Would you believe it was 82º here yesterday? Disgusting! Lettuces, spinach and the like refuses to sprout or do anything at all this season, what a bust. The good news is that the high today was early in the morning and as of right now it has fallen to 48º, keep going!
Fall colors finally appearing...
An early holiday gift for me, and no doubt my only one - and I am just fine with that! Santa needs to pay bills, not buy unnecessary objects this year! Plus, I asked "Siri" if I needed anything else this year and she told me me that she was all I needed, solved. :)
Wouldn't you know that I don't hear from the school all year, and then when my phone breaks down, that's when they are trying to call me. The school nurse has called twice in the past 6 weeks from Finn's school and I was the "bad mom" who couldn't be reached, figures! But no more. Also, if any of you are among those who I need their phone numbers, please send me an email with them, as all my contacts vanished.
With the lack of decent fall growing temps for greens and broccoli, we have been deficient in fresh so we have really been using up all the goodies that were put away last season.
I'm not sure what the deal is, but the kids will eat their veggies as long as it's in stir-fry - although of course they have to exhaust the noodle or rice supply first before they move on to the nutritious stuff!
A couple of nights ago I went to a social event with some other gals at our church. Very fun - the "assignment" was to cook a dinner for your family on a set budget that varied with the family size, and then bring it in and tell everyone about it. The amount was a modest $5 for a family of 4 and went up from there. This particular meal came in at approx $2.99 just for the 99 cent large package of Phillipine noodles (half the package will make one family meal leaving half for another night), and I estimated $2.00 for the amount of sliced chicken breast that went into the skillet with it. Of course, the cost of my snow peas, beans, peppers and onions from my harvest stash were "free"... or were they?? Ha! The evening was really fun, we all ate a ton of good stuff and came away with some new recipes from others to try. Now I wonder if everyone fed their families before leaving the house with the cooked meals, LOL!
Random strange sighting of the week:
What? You've never had Canadian Bacon in your purse? Don't judge :)
I'm progressing at a snail's pace on the apron, but progressing nonetheless. Here's the fabric, kind of a funky Swedish folksy print I had oodles of on hand, can't remember what the original intention was but it was definitely kitchen related, and the pattern is cut out finally. I'm hoping Sunday will be the day for indulging in quiet time with my sewing machine!
I have been scrapbooking a bit too, another reason I have been M.I.A. for awhile, I just can seem to find time for it all - I had like 7000 photos that needed to be transferred from a backup to the new computer and I did it, but they are all out of order, ugh. One more thing, I am starting to get into couponing quite seriously, and that requires a lot of time as well. I'll be sure to post what little I know so far on that soon, but I saved about $80 today in coupons, on things we actually use! I'd love to be able to say that I don't have the time for that, but in all honesty it's become a necessity in order for us to be able to give our kids a nice Christmas this year, and unfortunately we can't even think about traveling home this year, it's just too cost prohibitive, on the bright side at least it's "in vogue" to be concerned about the economy and it's effect on the family LOL, now it's cool to be cheap... crazy, huh?! Things will look up in the next year, I just know it - we just have some mud to wade through first.
I do know that I am thankful to have a happy and healthy family and plenty to keep me busy so I don't ever become bored with staying at home, and my great extended blogger family - I have gotten an email with the best news from Annie's Granny, a box just arrived this evening from Patty, a couple more emails checking on me and making sure all was okay during my unusually quiet hiatus... I am very thankful for all of you! Now I'm looking forward to spending some time with some hot chocolate this evening and catching up on everyone's posts!
One more thing - this is how lame I am lately -
Don't think for one second that these are mine, no, not this year...
These are Loch's! These are what he brought home the other day from the plots at the school garden he volunteers at. If it wasn't for Loch this year our fall harvest would be a complete fail! I hope he doesn't get too confident that he'll outdo me in 2012, I'll show him - I'm not ready to pass the torch yet!
