Cleaning Day

Saturday is cleaning day at our house and last week was an extra fun one for me. Every time I turned around Little Guy was doing a job I never even asked him to do. Yes, it did take me a whole week to share...perhaps you have not read the post on the quantity of missions forms we have to fill out? Most of them are done and sent off now, but on to cleaning day...

I asked him to clean the sink, but he volunteered to do the bathtub too! I am noticing how tall he is in this pic , guess we don't need the step stool in there anymore.

Then he dusted the TV stand without suggestion, followed by dust mopping the house. A mom could get used to this!

I surprised him with some Octonauts magnets too. Just printed pics and put sticky magnet pieces on the back. They were a big hit and is one of his favorite shows.

Window Quilts

I am going for it! I am making window quilts. I am even hand sewing the blocks, except 1 which is my seam allowance guide. It all started out with Adam running out of window plastic and saying, "I don't want to buy more, every." Well, I was ready with a solution  window quilts. Hand stitching is coming along quite slowly and I will switch to the machine when I need them done more quickly. At the moment I am just enjoying it as a leisure activity. Plus I have had the pieces cut for a quilt for my room for nearly 7 years and now they are finally getting put to good use!

You can see some of the hand stitching on this block.

I think they are going to be great! They will keep us from buying plastic and throwing it away every year, yay green! With the unseasonably warm weather we have been having occasionally  it also means that we can open the windows one day and have the winterized the next. That will be esspecially nice when spring comes around. You never know what the weather is going to be like in southern MN. They will look great too. As for living in the dark...we tend to keep the curtains shut in the winter for warmth anyway, so it still would have been dark.

Some of the finished blocks...can you guess the one that is machine stitched?

Easy Cooking

Freezer cooking, it is all the rage in homemaking right now! I only have 1 small freezer to work with so I don't have space for pre-made pans and typical pop it in the oven packages. We did store away 16 meals and some pancakes in the last week though and I am looking forward to having less prep in the kitchen in November. Here is a shot of my little stash...

I will start at the top left:

Veggie Soup
Pre-chopped cabbage, onion, carrots, and potato. This will go in the crock pot for 6-8 hours on low with a large can of tomato sauce and water to top it off, seasonings too.

Pork Stir fry
Pre-chopped carrot, cabbage, and onion and a baggie of cut and cooked pork. This one will get stir fried and go on rice.

Broccoli Beef Pasta
Chopped broccoli and cooked and cut beef in another baggie. This one is tossed with pasta when cooked.

Creamy Chicken Potato Soup
Cut potatoes and chicken. This will go in the crock pot for 6-8 hours with 2 cans of cream of chicken and water to top it off, seasonings too.

Then there are freezie pops, great for winter fevers, and about a dozen packets of pancakes for Adam to take with him to work on those 5 am days.

Honestly, We are winging it! I came up with an idea for what to put in each bag and we did it. Will it urn out? Who knows! We have fun experimenting in our kitchen and have really gotten a knack for cooking with whatever we happen have available. What do you like to pre make?

Pizza Day

It is Saturday and in our house that means pizza day! Normally I make 1 very large pizza and we have half for lunch and the rest for supper. Last night at the grocery store Jayne really wanted to have  Lunchables pizza packs. You know the ones with the little crusts and you build your pizza with lots of highly processed foods and cheese flavored shreds. I said yes. Before you get to thinking that I bought us a pile of Lunchables, I made it from scratch! Instead of using my crust for a huge pizza I made little ones and baked it on it's own. Then we built our pizzas with real cheese, sauce, and pepperoni  Jayne loved it! It was a lot more work than 1 pizza, but it was fun and tasted great. Here is a pic of our extra special pizza day...

August Menu

I just finished up our August menu. I haven't really shared over the summer since we already lost one computer to the heat, I was not going to push it with the last working computer in our house. This menu is also starting on our first month of school. The quick and easy method of many of the recipes will be great as we get the swing of kindergarten.

