Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap (Times 2), Plus a Garden Update

Believe it or not I am working on blog posts, but I just got delayed due to school starting around here (we decided to start early so we could book time to take more time off at Christmas) and also, it turns out, by stopping the son's sleeping meds, not only did his mood improve dramatically but it also ended up making his digestion start working overtime, so I've been dealing with some bouts of unpleasantness in that area of late.  Between all of that and his eczema flaring badly, it's been kind of rough around here of late when it came to finding time to get things done.

I honestly almost didn't write about money saving things that have happened of late, as there isn't a whole lot to report.  But, I'll give you a rundown of things that have happened of late.

1.  First big thing to report is my husband finally got time to work on the lawn mower.  He bought parts and replaced and tinkered and nothing was working to get the mower to actually fire up and run.  He finally pulled the heads off the lawn mower to find the motor just full of gunk (mud, etc) and he realized that some major seals failed.  So we are looking at basically an engine rebuild or having to buy a new mower.  We're not sure what is the most cost effective at this point.  We just decided we're going to just let the lawn go, probably until winter (we don't have an HOA or anything to worry about) and if worse comes to worse we'll rent a push mower to do the front lawn so it doesn't look too horrible.  Over winter we'll try and save up enough money to hopefully cash out a new mower next year or be able to cash out a new motor.  It seems to be the best recourse at this point to avoid having to put over a thousand dollar onto a credit card or draining our savings down to nothing to pay for one.

2.  I finally settled on a Mueller brand pressure cooker as it got rave reviews on Amazon and I have to say so far it has worked great and I'm really happy with it.  It is definitely better quality than my old pressure cooker, so we are already off to a good start.  I've used it to make a pork roast, some rice (my rice cooker is having issues...something to do with capacitors my husband is telling me, so I have to have him look at it so it'll power up correctly) and mashed potatoes.  So far, so good :).

I was able to get the cooker for about 74.00 after an online coupon on Amazon was applied, so I was happy with that as the coupon saved me about 5.00.  Every little bit helps.

3.  I've been doing a ton of rearranging around here and one of the things I did was I went through and found all of my Rubbermaid modular pantry storage containers that I had that I could move things around and use, combined it with a big Tupperware pantry storage container I had and I decided to put some things up on top of my fridge to make them easier to get to (or just put them up there if I didn't have room for them elsewhere, such as the juniper berries).  

Some things like the spatzle and the black rice are part of my son's feeding therapy plans, so I'm going to be happy to have them within easy reach.  

I was even able to stick a couple of containers on each side of the fridge, tucked behind the front storage containers so I could fit a few more things on top of the fridge.  I really like the organization of the items and it actually looks pretty good.  

4.  I fixed a lamp my in-laws had given to us (okay, so I begged them if we could have it, which probably helped to sway them a bit *laugh*) that used to belong to my husband's grandparents.  Grandchildren had played rough with the lamp (it is a "working" spinning wheel lamp, so calls to children like nobody's business) and had broken a few things on it.  I was able to get it mostly working.  We still have to restring it as there is a knot in the string that is on the lamp now that causes the gears to slip and the lamp to come unstrung.  I'm happy I was able to mostly fix it, though, as both my husband and I really like the lamp.  I was able to fix it with parts I already had around the house (I'll share pictures of it later as the ones I took came out blurry).

5.  I completely rearranged the pantry (I know, like when do I keep it the same for more than six months at a time *laugh*) and so far everyone seems happy with the way it is working out.

6.  My mother-in-law called and said that raspberries were ready to pick over at her place.  I managed to get enough for two quart jars of berries.  I had decided that this year I wanted to can the berries whole in syrup to use in desserts and things as just freezing them seemed to lead to freezer burn quicker than I liked.  It was hot and humid and when I saw that I was going to get probably two quarts of berries out of what I picked, I decided to not can them (I'm running out of room on my pantry shelves anyway) in the hot water bath canner, but instead to freeze them in quart jars instead.  It worked great and now I have two quarts of raspberries in the pantry ready to defrost and use in desserts and then I can use the syrup they are canned in for other purposes as well :).

7.  Our CSA has been really helpful in filling in gaps in the freezer for winter storage.  I processed four heads of broccoli this week, a head of cauliflower, some more kale and we are going to be using a big zucchini, some small cucumbers and other items with our meals.  

And now, a Segway into a garden update!

I'm really happy with how the CSA is working out as well...the garden is growing.  Kind of.  I THINK I can hopefully start harvesting lettuce this week.  After a long, long wait.  Past that I don't have any peas developing yet, the chard is just dead in the water and hasn't done anything since it popped out of the ground no matter how much nutrients I dump on it and the Asian broccoli I planted did the same thing.  So, basically I might get enough lettuce out of the garden this year to make a difference and past that I'm just praying the potatoes don't let me down.  It has not been a good garden year.

And there you go folks.  Like I said, there hasn't been much going on around here in the money saving department.  I hope things have been going well for you all and stay tuned.  We've been having some interesting meals around here of late, so menu plans will hopefully be shared again and give some inspiration and I'm hoping to post up my monthly goals here in the next couple of days :).

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap (Plus a Garden Update)

Okay, first, I just want to assure everyone that no, we were no where NEAR where that really big earthquake was and we are just fine :).  Actually, we didn't feel a thing (for which I'm thankful for, honestly), not even a tiny tremor as the earthquake was WAY far South of where we are.   Even my husband's uncle, who lives down South, said everything was fine where he was, so it's all good.  I'm sorry if I panicked everyone by not posting after the earthquake.  Honestly I didn't even know it happened until my mom called me in a panic because the news reports were mentioning Anchorage (which is on the coast thus part of the tsunami warning that went out to basically the entire coast of Alaska) and she knew that my husband worked in that area and was all worried he was taken out by a tsunami or something.

I was going to blog earlier (to help assure people we were okay), but was down all weekend pretty much with a bad headache (at least typing was not on my list of "can dos"), so that didn't happen. 


Right, so let's get down to other business.

What have I been up to lately?  Well, I finally got independent learning plans (or ILPs) into the home school and got those approved for the kids.  Curriculum that I ordered through the home school came in (including the Radish box and Kiwi crates, which astounded me how fast we got those in), I got the one book that is on back order with Moving Beyond the Page ordered and in and we are ready to go to start school next week (a couple of weeks early compared to the public schools up here, but we want to bank some time ahead so we can hopefully take December off for the Christmas holidays :).  It was such a HUGE relief to get that all done and supplies in as there is a huge demand for home schooling right now (go figure) and so a lot of home schooling curriculum suppliers are running out of things pretty fast.  Thank goodness I'm kind of obsessed with getting things done in and in early, so we are at least good to go and I don't have to panic about trying to figure out where to find materials.

