Today I have quite a bit to do….including some baking.   I haven’t baked for several weeks, so today I’m going to get back into that habit

Baking:

• 3 dozen homemade whole wheat tortillas
• whole wheat bread
• get starter for whole grain ciabatta going
• get starter for homemade bagels going

Around the house:

• clean out pantry and 2 other kitchen cabinets (I’ve been planning on doing this for a week now and still haven’t gotten it done!!!)
• laundry (I had a friend from church ask me on SUnday if I am so far behind on laundry that it is taking me this long to get it done or do we just have that much laundry…..I told her that with a family of 6, the laundry is an ever present job, and one that never gets “done”  )
• run Robbie (the vacuuming Roomba robot)
• make some calls to arrange meals for some friends who’s daughter is in the hospital
• babysitting

That’s a nice full and busy day….

Ok, I need some decorating help!   Last year for Christmas my family bought a coffee house/bistro style print for me for our dining room.   It was something that I REALLY wanted, and had been eyeing at Michaels for quite some time.   So it was very exciting when I opened that gift on Christmas morning.   I had some Christmas money and bought another similar print to be paired with it.  Well, these two beautiful pieces of artwork just got hung over the weekend (yes, almost a year later!!!!).   Well, now that they are hung, the wall looks a little off balance.  I needs something else to be hung to the right of the whole arrangement…..this is where I need your help!   What should I hang there?

These are the prints (sorry about the glare)…

And here are a couple of different views of that wall…..

Any ideas?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Lately I’ve been desiring to get back into exercising…..honestly, since my 40th birthday on June 16.     I realized just how important it is for me to take responsibility for my health and to get back to doing what I know is good for me…..eating right, and exercising.    Well, I started with the eating bit that week, and in the 3 weeks since then have lost 6.5 pounds.   This week, I started exercising again……I FINALLY found someone willing to go walking with me at 5 am.   We meet at the college that is not too far from either of us, and we walk around the track.    Our first day, Tuesday, we hadn’t talked about how long we were going to walk for, and got a bit over-ambitious and walked for a full hour (I think it was 3 1/2 or so miles, but I don’t know for sure).   Yesterday morning I took R for her missions trip and wasn’t able to go walking at 5, so another friend (she’s training for a 1/2 marathon) and I walked the perimeter of our church campus once all of the kids were loaded into the vans……I’m guessing it was just over a mile, took us probably about 15 minutes, but we were walking through the grass…..boy it was VERY different from walking on the track at the college!!!!!    Today we walked for 30 minutes, did either 7 or 8 laps which is either 1 3/4 miles or 2 miles…..and my H walked with us this morning!   She really enjoyed it!   I’m REALLY enjoying getting out and walking again.    The air quality is HORRIBLE (actually today it is in the dangerous category, but we didn’t want to break our routine so early into it….we could come up with an excuse nearly every day…..don’t want to get started that way), it was already 83 degrees at 5 am (our high today will be around 110 degrees), and humid as all get out!  (We don’t have too much humidity here, but today it was pretty humid…..or maybe it was just the air quality that made the air feel so thick and heavy).     I’m really looking forward to increasing our time/mileage but it will probably be pretty slowly because neither of us ladies have exercised for a couple of years (well, I haven’t exercised REGULARLY for a couple of years).    This WILL BE a lifelong habit!   YAY!!!!!

Oh, also M may start going with us too, he thinks he wants to jog while we are walking…..we’ll see

Here are pictures from today’s baking…..

Today I baked:

2 dozen Peach Cheesecake Cupcakes (they are actually cheesecake, baked in tinfoil cupcake liners)

5 dozen cinnamon rolls

8 hamburger buns

4 loaves whole wheat bread

that make me happy

Things like ……

a defrosted, clean and organized freezer “full” of meat that I got for a song!

and……

a tree full of ripening plums……SWEET! 

These are some of the things that are making me smile this morning :)  The other “things” that are making me smile aren’t quite dressed for their day yet (well, one of them is gone, she’s off babysitting).

We always have kids around (4 of our own along with various friends that are in and out all of the time), and kids are notorious for using way too much soap when they wash their hands.   We are a “clean hands family”…..meaning, whenever the kids come in from outside, they wash their hands, whenever they have been playing with the pets, they wash their hands; whenever they’ve been painting/coloring/playdoughing :)/whatevering they wash their hands….and of course they wash their hands before and after eating anything.    Well, that used to add up to A LOT of liquid handwashing soap.   I had tried using dish soap (which is cheaper) and diluting it with water, but it would make a huge bubbly mess in the bathrooms.   About 2 years ago I discovered the anti-bacterial line of products at Bath & Body Works.  While I don’t like to use anti-bacterial soaps for our general handwashing (our bodies NEED bacteria to build our immune systems, etc) I LOVED the scents but most of all, I REALLY LOVED the pumps when I realized that I could refill them.    I have it down to a science now, and use the big huge (almost gallon size) bottle of handsoap refill from Target to refill these pump bottles.   I use about 1 bottle per year for the 2-3 dozen handwashes that go on in our house each day.   Here’s my formula, and it works GREAT!

In a pyrex measuring cup (at least 1 cup measure), pour in 3/4 cup cold water (it HAS to be cold, and it HAS to be first), then fill the measure to 1 cup with the liquid hand soap (meaning add 1/4 cup).   Give it a little stir with your finger, then pour it into the pump bottle, replace the lid and give it a shake and it is good to go.   Should produce the same foam that it was before with the expensive smelly soaps.    (If you find that it is coming out bubbly and not foamy, it means that you will need to get another pumping top…..the pumping tops are not meant to last forever, and they do wear out…..I have friends that use this soap, so I just ask for their empty bottles…..they aren’t interested in saving the money and refilling them).   Now something else that I love about the Bath & Body works soaps were the scents….I have found that I can use 2-3 drops of my favorite essential oils or fragrance drops (used in making soaps….and available online through various vendors and at some craft stores with the soap making supplies) and get some groovy scents!

