I'm hoping my arm feels up to doing different things this month, including cleaning walls and carpets as much as I can so that the house is deep cleaned for winter, thus helping to keep the air a bit cleaner and maybe keep us all a bit healthier. I definitely need to clean out all of the electric baseboard heaters so that they are ready to fire up when the weather starts getting really cold here within the next month, so that's at the top of my cleaning goal list.
Christmas gifts will be one of my goals as well as I really need to start getting going on those now that food preservation is starting to finally slack off schedule-wise. I do have a few more things to get done, but I will hopefully get those done this week and be done with it.
So, here's this month's goals!
General Goals:
- Celebrate son's birthday
- Rest. Nap. Ice arm. Get better!
- Figure out better system of organization for things, again, to cut down on house clutter.
- Pull out fall and Halloween decorations. Put them up.
- Work on Christmas Gifts. Finish at least three of them.
- Find big things of aida cloth or other course woven fabrics and mess around with Swedish weaving (getting more in touch with my heritage and it kind of looks like fun and actually pretty when done :).
- Go to fall festival with the kids. A local farm has a fall festival every year with hay rides, a big hay maze, a pumpkin patch and other fun things to do, but we've always been sick or something (and we've been too broke to afford the 25.00 for the family to get in, honestly). The last few years they have had a special needs day for kids so that special needs kids can go and have fun at the event without all of the people that jam into the event on the next day. The event is also free on that day for families of special needs children. So, I'm hoping to take the kids to it this year as I think they'll have a lot of fun (if the weather and our health permit us to go).
Cleaning Goals:
- Deep clean baseboard heaters
- Get ceiling fans cleaned well and vacuumed off (got the living room fan done yesterday, so two more to go).
- Clean carpets well.
- Dust.
- Organize children's rooms better to keep things clean better.
- Wash windows and closet doors.
Food Preservation Goals:
- Mull and can apple cider
- Dehydrate potatoes.
- Keep eye out for good deal on carrots. If find one, blanch and freeze some and dehydrate some others.
- Blanch and freeze the last of peas.
Garden Goals:
- Wait for peas to die off and then pull them, turn soil, plant onion and garlic starts for Spring and walk away.
Hi Erika,
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday to your son. The fall festival sounds like a winner, especially hayrides. I loved them. I'm glad to see that frequent rest and icing of your arm is a priority. When I was a kid we had a neighbor who did Swedish weaving and taught us how to do it. I haven't done it in years. As I recall she used huck toweling to do it, which was much less expensive than aida cloth, unless you have wide weave aida cloth in your stash.
Food preservation from the garden and market sources is slowing down here so one goal for me is to start putting canning equipment away. Currently it's spread out on the dining room table. I'm going to dehydrate apples when they come in, as it takes up less room for in the pantry. Christmas gifts are moving to the top of the list. And I hope to get back to menu planning. When I do it dinner time is so much easier. It goes without saying cleaning chores are ongoing. Dorothy.
I do have wide weave aida cloth and a huge piece of it that I got from someone...can't remember who...a long while ago and have been holding onto it wondering what I could make out of it. So, I figure it might be something to try. I also, I'm pretty darned sure, have a monk cloth kit that I bought ages ago thinking that I could do cross stitch on it and then realized it was REALLY big weave and kind of a pain to work with compared to what I liked to do, so I put it aside to finish at some point in the future. I'm not sure if I ended up giving it away or not, but I'm going to look for it and see what I can find :).
DeleteYeah, I'm hoping to get the rest of the canning done this week that I'm planning on doing and then putting my canner up for the year. We don't have a dining room and need the kitchen table to eat on (I insist we eat dinner at the kitchen table...it's important to me) so I end up sticking my huge canner either on my stove for months, in my hallway closet taking up a ton of room or as it is right now, sitting on the floor over by my sideboard where I pray people don't trip over it. So, it'll be nice to put it up for the winter :).
I need to get back to menu planning too. I'm hoping to hit Pinterest and stuff today and start figuring out some meals. I always feel better when things are worked out ahead of time.
Pea plants are great for enriching the soil in nitrogen, don't pull them out, cut them at the soil level, clean out the tops but leave the roots in the ground to work their magic
ReplyDeleteSorry, that was worded awkward. I was going to do what you just stated, but the front of the bed where the peas were growing I've been walking over to get to the peas as they are so huge, so THAT part I'm going to dig over and then plant my onions and garlic in the front of a couple of beds (I have to put onions in the bed where the peas are as they say not to put onions in a bed where other onions or garlic have been in the last two years to avoid disease. So, I have two beds to choose from to plant the onions and garlic next year :).