SundaysHay Stacks (All Recipes App)
Hamburger Casserole (Quick and Easy Crock Pot Recipes Kindle book)

Mondays
Tuna Cheese Quesadillas
Pasta

Tuesdays
Cold Cut Spirals
Beef Salad

Wednesdays
Brats
Soup

Thursdays
Cheeseburger Quesadillas
Chow Mein (Jayne has decided this is his fave)

Fridays
Cold Cut Spirals
Cheese and Veggie Casserole (Quick and Easy Crock Pot Recipes)

Saturdays
Pizza Quesadillas
Baked Spam

Long Term Goals

Sorry I haven't written in a while, life just happens at lightning speed sometimes! We have been talking long term goals for a few months now. See, we had worked on my staying home for about 7 years. It was a long term goal that started before we even thought of having a baby. I have been home for about 8 months now and I love it! It feels a bit like limbo though. When you achieve a long term goal it sort of leaves you with this "what now?" sort of feeling.

We talked about traveling or the possibility of buying a new house. We just couldn't quite latch on to a goal that meant buying things and spending money. We would still like to travel at some point but there is no urgency to spur us on. It cam to me the other day and I suggested it to sort of test the waters...

"Wouldn't it be cool if you could stay home too? we could run The Crazy Elephant together."

It was like the light bulb turned on for us. Since I have been a stay at home mom (although work at home might describe it better), I have built a pretty good business for myself with The Crazy Elephant. In fact, if we had 0 debt The Crazy Elephant could almost support us as it is now, no changes. So, we made being a stay at home family our new long term goal with the mind set of accomplishing our goal in 5-10 years!

Here is the plan:

Phase 1 - Pay off all of our debt! Adam's calculations show that if I contribute about half of my profits to debt reduction, we should be debt free in just under 4 years...that includes the house! We also are doing a remodel of the shop to really put our best foot forward and re-pricing for a sustainable store.

Phase 2 - Complete any major home improvement projects and buy a car. They are the things we want, not need, but should do before Adam stays home.

Phase 3 - The nest egg! Things happen sometimes and we want to be prepared. We will be making sure we have a nice big cushion.

It feels great to have a long term goal again! I almost wish I could fast forward to see how it turns out, but then I would miss all the fun along the way.

Pizza Building Party

This weekend we had Jayne's uncles over and we had a pizza building party for supper. We made a homemade crust and divided it among us, then each person made their own pizza. It was so much fun and we got to all do it together. Everyone tried something new and our supper tasted great!

Adam makes a stuffed crust and Jayne tastes some pepperoni.

Jayne nibbles on all the stray cheese that fell on the table.

Everyone gets the final touches done on their pizzas.

You can find the piza recipe that we use here.

I Heart Quesadillas

In other words, I have turned quesadillas into heart! We made them the other day and they were quite tasty. They were even better than I thought they would be. I had nothing ot go on. I just tossed some things together and it turned out. Our quesadillas had tuna, cheddar, and a touch of pepper and garlic salt. Then it was time for the fun stuff. Adam's were made into hearts since I love him so much and they got packed up for him to take to work. Jayne got a car and a plane, not that I don't love him, he just likes cars and planes. I used some cookie cutters to make them and it worked great. They were a little harder to cut throuhg than I thought they would be, but not bad.

Adam's hearts

Jayne's car and plane, plus some tasty corn!

Frogs and Popcorn

No, they do not go together, but they do get to share a post! I have a couple of fun pics to share today. Here they are...

Adam made Jayne this super cute frog mask to keep him warm. We are still walking everywhere even though it is winter and this keeps his little face warm...as long as he keeps it on!

Jayne is always asking for "special" popcorn. I put candy in his popcorn once and now he always wants me to do something special with it. He has decided that this is his favorite. Stove top popcorn, a little salt, and bits of dried apples and pears. Healthy and delicious!

February Goals

Can you believe that tomorrow is February?! Winter will be over before we know it and I am already dreaming of rhubarb. Let's start by taking a look back on my January goals...

The Crazy Elephant did get a couple of V-day goodies but the focus turned to pads quickly and I chose to work on what everyone clearly wanted. We also got a large portion of our celebration chart done and it has been fun to watch us jump from less costly activities to larger ones as we get more orders.

Exercising for 130 minutes just doesn't seem feasible. I got close every week but always landed in between 120 and 130. I am still very happy with it though!

