When Money is Tight: Meal Prep Time!

 With how tight our budget is right now (and getting worse), I thought I'd share what I'm doing to help mitigate against meals getting too boring or too unhealthy.  For a short while there, I was buying a lot of frozen (and as minimally processed as I could find) food, but those items quickly went up in price and it got to the point that Alvah in a horrible mood or not, I had to come up with other alternatives around here to make sure we had snacks (or the husband develops a nasty vending machine habit at work), easy breakfasts and the like.  So, I thought I'd go through the meal prep I managed to do for this week (before Alvah went into meltdown mode).

1.  Recently, I was offered a really good personalized price on a new product that has cottage cheese on the bottom compartment and fruit on the top and you add the fruit to the bottom and then you have a high protein snack.  Traditionally, I'm not really a fan of cottage cheese...remember eating it a lot as a teen as my mom liked it and it would be in the house, but I've never been like, "Yay!!!  Let's go and eat some cottage cheese!" type of person.  But, I did find I was the only one who was eating the cottage cheese snacks because I didn't want to waste them, whether I was thrilled with cottage cheese or not.  Oddly, I found that while the texture wasn't something I would actively seek out, the protein in the snack did help to keep me satisfied in the afternoons and was making it so I wasn't falling asleep on my feet by 3 pm.  When I looked at the normal price on the cottage cheese snacks, however, there was NO WAY I was going to pay like 2.50 each for teeny little snack packs.  

So, instead this week, I bought a container of cottage cheese, separated it out into containers and then added a can of diced mangoes I had in the pantry to the top of the cottage cheese so I could just pull them out and have a high protein snack.  It works well, although I doubt I'm going to purchase diced mango again anytime soon as there was a LOT of pulpy mango in the can I had.  I'm going to try canned peaches next time as that is a favorite around here.

And yes, I'm doing my grandma's habit of recycling plastic containers from the store to store food in.  I'm using a dry erase marker to keep what is in them straight.  I find the small sour cream containers I buy are the perfect size for snacks.  The glass bowl was actually the last portion that I ended up eating for a light lunch.

2.  I bought fresh strawberries on sale on our last shopping trip, but the strawberries this season haven't been very good and these were really sour tasting.  So, I ended up cutting them up, added in a bag of nearly empty frozen strawberries, macerated them in sugar and turned them into a jug of smoothy mix to drink over the coming week.  I like to add greek yogurt for the probiotics (for the sake of the daughter's gut health), a bit of milk and the fruit with the syrup included and blend it all together.  I also added some collagen peptides I bought on a good deal a while back to help with my husband's and my health (and heck, the daughter will benefit too).

We have all been drinking a small glass of smoothy with our breakfasts all week and it's been a nice change of pace.

3.  I took some of the various things of sausage I had found in the freezer and made a big pot of sausage gravy (if you look at the menu for the week photo from a few posts down you'll see a half gallon of milk in the photo...I bought that on sale for cheap with the express purpose of using it in baking and meal prep and it worked FABULOUSLY!).

I then separated out the sausage gravy into four, individual servings for my husband for breakfast for the week.  It worked great and kept him from grabbing things from the vending machines at work.

4.  With the gravy, of course, I had to make biscuits.  I made plain ones for the husband for his breakfasts and the daughter as well (she loves biscuits).  I used the food processor to mix the dough to make life easier and made the plain ones first and then the cheese ones, so I didn't have to clean it between recipes.  I decided to make them square this time to just make my life easier as that way there was no wasted dough and no re-rolling the dough.  Worked great.   I did make them super huge by accident as it had been a while since I had made biscuits, but ah well.  I also made a big batch of cheese biscuits and we had some with dinner that night and I put the rest in the freezer to turn into cheddar bay biscuits with future meals.

