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!

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?

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!

Goals for 2024

 

Hey all, 

Just a quick note before I start our regularly scheduled posting here.  Posting has been delayed, again...it's been a real cruddy start to the year when it comes to stuff breaking around here (I'll get more into that below), so we've been busy rushing here and there and to and fro trying to find parts to fix things and stuff.  My plan, at this point, is to basically start posting regularly come the beginning of March.  I'm going to work on getting posts buttoned up around here for the next couple of weeks and then I'm hoping to release at least one post a week starting in March.  Hopefully that will get me back to, finally, being more consistent with my blog and not worrying people when I go over a month between posts.  I think I got a decent start on that, so here's hoping I can keep it up.  So, yeah, stay tuned and we'll see if I fail at my blogging goals again *laugh*.

And now, onto the post!

*****************
Goals for 2024

So, 2024, so far, has started not in a fun way.  Let me just do q quick recap on that one for you…

My washing machine stopped spinning correctly, so I end up having to spin the laundry at least twice so it is not sopping wet going into the dryer.  My husband is pretty confident that the washer is just plain worn out.  We do a lot more laundry than most folks and so we abuse our washer and dryer pretty hard, but combine that with the fact that the washer is 40 years old and…yeah…it’s tired.  Hopefully my husband can get another machine running before the current one dies.  I’m just limping it along at this point. 

My dryer wasn’t drying well, at all, and it would take me four times putting clothes through to get them tossed in air enough to get them dry.  Turns out, for some reason that baffles us (as it has worked fine for a long while before this problem popped up), the outside dryer vent screen kept getting clogged up with lint and was choking off air to the dryer.  I finally got fed up trying to dance around 6’ snow banks out in the yard to clean it, and just removed it.  I know I’ll have to watch for birds trying to make nests and things in there now, but man…I just don’t have the bandwidth to try and figure out a way around the problem other than that.

Our snow blower started self destructing and was plain out of commission for about a week before my husband could jerry rig it to hopefully last the rest of the winter.  This has been a really snowy and cold winter in South Central Alaska.  We are breaking snowfall records, which everyone is SO thrilled about after last winter…har.  We are all just counting down the days till Spring as the plows are running out of places to put snow at this point in winter and we still have months of winter left.  Not ideal.

My husband’s car broke down.  Hard.  We are now waiting on parts, which has been a pain and the parts weren’t cheap to begin with.  My husband is going to have to do the work himself to save money as he doesn’t want to pay the nearly 3000.00 the garages wanted to do the job.  At least we have home visits for speech therapy so my husband has been taking my truck to work the last three weeks. 

My kitchen faucet has just given up working right.  We’ve replaced the sprayer on the sink, twice, in the last year, and it just does not work right for very long before it will just not turn on and you have to sit there and basically beat on the faucet to get the sprayer cartridge to give you water.   So, we finally broke down and ordered a new faucet, so we’ll have to install that (it came in the mail today).

The top rack of my dishwasher broke due to plastic fatigue and tried to collapse onto the bottom rack of my dishwasher randomly one day.  It was a miracle nothing broke as the dishwasher was full at the time.  Trying to figure out what replacement parts to buy was a nightmare for me, but my husband figured it out and we ordered the parts.   In the meantime my husband did wonders with zip ties and managed to keep the dishwasher together until the upgraded (metal versus plastic) parts came in the mail.  Hopefully he can install the new parts this weekend and the dishwasher will be in working order again as you have to be careful when opening the dishwasher so you don’t break the zip ties.

We walked out of a store to find our rear taillight in our truck had gotten broke while we were in the store.  The person who hit us and broke said tail light did not leave a note.  So, we have to pick up the replacement taillight today so we can install that.  

And to top it off, I walked into my laundry room to over an inch of water on the floor, slowly draining into our floor drain and my daughter and I finally figured out it was coming from the hot water heater, more specifically the supply line pipe that comes out of the hot water heater and feeds into the wall.  It had popped a leak in the top of the pipe coming out of the wall and was spewing water EVERYWHERE.  I need up turning off the hot water completely just to help stop the gallons of water that were dripping into my laundry room super fast (I tied a dishtowel around the leak, so that it would drip instead of spew everywhere).  Thank goodness my husband was able to get that working last weekend, but it sure wasn’t a fun weekend for him for sure.  

Anyway, it’s been a year so far.  And we are a whole two months in.  Not great.  I did decide, when I found out the Lunar New Year was this month (I think it was like the 10th), that I was going to aim for that to get my cleaning and organizing done (since we were sick at the end of December) and just aim to start the new year with the Lunar New Year instead.  I feel pretty good as I did get a bunch of stuff done in the way of cleaning and organizing before the Lunar New Year, so I’ll try and share those projects here in a later post.