The next thing I've been working on is I have been working my tail off trying to get my bedroom to not be a horrible cluttered mess.  This had to start somewhere so I ended up having to clean my bedroom closet first (you can scream like a scream queen from a horror movie now as that is pretty much what I did when I opened up the closet and saw what was ahead of me *laugh*).  I brutally decluttered things out of the closet and moved things around, which led to me donating a bunch of things to the used stores, but got me to a point that I was able to fit a couple of big items in the bedroom into the closet, thus giving me room to move stuff around.  I've got plans for the bedroom in the next couple of weeks and am trying REALLY hard to get it painted this week if I can, so hopefully it'll all work out so I can get done before school work starts up again.

The next big thing that happened was the son's sleeping medication just plain stopped working.  It has been slowly getting worse in its effectiveness, but this last week it just plain quit.  I started giving him the max dose I was allowed to give him to see if it would work, but I think all it did was make him sick feeling, because last night I just plain decided not to give him the med (I mean when his sleep schedule has been to sleep from 6 am to noon every day, what is the point?) and he has been so much happier today, so much more energetic and so much more like his old self that I'm really glad I stopped giving him the medication.  I have a virtual appointment with his doctor on Wednesday and we'll see what she has in the way of advice or guidance to see if we can get him a bit more sleep (and better quality of sleep to boot).  I have to say I loved it when he was sleeping and I'm already really missing it as he does okay with little sleep (so it seems), but it is downright killing me.

So, on the money saving front...

1.  We made up our first Radish box "Ticket to Tokyo" last night for dinner.  The son actually did seem happy to help in his own way and tore up a bunch of seaweed sheets when he realized how brittle they were, happy as a clam until mom shrieked like a cartoon character when she realized what he was doing and was able to save two sheets to make the sushi rolls with *laugh*.  Luckily, I was was able to save the torn seaweed sheets and added some to the yakisoba noodles (basically noodle stir fry) and it just added one more veggie to the mixture.  I did NOT use short grain rice for the sushi rolls and just used the medium grain rice I had in our normal stores.  It worked perfectly fine, I just added  a bit of extra water to make the rice super sticky when I cooked it :).

The box called for certain vegetables, like Napa cabbage.  Well, Napa cabbage is going for roughly the same amount as a down payment on a car right now (my jaw dropped at the price), so I said "no" to that one and used some bok choy that came with our CSA box instead.  Kohlarbi was one of our vegetables this last week, so I used it in the sushi rolls and in the yakisoba noodles because why not?  And really, everything turned out really well and I was really happy with everything.

Oh and just because I keep forgetting to take pictures of the actual CSA contents when I get them, I figured I'd share a picture of the inside of the fridge instead.  I LOVE having the problem of "where am I going to stick all the fresh produce" when I get some at the moment.  It is a huge thrill for me to have this much fresh produce in the house right now :).

The box called for chicken tenderloins, but unfortunately chicken is really hard to find at the stores right now unless you want wings or a whole chicken (so it seems the few times I go into the store anyway) and I finally ran out of the boneless skinless chicken thighs I got from the butcher.  So, instead of chicken teriyaki skewers we had pork teriyaki and I just ended up baking the pork and peppers in the teriyaki sauce as I don't have any skewers either.  Sometimes you just make do with what you have and call it good.

I used 1/2 of the English cucumber we got in our box the week before last to make pork gyros for dinner one night (I love farm fresh vegetables versus store bought as there is NO WAY a store bought cucumber would last two weeks in the fridge up here) and then I used the other 1/2 in the sushi rolls.  For the gyros I used a pretty old container of plain Greek yogurt I got for free at the beginning of the Monopoly game with Carrs this last go round (before the pandemic made me just not caring about the game anymore).  It was more like cheese versus yogurt so I added a bit of sour cream to it to loosen it up.  It worked great and no one missed the meat being pork instead of chicken, which was good :).

2.  I had wanted to get some really good German take out for the husband for his birthday (it is this week), but our local German restaurant didn't survive the pandemic *sniff*, so I went to good old plan B.  Amazon.  I ordered a German dessert mix and a few small items I'd need to make hunter schnitzel (do not to ask me to give German names to that as I'd slaughter it) and hopefully we'll be good to go on the new "at home restaurant" style meal.  Here's hoping it all works out well.

3.  My electric pressure cooker died on me last night and started leaking steam everywhere and then when I went to use it again (after replacing the sealing ring and a deep, deep cleaning) to give it a heat up and then a pressure test it failed both admirably well.  I use the pressure cooker actually quite regularly, especially to cook things like beans, so I know I'm going to have to get a new one.  I am depressed about it, I'll admit it, as it is going to cost a decent amount of money to replace (at least as small appliances go).  I redeemed my credit card rewards through Amazon (that I got for ordering the kid's home schooling curriculum stuff through and will get reimbursed for) and will be able to get at least 30.00 off with gift cards, so that is something anyway.

I am definitely not going with a Gourmia brand one this time, that's for sure.  That sucker lasted less than two years and I sure did not use it everyday like a lot of people do with their pressure cookers (and yes, I called the company to ask their advice and didn't get anywhere).  I guess with pressure cookers you get what you pay for.

Anyone got recommendations on a good brand of pressure cooker to buy?  I'm not sure if I want to buy an Instant Pot as it sounds like the quality control is all over the place (at least via Amazon reviews), so I'm definitely open to advice in this area.

4.  I had a personalized price of .43 per lime this week at Carrs (UNHEARD of cheap), so I used the personalized price to get 5 limes through my online order.  Since the personalized price was for large limes (which is all they have listed online), but the store didn't have any, they replaced my 5 large limes with 5 small ones, but only charged me for one large lime.  So, I got 5 small limes for .43!  I have to say as awesome goes that was pretty awesome!

5.  I continued my quest to fill up my pantry as much as possible before winter.  I took what I had left from my grocery budget after getting what we needed at the store and ordered things from Amazon in bulk to fill in holes.  I got enchilada sauce really cheap (like 12 big cans of enchilada sauce for less than 12.00, which at the store those size of cans normally got for at least 3.00 per can) and a flat of  Van Camps baked beans for decently cheap (I'm trying to make things like baked beans from scratch as much as I can...or at least I WAS until my pressure cooker died, but I wanted to make sure I had them for those nights when you just don't have the energy to bother).  I also blanched and froze bok choy and kale from our CSA box to add to out winter stores as well.

6.  I requested a free sample of unscented/hypoallergenic spray deodorant to try out on the son and see how he reacts to it.  The free sample shipped this week, so we'll see how it does when it gets here.

7.  We ended up with hornets building a nest in our roof, and at a really nasty spot to get to.  I went and bought Raid at the store (which you need a treasure map to find hornet killer it turns out), which turned out to be on clearance, so I got it for 50% off normal price (which was nice as I had to guy two containers worth to get rid of the hornets).  My husband managed to outlast the hornets by spraying the entrance to the nest enough that it seems like the hornets finally died or moved on.  Since the nest was right by our front door, I was happy to see them go.

