If you do stuff, stuff gets done.......

If you do stuff, stuff gets done.......

Friday, September 13, 2024

A thrift tip and checking things off my list

hello everyone,
Thank you all so much for the big welcome back

First I have a thrift tip 

   
I prefer to use our dishwasher over handwashing and I used to use pods, but can you believe the price of those things now?
I switched  exclusively to this powder detergent from Walmart and it works great in our dishwasher.  
I don’t like pouring straight from the box because it comes out too fast so I switched to using an empty drink mix container that also had a scoop
I marked the scoop with a permanent marker at about 1 tablespoon. This much detergent gets our dishes as clean as any expensive pod I’ve ever used.

The canister with the dishwasher soap in it is under our kitchen sink with the label, so if anyone else is doing the dishes, they should be able to figure it out.

I think I read on someone else’s blog that they only use a quarter teaspoon of dishwasher powder per load.  That seems like a very small amount, but maybe that would work.
For now, I’m going to stick with about a tablespoon

This runs around four dollars at my local Walmart and a box last me about three months
We run the dishwasher daily, sometimes twice a day if I am cooking a lot or we have extra people in the house


I’ve been working on that to do list. I started on Monday.
Today I worked on a few kitchen drawers. Why do those drawers get so many crumbs in them?

I saw a whole maker on YouTube using a little handheld vacuum to clean the crumbs out of her kitchen drawers, and I thought that would be a handy appliance
But I am trying to get things out of my house, not more appliances.
When I was vacuuming, the floors I thought about my hose attachment and that’s what I used today. It was a little cumbersome than a little handheld vacuum, but I already own this vacuum and I already know how to use it so that’s a win-win.

I did remember to take some before and after photos
  

  

  

The first photo is the before, and the second photos are the after
See all those cribs in the potholder drawer ðŸ˜±
and besides just cleaning out the crumbs, I changed out the potholders.
I found these new ones in my sewing room and thought I should be using them instead of the old, stained ones



Gardening tasks are pretty small right now
when I watered this morning, I found three tiny green bean plants have started coming up in the green bean bed

two grandsons are here today and I believe this will be the last of the tomatoes of this season
And I’m thankful the boys like picking them

supper tonight was just myself and the two boys
So I planned pizza for supper. I made up a batch of dough and realized it was more than we would need so I used part of it to make 1 pizza for 3 of us. 
And then the other two parts were  partially baked for future pizza.
I used 2 Pie plates to bake them, I also brushed them with a little bit of olive oil and a little bit of seasoning

  


I’ve never done this before, so we’ll see how the parbaked  pizza crusts turn out later.  
They are in the freezer, waiting for a future meal. 


I’ve got more to tell you, but this is long enough
So hopefully, I will add more to another post tomorrow

Hope you all have a very nice weekend
❤️ Rhonda 






























Monday, September 9, 2024

it’s been a while…….

Hello Everyone
We had a very quiet summer while my husband was recuperating from a shoulder injury and  surgery that was much harder than either one of us expected it to be

he is doing much better now.
So things are starting to get back to normal here, and I am getting back to more homemaking instead of just the bare necessities. 



you may remember, I planted a spring garden. I harvested lots of bush green beans. I have since cleaned out that bed and planted another crop for fall

We also planted a few assorted peppers and several small tomato variety plants
The tomatoes have done amazingly well with very little care
One day we picked 20 pounds
And this morning I picked about 3 1/2 pounds
I have made spaghetti sauce for the freezer with some of them, have made fresh salsa many times
And have shared lots of them. My daughter works in a big office building that has a sharing table and she says our tomatoes are very popular there.



Our other summer entertainment has been birds
Robins like to build a nest on our pergola. I think this is the third year they have done so
This year, we have had five nests with baby Robins. 
Robins  grow up very fast And both parents provide equal care for the babies

My photos are not very good because I have to take them from a distance and the pergola is up kind of high.
My granddaughter has suggested we put a trail camera up there and we just may do that next year 

We have also enjoyed hummingbirds
We just had two feeders, but we may expand on that next summer.


This morning, I made my first pretty to do list in several months
I discovered my big black ink pad for the rubberstamps was not very fresh. But I have a smaller one and it worked good



Last week, I made this sort of master meal list for the month.
These are dishes that we have ingredients for and I’ve already made several of them even though there’s no check beside any of them
Sometimes it helps when I’m not feeling very inspired to look at a list. 
During the summer, we did enjoy takeout and restaurant meals several times.
But we live in a college town and the college kids are back, which means there’s lots of traffic and it’s not much fun to go out at busy times
So I intend to cook  At home whenever possible



Thank you all for the kind comments During my blog absence

I’m hoping to be back blogging and back to getting things done

❤️ Rhonda