But, yeah, let’s get onto the goals I set myself for this year. 

I have been really working on getting more organized and streamlined around here.  The goal is for a few different reasons.  One is a reduction of stress in trying to find room for things that I need.  And two is just to be more organized so that I don’t feel like I need this or that new thing to hopefully make things work better around here and so I can hopefully save money and pay off some debt.  I still have medical bills from last year sitting on credit card, my fridge is slowly wearing out, I need to get new gutters on the house and I NEED to start getting things accomplished for the sake of my sanity if nothing else.  So, that is the basis for my goals this year.  Save money, pay off debt and get stuff done.  Period.

So, here are my goals as they stand at the moment.  The list isn’t super long, but trust me there is a bunch of involvement in the list, so I definitely have some stuff to share on this stuff.

1.  Start Freezer Cooking

I have messed around with freezer cooking in the past.  I’d get enamored with the idea and would really want to try recipes this or that blogger was making (or now a days, bloggers and vloggers) and I’d make a bunch of different recipes that, honestly, most of the time my family wasn’t fond of.  But I loved the idea of simplicity in cooking, so I’d do it for a while and then just give up on it.

This time around, I decided I needed to do freezer cooking, but for real this time and get a good system down.  My daughter has had work pick up again, my son has a speech therapist come twice a week and stuff.  My life has gotten busier and with also making all of our baked goods around here…my days are really busy.  So, I wanted to make meals that I could pull out for busy nights or days where the son hasn’t slept for weeks and I’m exhausted.  So, first, I pulled up the old freezer inventory sheets I wrote up pre-2020 craziness, and went over those to see if there were things I wanted to keep from those Idas.  I then sat down and figured out what things I could prepare in advance that my family would definitely eat and added those to the list of things I wanted to make.  I also made a list of things that we had that needed to be used up (like for January I still had a bunch of pears and oranges in the fridge that my family wasn’t eating and were going to go bad, so I made sure to put those on the “make these into something” list).  And I sat down and figured out what recipes I had bookmarked in cook books or online that I had really wanted to try making and picked out the ones that were made to be frozen or could be frozen and added those to the list too.  

I then organized my freezers to make my life easier.  My fridge freezer is where I am putting things like soups in smaller containers or sauces, as I find putting those in my upright freezer downstairs just leads to them getting shuffled and then they fall out and get broken.  And I found that the freezer containers I ordered from Amazon stack perfectly in my fridge freezer so that was a definite win on my part.  

The small block freezer in my kitchen is for baked goods.  I put sweet breads, waffles, pancakes, bread based snacks (like pretzels) and other things in there.  This keeps the stuff on the top of the freezer from being too heavy and crushing the bread products below them.  With all the sourdough baking I do now a days, this is important to me as I want to make sure those things are rotated, used and also protected from harm.   I also am keeping my nine grain cereal in there that I bought last year (love it, but find myself only eating it in winter, so I go through it slow), so I know what is on the bottom of the freezer and things aren’t getting lost that way. 

The upright freezer downstairs in the laundry room is where the majority of the freezer meals are going.  It has basically become a freezer meal, frozen fruit and vegetable and butter freezer with a few other miscellaneous things in there.  I’m still working through things in the freezer, but am feeling darned good about my progress.  

The den freezer is primarily my meat freezer now a days.  I do keep my husband’s freezer breakfast items I make in there for him to be able to easily grab something on his way out the door to go to work.  I still need to pull everything out of the den freezer and defrost it this Spring as it has gotten some pretty good ice build up on it and I am collecting boxes to use to organize the freezer better when I do that as I am determined to waste NOTHING if I can help it and the best way to rotate through everything is being able to easily find it and see what you have.  

Also, just a disclaimer here for those thinking that I might start doing some like major freezer cooking days like you see online?  Sorry but that isn’t going to happen that I can see around here.  I’m too busy and too tired to try that.  What I did do during January was I worked really hard to get a few things done per day if I could and just mark a few items off of my list (I’ll share my master list with links in my beginning of 2024 freezer cooking post).  Also, any new recipes I try, I'll probably do a quick summary of what we thought of the recipes as we try them, not only for the curious out there on how those recipes taste, but also for me as a reference to look up at a later date :).

Getting into freezer cooking and keeping up on baking with more sourdough are basically my two goals for the kitchen for this year when it comes to cooking.  

Other kitchen goals (okay, goal as there is only one):

Organize and simplify.  

