Category Archives: Life

Saving on Saturday

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A Saturday at home, yes this is a treat.  We decided to go ahead and get ahead on some projects around here, so it was not a leisurely Saturday.

Matt took the pressure washer to the back deck. We will need to purchase a water sealer to place on it but it does look much better, and it is still structurally sound so we will continue to use what we have.

I am really enjoying my electric pressure canner and have started to get a good stockpile of items.  We still have tomatoes ripening on our cabinet from the garden and I am determined to use what we have and waste as little as possible. I decided to venture out today and make enchilada sauce. I started by dicing and cooking all the tomatoes that were on the cabinet.  Which produced 4 cups of tomato sauce!  This was enough to make a double batch of the recipe that I had.  It turned out perfect, I have a batch of chicken enchiladas in the fridge for a meal this week and canned up 4 half pints so that should be another 4 meals!

I have been researching pressure canning meat. One of the benefits is having it shelf stable in case the power were to go out.  Another benefit for us is that with it being canned it will be in the house instead outside in the cold.  We (Matt and I ) decided to tackle this project.  I defrosted 25 pounds of hamburger meat from the freezer, Matt cooked it on the Blackstone!  I currently have 13 quarts and 2 half pints of ground beef that is shelf stable.  Th e next project will be to make taco meat and can it but first I want to use up what is in the freezer.

A final saving money thought is that we are actually using the food in our freezer and pantry. I can actually see a difference even without the canning which is not using but moving around.  My goal is to keep the grocery budget for both November and December below $400 which is half of the normal.

Thursday Thoughts

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  • The chickens have officially moved outside!  We made the move yesterday. We did install a temporary door that has to be manually opened and closed. I actually went out at 6:28am this morning to open the door. Lily also went down and helped them exit the coop this morning.   We did decide to order and install an automatic door that should arrive in the next couple of weeks.  This will allow us to open and close the door remotely once the chickens have learned to go into the coop each night.  The expense of the chicken has finished increasing, I hope. I did use a gift card to order the outdoor chicken feeder. I spent $32 on a watering container and the door was $99.   Again, this confirms that these are pets.
  • Today is my last day of summer break.  I did a couple of errands, including having the Tahoe cleaned and attempted to mow the yard but managed to get the mower stuck. We all have haircuts this evening as well.
  • My plan is to make a couple of batches of stuffed peppers today. One for next week and one will be placed in the freezer for future use. I also want to try a batch of tomato soup just to see if it will turn out.  I also have a couple of new recipes for dinner as well. Sounds like a lot of cooking so we will see how it goes.  Yesterday after cooking most of the summer, I ordered pizza for the first time all summer.
  • I am actually kind of excited to go back to work and get in a regular routine again!

5 Things Friday

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  1.  Shout out to myself!  This is the 8th day in a row that I have posted! And the 5th post for the month of August on the 5th!
  2. I am finally feeling back to normal this week which means I am starting to catch up on all the things I planned to do this summer!  This really does help my mood and energy level to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
  3. We are continuing to harvest from the garden! This week, I planted some pumpkins and have hopes to start a fall garden including lettuce and spinach in the next couple of days!  We are also starting to plant some things in the chicken coop area which will make it both pretty and functional!
  4. I have been wanting to list things on Marketplace and Ebay all summer and today was the official day to complete. I have 5 active listing on Ebay and 7 on Facebook marketplace. I know we have at least 2 additional listing to make on Marketplace tonight.  The goal for this clean out is $250 to purchase a pop-up sunshade for beach use next year.
  5. The chickens are continuing to grow. We have turned off the heat light. The book we have been following said to start decreasing their constant temperature by 5 degree this week. The set point would be 75*. The air in our house is currently set at 74 for the day and 72 at night.   So we decided to go ahead and try without the lamp.  They did great last night so I am going to continue. We also are trying to get them outside at least a couple of hours a day right now. I hope to move to daytime outside next week with full time outside the next week.  Because it is summertime, this is a much quicker and easier process. Even when going outside full time the plan is to have them in a coop each night just to start that training process. A very sad update, this afternoon one of the chickens (Gummy) died.  We had been watching her closely today as she moved to the corner and was sleeping.  Not quite sure why it happened but we cleaned and cleaned the cage so hopefully this will be the only lost.

