Give Me A Break
Hey, for those of you who DO keep checking for new posts – I am sorry about the silence. I’m having one of those times in life where I am readjusting and figuring things out… again and again. That’s part of life and for sure a part of being a parent.
A couple of weeks back I did some major re-organizing after we put the boys in a shared room. I looked back through my folders of school projects we have done so far. The weeks that we worked on letters A-K look fantastic. The folders are practically falling apart, stuffed with coloring pages and crafts. Guess what? Those are the weeks I had planned out. When L and M came along, I was just winging it day to day. It’s what I needed to do at the time, but I’m realizing now that I want to do it right.
I’m taking a break for a few weeks. We just had some nasty sickness and I’m still tired, plus I have two upcoming shows (I’m in aband called LB Jeffries) and then some much needed family time set aside.
I will be back and am considering a revisit to letters L and M and continue on from there. There’s no point in getting stressed over not being totally organized, but I am realizing that this school time / craft time is really worth doing and so I want to do it right.
I think the school stuff we have done so far have made a difference: Dig spelled his name out (D-a-v-i-d) yesterday on a Valentine’s card for his Daddy! He knew how to do the D and i without visual aid, but I helped him with the a, v and d by writing them first and he looked at them and then did it! What a little smarty pants.
I’ll ‘see’ you back here in a few weeks!
When Life Gives You Lemons
Who’s in the mood for lemonade in the middle of winter? Not me.
So what am I supposed to do with the 10 lemons that I have from the produce co-op? I had 5 and my mom gave me more before she left town a couple of days ago.
Lemonade is really a summertime drink, isn’t it. So what is wintery? Getting fat, that’s what.
I looked in the back of my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook under ‘lemon’ and came across some lemon-pistachio biscotti. I don’t have any pistachios, or nuts of any kind for that matter, but I figured we could skip them and just make lemon biscotti. Dig was a great helper in the kitchen, scooping and pouring sugar and flour into the mixing bowl. He had a great time. 3 lemons down, 7 to go.
I have often missed the lemon curd on toast that was readily available at the Robinson’s house in England. The Robinson’s were the most lovely family that let me live with them for 2 six-month stints in England and became like a family to me. Every time Jonathan and I have gone back, they are at the top of our list of people to spend time with. I have purchased lemon curd from World Market before, but at around $5 for a small jar it has been years since I even considered buying it again.
So 6 lemons when into a big bowl of lemon curd. I will split it up and freeze 2 thirds of it and keep 1 third in the fridge to use over the next week.
Only 1 lemon left, but I think I should be done baking for the day – I need to focus on cleaning up the big mess instead… Come to think of it, lemon is a great cleaning agent, perhaps I will use it to clean my counters.
Mm is for Monkey
Step 1: Do a rough draft of the monkey face with marker on your paper plate.
Step 2: Glue the monkey face pieces that your mum cut out on to the paper plate.
Step 3: Act like you're all done and finished with the monkey face.
Step 4: You were not done. Improve upon the original with lots of glue and extra pieces of paper. Now it is a REAL work of art.
Mm is Mostly for Mustache
Today we started up the Mms. I could really go for some m&m’s at the moment, but luckily we have none.
I originally started the school time today with coloring and talking about men. Dig and I discussed – whilst he colored – men: careers, roles, etc. We talked a lot about “men” jobs (okay, I know I’m really pissing some of you off right now, but oh well) – fireman, postman, policeman. Of course, we know that women are capable of these jobs and all that, but we were just talking about men today, and they have these careers, too… Okay?
We also talked about one of a man’s most important jobs – being a daddy! Dig talked very briefly about his own daddy.
But… as soon as I started showing him the letter Mm and telling him what sound that letter makes, Dig said, very excitedly, “Mmmm, mmm, MUSTACHE!!!”
So how could I resist, making the rest of our school time all about mustaches.
It’s The Simple Things That Make You Crazy
I read in a gardening book that many people are making (this was 1970s) an attempt at living a simpler life – which inevitably leads to growing your own food, sometimes raising your own animals, making things by scratch. The book points out that this attempt at living a “simpler” way is, in fact, more complicated.
I’m a stay-at-home mom. I am so blessed that we have made this a priority for our family! It would be easy to think that we need more, therefore mummy has to go work to get it. I take my “job” seriously. Jonny and I have two wonderful boys that God has given to us – no one else – and we take it to heart to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4).
Part of my job as the stay-at-homer is to make it my duty to find us ways to save money – to make a one income home a bit easier on the ole wallet.
I don’t know who in the world would think it is “simpler” to make all of your food by scratch, but that is what I am doing. I have resolved to be making our salad dressings, our bread, dinners, desserts (occassionally!), and anything else I can think of. A benefit of doing this is definitely financial: flour, yeast, bran, salt, grains, they cost pennies. But I also have the benefit of knowing exactly what goes into our bellies. A bottle of salad dressing will have 20 different ingredients (including sugar), but a homemade dressing can have anywhere from 1-5 ingredients. It is also more expensive and difficult to find any desserts made with all or partial whole wheat, breads without corn syrup, cereals without a sugar coating. We have eaten a lot of beans and brown rice lately (and oh man, if you think yuck when you hear “beans and rice”, you haven’t tried Brazilian Beans from More-With-Less!).
Anyway, I’m kind of rambling here, I know. I am in that odd mood of being very proud with what I have done around our home, and being so tired from doing it and wishing I could run out and get a pizza!
But why would I want pizza when we are having asparagus strata made with:
•fresh asparagus and bulb onions (thanks to the produce co-op I am now a member of I can use twice the veggies for a healthier casserole without breaking the bank – see the pic above to see what I picked up last Saturday – thanks goes out to Carly for spreading the news!)