My kitchen was a deconstructed mess, or so it felt and I was getting really frustrated with it.  You had to go basically into the living room to get flatware for dinner, my appliances were all over the place and my counter space is limited, so I felt like I was tripping over everything.  So, I've been working really hard on getting appliances put away and out of the way unless they are in use.  I gutted my hallway closet (again) and am working on getting all of my appliances into it and out of the way to free up space around the kitchen.  Exceptions to this rule are the coffee maker (it has a timer so my husband has hot coffee in the morning to take to work), the electric tea kettle (I use it tons during the day to make myself cups of tea and stuff) and my mixer (weighs a ton for one and I use it nearly every day, for two).  I'll share the final results when everything is done, but at least I'm making progress :).

 I gutted my kitchen drawers and went through things kind of ruthlessly to only keep the things I use.  I have too little space to collect things I don't use.  I did keep a few things that my husband bought for me and stuck those in the back of a few drawers, but between the organizing and the windfall of finding a bigger in-drawer knife block to hold all of my good kitchen knives, I was able to reorganize the drawers in such a way that I was able to put the flatware into the kitchen to make accessing it easier.  It sure does make scrambling an egg easier when you can get a fork just by opening a drawer instead of having to walk around the kitchen table to get one :).

I did a few other things, but will share that when I finally get everything done and will work on doing a quick kitchen tour (I'm waiting on getting the kitchen faucet in right now as the kitchen is a mess because of it as I have to keep things from around the sink in the hope my husband can get the new faucet in soon).

I'm working on all areas of my house this year (I actually started late last year, but am still going strong) to get things just cut down, streamlined and working better.  I'm tired of everything feeling cluttered no matter what I do, so it is time.

Sewing Goals:

These goals are kind of simple, but are going to be a challenge for me to find time to do them.  But, they need to be done, so I'm determined to get them done.

1.  Make tablecloths.

I have looked and looked online and at the used stores for the last year to find more tablecloths without luck.  My table was my husband's grandfather's, so I try really hard to take good care of it and with Alvah...well tablecloths are the way to go until I can redo the finish on the table and put about 20 coats of poly on the top of it to protect it.   Our tablecloths are getting pretty worn, so I want to try and make some more to put into rotation.  I want to use a couple of our old tablecloths that fit both our table when it is at its smallest setting and also when there is a leaf in the table as a guide and make sure I make the tablecloths oval versus rectangular.  The rectangular ones work, but are a pain as I'm always folding corners up and under the tablecloth so the corners aren't dragging on the floor and looking weird, so I'm going to try my hand at making oval ones.

2.  Break down son's crash pad into chairs.

I bought Alvah a crash pad for Christmas years ago without really thinking about how much room it would take up...I just saw it was cheap and would ship to Alaska and I knew that Alvah loved crash pads at occupational therapy, so hey, why not?  It is huge, it is heavy and, most important, Alvah doesn't use it much anymore.  The cover is breaking down from age and the interior pillow case that holds the memory foam panel stuffing is just gone, so I thought a interesting way to repurpose it would be to make kind of like crash chairs/bean bag like chairs out of it to save it.  So, that project is on my list this year as well.

Garden Goals:

This I am actually quite excited about.  The big breakthrough on the garden front this year is that the dump has finally raised their prices enough that getting weekly garbage pick up was basically the same price as doing our own garbage drops, so we signed up for garbage service for the first time in over a decade.  It is great having the garbage get picked up every week now, it saves my poor husband time and physical exertion (doing the garbage was really starting to kill him as he gets older and with the snowfalls this winter...it's been awful) and, the big one for the garden, I got rid of all of the garbage cans that were on my deck taking up space AND it stops my husband from having to dance around the old garden beds to haul the garbage cans.  So, my husband actually brought up the idea to start planting in the old garden beds again and he can now put up fencing to keep the animals out since he doesn't have to worry about the garbage anymore!  

I took about 300.00 out of our tax return and decided to invest it in our deck and garden for more enjoyment during the summers as really, so far, we haven't been able to get much enjoyment out of our deck...I mean it's been over 10 years since we moved here...it's time to use the darned deck.  So, I bought these planters (Affiliate Link!), 2 of them, to put around the deck.  I decided on these to try and stop the planters from leaving wet spots on the deck that don't dry out and can lead to rot on the deck.  Once the deck gets refinished this summer (I hope the weather allows it this summer), I want to protect it from harm, so I'm hoping these beds will help to accomplish that.  This will also, hopefully, be easier on my back and I can wheel them around if I need to, to protect them from falling hail or something. 

 I'm not sure what I'm planting yet, except tomatoes are definitely on the list.  I want to plant yet more patio tomatoes this year.  I didn't get many ripe tomatoes last year, but the green tomatoes made really good relish and chutney (green tomato chutney has been awesome in cooking!!!), so red or green tomatoes...I'll take them this year.  I also broke down and got a second set of patio furniture (affiliate link) so we'll have four places to sit out on the deck for all of us.  My son loved sitting in the one set last year, so I'm hoping with four chairs we can all enjoy the deck this year.