Thursday Thoughts

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This is supposed to be our least busy week of the summer. The reason for this is simple.  I had outpatient surgery on Monday.  I wanted to give myself a full week to recover and this has turned out to be a positive thing.   I did not leave the house after returning on Monday until this morning.

Today, I had to take Lily to the orthodontist office in order to get a new top retainer made. This was an expensive process.  Hopefully, this will be the final time it needs to be completed. Lily lost her retainer while packing to come home from Oak Island last week.  When she received her retainers over two years ago, she was informed of the $35 fee to replace. She did pay this portion today but due to changes in technology it was $150 to replace the retainer today.

I also headed to the nail salon to get my manicure and pedicure today as well. I have been budgeting this for once every three weeks along with a dog grooming appointment every month.  I think this will definitely be items we keep in the budget.

The garden is starting to produce, and I am planning on an entire garden/food preservation update for tomorrow.

We purchased a small chest freezer that was delivered this week. This is actually going to be kept in our dining room and used as our convenient freezer. It has items such as chicken nuggets, waffles and pancakes. We have been able to move and arrange the other freezers so that we have one large chest freezer that is empty.  It is currently defrosting and will be cleaned and ready for our cow that is currently being processed.

Our awesome friends provided an awesome dinner last night which was greatly appreciated.

We have purchased the final 27 pavers needed to complete the chicken coop. The goal is to get the pavers placed and the top of the coop finished on Saturday so that we can possibly get chickens in the next week.

I am looking forward to not leaving the house again until Sunday to go to church!

5 Things Friday

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  1. Today is Kendall’s 14th birthday. She spent the night with friends last night and we are going to Red Robin for dinner.  She chose a pair of platform converse shoes for her gift!
  2. Kendall and Lily are scheduled to leave for Life (a national youth conference) in Orlando Florida, Sunday morning at 6:30am. We are working on getting everything pack for them. They will be joining us at Oak Island once they return.
  3. After much thought and debate, we removed the top layer of our kitchen and dining room floor. This top layer is 2 years old but a tripping hazard that was also very ugly!  We spent about 3 hours on Wednesday night just with the removal. This weekend the goal is to replace the quarter round and to order a couple of rugs.
  4. I finally (after almost 3 weeks) picked up my car from the dealership today. It needed an O2 sensor replaced as well as the radio. However, the radio is on back order to it will be at least middle of next week before it can be totally fixed. I will have to pay $100 due to the warranty on the car.
  5. My other big plan for the weekend is to plant more green beans, So far we have harvested only a handful. So hopeful the next round will produce better.

5 Things Friday

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  1. The schedule- Months ago when I started to plan for my summer break, my thought process was that I would schedule as many medical appointments as I could this week and get them out of the way.  This would free up several weeks of time instead of needing to go out once a week to a different appointment. I did not take in account how tired I would be after the wedding festivities.  I had schedule 1 or more appointments for each day.  Adding in some services such as land clearing and septic pumping that I needed to get done and car sharing that occurred made this week crazy busy! I am hopeful that next week and the following weeks, I will be glad for more time but at this point, I am exhausted and really need a break.
  2. Menu planning-  Did not happen this week at all. I have managed to get food on the table every day and no one starved.   I may start some planning next week but if not we still have a ton of convivence foods!  My logic is that we are cleaning out the freezers and making room so why not!
  3. Gardening-  For the first time in years, we had to water with our hose this week.  I have expanded the garden but we managed to empty out both 55 gallon drums of rain water. It has been very hot and very dry but it was dishearting to hook up the hose.   We did get a storm last night so that will eliminate the need to use the hose at least for the next couple of days.  I am praying for a nice soaking rain over the next week so that things will even out!  I have moved several plants to different areas just to give myself some more space and hopefully get a better harvest.
  4. Chicken- Matt agreed to allow the kids to get some chickens as pets. We had an area behind our house cleared this week in order to make room for the said chickens.  I am expecting a delivery of the first part of the coup this afternoon.  I want to make this a pretty and useful area as well so I have been spending lots of time thinking and planning the landscape around the chicken coop.
  5. Weather- It is extremely and usually hot.  In fact, this has added to my exhaustion this week. I need to get out and get any yard work done prior to 9 am or after 8pm in order to even survive!  I am so looking forward to sitting by the pool this weekend!

