Posts pertaining to Homemaking and Recipes
Slightly more detailed.
Pretty easy!
This area won’t be too bad to spring clean either! Hey things are looking up!
This is probably one of the easier rooms to spring clean. So I think this is where I will begin!
In years past I have utterly failed to finish spring cleaning. I’m talking about one of those deep down cleaning to the very core of the house. Sure the house gets cleaned…but we’ve lived here almost 6 years and it is time for a good honest cleaning. And I want to finish it during Lent so that when Easter arrives it feels like the house has had a resurrection too!
So I think I’ll make a list of each room, list the cleaning projects and get busy since I’ve already allowed a week of Lent to lapse.
This year WILL be the year of accomplishing some projects (I hope) that have needed to be accomplished for a LONG time. I can be such a procrastinator, it is terrible.
For example; this morning I super-glued broken tops back on 2 bookends that have been broken for literally SIX years! I have carted these broken bookends around through two states, one apartment and two houses. It is silly little projects like this example that need to be finished. But I have two completely fixed and functional bookends that don’t even look like the tops were broken.
Today I also actually put away our Christmas decorations on the last day of Christmas even!!
Yesterday I went through Dave’s closet and got rid of everything that does not fit or does not like.
So I pray I can keep this roll going and get lots done this year!
So John is only 2, but I’m beginning today to be a little more “teaching centered” in my everyday interactions with John. We’re also going to be doing more crafty stuff and create more purposeful learning opportunities. All the while remembering little guy is only 2!!
This morning John mashed the bananas for the banana bread we made (good hand-eye coordination opportunity). Then he dumped ingredients into the mixer while I briefly showed him tools of measurement in the kitchen. We played with puzzles. Read our daily Bible story. Now he’s down for a nap!
Later this afternoon he’ll get a bath and we’ll play outside briefly since it is raining. John gets a little stir crazy if he doesn’t get outside everyday, even if it is for only a short time.
On tap for dinner is pork stir-fry. I’ll slice cabbage, red peppers, onion, carrot and broccoli. Saute it lightly in a big pan with some strips of pork and add a stir-fry sauce I bought recently and want to give a try. For dessert we’ll have some of that banana bread. It turned out to be a pretty awesome recipe. I used Tyler Florence’s Banana Bread with Pecans recipe which is available on Food Network’s website. I’ve tried the old Betty Crocker and Better Homes & Garden recipes in my cookbooks, but they leave much to be desired. A friend gave me a recipe which tastes pretty great, but it never finishes cooking on top before the bottom burns.
I’m also finally feeling like the house is recovering from Hurricane Irene and being without power for 85 or so hours.
It is hot outside, but it was still a nice and productive day. The first thing this morning I took an Excedrin. I had a caffeine headache anyway (drank a bunch of soda over the weekend), but the caffeine in the Excedrin was just enough to wake me up all the way. I think I was meant to be a coffee drinker, but never developed a taste for the stuff. I’d probably have to put so much sugar/chocolate/cream etc in the stuff and it would defeat the purpose. And it really is too hot for me to drink hot tea. Iced tea has too little caffeine, unless maybe I haven’t done my research and maybe there is a great “get ya up and goin’ ” tea out there…have to look into it.
John bathed while I cleaned the bathroom. Our bathroom is pretty tiny so my eyes never actually leave him, so in case mom is reading…John is well watched while bathing. I also decided to get rid of the bathroom’s current decor during our upcoming garage sale. So I took all the wall hangings down, dusted them and set them aside for the sale. We are planning to paint the bathroom woodwork all white this summer so now I’ve got a clean slate from which to work.
I took care of a bunch of laundry, even hung some out to dry on the clothesline. John and I scrubbed the rod iron railing outside readying it for spray painting tomorrow. John took it upon himself to scrub the steps and rid them of some moss growing on them. John LOVES playing in water so I let him play with the hose while also watering the tomato plants.
Dinner was in the oven, again with John’s assistance, even before Dave came home from work. That was very nice. So all in all a productive, nice day.
John’s new phrase is: “up you go” when he wants to get picked up. I always say, “up you go” when I got to pick him up so it is too cute that he says that instead of “up” like other kids.
I had planned to be finished “spring cleaning” the entire house by Easter, but the project got expanded. Dave and I decided to purge our entire house of everything we don’t use/love/need. Our dining room and front porch has turned into garage sale central and we’re still not done. A couple of rooms are completed; like the bathroom, our living room and the upstairs hallway. The living room is actually housing a piece of furniture for the garage sale, our sofa. We’d like to get some money for the sofa, but we’re also game for just giving the thing away to however will hauled it.
With our new computer we have plans to divest ourselves of a whole pile of media; DVDs and CDs specifically. Dave bought a giant amount of memory that can hold 200+ DVDs and piles of CDs. We’ll sell all but out favorites from both collections and free up even more room. I think this will make the collections more accessible also. We rarely listen to any music and I think it is because it is a pain to search the collection for what you want to listen too and then load it into a media outlet.
Well, I need to get dinner on the table. I think we’ll have au gratin potatoes with broccoli and diced ham baked as a casserole.
For a long while I’ve had a couple of good books relating to celebrating the Catholic Liturgical Calendar within your family. Today I decided to make an effort to institute some Feast Day celebrations into our household. So this afternoon, during John’s glorious one and a half hour, uninterrupted nap, I had time to research and plan for the upcoming feast days through the beginning of November.
The first one I’m going to start with is Michaelmas also known as the Feast of the Archangels (St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael) which is September 29th. When the date gets closer I’ll let you know how we’ll be celebrating the day, but it should be fun.