In The Refiner's Fire

The beautiful sunrise one morning this past week. I spent a bunch of time just looking at it.    We've had a lot of blessings this month, the sunrise above is just the beginning:     Watching the Rose Parade on TV to ring in the New Year.   A retirement party for a beloved co-worker.   My husband's 42nd Birthday.   Two meals out - one with a gift card and one at a fundraiser.  Such a treat this month!   The ability to sleep in several days this month.   Catching up the ironing.  (Hurray!)    Having plenty to eat on a tight budget.   5th Grade Boy's Basketball.   Board games to play as a family.   New insulation in the attic.   Sunshine after so many days of gray and snow.   Acupuncture.   This has been such a huge help with my PHN!   Advil. So grateful I live in a time when this is available and safe!   Ordering...

And yes, I know it's still January, but today's shopping starts our February budget since I do my shopping for the coming week on Saturday.  We're still keeping our $100/month for everything we need grocery, toiletry, and paper product wise this month. We spent $51.94 on the above groceries at one store.  Everything in the first picture was an even $20 - that came to right about $1/lb for everything in the picture.  We have about 16-17 pounds of apples and pears, 2 lbs of onions and the two limes.  The store was running a $20 promo - fill a bag with a variety of things from a particular bin for $20.  Other options, aside from what we purchased, were potatoes (which we bought separately for $0.33/lb), winter squash (which we still have in our pantry), red bell peppers (which didn't look good), oranges, and grapefruit (both of which we already have in the fridge). In the bottom picture (plus a gallon of milk) the pricing broke down like this: 10...

Lanyard on Left: The original.  All the rest: What we ended up with! So, I've been trying to come up with homemade gifts for our children's myriad of teachers that don't involve food.  Since I don't know what teachers have allergies or likes/dislikes food-wise, I need to come up with something else. A vendor came in to my workplace a few months before Christmas and left a re-useable tote bag with about 40 of these blue lanyards (in the picture on the left) for us to hand out as propaganda to whoever.  They were nice and sturdy and the key clip was nice.  The key clips can separate from the rest of the lanyard fairly simply so they are easy to use.  The problem?  The company logo was in BOLD letters on the other side of the lanyard (ideally, the front side of the lanyard so everyone knows what company they are from).   My co-workers were just going to throw them away so I brought several home, sure I could do something with them.  I h...

So after a long discussion, John and I decided to move the grocery budget from $80 to $100 and to continue at that rate for the foreseeable future.  I've been feeling quite like a failure in that I missed my $80 mark this month.  I do understand that food prices have gone way up and we were not starting with a fully-stocked pantry, etc. like we have for our other challenges we've had in the past.  Going forward for the next few months, we're going to be spending $100/month on groceries, toiletries and paper products.  That leaves us with an extra $60/month to put toward our medical debt.  YAY! Given that, I stopped at my least favorite place to shop and purchased the above for $15 and change.  That brings us in right under $100 for the month of January. I bought: * 3lbs apples * 3lbs pears * 18 ct flour tortillas * 2lbs white onions * 2lbs carrots *2.something lbs bananas * 5lb flour * diced olives * evaporated milk ...

My daughter's American Girl Doll - looking cozy for winter! 1. Celebrate my husband's birthday .   Done! 2. Deep clean the kitchen , living room and main bathroom .           Washed the walls in the kitchen and two of four walls in the living room and cleaned out the coat closet this week.           I also cleaned my oven.  Yikes! 3. Sew a Memory Quilt for a relative that recently lost a family member.          I did get this all laid out this week.  Need to sew it next week - hoping to send it by Valentine's Day.  Then she'll have it for her loved one's birthday the beginning of March. 4. Finish a set of scrapbooks for a church event.        Did a bit of journaling in the ones that were almost done - those are finished now.  I have two more (of 6 total) to finish now. ...

My daughter's favorite bath soak - great for her sore feet after dance class! Wow - what a week.  And I overdid it physically this week, so I'm hoping to lay low this weekend and do some sewing and a bunch of planning.  I inventoried our cupboards a while back and decided that I wasn't going to buy more of certain things without using up what we have first.  The bath soak in the picture above is one thing that I will wait to replace.  My daughter was super sad - she loves this stuff - but I have several other kinds to use up.  I did find out where I could get more and I'm quite positive this is what we'll get going forward!  I love it too. So, the name of the game this week has been using what we have in the house rather than buying more.  I did buy my son one pair of pajama pants - he grew enough that he needed some NOW and I didn't have the time to make any this week.  I found a pair on clearance for under $5 so now he has a pair to last...

The Dance Tote Bag I made for my daughter for Christmas! She loves it! So, I made this tote bag for my daughter for Christmas - I apologize for the mediocre photo (all the good ones have her face in them!).  I used an online tutorial I found here and it took me about 3 hours with several interruptions to make this bag.  I do sew but sporadically and I'm pretty impatient about it so this wasn't a difficult project to do and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!  The tutorial shows a serger, which I don't have, so you can totally make this without one.  Just backstitch and clip your seams.  Before sewing the inside and the outside of the bag together, I added an extra pocket (square flap sewed with a pleat on each end) and two loops of elastic to hold my daughter's dance shoes.  The extra pocket holds her jazz shoes and the two loop each hold one tap shoe.  I used her shoes to measure the size I needed for these and sewed them into the ins...