My Craft Shop!

Over the past few months, I have been making some crafty items to sell! So, my craft shop is now open here. Please stop by and let me know what you think!

Plumbing 102

Our tub drain was running a little slow and I had recently used a commercial drain cleaner only to have this repeat. So, I decided to try a homemade remedy and see how it compared.

Pour 1/2 c. baking soda in drain. Follow with 1/2 c. white vinegar. Cover with rag (will foam) and let sit for 5 minutes. Flush with boiling water.

So far, this seems to be very effective as this morning during my shower, there was no extra water waiting to drain. It is also a very natural cleaner and my favorite part is that it costs about 0.20 per application as compared to bottle of commercial cleaner. The commercial bottle costs at least $3 and they tell you to use 1/4-1/2 of the bottle per application. So, you can see the savings.

Time will really tell if this is effective, though after nearly 48 hours, I am very pleased with the results!

For You, Mom!

Still A Mystery

I was able to get in for an ultra-sound this morning while already at the doctor and the little darlin' is all curled up and doesn't want us to know if they are a boy or a girl! So, a few more weeks, and try again!

Vanilla Wafers

Since our little darling seems to think that vanilla wafers are one of the only foods she can munch on, I decided to try to make them from scratch instead of who-knows-what-is-in-them from the store! Here are the results:

1/2 c. powdered sugar

1/3 c. sugar

1/3 c. shortening

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 c. cake flour (I used all-purpose)

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 Tbsp. water

1. Preheat oven to 325.

2. Cream together first five ingredients

3. Add the flour and baking powder. Add water and continue mixing until dough forms a ball.

4. Roll dough into 3/4" balls and flatten slightly onto a cookie sheet.

5. Bake 15-18 minutes or until cookies are light brown.

Makes about 50 cookies.

* David and I both agreed these were yummy and tasted like the "store-bought" kind. Emily likes them, but doesn't eat as many as she did when they came from a box - a benefit in and of itself! :)

PS: I did not change any settings on my blog, but noticed that everything is double spaced - does anyone know how I can correct this?

What's The Deal With Maternity Pants?!

When I was pregnant with Emily, I had a cute pair of capri pants that had elastic in the back waistband but were straight (normal looking) in front. The button to the elastic came off and my pants were falling down, in FRANCE, no less!

Yesterday, a similar thing happened to a pair of jeans - thankfully, I was at home this time. But, it made me wonder what is going on with maternity clothes!? Anyone else have an interesting experience with maternity clothes?! :)

Spring!

We had a lovely afternoon in Savannah on Saturday! The weather was gorgeous and the azaleas are in their prime! We took the Trolley Tour of downtown Savannah which enabled us to see all of the squares, old homes, neat architecture, and provided us with transportation through all of the traffic!

We stopped for lunch at the Gryphon Tea Room which was neat - very European feeling. And, it had a beautiful view as it faced Madison Square.

Continuing our tour, we stopped at the Juliette Gordon Lowe house, she was the founder of the Girl Scouts.

Savannah is a neat place to visit - and I can easily recommend all of the things we did, they were fun and worth the stop!

Easter Grass

One week ago today, I planted this Easter grass! Oh my, needless to say I seem to have started it a bit too early! I think I'll give it a trim and see if I can keep it going until Easter! Next year I'll know that to plant it one week before will be plenty of time! But in spite of how fast it is growing, I am thrilled with the results!

Update

Well, today is day five since starting to feel bad - and I'm finally up and around feeling better. The good news is that everything is ok with the coming baby and although I had multiple symptoms and other junk, God is good and I think I'm on the other side of all of this now! Praise the Lord! Thanks to all of you for your kind words.

My Grandma is arriving this afternoon from St. Louis! I am so excited to see her - she hasn't been here before and has never seen where we live. So, we are really pleased to have this time together! I may be posting sporadically while she is here - but will try to pop in once in a while!

Under The Weather...

Me, that is - I've been feeling very crummy since Saturday night. Which is why you haven't seen anything new here - today involved a trip to the dr. and pharmacy which tired me out so much that I felt almost worse. Hopefully all this will pass quickly with medicine and rest, I'll post something interesting soon!

PS: The Easter Grass is doing great! Can't wait to post an update photo of that!

Growing Easter Grass

In keeping with the new life theme, I cannot bear the thought of using plastic Easter grass in Emily's basket. And, I have always wanted to grow real grass just for Easter - so here goes nothing.

I found wheat grass berries at our health food store for $1/pound. The owner told me that this is what people use to grow Easter grass.

