In The Refiner's Fire

White Cosmos in our garden. Summer is half over already - wow!  I have finished my summer term class and am enjoying some well-deserved time at home.  I have a few meetings and things that I need to be in at work for over the rest of summer but for the most part, I am off until the end of August!  It has been a year with a lot of mentally and physically taxing things going on and I am grateful for the break. My garden is going well this year!  I have had continuous flowers and have been able to have a bouquet of flowers from my garden on my kitchen table every day since the middle of May!  This has long been a goal of mine and I am ecstatic to have reached it!  My garden is mostly perennials and a few flowers that reseed themselves each year, so very inexpensive and only requires time, mulch and maybe some water (depending on the weather) to maintain.  I typically buy a few annual starts but I can grow those from seed if needed in the future or ...

Our beautiful pink peony this year!  YAY! I feel like I've been jumping in and out of this space this spring - our lives have been so busy and blogging has gotten pushed to the bottom of the to-do list.  We had company at our home for six weeks plus a few other visitors, our children finished Middle School and took a class trip to another state, my spring term ended and summer session started, John had several baptisms to officiate and a funeral, and all the normal spring activities.  We have had all the spring yard work as well - deep weeding, planting, mulching, trimming and seeding the lawn.  It has been a lot of time together and with others and have done a lot of physically and mentally difficult work.  It has been good and time consuming and I'm grateful for our spring. Here are some things we have done in the month of June that we see as frugal: *  We made several types of soup, dinner rolls, bread, rhubarb crisp, rhubarb...

My beautiful hanging baskets! Wow!  I am having a hard time believing that May is almost over - it just went -zip- and now it's almost done. It has been so chilly here for the month of May. Typically we're into the 50's and 60's F for early morning temperatures.  Right now we're in the 40's F.  And rainy!  Wow, the amount of rain we have received lately.  What it does mean is that things are greening up nicely.  But we have had to cover plants at night a few times. We have had rhubarb in the garden as well as a little asparagus from our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share.  Other than that, the lettuce is almost in and the radishes are making a good start.  In about another month we'll start having a larger amount of garden produce.  In the meantime, we will enjoy the rhubarb! Here is what we are eating this week: Sunday, May 26, 2019:     Breakfast: Toast, Mango-Banana Smoothies     Lunch:...

Our daughter made English Toffee one evening.  It turned out delicious! May is always a busy time with getting the garden in and all the end-of-school-year activities, both for me and for the children.  We are looking forward to camping this summer and a few other "bucket list" items before the children start high school this fall.  I am a bit amazed that they are that old already (how did that happen?!).  I am so enjoying the people they are growing into! Here are the frugal things we have done the beginning of May: * Had preventative maintenance done on the air conditioning system before we needs it.  Discovered a major problem caused by rodents (ick!) and had it fixed. We have a maintenance plan so we only had to pay for parts out of pocket.  We pay a flat rate every month for our maintenance plan and it includes all visits, routine maintenance, filters, and a variety of other things.  We received a small discount on the parts because of th...

Baklava!  I made baklava this last week for a school event. YUM! I did some baking trying two new recipes this past week -  all from items we had in our house.  I had purchased phyllo dough several months ago for something different that never was made.  I used it to make baklava. I also made English toffee for an event at my children's school this past week. Both turned out very well - yum!  Baklava was not a low-cost recipe, so I will probably not make it often but it was a fun treat and I now know how to make it relatively well.  The English toffee turned out very good and was inexpensive to make, so we will make that more often. We did not spend much this week and are eating mostly from the freezers and pantry. I will be inventorying the freezers and the pantry this week to put together a menu for May as much as possible.  Here is what we are eating this week: Sunday, April 28, 2019:     Breakfast: Yogurt and Toast ...

Our budding rhubarb - before I cleaned out the flower bed of all the winter leaves.  It has grown so much since this photo and I am so excited for rhubarb this spring! We did not buy much this weekend - our freezers are full and so is our pantry and we need to eat some of it down before all the summer produce starts to come in. I had a short stack of Target gift cards that I had earned using their in-store deals (buy so much and receive a $5 gift card) and I decided to use some of those for part of today's purchase.  We then went to the grocery store and did the rest of our shopping.  My children put the groceries away before I could take a photo - so I gave you a photo of our rhubarb sprouts instead!  It is early here yet - the southern part of the state received snow this week (we did not).  I will not be planting vegetables outside for another 2 weeks, though I did start seedlings inside. Here is what we bought this weekend: Target: $11.97...

Our Rhubarb Pant, Approximately 1 Week Ago.  It is now about three times as big. Holy Week is always busy for a Pastor and their family.  This year was no exception!   And I feel like I have run a sprint for the last two weeks and have been grateful for the days of the Easter holiday off school and work so I can get myself back together.  I also feel like we have spent quite a bit of money in the last two weeks - quarterly taxes were due, the children needed new shoes for Easter, and we completed a few small household repairs.  In the midst of all that, here are a few things we did that are frugal: * We enjoyed almost all our meals at home.  The exceptions were: Easter Sunday, where we ate all three meals either at church or with friends; Palm Sunday with the brunch at church, and a couple of Wednesday evenings with Lenten dinners, also at church.  * Our friends gifted us leftovers after Easter dinner. * I made bread, spiced carrot ca...