June: A Month in Review

Right, so the whole "Monthly Goals Update" has been MIA for two months in a row.  But, hey, you get to see a pic of the son looking far away and visionary as we contemplate the events of the last month! 

By the way this is the look you get when you ask your daughter to look far away and visionary...

 *Laugh*, so, let's get onto some of the things that got done in June around here!

Right when it came to actual goals last month, I celebrated my anniversary and that was well...it for the goals I had in mind.  But, at least I got other things done.

1.  I got some templates cut out for tote bags and got started on some embroidery! 

This is NOT going as fast as I would like as my son has been high needs the last bit, but overall I am happy that I was at least able to start it and am making progress.  Slow progress, but progress none the less!  I also learned to appreciate electric lights a lot more as trying to work on embroidery in really dim light at midnight (we have a lot of sunlight this time of year)...it gets to your eyes!

2.  I gutted the pantry, rearranged things and got food storage better sorted so I could start to use things as needed to pad out normal supplies and have been working things into meal rotations that I need to use up before they go past their "use by" dates.  I got the two food storage kits from Amazon (after some stumbling blocks) and got them out of the boxes to put away.  I ended up gutting my fabric cabinet in the sewing cabinet I have in the den due to needing easy access for my husband to be able to fix the shelf that collapsed, so I just put the food storage into the den cabinet for now or I put it on the other shelf I created in the den, which is this one... 

Overall, I am happy with it as it gives me easy access with good visibility to the food storage I currently have.  As soon as my husband fixes the shelves in the cabinet I'll be able to stack my fabric back in the cabinet on the middle and top shelves of the cabinet, but for now it's in stacks in the den (so, once again, the den is a mess).

3.  I tended the garden.  I planted more seeds when I realized that the corn wasn't going to go far this year.  I planted pole beans and more peas, watched the garden grow before my eyes and am hoping to start harvesting things big time this month, including hopefully peas!

I got the flowers planted in the front bed finally, wrote off the mint plant for dead, gloried in the wonder that was the chives growing and am looking forward to harvesting those tomorrow and dehydrating them with the basil and dill I managed to harvest from the hydroponics garden this week.

4.  I worked hard to make dinners not boring around here and made a real effort to make different things for dessert or snacks.  I think I'm having DECENT success with that, anyway, especially considering the tightness of our income.

5.  Speaking of money, I started to dial in how to live within our new means that came with the new job.  It's been challenging, but we're making it!  And my husband is really happy in his new job, which is worth it's weight in gold!

6.  We started summer school, I finally got an appointment with a speech therapist (thank the Good Lord!), we went to the psychologist to try and work on autistic behaviors to try and make my son's life more bearable for him, and us.  Progress is SLOW, but we'll get there.  I have faith.

7.  I got peaches cheap and canned them and also managed to get a ton of peach juice out of the peels and pits left over after I canned the peach pieces themselves and it made really good jelly!  I had heard of apple scrap jelly, so I thought I'd give it a shot with the peach leftovers (mind you, you do have to strain through cloth a few times to get all the hairy bits out of the mix, or you could use nectarines instead), and it worked fabulously.  I even used home made pectin for the first time and managed to get it to work.  I have to say as accomplishments go, I was rather proud of that one.

So, yeah, as month's went, I would say that June was busy, but at least I got things done during it!  How about you?  Get anything done worth noting in June?