I used the rest of the money I had taken from the tax return and bought some random things I needed for the kitchen (pot holders, another ice cream scoop, another pizza cutter, things like that) and do not regret doing it.  Hopefully all of the parts from the planters are in the box or that could get interesting later on since the return window would definitely be closed by that point.  Here's hoping!

My only financial goal this year is to pay down debt and pay off bills, so I don't see the point in doing a different section for that.  Here's hoping I can get things done on that front.

And there you go folks.  My basic goals for this year.  I'm really determined to get these things accomplished this year, so hopefully I can get it all done. 

How about you?  Any goals for 2024?

March Goals and Doings

March.  In like a lion, out like a lamb.  When it comes to weather, here's hoping for everyone' sakes.

But, hey, enjoy the shots of the "Bob Ross-esque" sunset we had one night.  I guess we'll be getting sunsets that are quite spectacular for at least a few years due to all of the stuff that got thrown into the atmosphere due to the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruptions the last few years.  

Side note:  If you want to see a movie of heartbreak, survival and human endurance, I can't recommend the movie Krakatoa The Last Days enough (warning though...it can, and probably will, make you cry).  It is based on real accounts from Krakatoa and it really teaches you a lot about volcanoes while you watch as well.   It is definitely worth a watch and is really well done.

Anyway, yeah, volcanoes.  Crazy stuff, but it leads to lots of stuff getting thrown into the atmosphere that leads to pretty sunsets and things.  

February was really busy with meetings for Alvah for all of his necessary evaluations for his three year check up and lots of running around having to find him a new winter coat (outgrew his overnight), new shoes (ditto) and things like that.  I also caught a stomach bug that has worked its way across the country and it took me in particular down hard here...the rest of the family was down for a day, while I was down for a week.  Not how I'd recommend losing five pounds quickly.  Thank goodness I'm feeling better.  Still popping tons of vitamins and eating super healthy for the sake of recovering my health after that whole mess.  So far, I'm doing okay, knock on wood.

Bright side, we only have one meeting left (the recap of all of the other meetings, meeting) and then we will hopefully be done with meetings for a little bit.  Medicaid is getting nasty about wanting to approve the medications that we need for Alvah to keep his mental health stable, so when our insurance goes up for renewal this year, I am going to call and talk to them about getting him on our family insurance as a second insurance.  With his type of Medicaid it isn't necessary, but they seem to not want to pay for what little I have required of them now, so it is time to seek alternatives to help alleviate the situation.

So, anyway, onto other things!

Well, believe it or not, despite swimming obligations for Armina (she's now a certified lifeguard, yay!!!) , meetings, sickness and other stuff, I actually had a bunch of stuff going on at the house as well.  So, let's get to some of it!

1.  One of my main personal goals when it came to this year was going through my kitchen stuff (and really stuff period) and if it doesn’t serve a current useful purpose, I decided it is time to start using them or, if I can’t find anything to do with some things, to just get rid of them.  When you have limited space, it seems like making it work efficiently becomes a huge priority, so that is what I’m always striving to do, so I looked at problems areas at the beginning of the year and tried to figure out how to make things be more efficient.

One of the things I decided I needed to make regular use of was my cast iron.  I also needed to figure out how to rehome said cast iron as I was keeping my cast iron skillets and pans in the bottom drawer of my oven (technically I guess it is a warmer drawer) and it did double-fold not great.  For one, it was warping the drawer, which is not heavy duty at all, with the weight of the pans, so the drawer was getting harder and harder to open and close as the bottom slowly deformed, but by stacking my pans on top of one another constantly in a warm environment, it was causing the oil that I cured the pans with to go rancid really fast and I was having to pull all the pans out of the drawer weekly to wash and then re-cure the pans.  And I’m not getting any younger, so lifting a heavy stack of cast iron up when I needed a pan or to put one away, or to lift them all up and down again to wash and cure them all, was becoming more and more of a pain (literally).

 I was watching one of the YouTube channels I watch occasionally one day  and saw that she had a cast iron pan rack in her small kitchen and thought, “You know, if she can fit it in her kitchen, I bet I can fit one in mine!”  I went looking on Amazon and realized that the cast iron pan racks were actually pretty reasonably priced, so I ordered one (after carefully measuring all of my pans and things) that would fit most of my cast iron pans.  It fits PERFECTLY in the space I measured it for (which is great when the measurements online are actually accurate) and it is so much nicer to pull pans in and out of it compared to the drawer in the oven (my husband thought of wall mounting the pans, but we just plain do not have the wall space in the kitchen to do it).  The drawer in the oven now houses my sheet pans, since they lay a lot more evenly in the drawer and disperse their weight better in the space and I put my cutting boards in the cabinet that used to home my sheet pans.  The system is working well, I am proud to say, if I can get my mind wrapped around where I stored everything and go to the right spot right away (like the sheet pans were in the same cabinet for 10 years, so yeah….it has been a transition to look for them in the oven drawer instead of the cabinet *laugh*).

