The Hopeful Homestead

My week at a glance...

Do you ever have those weeks where you wonder who put your head in the blender?  This has been one of those.  We've spent FAR too much time figuring out where and how we're putting the rabbits.  Al built a great hutch, with plans to make a 2nd just like it, bit it needs some tweaking for practical use.  I paid bills, and realized just how eye opening our "write down every expense this month" experiment really is.  Ugh.  We obviously need a "homesteading" category in our budget for animal/ garden expenses.  They've become more than "accidentals."  We're working on winterizing things here.  Animals, gardens, wood for the woodstove, fall cleaning, and plans for the waterers once the temps begin to drop.  I'm trying to stay on top of the usual, you know, dishes, schoolwork, and laundry, and hate that my dryer is about to become a necessary evil again.  I'm back in the mood for baking again, with the cooler weather, though, so it all works out I guess.  I declared this week to be Fall Break, as we all were feeling a bit worn out around the edges.  Back to the grind on Monday, though.

Over the weekend, I plan to:

Bake a coffee cake, and some brownies for church Sunday, and maybe some bread.

crochet 2-3 dishcloths, and some more squares for the afghan I'm SLOWLY crocheting.

cut out, and sew the two aprons I've had stashed away forever, and clean out my fabric stash.

Other than that, I'm reading, reading, reading.  Rabbit books, goat books, gardening books, whatever I can get my hands on.

So that's what's up around here, hope I've not bored you to death!

Peace~ Shari

bits and peices...

Little Homestead things I'm up to these days...

I'm crocheting dishcloths.  We needed some new ones, and I found a new pattern I liked in Mary Jane's  Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook, only I started with 30, not 20 stitches.  DH likes them bigger, so OK.

Fall baking.  Pumpkin & apple everything!  This weekend I''ll be making a big batch of mini pumpkin muffins for church.  And some banana bread. mmmmm...  It makes the house smell SO good.

There's a greenhouse in my greenhouse!  DH got my new 4 x 6 greenhouse assembled and we'll be setting it in place out by my clothesline in the next few days.  A much more manageable size than the 20 x 60 greenhouse we're converting to a shop.  Then I'll get some lettuce & spinach planted.

I sat and mended Tuesday afternoon, and got all those little things done I'd been putting off.  A button here, a stuffed toy there.  Now that pile is gone. 

I also mailed all the letters our girls had written to all their cousins, so there's another pile gone.

My pantry got cleaned the other day after we found creepy crawlies in some bags of beans & rice.  I'll be getting some glass canisters to keep this from happening again.  I hated having to throw out groceries. 

We're really facing up to our finances this month with a renewed commitment to our budget.  (gulp)  The biggest thing we've noticed is that we didn't have a category for "animals" so all of our feed costs were "unexpectedly" eating our grocery budget.  We'll be fixing that!

We're cooking from our menu again!  We've gone a week only eating out once (the girls and I grabbed lunch when we were at church longer than expected last Sat.)  Last night I was tempted by Chinese, but DH did the grocery shopping while I was at Choir practice, and got stuff for Make Your Own Subs so we came home and did that instead.  YEAH!! (yep.  He's great for grocery shopping!- plus we saved gas by only going out ONCE this week.)

Just little things, but they really do add up.  Peace~

Shari

Old is new again...

Well, I had nothing better to do with a lazy Sunday afternoon evidently, than to sit here and re-create my "old" look for this blog.  (this involved a lot of digging for where I'd put graphics.)  I guess I must be nostalgic for this place, since this was my first blog, and I can't help but blog over here.  Maybe more homesteady stuff here, and life in general over there. Who knows!  Thanks for putting up with my finicky-ness. Peace~

Shari