8.  Our lawn mower broke down for the first time in eight years.  It is a 30 year old lawn mower (at least) and has worked really well for us, so my husband is going to attempt to get parts and fix it (it is a Craftsman brand, so goodness knows if parts are available or not anymore with Sears going out of business).  Here's hoping it can be fixed.

9.  I fixed a couple of holes in a comforter and hemmed a few pairs of pants this week.

And now onto the garden update!

If there was one word I could give to my garden the last little bit, it would be "ignored".  Between the son not sleeping, his eczema going crazy, all the home school stuff I've been juggling and everything else going on (new pay schedule at work for the husband, allergy flare up with the daughter so we have to make sure her eye isn't swelling up on her, etc etc), I just plain forget about it sometimes as we've been getting enough rain I haven't had to worry about it dying from not getting enough water or anything.  I finally went and checked it yesterday for the first time in a couple of days.  I have to say out of everything the weeds are growing the best. 

The lettuce was finally grown enough that I thinned it a bit and we tried the lettuce.  It is VERY bitter tasting, probably due to all of the rain we've been having and I'm going to have to use it sparingly.  Luckily we've been getting an entire head of lettuce each week from the CSA (and a huge head at that), so we aren't hurting for salad fodder, but that was kind of depressing.  We have a few broccoli sprouts that survived whatever bug onslaught was taking them out, but they are so small I doubt they'll get to a point I can harvest anything by the end of the summer.  The peas are growing (yay) and I keep putting them onto the trellis to climb and keep them off the ground (they stay on the ground they are getting eaten, so I want to make sure they have every chance to get big and produce).  The peas are a variety that only grown to about 2 feet in height before producing, so I'm kind of hopeful they'll start producing peas sometime soon.  If I only get potatoes and peas out of the garden this year that'll be something and I'll count my blessings :).

And there you go folks.  An update on what we've been up to this last week.  How about you?  Been up to anything?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap (and a Garden Update)

Yippee!  I'm finally doing this post on a Friday! 

....

Yes, things like this make me happy.

......

What?  Stop giving me that weird look.

It's the small things in life.  What can I say?

For once I purposefully decided to put off blogging so I could do this post on an actual Friday and hopefully get back onto a more even blogging schedule.  Honestly, it's been busy enough that it was probably best that I waited.

So, what has happened the last bit?

Well, home school stuff was a big portion of what I've been up to.  This year I am determined to have more of a REAL curriculum planned for Alvah instead of winging it from quarter to quarter.  So, the last weeks has seen me planning, planning and planning some more.  Bright side, some materials have come in so I can get my first round of reimbursements submitted to the home school today and then supplemental learning materials I ordered SHOULD be in by early next week, so yay for that!  The last few days I've just been putting together the learning plans for the kids (with the daughter it is just two classes that I'm doing myself; art and home economics, but the son is everything).  I got the daughter's art class plan done and submitted to our contact teacher to see what she thinks of it (she's on vacation till Tuesday, so we'll see what she thinks when she gets in) and the supplemental materials for the class ordered.  Yesterday I spent the entire day, pretty much, doing a list of books, publishing information and the other nitty gritty types of things for the son's learning plan.  I got through general education materials (books, work books and the like) that goes on all school year and encompasses all semesters.  Today I hope to start on the semester specific lists.  I hope our contact teacher likes to read as the learning plan for the son will be thorough, but it is going to be long *laugh*.

I also broke down and out and out forced my husband to go and get a new mattress last weekend.  I didn't want to pay for it any more than he did, but it got to the point that our old bed was, quite literally, crippling me.  It got to a point where I was having to sleep on multiple pillows just so I could get my leg aches down to a point that I could ignore it enough to get some crappy quality of sleep and my arms were in such bad shape I'd wake up every twenty minutes to roll over because the arm I was sleeping on had gone numb.  I used some of the dividends to pay for the mattress and I was depressed to find that since we'd been to the mattress store, what, a month or so ago, that the prices had doubled and/or tripled in some cases due to Covid.  I paid the price and flinched, a lot, but I am so glad we got a new mattress.  I've been able to sleep again and wake up without being in complete agony.  That, to me, is worth its weight in gold.

For some reason, when it comes to painting, my neck and shoulder going out one me really took the wind out of my sails and I've had a really hard time getting motivated to start on my master bedroom.  Since this is last "official" room in the house that I have to repair and paint you'd think I'd be gung ho to get it done, but it's been hard to get my bottom motivated to start on it.  I'm hoping next week will be the week that I'm able to finally get that room done.  After that it's just the stairways/landing, which is going to be the hardest spots in the house, so at least I'm getting there.

So, let's get to some other things that have been going on around here...

1.  I have been absolutely loving our CSA box through Pyrah's Pioneer Peak Farm (just a shameless plug for the farm as it is awesome).  Last week we got a loaf of artisan bread (which didn't last through dinner), strawberries (which didn't last through the night because we ate them for dessert), collard greens (got blanched and frozen as soon as we got home as they were wilted from driving in the hot car), lettuce (we've been eating lots of salads around here :), three ginormous potatoes and some basil. 

I was really excited about the basil as I had a great plan for some of it.  I took the tomato from the previous week's box that I had left, sliced the tomato up and made myself some tomato slices with basil and mozzarella cheese.  I ended up eating the entire tomato in this format for lunch and it was delicious (a couple of slices seen above).

2.  One of the add on things you can buy with the CSA boxes is culinary lavender that is grown locally.  I was talking to the gal who was running the CSA pick up table and she told me that lavender lemonade was to die for.  Well, I had lemons in the fridge and some sweetened condensed milk to use up from making Brazilian Lemonade.  So, I took one cup of lavender syrup, one cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice, six cups of water and a half of a can of sweetened condensed milk and mixed it all in a pitcher and made my own creamy lavender lemonade!  I ended up having to add some extra sugar (believe it or not), but the lemonade was super awesome yummy!  I pretty much ended up drinking the whole pitcher myself *laugh* (pic seen up top and above).

In other news the weather has been so cold, rainy and odd this summer that I'm so, SO glad I shelled out the money for the CSA box.  It has really taken the stress off of me about the garden HAVING to do well no matter what.  With the supplemental stuff from the CSA it has really been a great to not panic if a bug has eaten off the seedlings, again, from the broccoli I planted and stuff like that. 

