Freezers, cooking and zinnias

Good evening everyone.
This month my goal is to eat down our freezer.  We have quite a bit of frozen food on hand,
We are hoping to harvest lots of pecans at our friend's orchard in a couple months and we will store most of them in the freezer.

This is our chest freezer.

From these photos, it looks like we only have ice cream and vegetables.  

But this freezer is 3 feet deep and I promise there is more than enough meat for the month.  

I'll post an inventory later in the week as we are getting a new upright freezer delivered on Wednesday, I think.  Chest freezers are just so hard to organize.  I've been wanting an upright for awhile and have been watching the ads.  Lowes is having a great sale this weekend.  With my husband's military discount and free delivery, were getting a nice upright for about 1/2 of what it would been without careful shopping.  

This chest freezer will get passed on to a son that hunts.  

If you want a new freezer,  this blogger Fun cheap or free is giving one away.  She is doing a challenge she calls "shelf-tember" where she wants people to cook from their pantry shelves and freezer all September and only spend $25 each week on fresh produce, milk, etc.  I'm not following her challenge exactly as we've already done a big grocery shopping trip this month.  But I do plan to not shop much more in September and to cook every meal at home with ingredients we already have.  

So far,  this month we've had barbecue sandwiches and taco bowls both made with cooked roast beef in the freezer and  sausage gravy on freezer biscuits. To avoid eating out,  I packed sandwiches, drinks and snacks when we drove to the commissary to shop.  

I'm pretty most of my blog readers do this kind of scratch cooking anyway.  But I'm guilty of going to the store and buying things we really could easily do without and eating out a convenience instead because it's a special occasion.  Any of you remember when eating out was most always because of a special occasion?

Our zinnias, that I grew from seed,  are doing so well even though summer is almost over.

If you're wanting lots of color in your yard next summer,  I recommend thrifty zinnias started from seed.

I think you readers are some of the nicest people on the internet,  I've gotten so many sweet comments this month and I thank you all ❤️

DIY sewing machine tune up - and LoveNotions pattern #3

I'm not sure when I bought this Necchi sewing machine but I'm guessing it was 6-7 years ago.  I've sewed with it a lot and it's never been serviced. That last dress I made was a tight textured knit fabric and my machine did not like sewing it, the tension looked wrong and it skipped quite a few stitches.
I thought about taking this machine in for service (and sometimes that is the only way) but I really like to just do things myself.
I did some searches about the causes of my stitch goofs.  One is a dirty machine.

So, I got out the brush that came with the machine.  I opened the front door and dusted all those parts.

Then I unscrewed the cover over the bobbin and dusted all that space.

My husband removed the screws on the bottom plate and found lots more lint and dust in there.
He said some canned air would of been good for cleaning the inside too, if we'd had any.

Another cause of skipped stitches might be the wrong needles.  I was using universal needles and they weren't working so I got 2 packs of needles for knits at Joann's.

If you look close, you can see the after stitch- in red at the top of the photo.
Our dusting and $7 in needles resulted in perfect stitches on knit fabric.
This saved at least $50 and 2 trips to the next town where a shop is that services sewing machines.

I've made 2 different Lovenotions.com patterns and liked them both so much. 

Tonight, I started a 3rd- the Cadence.  It is similar to the Laundry Day Tee but it uses woven fabric. 

The patterns can be printed on a home printer and then the pieces taped together.  That's my method, because I like to do things myself.  They can also be printed at a copy place on large sheets so no taping would be involved.

I hope to start cutting out a Cadence soon and I'll post the results. 

I truly like Love Notions because their garments are stylish very easy to sew and they are so easy to fit.  

If you want to try the Laundry Day Tee pattern for free, just join this page on Facebook and you can get the code to get that pattern free.