In The Refiner's Fire

These are from our Christmas Day Tea from last year.  Since Advent starts in just over a week, we're doing a little planning around here! We've been pretty busy the last two weeks. I still feel that I haven't "caught up" yet and I probably won't until the semester is over.  I did put together a calendar with all the things that I want and need to do before Christmas Eve all planned out.  I'm not sure how it will work, but I'm giving it a try, anyway! We redid our budget a couple weeks ago at the beginning of November and basically found out that things are far tighter than we had initially planned. Some expenses have been higher, some income has been lower, and there are some unanticipated expenses that have popped up. So I scrapped any plans to buy anything other than food and gasoline for the cars between now and at least January (probably longer) unless we have gift card.  I have plenty to keep myself busy so it should be perfectly d...

Another week!   Here we go! The last week has been crazy busy - I spent the entire weekend resting and trying to catch up.  I'm glad and feel blessed that I can do that occasionally without huge penalties in other areas of my life. We have a quiet week and I'm grateful that this week is slow before the week of Thanksgiving, which is always so full.  We spent our entire two-week grocery budget this week and stocked up on several things this week.  I'm hoping to find the money to purchase a turkey or two this week but I'm not planning on buying more groceries between now and Thanksgiving unless I can find that money.  We have plenty of everything so I'm hoping that's not a problem.  Some of the things we stocked up on: Potatoes, carrots, canned beans and fruit, ground beef, soda crackers, and baking supplies.  I also bought some tea and nuts, which I don't buy very often but are on great sale around here right now. Here's what we're eating: ...

A full rainbow arc a few weeks ago - food for the soul! We're supposed to have beautiful weather this week - I'm so excited!  I feel like we've had rain for the last month.  My head knows we haven't, though we have had quite a bit.  I'm hoping to get some more yard work done this week even though we have gotten enough done that we would be just fine if the rest didn't get done.  I'm amazed at how much quicker things go now that the children are old enough to be a real help.  Time to rake the giant amount of leaves we get in our front yard: 1 1/2 hours.  Unbelievable.  When they were toddlers, we had to take turns or "work together" while the children "helped" and it would take a day or two.  I think I'm going to be totally spoiled by their help in the next few years! We have another quiet week this week.  My son is having a friend sleep over on Friday and John is on call on Friday also but that's it for "excitement...

My son took this photo of a lone little red tree a few weeks ago out of our rainy car window.  I'm already missing the fall colors - our weather is glorious and being outside is fun but I feel like I missed the "real" fall! Friday was a bit of whirlwind and so was Saturday so this got written WAY too late on a Saturday evening.  We had a thankfully quiet week and I'm hoping for another quiet week before a couple of busy weekends and weeks ahead and the rush of the holidays. Here's what we did this week in the frugal realm: * Redid the budget for the next 10 months. Ouch.  We had some sort of misunderstanding or miscommunication about what John would be earning while in residency this year and needed to revamp everything .  It was really difficult and more than slightly disheartening to see those numbers in black and white. We have several costly things that we really need to complete this year and now we're not sure how we're go...

Hello everyone! I have no photo this week either - mostly because I'm feeling TERRIFIC after weeks, and weeks, and weeks (literally 6 months) of being in constant, awful pain.   I'm feeling great and have spent the last few days tackling project after project of things that I've been putting off because I just haven't been feeling well enough to do them.  I'm so glad to be feeling like myself again!  I'm not sure if it will last but I'm hoping that if it doesn't, the downturns are short-lived and rare.  In the meantime, I am going to enjoy it as much as I can. We redid our overall budget as of November 1, and we're budgeting $200/month for all groceries, toiletries and paper products that we need. What that means on a day-to-day (week to week?) basis is that we'll have $80 in hand every two weeks for shopping and the other $20 set aside for our CSA and any bulk purchases we decide to make.  So, having spent $60.81 this week, we have $19.19 ...

* Sooo, I totally wrote this post and saved it instead of publishing it!  It's only Tuesday but it's been that type of week around here already....   SIGH. I was going through my photos and found this one of some of the last produce we picked from the garden - tomatoes and some very small peppers - I LOVE the colors! We're into fall here - but we're supposed to have a warm week.  I'm hoping "they" are right and we can get some much needed yard work done.  It's always amazing to me how fast the yard fills up with leaves once the trees start to drop them.   I think lots of raking is on the agenda this week! We don't have anything extra or special in our calendar this week - just our normal weekly activities - so we're pretty excited about having a more quiet week than the past few.  We tried three new recipes a little while ago for the crockpot and they were all delicious.  This week we're trying one more new one and resurrecting one ...