3.  Carrs/Safeway started their own, kind of odd, version of "Freebie Friday" like Kroger used to do.  Except Carrs/Safeway does it on Saturday.  You load a coupon for a free item onto your card (you have to be signed up for their e-mails to get in on this I think) and then you only have till Monday to redeem said coupon.  I always load the coupon for the freebie item, but had never gotten to the store on a Monday to redeem one.  This week, however, we ended up running low on milk and a few other things before our usual Wednesday shopping trip, so I was able to add a container of shredded Parmesan cheese to my order and I get it for free.  Cesar salad is definitely on the menu plan for next week :).

4.  I signed up for a freebie Charmin toilet paper extension for the bathroom so that we could use the "mega" rolls of toilet paper in the bathrooms in the future if we need to (I made the mistake of buying some mega rolls from Amazon last year and the paper would not fit in our master bathroom and just ended up being a nightmare).  The freebie actually came really fast and I was happy to get that in the mail this week.

5.  I ended up going into Carrs (like into the store) last night to pick up a rotisserie chicken for dinner (I had a personalized price of 4.49 for a chicken this week and we didn't want to pass that up).  While there I found that they had pork chops on sale for 1.79 lb if you bought the entire loin cut into chops.  I have been wanting to go to the butcher shop to purchase more pork as we are starting to run low, so I was thrilled to find the sale.  I picked up two huge packages of pork chops for 15.00 or less each and got them in the freezer when I got home.  I am so paranoid about keeping everything stocked as stocked can be anymore as the price on things keeps going up, availability is still questionable (like I had to order an 8 pack of toilet bowl cleaner and a big container of dishwasher rinse aid from Amazon as I couldn't find it at my local stores) and I'm worried about what the fall and winter will bring.  So, I'm just rolling with my paranoia at this point and stocking up on things. If I don't have to buy much at the store this winter I'm not going to cry, let's put it that way :).

While in Carrs I hoped to score some pita bread as the daughter wants to have gyros for dinner since we were able to get a cucumber in our CSA box this week (I am going to take a picture of our haul from this week and share it later as it is pretty spectacular), but they were, once again, out.  So, I am going to try my hand at making them from scratch this weekend.  Wish me luck as I've never done it before.

6.  The weather was going to get hot again this week and when I saw the weather report I knew that I wasn't going to want to bake anything once the temps got hot at around dinner time.  So, I did my baking the day before the weather heated up.  I even made a cake with lemon custard filling (which went into the fridge and I forgot to take a picture of) so we'd have a nice cool dessert to eat throughout the week.  It worked out great and I am SO glad that I did a baking day when I did.

I even baked some cookies for my husband to take into work.  They were a thank you present for a co-worker who had given my husband some really nice tools and things that he didn't want anymore and had refused to take any money in repayment for the tools.  He likes cookies, so we gave him cookies instead *laugh*.

7.  I found "Tasting History" on YouTube and have been having a great time watching all of his videos as they are a lot of fun and really engaging.  He's one of my top three channels I watch now.  I watch Party Kitchen (their closed caption/subtitled videos anyway), Townsends (always a favorite) and Tasting History regularly and it has been really relaxing for me to watch their videos :).

8.  I harvested some chives and some green onions/scallions from the garden.  Not much, but it's something :).

9.  I got my new cell phone in the mail and spent a lot of time texting people my new number (it's amazing how many people you have to get in contact with to change over cell numbers when you have a special needs child) and getting my contacts switched over to my new phone.  Not quite done, but I'm getting there.

10.  I used credit card rewards to help toward buying my husband some birthday gifts.  It was nice being able to save a few pennies doing it that way.

Right, so let's get to a garden update!

Well, things are growing.  The chard has not done much, no matter what I do with it, which is sad as I love chard and it is supposed to take cooler weather well.  Oddly enough I have to date not had much luck growing chard from seed, but if I pick up seedlings and plant them it does fine.  Go figure. 

The lettuce is starting to finally grow a bit taller.  I'm hoping to get it a point where I can thin it this week without worrying about ripping all of the little seedlings out of the ground.

The peas are enjoying the weather this summer and are growing taller every day.  Since this is one crop I was really hoping would do well this year I'm hopeful that I might get a decent amount of peas out of the plants. 

I was able to save some water this last week as we got so much rain (some downpours were so hard I was worried my garden would just wash away by the end of it) that I was able to skip watering it, which was nice.

One crop that is LOVING the weather this year is the potatoes.  The plants are growing by leaps and bounds and if they keep up this way I'm really hoping I'll have a nice crop by the end of it.  They have actually grown in the last couple of days since I took these pictures.  They are impressing me.   At this point I'm mainly worried about blight getting them since it has been so wet, but so far they are looking good.  Same with the peas.  No powdery mildew has attacked them yet,  So, here's hoping!

And there you go folks.  Some of the things I've been up to the last bit.  How about you?  Been up to anything lately?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap (Times 3) and Garden Update

Well, hello again everybody!  I hope everyone in the US had a good Fourth of July yesterday. 

It's been a mixed bag of crazy around here the last three weeks.  So, let's just get down to it.

Father's Day weekend ended up being a complete flop around here.  Our friend Roger, a very spry 73 year old who took wonderful care of himself, died suddenly in, of all things, a gardening accident.  Roger was a really close friend of my husband and they had been home visiting companions for a long time before Roger moved to Utah to be around his grand kids years ago.  I didn't know Roger that well when he moved as he moved right about the same time I married my husband and moved to Alaska, but Roger and I were constant Facebook companions and got to be good friends that way.  It was a shock to say the least and it has been hard on a lot of people losing such a great man.  Roger was very active in the historical village community and worked as wood wright for years as a volunteer and got to know a good amount of people that way, not to mention his other charitable works, his career as a teacher before he retired and other things.  It did comfort me a bit and I was able to comfort my husband by telling him that Roger died doing two of the things he loved most in the world.  Gardening and spending time with his wife. 

Due to Covid there was an online funeral via Zoom we were able to attend, so I felt good knowing that my husband could at least "be there", even if he couldn't be there in person.

The husband and son got colds at the same time and the husband is still feeling pretty ucky, so Fourth of July ended up being kind of a wet blanket too.

But, there has been some good that has happened the last bit, so let's get to that.

1.  Our CSA box started this last week and I have to say that I'm impressed so far.  We received tomatoes, bok choy, rhubarb, lettuce, carrots and kale.  I hope the volume of veggies keeps up like this through the summer because if it does I might be able to preserve a decent amount of stuff.  Today I'm going to blanch and freeze the bok choy and the kale.

2.  I got a great price on green cabbage at the store (.69 lb) so I got three cabbages as part of my online order this week.  So, be prepared for me sharing some new cabbage recipes here in the next bit (yes, I am getting back to blogging this month.  I'm determined :).

3.  We received our mineral rights dividends on July 1st this year versus in October.  Because the dividend came in early, Christmas shopping for the kids got done in July versus October (odd, I know, but I wanted to make sure I got the presents while we had the money to do it) and I paid off one bill.  We have so many expenses coming in (medical bills, we need to buy a new mattress, etc) that I'm being super careful to try and spend the money wisely.  We'll see how it goes.

