In The Refiner's Fire

These last two weeks have flown by for a variety of reasons and I'm absolutely shocked that August starts next week!   Where on earth did summer go?   We are still waiting for First Call and enjoying some extra time together.  I'm really enjoying the warmer weather and the time in my garden.   We're still trying to watch pennies and dollars and figure out how to make it through this period of waiting.  We've had plenty of rain so the garden is doing well (and so are the weeds!). Here's what we've done the last two weeks that count as frugal: * Pitted and froze sour cherries. * Sliced and froze bananas. * Attended a free outdoor concert at a local establishment.  The music was fantastic! * Brought home a package of hamburger buns and several cooked hamburger patties leftover from a church dinner. * Friends gave us extra zucchini from their garden.  I didn't plant any this year since we usually get plenty through our ...

This week has been blessedly quiet, in spite of having to run places a couple of days this week.  I feel like I've actually been able to relax a bit and catch up on a few things.  Above is a photo of what I picked from the garden one day - a handful of string beans, a "chocolate" sweet pepper (that sausage looking thing in the middle there!) and a large handful of mixed lettuce to go with the kale from our CSA.  I've been spending a bit of time every non-rainy day in the garden and I'm thoroughly enjoying it!   I think I've finally hit the "sweet spot" with the flowers in my garden too.  We used to have gaps during the summer where there were no flowers blooming, which always made me a bit sad.  This year they've been continuous and I've been thoroughly delighted!  I've had cut flowers on my kitchen table every day - which has been a goal of mine for years.  Simple things that make me so happy! It's been both a fairly frugal we...

My pea plant seedlings - coming back well. Hopefully we'll get peas this year! My summer goals are kind of opposite and two-fold - first, relax and second, finish up several things on my to-do list!  I've put together a tentative schedule and we're going to work on sticking with it.   I have some fun things to do with the children and I'm hoping to have at least two or three days each week that we don't have to drive anywhere.    That will allow us quite a bit of time to do things that we need to get completed. Here's my to-do list for July: Work: * Prep Unit 1 & 2 for both of my fall classes * Finish research summary Family: * Read 2-3 books aloud to the children * Attend two meeting with John (for his call process) * Host a birthday party for our daughter (her birthday was in May but she wanted her party in July) * Play 4 board games with the children * One date out with John * Visit three free or nearly free events/museums/locations...

My girlie picking raspberries this weekend.  She's getting so tall and grown up!  We have a week with lots of little things - I'm giving some perennials that are ready to be split to a friend, I have a doctor's appointment, and we have several church events this week.  Most of the day time will be spent at home and I'm happy to not have the daily drive in to work right now.  A slower pace is a welcome change for a while.    Other things on the to-do list are to start getting ready for our Daughter's birthday party in two weeks and to get some much-needed housecleaning done. I'm also hoping to get the weeding caught up after all the rain we had last week and finish our niece's graduation gift.  If I have time I'd like to do some other sewing too.  We'll see.  I'm hoping for a few hours of physical/mental work each day with leisure reading and creative items scattered throughout.    Here's what we're eating this week: ...

We have a week of food "stuff" here at our house!  The garden is slowly starting to produce - we've been picking lettuce, basil and strawberries every day for a couple of weeks and today it was a handful of beans to add to that.  Here's today's harvest:   We also got three strawberries that we promptly ate!   We've been averaging 2-6 per day with the strawberries so we've just been eating them as they come.  They're little and sweet.  I'm hoping that next year we can have more as the plants mature more.   I had to cut back the kale since it was getting eaten by something.  Hopefully it will recover - I'd love to make some kale chips.  Peppers and tomatoes should be ripe end of this week or next week, depending on the weather.  I can't wait!   We also gleaned raspberries and cherries from a friend's yard today.  She was starting to compete with the birds so put out a call for friends to come and pick.  ...

  The children were at church camp last week.  My son left his plush wolf with me with strict instructions to take good care of him.  Each day I took a photo of "Mr. Wolfie" doing something my son enjoys - here playing on the tablet.  We could email the children each day so I sent a photo each day - this was our son's favorite.  The one of Mr. Wolfie helping me weed the tomatoes?  Not so much! It's officially summer here - summer session is over and the weather is beautiful and warm, some days hot.  I'm ready for summer!   I have two goals for the rest of this summer: Cross some things off my to do list and get a lot of rest.    Those two things sound opposite but I think we can make it work - slow and steady wins the race here I'm pretty sure!  Many of the things I'd like to cross off are little or things that I consider fun (finishing up some sewing and crafting projects!), so I'm really looking forward to my summ...