Day SIX of our Journey - Decluttering that STUFF

I think I have found the key to cleaning and decluttering. Almost anything that I HAVE to do but don't necessarily like to do...

Do it with a friend!

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When I say, "Declutter with a friend...", it has to be a special friend. 

A friend that has stuck around through those bad monthly times. Those times of crazy hormonal pregnancies and crazy melt downs. A friend who will stick with you through the thick and thin. A friend that really loves you. 

The kind of friend who can say, " I love you but you don't need five popcorn poppers." 

The kind of friend who can handle it when you exclaim, "But we LOVE popcorn and one might BREAK!"

It is important to remember a few things when you find a cleaning/decluttering buddy and dive into it - 

1. Make a plan before you jump in. Think about it rationally. If you are a new declutterer, don't resolve to get rid of everything. You will go into shock and regret it and get bitter after.
2. Think of where you want the stuff to go. I know for myself, thinking of giving the excess stuff to people who will need it or turn it into cash to put towards debt excites me. This helps me push through.
3. Find a friend that is patient and will continue to plow through all the stuff even with your nasty comments about how she just doesn't understand. You need that large tote of wire hangers! 
4. Find a friend that you can tell your goal and they will hold you accountable. For me, I know that my husband is not a good fit. We both are hoarders (we like to call it frugal!) by nature and we always find some kind of reason to keep everything. Also, I often get very offended when he wants me to get rid of my treasures. (He just doesn't understand. I NEED 73 pair of flip flops!)
5. Carry out your plan. It will hurt but if you made a realistic plan, it will feel better - not worse.
6. Remember! Remember that you are going to help your friend in turn go through their clutter. Make sure you treated them how you want to be treated because its their turn to be nasty about their plastic plate collection to you! (We NEED 27 plastic plates. We might have GUESTS!)

All the "conversations" above are just a couple of the crazy pack-rat comments that I come up with. All have been said by me at one time or another. This summer, we decided to get serious about getting rid of our clutter. We get rid of about 30% of our stuff in the downstairs. People have walked into our house and asked if we've been robbed. 

We still have a lot of stuff but we have drastically cut down. 

If I can do it, anyone can do it. It was painful. I wanted to cry. However, it was so worth it. I can clean my house faster and there are many less toys to fight with my children to pick up. We can find and LOVE the things we have even more. 

When I think of clutter and STUFF, I think of a zap to me. It zaps my energy, I have to clean. It zaps my joy because I am continually harping for people to clean up. It zaps my time. I have more time to spend loving on my children and doing fun things with them. 

Getting rid of the clutter has really brought more peace and joy into my life. Have I "arrived"? No way. I am still on the journey to rid our house of unnecessary things but I am trying and making progress. 

How about you? Do you struggle with the clutter and stuff that is all around you? Or do you have a good system to rid your home of clutter?

BEST and Easiest Pizza Dough EVER! :)

Remember this post about finding ways to have some family fun? This pizza has made it all come together!!

This crust keeps my family from having pizza delivered! It is just that yummy and easy. All you need to do is plan ahead BECAUSE you put everything in the bread maker and allow it to do the work! Easy-Peasy! :) 

Put in machine in this order:

• 1 cup and 2 Tablespoons water
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cups flour 
• 2 Tablespoons Parmesan cheese
• 1 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning or pizza seasoning
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 1/2 teaspoon yeast 

Select the dough setting and walk away! After the bread maker's dough setting is complete, punch down dough and spread onto pizza pan. Add choice of sauce and toppings. Bake at 400 for 18-20 minutes.

Go ahead! Give it try this weekend. The only think you'll regret is not doing it sooner! :) 

Chicken!

We are now home from vacation and we're ready to embark on a new journey! Without too much being said, we are entering a time of life in which we need to start minding our financial "Ps and Qs" even more.

I am quickly finding just how much growing boys can eat. With a husband, three growing boys and God-willing more in the future, I really need to learn how to stretch our food budget all the while trying to obtain good nourishment!

This week I am going to issue a challenge for myself. I have a family pack of split chicken breasts that has been in the freezer for a while. I am going to challenge myself to make as many nutritious meals out of that chicken as possible.

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Now I know that some would say, "Cook it and refreeze it so you won't get burnt out on chicken." but I'm not one of those types. If it goes in the deep freeze, it stays until we clean it out. As hard as I try, I just cannot keep up with what I have in that big ol' thing.