I also had a cast iron griddle that I got for free that was out by a dumpster at a used store years ago that had some surface rust on it, but was in really good shape otherwise, so I had asked if I could have it and when they said yes, I brought it home and scrubbed the rust off and put an entire new seasoning onto the pan.  I was proud of it, but the downside to it was that at my old house the griddle would NOT work with the oven that I had and when we moved to our current house the stove still had really separated burners so the griddle didn’t work well there either as it would not heat evenly.  I didn’t want to get rid of the griddle, so I just ended up moving it from place to place over the years which kept it dry and all, but it still wasn’t functional.  I ran into it when cleaning/decluttering the last couple of months and was considering getting rid of it, when I looked at it for a second and thought, “Wait, this looks about the same size as the griddle that is built into my oven now”.  Sure enough I compared sizes and after quickly removing said current griddle and putting the middle burner onto my stove the cast iron griddle fit PERFECTLY!  Since then I’ve been actively trying to use it more and have grilled things like chicken on it and on the smooth side I cooked a big batch of sourdough English muffins on it just a little bit ago (most of the English muffins went into the freezer to use later on :).  Side note:  The English muffins are SO good!!!  They are so chewy and yummy, I highly recommend that recipe!  

I’m so happy to finally be able to use the grill pan for things.  I put it on a shelf where I can get to it easily and put my cast iron loaf pans and my smaller cast iron Dutch oven on the same shelf so I can get to things I use regularly without having to move things around the entire kitchen to get them. 

Note:  I am planning on giving a kitchen tour sometime soon…I’m just behind at this point, so you will see the cast iron rack I got here, hopefully soon :).

2.  As previously mentioned with the English muffins, I’ve gotten into small batch sourdough making the last few months.  I’ve found that small batch sourdough works for me perfectly as it takes a week to get the starter built up where I need it to be and then I use pretty much the entire starter on a batch of bread and pancakes or something else and then I start the process over again.  This way I don’t waste much starter (I’ve even used some of the discard starter to make tasty crackers the last bit, and by the way the crackers are delicious!  They have a cheesy taste even though they contain no cheese!) and I don’t end up baking a ton of stuff to use up said starter like other people I’ve seen online and things.  I bake, sure, but there are only three of us that actively eat what I bake with the sourdough, so I sure don’t want to end up baking a bunch of stuff that will ultimately go to waste.

Shot of  the sourdough discard crackers up above there.

Once summer hits and it gets too hot, I know that I won't be baking with sourdough much, so I'm having fun experimenting with it while I have the colder weather *laugh*.

I found a recipe that calls for mixing 50 grams of flour with 50 grams of water to feed the starter every day and then you discard half of what you put in every day, which has worked out well for me.  I also found that mixing in a bit of home ground flour (like half of the 50 grams per day that the method calls for) worked out well to make sure the starter had enough flour to feed on and wouldn’t run out of food too quickly (my kitchen can get pretty warm when I have baking and stuff to do and the starter will start to blow through the flour it has to feed on FAST without the home ground flour to help feed it), so it also gives me something to use home ground flour for, which is always nice :).

Oh and March, yeah, what are my goals there?  

3.  I’ve been watching a bunch of homestead/gardening channels/personal vlog channels on YouTube and it seems like a ton of channels share Costco or Azure Standard hauls on their channels and hoenstly I find that stuff neat to watch as it is kind of "how the other half live" for me.  I don’t have a Costco membership (nearest Costco is Anchorage and once I include fuel costs and things we keep deciding it isn’t worth it to get one) and Azure Standard doesn’t really work up here as the shipping costs get prohibitive to get the goods up here, at least for us.  So, unlike some others I’m down to Three Bears (who is a local outfit that buys things from Costco and marks them up, BUT tends to carry local items and also doesn’t require you to have a membership to shop there) and others places like Amazon to get different types of groceries.  So, I thought it would be kind of fun to start sharing my "grocery hauls" with you here, if for no other reason than to potentially help out those who live in the bush areas of Alaska who might be interested in what would ship, or not ship, up here and things.  I've gotten a few calls for help asking me to start up a coupon blog again (which it has been a long time since I did that) and while I can't really do that (coupons ain't what they used to be, for one thing), I figured I can at least point out some good deals (or not, who knows) of things I've gotten in the way of groceries and household items.  I've been supplementing my groceries with things I've found online for a while and it has really helped to help me get ahold of things that are super expensively locally or not available at all, or in some cases I would just find a really good deal on something and order it because it was cheap and I knew I wouldn't even BEGIN to get something that cheap nearby.  So, yeah, I thought I'd share some of those finds when I find them.

