planted are finally coming up I hope, so that was a welcome site.

I fear that this is the last year for these good old wooden planters.  They have served me well and faithfully for eleven years now (and I inherited them, well used, when we moved into our last house so I have NO IDEA how old they actually are), but I noticed that not only have some carpenter ants started eating on the bottom of them, but once you move them you can see all the rotten wood come off the bottom of the planters.  They are just finally dying on me, but they have done their job many times over and so I will send them off with a grateful heart when they go.

I gave my daughter some flower seeds that were in with my given to me seeds and told her to plant some in this planter.  Well, she decided "some" meant "all" so I'm happy to see them coming up, although I might have some thinning to do later.

I didn't take pictures of the front bed, because the petunias are coated in cottonwood pollen right now and look like snow balls and past the chives growing well there's not a lot to report yet (the chocolate mint is still popping up here and there).

Some more planters.  One contains potatoes (which I'm figuring they won't really grow beyond new potato size since the container is smaller than I would normally plant a potato plant in), the green container contains a lettuce mix and the right container contains some kohlrabi, of which I've never tried before but am intrigued and a few Chinese cabbage seedlings (I plan for those to be salad fodder when they get big enough).

I have a couple of planters on my deck that I forgot to take pictures of.  One is a hanging basket that I planted more spinach and some basil in and the other is a old tree sized planter that I planted a couple of types of potatoes in and a couple of pea plants (I'm just going to let those trellis on my deck railing).  I'm hoping between the planters and the garden I can get a decent amount of potatoes and salad fixings.

So, there you are folks.  My frugal adventures and gardening adventures for the week.  How did you do?

This Week's Shopping Trips

Okay, so I went over on groceries this period.  I'll admit it.  The call of cheap produce, when I went to buy milk today, called my name.  I went over by about 30.00, five dollars of which was the pickle crisp I bought when I found that Carrs had given me a .99 price on cabbage so I could make some cabbage to can.  I KNOW I have pickle crisp around here somewhere, but haven't been able to find it, so I bought some new so I could...you know...find it *laugh*.

When I was at Fred Meyer today I stopped by the reduced produce and hit paydirt.  I got a 1.00 cantaloupe, some mangoes, some pears (2 types between the bags), citrus (an orange and a lemon) and some apples.  I also got some corn on the cob (on sale for .75 an ear right now...yes...that's cheap up here) and some watermelon (3.00 on sale this week).  And I got the milk I walked into the store for *laugh*.

I then went to Carrs to pick up my son's prescription and got the red cabbage while I was there.

So, yeah, all totaled I went over my budget (I'm subtracting off the milk as it was part of my original grocery budget) by 26.99.  I'm honestly okay with this as we were down to one banana and an orange in the house because of my fruit loving daughter so the produce was kind of needed :).

So, how did you do on groceries this week?  Did you manage to stick to your budget (better than me ;)?

Taco Sauce

Here's a pretty easy recipe to try your hand at, although you do have to have a few ingredients on hand, most notably tomato paste. 

I'm one of those people who actually do keep a good amount of tomato paste around the house.  Why?  Because you can use it to make tomato sauce and a lot of other tomato based products with and it takes up a lot less room.  Something to consider the next time you want to build up your pantry :).

Taco Sauce 
(adapted from freshpreserving.com/Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving with abridged instructions)

Ingredients:

• 5 cups water
• 3 cups tomato paste (about 2 12-oz cans...I ended up using 5 6-oz cans to get three cups)
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 2 Tbsp chili powder
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tsp hot pepper sauce (I used sriracha sauce)

Procedure:

1.  Prepare canner, jars and lids in a safe and approved manner.

2.  Combine water, tomato paste, vinegar, corn syrup, chili powder, salt, cayenne pepper and hot pepper sauce in a large non-reactive saucepan (I use my 8 quart stock pot for these types of things). Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently. Reduce heat and boil gently while stirring frequently, until mixture is thickened to the consistency of a thin commercial barbecue sauce, about 30 minutes (mine came together in about 20 minutes.  I might have gone a bit thin on mine since I got a much higher yield than the recipe said it made, but I stopped at what I considered to be a thin BBQ sauce consistency and what I was happy with for a taco sauce consistency).

3.  Ladle hot sauce into hot jars leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Apply band until fit is fingertip tight.

4.  Process in a hot water bath canner for 30 minutes (since I made pints as well as 1/2 pints, I went for 35 minutes just to be safe).  Remove lid on canner and let sit five more minutes.  Remove jars to a tea towel and let sit for 24 hours.  Check seal (it should not flex up and down when pressed).  Store.