5.  I make all my own bread now a days for the most part (I do buy the son hamburger buns to destroy as he's less likely to choke on the all air store bread), and I love making the dutch oven style sourdough bread that I've made for a long time now, but the daughter asked me to make some loaf bread so the bread would fit in the toaster better and sandwiches would turn out more uniform.  I found that Farmhouse On Boone's Sourdough Sandwich Bread was a great recipe to use.  I make it exactly as written, but I end up adding about 1/2 cup extra flour to make the dough into a soft, workable bread dough and also add 1 TBS of SAF instant yeast.  The dough only takes about 1 hour to rise in the first rise, and then I found you need to separate the dough into 3 loaf pans, not two, or you end up with super huge loaves that might nor might not get jammed into the top of your oven (ask me how I know).  I then let the dough rise for about 1/2 an hour longer, split the top to let the steam escape in a controlled way, add the egg wash the recipe calls for and bake at 375 degrees F for 35 minutes.  The loaves turn out perfect every time, the sourdough adds the best flexibility to the bread so you can cut it into really slim slices without any crumbling and it is wonderful stuff.  I end up freezing the third loaf most weeks to pull out when bread is getting short, which works great when you end up with a few loaves in the freezer that way from different weeks and don't have the time to bake bread for a few days one week.

On weeks where I don't want to look up a recipe or have time to soften butter and stuff, I do just make my go-to dutch oven sourdough recipe, but it is nice to have a good sourdough sandwich loaf as well.

I had other plans for meal prep, but life got in the way this week.  So, that's all I got done.  

Enjoy!

Weekly Goals Update

Man guys and gals, it has been a week.  Not a great one, but a week.

First off, the court interview/visitation went well on Saturday.  Luckily she had experience with kids like Alvah so knew what to watch for before things would escalate with him.  After some rearranging of the seating, he was fine through the interview and I got some helpful information on stuff, which was good.  Next step is our court date in June and the court will do all the document collecting and stuff on their end, so hopefully we won't have anything else to worry about.  My husband can even call into the court instead of us having to show up in person with Alvah in tow, which will definitely make things a lot less stressful.

The rest of the weekend, Alvah started acting weird and by Monday he was not doing well and not stable.  After a few days of more medication than I wanted to give him, a lot of outbursts and more walls to fix, yesterday he woke up and started trying to shove entire blankets and clothing down his throat.  I was scared to death he was going to inhale that crap into his airway and we were concerned that maybe he had strep again (since the last time he tried shoving things down his throat was when he had it), so we took him to the doctor's yesterday.  The test came back negative, but my husband thought maybe Alvah had a sore throat either way (I mean your tonsils can be swollen without strep, of course), so we decided to ride it out as much as we could.  He didn't sleep last night and started doing the same thing at 3:00 in the morning, but after a lot of struggling to stop him from hurting himself and a bunch of medication, he finally settled down.  He woke up this morning in a much more stable condition and has been eating and drinking like normal so far, so hopefully whatever the heck was going on is past.  

During one his outbursts, I threw my hand up between his head and the wall to stop him from hurting himself on a wall that had no hollow spot behind the drywall, but all 2x4 structural stuff and I ended up bruising the crap out of my hand as a result.  Typing hasn't really been in the cards this week (thank goodness I didn't have any new paperwork to fill out).  My fingers are turning wonderful shades of technicolor purple now, but I'm way more mobile, so I'm glad I can finally get some stuff done in the way of typing and such.  

So yeah, carpeting Alvah's closets was DEFINITELY out this week with everything going on, but I did manage to get the desk cleaned off (still need to dust it, though...yeah it ain't perfect, but TRUST me it is a vast improvement over where it was...it had become a catch all for everything and you could barely fit a laptop on it...sure the shingle sample is still on there, but we'll need that) and I got a bunch of old paperwork cleaned out of our file cabinets that we didn't need anymore and put those into the "to be burned" pile of paperwork.  I got a bunch of stuff printed out and organized for Alvah's new stage in life so I can better keep track of records and such and know where to go to take guardianship classes and things online (husband has to take them too, so doubly nice to have it in an easy to find location).  

As for the locating of the panelling, that certainly didn't even get started.  I'll have to see if we can find it this weekend or something.

It's definitely been a mixed bag of a week.  But, hopefully, looking up.  Be prepared for more than one post today as I'm going to be doing a bunch of catch up today since the son is in an okay mood.

