Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - Tuesday Tidbits...

What we're up to today...

School:  We seem to be hitting our stride with this.  It's only taken a year. LOL!  We don't start as early as I'd like, but we're getting everything I want to done, so it's a good start.  Al brought the girls an Eastern Fence Lizard he found outside.  Very cool.  We keep a species list on Enature.com.

House: There's 3 loads of laundry on the line, almost dry, and more in the works.   I have the new curtain fabric up in our room (just stapled to the window frames so far) very ala Nester's Mistreatments. I LOVE it.  (I'm just using hidden clothes pins to hold them back when I want them open.  The velvet is SO POSH!!  ooh la la!!)  I hope to work on my "little project" list this afternoon.  You know those things that take 10-15 minutes, but really add up!  Most of them involve my sewing machine or a paint brush...

Kitchen: We discovered my sourdough starter was NO GOOD this morning,  so that will need to be redone...  and I need to bake some bread (as usual), and, there's Strawberries everywhere!!!  I have 2 gallons sliced, we've been eating them plain, and we had strawberry pancakes for breakfast.  To DIE for!!!  Hopefully, I'll be making jam soon, but I need a few more jars first...  Lunch is my leftover fajita mix from last night's Cinco de Mayo dinner/ mixed with Rice, (yes, enough of MY dinner left over for all FIVE of us to have it for lunch!!)  and dinner will be this recipe from PWCooks (Ree cracks me up!!)

Yard: Al got the push mower and weed eater going, so now we live in the sticks w/o it looking trashy. (we had knee high weeds everywhere!)  Looks great!  I need to pot some of the lemon balm growing in the driveway, to bring some inside, and move a bit more of it to some empty beds I have, since it will fill in the holes nicely.  Al's putting up my flag bracket for a bit of red, white & blue out there, too.

Animals & Garden: Chickens are doing well.  Loving the coop.  Al is putting the green trim on, it's the prettiest coop in the county.  We hope to get some fencing started this week, budget permitting. The garden is doing really well.  I think my tomatoes were suffering from lack of water, so I've upped how much they're getting and they are doing much better.  My potatoes are huge.  Must be what happens when a girl from Maine marries a boy from Idaho and they grow taters in Tennessee together!!  Lol!!

This Afternoon: Today's our planning/ paperwork day: we'll be sitting down & hashing out our budget & bills for the week.    Then I'll plan my menu, grocery list, and errands for tomorrow (our "town Day") and we have library books due, and the farmer's market opens today in our little town  (we may be too late for that today, maybe next week!)  I've been working or re-working my schedules (I do this a lot) and have gotten things back under control a bit.  I didn't get all my housework done yesterday, so I'll tidy up a bit more today.  (I re-habbed our bath and it looks very spa/ zen in there.  Less is definitely more!  I even got the rest of the rice paper/ window privacy film on, and it looks really nice, plus kids can no longer stand on the Pew to peer in the window at you in the shower  ... MAMA??!?!??-sigh-)

So we are busy here, as usual, but happy.  I'm feeling much better, and will be even better tomorrow, as today's my last day of Prednisone (hate the stuff, but it works when things have gotten bad) Now, if Al could get HIS allergies under control, we'd be all set.  (He, of course, is too stubborn to go to the Dr.)  I'm just waiting for Miss E to finish copying her spelling words, then I'll be free to get on with my day.  She seems a bit SLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW at schoolwork today... (sigh)

All in all, life is GOOD here in Gilead.  I hope it is wherever you are too.

God Bless~

Shari