Homemaking on the Homestead

Good Morning friends! How's your week going? Anyone else ready for spring to start? I know I sure am. We've just been hunkering down and letting winter do its thing, as if we have any other choice. Hubby's had a couple days he had to take off work because of ice and snow and hazardous road conditions. We'd really like to enjoy his vacation days in some other way, but thankful that he's safe and is able to this. Winter has never been my favorite season. I've been known to complain a bit about it, ok, complain a LOT about it. And I know our winter's are nothing in comparison to what you folks in the Midwest or East coast have to deal with. This year I determined to have a better attitude about winter and roll with the seasons and try and see the good in each of the four seasons. I was doing good with this until this week, ha, ha! :D Now I'm done, and soooo ready to move on to some spring like weather. As I look at ...

Happy Monday! Time for a fresh start to the week. I'm probably among a small group of people who actually like Monday! :) Here's a recap of last week's meals.. I started the  week with a lot of leftovers.  We had leftovers on Monday and by Tuesday I still had about 3 servings left and I was ready to move on.  I froze those servings in individual serving size containers.  Hubby will take them to work or we'll eat them after it's been a couple weeks.   So, on Tuesday I made my Asian Potsticker Chicken Soup .  I love this stuff. It's basically chicken noodle soup only I use potstickers instead of noodles and add a little Yoshida's Sauce into the soup to give it that Asian taste.  On Wednesday Hubby was ready for a BBQ.  I pulled a couple steaks out of the freezer and we BBQ'd those in the rain, ha, ha! :) We were nicely sheltered under the carport and enjoyed it. We had the leftover steak f...

Good morning! It's Friday and time for my weekly grocery haul. This week I only had to go to Winco. I had a lot of leftovers to use up and still had a good supply of fresh veggies so I didn't need a lot. Here is what I got from Winco.. I needed kale, lettuce mix and mushrooms for veggies. And for the fruit, oranges, bananas and a couple apples .    I picked up half & half, sour cream, Yoshidas sauce mix, egg noodles and the generic tater tots. I like this brand the best. I was at a different Winco this week and they had them in stock. The other Winco I'll shop at on occasion had been out of stock on this brand for a couple weeks. I picked up a different brand and wasn't as happy with them. So I grabbed 3 bags and now have enough to last me for a while. And I got some sushi. It went great as a side to the Asian Chicken Potsticker Soup I made when I got home. The total for this trip was: $3...

(this post does contain an affiliate link)   Good morning! I hope you are having a great week so far. We had a busy week continuing to battle more snow storms. I think things are settling down now. My hubby slid his car into a ditch right before getting to our house. He was not hurt and the car was not damaged. He walked up to the house and got the tractor and went back down and pulled the car out and drove it to the house. There have been so many accidents caused by these winter storms that I'm grateful this was nothing major. I was wondering if the snow was going to affect our company's ability to get here. Their flight landed without problems in Seattle and the next day took the train down to see us. We had a great visit over the weekend. We had other family and friends join us but I didn't get a lot of pictures from it all. I did get this one shot.. As I said, it was a busy but very enjoyable weekend around here. Yesterday ...

Good morning! We've had a busy weekend around here. But a lot of fun. I changed my menu plan a lot due to company. But some things I kept the same.  On Tuesday I did make my pizza dinner and it was delish..   On Wednesday I had a BBQ planned but hubby ended up not being up to it. He had a long day and wanted something simple.  So my plan B was, hot dogs.  On Thursday I was planning to have a couple of my freezer meals. I woke up to a cold day and more snow and a pot of chili sounded so much better.. Friday we had the leftovers and on Saturday our company arrived.  I had a Costco lasagna that I made along with french bread and a salad. Since I was having a few people over (mostly family), I decided to go ahead make a crockpot full of teriyaki meatballs.  I had purchased the frozen meatballs from Costco and put 3lbs in the crockpot and made a double batch of THIS teriyaki sauce, poured it over and let them c...

Good morning from the snowy Pacific Northwest! Between storms we managed to get out of here and restock groceries, so that's a good thing. The first stop was Winco... They had tortilla chips on sale and even though I didn't need any I could not pass up .98 cents a bag for something I know will be consumed. I also picked up bagels, cookies and Jasmine brown rice in the bulk section. There were the regular fruits and vieggies to be purchased... And I restocked on milk, half & half, non dairy creamer, tater totos, eggs and pepperoni... My total for Winco was: $47 Next stop was Costco.. Coffee, french bread, Pub Mix, salsa, tortillas and mixed nuts. The mixed nuts were on sale for $15.99 and are normally around $17 something. I bought 2 of them.. I had quite a few non food items such as cat food, laundry detergent, and some amazingly soft and comfy leggings.  I can highly...

I'm feeling ready for a change on my weekly Wednesday post. A new picture and a new name, but that's all that is changing. I loved the cozy feel of this picture that my daughter sent me and knew it would be a great change for my Wednesday posts. So grab a cup of coffee or tea and come visit. Now onto my week. So we've been sailing through winter nice and easy. Then all of a sudden, BOOM! We seem to have gotten an entire winter in a week! We got the one big storm that dumped a lot of snow on us. You can see my picnic table (and a few more pictures) on my deck to get an idea of how much snow we got.. Hubby was at work when it really started coming down. He decided to leave early so he could make it home safely. The trip is usually about 40 to 45 minutes. It took him nearly 2 hours to get home. He said it was white out conditions at times because so much snow was falling and he was thankful he knew the roads as well as he d...