Hello Winter!
I can't say that I'm ever ready for you
But I must admit, you are pretty.
It feels like a cozy, curl up with a blanket and a book kind of a day. Sadly, I don't have a book; maybe a nap would work too? I did listen to a book last week -- Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. It is a heartbreaking fictional story, based on one of America's most notorious real-life scandals -- in which Georgia Tann, director of a Missouri based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country. Be prepared to not be able to stop once you get started.
I don't really have anything thrilling or noteworthy to talk about but I thought I might just scribble down a few bits and pieces of general interest with no particular rhyme or reason.
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I like to sew. However, I don't particularly like to cut the items out that need to be sewed. Even more particularly, I don't like when it's been months since you've sewed a dress for a growing daughter and it's necessary to re-measure things and tweek patterns, etc. Worse yet is when you've done all of that, sewed the dress, and the try on session reveals that it just doesn't quite fit right. If there's anything I do hate about sewing, it's needing to rip things all apart and re-do them. Ask me why this is all fresh on my mind.... Sigh.
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Cooking is forever a thorn in my flesh. I complain about it way, way too much. In an effort to cut out my daily pleas for supper ideas, my longsuffering husband implemented a plan and exhorted me to stick with it.
He even printed me up
these nifty little lists
It actually really does help to have a plan, since the biggest part of my cooking struggle is deciding what to cook. My problem now is getting the children to fill out the list for me. It's actually rather funny. For all that my husband and I are opposites, in this area we are so much the same: we're terrible at sticking to any kind of a plan. When we come up with a new plan around here, pretty sure our children just smile because they know it won't last long.
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This fall our church started having "small groups" again. (We're split into groups of 4 or 5 families + some singles and each group does something together every other week or so.) I have really been enjoying our group. Our gatherings have been very informal with a small snack and lots of children playing loudly. What I have loved most though, is listening to each other briefly tell our life stories. I keep wondering to myself what would happen if we did this more? So much of who we are is shaped by our childhood, our family, the community we were raised in; things we often know very little about even after attending the same church for years. It's been so interesting and illuminating.
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A blog that I follow recently wrote a post tilted Notes From An Untrendy Person. It made me chuckle and think of several pictures I snapped recently and sent to my sister. One of them was this one taken at our local Wal-Mart, with this message --
"And we used to hunt high and low
for long socks!"
The other was a picture of a homemade baby dress some etsy shop was selling for forty dollars, made from the exact pattern I used for my own little girls back in the day. I'm not sure what I'm waiting on? Quite sure I have some of those vintage dresses stored away in a tote in the attic....
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I really should get off of this cozy chair and try to get something else accomplished. Besides, it's past lunch time and I'm hungry. Also, I need to decide -- if the sewing is this evening, and I take three children with me, do I stick to the meal plan for tonight or deviate to something more suitable for less people? I tell you, the need to eat is just a major complication in this life.
Got any tidbits of life you'd like to share? I'd be happy to listen...
13 comments:
"I tell you, the need to eat is just a major complication is this life" has me laughing and I plan to remember that n use it at appropriate moments. :) there is no such thing as "kitchen thereapy" for me, rather I need therapy after I've been in the kitchen to long.... Maybe a couple hours at the sewing machine to try to reverse the damages. :)
I remember the days of searching for long socks. I enjoy cooking but I don't like menu planning. Maybe you all could fill in my menu planner. 😉
Okay tidbits from my life:
I'm still needing to finish a quilt top I started months ago. I really want to finish it so maybe tomorrow I could get it done.
Youngest daughter has a severe cold and ear infection so she is on a round of antibiotics. My poor baby girl. Okay she's 18 almost 19 but she is still my baby.
Our church is going through the book of Luke and our pastor came to our mid week group Bible study last week with lots of study notes just on the first four verses of chapter one! A lot of notes and quite overwhelming. I'm looking forward to this study.
My ladies small group is studying The Sermon on the Mount and we are on the section on fasting. This should be interesting to read.
I want an Instant Pot but I don't need one. But I really want one.
