Happy Sunday to all. My goodness, we are halfway through this month already! Gaining more daylight each day - which is a good thing. It won't be long before we will be talking flowers and gardens!!!!!
We had some warmer temps this week and on Thursday, we actually had thunderstorms! Friday - well, that was a different story. We had much cooler temps and snow showers! This AM it is in the 20's. Just wait a little while and the weather will change drastically!!! We had the terrible cold around Christmas, but other than that, so far this winter, my area has been decent. I wish all could say that. There has been so much snow and rain everywhere.
People all over - coast to coast and even overseas have had drought for ages, now the rains are flowing like crazy. Sure makes you think of that old saying "be careful what you wish for".
Birds and squirrels have all been active. I have about a dozen squirrels a lot of the time. I looked out the other day and there were 14 doves sitting on the fence! Blue jays and woodpeckers complete to get the peanuts in the birdfeeder! Cardinals, finches, sparrows and the occasional robin showing up. Sure do enjoy watching them all.
- Cut up a cuke and put in some leftover pickle juice - gave it a great flavor
- Got the kids gift bags all put together. Had everything, just had put off bagging up their stuff
- Cleaned and cleaned.....it never ends
- Made up a huge pan of snack mix. Just used what I had on hand - cinnamon crunch cereal, pretzels, M & M's, assorted nuts & peanuts - white chocolate and milk chocolate (tasty!)
- Gave myself a nice spa night
- Baked - cookies and brownies for company
- Ran to store to get buns and a few fresh veggies. Have everything else I need to feed all today. Made chili, ham and cheeses for sandwiches, snacks, chips and crackers, tea, ice.
- Just putzing around the house all week - doing odds and ends
Meals this week:
Pork fritter sandwich and salad
Smoked sausage and fried cabbage
Turkey (freezer), rice and veggies
Beef and bean nachos
Chicken strips, Zatarain's beans & rice, fresh vegs
Burritos using leftover beans & rice
Progresso ham & potato soup (busy day)
How was your week? Did you get any deals? Doing any pre-spring cleaning? Crafting? Love hearing from each of you.
I have family coming in today for a holiday get together. One nephew and his wife won't be here, he has the flu, sadly. Looking forward to seeing all.
I am wishing you all a wonderful day and week ahead. May you all be safe and healthy.
Blessing from my humble little home to you and yours.
************
Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.
3 John 1:2
Lord, we ask Your blessings upon each of us. Please keep everyone is your safe and loving hands and may all be protected in every way. We look to You for guidance and strength in all we do.
Amen
We are alive for a reason. May we each honor that every day!
This was a quiet week. I just coasted. Plumbing issues at the rental seem to be sorted out if no news is good news. Packed up the Christmas decor at my mom's lodge room. She'll be 90 next month. Walked 4 mi this week, once with a friend. Then we enjoyed coffee & a doughnut at the local bakery. I hosted my young cousin for brunch & heard of her trip to London at Christmas. Got my haircut & stopped at a friend's for coffee & crib game. I got royally skunked. Freezing rain kept me home yesterday cancelling the trip to a neighboring city for some shopping. I do need a printer cartridge soon. Connected by phone with 3 friends. I love those phone visits when we can't visit IRL. I did get my bedroom dusted & vacuumed. I made saskatoon tarts trying to use up the frozen berries. Food this week: squash soup; egg salad; hummus with vegetables; stuffing frittata; tomato sausage penne casserole. I promise that today I will get out of my pj's.
ReplyDeleteQuiet and coasting weeks are wonderful. This past week seemed lighter to me as well. Sounds like you had a wonderful visiting and socializing. That is neat.
DeleteYour meals and goodies sound very tasty!! Stay in the PJ's if you desire. Why not?
Have a great week.
I love reading about your week. We enjoy the critters around here too, mostly from the windows. We used to have lots of squirrels, and still have several, but I have noticed the population dwindling since the cats came to live around here. We feed the cats very well, so they shouldn't be hungry for squirrels. lol I've been hand stitching most of the week, when I need to be doing some deep cleaning! Your snack mix looks yummy.
ReplyDeleteMy cats could care less about the squirrels - I guess because they grew up around them. Now if the see a mouse outside - watch out. They go after it and play with it till it is dead and then they are done. No eating. Same with small birds (only Fluffy does this).
DeleteThey are joy to watch out the window - better than any TV.
Stitching is fun and productive - so stitch!
The cleaning will wait.
Have a good week.
