5 thing Friday - cooking, thrift finds, shopping, Valentine's Day, painting plans

I've been making a loose menu for the week just to be sure I buy the ingredients I need. 

I am getting a little weary of my tried and true salad with protein routine, though.  We've had cold weather which calls for something a little more comforting.  This week I tossed some things together in my mini crockpot for a grown up version of Pork and Beans Soup: Cannelini beans, pulled pork, some frozen stock, a dash of this, a dab of that.  Served with cornbread, it was really good, but alas, still involved a bit of effort in the kitchen.

Stopping by my favorite tiny Goodwill, I found two books, these scroll-y plaques, and a frame I'm going to use in the garage.  Four dollars and change.  I haven't decided where to hang the plaques, so I found a space to keep them for now on one of my bedroom walls and they are kinda looking just right there.  Might leave them.

I found the new blackberry Dr. Pepper Zero and bought two so I could use the $1 off coupon, which seems ridiculous but I am fixed for soda for a few months. Ha!  My grocery cart looks so different now than it did when I was feeding other humans. A lot of what I buy isn't even food, its all the other stuff you need: personal care items, household supplies, and lots of etc.  The life of a single woman who is struggling to cook.

For Valentine's Day, I treated myself to a ribeye, peppers and onions, a salad with Ancho dressing and candied pecans, and this triple chocolate layer cake.  I have had way too much sugar the last week or so and I totally get it having an addictive effect on your body.  But this was a perfectly lovely Valentine's Day.  I might even had had a dark beer.

This week I bopped over to Home Depot to peruse their Oops paint and low and behold, found a 5 gallon bucket of white paint for the garage project with the girly name of Chantilly Lace.  (the roller you see pictured was 1 cent!)  Next week I have Monday off so I figure I may as well get started on this, weather permitting.  Happy Weekend,

Gina

Little project: sewing room

 I am enjoying a slower pace for the rest of February and making space to be creative.  About two weeks after Scout moved out, I made that room into a sewing room/crafts room.  Its still in progress, but here is where I started:

The light in here looks yellowy, so I may look for daylight bulbs.  The shelves are not all that useful except to place things, so I set some odds and ends mementos on them:

The space underneath will be where I set up my ironing board when I need to use it.

When I was switching out the closet contents, I decided to remove all of the family portraits from frames and store them another way.  Underneath one I found this mid 90s poster print from our first home.  I forgot I had left it behind the portrait.  It felt like a full circle moment, so I decided to use it in here.

I used the rest of the gold spray paint from this project to take the frame from silver to gold, cleaned up the glass, and re-hung the print.

The ironing board is behind the open closet door.  I plan to leave the closet door open so I can access the contents of my craft and sewing supplies. 

The sewing table is a folding table we had up in the barn at Highlands.  It got a good scrubbing.  Scout left this chair, so I claimed it, for now.  I want to order this pretty pink office chair eventually.

Other than the future chair purchase*, I spent zero dollars on this room.  It has a lot of potential space for me to spread out and enjoy some peaceful creativity.

Its going to be a nice place to get started.

Gina

*I think I might be able to find a pretty pink boucle fabric to update this chair, though.

Cleaning up my blog

The past couple of weeks has been spent in introspection and journaling.  Over the past three years, I have shifted the focus from caring for a husband and family to discovering what I want and finding my voice as a single woman. Its not an impossible task, just a big one.  But a necessary step in working through the past so I can move confidently into the future. 

 To that end, I have cleaned up a bunch of blog posts and deleted a lot of others.  Reading through some of my old posts, I saw where I was: 

*tired/grouchy/resentful

*way too busy

*focused on everyone but myself

*handling more than my fair share

*not giving myself grace

Its was hard to read the truth of some of the posts and I didn't want to leave that as a legacy for my kids someday.  I don't want them to feel like all of that hard work and effort didn't mean something to me - it absolutely did.  But reading them now brought me some perspective and I found I could easily let them go.  So I went from around 2300 to just over 1800 posts.  I did the same with my other blog, Its Just Me, Gina.  That's the beauty of an on-line journal, I guess.  

All that to say - I will be back to blogging next week, after I do a little more blog spring cleaning.  Have a great rest of your week!

Gina

5 thing Friday - planners, wreath, purging piles, sheets, rotisserie chicken

Last week I pulled down the box full of planners I store in my closet, just to have a look through them.

And I thought "What if I didn't keep these?  What bad thing would happen?"  And I had another epiphany:  holding onto these planners is like holding onto the past.

I sat in my office with the recycle bin and shredder on one side and the planners on the other side.  (Some of the planners had info in them that needed to be shredded.)

RIP planners from 1992 to 2023.  I actually might have shed a tear.  Looking back through them one last time I thought about how different my life is now, in both little and big ways.