4.  We went and picked up 9 buckets of hard white spring wheat from my brother-in-law that was a part of the free food storage he and my sister-in-law had gone and picked up from a family that was moving a while back.  When we were offered the wheat we were not going to turn it down, so we picked it up and put it into the garage until I can find a better place for it.

5.  Speaking of wheat, I FINALLY got my wheat grinder in!  The wheat grinder works well and the grinding burrs and stones have a lifetime guarantee on them, but man getting this thing was a nightmare and the customer service was non-existent.  Believe it or not what finally got the wheat grinder shipped to me was me calling the company (again as I'd called and e-mailed many times to check on things over the months) and cancelling my order because Amazon had wheat grinders in stock and the 2 to 3 week delay in shipping that the company had kept assuring me was holding true for their orders had turned into a near 3 MONTH period where they hadn't even activated my order yet so I was seriously thinking that I was never going to get the wheat grinder  I told them to cancel the order, they shipped the wheat grinder on a Saturday and I received it the same day the charge appeared on my credit card.  Thank goodness Amazon was able to cancel the order I had placed through them for a wheat grinder or I would have not have been a happy camper.

Anyway, yay I finally got a wheat grinder and it fits in the spot I had picked for it on the new kitchen cart.  Always nice when a plan comes together.

6.  I was gifted a bunch of apples as a gift for my anniversary.  So, I canned a LOT of applesauce.  I harvested a bunch of rhubarb from my plant, made rhubarb sauce and mixed it with some spices (cinnamon, nutmeg and a pinch of allspice) and then mixed it with applesauce to make rhubarb applesauce (obviously). 

I realized that I was going to be short on pint jars to jar up all of the applesauce so I took some empty applesauce jars I had from applesauce I had bought a few years ago and had been saving and froze 8 pints of the rhubarb applesauce in jars and then a couple pint equivalents in freezer bags as well (I froze the jars with no lids on them so the sauce could expand in the freezer and it worked great). 

I then took the rest of the applesauce and sweetened it a bit and jarred it up.  I ended up with a lot of applesauce, which I'm very happy about as we actually eat it quite a bit, and I put those up in the pantry a few days ago (I had the boxes of jars of applesauce on my counter top till then...it's been busy).

7.  I started finding ants in the house and was paranoid about those suckers finding food in here, so I went out to the shed, dug out the diatomaceous earth I had bought several years ago to battle the spider mites when they were invading and spread a nice thick layer around the house.  So far it is working well and the big pile I dumped on top of the ants nest that was right against the house seems to have made the ants life more than a little hard.

8.  For Father's Day the one thing that my husband really wanted for dinner was BBQ hamburgers.  I went and tried to clean my old grill only to have things start to disintegrate on me as I cleaned it.  When the grill covers started to actually fall apart as I was cleaning it, I knew that it was time for a new grill.  I was just going to make burgers on the stove, but the husband decided we should just buy a new grill.  We didn't want to spend a lot of money, so we went online and found a grill on sale at Home Depot with an online sale for less than 100.00.  We placed the order online and went and picked it up at the store.  They even fully assembled the grill for us before we picked it up, which was nice as we didn't request that they do that.  It works well.  It's smaller than our old grill, but I'm okay with that. It cooks well which is the most important thing.

9.  I painted the daughter's room and painted the upstairs hallway.  So, officially, the upstairs is done!  Yay!  

10.  Painting over my head so much took a toll on me and my neck and shoulders ended up flaring up horribly.  My sister-in-law, a massage therapist, was nice enough to work on me and gave me some stretches to help.  I'm in a lot better shape thanks to her.  We'll invite her family over for dinner sometime, hopefully soon, to thank her for helping.

11.  I ended up running out of white paint in the middle of painting the daughter's ceiling.  I ordered more paint online, as well as some cleaning brushes for the paint brushes and things.  I used an online coupon code they had going on to get 40% off of my order and I was able to get curbside pick up for my order.  

12.  I redeemed some credit card rewards for Amazon gift cards and used the money toward buying things for the house and to get the husband some new jeans.  Sears finally closed in our area, so I'm hoping that Amazon will be a good source to buy the husband's preferred brand of jeans from decently cheap.  We'll see when they get here and what kind of quality they are.

13.  My husband bought me some roses for our anniversary on his way home from work.  Our anniversary was spent quietly at home, which was fine by me :).

14.  The used stores reopened up here, so we ended up having to go and buy some clothes.  My husband went in first and bought himself a few shirts and then I went in after he rejoined us and picked up the daughter some new jeans (she's now in the same size of jeans as me now and had been borrowing jeans from me for a couple of months) and I replaced a few pairs that had fallen apart on me as well.  I was also able to pick up some new curtains for my master bedroom (I think they'll fit) that I can hang up after I'm done repairing and painting the room.  I keep hoping to get that room done, but it just hasn't happened yet with everything else that has been going on.  I saved a ton of money compared to going to a store (or ordering from Amazon) and buying new, so I'm happy.

15.  My cell phone has been steadily dying on me and it has gotten to a point that it freezes up on me multiple times a day and isn't holding a charge anymore.  I went and checked with Tracfone, but did not find anything I wanted to purchase through them.  Instead of transferring my number, which was going to be an absolute nightmare with Tracfone (they aren't great about doing stuff like that it turns out), I went to Consumer Cellular (the people who we have my daughter's cell phone through) and just purchased a new phone and just added a new line to my daughter's cell phone plan.  This will allow me to use her unlimited talk and text and share her data plan (all of which she currently doesn't use much at all) and will give me a dependable phone again.  I took advantage of a promotion they were running that allowed me to get a 20.00 credit back when you added a new line, so we'll be seeing that discount on our next bill.

Now I just need to wait for the phone to come in the mail and start transferring my cell number with everyone.  

And now, onto the garden update!

1.  Well, everything in the garden is officially growing, so that's good!  The potatoes finally popped up all over the garden.  Since this was the one crop I really wanted to do well this year, I'm happy to see the seedlings pop up.

The lettuce germinated really well.  I'm going to wait until the seedlings get bigger and then I'll start to harvest the seedlings for baby lettuce in salads while I'm thinning the seedlings out.

Most surprising is that the green onions not only survived, but they seem to actually be growing, so that was a nice surprise!

Even the peas finally germinated and seem to be growing decently well.

The Asian broccoli I planted got mixed in with the lettuce and chard I planted, thanks to my cat, so I'm not really sure what seedlings they are, but I'm hoping that they are germinated and growing.  We'll find out as the plants get older.

And there you go folks.  Some of what life has thrown at us here the last bit.  How about you?  Been busy?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap (Times a Lot), Plus a Garden Update

Yikes!  It's been almost a month since I blogged.  I have good reasons though, so strap on your seat belts.  It's been a crazy, busy and wild ride around here.