Enter...

Operation 5 1/4 lbs. Chicken Breast Challenge

I used to just bake the chicken with some seasonings and call it dinner, however I need to learn how to stretch it further and bring more vegetables onto our plates.

I will begin the challenge Sunday night. I will be putting chicken into a slow cooker with vegetables and allow the chicken to slow cook - I will be saving the vegetables to make bone broth.

Monday: 2 cups chopped chicken - no broth
Chicken Enchiladas  - with re fried beans and salsa

Tuesday: 4 cups chopped chicken - 4 cups of broth or broth from cooking chicken
White Chicken Chili - with salad and bread (This while make enough for several lunches and LOs)

Wednesday: 1/2 cup chopped chicken - no broth
Chicken Alfredo - with salad

*I will be making the chicken stock out of the bones and vegetables for other meals*

Thursday: 2 cups chopped chicken - 4 cups of chicken stock
Chicken Gnocchi sou- with garlic bread and salad

Friday: 1 cup of chopped chicken - no stock
BBQ Chicken Pizza - fruit and veggie tray

Saturday: 1 cup of chopped chicken - no stock
Chicken Quesadillas - with Spanish rice and chips and salsa

Sunday: 2 quarts chicken stock
CP Baked Potato Soup - with sandwiches

Monday: 1 cup shredded chicken and remaining chicken stock
Chicken and Noodles  - with green beans and mashed potatoes

Tuesday: 1 cup of shredded chicken
Buffalo Chicken Dip - with tortillas, chips and salsa

As I look through these meals, it's really going to be a stretch to get all these meals out of 5.36 lbs of chicken but we're going to give it a whirl! :) If I get all of these meals out of that chicken, I will be stretching one chicken into NINE meals!

Wanna take the challenge with me? Go ahead, try it! :)

Garden Journal: June 20, 2011

As I said yesterday, we are having a horrible time fighting the blight and fungi around these parts. It just keeps raining, and raining and raining and raining and raining... Continuously. At first I was just so thankful that the rain didn't flood my seeds out but not I just want it to not stop but come more periodically.

With all the blight and fungi, my plants are still growing beautifully for the most part. We are blessed abundantly blessed and I cannot wait to see what the Lord has in store for this year's harvest!

One of my favorite things when making dinner is walking right out my front door to gather the fresh herbs to add while cooking or to snip some lettuce for a fresh salad!

Herb "garden" right outside the front door

The three different times of leaf lettuce. They are all so delicious!

This was an extra tomato plant I had so I decided to give container tomato planting a try. This plant is growing beautifully due to the blight not being able to attack it as it has everywhere else on the ground.

It actually already has tomatoes forming!

In contrast, this is one of the tomato plants we've been fighting to save from blight and fungi. It is still alive, as are most of them, but looks really pathetic. Kind of reminds me of the "Charlie Brown Christmas Tree". 

The side of house garden really needs weeded but with all that has been going on in these parts, I have not found the time Hopefully this weekend!

Peas - I just love the purple blooms!

We planted 16 pepper plants and surprisingly, the ones we thought were dying from transplant shock, are beginning to look as if they might make it!

The kale is beautiful to look at from the road and I am just amazed at how well it grows. This photo actually doesn't do it justice!

As I said, this side of house garden really needs weeding but here is a picture of the cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli plants.

These are also pepper plants. I think I am going to purchase some large containers and grow them in those. They weren't mature enough to transplant and the blight hit so I think I'm just going to stick to containers for them.

Back of house garden

Rows and rows of green bean plants!

Onions beginning to sow their little heads..

Beets

L-R -- Squash -> Pumpkins -> Cucumbers

Carrot and Radish bed - I began weeding it and the carrots were so small that they were coming out as well. I decided to give them time to grow and root better.

See the carrots popping up amongst the weeds?

Garlic bed - This is a perfect picture of what NOT to do with your garlic. See all those scapes that I never got to picking off? No? Well here's a better picture below!

 

So there are many areas that I need to work on in my garden. I need to convert weekend gardener to one that gardens like her family's food supply depends on it. But I do believe we are off to a good start. 

How about you? How does your garden grow? Any advice for me on converting to a everyday gardener (besides get off my tail!) :)?

