Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

It is wet here.  So, so wet.  How wet?  I'm about to start building an ark and charging toll (hey you might as well make money off the ark right?). 

The weather is just playing havoc with my garden plans.  The slug traps are full within hours of me refilling them with beer, the slugs are somehow getting underneath barriers buried into the soil with weights on top of them.  And anything that isn't slug eaten?  The seedlings are quite literally rotting as soon as they start to pop out of the ground and grow a few inches high.  The ground is THAT saturated with water right now.  It's pretty gross.  I talked to my husband about potentially building a greenhouse with corrugated plastic instead of glass windows and such and he agreed that would be a lot cheaper and we might be able to swing that for next year.  At least if I can get him to draw up some plans I can start picking up material or at least get some cost estimates and start to budget for it.  It'd be nice to avoid some of these problems in coming years.

I actually dug some soil and put it into a couple of planters and have it sitting under the eaves of the house to see if I can dry it out enough to grow a few plants in those.  If the good Lord says no to a winter garden, annoy your husband by moving a mini garden inside ;).  It'll be interesting to see if I can imitate natural light with the florescent lights out in the garage.  We'll see how it goes.  Nothing to lose really at this point is there?

My husband left town late last night/early this morning and already my son keeps looking for him to come home, refusing for me to turn off the garage lights and keeps asking for items that he associates with his dad on his talker.  He even keeps wandering over to the window looking for him to come home.  Kind of makes me want to cry and he's not even in a really bad mood yet and is not helping me miss my husband less that's for sure.  And my daughter's stomach is officially cycling as well.  Top that off with OT cancelling this week and speech cancelling as well and the pouring rain...man it's depressing.

I refuse to get too caught up in a dark mood though as the kids are going to need me to distract them from theirs, so I ran out a couple of times today and foraged in the yard, picking rose hips and watermelon berries (a new find for me.  I was watching a cooperative extension service video on edible berries in Alaska and saw the watermelon berry plant and was like, "Holy cow!  I have those all over the yard!").  I am pretty sure between the rose hips I have dried from last year and the fresh ones I've picked I should have enough for rose hip syrup, which will be fun to make.  Since rose hips taste like apple, I'm figuring on making it with some cinnamon and making it into basically an apple cinnamon syrup for pancakes and things.  I think that will be really tasty.  And packed with vitamin C, calcium, iron and all the other great vitamins rose hips have in them.  ANYTHING that is as packed with antioxidants as rose hips can't hurt to consume over winter.  Ever.

When it comes to goals I got accomplished this week...it was kind of mixed.  The plans for my husband going out of town changed suddenly when I found out all the details as it just was NOT going to work with my son's allergist appointment. Which led to me rescheduling my son's allergist appointment, led to my husband flying out earlier than expected and me scrambling to get things like laundry washed, sorted, folded and other things figured before my husband had to leave.  So sewing Christmas gifts and things was totally out this week after all of that.  I did get rhubarb and cherries canned (as I showed in my Frugal Friday post) and I also managed to can pears (seen up top).  Super happy with what little I did get done with everything that was going on around here.

I also was able to pull the pants that were too small for my son out of his dresser and put them in the donation pile.  I can't believe how big that kid is.  For what he eats it doesn't make sense that he is SO huge for his age.  I mean he's less than a foot shorter than I am.  At seven.  Crazy.

I've gotten more pantry organization and kitchen organization done, but not as much as I was hoping, so I'm hoping to get more of that done this week.

So, onto this week's goals.

Sewing Goals:

• Work on Christmas gifts
• Mend husband's work jacket zipper

Food Preservation Goals:

• Dehydrate cabbage
• Dehydrate carrots
• Dehydrate celery
• Dehydrate Potatoes
• Can rose hip syrup
• Can strawberry preserves
• Continue to harvest peas.  Blanch and freeze.

General Goals:

• Continue to work on pantry and kitchen organization
• Get kids through meet and greet at school.  Drop off school supplies.
• Work on master bedroom closet.  Start ripping things out of closet to do a hard reset.
• Strip, wash and change bedding on all beds (I never manage to do all of them at the same time and would like to give it a shot *laugh*).

So, there you go folks.  My goals for this week.  How about you?