Making Cents Of It All

Tonight I ate dinner alone and I did not like it. My kids were at work and Hubby is working late. Dinner was ready and I ate it. I did eat in the dining room where we always eat but it was weird eating buy myself.  I am #4 out of 5 kids. My dad worked 9-5 and we always ate dinner together unless he was traveling for work. We always sat at the dining room table (our kitchen was tiny) and we talked about our day. It was loud but entertaining. I remember when my oldest sister got a job. My mom would sit with her when she ate dinner if she wasn't at home when the rest of us ate. I remember her doing it with me when I got a job. We always ate with someone.  We are big breakfast people. We always make a big breakfast on the weekends. We do waffles, pancakes with fruit compote, french toast with fresh strawberries, biscuits with sausage gravy, or omelettes with hashbrowns. Don't forget a side of bacon with that. We eat together as a family. Breakfast is at 9am so that is when the...

It is a new year so I want to try to get everything organized. I have been going through everything in the kitchen. It will take time to get through the whole house, so I started where I spend a lot of time. Do you have a junk drawer? We do. It is where everything seems to get tossed. I cleaned that sucker out. It looks amazing. I don't know how 6 pairs of scissors ended up there but it explains why I can never find a pair.  I know it won't last long but I am so happy with it right now. Then I cleaned out the cabinet underneath it. It holds my oils, vinegars and such. This one was pretty easy. I did several other cabinets throughout the week. It is easy to just do one cabinet at a time. I am very happy with my progress. Lots of stuff was donated.  My ice machine stopped working. It is no longer under warranty. It had been replaced while it still was covered and it has always had problems. The one time the workman came, he made a mess, made me empty my fridge a...

I love this time of year. I would hang Christmas lights and play Christmas music all year if Hubby would let me. Hubby and I went on a date and drove around looking at lights and listening to music. We brought drinks and a snack with us so all it cost us was the gas. We are planning on doing it again this week.  Youngest daughter has been excepted to another college that she applied to. She was also given The Presidential Scholarship. We are so proud of all of her hard work. She is still working on scholarships as she has time. We are still waiting to hear from 2 more schools.  I had my work holiday party this week. They provided the main course and employees were asked to donate desserts. We had a great turnout and so many people brought goodies. We watched ELF and played games and had an ugly sweater contest. I went with a long sweater since I had this old cardigan. Unfortunately I did not win. A beer sweater won. I did have fun making it though. We also did a t...

Sorry this is so late. I worked 6 days last week and I am probably going to work 6 days this week. That is good and bad. Bad because I still have to cook, do laundry and a 100 other things. Good because my checks will be very nice.  Since we are saving as much as we can right now for college I will work as much as I can. Several popular movies are out right now so work is letting us have more hours. Lets get onto what I did beside work and sleep. I signed up with a few friends to attend library classes. This one was a fall decoration. It was 2 hours of painting and chatting with some lovely ladies. I almost didn't go because I figured I could do something better with my time but Hubby said to go and have fun. I also picked up a few books while I was there.  We brought food, reusable water bottles, and snacks to work and school.  I charged my phone at work all week. If I am there I might as well use there electricity. Hubby and I went to see the ...

I started out the week not feeling well still. I ended up calling out from work one day. I don't get paid if I don't work since I am part time. That is OK since I really needed the rest. I am doing much better, thank goodness. I did have the eye doctor again and he said my eye is all better. Thanks to my insurance and already meeting my deductible the visit is covered. I did get some things done this week even with not feeling great.  We made a big batch of chili with tomatoes and peppers from my garden. We changed the recipe some, like omitting the cayenne pepper since I had plenty of hot peppers in my garden. I always add extra beans to the recipe too and no one ever complains. The chili came out great. Hubby was calling it 5 alarm chili all night. It came out a little hotter then we are used too. That's what happens when you use fresh peppers I guess. We put it on rice for dinner. I put a container in the fridge for the next few days lunch. 3 big containers went...

I was a very busy bee this week. I worked 4 days this week. They asked me to work an additional day but I said no. It would have been too much. 2 of the days were full 8 hour days, the other 2 were normal 5 1/2 hour days. I had to spend Wednesday at Jury Duty. I didn't get picked which I am grateful for. Since I worked all of last weekend when we got home from vacation, I haven't had a day off.  The garden is going crazy which is wonderful. I really needed to use up the produce before it went bad. Saturday I got down to business. So first thing in the morning I went through the garden and picked a bunch of veggies. I then started chopping tomatoes. And there were a lot. Next up was to use the tomato mill (Thanks Mom & Dad). Then I made my largest pot of sauce. I had to wait for it to reduce some to add the rest in.  When it was ready we had some for dinner. The rest was canned. I got 6 quarts and 3 pints for my pantry. I like to do some pints for certain m...