Reading through all of Exodus did not happen. We forgot just how many studies we were starting in January and we have been behind in all of them because we are trying to do them all.

So, now it is time to regroup and focus on what I want to accomplish in February.

*The Bible is awesome, but we are being overwhelmed with information right now and don't have time for them all. So, we will put our reading of the whole bible on hold until we get a break and leave our Sunday school study to Sunday morning. That leaves me 2 studies to work on at home, For Women Only and One Minute After You Die. Plus I will still get in an occasional chapter of Manna For Moms just for fun.

*The Crazy Elephant has really picked up the pace! We made a few changes that seem to have worked well. It is very important that I continue to get in at least 2 hours of TCE time each day plus computer and listing time. I would like to continue to see growth so it means it is time to kick it up a notch.

*I have been struggling to get everything in this January. Between Homeschooling, cleaning, cooking, TCE, and outside activities I have been feeling a little stretched. This month I really want to give my daily schedule a fighting chance and remember that I can make changes as needed. I am still trying to get the feel for this staying home thing and each month seems to get more organized and better maintained. With all the things I need to get done a schedule is going to be important so that things don't get missed.

That's about it for me. It's another month and I am sure each day will have a new surprise, be it good or bad. Are any of you adding a new goal for your month?

February Menu

I thought I would share with you all what our meal plan is for the month. Each week is the same and we do all of our shopping once per month. Adam does bring more home over the course of the month, like milk and other items that don't last a whole month. This month our grocery list cost us right around $150. We had a small amount of items left from the last month but we did need to buy most of them. So here is the menu...

Sundays
Lunch: Mac and Cheese (we always add to it or change it in some way)
Supper: Slow Cooker Lasagna (This meal lasts 3 weeks for us, leftovers get frozen)

Mondays
Lunch: Soup (we have 3 soups left over from last month and I will make a new soup from what we have laying around for the last 2 weeks)
Supper: Ramen noodle spaghetti

Tuesdays
Lunch: Tuna and Cheese Quesadillas
Supper: Hawaiian BBQ Chicken (This meal lasts 3 weeks for us, leftovers get frozen)

Wednesdays
Lunch: Grilled Cheese
Supper: Buffalo Chicken Lasagna (This meal lasts 3 weeks for us, leftovers get frozen)

Thursdays
Lunch: Mac and Cheese
Supper: Slow Cooker Cheesy ham potatoes (new recipe, but should last at least 2 meals)

Fridays
Lunch: Poor Mans Meal
Supper: Slow cooker Beef and Black eyed pea soup (new recipe again, but should last 3 meals)

Saturdays
PIZZA! This is the day our whole family looks forward to! We make a huge pizza from scratch and eat the whole thing between lunch and supper. Jayne makes his own too, although he has decided that he likes making bread sticks for everyone to share now.

Our menu this month has the most flavor variety of any of our menus. I am really excited to try the many new recipes. I will give you links to some of our recipes we will be using below...

Six Sister's Stuff:
Slow Cooker Lasagna
Hawaiian BBQ Chicken (slow cooker)
Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken Lasagna

Depression Cooking With Clara
Poor Man's Meal
(Clara has some great frugal recipes and you learn a little about the depression while you watch her cook)

Inspiration Needed!

The last few weeks have been crazy and we have had so many events to go to. One huge problem I am running into is that things have been piling up every week. It seems like no matter what I do I cannot get the house done lately. Yesterday I was not feeling well and took it easy for the day. Sometimes you just have to. Today I have gotten caught up on everything except my old enemy...dishes!

Normally they get done on a daily basis. I wash them and dry them and get them put away. It is a pretty easy job to do, on a daily basis. We have had so much going on this month though that it has been several days worth at a time and with holiday related cooking, it seems like the pile of dishes to do is never ending. I did the dishes on Saturday and now on Friday the whole counter is covered. In our small kitchen it is a cycle of wash, dry, put away. I can get throught the cycle about 3 times before the water is cold, if I am lucky.

I am just having a hard time staying motivated this month. My brain feels like sludge and I just plain don't want to put in the hour or more it will take to do this job. So, here I am, waiting for the motivated homemaker in me to step it up a bit and get started on the massive pile of dishes. In the meantime, I got a blog post in...that's good right?