This supposedly makes 6 8-ounce jars, which would have been three pints.  I got 5 pints out of the recipe.  Not unhappy with the results, but I wanted to give people a head's up anyway :).

Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

Right, when it comes to clearing part of the yard this month is a total loss, I can tell already.  With how little sleep my son has been allowing me and the sheer amount of rain (I'm not complaining about the rain, truly as the last two years have been so dry we could use a more "normal" Alaska summer this year, which so far it is shaping up to be) and then appointments and things on top of everything, it's just not getting done.

I thought I'd be able to get some yard work done, but nope, it didn't happen.  It started out with the one really nice day we had early in the week, my husband shot a tool cart in my general direction as he was running out the door for work and asked me to put it away in the garage for him.  Well, with all the stuff in the garage I just plain couldn't FIND any room that didn't involve the thing being right up against my car and that wasn't going to happen because then I wouldn't be able to open my car door. 

So, I looked around and saw a rocking chair that had needed repair and has been sitting in the garage for AGES and decided it needed to go into storage for the time being.  So, I go out to the forty foot van only to find that my husband had parked a bunch of stuff right in the road and I wasn't going to be able to get into the van with the chair until I cleaned up that mess.  And so a domino effect started which toasted my day, led to a bunch of things getting reorganized and I was finally able to put the tool cart away.  Not how I would have liked to have spent my day, but that's what ended up happening.

My husband didn't feel well over the weekend, but managed to mow the lawn and that's about as far as doing anything to the lawn went.  Actually, since my husband wasn't feeling good and was kind of demanding my time on top of the kids I didn't get anything done either.  At least my daughter was finally not awful about doing chores, so she ended up being a help to me as I juggled one very demanding son.

Today was shot pretty much from the get go.  I had planned on canning taco sauce (I still haven't gotten that done yet), but called the allergist this morning to give them an update on the hives/welts situation and she wanted to see my son ASAP, so we spent most of the afternoon at the allergist.  So, we're on a stronger steroid cream for the eczema (I have tried not to use those over the years unless absolutely necessary) and a yet higher dose of Zyrtec to try and get the hives to go away.  Hopefully it works and we can start allergy shots next month.  Prayers would be appreciated.

I did manage to get the house cleaned last week and I've been trying really hard to maintain it so it's not awful.  I also got some things canned.  And I managed to get spinach (it's a space saving hybrid seed so you can plant it every two inches) and some basil seeds in my one hanging planter.  Now I'm just waiting for seeds to germinate there.

This week I'm not even going to plan on getting yard work done at all.  My son hasn't been sleeping well at all and isn't going to bed until super late, so I'm in bed about midnight and up about 2 am to give him Benadryl and waiting for it to take effect, so I really can't see myself being able to get up at five am to work on the yard.  At all.

Since we have two more appointments this week for my son (eye doctor and OT), I am going to keep goals to somewhat of a minimum so I don't stress myself out too badly.

So, this week I'm pretty much going to be focusing on the pantry and trying to reorganize so it works better and while I'm at it taking an inventory and trying to figure out what I need and how to remedy the situation with what I have on hand.  Reorganizing is really important, especially the home canned goods.  I have a hard time reading the lids in the really dim light in there (we only have one lightbulb that's right by the door and then I have a small LED motion detecting nightlight and that's the only light I have total in there), so things quickly get disorganized and it just doesn't work great and the box system works great until the boxes get the least bit worn and start to cave in on you.  So, I'm going to see about finding some materials around here to put some type of fronts on my shelves by the door to protect jars from an earthquake and see about maybe putting the home canned goods (or a good portion of them anyway) there where I can read everything easily (some of the jars are seen up top).

So, yeah, here are my goals for this week.

Sewing Goals:

• Try and get some of the previous goals done if possible.

General Goals:

• Work on pantry and make list of needs and brainstorm ways to fill in gaps.
•  Reorganize the pantry to work better if possible.

Cleaning Goals:

• Get caught up on laundry
• Keep on top of "Alvah God of Destruction" (I'm kidding...kind of *laugh*)

And there you are folks.  My goals for this week.  How about you?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Lately, life has been trying.  Money, as you know, is tight (understatement of the year).  With this being the last week of school my daughter's stomach has been all over the place (read, cycling) so she had to take probably more Zophran the last week than she has all school year.  My husband has not been feeling great between his back, the tendon in his foot still swelling up and hurting him on and off (can't really let one of those heal when you're on your feet all day) and stress is getting to him big time (getting spells of feeling weak and shaky, but blood pressure and sugar are fine, etc).

