As many of you already know, we bought this house and it has already been well-loved. It was definitely in need of some TLC… a bit more than we had realized at the time but we’ve been making improvements as time and budget have allowed.
We had a lot of hopes and dreams for this house when we first moved in but there were so many issues that happened and had to be dealt with that we just had to focus on those. Plus the pandemic had just started, we were dealing with an unexpected high-risk pregnancy and then a stressful premature birth with a NICU stay and other complications, and then when we thought things were getting better we were sidelined by an unexpected leukemia diagnosis.
No catchy title line here… no time for that today as the kids and the dog have been WILD! I’m exhausted and it isn’t even lunchtime yet!
We are almost halfway through the first month of the year and I’m already behind on my garden duties! Granted, we have had some CRAZY weather here and the house remodel has taken first priority but things still have to get planned so we can try to have an even more abundant garden this coming year!
I’ve been working on some Planning Notebook pages soon but for now, I’ll just list some of the things I’ve been working on for the garden. I have been playing around with a new planning program called SEEDTIME. It really does seem like it will be quite the time saver as I’ve been keeping up with my gardening task on notecards in a small file system… quite cumbersome at times.
Well, our Polar Express Party was full of family, fun, food, and lots of love. I think everyone had a great time and it all seemed to have gone well despite the bad weather we were experiencing.
The cousins had a lot of fun visiting, playing hide and seek, enjoying all the sweet treats, and having a special movie night experience. The grown-ups also got to talk and enjoy the movie… I love these special memories that our kids will be able to fondly look back on when they are older.
I’ve definitely been trying to streamline things around here… in some ways, we need to look at our homes as a business and try to find ways to make things run a little smoother. I’ve had a master shopping list for a while although I’m not sure if I’ve shared it here. I might’ve been a little inspired by these vintage-style grocery boards**:
The problem with our previous shopping list was that it was outdated and our diets/tastes have changed quite a bit. I wasn’t quite as health conscious when I first made my grocery list so I did have things like Koolaid and Bisquick on there. We’ve also been growing some of our own veggies and making some of the convenience foods like ranch seasoning and onion soup mix so we don’t buy them anymore. We really want to try to grow some of our own herbs to make them even better!
I took a little time one evening while Mr. Awesome and the kiddos were out to look through our grocery purchases over the past year… yeah, it did take a little time to sort through the orders we have placed but it was worth it. I know the orders I went through didn’t show EVERYTHING we bought over the past year but it did give me a good idea of what we are buying regularly and how much we are buying. Some of those things were quite surprising!
When we did our pantry makeover, I really wanted to see just how much space I needed to dedicate to certain items before getting too happy with my organization.
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