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 

Hummingbird feeder and Dollar General event

First Nature Hummingbird Feeder, 16 oz
https://www.walmart.com/ip/22889949

I had a question about this hummingbird feeder. I bought two of them from Walmart. They are not the sturdiest feeders ever but they do the job. They also come apart for easy cleaning.

If I need more, I would re-buy this same kind.  




On my Dollar General app, and I saw these high value coupons. 

Two of them are only good this coming Saturday, September 2

I looked on Instagram for some of the people who show deals at dollar general. One of them said Don’t click both the $10/$40 and the $5/$25.  

She said the smaller one of them subtracts first and probably would not take off the bigger one.  

Dollar General has lots of digital coupons for P&G products Charmin- Febreeze-Tide-Downy etc 

I’ve looked over the digital coupons and I’m hoping to buy $40 of P&G and use both the $10 coupons as well as some individual product coupons.  How it will work remains to be seen.  Coupon deals are tricky but I’m going to try.  

And I want to let y’all know in case you want to try to them too.  

If you want more detailed advice, do a search on IG or YouTube for Dollar General deals.  There are a number of experts who share deals much more detailed than I do.  

❤️ Rhonda 

Recap of a hot week

Good morning everyone

I’m still liking Kroger delivery.

This week, I really only needed fresh things and Kroger had deals on all of it 

I pretty much only buy things that are on sale, are Free-Bees  or have coupons though 

The milk was a very good price.  I poured a little off the extra ones into a small pitcher and froze them. 

The energy drink was a Free-Bee and I imagine one of our grown children might want it 

I refilled the hummingbird feeders with homemade nectar

Country Living magazine says to bring 4 cups of water to a boil and add 1 cup of sugar.  

I keep the extra nectar in a glass jar in the fridge. 

 My husband saw it and  asked if I was making moonshine 😊

We don’t garden much these days but we do have some bush green beans planted for fall in this narrow raised bed along the east side of our house. 

Bush green beans are easy- they don’t need any climbing support 

As I’ve already mentioned, it’s been so hot here so we ate out several times this week because it’s especially hot in our kitchen. 

This was the funnest meal out, shared with 2 grandsons 

Jackson is 8 and a 3rd grader,  JJ is 10 and a 5th grader.  

Our weather forecast for next week is cooler and I’m so thankful! 

Hope you all have a great week

❤️Rhonda 

Branson Missouri USA

Hello again 

If your wondering what a Branson music is like,  this theater puts a new one every week on YouTube 

It’s short though but very good.  Other Branson shows tend to run 2 hours 

For lots of Branson tips,  join the Facebook group called Branson on a Budget. 

If you’re planning a Branson vacation, check a Branson calendar before hand

Branson tends to run very cyclical. Many things are closed from New Year’s day until about spring break.

Summer theaters shut down two weeks at the end of August.

Hotel rates are also hirer during high traffic months

We have stayed at Branson hotels and two different condos, routed through Verbo

Our favorite place to stay is the French quarter condos

http://french-quarter-resort.hotels-branson.com/

I have written a number of post about our Branson vacations. To find them, just type Branson into my search box on the right hand side to see them

I had a much longer post written out, but it disappeared before I could publish it 🙁

❤️ Rhonda 

Good morning 🌞

Good Monday morning everyone 

I got a lot of rest this weekend and I’m feeling good this morning.

 Even still,  this just written to-do list is much shorter than my usual lists but is more realistic of what I might actually accomplish 

Over the weekend,  I had 40 pounds of Colorado peaches to deal with.  

I peeled the ones for a relative and froze them in bags. 

At home,  I blanched ours and that was the best way.  The peels almost fell off.  

My husband helped and we sliced and froze ours too.  

The peaches are delicious but not the quality we are used to from this farm- but I understand peach crops most everywhere have not been good this year.  

Our summer started out both wetter and cooler that usual but…… it’s going out with a bang!  

So my plan today is to get some much needed housework done- especially our tile floors this morning.  

Then I’ll sit and read or sew once it gets really hot this afternoon 

Hope you all have a great Monday 

❤️ Rhonda 

PS. I will do a requested post about Branson soon 

Hello and it may be awhile …..

Good morning 

If you look close in this photo, you can see our 4th nesting robin of this spring/summer and a hummingbird at the feeder.  

I don’t know if it’s the same robin pair raising all these baby robins.  But it really is our 4th nest with the parent birds that do such a good job raising very needy baby birds. 

The robins and hummingbirds are both entertaining 

Anyway,  I want to blog but I usually blog about homemaking things.

But for several reasons,  my summer homemaking has been nothing but the bare minimum.  

My husband and I are both dealing with manageable health conditions and are very thankful for good medical care.  

Another family member has been hospitalized for a week and another family member has dementia.  

I’ll be back when I can 

❤️ Rhonda 

To do list and Dollar General shopping

Hello everyone 

I spent a lot of time looking into my blog photo problem.

I don’t think I can easily fix the posts from this summer that are missing the photos 

But I’m hopeful I found the problem- I needed to update my Google photos app.

Time will tell I guess 

This weeks to do list 

I went to 1 Dollar General on Saturday.  

I used their 5/$25 coupon and some of their digital coupons. 