The worst one out of the lot, though, is my son.  I'm baffled.  Completely baffled.  The poor kid is on MASSIVE doses of antihistamines right now.  Like four times the recommended dosage of those medicines.  This is SUPPOSED to get rid of his hives so we can start allergy shots. Instead the last week has been utterly MISERABLE!!!  The poor guy will suddenly go head to toe hives in five to ten minutes, develop welts randomly on his body and face and scare us to utter death.  We were supposed to be giving him Adorax to help with the hives and itching on top of the Zyrtec, but I switched to Benadryl, because no matter the way the medicine is supposed to work and help him, Adorax does 100% nada for him.  So really my son is one big walking, hivey and welty, cauldron of Benadryl and Zyrtec right now.  And it doesn't seem to be doing much for the hives.  Although, odd bright side is that his eczema is the best it's been in YEARS.  I feel so bad sometimes and feel like I've failed him.  I can't seem to fix anything wrong with him no matter what and how I try.  Sigh.

Anyway, hey, bright side is physically I'm doing okay all things considered.  My TMJ is flaring on and off and I'm depressed (and I've found myself kind of snippy with my husband from time to time, but it's only about work and he understands, thank goodness...I'm trying to watch my tongue, but I'm so tired from lack of sleep and just plain worry about everyone in the family that it just kind of pops out without me thinking about it.  Not fun, but honest I guess), but  compared to everyone else, I'm not complaining.

I haven't taken pictures of the garden progress yet as the weather hasn't been accommodating to picture taking the last few days due to rain, but I'm not complaining as we need the rain!  I'll try to do a quick separate post on the garden in the next few days :).

Some anyway, let's get onto money saving things that happened this week!

1.  I did my math and checked my receipts from Carrs and due to saving up my gas rewards (and taking advantage of the 4x gas rewards if you spent 100.00 they have going on right now) I was able to get .70 off per gallon of gas yesterday.  Since I was running on next to no gas when I went and got gas and they only allow you so much gas on your rewards, I didn't get to fill up a jerry can with gas the way I wanted on that price, but I was still able to fill my tank for 28.00, which was awesome!

2.  I went to Fred Meyer and got the free Myst Twyst (or whatever the soda freebie was) from yesterday while I was in town as that will give us free treats this summer.  I let the curate bar go for now as the nuts in it...I don't like to keep stuff like that around the house with my son's want to chew on things in wrappers.

3.  I canned a few more things this week. 

Monday I canned some dilly beans (seen up top).  I looked at stores close by and had my husband check other stores he was near when he was working (since he was in the area and I was conserving gas as much as I could) and neither of us could find dill seeds ANYWHERE and the fresh dill just looked sad at the stores, so I ended up using dill weed instead of dill seed in the pickles.  I have no idea if they'll come out tasting anything like dill pickles doing it that way, but that's what I had so that's what I used.  We shall see how it goes when we open them.  I figure if they don't taste like dill out of the jar when I open them (here's a good "hack" for you), I'll just pour out some of the brine and add some pickle juice from some other dill pickles to help them along a bit.

I did end up picking up my canner from the Cooperative Extension Service.  The gal called and said my canner was done.  I do, indeed, need to replace the dial as it has a dent from heat warping over time and the temperature doesn't read accurately due to it.  Which is fine.  I can pick up a dial at a store about two minutes from my house, so I figure as soon as I can get ANY money to mess with in my budget I'll stop down there and pick one up and my husband can install it for me.

Tuesday I canned a couple of jars of cranberry sauce from a bag of frozen cranberries I found in the freezer.  I always buy extra cranberries and use them usually in recipes and things, but my family doesn't really "get into" fresh cranberries much and I have a bunch of dried that I still need to go through, so I just decided to make the cranberries into sauce instead.  I will try to post up a recipe for cranberry sauce here as not only is it super easy to make it is also a REALLY good thing to make if you're confused where the "sheeting" point on jam making is as cranberries have so much natural pectin the sheeting stage happens a LOT quicker so you don't second guess yourself so much like you would making strawberry preserves or something and you end up with sauce.   Just for the record, I've noticed a lot of descriptions on the sheeting stage are just plain confusing.  Here's how I figured it out.  Take a cold spoon and dip it into your jam mixture and then hold it up to let the jam/whatever run off the spoon.  If it LOOKS like jam and kind of falls off in blobs you're good to go.  If it flows off the cold spoon, even if it's thick looking, you've got a bit longer to go or an alternative if you are making jams with tart things (like rose hips or something) you can add 1/2 cup more sugar and then bring it back to boiling and test again.