First, a big thing that happened is that my husband got a promotion at work.  It went through FAST, but it's been kind of an adjustment to say the least as we had to go through the entire promotion process and then get used to the shift change on top of it.  Yup, for the first time in, what, three years, my husband is not on the night shift anymore.  He just started his new shift this week and we're still getting used to him being home at night.  I'm really loving it, honestly and I'm happy to have him home at night :).  The new promotion doesn't really give us a "raise" in the grand scheme of things.  When you work the night shift at my husband's workplace you get 2.00 more per hour because most people don't like to work the shift, so we lost that when my husband went to the day shift.  Basically once the "raise" kicked in and the shift differential kicked off we'll be at about a wash when it comes to pay.  But, bright side is that when my husband has to take time off or take sick days he won't have to worry about losing the grave differential on the paycheck, so there is that.  And he gets his own parking space at work, so hey...there are perks ;).

Another big change, and not a good one in this case, was that the pool where my kids have taken swimming lessons (and learned so, so much) these last few years closed its doors permanently.  The pandemic and the subsequent restrictions and social distancing guidelines just killed the business (I mean not being able to touch a person that you are trying to teach to swim?  Yeah, that wouldn't work).  It was depressing to say the least and I know Tina, the owner, isn't alone in the world with losing so much to this mess.

I'm not sure what is going on with Alvah and therapy at this point either.  The owner of the business has been completely silent these last months and I know she owns businesses in a bunch of states now as she was expanding her therapy business.  How she could afford to stay open through this entire thing...I have my doubts if we are going to have therapy when this is over, let's put it that way.  So, yeah, I've been e-mailing people like the Center for AAC and Autism and other people trying to find courses I can take in LAMP Words for Life (Alvah's talking program) and things so that I can take over that job on top of homeschool and things since I have no idea when, or if,  we'll be able to get therapy again.

Right, off of the more depressing downsides to the last few weeks, let's get to some other things that happened.

1.  I'm trying really hard to stock, and really if I can, overstock, my pantry in preparation for the coming months.  So, part of that plan is to preserve nature's bounty as much as possible.  So, I decided to try and make dandelion capers to use in cooking later on.  My daughter went and harvested the dandelion buds and out of an entire pint of dandelion buds with the greeny part still attached to the bottom of them, once cleaned and plucked, made one half pint of dandelion capers.  I looked at the one jar and REALLY didn't want to pull out my big 23 quart canner to can one jar of capers, so I quickly went out to see what else could be harvested to can as well.  I found that the chives in the front garden bed have really LOVED the last couple of years of complete neglect that I've given the bed and really expanded, so I decided to pickle the blossoms off the chives.  The blossoms themselves should taste like cocktail onions from what I got reading online and the vinegar is good for making salad dressings and things out of, so double benefit there :).  I pulled out just a regular stockpot to can in and placed a cotton pot holder in the bottom of it so that the jars took the canning process okay without breaking from thermal shock,  It worked great and I didn't have to boil a bunch of water in my big canner to do it.

A shot of the finished product is seen up top.

2.  I harvested some rhubarb today and will definitely be harvesting more this season.  My rhubarb is really loving the cooler weather we are having this summer, which is nice.  I put up a big bag of rhubarb in the freezer today and am planning on using it a bit later in the week, so it'll be nice to put up a bunch of it this season.

3.  I finished the kitchen and hung everything up.  I was really pleased as I was able to find room by cleaning out the bottom of my china cabinet (which required me to clean out closet space in bedrooms and things to put the sheets that were in the china cabinet elsewhere) and putting all of my dishes and things in the china cabinet (which was a double relief for me to do as now they are better protected in case of an earthquake and things now) and finding room in the pantry and things to place most of the items that were on top of the cabinets in other places.

It really makes the kitchen look SO much less cluttered by doing it that way.  I was even able to put all of my flour containers and things on one of the kitchen carts so that I have more counter space to work with.

I moved the freezer over so that I could use the top as a counter extension when needed again and have actually been using it to hold paint brushes and things to keep them out of the way and in one place.

I wish I could show how well the yellow paint in the kitchen matches the yellow in my frog print, but it really does and I'm doubly thrilled because of it *laugh*.

I put the flatware boxes on top of the kitchen cart in the corner of the kitchen to keep them within easy access of the table.  So far it is working well.

The microwave, for the curious went on top of the sideboard.

You'll notice that the wall going from the kitchen to the living room ended up remaining yellow.  I had an entire gallon of yellow paint left over after the kitchen and instead of having it go to waste I used it to make an accent wall into the living room instead.  It actually came out looking really nice and it matches the yellow throw pillows that I made for the loveseat (you can't really tell in the pictures as the sun is shining on the cushions, but they actually do match well :).

The second kitchen cart I used to put the syrups for the soda stream and things on  and to store a few kitchen items.  The top I decided to use for a tablet charging station, which has worked rather well so far.

I ended up losing one of the bookcases in the living room when I dared to move it.  It had just suffered too much earthquake damage and just plain fell apart as soon as the other two bookcases weren't holding it up anymore.  So, I ended up putting a bunch of old VHS tapes and things into storage and just doing without the third bookcase.  I moved the loveseat onto the wall to help reclaim floor space in the living room.  It has worked well and I really like the new layout.  I'll have to take a full photo of the living room later (I took a photo but it came out too blurry), but I painted the ceilings white (which was a LOT of ceiling between the living room and the kitchen) and got a good portion of the upstairs hallway done (also white) the last bit.  I then moved into the son's room and got to work.

This room took a lot of repairs.  The sheet rock was damaged in a bunch of places due to the earthquake and just general "son abuse" from long term wear and tear.  We have new flooring yet to install, but at least the walls and ceiling are done./  The room ended up being a darker blue than it was previously, so I installed a lamp in the room to give off some additional light (and give a diffused light option).  The son hated, hated, HATED me working on the living room and his room, but now that both are done he is super thrilled with them.

The corner where his crash pad is right now (the dark blue square in the corner of the room) is going to be where we hang up his swing next as we want to give his one roof support we've been using the last eight years for his swing a break.  But I'm hoping that we can wait until we get his new flooring in before we put the swing in (so we aren't working around it).

And, after a long wait, I was finally able to pull out the vintage Formula One prints I got cheap on Amazon a few years back and put them into frames to hang up on the walls.

The son loves the old Speed Racer cartoon, so I was really thrilled to find this print of the guys doing the running start for the race.

4.  My husband got his truck fixed and running well.  He's been fighting with the distributor on the truck for a long while, so it was good to get that done and working well.  I even ended up helping as he lost a bolt down the back of the engine and I got to shove my small arms and hands into tight spaces until I finally found the bolt.  I've complained about having the same hand size as a five year old in the past (it's been proven to my nieces and nephews when they were five and they were amazed that they had the same hand size as me *laugh*), but it does come in handy from time to time.