Enjoy!

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

I was hoping to share some frugal things I did this week, but my week got derailed by the court scheduling to do a guardianship interview this weekend with us,  So, instead of doing mending and things, I've been working on deep cleaning the whole house from top to bottom so that we can, hopefully, put a good foot forward.  Alvah's kind of unstable the last few days, so it won't be our best foot...but hopefully we'll do alright.  My anxiety is eating my stomach lining, so I hope it goes well.  

So, instead of sharing frugal things that happened (I'll, once again, save that for Monday), I figured I'd instead share our menu for this week.  

It was grocery shopping week this week.  We went and got groceries yesterday, so I have a good idea of what I have in the house now (I tend to wait on grocery week until I know if I'm going to get what I ordered or not before I think on things too hard) and that makes it easier.

So, let's get to it, shall we?

Menu Plan for Week of 4/23/26 -- 4/29/26

Thursday:  Home made chicken strips with honey mustard dressing (I just do equal parts honey and mustard and do it that way), salad.

Friday:  Teriyaki chicken burgers (from freezer that I have made up) on home made bread, chips (bought a bag of plain potato chips on sale).

Saturday:  Ham, cheese and spinach quiche (from freezer).  Salad.

Sunday:  Chicken fried steak (using cube steaks from the freezer), mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans.

Monday:  Pizza night (daughter works that day, so it's always nice to give her something she really enjoys for dinner)

Tuesday:  Chimichurri Chicken (I just mixed up the sauce, poured it over chicken thighs and froze the chicken to bake later.  It comes out really good...great way to use up cilantro that I have left over from like Pad Thai night or something without anything going to waste), corn (from freezer), bread/rolls/something starchy.

Wednesday:  Creamy sausage, gnocchi and spinach soup.  This is using up a big bag of frozen spinach that the store subbed for frozen onions one day...no idea...and some of the sausage I found in the freezer that needs to be used up. 

And there you go folks.  Our basic dinner menu for this week.  I am hoping to get some stuff done on Sunday that I can share (I am cutting my grocery budget by 1/3, basically, this pay period and next to make a 500.00+ radiology bill that came in the mail, so meal planning and meal prep is a must right now), but this is the start for my weekly plan.

You all planning on anything good for dinner this week?  I'm always looking for inspiration, so feel free to share!

Enjoy!

Last Week's Goals Update and This Week's Goals

I have to say, when it comes to last week's goals, I feel rather proud of myself.  No, I haven't completely finished Alvah's carpet yet.  I still have the closets to empty, remove the old carpet from, and lay carpet in them.  Which also means I have to remove the track from his mirrored closet (scary since those things are heavy) to get under it.  Then I also have to have my husband's help in getting the transition strip for the doorway between Alvah's room and the hallway to get everything so you won't trip on a loose carpet edge.

We did not get to cleaning the shingles from the yard last week as we are still getting snow and/or rain here *cue horror movie scream* and it made working outside just not a pleasant, viable experience.  We'll get to all of that soon enough, I'm sure.

But, let me show some pictures of what I DID manage to get done around here.

Doing the carpet was a daunting task with doing it around furniture and a grumpy teenager, but I decided to tackle it in two parts.  I just did the half that needed the most carpet put down (the half of the room on the same side as his door) and I decided (smart or not) that I was going to do it in one day so that the doorway was done (didn't want to glue myself into a corner if possible so worked my way toward the door).  That was a long day and man it took a toll on my sciatica that night...talk about no sleep to be had.  

The next day was a bit easier as I just started cleaning up the carpet on the next section of his floor so that the edges were as "puffed up" and evened out as much as possible to line up the new carpet squares with.  Man, with the carpet squares, boiling water is SO much easier to use as a cleaner than trying to use actual carpet cleaner on to get ground in gunk (Alvah is very good at ground in gunk) out...it worked well and got the carpet nice and clean to work with for later on.  I waited for the carpet to dry out (basically took a day) and the next day I cleaned up the floor and scrubbed it with soap and Borax like I did the other half of his floor.  I then used the floor leveler I had to fill in some gouges in the floor that might have made the carpet dip in weird ways and waited another day for that to dry and set.  And then, finally, on day three (which ended up being Sunday instead of Friday as we had errands to run and frustration to feel on the garage roof), I put down the rest of the carpet in the main section of his room.