Been crocheting mittens for first the last few months but I have trouble with the thumb and getting the first couple of stitches in the correct spot. And my mitten tops are flat and not round. Whatup with that?
Dinner is almost ready so I shall arise off my comfy couch and get ready to feed my hungry family.
Have a blessed week!
I'm with you there! 😁
Enjoyed reading your tidbits!
"What I have loved most though, is listening to each other briefly tell our life stories. I keep wondering to myself what would happen if we did this more? So much of who we are is shaped by our childhood, our family, the community we were raised in; things we often know very little about even after attending the same church for years. It's been so interesting and illuminating."
I love this!
My own meal planning has evolved a lot over time. Currently I plan three meals a day seven days a week, two weeks at a time. At first it was overwhelming to plan that much, but I now have almost ten months of meal plans to look back on and the actual planning part goes rather quickly. I still dread it and put it off as long as possible though. One simple thing that helps for supper is to have seven categories and choose something from each. So I'll have a soup on Monday, casserole on Tuesday, breakfast for supper on Wed, mexican on Thurs, etc. Some categories overlap of course. Other categories I've used are sandwiches, easy to make meals, meat and potatoes, chicken, and italian. I wish I enjoyed cooking more, too, because three times a day for 6-7 people doesn't excite me.
Oh my. You are a hero! I really only plan one meal a day around here during the school year... unless you count that leftovers from supper need to be useable for packed lunches the next day. Breakfast is generally cereal/ everyone finds/ makes their own.
Bless you, mama. Good job!
I am glad that German meal planning is so much easier than American. We only have one warm meal per day (either lunch or supper). In the morning we eat cereal or bread with butter and jam or honey - and fruit. The other meal is bread with butter and cheese or "Wurst", which means salami/ham/cold cuts... and vegetables (tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers).
But even with only one warm meal per day I often don`t know what to write on my cooking list. Yesterday we had a casserole consisting of rice, fried ground meat, cauliflower and sauce bechamel.
I like the part about your church groups!
-Rike
Rike, that's so interesting about German meal planning - German people I know seem to eat a lot of cold cuts but I never knew it was 'established' like that. Now that I think of it, having just one hot meal a day isn't at all unusual here, either: maybe cereal for breakfast, and sandwiches for lunch.
I don't enjoy cooking and I find that the easiest meal is also one of the tastiest: just a chunk of frozen meat (usually beef) in the crock pot, plus enough halved or quartered potatoes and carrots to fill the pot. Salt and pepper, but no extra liquid: the frozen meat adds more than enough moisture. I often add quartered onions or a few garlic cloves, and maybe mushrooms and a bay leaf and/or other herbs and spices, but they aren't necessary.
The key is to not eat it the first day! It won't taste nearly as good. Cook it low for most of one day or night, let it cool and sit, and then cook it again the next day and cool it slightly before you want to eat. Everyone just fishes out what they want onto a plate or into a bowl. It isn't pretty but it's tasty. We often eat it with relish. It's even better on the third day if you dare!
I am always comforted when I read words like "Cooking is forever a thorn in my flesh." Another keeper at home; virtuous woman; that struggles with something that I'm supposed to enjoy, something I learned from my mother and should love...why, it's expected of me! Who ever thought that not all females just love it!? "Cooking is forever a thorn in my flesh." There is someone out there who feels like I do!
A little tip, and you already alluded to it, is to have a plan. For me, knowing what to make is over half of the battle. Once that's determined, I know how to go about it! So I try to fill in my weekly meal plan (free printable from contentedathome.com) for the week, on Monday morning. I do not enjoy reading cookbooks, and almost feel sick to the stomach by the time my week's filled in. If I feel ambitious, (and not sick) I might do the second week, and oh how I love that come the next Monday morning!!
“Cooking is forever a thorn in my flesh” but onetime I found a recipe on your blog, that my family loves. Your “man catching oven baked fried chicken.” So that’s my tidbit to share with you.
Oh thank you for that tidbit! 🙂🙂
Sometimes I get so bogged down with how much I dislike cooking and how much I wish I would enjoy it and that really helps nothing. I need to work harder at finding strategies to at least make it more workable!
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