My purchases 

And the receipt 

I’m happy with the total but I made a goof.  I’m 

I bought the wrong kind of Febreeze so the Febreeze $3 coupon didn’t subtract 

But that’s how couponing goes.  It’s both frustrating and fun.

Hope you all have had a good weekend 

❤️Rhonda 

Robin watching

I went in the backyard this morning to water the caladiums and the few pots of plants.  

I saw a robin gathering grass in the yard so I looked up at the pergola and sure enough,  robin nest #4  of 2023 is going in.  

Look at the top right corner to see the robin nest

  

They are fun to watch and they don’t make a big mess on the patio like doves we have had in the past.  

So I guess our pergola is just a robin haven now.  

My posts from April 30- July 3 all are missing the photos when I view them.  Can any of you see photos on any of those particular posts? 

I have paid .99 cents a month for years for Google photo storage so that should not be the issue.  

🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

So far my other photos on other posts and other blogs all are still showing.  

Hope you all have a good Saturday 

It’s hot here but it’s always hot in Oklahoma in July 

❤️ Rhonda 

Trying again

Hello everyone 

I’ve been away from blogging most of the summer. I checked my blog yesterday and saw that more of my recent posts have missing photos. I’ve done a search to find out the problem, but I cannot find a solution that works that I can do or that applies to my blog. 

So………..

I’m going to write a short post now with photos and a back up and see what happens.

Our patio pergola hosted 3  families of baby robins this summer.

They were fun, watching the parrot sit on the nest, and then faithfully feed the babies. About three weeks after the eggs hatch, the babies leave, and they all go away, and never come back.

I’m still working on downsizing the amount of things in our home

Yesterday I gave away a whole, another big batch of stuff on the Facebook buy nothing group.

Last week I worked on my homemade cookbooks. I had four binders and several folders with printed off recipes and recipes saved  from magazines

They were quite unorganized!

We have had to do some serious changes with the foods that we eat so many of the recipes I had saved were completely useless at this stage.

BEFORE 

AFTER I know, it looks dirty, but the scrapbook paper is a distressed style and looks a lot prettier in person

1 single notebook takes up a whole lot less space than all that other stuff.

The notebook has four dividers – main dishes, side dishes, breads & desserts, and miscellaneous

Some of the recipes are printed from the Internet and some are cut from magazines.

 Some are glued onto pretty scrapbook paper.

I used dividers that I already had and I was happy, but they have pockets in them. 

This is in the back in the miscellaneous section.

I also saved some menu plans from the past. I don’t know that I’ll ever use this again, but they’re fun for me to go back and read.

  

If the photos stay on the post for a few days, I will try to get back to blogging

If they disappear, I may look into starting a new blog or

I just don’t know.

❤️Rhonda

Advice is most welcome about the missing photos 

End of June -to do list, sewing, grocery haul

Hello again- I’ll just jump right in

I made a to do list that started Sunday- it’s not pretty but hopefully it will keep me on track 

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I used to sew a lot! I found this photo of 2 of my children in pajamas I sewed - around 1987 I think. 

Aren’t they cute?  They really were happy children that usually had smiles on their faces.  

Anyway, this got me thinking that our youngest granddaughter would enjoy a twirly nightgown too. So I searched EBay and somehow found the pattern.  

I cut out a blue polka dot one last night 

I am so thankful for online shopping.  I’ve been using Kroger delivery and it’s great!

Oklahoma does not have any actual Kroger grocery stores but there is a delivery hub about an hour from our town.  

I wont say their prices are rock-bottom lowest, but they do have good deals.

They have weekly sales and coupons and if you match them up, it’s pretty good.

They also have two weekly Free-Bees coupons, this week it was for marshmallows and apple sauce cups. I think my grandchildren will enjoy making rice crispy treats with the marshmallows.

Anyway, I ordered Saturday evening and my groceries were delivered Sunday morning about 7:30 AM. I ask for delivery between 7 and 8 AM.

They bring them right to my door and they travel in a refrigerated truck, so everything was fresh and chilled.

Kroger has the best produce of any store I’ve purchased from.  

The 3 bagged produce items were dated into July

Everything looks fresh and A+ in my opinion 

Look at this crazy big bell pepper! It’s on top of a 1 pound strawberry box

Dog items and grocery items.  The chicken breast were buy one get one free and I should’ve bought four or six. It was a good deal but I don’t eat that much meat these days so that will easily make three meals. The cream of tartar is for homemade Play-Doh.

As I said, before, the marshmallows and applesauce were freebie coupons.

That’s a lot of bread, right? I already had two loaves on my order. Then at the end, when you check out with Kroger, they usually have some short dated items that are half price or less. So I went ahead and added three more of the discounted loaves of bread, and I just put them in the freezer.

Can you believe these five grandchildren are getting so big and old? The youngest one is eight and the oldest one is 14! 

They have very busy lives -ball tournaments, ninja tournaments, livestock shows, Girl Scout camps, church camp, energy camp

They all had some free time in their calendar last week and were able to have a sleepover here.

I’ve been doing more decluttering. Most stuff that was usable has been passed on to people who wanted it on our local Facebook buy nothing group.

I truly recommend looking into your area buy nothing group. People give away lots of neat stuff and people ask for stuff. 

And it just feels so good to take stuff that we don’t need and put it into the hands of people who do want it.


OK, I need to get up and get on with my day. The last of my tea is gone.

I hope you all have a great week 

❤️ Rhonda