5.  My husband installed the new light fixture in the master bathroom and I got the paint finished up, finally, yesterday.  I cut in where the light was and around where the new cabinets and things were installed.  It looks really nice and finished now and I am really glad to have it officially done and looking good.

6.  I was able to get a five pound bag of bread flour!  I have been trying for the last month to at least try and find some somewhere to replenish my stores as I use them and have had no luck finding any.  I, once again, put it in my online order again this week and they actually had a five pound bag in stock!  I felt like I'd won the lottery, honestly :).

And now (since I lumped a ton of what I've been doing together) I do, in fact have a garden update!

Trying to get the garden planted this year has been rough.  Mainly due to the weather.  It has actually been rather cold at night and just a few weeks ago the temp at night was right around freezing, so I was happy when it got warmer and dried out a bit the last week or so.  I spent a good three days just taking the garden weasel and other garden tools to the garden to get it back to bare earth.  The two years of neglect were hard on the garden to make it into an actual garden again.  I had crab grass, waist high dandelions, fiddle head ferns just all incorporated into a huge mass of roots EVERYWHERE and it took a lot of back breaking labor to get the garden back to where I could plant in it again.

I planted green onions (I got bunches of green onions for .50 each at the store one day, used some up, but put some of them in some water in the fridge for a few weeks to grow a nice root system and plunked them into the ground.  We'll see if they survive and grow) and potatoes.  I then planted seeds for peas (a cold hardy variety that only grows to about two feet high) after moving the trellis we made when I last had a garden, Asian broccoli (it is supposed to grow well in cold climates), lettuce and Swiss chard.  We'll see what grows and what doesn't.  The CSA I signed up for should start this week or next, so we'll see what comes in that as well, but at least I am glad that I have things in the ground for better or worse.

I was hoping to plant some more in planter type things up on my deck, but I didn't get to that yet with how busy I've been with everything else, so we'll see if I can find somewhere to get some dirt around here and plant at least some more lettuce.  We'll see how it goes as my "to do" list keeps getting longer and longer.

And there you go folks.  What I've been up to the last bit.  I'm exhausted.  Honestly my exhaustion is suffering from exhaustion at this point as I'm doing things like painting pretty much 100% on my own while juggling everything else around the house, but I feel good that at least things are getting done.

How about you all?  Been up to anything constructive with all the craziness going on on the world?  I hope you all are well and doing okay during this whole crazy time.

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap (Times 3)

First, I want to apologize up and down to the caring souls who have e-mailed me and messaged me the last week asking if we were still alive around here.  Yes, we are all okay here.  Things have just been hectic/time consuming and I haven't had time to blog.

First up we all ended up catching a cold and rotating it through the house.  I'm still up in the air over whether it was an actual cold or just seasonal allergies, but either way...people were stuffy and miserable for a bit.  I ended up with a migraine for like three days straight after we were all over that mess...migraines run in my family and I don't get them often, but when I do...well it's not fun. 

Once all of the health stuff was past, I was so far behind on getting things done that I wanted to get done that I just kind of went nuts trying to get things accomplished around the house as not getting things done was REALLY starting to get to me.  I got the new kitchen cart put together and then went to town emptying the kitchen so I could paint it.  Turns out painting the kitchen has been a slow process, not to mention a bit of a pain in the keester.  Turns out that Kilz is no longer an oil based primer, so my plan of putting Kilz on the walls to cover up all of the old grease and things ended up being a three coat affair instead of the one coat I was planning on (seen above after all the Kilz was on the walls and I think the ceiling was completely done at that point).  Alvah's allergies flared, so his sleep schedule went to crap and he became super needy during the day as a result.  I suddenly had a ton of end of the year things to do for school, including doing IEP updates, work samples and getting final grades together.  It's been nuts.

Bright side, I got all of the school stuff done and in on time.  And, despite fighting to get the painting done while the kitchen was completely torn apart (thank goodness for the electric pressure cooker this week as it really helped us from having to eat out way too much), I finally got the final coat of paint and the counters re-caulked today.  The above pic was after I put the second coat of paint done, but before the painter's tape was removed.

And here it is after I got the majority of the painter's tape removed, the counters re-caulked and the caulk painted to match the paint.  I still got a bunch more to do to get the kitchen where I want it, but yay for the paint being done!

When it comes to money SAVING things that have happened the last three weeks...honestly there isn't much to report.  I ended up buying pork and chicken through our local butcher shop to add to the freezers as trying to find those things at the store was impossible.  I bought things from Amazon as things broke around here (like my coffee grinder that I'm using to grind wheat until my back ordered wheat grinder gets fulfilled and shipped out) or things were outgrown (like socks for the kids).  I am not going to complain about any of that as I KNOW how lucky we are right now.  My husband has been able to keep his job during everything that has been going on and has a regular paycheck coming in on top of that.   I'm counting my blessings and feeling grateful for what I have right now.

Anyway, there is some things in the money saving department I did the last three weeks, so I will list those to maybe inspire others to help them save a few pennies.

1.  I decided to take advantage of the online ordering and pick up for groceries the last couple of weeks.  I have found I really kind of like it as it allows me to sit there and think of what we need, compare the ad and figure everything out before I finalize my order online.  Also, by staying out of the stores I've found that my grocery budget has been cut significantly because I'm not picking up deals while I'm in the store, but instead focusing on things I'll use or on things we really need around the house.  It has made, "shopping from a list" take on whole new meaning for me.  It has been interesting as I never know what I'll get when I go to pick up my order.  Things have been completely out of stock or substituted, sometimes to a nice advantage.  For instance, I ordered some large limes as they were on sale and the grocery picker had to substitute small limes and only charged me for two limes instead of five to make up for the smaller size.  The small limes were plenty juicy enough and I was able to use able to make the recipe I had in mind without having to substitute any bottled lime juice to make up for any type of shortfall, so it worked out well. 

2.  My husband's and my bed just out and out died last week.  Suddenly we were both sleeping in holes, essentially.  I was lamenting the fact that the mattress and box spring was only two years old and decided we'd just have to go and get a new bed, but my husband looked at it and determined that it was the box spring that really died, so he asked me to just get a new box spring first and try that.  We went and got a new box spring (well, I went into the store in my mask while the husband and kids waited outside, anyway).  So far the new box spring is working well and was a LOT cheaper than buying a new mattress and box spring, so that saved some money for sure even if it ends up being only for a little bit (if the mattress should go the way of the box spring).

