Last Week of September 2023

Good morning

First, here is this weeks to do list

Last week, I put out some fall decorations on the front porch

And in the dining room 

And living room.  

I have a tub full of fall  decorations from past years. Many of the items are things I’ve made.

The only things new this year are the little mum on the porch that hasn’t opened it’s blooms yet, the leaf garland over the fireplace, and I sewed a short runner for the big dining table.

One change is I took the orange buffalo check table runner that was very long and made it into two, one for the coffee table and one for the dresser under husband’s giant TV. 

This is an awkward selfie by me – the flowers are from my daughter.

They were a fundraiser and activity done by our local high school Special Ed students.  

 I think they are really pretty!

No photos but I did get some sewing done week including another top for me and pillowcases for the guest room.  

I also did some couponing-sale shopping at Walgreens and Dollar General.  I’m very happy with the savings at both places.  

Reading- I finished a kindle book called “Maggie’s Mistake “ by Carolyn Brown.  It takes place around 1900 and is set mostly in Oklahoma.  I enjoyed it a lot and it had lots of surprises.  

Last week was weird but this week looks like it will be normal.  

So,  I hope to blog more.  

Hope you are all well. 

Thank you for stopping by

❤️ Rhonda 

Meals, couponing and homemaking

Meals this week-

Monday was slider hamburgers. I used the leftover Texas roadhouse rolls for the buns.

Also carrots, little potatoes, and toppings for the burgers

I used the second half of that package of hamburger from yesterday and made taco meat.

We had Mexican bowls using the leftover Texas Roadhouse rice, beef, taco toppings

I think this is my husband’s very favorite meal-pasta with homemade sauce, green beans, grated

 asiago cheese to put on top

 Thursday, I made a salad with the last of the fresh vegetables in the refrigerator.

I heated up the leftover green beans and some leftover gravy from Saturday morning breakfast

 and  cooked a few chicken strips from the freezer

  

Nothing too exciting but it felt good to use up things instead of letting them go bad

Every meal tasted good.  

Everything is too expensive right now to waste. 

I tried my hand at some couponing this week

My plan for this week was to hopefully stock up on hair products and laundry products

First, I went to Walgreens because I saw they had a shampoo and conditioner deal.

  

All of the hair care products were on sale and I used a digital coupon on each pair

Everything subtracted just like I wanted it to

The bonus was I ended up with a register reward and some thing called Walgreens cash.

Then I stopped at dollar tree, still looking for the elusive wire pumpkin wreath frames

  

Dollar tree had some quality looking hair care products so I bought a few of them to try

After shopping, I am quite stocked up on hair products

And if you’re wondering why I need so much conditioner, I have thin, fine hair that tangles like crazy..

My daughter and granddaughter inherited my thin, fine, tangly hair too.

So, whenever I wash my hair, I use a big glob of conditioner worked well into my wet hair. 

And then I comb it out in the shower with a wide tooth comb.


Yesterday, I tried laundry product coupon shopping at Dollar General, Walgreens, and CVS

CVS had sent me eight dollars in CVS bucks to get me to come in because I haven’t been there in so long. So I used to that and a three dollar coupon and got a big container of Tide  for think it was $.2.79.  So that transaction went just fine.

At CVS, I got for Procter & Gamble laundry products. They all had digital coupons, but only three of the coupons attached.

Even still, I got four products for about $16. And I got quite a bit of Walgreens cash back.

At Dollar General, I bought four more laundry products. But one of those coupons did not attach either.

After I got home, I added up what I spent.  It was close to $40 for the laundry products.  Then I scanned them on the Walmart app, and they would’ve cost $79 if I had bought them at Walmart so I guess I did OK.

My little laundry product cabinet is stocked back up! 

My deals did not work perfectly but it’s OK.  My advice is before you go to any of these stores, check your digital coupons on your app.  All the stores have different deals right now.  Walgreens has some especially good coupons to get Walgreens Cash.  

The OxiClean Maxforce gel stain pretreater works amazingly well. It’s one of the many products I inherited when our son moved to the Midwest and our daughter moved in here.  I do recommend it if you need to pretreat stains.  

A Homemaking tip

If you have a canister vacuum, where the canister completely detaches from the mechanical part,

the canister can be hand washed just as if it was a dirty dish.

I hand washed my vacuum canister and the filter that is just a piece of foam.

Then, once they air dried,  I put them back on the vacuum.

The vacuum smells so much better when it is clean!

I’ve been watching some fall decorating videos on YouTube 

Have y’all started fall decorating yet? 

 🍁 🎃 🍂 

❤️ Rhonda 

New week to-do list

Good morning everyone

Sunday was very much a rest day here.

 But about 530, I got a second wind and decided to get some of the housework done.

The three grandsons slept and played in this room. So I washed all the bedding, vacuumed and dusted.

I also got a pair of little boy underwear and one sock out from under the bed 😵‍💫😱

Then I cleaned the hall bathroom and vacuumed the carpet in the other three bedrooms

Today, It was very nice waking up to a partially clean home  and knowing I don’t have a really long to do list for the week

Are you making a to do list for your week today?