DeleteIf the pain you are having is caused by inflamation,I have used tumeric ginger and cinnamon in small amounts added to smoothies, coffee or tea. If nothing else, some tumeric everyday makes huge difference.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've been doing that the last couple of days, just to try and make any difference in the arm pain. So far I haven't noticed much, but in the herbs defense the tumeric is old. I'm going to see about adding some to my order on Amazon as the price at the store for spices and herbs nearly made my jaw drop off. When did those things get to darned expensive? The last bunch of herbs I bought were high quality ones that I got for a song through some Groupon type site that isn't around anymore, so I was just blown away when I saw the price on a thing of cinnamon sticks. Went on Amazon and got a bottle for 2.00 and some change, and they are organic on top of everything (honestly, I'm not one of those people who care about that stuff really, but still the fact that I can get organic spices cheaper than the non-organic ones at the store? That just shows what kind of mark up there is on those things).
DeleteThanks for the advice, really. I forgot about ginger helping with inflammation. I really need to pull out my herbology books and start refreshing my memory on these things.
I need to get our house cleaned for winter too. I really need to clean our ceiling fans as well, its just such a pain!!
ReplyDeleteSo my oldest ended up having strep, my youngest slide backwards with the asthma thing, but today he is better, my oldest sounds worse. My husband and I are possibly going to escape this bout, though I've been SO tired the last two weeks I can tell I am having a hard time not getting aick.
It was my first day at work, nearly had a side swipe, darn people going 70 in the 55 all over, one girl there is nice, the other is one of those who acts like you are in her way, sheesh! My first day so cut me some slack asking where things are! There is SO much on the todo list there, I don't know how I can manage it all in 6 hours a week. I hope it gets better and easier. And that I get less tired.
I've got a good start on Christmas here, thank goodness!! Have a few wcarves and a baby blanket left to make though, that I need to finish this month.
Thursday is the schools pta back to school picnic which the kids and I are skipping this year. Its never fun, just chasing after the kids on the playground and honestly, I just dont want to spend $30 this year for 3 pieces of pizza, three chips and drinks and two snow cones.
I hope your arms is able to rest. Have you thought about putting it in a sling to force you to not use or move it? Then it can also be iced or whatever, while you still do stuff with your other hand if you cant sit atill.
I went out and bought a sling, only to find "one size fits most" doesn't apply to someone with an extremely short torso. I adjusted the thing to the shortest it would go and it still won't sit my arm comfortably at all. All I could do was laugh.
DeleteTake it easy on that arm. I know; easier said than done. It is so hard to be still when you see so much that needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteI find the cold weather you are having so hard to believe. It is going to be 95 degrees again tomorrow and it seems like this hot weather will never end, so tired of it. I got out again at the crack of dawn today to begin planting the fall garden. I am far behind but it has been just too hard to work in the high heat and humidity. The heat has baked the ground dry, again and when my husband plowed yesterday, the dust just flew. This summer has either been drought or flooding. This morning I planted kale seeds and onion bulbs. I am planning on going out this evening right before sundown to plant collards, carrots, Swiss chard, spinach, lettuce and Chinese vegetables. We don't have any rain in the forecast until next Tuesday.
My goals:
Get the garden planted then watered and order more Gro-guard to cover it.
Finish putting up the food I got at the auction last week. Freeze the rest of the peaches and start on the apples. I think I will dehydrate some and make applesauce with the rest.
Two goals. TWO GOALS!!! JUST TWO GOALS!!! Surely I can get them done.
Jeannie
Two goals. As you said, "Easier said than done" *laugh*. With the arm...I'm trying. Sometimes I wish I wasn't born so short. Times definitely like this when I have to drive the kids to school, period, and every time I have to make a left hand turn quickly I clench my teeth. So not fun. I'm getting better at doing things more one handed though, so hopefully the arm will start to feel better soon.
DeleteAs a young mom I learned I could do everything one handed with a child on my hip except ironing. Then an older (wiser) woman said, "So why don't you give up ironing?" I did.
DeleteJeannie
This is the first time I have posted, but I want you to know I really enjoy your blog! You have given me many good ideas and have encouraged me in many ways. I notice that you mention baseboard heaters...two years ago, I bought a house in the mountains of New Mexico that has baseboard heaters. I am not there full time, but I keep my house at 50 to keep pipes from freezing. My electric bill is pretty high in the winter, so I was wondering what it's like in Alaska! I have never deep cleaned these heaters...is that something I should do? I wouldn't know where to start! I hope you have a great fall!
ReplyDeleteI kind of need to deep clean the baseboard heaters because my son chews up cardboard and spits it all over (remember, you asked *laugh*) and it gets into the heaters, so to avoid a fire hazard I vacuum them out well and make sure they don't have any foreign matter in them before I fire them up.