3.  I had to break into some cans of long term food storage the last few weeks.  The lids to the #10 cans were broken, so I poured the contents into some empty Tupperware containers I had around the house and then I took the empty cans and put them aside to use as planters for things like lettuce in the next few weeks (it is still awful cold around here, so I haven't planted anything yet).  I'll put the cans on the deck under the eaves of the roof to hopefully help the plants to survive any frosts we'll have.  The planters won't last more than a season, I'm sure, but the cans are free,  so here's hopign they work well for this season.

4.  I submitted my children's work samples, progress reports and IEP updates online through the homeschool website, thus saving me time and postage doing it the old fashioned way.

5.  We took advantage of some free for a limited time shows on Amazon Prime and the kids got to watch some programs they had been wanting to see but I hadn't wanted to purchase.  They'll be able to watch the programs for free until the end of the month as part of an Amazon "for a limited time" deal they have going on to get people hooked on the programs.  The kids have already watched the shows they wanted to watch and have kind of moved past the programs and onto other things, so I'm glad that I didn't give in and buy the programs earlier :).

6.  Speaking of Amazon, I found a really fun little film called "Little Forest".  It is subtitled and takes place in Asia (just to give those who can't see the subtitles on their TV very well a head's up), but I really enjoyed it as the story revolves around a woman who associates memories, happiness and everything in life around food.  Since I'm much the same way, I absolutely loved the movie :).  Another fun, oddball, kind of movie I found was "This Beautiful Fantastic" which revolves around a woman who has to get her terribly overgrown mess of a garden up to snuff or be evicted.  In the process she ends up going from an orphan who had grown into an OCD kind of an oddity into her own woman and ends up finding a family in her adventures with her garden.  It was a fun movie and I love how it revolved around gardening and the beauty that hard work makes. 

7.  Our insurance company gave us a discount for our entire policy term to help with the expenses from the Corona virus.  We took the money from the discount and went and bought a new Soda Stream machine, some flavored syrups and some Coke syrup from the main Coke distributor in the area.  We have, so far, gotten the son to drink the new "fountain soda" with the Coke syrup, which is great because I've been able to make his soda weaker than he was drinking it out of the cans this way AND it gives me a good way to start trying him on different flavors of "soda" this summer.  I bought some all natural syrups in flavors like grape, strawberry and so forth to try him out on.  I am really hoping this will be a good way to transition him into drinking real juice.  Even if I have to add sparkling water to said juice...heck I'd be happy with that!

8.  I used up a bunch of stuff in the pantry, fridge and freezer that needed to be used up.  We ate pork enchiladas one night to use up some canned pork that was way past its "best by" date.  It worked well and we all enjoyed it.  I used up some sweetened condensed milk that was sitting in the fridge for quite a while and used it to make limeade/Brazillian lemonade with the limes I got at the store.  It was a nice treat and went well with the cuban pork roast I made that was made from a pork roast that was getting kind of freezer burned from the depths of the freezer (and where one of the limes I bought went *laugh*).  I will use the leftover pork roast to make Cuban sandwiches (minus the ham as I haven't been able to find any at the stores...sorry Cuban sandwich purists *laugh*).

And yeah, I'm going to call it good there as the son is demanding attention and is going grumpy on me.  I hope you all have had a good month and are getting things done if you have a list you want to get done :).

Monthly Goals: May, 2020

Wow.  This is something I haven't done in quite a while if the auto fill for the photos on this post was any indication.  Whoops.  Luckily, one of my goals for this summer is to get more organized, so hopefully I'll be able to get back into the "writing down goals" frame of mind!

When it comes to goals this month, I have a ton to do, so writing it down will hopefully make it more manageable in my mind to get things done :).

So, without further ado, here is my goals list for the month!

Household Goals:

• Paint kitchen and maybe a child's bedroom (I'm hoping the kitchen will go pretty quick since the space is so small).  I'm looking forward to this goal so I can feel like I'm getting some things accomplished around here.
• Get freezers organized super well and fill with meat where needed (or if possible).
• Drop huge amount of cardboard and paper bags that have accumulated over...a long while...to the recycling center.  
• Continue to go through pantry and freezers and use up things that are old and need to be used up.
• Continue to organize pantry so everything is easy to find and well organized.
• Clean out den and stack up boxes that are currently in the garage in the corner to get them out of the way of everything the husband is trying to do :).
• Try to find a good spot to set up new kitchen cart in kitchen as I could sure use the room if I can figure out where to put it.
• Clean the camper and shampoo the interior (I need a good, warm and dry spell of a couple of days at least to get that done so it can dry completely).  We are hoping to at least camp out in said camper this summer.  It might only be in our driveway, but we have to start somewhere to see how the son would take sleeping in a bed that isn't his own at his age.
• Sit down and plan menu for the next month, tentatively (I want to make sure I have some wiggle room for sudden changes in the plan).
• Clean out fridge and clean shelves (it needs it).
• Deep clean microwave (that needs it to).

Sewing Goals:

• Sew more masks for the family and hopefully make extras for my husband to bring into work for the essential employees there that might need them.
• Sew reusable coffee filters (not only are coffee filters hard to come by at the moment since people are using them to make masks, but I figure not having to spend money on them if I can help it would not be a bad thing).
• Make some new skirts for the daughter (she outgrew a few of hers).
• Make new throw pillows for love seat (the ones that are on there right now are pretty much flat and starting to suffer).

Garden Goals:

• Continue to harvest lettuce from the Aerogarden
• Till the garden area by the house so that I can plant things (it's been a few years and the grass has been REALLY happy with the situation).
• Find containers around the homestead to plant seeds in and start to plan out the container garden for the deck.
• Research online to find a good soil to get for the container garden (I want to get some hopefully lighter soil to plant in the containers so that the deck doesn't end up bearing too much of a load...I baby things since the earthquake).
• Hopefully get the garden started in various areas.

Homeschool Goals (yup, I have some)

• Finish up school year for this year (nearly done!)
• Start planning individual learning plans for next year (already started)
• Dig out books that we have around the house that I can use for Alvah's learning plan (working on that, but have a good start)
• Figure out list of books and materials that we will need before school starts in the fall and be prepared to purchase for reimbursement in July (already started on that as I want to get started with all my ducks in a row as soon as school starts next year)
• Buy what materials I can through the virtual Curriculum Fair the homeschool is putting on this year (already accomplished.  I managed to get the daughter's boxed curriculum for "Moving Beyond the Page" through the fair and will be able to get it with free shipping.  For Alaska? That's HUGE!  Awesome deal :).
• Start going through the books I found for Alvah's lesson plan and start making worksheets, quizzes, tests, etc to go with them (I have a set plan of what I want to do to help him get across how much he knows to me, so getting ready for the next school year is pretty much going to take me all summer, I think...I have a lot of work to do).

And there you go folks.  Some of the goals I have for the coming month.  I have a lot of work to do, so here's hoping I can get some of it accomplished :).

How about you?  What's on your list for this month?