In The Refiner's Fire

One of our meals during our camping trip - 3oz steak, two rolls, zucchini and onions (grilled), carrots, and grapes.   How on earth is it the end of August already? It just seems like summer went by ZIP this year.  Two things this week: Back-to-School-Night is on Wednesday and we have a garage sale on Saturday.  Back to school night is when the children take all their school supplies and we get all the paperwork squared away, etc. so all we have to do is show up on the first day of school ready to go!  Not so sure about how that garage sale is going to go so I tried to keep things simple for meals.  Missy is making cookies to sell at the garage sale so she's making those on Friday (peanut butter, sugar, chocolate chip and snicker doodle - yes, she's ambitious). Here's what we're eating this week: Sunday, August 30:      Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs, Zucchini Bread      Lunch and Snack: At a local festival ...

How long has it been since I've done one of these posts?  It feels like forever! This week I stopped at two shops, harvested produce from our garden and picked up our CSA share - we have SO MUCH food in the house right now.  Such a good problem to have, no? I had hoped to spend less this week but we made salsa and John requested chips to it with and the children are eating enough fruit for an army lately (10lbs or better per week!) so we needed to stock up a bit.  We do have a cantaloupe and an avocado from last week in the fruit department but that was it.  And that includes the plums and raspberries we received from the CSA.  I almost didn't buy the pork loin but John asked me to - we love those pork loins and haven't had one for quite  while.  We'll try to stretch it for two meals when we do eat it. Here's the CSA for the week and bit of what we got from our garden:   Back row: Potatoes with Swiss Chard laying on top, Sw...

What I bought with my birthday money! Another week and that means it's time for another Frugal Friday post! I totally forgot to put the picture above in my list last week so it's here now!  My Mother-in-law sent me $20 for my birthday and I had a $10 off a $10 purchase at Kohl's so I decided that I'd try to find some new workout tops.   I hate working out with sleeves on because I sweat so much so these were perfect!  Even better: they were all on sale so I was able to get the necklace and earring set too!  I got $1.69 back in change from my birthday money after everything above was paid for.  Whoot! It's been a pretty lazy week here - getting the house put back together after all the cleaning out we've done over the last few weeks and making a list of things that we actually need to purchase (another shelf for the utility room, a rug to replace the carpet ripped up in the living room, etc.).  Most are bigger purchases but we'll do the...

It's been so busy here the last few weeks and I am SO tired.  We have quiet week off before having to jump into the frey again.  In the last two weeks we visited my cousin up on the "Iron Range" in Northern Minnesota and then spent several days camping at one of Minnesota's beautiful state parks.  It was a fun and frugal vacation and now we get to ramp up to school starting again.  Much of Minnesota starts school after Labor Day so we don't start school until September 8th this year.  Here's what we did these last couple weeks in terms of "frugal things": * Baked four loaves of French Bread. * Blanched and froze green beans and sugar snap peas. * Used saw horses and a couple of old doors to make "tables" for our garage sale. * Went to visit my cousin and her husband for several days. We stayed at their house and they fed us.  My cousin stays with us when she comes to visit so they were pleased to reciprocate.  And we enjoyed havin...

Our CSA share this week. Clockwise from bottom left: Onions, cucumbers, Russet potatoes, Beets, Green Beans, Savory, Rosemary, Zucchini, Garlic.  In the middle: A long bell pepper and sweet peas. Wow! Has it really been three weeks since I posted?  Where on earth does the time go? Sorry for being AWOL (absent without leave, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term).  I have several posts half done and had all kinds of grand plans for posting this summer and - woosh - right out the window they went! My only excuse, and not a very good one at that, is that we've been super busy! We had unplanned company for two weeks, I turned 40, we celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary, we tore our one set of storage shelves and installed an "office in a closet" instead, cleaned out a whole bunch of junk stuff from our house and had a thrift/yard sale, and weeded the garden like a pair of maniacs.   We also attended Family Camp for John's Internship...