Doing Happy Homemaker Monday so extensively helps keep me on track as it summarizes the past week and lays out a fairly concise plan for this week.
Be sure to join us for Happy Homemaker Monday and link up
with our host, Sandra at Diary of a Stay at Home Mom
Do you do new year’s resolutions? I quit years ago because I felt they were always too short lived. Instead I try to make lifestyle habit changes that are longer term and I try to adjust regularly.
I was gifted several planners this year so I have the unique opportunity to try them all out and see what really “fits”. One of the planners is a menu planner and habit tracker. I’m just not sure quite yet what is going to work best with my organizational style.
I did spend most of the snow week working on cleaning up my digital files and updating my computer so I could start the new year a little “cleaner”.
I was also gifted The Illustrated Compendium of UGLY English words which I’m finding quite amusing. We all have those words that just make us cringe and this calendar appears to be going to touch on all of them 😀
A Compendium is a collection of concise but detailed information about a particular subject, in this case UGLY English words.
I thought it would be fun to keep track of these each week as a source of amusement. They did cheat a bit and only give us one word for the whole weekend. 😀
- January 1/2 – ACRID (adjective) – Deeply bitter; corrosive; so unpleasant in taste or odor that it causes people to retch instantaneously and shriek the word into the air like a pained battle cry: “ACKKKKK-RID.”
- January 3 – BACKWASH (noun) – A backward current; the moving of waterin a reverse direction; the liquid that flows from a person’s mouth back into the bottle when they remove it from their lips. Or, rather, the spit water that a younger sibling uses to prevent you from stealing swigs of their drink.
I decided to join in with many others and choose a word for the year and make a list of things to accomplish also. If you’re interested that post is here.
The cold and snow lasted through yesterday so I really got my wish for Christmas snow! A new storm, a bit warmer HA HA 40’s instead of 30’s, started pushing in just after lunch. We’re supposed to get close to 5 inches of rain in 5 days with this storm front. Oh, and now it’s windy – REALLY windy!! They said the wind advisory was from 4pm yesterday through 4pm today, but it showed up early with a vengeance. Before it began we did at least get the outside Christmas decorations put into the garage to dry out a bit before being packed away for the year.
I actually wish it was snow since we are already so wet and now have huge puddles of run off water EVERYWHERE and 5 inches more will just turn that all into mud puddles and slick roadways. Plus with the wind it will still feel just as cold 😀 But, at least we’ll be worrying less about frozen pipes.
I’m feeling extremely anxious and concerned. My prayers go out to everyone suffering, in whatever way, from anything, but especially from this pandemic. Seems like no matter how hard we try to stay safe, life happens around us leaving so many susceptible.
We found out just before new years that our vaccinated step son and his wife have COVID and are really quite ill with breakthrough infections. We have several other friends who while also vaccinated have just healed from bad breakthrough infections.
Thank god they were vaccinated if the severity of their breakthrough infections is any indication of how much worse it would have been had they not been. But, they are not out of the woods yet and prayers would be deeply appreciated.
Hot water and peach yogurt
|
THIS WEEK’S TO DO LIST, PROJECTS & APPOINTMENTS
|
|
|
WHAT’S ON THE DVR/TV
|
|
I just finished State of Grace from Marie Force and am looking forward to the next installment in September, but in the meantime she’s branching off again into a 3rd series that will expound on the characters even more, but that book doesn’t come out until February.
In the meantime I will be reading Ava Miles Beside Golden Irish Fields of another series for this author with characters that I also love.
I’m anxious to begin the Hidden Child by Louisa Fein and When the Nightingale Sings by Suzanne Kelman. I’m hoping they both write in similar style to Gill Paul who writes stories about today that began during WWI or WWII and leave their footprints along the way tying the present to the past.
We had a wonderful, but quiet Christmas and New Years with just over a foot of of snow which was quite beautiful making it a true Winter Wonderland. A few friends are “blaming” me for all the snow because I kept wishing for a Christmas snow. LOL I did wish for it, but I just didn’t plan on it being quite so much or lasting through the end of the year!