•homemade English muffins (from a weight watchers cookbook – super easy microwave baked),
•a healthy (that means meager) helping of bacon, chicken and cheese
•eggs from our chickens
Plus a rare treat of dessert: lemon bars, made from scratch, with a diminished amount of sugar and a half-whole-wheat crust.
Bet you wish you had something so simple for your dinner, eh?
Crafty Christmas – B&T’s Fingerless Extravaganza
I named this post purely from the inspiration I received from these photos my sister sent me.
When you want to send gifts to people you love overseas, unfortunately you have to take postage costs into consideration. I wanted to make Bethany and Tomas each something useful, small, handmade with love.
Enter fingerless mittens.
Can anyone have too many pairs of these?
These pictures are somewhat creepy, I’m not quite sure why, but that makes me love them all the more.
I managed to use leftover yarn for both of these pairs. It is projects like these that make me glad I saved leftover scraps of wool. I simply chose coordinating colors for each pair and used the ole fray-lick-rub/felt technique (my own name for it) to attach the yarn together (instead of having all of those ends to weave in). Thus the project is thrifty AND nifty.
Making Tortillas
There have been a few times that I’ve wanted to make tortillas for our family instead of buying them. Up until now I have talked myself out of it. I thought it would be too much trouble.
But necessity strikes! I am making bread today. This afternoon. It took me all morning to just tidy up the kitchen. So I needed a quick fix for the boys’ lunch and decided to make some tortillas. We wanted fajitas tonight anyway.
I used my new trusty kitchen assistant More-With-Less – thanks to Jonny who gave it me for Christmas. I knew that it would contain the very recipe I needed, and it didn’t let me down.
Like any health-conscious person, I opted for a version other than (more than) plain white tortillas. I made a mix of white flour, whole wheat flour, wheat bran, and corn flour. I now know that next time I will roll them a bit thicker, but they taste absolutely delicious.
My boys just enjoyed their quesadilla lunch and are full of some whole grainy, fibery goodness as they now run around wreaking havoc on the house.
Fever!
Winter has only just begun, technically. Yet Spring fever is upon me!
My problem: I daydream and make lists, charts and graphs about all of the organizing I will do in our home, all of the gardening I will do outside our home, and it never works out to such greatness as I expect. I have a habit of putting too many irons in the fire. Starting a project – any project – is so exciting. The problem is the middle and end bit of a project. I know I’m not the only one…
Is there a solution? I don’t know that I’ll ever find a satisfactory one. Oooh, except this awesome idea I have that involves me starting all projects and then someone else comes along after and finishes them all up. Wait, isn’t that what marriage is for? Bwahaha.
Okay seriously now. I don’t make new years resolutions. It’s not something I do. I just want to be a person who doesn’t have to wait for the new year, or next month, or tomorrow, to start something that is good that I could start today. Practically and financially there will be things that need to wait for another day. I’m not thinking of those things. I am thinking of things like regular reading of the Bible, exercise (purely an example, I’m against it myself), washing the dishes after dinner… The problem is, I can’t try and start everything I think of at once, it will only lead to frustration and quitting everything. So, one thing at a time, right?
Spring fever brings on the desire for cleaning, organizing, and repairing things around the home. The repairing stuff – that’s an example of what to wait on until the finances are handy. But cleaning and organizing, right-oh. Totally possible.
I started with my pantry. I really wish I had taken a before picture. Things were bad. I prayed on my way to Costco on Tuesday (seriously) for these cereal/snack containers to be on sale. Thank You! I bought two sets (6 total) for holding bulk flours and rice. I wish I could get a couple more sets, but got creative instead with some old peanut butter and canning jars to hold smaller quantities of things like baking powder, gluten flour, soda and the like, plus an extra oatmeal container that I relabeled for non-fat dry milk (for cooking purposes).
Despite the fever going on here, I haven’t done much else spring-cleaning like. Since our dishwasher broke, hand-washing the dishes has taken up a lot of the regular cleaning time. It had to coincide with my decision to bake our bread again, and all of those measuring cups, spoons, jugs and bowls pile up in the sink so easily.
Alright, this is done, now I should probably make a list and chart for the garden, the family room, the boys’ rooms, those sewing projects I’m dying to start, my exercise plan, and spring knitting projects.
Kk is for Kangaroo
Today’s school time was a flop. Despite my enthusiastic attempts with a Piglet in the pocket of my apron hopping around trying to get Dig to do the same (yes, you can laugh), he was not interested. Charlie enthusiastically chimed in with a “Hop! Hop!” cheer, though.
Charlie woke me up at around 5am screaming and crying. I discovered his bed soaked – entirely wet including sheet, 2 blankets and puppy. The poor little guy has the coldest room in the house anyway, and was wet through. After a sponge bath and clean diaper and jim jams he was still shaking from the cold, so I took him downstairs to snuggle with daddy in our bed whilst I headed back upstairs to take care of the bedding. He was so sad to leave daddy’s arms.
I realize now how little trouble we’ve had with our babes. Charlie has been sleeping through the night (like 8 hours, now 12) since he was just a few weeks old (except for that trip to England, which we won’t think about). We have had things pretty easy – very little sickness (except that time they had the swine flu, but we won’t think about that either). We are blessed.
Yes, today is a day that has fallen kind of flat. I’m tired, and I’m guessing that the boys are, too. Our kangaroo coloring page had a couple of half-hearted scribbles on it and the before mentioned hopping time was a failure, but the kids did enjoy watching a couple of youtube videos about kangaroos (from BBC).
