Spur of the moment trip

About the middle of January,  I was looking at our calendar and the weather.  We didn’t have any appointments and the weather wasn’t scary so we decided to drive to the Midwest and see our youngest grand child, Cora and family.  

We had a great time!

It was just so nice to see them, eat good food, see new sights and do some fun things. 

On the way,  I didn’t want to eat to at places we have around here.  

We ate at several family restaurants and we had a late lunch at a Culver’s.  This is a chain but there are none in Oklahoma.

Doesn’t Culver’s have the best graphics and slogans? 

The food was delicious.  I had a burger and my husband had a pork loin sandwich.  

We ate at a bakery in Indiana. 

It’s a 2 story building.  The bakery and counter are on the ground floor,  then you take an elevator upstairs to the dining tables.  I think this rolling pin mobile is really neat.  Their food was amazing too. 

Our main desire of this trip was to have fun with Cora and we sure did.

We did the 3 crafts in a Kiwi Co kit.  It was a subscription her parents bought.  The crafts were lots of fun and all worked just as they were supposed too.  The jelly fish is like a puppet and moves up and down.  On the window sill, are a glow bug and a mushroom - they both glow in the dark.

No idea how much a KiwiCo subscription costs but they do seem to be educational and good quality.  

The next morning,  we had snow ❄️ it was cold but the snow was light and didn’t cause any travel problems.

We saw a log cabin made with wide, hewn logs and lots of rocks.  

Our son prepared several delicious meals including this charcuterie board. 

The bread is from the bakery with the rolling pin mobile.  

Sorry, no to do list this week.  I’ll be back with that next week.  

I’ve caught up all our laundry and our house just didn’t get dirty when it was empty for a week.  



Are you all thinking about thrift right now?  

I’m thinking about doing all Frugal February posts.  

❤️ Rhonda 

3rd week of January

Good morning everyone 

No to do list on paper this week, just the list in my head as this week is a different week but I’ll have more in that later. 

               
Before                                                                                   After 

One of the jobs on last week’s list was to straighten this bookshelf.  I thought it was going to take a long time but it only took 5 minutes.  

It’s a tall shelf, taller than the door. My husband built it several years ago to fit a funny space in a hall.  

My mother lives in a retirement community and her meals are provided but she isn’t crazy about all their meal choices 

So yesterday,  I cooked foods that Mom cooked often when I was young- and took them for her lunch.   

Goulash which is ground beef, onion, elbow pasta, canned tomatoes and tomato sauce- very simple but delicious 

Creamed potatoes- I know it is a double starch but that’s how we always ate it.  My Dad loved potatoes and they were a budget food.

Apple salad- no exact recipe but it’s diced apple, cheddar, celery and pecans with a light dressing of mayo, sugar and vinegar.  

Banana muffins

I like to pack foods that need reheating in these Tupperware containers.  They are hard and won’t break, have handles for easy holding and don’t get hot in the microwave. 

After lunch,  I drove my van through a car wash.  My husband bought us monthly subscriptions and I could get my van washed everyday if I wanted to.  

It’s really weird as you have to put your vehicle in neutral, it’s dark and noisy in the tunnel  and the car wash tracks move the vehicles along.

But it does a great job and I do like having a clean vehicle. 

Other meals this week are from Every Plate.  I ordered ours with a deal our daughter shared with us.

I will caution you that I’m a very experienced internet shopper but Every Plate has a website where I ordered before I even knew I had ordered.  

But is OK and I will be very cautious if I ever use their website again 

Below is the food they sent and it all was fresh and high quality 

The 3 meals recipe cards

And the spicy shrimp I cooked compared to their photo- I added tomatoes and onions to the salad and I didn’t eat a full serving of the shrimp.  

It was good but was far from spicy 

There have been some comments I need to respond to and I will do that soon.

Hope you all have a good week 

❤️ Rhonda 

Buy Nothing Group, and few meals

Hello everyone 

I’m happy that most of the stuff on my to do list is done

I had a pretty big pile of discards and I gave most of it away on a local Facebook Buy Nothing group. 

As people claimed things,  I put them in grocery bags with their names outside our home.  

It’s all on the honor system but so far, things are getting picked up and it’s been fairly easy.  

Buy Nothing groups are local, by city and town.  If you have a Facebook account,  I think they can be a great way to give things away free  or to get things for free.  

We gave away an assortment-some was our stuff, some belonged to our daughter’s family. 

We still have our original doors and windows but have ordered new ones.

The front door will look like wood but I think it’s some kind of fiberglass.  

I wanted internal blinds on the windows but we have 7 curved windows and internal blinds aren’t available for them.  

But it is OK.  New doors and windows are expensive and having internal blinds almost doubles the cost.  
We found out today that we should have our new windows and doors installed in February.  That’s much earlier than we were expecting.  

We had homemade pizza one night with a 1/2 recipe of the dough in the link below 

http://ifyoudostuff.blogspot.com/2012/03/homemade-calzones-wonderful.html

And stuffed bell peppers another meal- they were still steaming when I took the photo. 

I used the recipe below as the base but it used 6 peppers and I only used 2.  

They were delicious and I should make them more often.  

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/235323/dis-stuffed-green-peppers/

Hope you all have  had a good week 

❤️ Rhonda 

Working on my to do list

Hello everyone 

I can’t say I’m going real fast but I have checked off a few things on that to do list.

My biggest job was deep cleaning the fridge.  

When there were 7 of us living here,  it was like a game of Jenga fitting all the groceries, leftovers, lunch things, etc in to this fridge.  

It seemed like it was always full to capacity. 

So yesterday, I took everything out shelf by shelf.  I also took out all the shelves and drawers and door cubbies. 

Everything got washed in the sink with Dawn Powerwash and and a scrub brush.  

I’m a big fan of the Dawn.  It really cleans off stuff with no effort. 

Before

After 

Besides cleaning,  I also refilled the tea dispenser, peeled a bag of tiny oranges, 

and brought more eggs and a bag of big oranges from the shop fridge into this fridge. 

I found multiple types of cheese that need to be used soon so we will be having pizza, tacos and salad with grated cheese on top this week.  

There are also 2 containers of sour cream so I should use some of it in something baked soon.  

I only cleaned the fridge side.  The freezer side still needs cleaned but I don’t think it will be a very big job. 

❤️ Rhonda 

2nd to do list of 2023

Good morning homemakers 

One thing on last weeks list that did not get done was a bath for our dog, Ducky. 

So, that was done first thing and now he is pouting and looking out the window.

Here is my to do list, what I hope to accomplish this week anyway, but as always, we will see. 

Hope you all have a wonderful week

❤️ Rhonda