I have been LOVING having a full floor of carpet in the room.  You don't have to worry about your footsteps echoing as you are doing something in his room when he's sleeping and being scared to death you are going to wake him up.  It looks SO much better.  And it is so much easier to vacuum a room when all of the flooring is the same level.  We can use one vacuum now instead of worrying about switching between the broom (we end up sweeping the carpets before vacuuming because son throws food everywhere when he eats), the small shop vac we have and the Kirby (Kirby to remove dust and deep clean things, Shop Vac to get under the edges of the room to get anything that might be hiding, etc).  Definitely saves time cleaning the room now.  

Oh and note:  If you are wondering about the mattress against the wall...that's to protect both the son and the wall.  He tends to get frustrated and beat on walls (as you can probably tell) and recently has been running full tilt at a wall and can put his knee through it.  So, I put the mattress there for now to protect the wall and his knees from damage.  I think, once we get the panelling up, my plan is going to be putting in a wall of bookcases that I can affix to the wall for safety (of courses).  He doesn't run into bookcases as they aren't a level surface to go after, and it will give me space to put out a bunch of his toys and things that he could use better access too...and protect his head and other body parts from getting potentially harmed when he's in a state.  Just need time, and money, to get to that point...story of life, really.

The color of the old carpet vs the new definitely does not match due to its age, but his bed covers like 90% of said carpet anyway and it is clean (even though it looks aged really badly now next to the new stuff), so I am just going to leave it for now.  If and when a certain tile gets too bad, we can scrape it up and put a new carpet tile down (why we went with this system to begin with) and it'll all start to blend in time soon enough.

So, yeah, now that the update on last week's goals is done, let's get to this week's goals.

Goals for the Week 4/19 -- 4/25

1.  Clean out downstairs desk of old paperwork that is no longer needed.  Put into a box to burn later on.

2.  Print out all paperwork received from the courts so far on Alvah's guardianship hearing coming up and get it organized (we just got a court date for June and then suddenly are getting court officials e-mailing us paperwork and stuff, so I have GOT to get organized for the sake of my anxiety).

3.  Work on carpeting closets in Alvah's room (if I can find time and Alvah's not too grumpy).

4.  Figure out where husband put the paneling for the son's room in the garage so that I can start pulling it out and getting it installed as soon as the weather permits (am going to need to cut it outside due to the size).  

And there you go folks.  My goals for this coming week.  What about you?  Got anything exciting planned?

Money Saving Money: Recent Frugal Accomplishments

 On the frugal front, it's been kind of basic around here, as saving money with the cost of everything has been...well it just hasn't happened.  A bunch of medical bills and some expensive prescriptions have gone onto credit card, which isn't ideal, and have to be addressed.  I also have to start calling around and seeing if I can get a quote on our garage roof.  Turns out that no one has three tab shingles anymore up here because they fell out of popularity (and yes, we went beyond Lowes and Home Depot and looked into local businesses as well).  Everyone has switched to architectural shingles instead (whatever those are), which will NOT look good with our old roof shingles from what we have found, so we are trying to see if a roofing company will have means to get ahold of our old style shingles when we can't.  While we are at it, I'm just going to get a quote on a new metal roof for the garage just to see.  At this point, it's going to be an option (woohoo for more loans *ugh*) if we can't get shingles to repair the roof right or if there is more damage than we are seeing at face value here.  At least we got a roll of tar paper while we were out over the weekend, so we can flame it onto the roof (hopefully the weather dries out here) and help to seal it from the rain instead of having exposed wood.  After a bunch of research into our home owner's insurance and such, I decided doing a claim wasn't going to happen.  We could not get a roofing contractor, anywhere, to come out and give us a quote on repairs or replacement before Spring (which was step one to doing an insurance claim) and looking at our policy and the age of the roof...we weren't going to get much in the way of a payout from insurance for the repairs and then we'd lose any discount we have on our monthly insurance for putting in a claim.  So, yeah, we are on our own for this one.