Enjoy your day!
ReplyDeleteLove the Scripture and prayer! Always welcome!
ReplyDeleteThe snack mix does look really good! We keep pretzels around and stopped buying potato chips. Trying to eat more fruits and veggies.
Hope your week is a good one! The Farmer goes to the dentist tomorrow to get his partial plate repaired. The dogs go to the vet on Thursday. Right now that is all that is going on.
Y'all can have our share of the squirrel population. Little beggars love to dig in the gardens. We have to net everything.
Thanks Donna.
DeleteI only do chips now and then. Love having fruit and veggies for snacking.
My week will be kind of quiet - nice. The squirrels never bother my garden - they have food and plenty of water - so nothing they want in the garden. My brother on the other hand does have a problem with them.
Have a good one.
Have a wonderful day with family today!!!! Your snack mix sounds so yummy!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you - it was a blast!!!!!
DeleteHappy Sunday! Hope you have/had a wonderful time with family, Cheryl. Your food sounds so tasty and that mix looks good. Love the scripture and prayer, and also your "thought for the day."
ReplyDeleteWeather was mild this week, and although there were some small glitches with the solar install (ours will be ground mount, I've mentioned heavy clay), at least the project is started. Today we have snow showers. We'll have snow through Tuesday. Flagstaff had 13 inches by this morning. Thankfully, we won't get that much!
We finally got around to hanging more pictures this week. It sure does make a difference! I gave our youngest a haircut last night, and will cut Hub's hair today or tomorrow.
All simple meals this week. This week I'll roast a boneless (big) beef roast in the oven and that will feed us for days in one form or another. I browned ground chuck ($2.79 lb.) last night; 1/2 was used for Sloppy Joes and the rest will be frozen for quick meals. The remaining Sloppy Joe meat will probably be added to a skillet of cabbage (49 cents each) and served over rice. For AZ readers, Basha's still has good meat sales.
Have a blessed week, everyone!
--Elise
Thank you - we had a great time!
DeleteWe will be getting rain later on - no snow. Wow, 13 inches would be a lot. Glad you are getting you solar installed. That will be nice.
Simple meals are right up my alley. I will be eating a lot of leftovers this week! Not a bad thing!!
Yours sound good.
Have a great week.
Hope you're enjoying your time with family today!
ReplyDeleteHad a bit of a to-do with the oral surgeon's bookkeeper early in the week. Apparently, it is technically legal for them to charge the patient if the insurance company downgrades the procedure code when the claim in submitted. They were trying to charge us $48 more than the insurance co. said was our responsibility. Their complaint should be with the insurance co. not the patient! I raised enough of a (polite) stink that the dentist finally said to give us our refund. I conducted everything by email except bringing my cc to the office for the credit. I did get an apology from the bookkeeper for her lack of communication about why we were getting the extra charge. Won't be going back there, though the dentist was excellent. Reviews online indicated this wasn't the first time she had tried to overbill patients.
Husband should be getting his bridge/crown tomorrow at our regular dentist and hopefully will be back on his regular food. Not being able to chew fiber foods has really messed up his digestion (to put it delicately), and he (and I) have been suffering for it, despite his metamucil and prune juice. We are to have great weather, so he will be able to use his walker to get in the building and I won't have to bring the wheelchair.
I fixed a big dish of lasagna for myself yesterday and will eat from this for a few dinners this week and freeze the rest. I'll cook for Husband as we go through the week. He doesn't like lasagna, and he accused me of "cultural appropriation" and said, "We're not Italian!" LOL Tonight is the last of the taco meat in a taco salad.
Finished scrubbing the living room walls, false ceiling beams and floor. I spread it out over four days. The floor looks so nice without all the squashed wasp smudges all over it. The previous owners of the house were heavy smokers, and it's amazing how much brown gunk I scrubbed off the false ceiling beams. Can only imaging what their lungs look like. I ordered a new area rug for under my desk, too (15% off on Amazon). That will help keep some of the dirt down. The old rug was disintegrating.
No real grocery bargains this week. At our local grocery, eggs from a local farm (10 mi. away) were $7.99/dz. Eggs at Aldi had jumped to $4.43/dz and a note on the display indicated that they would be going up even more. I bought a dz, all I had room for.
The birds are starting to hint at Spring. I'm almost out of sunflower hearts, and the price has gone up drastically, so I'm saving what I have for another bitter cold spell. I am feeding sunflower seeds in the shell. The squirrels (nicknamed Baby and RatTail) are frustrated that they can't get to them or the peanuts. There is plenty on the ground for them, though. We have at least 13 doves. They're a nuisance, too. Daffodils are coming up on the south side of the house.