What job gets you in a rut?

October Goals

It is goal time again already! To recap on last months goals...

*I brought the food budget from $175 to $133! Huge step but I will still work on tweeking it.
*I have thought of a couple of handmade gifts that I can make this year that are brand new and will most likely end up in my shop as well.
*I have been building up the listings in my shop and it has resulted in sales, YAY! I started the holiday bootcamp and even got in a new item, the super hero roll!

So now it is time to come up with my goals for October. It is a big month! Starting on October 1st, I will be a stay at home mom. That is a huge goal that is finally being accomplished. So here are the goals for the month...

* Work on a new daily routine that works with all of our new schedules. The new routine will include a sleep schedule, now that we can have one, and time for exercise and devotions.

*Have more quality family time. With our crazy combination of schedules over and more sleep to be had, we don't need to plop in front of the TV at the end of the day because we are too tired to do anything else. I am going to be coming up with a list of activity ideas so that when we say "what should we do tonight" there will be somewhere to go for ideas. I will make sure to share my list on here too so we can all have new ideas.

*Beside working hard on the Etsy holiday bootcamp, I want to get to 100 listings this month and then maintain that number. I have had a hard time growing my stock this month since my listings were being purchased as fast as I was listing them. So I want to get it up and keep it at that amount, minimum, for the whole holiday season.

So those are my 3 main focuses for the month plus my monthly planner pages. What are your plans for the month?

Special Routines



One of Jayne's pizza creations



We do a lot every week and tend to do roughly the same thing each week. The one day we all look forward to is Saturday. It is mostly the same as every other day of the week. Adam still works and I usually did too. What makes Saturday so much fun is that it is pizza day! Every Saturday we set aside an hour to make pizza from scratch. I mix up the dough and do the dishes while is rises for half an hour. Then the fun begins! I give Jayne a section of dough and we make pizza next to each other. Jayne makes his all by himself. He has to taste every single ingredient before it goes on the pizza. He is always so proud of his pizza and it is one of the few dishes that he simply devours at the table.

What special things do you do with your family?

Stretch It: Winterizing

Winterizing your house is a great way to save on your heating bills during the winter. That is a must here in Minnesota! There are 3 main things that we have done/do to make our home more efficient during the winter.

Insulate - You can go through and find spots that let in cold all over your house. The main spots for us were lighting fixtures and outlet/switch plates. For the lighting fixtures Adam cut circles out of a clear storage tote that got a crack in it. He drilled out the holes for the wires too. Then he removed (please take great care in this and make sure the power is off, use common sense!) the light fixture or ceiling fan and connected the wires through the plastic circle. This is really a 2 person job by the way. He caulked the circle to the ceiling and reattached the fixture. You can't see it at all and it keeps a considerable amount of cold air from coming in. The switch plates are much easier, though you should still be careful. You will need an exacto knife or something like it, a cutting board, and some light weight foam sheets (the kind that come in packages like the light weight foam around books you order online). Cut out the size you need and the holes in the center and screw it on under the plate. Super easy! Plus both of these were done with recycled materials and little cost.

Vacuum - The vents that is! We have baseboard heaters and last year we found out how to clean them. Take off the faceplate, again, be careful they are sharp. Then vacuum. It is as simple as that. It takes a lot of energy to heat through all that dust and debris. It is an easy way to make you heater more efficient, thus saving money. Take the time to find out how to clean your heating system, it pays off.

Plastic - Plastic sheeting on the windows will not win any beauty contest, but it will save you money. The shrinking kind that we get is relatively inexpensive and it helps a lot. How it works is this...The cold air touches the window and is released into the air. If there is no sheeting, that air is the inside of your house. With sheeting, the air is trapped between the window and the plastic. It has to go through 2 layers to get to the warm air inside. Our sheeting goes on the inside of the window which I prefer as I have to stare at the neighbors house with plastic on the outside for half the year and I can't say that I like the way it looks.

Please take care doing any of the projects I have listed here. They are quite easy to do, but don't do something stupid like get hurt in the process. I would really love to hear what all of you do to winterize your house. We could always stand to make our little house run a little better!