I selected a recycled lunch meat container from my plastic cabinet and cut the rim off with a razor blade that it would fit into the basket. Then I almost filled the container with potting soil. And, sprinkled a generous amount of seeds over the top of that. I covered the seeds with a thin layer of potting soil, watered and put in a sunny window. I read somewhere after the fact, that I should have soaked the seeds for 6-12 hours first, so hopefully they will still sprout, since it is a bit too late for me to dig them out of the soil successfully!

I'll be posting the progress...here is a photo from the planting, minus the top layer of soil to cover the seeds.

Creamy Ranch Chicken

This recipe seems kind of similar to the Spaghetti Carbonara I recently posted, but we liked this much more and it doesn't have the egg-issue. Yummy! this recipe was a $400 prize winner in the Better Homes and Gardens Kid-Pleasing Chicken Entrees Category for March 2006.

Creamy Ranch Chicken

6 slices bacon
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut into bite-size pieces
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. ranch dry salad dressing mix
1 1/4 c. whole milk (I used half and half because I had some left from another recipe)
3 c. dried medium noodles (egg noodles)
1 Tbsp. finely shredded Parmesan cheese

1. Cut bacon into narrow strips. In a large skillet cook bacon over medium heat until crisp. Drain bacon on paper towels; discard all but 2 tablespoons drippings.

2. In the same skillet cook chicken in reserved drippings until tender and no longer pink, turning to brown evenly. Sprinkle flour and salad dressing mix over the chicken in the skillet; stir well. Stir in milk. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir for 1 minute more. Stir in bacon. Meanwhile, cook noodles according to package directions. Serve chicken with noodles; sprinkle with Parmesan.

Makes 4 servings.

On Becoming More Thrifty

While I am thrifty in comparison with a majority of Americans, I still feel that I could do better. And, recently am convicted to make the effort to work harder at it. So, I'll be posting regularly on what I'm going to change (this motivates me amazingly!) and how it works.

* First of all, I'm going to reinstate something I used to do and got lazy about when we had a little baby in the house and that is washing out ziplocs and minimizing the use of disposables like plastic wrap, aluminum foil, etc... If I can put it in something washable to save or freeze, that is a savings. Or, if I wash out the ziploc and re-use it, that is also a savings.

* The next thing I am going to do is switch all of our aut0-pay bills to be paid on our Discover Card. I know, you are wondering how this will save us money - here's how:

- We are absolutely committed to pay off our credit card every month, so we will not pay a penny in interest on any of these bills. We simply deduct the amount from our check book and then know the money is spent, when I write one check for the Discover card, I don't have to deduct it from the balance left. I am in no way encouraging the misuse of a credit card to pay bills!

- We get a bonus from our Discover Card that will allow us to receive cash back. So, my plan is to save this all year and use the money to do Christmas and gift shopping throughout the year. This will not only make gift giving more fun, it will also essentially make the gifts free.

- We will watch for special bonuses available from our Discover card. For example, through the end of March, they were offering a special 5% rebate on any medical expenses or health related expenses. So, I paid our entire global payment for the coming baby and we got a great bonus on that.

I know that there are tons of ways I could become more thrifty - but I'm going to start with these. When we were first married, I had just finished reading The Tightwad Gazette books and was extremely motivated to try lots of new ideas. I thought I would try a new idea each month. However, then I found out I was pregnant and did not feel like doing much of anything. So, now I am hoping to get back to this and try to implement at least one new money-saving idea each month.

Please feel free to join in or pass on ideas you have implemented in your home for making the money stretch further!

Update: Well, as nice as the idea was to put our bills on the Discover, it is not working out. The electric and mortgage companies do not accept credit cards for auto pay and the water company does not accept Discover. The only one that is going to work is the phone/internet bill, so I'll just be satisfied with that and keep using the card for everything else that I can.

Easter Basket

I will be adding posts about Easter as I figure out what we are going to do for Emily this year. However, I figured a good place to start was with finding this smallish Easter basket that I mentioned previously.

While in the Easter basket aisle of Wal-Mart, I was getting pretty disgusted with the cartoon characters, sports ball shapes, and just ridiculously huge baskets that they had. Then, I had an inspiration! I saw this pretty basket with the butterflies and it came in two sizes - small and large. So, I looked through the smaller ones and chose this one.

Now, here is the exciting part to me: I can use this basket without regret because it will be so easy to tie in the theme of "new life" with the butterflies! So, perhaps this begins a trend for our Easter celebrating ~ choosing items that can have symbolic meaning and can be used as a teaching tool of the true meaning of Easter.