So, stay tuned for that aspect coming back to the blog a bit.  My way of shopping has definitely changed the last three years, so it might be fun for people who have read the blog for a while to see how my shopping habits have changed as well and how I'm stopping things from going to waste (I'll get more into that on another post).

4.  One big goal for March (meandering though the post is, yes, I do have some goals for this month) is to fix the two Lazy Susan cabinets in my kitchen.  My bottom cabinet is pretty much gone.  It needs the Lazy Susan part in it completely replaced as the old plastic shelves are nearly cracked in half on both shelves and attempts to repair said shelves have failed...we are pretty sure the plastic is just breaking down from age, but it has made the cabinet nearly useless as time went on as I've had to remove one thing after another from it to alleviate the weight on it so it doesn't completely break in half.  I was able to redeem all of my credit card rewards from the medical bills I had to put onto my credit card (if there is one bright side to anything is that my credit card gives me double rewards for medical stuff) and used them to purchase a brand new Lazy Susan insert for the cabinet (not cheap normal price).  We got the insert in a few weeks ago and my husband is taking measurements and things to make it work with our current cabinet set up (I still think we might end up having to hinge the cabinet doors to move them out of the way to use the cabinet insert, but I guess we shall see...it was the only insert I could find that would ship to Alaska, so we'll make it work one way or the other.  Heck I'd use it without cabinet doors at this point if it will make the cabinet workable again.

The spice cabinet Lazy Susan insert is having problems with bowing and things on the bottom shelf and is scraping on 1/2 of the shelf as it spins, so I'm working on a fix for that to make the shelf work again.  I really don't want to have to shell out for another insert for that cabinet, so we'll see what I can come up with :).

I've definitely got other goals I'm working on hammering out, but those are two of the biggies for this month.  

And yeah, I'm going to call it good for now on this post.  I know, it's kind of short compared to the amount of time that has passed, but I've really just been in the "get through day to day while recovering health and energy" mode for the last month, so you sure haven't missed much.  I SHOULD be up to more stuff this month as I'm feeling better, so here's hoping :).  I hope your February went well and now onto March!!!

Monthly Goals: February, 2022

Originally I was going to do two months at a time when it came to goals and do a "January/February Goals" type of post, but January just flew by, it seemed, and here I am starting to draft this post on the last day of January, soooooo I guess February goals will get its own post after all *laugh*.

For me this is traditionally the worst part of winter to get through.  The sun is coming back slowly but surely, which is good, but a lot of times it is overcast so you don't see much of the sun when it does pop its head over the horizon and we are only regaining light by like 2 to 4 minute increments per day this time of year.  It can still get decently cold (we are at a whopping -4 F at the moment and it is after 10 am Alaska time) and we usually expect to be buried in snow come March.  So, basically you know the Christmas holidays are over, so the Christmas lights (which help to light up the house and your mood) are put away, Spring is still a long way off and it can really start to feel like everything is a slog.  You get really tired all of the time (good old vitamin D deficiency), don't feel like doing much and can really start to suffer from SAD (Seasonal depression) if you aren't careful.  So, for me, this is the time of year I really start to try and stay as busy as I possibly can to help combat the doldrums.  Staying active really helps  to make this time of year go quicker and feeling like I'm getting things done helps me to feel good.

So, speaking of getting things done, let's get to my list for February!

Canning Goals:

1.  Can some beans.  

I know that sounds like a kind of vague goal, but I have at least four different types of beans in the house, so I want to make sure I start to get those canned up to use in dishes around the house.  I have tons of beans in food storage, so I really want to make a point this year of starting to use some of them more.  If I can keep rotating out jars as I run out (like make 4 cans of black beans and when those cans are gone immediately refill those four jars with more black beans to use later), I think it will really help me to streamline things and make me more motivated to use up some of my dried beans :).

2.  Can frozen cranberries.  

I think I'm going to take my frozen cranberries and make a cranberry orange relish/sauce from them from a recipe I found online.  It looks good and I think will help me be at a good start with the cranberry sauce to make some really nice sauces for chicken and things with it later in the year.

3.  Make and can applesauce

I'm really not sure if I'll get to canning this or freezing it and canning it later.  I got a really good price on apples earlier in January (they were 1.00 per pound on 5.00 Friday), so I had my husband pick up a ton of them so that I could make them into applesauce.  So far they are keeping just fine in the fridge, but I want to make sure they get processed before they go bad on me.  Since we are running low on applesauce, I am thinking this will be a good idea to use some of the apples :).