The joys of current year, huh?

Anyway, onto the frugal stuff that has been going on around here.

1.  We've gotten a few freebies from the grocery store (seen above there).  The breakfast bowl seems to be a part of Carrs efforts to get people to do pick up or delivery instead of shopping in store so every once in a while they'll have a freebie for pick up and delivery only.  Nice thing about these freebies is we've actually been getting them, which is nice as trying to get in-store freebies is near impossible anymore....they disappear FAST!  I got the flavor my husband picked out of the available options and we just picked it up with our regular grocery order.  

The coffee freebie was actually just coincidently being in the right place at the right time.  We ended up going to the pharmacy to pick up various prescriptions and there was a digital coupon for one of these free coffee drinks that was only good for a few days.  Since I was at the store anyway to hit the pharmacy, I went and found one of the few flavors of the coffee they had left and got it.  I'm hoping the cold brew coffee won't be too acidic as my stomach is VERY picky when it comes to coffee and my husband hates flavored coffee, so I'm going to be the one drinking it.  My plan is to save it and then drink it as maybe iced coffee a bit later in the season, but we shall see how it all goes.

2.  I got minimal materials to finish up the carpeting in my son's room to cut down on costs.  I had to get new carpet glue, as when I went and opened the old bucket of glue we had, it was a big science experiment of various molds (I had no idea that an adhesive could mold, but learn something new every day).  It was really old, so not sure if that had anything to do with it.  

Originally I was going to do an online order with Lowes and then just go and pick it up, but decided to run into the store after swimming one day instead when my husband could sit and keep the son company in the car.  I used the site to figure out where the glue was supposed to be shelved and then went into the store, went directly back to that spot, grabbed the glue and was able to check out within a few minutes, instead of wandering around and potentially spending more money.  I also found out that doing pick ups at Lowes has a RIDICULOUS mark up!  By picking up in store, I saved myself a nearly 100% mark up on the carpet glue (online price for pick up, 39.99 per bucket; in store it was like 24.00 per bucket).

3.  I made sure to use up leftovers as we had them, or I made sure to freeze them, so nothing went to waste.  We had chicken Chow Mein last night and for the cabbage I actually used up several coleslaw kits I had bought in the past few months that I had not had an opportunity to use before I was worried they were going to go bad, so I just threw them (bag and all) into the freezer.  These kits took the place of the cabbage and carrots in the recipe I was making last night and I picked the meat off of a rotisserie chicken carcass I had in the freezer (that I defrosted, of course) to use for the meat (there was actually a nice bit of meat on there).  The recipe turned out fine, nothing went to waste and I was able to clear out some room in my freezer where the kits and the carcass used to be, so wins all the way around.

4.  My husband has been wearing Lee jeans for years now, but the last like three years, the quality of the jeans has just gone downhill significantly.  He's actually had more than a few, near brand new, pairs of jeans rip out by the back pocket straight down the back of the jeans.  He was worried he was gaining weight and that is what was causing it, but looking at the reviews online a TON of people, small to large sized, complained about the same problem and were blaming the quality of the fabric.  I looked around for better work jeans for him as he does have to do things like crawl over bag lines and stuff at work from time to time, and found Rustler jeans were about 1/2 the price, fit him decent and have been holding up much better.  I'm slowly replacing his Lee's as they rip out with the Rustler jeans.  I've got a pile of mending to work on (including more than a few pairs of Lees), but haven't had a chance to really work on it with Alvah, so this will have to do for now.

5.  I redeemed credit card rewards for a statement credit as I found that getting gift cards (even E-gift cards) had changed and would actually (essentially) cost you money to "buy" them with your points.  So, statement credit it is.  A few bucks is a few bucks.  

6.  I gave my husband and my son haircuts.  I've still got a bunch of clean up work to do on Alvah the next week as he fought tooth and nail getting the haircut done, but we'll get there.