Sunday Catch-Up

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Another busy weekend has come and gone so I wanted to share what we were able to get accomplished this weekend!   I am still overwhelmed so I am hoping that by being positive I can tackle the rest of the list tommorow!

This is the first Sunday that I have not had to work because the Guam school year has ended.  I really LOVE working with the students, but I do need a break.  This afternoon Mom and I headed to the grocery store, we both had list!  I was so excited to come home and say that I have finally caught up with the list until Zach announced, “We are out of mustard.”  Yeap the story of my life. In other food related news, we schedule to receive our cow this weekend. We are going to purchase a whole cow. It should be ready for pick up the first week of August.  I am going to plan and not purchase any cow related meat for the next two months in order to finish cleaning out the freezer and make room and also to make sure we don’t have something get buried at the back and wasted.   I have stocked up on 2-Liter drinks with a total of 60 purchased this week. If I chose to go to the store again tomorrow to pick up mustard, I will plan to grab another 10. n I did manage to make pickled radish this weekend to use in salads in the next month.  Food Things I have left to get done-  Menu plan, make French toast for breakfast (bread is cut and drying out tonight), make banana muffins to use the remaining bananas from last week, cut up watermelon and cantaloupe so that it will get eaten this week and freeze more Kale from garden.  I should also prepare myself lunch for several days this week as we are not having alot of left-overs currently.

On Saturday, Matt, Zach and I managed to replace the roof of the greenhouse. This should be a permanent fix.  I purchased and planted 7 additional pepper plants from the farmers market and transplanted 4 tomatoes from a bed that was really reallly crowded.  This should finish my planting until July when I will find space hopefully for pumpkin seeds that I already have.   Now the next several weeks should involve watering and weeding while we wait for the harvest to begin.   Garden things left to accomplish-  Get pictures of the veggies growing and post as well as compare to the last couple of years!

I have not touched the budgeting stuff so that is an good chunk of time but hopefully I can get to it this week

5 Things Friday

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  1. Overwhelmed yeap that is currently how I am feeling!  Today is the last day of school for Kendall and Zach. This means that for the short run 2 weeks or so we will have less to none things happening at night so maybe I can get caught up on the things that need doing.
  2. Garden- I am amazed at how much and how well things seem to be growing.  We have baby tomatoes, squash and snap peas. We are currently harvesting Kale, radish, dill and chives.. I want to get some pictures up soon!    One of the goals for the weekend is to finish planting. Amanda brought over a 8 container garden she built several years ago, I need to fill it along with one more container I found under the house. I have planted additional squash and zucchini this week so hopefully they will grow and produce as well.
  3. Summer project list- I have started working on the list of summer projects.  First up is finding someone to clear the area of land at the back of our house. We will be getting chickens in the near future so this area needs to be cleared in order to build a coop and run.  I also need to schedule our septic tank to be pumped.  After these two items are completed, we would like to get the bathroom floor re-titled and maybe get some vinyl in the kitchen.  That is the short list.
  4. Saturday goal- Replace the greenhouse roof that was destroyed by hail last week. We are going to convert it to hard plastic in order to extend the life and reduce maintenance.
  5. Financial goal- I need to do some serious bill pay and establish the new budget for June this weekend as well.

Did I mention I am overwhelmed?

5 Things Friday

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  1. My initial thought that things should get a little tiny bit easier this week was WRONG! This week has been crazy full and busy. We did add swim team practice 4 nights just for 2 weeks until the kids are finished with school.
  2. My Guam schools end this week. I have a few loose ends to catch up on but that is a huge portion off of my plate starting next Wednesday.

3..  I am so happy and excited about the way that my plants are taking off.. I would love to harvest several hundred pounds of veggies this summer. I have only purchased flowers and 2 cherry tomato plants. I have replanted basil and I directly planted 7 green pepper seeds this week. I am hoping that with a long hot summer and fall  these green peppers will have enough time to produce at least during the month of September.  We also purchased a lemon and lime tree that will leave on our back deck until the fall and hopefully survive the winter in the greenhouse.

  1. This weekend is busy with a baseball game tonight, graduation party tomorrow and Graduation Sunday at church on Sunday.

5.  I officially have 3 weeks or 15 school days standing between me and summer break. I really want it to hurry up and come but I also need things to slow down so I can finish up on everything I need to before summer break