General Goals (basically I'm just lumping all the other goals together):

1.  Get the son his physical for Special Olympics so we can sign him up for swimming this year.

Last year swimming was cancelled for a good portion of the season due to restrictions, so I'm hoping this year will go well and it will be worth getting him his physical for it.

2.  Save money out of paychecks to pay for Subscribe and Save order at end of the month.

I had to order some things in bulk from Amazon for February that I can't find locally at the moment or are so darned expensive locally that it is worth my while to get them from Amazon instead.  But, while I'll save money getting things in bulk, I still have to pony up the bucks to pay for the bulk orders by the end of February, so I've got two pay periods to work it out or start to cut back my order from them.  Since I have things like laundry detergent on that order, I really don't want to have to cut down my order much, so we'll see how I do on saving the money to pay for it.

3.  Start to reorganize pantry to accommodate new jars of canned food.

I want to make sure that I can still find and get to things decently easily, so I'm still debating on the best way to do that at the moment.  For now, the boxes of jars of food that I've made are sitting down in the den ready and waiting for me to put them away.

4.  Make and freeze sugar cookie dough.  I want to make a nice versatile dough I can turn into different types of cookies and sugar cookie dough is one of the best for that purpose so I want to make some to have ready to go in the freezer.

5.  Find room in freezer for ice cream bowl so that I can make ice cream for daughter's birthday in February :).

6.  Make and freeze some waffles and the rest of the Swedish pancakes.

7.  Make and freeze some extra bread for Valentine's Day.  I decided I was going to make cheese fondue for Valentine's, so I want to make sure I start to put up different things for dipping :).

8.  Make some turtles (the candy) for Valentine's Day as well as a few more different types of chocolates.  I'm thinking of making some chocolate truffles for my husband for Valentine's this year.  I haven't made them for my husband since our first year of marriage, so I think it might be fun :).

9.  Fix work jumpsuit for the son.  The suit is my husband's old one from when he was a teenager but it has a big rip in the Carhart material.  We tried it on my son and it fits him perfectly, so I want to fix it so he has something cool to wear to match his dad when he goes and hangs out in the garage with him :).

10.  Sew handkerchiefs.  This was SUPPOSED to be my husband's Christmas gift, but when the family got sick, it got sidelined, so I want to make sure I get that done for him.  Late is better than never.

And there you go folks.  I have other things I want to get done (organizing and such), but I'm going to count these goals as my main ones I want to accomplish, so I'll leave the written list here :).  How about you?  Got things you want to get done in February?

Goals for 2022

Blogging was, once again, delayed due to the weather.  We had a few days that were wind free and then round two started and was blowing hard all weekend.  Bright side, if there is one, is that the winds only reached about 60mph this time instead of 100mph, so while the winds were scary sometimes, at least they weren't as destructive as the first round.  People still lost power as weakened trees went down, but MEA has stated that all power has now been restored, so I was happy to hear that.  As soon as the wind calmed down I ran out and put ice melt on the entire driveway because the wind had managed to batter the ice on the driveway from the ice storm we had into a nice, solid, glossy sheen.  If we'd had ice skates we would have had a great time, but since we were trying to drive vehicles over it, I figured putting down some salt was a good idea, especially since the weather called for snow (which we got about an inch of yesterday) and they are calling for chances of snow for basically the next week.  The ice melt seems to be making a difference, so I am happy to see that.

Right, now that "Wind 2:  Electric Boogaloo" is over, I finally found time to get some goals actually written down and some things done around here.  So, let's get to the yearly goals, shall we?

Oh and as an aside, please enjoy the shot of a calm sunset I took when the wind finally stopped here up top :).  

In general, 2022's main theme on the goal front is "to be more self sufficient".  The world situation is...well uncertain and scary....and I am determined that I am going to do everything in my power to make sure my family can ride the tide of things to come with as little upheaval as possible.  So trying to get more and more self sufficient is going to become more and more important.  That probably means me looking around come Spring to see if I can find someone willing to part with some egg laying hens and getting prepared to be a chicken owner again.  I need to do some checking on feed and bedding prices, though, as everything costs more up here, so I'm not sure how cost effective I can make chickens in our current budget.  I want to be prepared this time.  Last time I took on chickens fast and furious because Shani needed me to, so this time I want to make sure I do it smart if I do it.  You'll definitely see the theme of self sufficiency moving through the goals this year.  So, let's get started on things I want and/or need to get done this year!

Painting Goals:

• Get hallway and stairway painted.
• Repaint upstairs bathroom.
• Touch up paint in son's room.