Keep the ideas coming if you have any!

Plumbing 101

I can now add minor plumbing repair to my home work experience! Our toilet has had a slow drip (inside) that I've been able to hear lately. So, after consulting David's brother - I went to Lowe's to find the part I needed.

I bought the part for less than $7 and spent one hour this morning installing a new Fill Valve Assembly! I wanted to take a picture - because I was so proud of it - but realized you might not all want to see the inside of my toilet tank! Hee Hee

Anyway, the project was successful and I no longer hear a drip!

My next project is to try a homemade remedy on a couple of our drains that are seeming a bit slow. I'll post on that in the future.

Follow Up

I've had some great responses to a couple of previous posts and wanted to share those as well as thank the ladies who sent them!

Mary Ann sent some yummy bread recipes!

The Common Room sent some great tips for entertaining toddlers!

Thank you!

Celebrating Easter

Yes, I'm thinking ahead...but, I've had Easter on my mind the last couple of days. This morning at breakfast, I asked David if we were going to give our kids Easter baskets as they are growing up. He said that he thought we would but that it should clearly include something meaningful and pointing to the true meaning of Easter and the Gospel. I agree. I want to do a small-ish Easter basket for Emily this year. I do want her to experience some of the "fun" of Easter, but I also want her to grow up learning why we celebrate Easter!

I always had an Easter basket growing up, and I think it all comes down to what the attitude is in giving it. If my Mom had never told us the true meaning along with the basket - I might have thought Easter was all about candy and bunnies. A tradition I have kept up is making "bunny biscuits" on Easter morning.

So, I'm just wondering what any of you do to communicate the meaning of Easter to your children. Do you have any traditions? I read somewhere about doing the eggs/bunnies part of Easter on the Saturday before and then keeping Sunday for the celebration of Jesus resurrection. I'm just gathering ideas and wonder if any of you would share what has worked for you and your family? Thanks!

Yard Sale

Our yard sale was this morning - I've been working on this for over a month. Sorting, pricing, organizing, etc... Yard sales are A LOT of work and I always seem to forget this until I'm in the midst/end of one. We made about $70 which was ok, but we had a ton of stuff left at the end which is now going to a thrift store - the best part of this whole deal is that the cleaning out and sorting out is done!

Milk vs. Solid Food

As I was reading in Hebrews this morning, I came across this:

Hebrews 5:11-14, "We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's Word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teachings about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."

I kept thinking back to last summer when it was such a struggle to get Emily to eat solid food - to teach her how to eat it and to be thankful when she ate one or two bites at a time. I remember her arching her back and crying over the whole ordeal of being fed this food and desiring only milk. It took daily effort, discipline, and perseverance. Now, she loves solid food.

How often is this true of me? Isn't it so much easier to just think over the things I already understand and believe than to dig deeper into God's Word for new things to learn? The learning of the new takes study, thought, effort, and discipline - much like training a baby to eat solid food.

I love the reminder in verse 14, "who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." It is daily. It is discipline - think of the word 'trained'. I picture my Dad - a great runner of marathons, who without training, would not be able to complete the race. But, because of discipline, desire, and goals along the way is able to run with perseverance and finish the race!

Today, I want it to be in the front of my mind to desire solid food ~ in spite of and because of the work it will require. And, to train myself by constant use to distinguish good and evil.

Spaghetti Carbonara

Another new recipe I tried this past weekend from Everyday Food. It was very yummy even leftover and David liked it too! So, this one is a keeper!

Serves 4
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes

1 pound spaghetti (we prefer fettucini)
8 ounces bacon (8 slices) cut 1 inch thick crosswise
Coarse salt and ground pepper
3 large eggs
3/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
1/2 c. half and half

1. Set a large pot of water to boil (for pasta). In a large skillet, cook bacon over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until crisp, 8-12 minutes; transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate.

2. Salt boiling water generously; add pasta and cook until al dente, according to package instructions.

3. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together eggs, Parmesan, and half-and-half. Set aside.

4. Drain pasta, leaving some water clinging to it. Working quickly, add hot pasta to egg mixture. Add bacon; season with salt and pepper, and toss all to combine (heat from pasta will cook eggs). Serve immediatlely, sprinkled with additional Parmesan cheese.

Note: After following all of these directions, I was very skeptical that the eggs were cooked, so put the whole bowl in the microwave for a minute or two. I felt better and knew I was not eating raw eggs in the process.