Did lots of reading, knitting, and sewing/quilting. Used lightweight fleece blankets (from WM $3.74/ea) behind the curtains on the north and west sides of the house the past couple of nights. I used metal clothespins to clip them to the curtain rod supports.
Husband likes to watch old movies, but needs the volume up too loud for me to tolerate. I got the appropriate cables to connect headphones to the DVD player. He can watch his movies and I don't get a headache.
Wow - that was pretty nasty of the dentist to try upcharging. Glad you spoke up. Glad the ordeal with be over and your hubs can get back to normal eating. LOL - I am not Italian either - but love me some lasagna!!!!!
DeleteI feed the squirrels sunflower in shell - and they love them. I am seeing more and more birds and the chatter - is loud sometimes.
No flowers coming up here yet. How neat.
Smart to use the fleece blankets. Good idea.
It is amazing what a little soap and water or a little paint can do to change the looks of a room.
Good thinking on the headphones. That will help you a lot.
Have a good one.
Hello, all!
ReplyDeleteWe need Cali's rain! Not to the flood point, but a good soaker is very welcome any day! I feel that we're going to be facing water rules by summer if we don't have a wet spring. The thing is, we already catch most of our water and already save as much as we can without going dirty! The problem with flat % reduction is that it penalizes people that already cut substantial amounts. Like our electric bill. I compare to our neighborhood and I was sad to see that we were only using 25% less than other neighbors. But wait!! Reading closely, I saw that we were using 25% less than the LOWEST users in our neighborhood!
The energy hogs were more than 100% higher. Anyway, I'm sure you get what I'm saying.
Finally got the pantry and freezer organized this week. Need more than I thought, but can't afford to spend more than $16. That's all that's left after paying bills. So, we get potatoes, barley, brown rice, and bananas. Hubs got eggs at Trader Joe's on his way home from work Friday. New developments there. A dozen eggs are still $2.79, which is eggxellent 😁. But, they started a limit of 2 dozen.
The news keeps reporting that inflation is up about 7-8%. In my world, costs are up about 30% overall. Another friend's husband lost his job and he's not in real estate. Frightening. I'm glad the housing bologna in the early zeroes helped us so much and we missed the 2008 correction. For my little circle, 2016 was our dumpster fire with lost jobs after decades. Slight uptick in 2017-2021 and back on the bumpy road! And here we go again, cooking our weenie finances over the dumpster fire!!! I'm too old for this.
If anyone enjoys the squirrels as much as I do, look up Mark Rober squirrel mazes on YouTube. You will be entertained more than anything on TV!! The guy has a knack...and is a genius!
The woodpeckers and starlings do battle for the suet cakes. The juncos and finches are at the finch food. The rest of them argue over the fruit and seed feeder and they all manage to share the water. The bird bath is like the water cooler at a job. Everyone meets up there at some point during the day!
My reading is all up in the air this weekend. I'll settle it today and do my big reveal HaHa! on Tuesday! On PBS, we're watching Death in Paradise and Miss Scarlet and the Duke. Good stuff!
I just read not 10 minutes ago they are predicting a wet and cool spring for most of the country. Hope you get some rain.
DeleteGood price on eggs - even with limit 2. Bummer that things are so tight right now.
Nice to have our pantries and freezer food to fall back on. That spreads things a little bit more. I think maybe we can all eat simpler meals - we just don't always want to. No need for meat at every meal.
I just love watching all the birds and squirrels. Yeah, the birdbath is the congregating place! My gr gr nephew thought it was great today. He was having a ball watching out my bedroom window and then we would go outside and watch all the squirrels and birds. He loved it and thanked me for letting him look (he's 4).
Hope you have a good week.
I have done a bit of cleaning just all the pictures cleaned and rehung, as well as the baseboards, chair rails, and crown molding got a good dusting.
ReplyDeleteSticking close to home and figuring out what I can purchase a years supply of. While I am not worried too much about a really tough recession the way things are rising in price makes me want to stock up a bit more on certain items like shampoo, soap and such.
God bless.
It is nice to get those pesky projects done. It just makes you feel better and it looks better.
DeleteI hear ya. I think the recession has already been here for a while (IMO) - but being prepared for anything is just smart. I think I am good for the rest of my life on soap! No problem - I can use it in many ways if need be. That is what I am thinking about - things I can use for more than one thing.