September Goals

It is a new month again! I love the fall, even if most of the month is "technically" still summer. We have a lot of big changes happening this month and it is going to mean a lot of work and planning. So here are my big 3 for the month...

* Research some new recipes to add to our menu planning to help get our food budget down, we have worked our way up to about $175 each month. We would like to get it back down to the $110 mark that it was at last winter.

* Start planning holiday gifts. We will be on a tight budget again this year, but we will be able to spend time with our families this year becasue I will no longer be working and that will be a great gift for us all!

* Begin work on the holiday season at The Crazy Elephant. With me being a work at home mom very soon, I need to put a huge focus on my shop as a source of income. I will have more time to work on it now and can treat it like my job, something I have wanted to be able to do for a while now. I will be working on Etsy's holiday boot camp toward the end of the month and I want to work hard to make it successful for me.

In case you have not caught it by now, I will be staying home very soon. We have been working on this goal for 5 years now and it is comming up. Our car's brake line broke on Saturday. We can't fix it till tomorrow at the earliest, but the cost of fixing it and time we can fix it will have a big impact on when I am done at work. In the meantime I am going to focus on my goals and look forward to personal success!

What are your goals this month? Share in the comments and inspire someone!

Sprucing Up My Pillows

The decorator pillows on our couch have seen better days. Now that is putting it lightly because one has ripped open across the whole zipper and the other has ripped open from side to side across the center of the pillow. They have been that way for a few weeks now and I finally got around to making them new again. I took 2 of our no longer worn shirts and turned them into pillow covers. It is as easy as sewing a square and they look so fun on the couch. Plus one is from a play I did in high school and it is fun to have the tee out where I can enjoy it. I also like not having pillow fluff sticking out all over my couch too!

My Homemaker's Journal

I mentioned before that I made a homemaker's journal. It is the cornerstone of our house! It has been so much easier to keep track of everything. It has been a lot of trial and error to get to where we are now. I will break it down for you. Keep in mind that this is what is working for me. Your family is different than mine, so you might not use the same technique.
The main tool is my planner. On the monthly pages I record appointments and schedules and what our school theme for the week is. On the weekly pages I write up my checklist. One side is for household projects and the other is for Crazy Elephant projects. Here is how a typical week plays out:

Monday: Laundry, list/update (TCE), sewing, getting photos ready for the week (TCE)
Tuesday: Sweep/vacuum, food prep for the week, list/update, blog
Wednesday: Family day
Thursday: Bathrooms, list/update, blog
Friday: laundry, list/update
Saturday: general tidying up, clean/set up school room for next week, list/update, blog
Sunday: church

I don't write school on my check list, but I do have pages written up for each day of school too. They are in Jayne's school binders with each week's materials. I started writing up my planner pages for the month and I like it that way. I do it the same time I write up our menu and grocery list for the month. The planner and my TCE notebook (previous post) go in the homemaker's binder. The binder also has detailed cleaning instructions for different rooms in the house. We don't use them often, but they are great to have for when we do. There is an inventory sheet to use as a guideline for writing up the grocery list. It includes all the foods and non foods that we always want in the house. There is a yearly calendar for checking. It includes things such as spring cleaning in April and winterizing the house in September. It helps us to remember to do them. I also have my spring cleaning chart that I use for making my spring cleaning check list.

I also have a homemaker's journal folder in my Internet favorites and on my desktop. That way I know where to go for my homemaking sites and downloads. That would be for recipes, sewing instructions, cleaning tips, etc.

As far as keeping the house clean, start by determining your standards. Clean for us is tidy, but lived in. It is not immaculate by any means, but it is tidy. Jayne picks up all his toys every night. I do the dishes each day which includes wiping down all the kitchen surfaces. Laundry is 2- 3 loads per week. When we tidy up on Saturdays we usually pick a room that really needs it and focus on it. There is still lots of time to do school, cook, work, and do daycare. We are all working on not just leaving things where they are and putting them away when we are done with them, that goes a very long way in keeping things clean. I am not sure if I have missed anything, but I have run into school time. So, feel free to ask questions, I am an open book!