Category - Home Sweet Home

I don’t like to cook.  There are about million other things I’d rather be doing than cooking, but since my family likes to eat, I don’t have much choice.  At this season in my life, I have to stick to meals that require no more than 30 minutes prep time.  As a result, we’ve been eating a lot of pasta dishes.  However, I have just discovered two wonderful cookbooks: Saving Dinner and Saving Dinner the Low-Carb Way, both by Leanne Ely.  You can visit her website at www.savingdinner.com.

So what’s so great about these cookbooks? Well, the whole premise is to create healthy, easy dinners that the whole family will eat.  The recipes are divided by season to take advantage of the fresh foods that are in season.  The summer recipes are mostly for either the grill or the crockpot so you can avoid heating up the whole house with the oven.  Winter recipes include lots of soups and stews.

Each season is further divided into 6 weeks, each week has 6 recipes.   You go through each week twice a season, giving you plenty of variety throughout the whole year.  Another cool feature is the shopping lists that are included for each week.  You could just take your book shopping if you’d like, but even better, each week’s shopping list is available to download and printout from her website.

But really the heart of the books are the recipes of course!  They are quick and easy to make and only use ingredients that you’ll find in any supermarket.  One thing I found very cool was that often one recipe will use only part of one ingredient, only to use the remainder in another recipe for that week.  For example, last week I used 1/2 a cucumber in a recipe one day.  Two days later, I used the rest.  No soggy, rotten 1/2 used cucumber in the fridge next week!  Another cool thing – if you use the recipes from a given week in the order they are listed, the last line of a recipe will often be a reminder to marinade the meat overnight for the next day’s dinner.  She thinks of everything!

We have loved every recipe we’ve tried so far.  Sometimes the children  don’t really care for the sauce, like a sourcream-horseradish sauce for salmon, but they have always enjoyed the main part of the meal.  Most of the sauces are supposed to be on the side or added after cooking, so leaving them off the children’s servings has not been a problem.

The recipes generally are sized to serve 4 but are easily adapted for a larger family.  The website has a chart to help you adjust the serving size up or down.

Overall, I give these books 5 stars!  If you’re looking to simplify your meal planning or just want to get out of a cooking rut, check these books out.

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To say that there was a breeze that day would be an exaggeration. So when this HUGE gust of wind came out of nowhere, we were taken completely by surprise. Phil had been grilling hamburgers and was stepping outside to check on them and Boo was going along to supervise. The wind gust was so strong that trees were bending over and our canopy was lifted up and dropped about 2 feet from where it had been. One of our picnic benches fell over and the 50 pound bag of sand that had been weighing down one corner of the canopy was lifted and moved to the other corner. The fountain on the other corner managed to stay right where it was, but the plug was ripped out of the wall. And then the wind was gone. Nothing else in the neighborhood seemed to have touched. Very strange.

The good news is, even though the fabric of the canopy has some small tears, Phil was able to pound the bent peices back and the whole thing is still in good shape. We had no other damage.

While I was putting the tomato cage back in place, I noticed a bunch of little green bugs investing the tomatoes. I googled them, but all I could come up with were “tomato stink bugs,” but that didn’t seem right. I sprayed them with Dr. Bronner’s soap and water. That helped a bit. A couple of days later I sprayed them again, this time with 2 teaspoons of Tobasco sauce in the soapy water. Hot bugs! That got ’em! On Wednesday I was out, setting the fountain back up from the Freak Wind and I saw all the little dead bug bodies. Bwah ha ha! I am Woman, hear me roar!

But I was still wondering what those little buggers were, especially because now the leaves that most of them were on had yellowed. This time I googled “green bugs turning leaves yellow tomato” and got my answer: aphids! Now this is not the first time I have grown tomatoes, but this is the first aphid infestation I’ve had. Of course, the best way to rid your plants of aphids (besides the hot sauce!) is to go get yourself some ladybugs. Well, that wasn’t going to happen yesterday, but what did the Good Lord send me? You got it – a nice little ladybug got herself caught between the glass and the screen on my storm door. With Phil’s help, I captured her and released her on to my tomatoes.

And yesterday, as I was pruning all the damaged leaves from the tomato plants, I found not one, but two ladybugs! And a couple more aphids. So hopefully the ladybugs will have a feast and the aphids will be no more!

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I  had great plans to make yesterday FlyLady Friday and talk about the work I’ve been doing all week, but well, I was tired and I forgot.  So here I am today.

I’m hoping that writing regularly about the progress I’m making in the house will help keep me motivated.

