Well, it's the middle of the week and I'm at work day-dreaming of a time when Lucas will be done with school and I will be able to stay home with Brandt and Felix and work on all the projects I've been wanting to work on. Just one more year of school for Lucas and maybe one more year of work (maybe two) and staying home it is! :)
Recently, Holly, my sister-in-law, sent me the link to a blog of this woman (http://theivanovskys.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-i-organize-my-coupons_31.html) who is a superstar when it comes to couponing. She has binders and sheet protectors and divider tabs, a dream for an organizer like me. I am going to start doing the same thing because my grocery bill has definitely gotten out of hand since having Brandt and Felix. Let's face it, the boys have to eat, but it's hard to buy them food if our funds are all out. hehe:)
Another project I'm working on is a recipe binder (yes, I know...I'll have binders coming out of my ears!) I'm looking for 31 recipes to create a recipe calendar for each month (so if anyone has any good recipes they want to share I'm all "ears"). One of the sisters in our ward, who has six kids, created this recipe list and spread sheet so she could get their grocery bill under control and also have a variety of meals. It basically works like this...create a binder filled with 31 recipe cards (or printouts) and assign each meal (dinner) to each day of the month. If you come across a recipe that everyone turns out to love add it to the list and remove one of the other recipes. Then create a spread sheet of every ingredient and it's amount so you have a total of how much you use for the month, including water. At that point you'll have a comprehensive list of everything you'll need each month food-wise in order to make each and every recipe. Then go out and purchase it. When you use something, put it on the grocery list so you know to replenish it when you go to the store.
I'm so excited to get this going because it will not only help with our food costs (big yipee!) but it will also help with time management. If I know what needs to be prepared for the next day then I can have it partially ready and be able to throw it together when we come home.
In May/June we canned strawberry freezer jam. It's turned out great and we ended up with more quarts this year by about 6 than last year. It's been a huge blessing!
Something else we've been working on as a family is our garden, for the second year in a row. Lucas was its "architect" and did a great job. We've been working on the garden with a couple of our other friends, the Quayles and Nichols and it's been a blast, not to mention a huge blessing. We have beans, corn, cucumber, zucchini, (radishes earlier), green and bulb onions, a variety of tomatoes, green peppers, jalepeno peppers and jabinero peppers (all for Lucas, Mark and Kipp I might add hehehe). We also had lettuce in the beginning but we didn't pick it enough and it went to seed. (I might be forgetting something so forgive me Desi and Kim. :) So far we've canned green beans and are getting ready to can tomatoes too. Oh, and a word of caution for anyone possessing the desire freeze jalepeno peppers. Make sure if you choose to blanch them that it is in a house where no one will be home for about an hour or two or do it outside. Lucas blanched some jalepenos last night and to say that it made all of cough like crazy (boys too) is a bit of an understatement. I ended up having to take the boys outside for about 20 minutes while Lucas worked to get the "fumes" out of the apartment. It was intense to say the least! hehe:)
We also worked with our other friends, the Willis' and Nichols, to put up chicken for the first time this year. We had live chickens that Lucas, Kipp and Tom killed, skinned and gutted. They would then bring the carcasses inside and we canned the legs, thighs and wings and froze the breasts. It was hard work, but it paid off. Now we have a lot chicken for food storage and they taste wonderful!!
We will plant some more beans and some potatoes too before the season's over, as well as in the fall. I'm really excited.
One last thing, Lucas went with Tom and picked nice bowl of black berries. They were great!!
I'm attaching a couple of pictures of our garden, but you can look at a lot more of them on our flickr website at http://www.flickr.com/photos/24827222@N06/.
I will have more information on the upcoming semester and our busy little family in a bit so stay tuned.
Love you all!
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