I figured all I had left to do this week was taco sauce (which I'm hoping to make today), but then I got a text from a friend of mine.  Her big block freezer had died and she wanted to know if I wanted some cherries as she remembered me saying that I was looking to get some cheap.  I didn't really want to take food from her as I know her family is tight in the money department like mine and even offered to can them for her, but she said I'd be doing her a favor as she and her mom and sisters were working on canning and dehydrating all of the meat from the freezer that they couldn't fit in all the freezers between them so she didn't loose anything and she was going to be tight on room in her pantry due to all the canned meat (they pretty much live on game meat her husband hunts).

So, put that way, I said sure and quickly met up with her one day to give her a hug (my week looked like roses compared to hers) and her to give me 5 pounds of  not quite frozen cherries.  I took them home and put them into a bowl to defrost and then Thursday I made them into pints of cherry pie filling (yay!!!).  I now just have to make up my rhubarb recipes come harvesting time and whatever produce I can score cheap or whatever grows in the garden that I can process for winter.  I'm happy!!!  Winter preparations are going well so far for a change =D. 

4.  I knew I needed to start fertilizing the garden this week since the seedlings are finally starting to pop up with a vengance, but I thought for sure I was out of fertilizer and was trying to figure out if I could make enough compost to fertilize the garden (I've found you have to fertilize up here.  Plants are forced to grow so much faster than they would like due to the short growing season and near constant sunlight that they'll just not grow very well without heavy fertilizing), but luckily while tearing apart the shed looking for something I found a box of fertilizer that was 3/4 of the way full!  I had bought it when we first moved here and had forgotten we had it, so yay!

5.  One big way I saved money this week was with the exception of running errands yesterday I didn't go anywhere or do anything much at all, so I kept spending to an absolute minimum.

6.  When we had to go to the dump last weekend, I gave my husband our free dump coupon to use (the Borough gives every household one per year).  It gave us an 8.00 credit to use, so my husband threw out some heavier items that he'd been putting off throwing away.  All totaled a month's worth of garbage (we normally go to the dump once a month and go through a big garbage can a week) and heavier items that my husband threw away cost us 4.00 to get rid of.

7.  I mended a few items this week, including a hole in a pair of jeans I had.

8.  I weeded the garden a lot this week as invasive weeds are AWFUL this year all over the place...it's annoying for sure.  This doesn't seem like a money saving "thing" to some folks, but it really is as it helps your actual plants to grow, is free except your time and it pays off in the end for sure.

9.  I knew I would have to trellis my peas sometime relatively soon so I started looking at materials to build a trellis system instead of worrying about buying one.

10.  Yesterday was the last day of school before summer break and I was surprised and delighted when my son's teacher gave us a packet of photos along with his progress notes that were taken during his ski trip earlier in the year.  There are some great photos in there that I want to frame :).

On a sad note, this was the first year where at the end of school I wanted to hug teachers and cry.  We found out recently that my son's ABA program is moving to our boundary school, which will be a lot more convenient for me (no more double pick ups and drop offs), but then the bad things started coming through about it.  One is that our new principal in our boundary school doesn't seem to get how many accommodations she's going to have to make for a good even dozen special needs kids coming into her school and that makes me nervous (their parking system and pick up procedures are ridiculous and you almost need a flow chart to follow them).  Our boundary school doesn't have the nice fenced in playground like my son's old school did (another thing making me nervous).  And the worst part is that his teacher, who I adore and is spectacular at behavioral teaching and things isn't going to be at the ABA program next year and they are bringing in an entirely new teacher.  This upset me as his teacher is awesome, for one, and most of the kids in my son's class hate change, so I can imagine how productive of a year they are going to have next year at a brand new school with a brand new teacher.  And this is IF the aides get transferred over and they still don't know if they are yet.  Upsetting to say the least.

So, I'm going to really miss my son's teacher.  And then my daughter's teacher was just awesome this last year as well and she really helped my daughter to develop more of a sense of self confidence and things.  And she really helped to push her in all the right ways.  There are some teachers you want to grab and just transfer from grade to grade, this was one of them.  I am going to miss her and pray that my daughter's teacher next year is nearly as good as her.

And there you are folks.  Some of my frugal ways this last week.  How did you do?