Sunday Ramblings

This Sunday is the Feast of the Epiphany of The Lord. The day the wise men came bearing their gifts for our Savior.

We made it to Mass today even though it was and still is bitterly cold. I am so glad that we did. Father Brian stressed that Christ was first and foremost a Jew, that He came in fulfillment of the prophesy given to the Old Testament prophets. If we ever forget this we are twisting our faith into something that it is not.

Father Brian repeated something that every Pope has said for the past 50 years. The gist of it being that we as Catholics are Judaeo-Christian, our faith is forever grounded in the fact that Christ was a Jew, that Mary his mother, whom he gave us to be our mother is Jewish as well.

I can remember a talk we were having at Youth Group one night and I mentioned that Christ was a Jew and one of the youth said, "Really, I thought he was Catholic?" This lead to a further discussion and Father Brian coming in to speak to the youth. It was a lively discussion to say the least, but I am definitely sure that everyone went home with a better understanding of our faith.

Tonight I tried a new recipe....

I made this Taco Bake. I think it needs a bit more seasoning, but all in all it wasn't too bad. Lots of leftovers so we will be having another meal later this week. I may even have enough left to make a TV dinner for Kris.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Week In Review

This week has passed by very quickly. I am amazed at how quickly looking back.

Trying for zero waste this year and today was one of getting that started.

I had 4 over ripe bananas that neither Hubby or I would touch so I decided to make Banana Bread for the freezer.

Now there was a time that I would have said.... "Ewww," and just thrown them out. What a waste of good food. I don't know when we will consume this loaf, but I do know that well wrapped and in the freezer it will keep for a long time.

I also had one apple that had been in the crisper for a bit of time (probably a month). I checked it out and the apple was still firm. What to do...... I cut the apple in half, cored it and sliced thinly. Pulled out the trusty dehydrator and......

Voila, now that they are dry I have a nice small bag of apple chips to have as a snack some evening. Once again there was a time I would have thought to myself that it was only one apple and chucked it in the garbage bin.

I spent part of this week (the cloudy days) working on my new quilt. I now have 6 blocks done and almost a 7th. Hoping to get more done in the coming week. I will share pictures as they are completed.

Today for the first time in a bit I pulled out this.

I worked on it for about an hour as the sun was shining in the front south facing window. I will more then likely be working on this project anytime the sun shines, saving the quilt for those cloudy days.

I have also been busy knitting during our long winter evenings. I want to start a blog showing my handicrafts and perhaps listing them for sale.

These are the projects that I have mostly completed this week. They do need to be sewn, and the ends woven in.

I have the start of a pair of mittens on my needles right now. I so wish I could knit on double pointed needles, but I need loads of practice.

The good thing about knitting small items to sell is that it is using up all the odd leftover balls of yarn from previous projects. Keeping my no waste year going in all areas of my life.

I have also been busy with one of my monthly goals.

Busy copying recipes from one of the many binders of saved recipes..... Almost finished another binder. I am not sure I like these bright pink index cards, and the pen I have been using is blue so I do not for the life of me know why it is showing up red!! I would go blind trying to read them if that was so.

Cleaning and the usual chores have taken up the rest of my days. In cleaning I set up a donation box and today two items reside in it. Hopefully more will join as I am going to try and divest this house of at least 500 items this year. Perhaps more if I am very diligent.

I am also trying my best to get through the book "Eat, Pray, Love". It just is not catching my fancy right now. Thank heavens the chapters are short!!!

So that has been my week. How are you all doing?

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Friday Frugalities For The Week

Fridays are going to be my day to list all the frugal past times and things I have done over the week.

I am starting off with the use of my very own daily planner.

On this page I am listing all the extra cleaning chores and organizing I want to do this month. I am also listing my monthly goals.

These next pages will contain a list of the chores I want to get done that day.

I just love seeing all the chores marked off and all my fun things marked off as being done as well. Makes turning off my brain at night so much easier.

I checked out what the daily planner I usually buy cost now, and was very surprised. I know for a fact that the one I made did not cost me $15.00 to make. Boy are prices ever going up.

I have also started my frugal exercise program. I have been able to get out walking every morning this week, sometimes even twice. The fresh air does me loads of good and clears my head. I do have a feeling that tomorrow morning though I will be using the treadmill (we are in the midst of a good old fashioned snow storm).

Leftovers are packaged up daily and used for another meal. Tomorrows meal will be leftover rice made into fried rice, home made stir fry that was leftover, and some sweet and sour pork that was leftover as well. That will clean my fridge out nicely for the upcoming week.

I have been carefully following my menu plan (trading the clean out the fridge night though) and this is helping me to use up what I have in my freezer and cupboards. I am also doing more appliance cooking. Using a slow cooker, microwave, rice cooker and my ActiFry uses much less power than the oven. I even made a loaf of bread one morning in my bread machine. I mean totally in the machine. The loaf is strange, but tastes just as good.

I downloaded some free Kindle books onto my tablet and along with the free Kobo books and books that I have bought very inexpensively I should be set for this month's reading material. That is if I ever make it through Eat, Pray, Love (another very inexpensive book I picked up at the Salvation Army store a few weeks ago).

I am also using up items from my stash, both my yarn and fabric stashes. No need to buy anything as I have more than enough to work with. It may take some changing of colour schemes, but that is half the fun of creating.