Last week was the master bedroom.  It’s hard for me to work on the master bedroom because my housework time is during Bip’s nap time and he naps in my room.  So I tried something new this week.  In between nap times I put a video in for Bip to watch while he sat on my bed and I worked.  He likes "The Brady Bunch."  As a treat, I also let Boo and Pumpkin watch a couple episodes, too.  This way, nobody had a melt down when if I left the room.  I ignored FlyLady’s missions this time and just did my own thing.  First I pulled everything out of the room that didn’t belong there.  I sorted through what I could, but a lot of it went into the guest room.  Right away the room looked better.  Then I put a paper bag in the corner to toss the baby’s clothes in when he outgrows them.  You can’t even see the bag unless you know where to look.  Next I tackled our shelves.  We put some shelves up on either side of our bed to hold nick nacky things.  I was never happy with the way they looked – sort of random and haphazard.  I put more thought into how I arranged things and I’m much happier with them.

I also cleared off the top of Philip’s dresser and both our side tables.  A good dusting all around and the whole room looks a lot nicer.  I was also able to yank some clothes out of my closet for the donate box.

Next week is living room.

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FlyLady…do you know about her? If not, check her out. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Ok. So you want to get your home decluttered. You want more control over the endless housework. You can name a hundred other things that you would rather do all day than clean the bathroom.The laundry never stops. You’d like to stop trying to drop dead of embarrassment when the doorbell rings.

FlyLady may help.

“I tried FlyLady and it just wasn’t for me.”
“All those emails…I just couldn’t get past all those emails!”
“Dividing your home into zones? Hmm. That’s kind of sick.”

Yes, I’ve heard them all. True, FlyLady isn’t for everybody, and yes, there are a lot of emails.As for the zones – well, they work.I thought I’d take the time to explain a little more about FlyLady.

A shiny sink and other daily routines
FlyLady is big on daily routines. She starts you out shining your kitchen sink every day. Go to her website to find out exactly how and why.Shine your sink every day for a week and it’ll become a habit. No matter what chaos is going on in the rest of your house, your kitchen sink will smile happily at you. You’ll start feeling better about things.You’ll realize that if you can manage to just shine that sink every day, maybe you really can get the house under control.This is your first Baby Step in developing a daily routine. You will then work on the rest of your routine, one piece at a time. Eventually, you will find yourself getting dressed every day, making your bed, planning for dinner, doing laundry and whatever else is important in keeping your home running.

“I could never be that organized”, you’re thinking.Of course you can! You don’t just get there overnight. You add one thing to your routine at a time. FlyLady will even tell you which one to work on during any given month. Last month it was making your bed. That’s all you need to add to your routine that month – just do all the things you’ve already been doing, and then make your bed. Next thing you know, you don’t even needing reminding. See how easy it is?

All those emails
Yes, FlyLady sends a lot of emails.They are divided into a few categories:Reminders, Zone Missions, Testimonials and Other. The Reminder Emails are not supposed to be read. Just look at the title, let’s say “Where’s Your Laundry?” and answer the question.If the answer is, I’m not doing any laundry today, then delete the email. If the answer is “sitting in a cold heap in the washer, waiting to be dried” then get up, go take care of the laundry, come back and delete the email.That’s all.Address the issue, then delete.

Testimonials.I set up my email program to filter all the testimonials into one folder.I read them if and when I have time.At the end of the day, if I haven’t read them, I delete them all. Testimonials are emails sent in by other FlyBabies. They are meant to be inspirational, but even email can be clutter.That’s why I give myself one day to read them.Sometimes I’m in the mood, sometimes I’m not. Sometimes FlyLady wants to address a particular area or has a little more to say about something. These usually come once a day. Again, read it, absorb it, delete it.

Zone Missions are the “extras” you do in each zone once that area is clutter free. I read the missions and if it is something I want or need to do in that room, I add it to my To Do list for the day. Then I delete the email.If I don’t want to do that mission, I delete the email.  FlyLady has divided up the house by zones. You can read about which rooms go into which zones on her website.You work on one zone each week.This does not mean during the bedroom week that you go into your bedroom, tear the whole thing apart in an afternoon, create an even bigger mess, and then abandon the whole thing in frustration. Baby steps, remember? FlyLady has come up with a number of ways to attack a room, all of which take about 15 minutes.(Again, read more about these methods on her website.) She encourages the use of a timer. Choose which de-cluttering method you want to use, set the timer and get going. It is amazing what you can accomplish in such a short amount of time. It’s also amazing how fast those 15 minutes fly by. This is encouraging to me as a busy homeschooling mom. I rarely have large blocks of time to work, but I can squeeze 15 minutes in here and there. I try to get two 15 minute blocks of time per day for each zone. Thirty minutes a day, 5 days a week – that’s 2 ½ hours of de-cluttering a week!! And it’s not overwhelming or tiring. Then the week is over. Maybe you have more work to do in that area. That’s ok. That zone will come up again next month and you can attack it with renewed vigor.