Think about H & B, dry goods, canned meats - just so many things to be on the safe side.
Have a great week.
Back from camping on the Colorado River. Stopped to gawk at the engineering marvel of Hoover Dam. If you want to see bald eagles, come to Arizona. We see them often.
ReplyDeleteI use bar shampoo and bar conditioner in the camp trailer. Not quite like the liquid, but I like them.
In reading the past posts, I have a couple questions. Is the Yellowstone program laced with "language". Seems like someone told me that but my memory (along with a few other body parts) isn't what it used to be.
Also in bringing forth the pantry items that need to be used up, I have four cans of sweetened condensed milk. What was I thinking? Why four? Any suggestions on a gluten free way to use them?
I tried (twice now) the gluten free bread in a bread machine recipe from Merissa at Little House Living. Yippee! It's a keeper. I'm thrilled because now I can put the bread machine on the table on the back porch during the hot weather and not heat up the house. I can buy the mix needed, in bulk, from Azure Standard. Do any of you buy via Azure? Especially with gluten free, I find the supplies I need at decent prices. I also like their herbal remedies.
Ellie
Central Az
I bet that was a lovely camping trip! I miss camping.
DeleteI have never seen that program, so I can't answer to that.
As for sweetened condensed milk - about the only thing I have used it for is fudge.
How nice that you have a good recipe for bread now. There are some really good ideas and recipes at Little House.
Have a good week.
Ellie- I discovered Azure Standard about 15 months ago. I buy a lot of bulk basics there plus vitamins and my favorite tea.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I can think of for the sweetened condensed milk is candy. If you don't want that much candy maybe gift the candy? I opened one of my expired cans. It had turned brown. The internet was divided on whether it was safe so I threw it out. Can't recall what I was going to make. Probably a candy since it was close to Christmas.
~margaret
I did remember that you can make caramel with it - by cooking that can in water for a few hours. That would be good on ice cream or other desserts.
DeleteI need to check what I have in my pantry. I am almost sure I have some in there.
ah ha!
ReplyDeletespent time today trying to figure out how to get my comments to show up using google
no I didn't figure it out
then I thought of trying with a different computer
using a different computer that apparently doesn't have whatever it is blocking it on my desktop and phone!
Well isn't that something - the simplest fix! Glad you got that part figured out.
DeleteAnd I'm wondering what is your favorite tea?
ReplyDeleteCandy is a good idea. I've got chocolate chips. Thanks for the idea.
you're welcome!
ReplyDeletemy favorite tea is Teeccino--their no caffeine, herbal blends come as tea bags or can buy it by the bag and brew it
I had a great day as the young woman who cleans just because I need it came today and made great progress in the house. It makes living easier. There were not many bargains this week, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteGlad she showed up. That has got to be such a nice blessing for you.
DeleteHope you enjoyed the family visit Cheryl. I have spent very little on food since Christmas, milk, coffee and bread. As part of her Christmas present, granddaughter Poppy arranged a photo shoot for her Mum, brother, sister (her boyfriend) and the two dogs. Fortunately, as it was outside the rain had stopped although they all had to take detours to actually get there due to floods. Can't wait to see the photos. Our daughter brought the little dog back for the night so eldest granddaughter and boyfriend could go shopping and our for the evening. When they collected him on Sunday they brought him round to meet Freddie, our little rescue dog. They got on well, doing zoomies all around the house. Good job as he is staying for five days at the end of the month while they are in holiday. Our daughter came round for dinner last night which we all enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteThe sun is out this morning on so called Blue Monday so that's a good start to the day.
Hope you have a good week.
I had a wonderful visit - so much fun.
DeleteHow nice on the photo shoot - sounds like an adventure just to get to it!
How cute on the dogs playing. I love the word 'zoomies' that just makes me laugh!!!! I can almost imagine them running and having a ball. Glad you got to visit with your daughter.
It is still dark here this AM - but later we are to get rain. I doubt we see much sun today. Yesterday was sure pretty and sunny. A rare sight it seems in January.
Have a nice week.
Cheryl, these verses so reminded me of you--and others here. I hope no one minds if I share them:
ReplyDelete"Long life is in [wisdom's] right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those that lay hold of her will be blessed." Prov. 3:16-18
"The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy." James 3:17
--Elise
Those are absolutely beautiful verses. You may share anytime.
DeleteI am humbled. Thank you.