7.  I redid my menu plan a bit and did a quick meal of tacos instead of doing a more elaborate meal one night because Alvah hasn't been sleeping and I just plain wasn't up to doing much (transitioning of the seasons is always so rough on his already crappy sleep schedule).  We thought about going out to eat, but I put my foot down and said simply, "We can't afford to" and went home and just cooked some taco meat and defrosted some tortillas we had in the freezer.  Dinner was done quickly and with no added expense of spending way too much money eating out (I mean, dude, even a take out pizza is insanely priced anymore!  How bigger families afford to eat out is beyond me!).

8.  I put some new elastic into the waistband of a pair of yoga pants I've had for years  and years (I bought them at Target back before I moved to Alaska and that was over 20 years ago...so, yeah they've held up ridiculously well).  While doing so the tie string snapped in two and I saw it was not going to be fixed as it was fraying all over the place.  I actually ended up taking some shoe lace material I had in my sewing stores that I had bought for another project I never got to years ago and used it to make new ties for the pants.  Just tied some knots into the shoe lace material so the ties wouldn't get sucked out of the waistband, used a lighter to seal up the ends (you melt the ends of the laces to stop them from just fraying apart) and voila!  Fixed.  Nice part about that project was that I was able to do it all by hand instead of trying to figure out how to pull out my sewing machine to do it (which I need to do desperately to get some stuff done in the next bit around here).

9.  I was able to get quarts of Pacific Organic Beef Broth on sale on Amazon one day.  They had a coupon for 20% off when you bought three and they were cheap on top of that, so I did two orders of three and was able to get six cartons for $10.66.  For beef broth period that was cheap, but for organic on top of it that was insanely cheap!  I would have shared it when I got it, but the sale went away super duper quick, so I wasn't able to share it in time before the prices went back up.  

10.  I have continued to work on Spring cleaning and organizing and am slowly getting my home streamlined to work as efficiently as possible.  This week I was able to get my den freezer organized, which is where I store my meat.  By doing that I was able to find a bunch of sausage that had fallen into cracks and/or gotten buried in with other meat (probably because I was in a hurry at the time when I put it away, which is typical).  So, I now I know to start working more sausage into the meal plan in the coming months to get that inventory back under control.

And there you go folks.  Some of the frugal things I've done around here lately.  Hope money saving endeavors, big or small, are working out for you all.

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

Well, it is Thursday, but I don't have anything to post for Thrifty Thursday, so I decided to wait a day to post up our menu for this week.  I started implementing shopping every two weeks a few years back and it has served us really well in trying to keep within our budget (and saving shoppers from my son's unpredictable moods), so if you are looking at the picture above and thinking the fridge looks kind of bare, that's because we are one week into our two week shopping cycle :).

One nice thing about shopping online and doing pick up orders is that I can plan my menus a bit more carefully (and creatively) than before, which honestly has helped to stretch the dollar because I am a lot less likely to impulse buy when there are no clearance sales to shop.

So, let's get to it, shall we?

What's for Dinner this Week:

Thursday (today):  Eggs Benedict, tropical fruit 

Friday:  Pork Wellington, spinach salad, bread.    

This is a treat for my husband as beef Wellington is probably his favorite meal of all time and he's been under a lot of pressure at work and home of late.  I'm trying out pork instead of beef, because well...beef is out of budget pretty much unless it is hamburger unless there is a super sale.   I'm going to be messing with the recipe a bit...I'm using dehydrated and rehydrated mushrooms instead of fresh, using onions instead of shallots, etc. 

Saturday:  Chicken Chow Mein , using leftover rotisserie chicken and spaghetti noodles instead of the called for noodles in recipe.  Comes out really good!  This is one of my "saved and look up as soon as we want that dish" type of recipes.

