a slow week

hello everyone

I didn’t mean to let a whole week go by without blogging, but I guess that’s what happened

Last week was kind of a shopping week. For me anyway, it was a lot of shopping.

  once again, here is an AFTER photo of my newly organized pantry.

Before this photo, the  canned goods were not sorted. So the first thing I did was sort and count all of the items

I was really surprised to find out we had no canned fruit of any kind except for two cans that were in the refrigerator.

And we had no refried beans. Sometimes I make homemade refried beans, but it’s nice to have them in the pantry.

these photos are not in the order of my shopping, but I’m just going to leave them in this order and y’all are smart enough to figure out what I did.

I went into Dollar tree and walked every aisle and bought the above five items.

The shelf stable cream is a new item.

The strawberry cream savers are my granddaughter’s favorite candy, they are hard to find, and she was very excited to see these. She said she had never seen them in a roll, they are usually in a bag.

This is the back of the cream container.

It does contain carrageenan.  It is an ingredient that adversely affects some people

I am a fan of shelf-stable milk.  I’ve kept it in my pantry for years.

It was so nice to have it when my grandchildren were little and liked milk in their sippy cups. if we ran out of fresh milk and I couldn’t get to the store, there was usually some shelf stable milk from Dollar tree in our pantry back then. 

I do remember one of my grandchildren suspiciously, eyeing that shelf stable box when I filled their cup. But then they tasted it and realized it tasted just like the fresh milk.

My husband went with me to Aldi

 I especially wanted to stock up on canned fruit and refried beans.

Canned foods are not as popular as they used to be. I remember when we first started shopping at Aldi, maybe a dozen years ago or so.

Back then, the canned food aisle was huge.

Now the canned foods are just part of one side of a aisle

But we did buy canned peaches and mandarin oranges and refried beans and tomato paste.  This is part of what we bought.  The perishables had already been away.  

We tried the box of Belgian butter cookies, and they were delicious!

The box only weighed 3.5 ounces and the cookies were not much thicker than a potato chip

But they are very flavorful and I do recommend them if you want a small butt yummy dessert

OK now more about some of the shopping I did over the last week.

My daughter told me about a Walmart on her side of town. She stopped there on her way to work and she said they had Christmas marked down to 90%.

I was already up and dressed, and I wasn’t busy so I drove over there.

I didn’t buy much, but I did buy these gingerbread house kits

We are hoping to have a family Valentine party and decorate gingerbread houses like a Valentine village
 I also found a few toys that were 90% off..  My grandkids are pretty much too old for all of these, but I got them thinking about putting them in the shoeboxes for next Christmas or any other need for toys that might come up

I didn’t take any photos, but I also shopped at Hobby lobby. My daughter wanted the New Year’s decorations that were marked down 90% off. 

pretty much since 2020, I have done the majority of my shopping online, I’ve done Walmart pick up. I’ve done Walmart delivery and I really enjoyed Kroger delivery. Sadly, for Oklahoma, Kroger is going to stop their delivery service for Oklahoma at the end of January

So I may have to go back to more grocery shopping in person. What I discovered during all of this shopping though was, I don’t really like shopping anymore.  

While we shopped at Aldi, I did look at their produce, and I was pleased with how nice most of it looked.

So I may go in there and get my produce once a week and then maybe do Walmart pick up for the rest of the stuff. 

I don’t know. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I have been cooking and that fridge and freezer inventory I did earlier this month have certainly been useful.

One night I made fajitas with cooked roast beef strips from the freezer

Those turned out so good! There was enough here for two meals

Another day I made goulash with some cooked hamburger from the freezer And I used up a can of tomatoes that we opened by mistake and had to be put in the fridge for a few days.

This meal also made enough for two days

That’s all the news I have 

hope you are all having a very good week 

❤️ Rhonda 

some planning, cleaning and sewing

hello everyone

yesterday I cleaned And organized our two refrigerators. I threw away a few old leftovers, but it mostly just needed cleaned up and organized

And of course, I never remember to take the before picture, but here are after pictures

There is a lot of empty space in both of these refrigerators but I’m not rushing to the store.  

We really don’t need much but we do need eggs.  

I’ve needed to plan out meals for awhile.  So yesterday,  I just sat at this little table and worked on a list of main dishes to cook.  

At the top of the list is a Monday through Sunday plan that another homemaker said works for her family but after looking at what I picked out,  her exact plan won’t work for us.  

I do like Taco Tuesday and  Pizza Friday.  I’m still thinking about it but I think a chicken day and an oven baked casserole day would suit us.  We like burgers too.  

If we have leftovers,  we tend to eat them the following day so I don’t know if set plan like this would really work for us anyway.  

I printed off about a dozen recipes I’d like to make soon.  They are all from sites that mostly have weight watcher type recipes,  I just like they are a little lower calorie and all the ones I printed mostly use groceries we usually have.   When I cook them,  if they are good,  I’ll share a link for them.  
After I cleaned the fridge,  I wrote a list of produce we have.  This in on the fridge by our freezer inventory and calendar.  Hopefully it will help me use use them all up and not forget them.

I took a photo with my phone of what I cooked for supper but it doesn’t seem to be in my photos on my iPad yet. 

I did use some of the fresh broccoli and leftover rice from New Year’s Day in a baked chicken and rice casserole for supper tonight.

It wasn’t fancy, but it tasted really good.

in the sewing room, I did some more work on those strip quilt squares.

My daughter bakes and sells sourdough bread.  

She didn’t learn that for me, she picked it all up on the Internet and she does a great job with it.

She has a giant bowl that she wanted a cloth cover for it, like the ones that I made a while back for my KitchenAid mixer.  

I think she lets big batches of sourdough rest in this giant bowl for a while before  she forms them  into loaves.  

I told her I had some really cute chicken fabric that I thought would make a cute cover, but she wanted a plain one.  So I sewed one up today out of this neutral  fabric below.

I don’t have a bowl that big at my house so I can’t take a good photo. I’m sure she will take a photo and I’ll share it later.

One of the things I was hoping to do in 2026 was so more.  We are only eight days in, but so far I have been in the sewing  room every day except one.

We’ve had unusual weather since Christmas. It was very warm on Christmas Day and then it got cold.

Today we woke up to warm temperatures and a lot of rain

Then the wind blew hard all day.

I had thought about going to a few other thrift stores today, but I did not want to be out in the wind.

So I did 3 more loads of laundry and sewed and cooked and watched at little Youtube.

Home is my favorite place to be anyway! 

I hope you all have had a good day

Thank you everyone that has been leaving such sweet comments

❤️Rhonda