Wednesday Snap Shot

-



Good afternoon! My weekly post is out late today. This morning I headed into town with my hubby. He was taking our van to pick some things up at Home Depot and I had some things to pick up that required the van so I went along with him.

It's such a beautiful fall day today! The sun is shining and it's warm out with just a little fall time nip in the air.

My week has been busy. We have a vacant rental that I am working to clean up in preparations for the next tenants. Hubby has had some repair work to do as well. So I try and get over there as often as possible and plug away at the cleaning. I've gotten the kitchen done and all the windows cleaned. The windows were pretty bad so it's taken a long time. I finished cleaning the laundry room area on Monday.

Aside from a couple other trips to town I've been working on going through more of the things that have accumulated over the 20+ years we've lived here. I did this a few years ago and it's time to do it again. There were things I hung onto and now I need to reassess and see if I can continue to trim down.


Goals
Today's goals, aside from posting this blog :), are.....

~clean up clutter
~clean up my laundry room/pantry
~sweep & mop the kitchen floor
~vacuum the living room.


For the Love of Books!
I finished The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne and loved it. I have now started reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and I'm enjoying that quite a bit.

In my Bible reading I finished 1st & 2nd Peter and have started 1st John



Projects
My mind has been on Christmas gifts to make. One of my gift ideas for my grandchildren is a fort kit made from PVC pipe. They can use the kit to make any type of fort they can imagine. I like the gift idea because it (hopefully) will engage them physically, allow them to use their imagination and be creative all while having fun. My trip to Home Depot today was to get the 10ft lengths of pipe I will be needing. 

 

This is another project that I'll share more about when I finish it.



Fitness and Health
I didn't get as many 10,000 step days last week as I wanted, but my overall daily average of steps has gone up between 5,000 and 7,000 most days. I'm pretty happy to be moving and doing once again.



View from my Deck
The sun is out with a few clouds in the sky and it's just lovely...




Hubby is currently taking advantage of the dry and warm day to do some mowing. Hopefully it will be the last mowing of the season.




Today's weather: High: 67   Low: 44


That is all for this week! Hope you are having a fantastic week!

Comments

Post a Comment

All messages are moderated. After approval your message will be posted. Thank you for your comments!! Crystal :)

Popular posts from this blog

Canning Chicken Noodle-less Soup

-
Image
Today was one of those busy days that it seemed I was moving from the time my feet hit the floor until this evening.. But, I got so much done and that is a great feeling! :) One of my accomplishments today was canning 14 jars of chicken noodle-less soup. I call it “noodle-less” because you can’t can noodles. They end up falling apart. So I canned the chicken, veggies and broth. When I go to use the soup I will bring it to a boil and then add a handful of noodles (any type of pasta will work) and cook it until the noodles are done. Because I plan to add the pasta after the fact I wanted to make sure there was enough chicken broth to do this. So I only filled my jars about half to two thirds with chicken and veggies and then filled with chicken broth. Here is how I did this…. I started off with 2 chickens that were a total weight of about 10lbs. I put them in my 14 quart stock pot… I then added 2 gallons of water.. And 3 tablespoons salt.. I brought this
Read more

Canning Cabbage

-
Image
I had 4 large heads of cabbage that weighted about 25 pounds. We had some really hot days and I figured I better get the last of them picked soon. My daughter Sierra and I ended up processing 3 of them yesterday and I have one left for a meal on my menu this week. I made pickled cabbage and then canned up the last of the cabbage. Here is the recipe for the pickled cabbage (according to how I made it)… 8 pounds cabbage 1 large onion 1 ½ red peppers 1 lb carrots ¾ cup salt 9 cups water 12 cups white vinegar 10 cups sugar 1t mustard seed 1t celery seed Slice cabbage thinly. Slice onion and peppers. Grate carrots. Mix all veggies together in a very large bowl. Sprinkle with salt and mix in well. Let sit for 2 hours to soften veggies. Rinse veggies well.  In a large stock pot (mine was 14 quarts) combine water, vinegar, sugar, spices. Bring to a boil. Add cabbage/veggies. Bring to a boil. Fill hot pint jars with veggies using a slotted spoon. Fill jar with brine to
Read more

Canning Beef Stew

-
Image
In my last blog post I shared that I had bought 10 pounds of beef roast. I cut it all up and used 4 pounds in 2 crockpot freezer meals ( http://homesteadinghomemaker.blogspot.com/2012/02/two-more-crockpot-meals-for-freezer.html ) . I used the other 6 pounds of meat along with potatoes, carrots, onions and celery to can beef stew. Here were the general proportions I used in canning 7 quarts of beef stew.. 6# beef 2# potatoes 2# carrots 1# onions 1# celery After I cut up the meat and got the freezer meals done I moved to the beef stew. I peeled and cut up the potatoes and carrots. I chopped up the onions and sliced the celery. I pulled out 3 quarts of veggie stock from my freezer to use for liquid in the stew. You can use beef or chicken stock or you can use water. I did not add anything to thicken the liquid as usually thickeners don’t hold up in canning. You can thicken the broth after it is opened if you would like. I added 1 teaspoon salt to each of my
Read more