Household Goals:

• Get cabinet handles for bathroom cabinets and install them 
• See about getting cabinet handles for kitchen and install them (wow, I can't believe how uncluttered I managed to get the countertops back when I took this photo.  It doesn't look like that now).  The cabinets are just starting to show wear and tear little bit by little bit so I'm hoping using handles will help to preserve what is left of the cabinet finish.
• Try and find something to install as a backsplash in the kitchen (I just cook and bake too much and it just beats the paint up, so I'd like to find something that is easier to clean).
• Install wood stove.  My husband surprised us with a wood stove for Christmas that we can install as a back up heating source, so we need to get that installed.
• Get new gutters for the house installed.  My husband keeps kicking this goal down the road as he's the one with the gutter installer contact, but I'm determined to get this done this year as the gutters are becoming more and more of a mess and the lack of gutters in places are really wearing on the house.

Financial Goals:

• Try to stop getting into more debt (and boy I know I'm not alone in that regard).
• Be more proactive about health (to avoid going to doctors and screwing up goal #1).
• Pay down bills as much as possible.

Pantry Goals:

• Can more!  There.  My one pantry goal.  Okay, so it's a loaded pantry goal, but still it is one single goal.

I think I pretty much managed to find all of my empty jars from around the house and now it is a matter of starting to use them more and get back into full scale canning (creative jar storage seen in the photo above).  I'm not going to go too crazy with the canning (as in what I am going to can), but I do want to put up some things that we will use.  Like right now my list starts with canning the frozen fruit in my freezer so we have it to use on pancakes, waffles, on cake, or as a mixed fruit type of cocktail for dinner sides (I have a bunch of miscellaneous frozen fruits that I put in the freezers to stop from going bad, so I'm just going to mix them all together and can them) and things.  

I also am planning on pressure canning (I haven't pressure canned in years as I found it was just too much work and worry with juggling the son as well) some soup and also canning some different beans to use in dishes later on so they are readily available and such.  Since I have tons of dried beans, this seems smart to me.  When it comes to storing the jars in the pantry, I got some nice heavy duty boxes that I'm putting aside so the storage will work easier.  Here's hoping my plans work out in reality.  With the way prices keep going up and the shrinking amounts in cans and other packages (shrinkflation), doing as much for ourselves as possible is becoming more and more of a necessity just as a means for our dollars to go as far as we can make them.

Freezer Goals:

Okay, so some might remember my lofty "freezer inventory" goals I came up with before 2020 made everything spin on its ear.  I'm not going back to the freezer inventory idea, per say, but I did do a bit to reorganize the standing freezer to work better by organizing meats into boxes so that I don't get a broken foot pulling things out of the freezer for dinner (this works fabulously and I recommend it to everyone!) and everything stacks up SO much nicer this way.  You'll notice a lack of beef in the freezer.  That is because, with the exception of the steaks I bought that are on the top shelf wrapped in freezer paper, the rest of our beef is in the small chest freezer in my kitchen.  It just seems best to keep like things with like.  One day soon I'm going to get motivated and move the steaks into the small block freezer in the kitchen, but it just hasn't happened yet.

So, my goals to make the freezer work a bit better for our needs, is once I can the fruit on the top shelf of the freezer there, I want to make the top shelf of the freezer into a shelf for convenience foods (snack foods and the like) and ready made meals and desserts.  I'll get into the things I'm going to make this month in another post, but I have to say that I'm excited at the prospect of having things made and ready to go, especially for the sake of my husband's lunches, so on days when I'm out of ideas we can just grab something from the freezer to pack in his lunch box.

With the potato shortage (no, really, this is a thing) causing problems and may be putting a strain on McDonald's French fries (which gives me nightmares since that is one of the few places Alvah can and will eat), I want to get some potatoes cut up, blanched, frozen and ready to go into the deep fryer so the son will have his French fries.  Man, I hope I can get it dialed in where he will be happy with it as he's super picky about his French fries.  I've always failed at home made French fries before, so wish me luck as I try again.  Here's hoping it works this time as I really don't want Alvah to lose one of the few things he'll eat *fingers crossed*.

Garden Goals:

This year I am planning to expand the container garden so that I can plant and harvest more food this summer.  I need to be sure to be careful and not overload the deck with too much weight, so my husband will be on board to help me figure all of that out as we go.  I am thinking, if I can get them, about putting the patio tomatoes going down the deck stairs on one side, which would give me a TON of tomatoes if they grow well, but it is still an idea in progress at this point.  I am determined to grow more food this year and to keep it as safe from insects and animals (I'm looking at you, moose) as I possibly can.  Here's hoping it all works out.  

So, yeah, my goals are pretty much the same as last year.

1.  Plant Garden.

2.  Have it not fail.

3.  Put up as much as I can for winter when the garden does well.

*Laugh* as goals go, I'd say that every gardener has pretty much the same, but here's hoping it all works out!

And there you go folks.  Some of my more major goals for 2022.  It is going to be a full year and I am DETERMINED it is going to be a good one!