I combined my trip in the car going to the bank and grocery shopping. I hope to do that much more this year. Keeps me from just running out to pick something up for the sake of getting out of the house. Gas is dropping in price and that is a very good thing. We should be well under budget for that if the drop continues and I continue to keep my driving to a minimum.

This will be a year of using up, making do, or doing without. Just hope I am up to the challenge.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

And A New Year Begins

Shhh, don't say anything, but Harvey and I did not stay up to see the new year in. In fact it has been many years since we have. I did get up 6 hours after the beginning of the year so I really did not miss that much.

I have kept busy today doing various large and small tasks. While the temperature is beautiful it is dark and cloudy so counted cross stitch was put aside for the day and I started to finish another project that has been on the to do list, cut out even for the last three years (I will more than likely be working on this when it is too dismal to cross stitch). This is in keeping with my goals for the year and even my monthly goals so I don't feel too bad about leaving one project to work on another.

I embroidered some butterflies a couple of years ago, and then gathered together and cut out squares of matching colours. This was going to be a new quilt for our bed which is needed. I then gathered everything together and put it away nicely in the sewing room. That is as far as the project got.

Until today. I pulled everything out and started pinning.

Here are the first two simple block patterns.

The quilt will use variations of these colours in each block but the basic block will stay the same. Nothing too overwhelming really I just needed a boot in the pants to get started. The best thing. Harvey loves the colours!!!

A new month means new monthly goals, and I did promise you yesterday I would share them with you all. There are 5 this month.

1.     Organize kitchen. I have to move things around to have room to store my new appliances.

2.     Work on unfinished projects (this seems to be a reoccurring theme).

3.     Copy and organize more recipes. Slowly but surely all those binders of recipes is disappearing and a nicely organized recipe shelf or two is evolving.

4.     Work on scanning all those loose pictures in containers and files.

5.     Work on at least one quilt. (notice the "at least one", gives you a hint that there could be a few more that need working on.... More of those unfinished projects).

This should keep me busy this month, but really the list is not that undoable.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

The End Of The Old....

Today is the end of another year. Amazingly this year seemed to go by faster than the last. I wonder if it is true that as a person ages the years go by faster.

I have figured out goals for next month as well as some overall goals for the year. I do have much better results with the monthly goals, but I need to focus on big changes this year and in order to do that I must have yearly goals as well.

A few of the goals are personal and I won't mention them on here unless they come to fruition. The others have to do with leading a more simple, and frugal life and I am going to share those with all of you.

1.     Bake bread at least 3 times a week.

2.     Only buy what is necessary. In other words what is needed not just what I want.

3.     Empty my purse weekly of all change.

4.     Use the library more often.

5.     Find an extra source of income and really work at it.

6.     Set up a craft sale blog, and keep it stocked.

7.     Work on my many unfinished projects and not start any more projects until those are done.

So those are my year goals. I will share the smaller monthly goals with you tomorrow since it is the beginning of a new month and a new year.

Before I forget. Happy New Year to each and every one of you.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

My Version of The Sealed Pot

A friend of mine mentioned the sealed pot challenge she was taking part in a few years ago. As you may have guessed my friend lives in the UK and since I had no idea what so ever about a sealed pot, I decided to do a bit of research into this challenge....

Well it slipped my mind for the first year that my friend mentioned it, but then she was doing the same challenge the next year!! This time I got off my butt and did the research, which consisted mainly of reading UK frugal blogs....

I decided at the beginning of this year to give it a bit of a go. We had always saved our pocket change, but this time I added two other coins to the pot. Our Canadian one and two dollar coins, after all they are change as well. I do most of the coin saving as Harvey usually uses his spare change to pay for car and truck washes. No biggie as sometimes there is enough leftover to add to the collection.

So here is my version of the Sealed Pot.

Each coin has its own jar. It makes it much easier to count and roll when the jars get full. I notice the dimes are not moving up as quickly as the other two coins.

And this container holds the 1 and 2 dollar coins.

Perhaps you will also notice that none of these containers are really sealed.... I was worried that I would break any container that wasn't easy to add to, or to count when the time came.

I still need to count this all up but I do know I have $160.00 in the bucket.... I have a feeling that there will be close to $260.00 once I add everything up.

Am I going to do this again next year? You bet I am. It is a very easy way to save a bit of cash, and everyone could use some extra savings.

Everyone have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Another Year Older

Today we have been under a weather advisory. The wind chill has been extreme and will continue that way for another day.

So, as luck would have it I celebrated my birthday on what turned out to be the coldest day of the year!!! Not really that much of a problem as we usually do not go out to celebrate. I make a meal that is simple to prepare and we stay hunkered down. Being so close to Christmas (and our anniversary next month) money used to be tight and one of the boys was always up for making me a birthday cake.

Now that the boys are living away from home and working I don't get a cake as often, which really is not a bad thing. So imagine my surprise when Harvey announced he had baked me a cake!! He then proceeded to put a cake he had ran out to buy me on this cold day.

Carrot cake, one of my favorites! It even had Cream Cheese Frosting. Mind you it is so huge we will be eating on this for a very long time.

Do I feel older? Nope, after all age is just a number and though I am getting closer to 60 with each year that passes I really don't feel that old.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.