It’s been a busy year–so busy, in fact, that a lot of my goals have been put on the back burner while I work to keep up with my regular everyday chores (you can see my daily schedule here). I’ll be picking and processing fruit from the garden this month, organizing, and sewing every chance…
This month in the garden, we’re picking blackberries, Mission figs and Dorsett Golden apples. The blackberries and figs will finish up within a week and then the apples will be ready. I’ve amazingly still got lettuce, thanks to a much cooler than normal May, which I should be able to pick for at least a…
I cut flowers from the garden for the entry table. I put them in a $2 urn that I bought a couple of weeks ago at a garage sale (the mirror is the $20 mirror I bought at a garage sale the first Saturday in April; my dad recently hung it for me on a…
I cut larkspur from the garden for my table. We picked peaches from our Desert Gold peach tree. We ate lots of peaches this week; I made fruit salads and peach clafoutis. I sliced and froze peaches from the garden for us to eat later in the year. We picked a few white alpine strawberries…
For the first time ever, I have apricots and peaches ripe at the same time (usually the apricots are ripe first). This past week we enjoyed both from the garden. I watched a few shows on pbs.org for free. I harvested a few white alpine strawberries from the garden. Strawberries were on sale for $0.99 a…
I harvested the first apricots from our garden. I harvested turnips and artichokes from the garden. I made fig tarts using figs we froze from the garden last year. I watched a couple of episodes of Call the Midwife on Pbs.org. My husband had some work done on our vehicle. He had everything written…
Oregano from the garden I harvested lettuce, spinach, New Zealand spinach, Swiss chard parsley and oregano from the garden. I cut roses from the garden for the table. I sowed seeds in the garden for New Zealand Spinach, zucchini, and acorn squash. New Zealand Spinach I cut the sleeves down on two of the long-sleeved shirts…
It’s been a very busy week here, and on top of everything we’ve had our foreign exchange student here. I wasn’t sure ahead of time how much English he spoke, and so while we help him to learn new words in English, we’ve also needed to converse quite a bit in French. I’ve had a lot…
One of my current goals is to improve my French every day by learning new words and phrases, improving my grammar, and improving my listening comprehension. This year marks 20 years since I left for France and Switzerland as a missionary. It’s been 19 years since I had the opportunity to speak French every day….
Most weeks I save by making do at home and not shopping. This week involved a lot of saving on items I needed and wanted while shopping: I love the symphony. Starting from the time I was 13, I used to save all of my babysitting money (and most people paid me $2 an hour)…
Several years ago, it became rather obvious that the standard two-towel towel racks were not going to be enough for our family’s needs. We switched the towel racks out to some hooks that my husband found on eBay. We added a piece of molding to the wall first, painted it, and then added the hooks….
This month we’ll be adding one more teenaged boy to our home, as a dear friend’s son from France will be coming to stay. That means I will have 11 to feed, with one being a baby and three being teenagers. My budget this month for food, cleaning supplies, and toiletries is $250. From the…