DeleteMy heat is a weird Frankenstein system that was here when we got the house. We have one giant heating vent that goes from the gas furnace in our den up through our living room/kitchen area and it heats the main part of the house that is in a "grand room" type of style. Unfortunately the bedrooms are at the back of the house where the heater doesn't really reach well, so there are electric baseboard heaters in the rooms we use (we actually have electric baseboard in every room of the house, but we only use the ones in the bedrooms). When I turn the bedroom heaters on during the winter months, even with the thermostat on them set to about 65 (if you set them much lower than that the rooms get COLD during the night) it still skyrockets my electric bill between them and the near constant dark. Usually during the winter I average about 400.00 a month on the electric, unfortunately, and that's with LED lights everywhere and only the bare minimum on. We keep hoping to get a boiler room built, a boiler installed and put in hot water baseboard heat, but that, unfortunately is goodness knows how many years off yet. So, we deal with what we have :).
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply! I appreciate that your shared this information with me. Electric bills are definitely tough in the winter!
Delete*you
DeleteI notice a lot of people blanching and freezing spinach. What in the world do you use it for???? I have spinach in my garden that I would love not to waste, but I have never used frozen spinach except for a smoothie maybe.
ReplyDeleteWell, I use it in any application that calls for frozen spinach. I like to defrost it, squeeze it out and use in quiche fillings, or you can mix it up with some other veggies and some meat and use it as part of a filling in meat pies. I'll throw it in frozen about ten minutes before I serve soup and it comes out nice and tender once just heated through. I also just serve it as a side dish as well. Now I have found we like it better if I blanch and freeze it with chard or some other stronger tasting green for a side dish as it can be kind of bland otherwise, but overall...yeah it actually comes in pretty handy :).
DeleteLynn, I have used frozen spinach in pasta dishes as well. Stuffed pasta shells or cheese manicotti are 2 good examples. You can also make spinach dip with it.
DeleteThanks for the spinach ideas Erica and Rhonda! I'll give them a try!
DeleteLong time reader, first time comment-writer! ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry your arm is hurting so much. I dealt with tendonitis all through high school- I spent at least two weeks out of every month with my wrists wrapped up in braces and ace bandages. It's painful as can be and SO annoying. I spent a lot of time at the rheumatologist's office, and the one thing that ended up working well for me was moist heat. Wrap a warm, damp towel (I always used a dishtowel, something thin), then wrap that up in plastic wrap or a plastic bag, whatever you have on hand, and then wrap a heating pad around it and sit for as long as you can. It doesn't make it totally better, but it helps take the "I WANT TO GNAW MY ARM OFF SO IT STOPS HURTING" kind of pain away.
Wishing you all the best! I really enjoy your blog, it's really inspiring. :)
YES! The "I want to gnaw my arm off" pretty much covers the pain. It's not excruciating...well unless I move certain ways or something, but the constant just ANNOYING pain is what wears on me. I always know it's there and it drives me nuts. You get to a point where you want to pinwheel your arm repeatedly just to try something to make it stop for a few minutes only to realize that would be a really bad idea.
DeleteThanks for the advice on the moist heat. I'll definitely give it a shot!
Erkia, I read about how high your heating cost is. Have you guys tried those kinds of heaters that you plug into the wall? I can't think what they are called. We have a few Dyson heaters, and WOAH. Those things will get an icy room bearable (My sons room, before we switched them, were unconditioned on 3 sides and awful in the winter) and those heaters work well in closed or large open rooms. Over the years we've watched to get them on sale for $200ish, (and one was a gift from my mom, our first one) and now we have 3, one for the boys room, one for ours, and then one for the living room. And that allows me to keep the whole house heater on much lower than usual. Other brands other than the Dyson work well, I'll bet, but we went when them because they have a 3 year warrenty, no qestions asked (which we have used twice when they made funny sounds) and they turn off if they get tipped over, but since there's also no parts that get really hot, it's safe, and not a fire hazard. That's the only reason I leave them on all night. And now they make new ones, even quieter, with timers! Will have ot save up for that eventually.
ReplyDeleteWell, basically the baseboard heaters do the same job as unit heaters would. My sister-in-law tried one of the plug in heaters and nearly had a heart attack when her heating bill came in as they didn't save any money at all off of diesel (they live out where fuel has to be trucked to them). The biggest problem I find is that we have a monopoly on electricity in the Valley. No competition means that our electric company can charge whatever the heck they want and you have to put up with it to keep your lights on. So, we end up with our rates going up four times a year now a days. A lot of people, including me, complain as we are SUPPOSED to be a cooperative and should have a say in how money is spent and how much we should have to pay, but we don't. Basically they call it a cooperative just so they don't get nailed by the government for running the monopoly they are running. It stinks.
DeleteBright side, the wall units are as safe as say hot water baseboard heaters would be. The only reason I deep clean them is because of a son who will jam paper down into them and I'm not keen on paper and heat together *laugh*.
Thanks for the recommend though. I might look into them and see if any are Energy Star rated and what their consumption would be. If the electric keeps climbing rate-wise it might be wise to switch just to make the consumption more cost effective.