A Time with Blight

I know I keep coming back and saying that I will be updating our gardening joys and woes, but we are still dealing with the woes...

The woes being blight and massive amount of fungi. It's been a crazy, crazy ride trying to fight these woes with organic measures but I am hopeful that this last time it worked. Now I am just looking at the forecast of rain for the next 10 days... Oy...

So stay tuned. I am hoping to get outside and take some shots today!

Garden Journal: June 6, 2011

Tomorrow I am going to be sharing the garden woes we had the past weekend. Today I am just going to share how great things are going and focus on the positive! :)

All of my herbs in their containers!

  

 This batch of lettuce is finally filling out and almost ready to eat!

 This batch has already been cut and eaten once!

 My container tomato plant experiment.

 

Look how tall the ones in the ground are getting!

 These peas aren't having such a great go at it but we'll eat them up just the same!

These pas are doing MUCH better! :)

Sorry for the horribly shady picture but this weekend, Andy and I took out the spinach and but in 16 pepper plants instead! 

One of the Kale plants bit the dust... I will be writing about my gardening woes tomorrow but for today, I am going to be positive! 

Broccoli, Cauliflower and Cabbage plants - Remember those neighbors who thought I was crazy? Not anymore! Somebody really should weed this!

I just look at this beautiful broccoli plant and get sooo excited!

I spy with my little eyes something is green! Green beans popping up!!

Carrot and Radish bed! See them?!

How is your garden going? I know some of you have been cleaning out the weeds recently. What are you putting in instead of weeds? 

Strawberries Galore!

I feel so blessed to live in the location in which I do. Sometimes I whine that I cannot wait to get out of the city but I am truly blessed and need to remember that from time to time!

About fifteen minutes out of town there is a large farm and they have a farm market. It's not quite a "farmer's market" like many think of when they hear the term but it does us well (next time I will snap a few shots!).

A couple of days ago I decided to take a drive "north" and see what they had. Strawberries were in full bounty! It was beautiful. I was so excited! The boys and I purchased a large passel of strawberries and headed home.

 

With all these strawberries, I have spent the past couple days making strawberry jam and dehydrating strawberries.  Wanna know the simple process I use to make jam? I'm sure glad you asked because I am excited to tell somebody! :)

Of course the first step in the jam making process is to wash the strawberries thoroughly. After washed, I go through strawberry by strawberry and cut of the stem and leaves as well as cut out all of the bad spots.

This may come as a shock to you but here it goes... I am weird. I do not like the texture of strawberries. The taste is alright but the mushy weird feeling just does not work for me. Keeping that in mind, as I cut the strawberries, I throw them into a blender.

If using the blender method, I would recommend leaving a little juice in the bottom. It makes the blending process go a lot smoother. However, make sure to put the lid back on. It makes a disastrous mess with more liquid in the bottom to begin with.

I have been talking to a lot of mothers who, myself included, are just not happy with the amount of sugar a lot of recipes call for when making jam. While at the store the other day, I found Ball Naturals pectin. With this pectin, you only use 1 cup of apple or white grape juice. No other sugar necessary (Please read the five star review. It explains the product very well and I have had no problem with mine.) Using this pectin, you use four cups of prepared strawberries and 1 cup juice to one box.

Continually stir. Using stainless steel pots, my jam cooked quickly and began sticking to the bottom. Bring to a rolling boil and take off of burner or heat source. I skimmed the foam off of the top and then ladled the jam into pint jars leaving 1/2 inch head space. Before putting lids on, be sure to wipe rim of jar. Often the jam gets on the rim and makes sealing impossible.

Place jars in pot in which there is enough room to cover with water. Keep in mind you will be bringing water to a rolling boil when you are looking for a usable pot. Bring water to rolling boil for 10 minutes. Take off of heat and allow to sit for five minutes.

 Carefully, pull jars from water and place on a soft surface. Allow to sit, undisturbed, for twelve hours. Jam should be "set" and sealed. If you see that a jar is not sealing withing a couple of hours, you can reprocess or you can refrigerate.

Isn't this just the most beautiful colored jam you've ever seen? I stand in awe of the wonderfully vibrant colors the Lord saw fit to make strawberries. He's truly amazing!

Next up I will be showing the dehydrating process. Come on back!