Sunday:  Japanese Curry with chicken (just using Japanese curry roux blocks to make the recipe super easy to make), carrots and potatoes, rice 

Monday:  Chicken Lyonnaise (to use up some fresh onions I got as a surprise in a grocery order last week), fruit, salad, bread 

Tuesday:  Chicken Alfredo Tortellini (making recipe up as I go along with some frozen stuffed tortellini I have), garlic bread, salad or steamed broccoli 

Wednesday:  Cheeseburgers and fries

Leftovers will be eaten for lunch (including getting sent with my husband for lunch at work), or, if need be, I'll shuffle things around and not make something one night and we'll have a leftover night instead.  Vegetables like carrots are frozen, potatoes are stored in the fridge for longer shelf life.  I'll pull meat the day before to defrost in time for dinner the next day, so that lends me a bit of freedom in figuring things out on the fly.

And there you go folks.  Our dinner menu for this week.  

Enjoy!

Goals for the Week (4/12 -- 4/18)

It's Spring Cleaning time around here...okay well Spring Cleaning and the start of Spring and Summer projects.  The weather is finally into the 40's during the day, so you can open up the house to air in the afternoon, so kicking up stuff in the house isn't as much of an issue as if you'd do it in the winter.  So, I've been working on getting cleaning and other projects done that desperately need to be tackled and this week is no different.  So, let's get into what is going on around here for projects.

Goals for the Week of 4/12

1.  Get chandelier glass in the kitchen cleaned well and hung back up.  Dust the light fixture pieces as well.    DONE!

This thing was FILTHY from all the dust and residual grease that had accumulated over the winter from cooking and stuff.  It looks so much better now!

Note:  Please ignore the state of the walls in the picture above.  Alvah's been rough the last few years to himself and other things.  Step two in his room redo is we are going to put up paneling to hopefully help alleviate this situation and protect him and his room a bit better.

2.  Biggest project of this week is to get my son's floor done.

We started carpeting his floor a few years ago, but my husband never finished it because life got in the way (and Alvah burned out on people being in his room and didn't want anything else messed with).  I am tired of tripping over carpet square boxes and looking at an unfinished room, so it is finally getting done one way or the other this week.  Nice part about having a wife with near clinical OCD is when I finally start a project, it gets done.  So far I got the part of the floor where the carpet will be going down scrubbed well with a mixture of Borax and soapy water (Borax will kill anything weird that might be on the floor and help get grease off the wood that might stop the carpet glue from adhering right).  I then filled in a spot on the floor that my son chopped up pretty good by rocking a chair back and forth over the wood that wasn't meant to move that way a few years ago.  I bought floor leveler that was made specifically for this task and was approved for the materials I'm using, so no one comment worried I did the wrong thing here *laugh*.  

Then I scraped up a few carpet tiles that the son had just fouled up too badly and would just look nasty even after cleaning them (by the way scraping up carpet REALLY sucks...just wanted to share) and then poured boiling water over the carpet tiles I felt could be saved.  I sucked up the water as soon as it started cooling off a bit with the carpet cleaner.  After doing that a few times I poured vinegar on the spots with the worst stains, sucked that up, and then went over it one more time with water.  It actually worked really well and stopped me from having to go over the carpet squares with a bunch of different chemicals (that Alvah is really sensitive too right now...his eczema is just awful this Break Up, even for him).  The shot above is in the middle of the process.  Now that the carpet has dried it lightened up a bunch and looks pretty good!

After a ridiculous amount of prep work I'm finally going to start laying the carpet squares today.  Here's hoping it goes well *fingers crossed*.  I've never laid carpet before, but I've watched a bunch of people put down flooring on YouTube and things, so I'm hoping I'll do a decent job.

Wish me luck on this one.

3.  The last task on my list for this week (trying to make things doable), is to get out this weekend and start to clean up some of the MANY shingles and roof materials that are currently over the whole of my back yard, so we'll be better able to mow when green grass starts to make an appearance.  Between the shingles and just general wind debris, this is not going to be a small job.  I'm hoping we can start to source shingles for the garage roof this weekend as well (I got and bagged up a sample to match color).  We very well might have to order the shingles as regular 3 tab shingles are sold out everywhere around here (go figure), but I want to get this rolling before too much time has passed.

And there you go folks.  My goals for this week.  Hope your goals for the week are going well.

Enjoy!