❤️Rhonda 

End of a good week……

Hello everyone I hope you all had a good weekend 

4 of our grands were here Friday night for a sleepover

2 of them got up and went on an early morning walk with me 

  

Hamming it up 

Mrs. White,  I walk early in the morning because it’s the only cool time to do it.  All summer, it’s usually reached 80 by 8 a.m. and climbs to 100, and that is way too hot for me.  

Early morning walks are especially pretty too so for now, it just been my routine. 

We also visited a relative in an assisted living residence.  

That’s the 3 boys on the way out.  

The boys are 8, 10 and 11 but going down this hall, they all look about the same size.  

Meals the last few days 

Salmon patties, Cole slaw and potato salad inspired by 2 recipe links posted by  Melanie  at Comfy House 

When the grands were here Friday night,  we got a family pack from Texas Roadhouse- a big salad, chicken critters, fresh rolls, seasoned rice and steak fries and lots of condiments.  

  But I didn’t get the photo until after plates had been filled.  It’s our favorite takeout and it’s a lot of good food for about $40.   And the leftovers are delicous too!  

This weeks Kroger delivery 

I think it was about $32

There was a second pack of buns I put straight in the freezer.  

The ginger snaps and tortillas were Free-Bees this week.  

Kind of shocking what groceries cost- and as usual, I only shopped sale items except for the celery, green onions and bananas. 

A good book I just finished - I read it on Kindle Unlimited but I imagine it is available at libraries and other online book borrowing services 


Good night everyone 

❤️ Rhonda 

2 days in September

Hello everyone 

It took 3 sewing sessions but I finished the pair of pillowcases.  

I do like this burrito sewing method and plan to sew more. 

Search on YouTube or Pinterest and you will find many tutorials on how to do this 

Meals this week so far 

      

I cooked the second half of that package of cube steak. I added a sliced onion and a sliced bell pepper. The sauce was 1 beef broth, thickened with 1T cornstarch, also some soy sauce and just a little bit of brown sugar. It was delicious! 

The other meal is some leftover lentil chili with some leftover corn. It was good too. 


My daughter has been wanting something from dollar tree that she saw on Instagram. So I have a several trips to dollar tree looking for them.

What she wants is probably in the store but , it’s just in these boxes that are not getting unpacked very fast at all. 

What a big job that little store staff has!

And yes, I did walk by and read the labels on some of the boxes to see if I could see the wire pumpkin wreath frames that she is looking for. I couldn’t find them, and I certainly couldn’t look at every box.

I take a walk outside most every morning.

Wasn’t this sunrise beautiful?

I’ve had my walk today, but so far not much else. 

I need to get busy now!

Hope you all have a great day

❤️ Rhonda 

Starting off September

Hello everyone 

It’s getting closer to autumn but it’s still 100% summer in Oklahoma.  The heat is exhausting so I mostly stay inside, in air conditioning and do quiet things in the heat of the day.  

I didn’t make an actual to do list for this week.  I did the big housework over the weekend-floors bathrooms, laundry.  

So I’ll just do housework as needed this week.  

I needed a few groceries so I went to a Walmart- what was I thinking?  If you’ve read my blog, you know I like to do grocery pickup from Walmart and delivery from Kroger.  

Today’s trip convinced me that pickup and delivery suit me best too!  

Cook something

I made a double batch of energy balls - these have mini chocolate chips- and will be eaten in school lunches by some of the grands. 

energy ball recipe here

I took a package of cube steaks from the freezer but it was much too much beef for my husband and I for 1 meal.

So, I cut about half of it into cubes for tonight’s beef stew and cut the other half into strips for a meal later this week- maybe fajitas or pepper steak

The beef stew tonight was delicious !

 

Sew Something

Mrs. Laura Lane said on her blog that September is national sewing month.  

I’ve been decluttering my sewing room over the last week but today,  I started a new project.

Have you heard of the 15 minute or burrito style pillowcase sewing method?  

If you look on YouTube or Pinterest,  you’ll see many tutorials.  

We need new pillowcases for our bed so I got started on a pair.  

2 cut out pillowcases and one of them pinned and ready to start sewing.  

It may only take 15 minutes for an experienced pillow case maker to sew them.  But it took me 30 minutes to iron and cut out my pieces-  

Hopefully I can sew them both up tomorrow 

A few Grandchildren updates

Gavin and Braeden raise dairy cattle.  During our local county fair, they were featured on a morning news show.  They did a great job talking to the host.  

Gavin, 14, is our oldest grandchild.

Braeden is 11

This is our youngest grand.  

She was on a weekend trip.  

Her parents ordered her ice cream for dessert and the restaurant treated her to cotton candy as well.  

Fun photo, right? 😂😂😂

And no, she did not eat all that sugar herself.  




Hope you all have had a good Monday 

❤️Rhonda