Home Blessing
This is how FlyLady refers to those weekly chores that just have to get done. She does all of her “home blessing” in one day for one hour. I don’t know how she does it. It takes me 30 minutes just to change sheets. (She says to have your children change their own sheets. Um, good theory. My children are 9 months, 5 and 7. The older two need a lot of help changing their sheets. I am training them to do it, but for now it’s a good 30 minute project.) I have tried doing all the weekly chores in one day and get tired just thinking about all that housework. And frankly, it doesn’t get done because I just can’t, or won’t, devote a half a day or more to do housework. Instead, what I have done is assign each day of the week, Monday through Friday, a zone according to FlyLady’s monthly zones. So Monday is Zone 1 (entrance/front porch), Tuesday is Zone 2 (Kitchen), etc. I spend 30 minutes or less doing weekly chores in the zone of the day. This is part of my daily routine and is in addition to my Monthly Zone de-cluttering.

Little by little I have seen my house become a sanctuary and place I can be proud of. It’s not perfect and never will be, but I’m good with that. I don’t spend my whole day cleaning and I don’t fret that I will never get everything done. FlyLady has brought a lot of peace to our home. Give her a try. Remember that it’s going to take time because you are building new habits. Her system may seem overwhelming at first because it’s a lot of information coming at you at once and you’re not sure where to start. That’s why I wrote this. Hopefully it makes things a little clearer. If you try her program and like her, stop by and tell me. If you’re already a FlyBaby, leave me a comment about how it’s working for you. I’d especially like to hear how others have adjusted FlyLady’s plan to suit their own circumstances.

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My children have too many toys.  I have tried and tried to help them manage their stash but to only limited success.  We have 2 shelving units with toys bins, brightly labeled for their convenience.  Most of the time this works, but the bins are all full, almost overflowing.  A large trashcan holds a hobby horse, swords, and "boom whackers" (fun noodles cut in half to whack each other with – thanks, Phil!).  They have a little kitchen, complete with a whole box of play food and dishes, 2 boxes of legos/mega blocks, a box of dress up clothes, a bin of crafts, puzzles, dress up jewelry and on and on and on.  We won’t even address the plethora of stuffed animals living in my daughter’s bed.  That’s a whole ‘nuther problem.  So what to do?  We’ve tried purging the toys.  That didn’t even make a dent.  It’s time to be creative.  When all the broohaha from Phil’s upcoming promotion is over and all our guests have gone home, I’m going to tackle this problem.  My plan is to empty out the closet in the playroom and move one of the toy bin shelves in there.  The children will be able to select which toys they want to play with each week, those will stay in the room.  The others will go into the closet and the closet locked up.  Each week they can "check out" the weeks’ toys from the toy library.  For a toy bin to come out, another toy bin must go in.  I think I may even stick a post it note on each bin in the closet with the date on it.  Toys not checked out in 4 weeks will be moved outside for another 4 weeks.  At the end of that 4 weeks, any toys not asked for will be donated.  This will make more room to play in, plus give us a better perspective on which toys are really played with.   

I sound pretty calm about this whole thing don’t I?  Dh just sent me downstairs after we saw the mess each child made of their rooms during the quiet time.  I took one look, started to say something and he said, "go downstairs, I’ll handle it."  This is because I already spent the greater part of the day helping my daughter find a dress.  She came down for breakfast wearing longsleeves and I told her to change to short sleeves today.  She said she didn’t have any and I asked her about her new "bee happy" dress.  She said it’s not in her drawer.  The last time anyone saw this dress was when she had gotten it wet by playing outside after it rained.  She came in to change and the dress hasn’t been seen since.  That was a laundry cycle and a half ago.  We turned her bedroom upside down looking for it today.  I told her no more new clothes until she finds it.  Dh thinks she should still be allowed to wear her Easter dress on Sunday.  I disagreed because this is just another lost item in a long line of her things.  But I gave in and decided instead to charge dd the price of the dress, plus no new clothes until the dress is found.  I already knew a big box of Hannah Andersson clothes was being delivered today.  Cute stuff, too, including the sandals for her Easter dress.  Until she can learn, I’m just going to keep confiscating the toys she leaves out or puts away incorrectly. Last night she lost a whole bag full of toys and just now I took away a pair of shoes, 2 pairs of socks and book after she insisted that all of her things were out of the living room. She knows what to do, it’s just disobedience or laziness on her part. Sometimes I feel like taking Dr. Phil’s suggestion and just stripping their rooms down the bare minium, sheets, pillows and a blanket and make them earn every single thing back.  The only problem is, where to put it all in the meantime.