I figure that each bottle of hand soap costs me about a penny!   How’s that for saving money?

Ok, this past weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and where I live, it is the unofficial “Official start to summer”……normally we have our first hot weekend of the year, and swimming, bbqing, and hanging out with friends is the norm.   Not THIS Memorial Day Weekend!  Our high temp on Saturday was 63 and cloudy, Sunday was 53 and drizzly/rainy, Monday was 73 and cloudy most of the day.  CRAZY temps!   We did have a blessed weekend though…..we turned the ringer off on the telephone and hunkered down at home for the entire weekend……did very little.   We had planned to take the kids to see “Chronicles of Narnia  Prince Caspian” on Saturday, so we did that, and went to lunch, and did a little bit of shopping, but other than that, we stayed very low key the rest of the weekend.    It was SOOOOO nice!     Just what we needed

Here are the photos of today’s baking….I still haven’t finished this week’s baking, I have more to do tomorrow, silly me (although this morning I wasn’t thinking myself very silly, but rather stu___) forgot to get the disposable pans to bake them in for my customers. I have also promised my little family that I’d make some more angel food cake for them.

Today I baked

2 dozen bran muffins

2 batches of scones (1 plain, 1 cranberry orange)

6 Ezekial 4:9 hamburger/sandwich buns

12 whole wheat dinner rolls

1 loaf whole wheat bread

1 loaf Ezekial 4:9 bread

2 loaves of angel food cake

One of the very easy ways to be more environmentally conscience is to stop using all of those plastic grocery bags that are abundant across this country.   I have a number of tote bags and reusable grocery bags that I have bought here and there at various markets that I use for much of my grocery shopping.  The bad thing is, I forget to bring them with me, and when I remember to bring them with me, I sometimes forget to bring them into the store with me….if I have D or R with me, I can send one of them to the car to get them for me while I continue shopping, otherwise I have to abandon my cart to go and get them and risk a dutiful employee coming and taking my cart and groceries and putting them away….which would make me very sad!   So more often than not, I’ll just use the plastic grocery bags and then add them to my pile in the garage to take back to the markets to be recycled.     Well, today in an email from Martha Stewart Living, there was a link to a video to make grocery bags from simple t-shirts.   They made two of them in a matter of 4 minutes (granted, there were two pairs of hands working, so realistically, it takes about 4 minutes to make one of these bags), and the best thing?  Actually  there are several advantages….

1) they roll up and fit into your purse to keep in there at all times, so you won’t forget them in your trunk, or worse yet, at home!

2) you are reusing something that still has life left in it

3) the t-shirt bag stretches and gives for bulkier products….something that the canvas or nylon type bags don’t do.

4)  you can  use different sized t-shirts for different uses….adult sizes for regular shopping trips, PLUS sizes for clothes/household shopping, kids sizes for smaller trips maybe to the drug store or other trips where you will only be picking up an item or two…..and these can be very stylish!

Here is the link to the video instructions for this fun and easy and fantasticly “green” craft idea.  The t-shirt shopping bag portion of the video starts at 5:26 time marker.

As soon as I make some of these, I will post the pictures for you all!

Today I’m not babysitting, the little guy’s parents have the day off today to spend loving on their little man, SO I’m going to take advantage of it and get some organizing/deep cleaning projects done around here!   So here’s what my day will look like….

*personal devotions

*breakfast

*family devotions

*get kids started on school work (today is just math, bible, and some reading/lit., and if they get everything done (including their rooms cleaned, they will get to paint this afternoon…they LOVE to paint, but I limit to when everything else is done in the house so I can use it as motivation))

*clean out 3 drawers in kitchen…..my “junk drawer” (which I’ve been trying for 2 years now to keep it from being a junk drawer, but it’s hard breaking the habit!), my measuring devices drawer, and my cake decorating drawer (I have some things that aren’t fitting in there and I need to go through it and re-organize it all)

*re-organize the food cupboard

*see about re-organizing the top two shelves of the pantry

*mop kitchen floor

That should keep me busy for most of the day today….still need to figure out what I’m going to cook for dinner tonight.  I took some meat from the freezer this morning for D to smoke and bbq for me this weekend, and I’m going to make some wonderful bbq sauce today also.  But I need to figure out tonight’s dinner…..I may just make some sloppy joes, oven fries, and various veggies.

Oh!  I also need to prep asparagus for the freezer

Planning on making an apricot cobbler for dessert for tonight as well.   I have apricots in the freezer from last summer, and I need to use them to make room for this year’s crop :)  But I also am working on emptying out my freezer so that I can defrost it next week (it’s almost to a point where I can do that)…..need to get it all defrosted and cleaned out for this year’s produce.

Oh!  I’m also going to try to get some work done in my garden area ….. despite having cut the rose bushes WAY WAY WAY back last fall, they are as big and bushy as ever!   So I need to trim them back as well.   My plan is to get my basil plants into the ground this weekend, and also get some tomatoes, peppers, and other herbs into the ground.   I’d also love to try my hand at some cucumbers or zucchini (but those plants get SOOOOOO big!)…..I think I’ll try cucumbers climbing up a trellis (which means I’m going to need to try to get a trellis :))    Today I’m going to finish weeding and turning the soil, so that tomorrow I can amend the soil, and then on Sunday or Monday (after baking) do some planting.

That should be more than enough to keep me very busy today…..what is happening in your home today?