The comically large wreath on my door.  It didn't seem this huge in the store; it is a big pop of color, for sure. I just wanted something colorful, on sale, with no crafting on my part. I got it.

Another round of purging and more things I don't want.   I reserved a bulky pick up with City of Austin and got Bubbie to help me haul it all to the street.

buh. bye.

  In another donation pile I still have: a steel table, BBQ charcoal, a microwave, camp coffee pot, and a silver tray.  I don't want money for them.  I simply want them out of my life. I'm going to find people to offer those to.

I bought myself some new flannel sheets.  They are silky soft and soothing, the perfect color, and were on sale.  We are currently experiencing warm weather in Austin, but I know that February usually brings us a bit of icy weather.  I will be snug and ready.

What's the first thing you do when you bring home a rotisserie chicken?  I eat the drums almost immediately!  Then I portion and store the rest, making stock with the bones.  HEB now has these for $4.97 and I had to grab one up for some easy meals.  Next week I will not post menus, and I am figuring it all out.  I feel like a college kid who just got her first kitchen - what do I feel like eating?  Besides rotisserie chicken, that is!

Gina

Monday menus #109 - the last one

I ordered a tap light bar that fits perfectly on the pantry door frame. 

It doesn't light all of the shelves, but enough so that I can pull baskets out a bit and look through them.  It also adds a bit of ambience to the kitchen when I don't want the overhead lights on, but mostly I keep this door closed.  Either way, me like.

Monday - kitchen closed

Tuesday - One Pot Chili Mac (cook once, eat several times!), kale salad {start my February home project list*}

Wednesday - Calamity Chicken (never made this 2 weeks ago), twice baked potato, spinach

Thursday - Classic Greek Salad (add chicken sausage cubes) {replace air filters}

Friday - One Pot Chili Mac (freeze the rest in containers), kale salad {payday}

Saturday and Sunday - kitchen closed 

I think this may be my last menus post. I have posted my Cannary Family menus for the last few years and there are literally hundreds of them, shaped by whatever was happening in our lives and how many people I was feeding!  I am cooking far less than I did when I had a full house, and I would like to focus less on the planning/shopping/cooking aspect of my life now. I may post about it from time to time; I like to try new recipes and foods, so we'll see what direction that takes me!

Gina

*prune the crepe myrtles, get the dryer vent cleaned, spiff up guest bathroom, touch up paint in guest room}

5 thing Friday - crockpot pork, baking, new filing cabinet, thrifting, books

Its been a long week. I'm glad its Friday.

Last week I put a bunch of pork shoulder in my crockpot and froze at least ten meals of around 5 oz each of the most delicious pork.  I seasoned it with S&P, cumin, chilies, garlic, onions.  I'm going to eat it in tacos, on salads, and mixed into various other things.

I also found a can of pumpkin from the holidays and made some moist pumpkin bread. One loaf went into the freezer and the other has been slowly disappearing. I also used up the last of the chocolate chips on cookies for Bubbie and me.

Last Friday I found exactly the right size filing cabinet I was looking for at Habitat Restore - $5.  They even loaded it into Brigid for me!

The one I had was just too large for my purposes.  The top two drawers were mostly empty and the remaining drawers had plenty of space.

I removed all of the files, pulled the tall cabinet out, then cleaned up the area and added an extra shelf. My plan is to go through all of my files before I put them back - I'm sure I will have plenty to shred.

I will sand and seal the shelves, paint the walls, then make a space for my stepstool and "new" file cabinet to live here.  I will show it when its all done!

Thrifting last week also netted me this Snoopy mug for $2. I got rid of all the kids' Christmas mugs, so now I have room for Gina mugs.

And my favorite little Goodwill now prices all of their books at $2 each so I got some new things to read.  Right now I am halfway done with The Things They Carried.  Its been a week of introspection and organization here at Camp Rustown.  I am ready for my workweek to begin!

Gina

Monday menus #108

One day last week,  I wanted muffins but I also wanted to add sausage, and food prep it for the weekend, so here's what I came up with: 

I buttered three small dishes, added 3 Brown & Serve sausages to each, then poured over some muffin batter and baked until browned on top. I packaged 2 of them up for easy work breakfasts.

Monday - kitchen closed {but this has become my Chik-fil-A day}

Tuesday - BBQ Pork Chop, twice baked potato, green beans {telehealth appt., meeting a friend}

Wednesday - Steak Bites, salad with bleu cheese dressing {to Starbucks to journal}

Thursday - Coconut Shrimp, Fried Rice (make two meals) {PCP appt. day}

Friday - Seasoned Chicken Drums, Chopped Salad, a healthy dose of self care {Mark's Birthday}

Saturday and Sunday - kitchen closed

How are we this close to February already?

Gina