Sigh.  I’m going to check the mail.  Maybe my Sonlight catalog will finally be here.  I think I’m the last person in the US to get one.

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Yesterday in the Clean Heart Clean House challenge, we were supposed to be working on the front yard.  Well, it was cold and rainy, so I put it off til today.  I’ll be heading out there to weed the flower bed, change the garden flag and see what else needs doing.  Boo and Pumpkin Girl discovered that our mystery bulbs were indeed tulips, like I thought.  I once read a poem about the life of a military wife and it said, "we plant flowers that we will never see bloom."  I fondly remember thedaffodils I planted in Kentucky and the one grape hyacinth that someone planted in Korea.  I am thankful that one Fall, some other military wife planted pink tulips in her flower bed and now my family can enjoy them.  Next fall, I will add daffodils, irises and hyacinths.

The Flylady Zone this week is the kitchen, but mine is so tiny that it is not cluttered at all.  It has to have clean counters out of sheer necessity.  So I’m doing my 15 minutes a day in the dining room instead.  But it’s almost done, too, so I’ll move on to the living room for the rest of the week, which is where we are in CHCH challenge anyway.

I’m not sure when I got so domestic.

Speaking of which, I have discovered the wonders of microfiber cleaning cloths!  I order the 12 pack from Don Aslett at CleanReport.com.  Boo has the polishing cloth for glass and chrome in his cleaning bucket along with a duster and his spray bottle full of club soda.  That boy can shine him some sinks!  He also likes dusting his trophies. Pumpkin has a microfiber cleaning cloth and a spray bottle of Sal Suds and water to wash the marker, crayon and pencil marks off the school table.  She does a great job, too.  I’ve been keeping a cleaning cloth in the kitchen and it does wonders for our dining room table.  Our table is very glossy and in the 7 years we’ve had it, I have never been able to wipe it down with a sponge without leaving spots.  I’m too lazy to go back and actually dry the table, so alas, the spots stayed.  But no more!  A damp microfiber cloth not only gets off those spots of dried on food you missed from like last week, but leaves my shiny table spot free!  As my friend Maggie would say, "it’s a beautiful thing!"  I also have a polishing cloth in the kitchen to shine up my sink.  Our master bathroom has a sink that collects water behind the faucet and along the flat part of the bowl, so I keep another cleaning cloth up there.  I wipe up the water twice a day and shine that faucet and wipe up the mirror.  The magic of the microfiber is that is actually aids in removing gunk that you would normally need to attack with a lot of chemicals.  And with young children in the house, that’s not cool.

I really don’t know when I got so domestic.

The nice thing is, with a shiny, uncluttered kitchen and bathrooms, my whole house feels a lot cleaner than it really is.  But the whole thing is getting there.  And most importantly, I think, is that my children are learning to take care of a home.

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Phil comes home today.  His plane is scheduled to land in about 45 minutes.  The planes come in right over our head and there is a park where they are particularly low.  If I can get everyone fed and ready, I’m going to try to get us out to that park, and watch for the US Air flight coming in at about the right time.  Then we’ll all wave at it.  I’m pretty sure the passengers can see us.

I don’t mind Phil being gone all that much.  I’m pretty busy with school and everything.  But picking up his usual chores really threw me off.  I don’t have them worked into my schedule, so I started falling behind last night and this morning.  I had to skip my 15 minutes in the FlyLady zone this morning just to try to catch up.  Plus, there is the Boo Factor.  Boo has labored for 7 years under the misconception that I am his playmate.  I could be elbows deep in hot soapy water and he would show up and say, "hey Mama, can you play with me."  Actually, I’m lucky if he asks.  He  usually just starts in on, "I’m the guard, show me your ID!"  I do have time set aside to play with the children – lots of it!  He just wants to play with me 24-7.  Or talk to me.  He was telling me some elaborate story while I was trying to make dinner.  I kept losing my place in the recipe.  I finally had to send him away so I could concentrate. I digress.  Phil’s going to be gone once a month for the next few months.  I may have to come up with a revised schedule, to allow enough time for the extra work in a way that doesn’t send me over the edge.

Evening chores were so much better last night.  Starting with rooms that had already been cleaned yesterday was much easier than trying to clean up the total disaster areas they had been.  In hindsight, we should have taken Sunday to get the playroom and bedroom all cleaned up so we’d have a fresh start on Monday when we started implementing the new chore system.  It would have been a good time to review my expectations, too.  Well, as Phil would say, lesson learned. Pumpkin Girl still needs a good deal of supervision to help keep her on task.  Boo does better working by himself.  I’ve been taking notes on the things I need to tweak in our system.  Some chores need to be done in a different sequence, for example.  I think most of the bugs will be worked out by the end of the week.

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