The neighbor boys made a “toppled” snowman and tried their hand at “pool sledding” 😀 Fortunately I was able to take all these pictures without even stepping outside!
While I do most of this twice a year or even some it quarterly, I “start” my year with the following list. Doing this makes it easy to remember when it was done last 😀
- Change the smoke detector batteries
- Change the refrigerator filter
- Change the kitchen water filter
- Wash the cold air return filter
- Clean behind the refrigerator
- Clean behind the stove
- Do a vinegar clean in the coffee pot
- Do a vinegar clean in the washing machine
- Do a baking soda/vinegar clean on sink basins
- Turn the hangers around! I do make an exception for things that are obvious exceptions like special dresses to wear to formal events. weddings or funerals etc…
I’m trying a new menu planner and habit tracker for 2022 that will hopefully streamline my menus. I’m also still including the links to last week’s posted recipes, featured party links for the week and upcoming recipes to be posted soon. I’m really hoping to get caught up on indexing recipes for the blog which is a monumental feat! After last week’s recipes all revolving around either prime rib or turkey I’m ready for a little more adventure.
|
MONDAY
|
TUESDAY
|
WEDNESDAY
|
THURSDAY
|
FRIDAY
|
SATURDAY
|
SUNDAY
|
|
|
DINNER
|
*STUFFED MEATBALL PIES
|
*ULTIMATE CHICKEN CASSEROLE
|
*INSTA POT POT ROAST & VEGGIES
|
C.O.R.N. CLEAN OUT REFRIGERATOR NIGHT
|
CLAM CHOWDER & CRUSTY SOURDOUGH BREAD
|
CHICKEN BLT CASSEROLE a remake from the blog to get a better picture
|
*BACON CHEESE BURGER BALLS & ONION RINGS
|
|
DESSERT *new recipe I’m trying this week
|
*something chocolate
|
- BEEF BARLEY SOUP
- BAKED BEAN DIP
- SHORTBREAD TOFFEE
- PRIME RIB STROGANOFF
- CHARCUTERIE BOARDS
- CIDER GLAZED ANCHO CHILI RUBBED BABY BACK RIBS
- INDIVIDUAL MEATBALL PIES
- MAGIC LEMON COBBLER
- ULTIMATE CHICKEN CASSEROLE
- OLD FASHIONED GINGERBREAD
- BAKED MACARONI & CHEESE
We took a day trip last Thursday to 
I grew up in California and unfortunately fires are a fact of life out there, especially in October with the Santa Ana winds. I’ve also been mandatorily evacuated more times that I would like and even watched from a cruise ship one year while our tiny town of 500 was on CNN in one of the fastest moving fires in LA history, but there was usually a lot of brush and trees burned and even a few structures, but in ALL those years I cannot remember any combination of fires as horrific as what California is experiencing now, especially with loss of life. Please keep California in your prayers that containment comes soon and there is no more loss of property or life.
As horrible what California is going through, there is still so much destruction and rebuilding going on that is also impacting people ALL over the country and world!
Several months ago I told you about some roof leaks that we had that required major patching and when we went into the attic to investigate the source were confronted with 40 years worth of crap that my grandfather and cousin had accumulated back in a corner we “missed” originally because it was just that, in a hard to reach corner. Unfortunately we had to bag it and move it in order to reach the area that was leaking. We also discovered about 500 pounds of “good” (by my grandfather’s terms) boards that I’m sure he was saving for a project as well as a bunch of bricks – really bricks in an attic? I can’t even begin to figure out what those were for. So, we bagged it all up and moved to a pile in the center to be removed later. Well, it’s now later!
I hope everyone had a wonderful week. Mine turned out quite busy in a weird, but also productive way. I can’t believe it’s October already, mainly because it’s so dang hot here still, but it also means Christmas is right around the corner and I’m not sure where we will be so it makes it seem sort of weird.
The post hurricane Harvey thunderstorms have been amazing and left us with some interesting skies. There are still debris everywhere and traffic beyond belief, but it looks like most things are getting back to normal.
