Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do or Do Without

I decided this morning that I am going to use up the things I have in my house. I was inspired also by a conversation with my daughter and after reading this blog-post from our sweet friends in China.

We've only been in this house for 1 1/2 years and we purged quite a bit as we unpacked boxes, but somewhere more stuff crept in.  I've been thinking about this for a while, but after cleaning out my train-case this morning, I decided to make it a goal. Anyone know what a train-case is? My hubby gave this one to me on our wedding day. It matched the luggage that I had at the time. 27 years later I still use this when we travel.

As I cleaned it out today after 6 weekends in a row of being out of town, I found all these things in there I got from all sorts of different hotels we have stayed in.

and then I found this in an overflowing drawer in the bathroom.

All these things are the small sizes you get in a hotel. That's a lot of shampoo, conditioner, lotions and soap! I am on a quest to use them all up. I'll sure be clean and smell good!


Last month I re-organized the freezer and found a bunch of food items that need to get used. There were several meat patties I had bought sometime last summer for on the grill. I really don't have any idea if they were pork or chicken or turkey. One night I broke them up and browned them, added BBQ sauce and put it over some baked potatoes with some grated cheese. Hubby asked what we were having for supper and I answered, "I have no idea. I'll call it.... BBQ Mystery Meat." Despite the mystery, it was quite yummy.

My quest to purge also took me to the medicine cabinet and, sure enough, there were some expired cold medicine and things we never use that ended up in the trash. 


This morning I looked through the pantry and tossed some items that had expiration dates from the year 2009. I don't think I can consume something knowing it's that old. Yuck. I'm going to try to figure out how I can use the things that are in there and then only replace them when I am planning on using them in a recipe

Boy, I guess I am on a roll, huh?

Next stop all the condiments in the refrigerator. Where do they all come from?

I'm also going to try to extend this using it up thing to my sewing room and see if I can make at least one quilt from just the fabrics I have. Believe me, that shouldn't be too hard at all!

Even though I don't set New Year's Resolutions, I think this quest could qualify, don't you?

Day 27 of Thankfulness

I am thankful for...
...a husband that doesn't mind vacuuming the whole house for me twice in one week

A Bit of This and That and Another Thursday

I was busy today.

I woke up and starting working on my Bible study lesson. Hubby and I are working through Beth Moore's Believing God. I had a hard time getting into last week's lessons and had suggested maybe we dump the rest of the study. Boy, am I glad Hubby said we should just stick it out and finish it. This week's lessons are very good. A little hard and sticky and heart wrenching, but good. I was engrossed in it for 1 1/2 hours this morning!

My next task of the day was to clean the Master bath and bedroom. Yuck. Not my favorite job and I even managed to twist my knee and put a scratch in Hubby's dresser. Now I can hardly walk. Wonderful. I told hubby I was pretty sure this meant that I need to hire someone to clean my house. :)

Despite my knee, I managed to make a yummy, wonderful Beef Stew (courtesy of Pioneer Woman's website), Cornbread (I added some frozen corn to my regular recipe and it turned out pretty darn good! At least I thought so...) and Blonde Brownies.

After supper Hubby told me I had to take a nice, hot bath. What a meany, huh? It actually felt really good on my sore knee. Hubby even cleaned up the kitchen. I like that guy. A lot. I think I'll keep him. Forever and ever.

I have such exciting Thursdays, don't I? I wrote about another Thursday here.

Today ended with an amazingly beautifully gorgeous sunset.

 

From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
   the name of the LORD is to be praised. Psalm 113:3

The Weekend of Movies

Weekends with my hubby? The best! What could be better than hanging out with my best friend?

What am I doing? Why I am writing a blogpost about my weekend before the weekend is actually over! I am so proud of myself.

Friday night we had a date night. Yes, after 27 years of marriage, I still love a date night.

There is a Golf Club in this tiny town. No we don't golf. Well, I don't golf, hubby does. I drive the golf cart. :)  Anyway... we joined the golf club for the winter season. Not for golfing, of course. Confused? There is a quite nice restaurant there (which, believe me, the words nice and restaurant and this town do not go together). Anyway... we joined the golf club for $5 so we can eat there through the winter. We did it last year and really enjoyed it. Very reasonable fee, if you ask me.

Friday night we had dinner there (yummy!) and then went to see the movie The Help. Have you seen it? It's a pretty good movie. The book is next on the list for me to read. I've been told it's a good read. (I must pause here to say how it was a big deal to see a movie in the theater in this town. The theater closed down several months ago and we have been without ever since and have had to resort to driving for an hour to see a movie. The theater here opened again recently under new management.)

I know this is all quite riveting, but, hey, when one lives in a small town in the middle of nothing, things like this count.

Saturday found us heading to a local apple orchard. If only we had little kids to take there for all the chaos fun they were offering. Goodness, there were a lot of kids. We just bought apples. Obvious, huh? But have you ever had a HoneyCrisp apple? One from Minnesota? They are THE best! I've tried imposter HoneyCrisps grown in other states, but they really do have a different taste. The ones grown here are sooo good.

Saturday evening we watched True Grit.  Can I say our reaction to that movie was: meh? I know lots of people loved it and even found some spiritual message in it. We just couldn't see it. Seeking revenge and killing seems not very spiritual.

Sunday found us doing the usual, church, lunch out and a nap and watching football. I'll just leave it at that. I will say that both of us did not participate in both activities. One watched football, one napped. Guess.

And now I will write about the most exciting thing that happened this weekend. Before I tell you about it, I'll show you a picture of it:

This is a picture of the kitchen window over the kitchen sink. What you don't see are all the bugs and ewww that were on the window and the screen. It's a big deal to me that the window is clean now because I've looked through all the yuck for almost a year. It was one of those jobs that I kept putting off. This house has windows that tilt in for easy cleaning. The trick is to figure out how exactly to do that. And this window is over the sink, so not very easy to get at. So I asked Hubby to help. He provided the muscle and the engineering know-how and I provided the Windex and the rag and the internet surfing. What does internet surfing have to do with washing windows? I wasn't just sitting there letting Hubby do all the work. I Googled the brand of window to figure out how exactly to get the windows tilted in for that easy washing feature. Once again, Google came through! (How did we ever survive before we had that resource?)

Now that I know how to work those windows, I have no excuse to start working on the other windows in the house. Sigh.

After all that rigorous internet surfing window washing was done, I decided to head to the basement to watch one of the chick-flicks I have recorded on the DVR. I settled in with my yummy HoneyCrisp apple and spoonful of peanut butter (best snack ever invented), and hit play for the movie 27 Dresses. It was a lot better than I though it would be, but I have no idea how it ended. The recording stopped before it was over! Sad. Now I think I'll have to rent it.

And now that there is only 25 minutes left to the weekend, I better hit the publish button.