Tuesday Tip

Yep, I'm still here. I chose to take down my last post and have taken a bit of a vacation.....


I'm reaping the fruits of the garden, albeit small ones, the last few weeks.  I froze enough corn (not from my garden) to last a year and as I glean little bits and pieces of my harvest, I am learning how to preserve them.

So here's Tuesday's Tip:

Roasting your own green chilis!

I only have one Anaheim chili pepper plant.....foolish, I know! So I haven't harvested a ton of chilis, but they are ridiculously easy to roast at home.  Peppers are coated with a waxy skin, the purpose of it I am not sure, but our wonderful Creator knew it would be important, so He did it that way! (maybe to enjoy the deliciousness of roasting them.....who knows?)

In order to enjoy them, that waxy skin has to be taken off. All you have to do is preheat the oven to 450 degrees, coat the peppers with a little oil, lay them on the pan, and pop them in the oven to roast for about 15-20 minutes. When they are brown and blistered, it's time to take them out!

Let them cool off a bit, and then peel off the skin, open the pepper and carefully scrape out the seeds and membrane. You can wear gloves if your peppers are hot because if you touch your eyes or mouth after cleaning peppers........yowza!!!

I place them in ziplock bags and freeze them for my next chicken enchilada dinner....

This may be a no brainer for some people, but it's easy, quick and simple for my little harvest!

Before I sign off, I HAVE to share this photo of a recent fiesta we had.......

 

 The prez with one of his littlest branch members.  SO CUTE!

Tuesday's Tip

I've had lots of tips running through my head the last few days, but the one I'm going to share today is the most pressing thing on my mind the last 24 hours.

I've been having lots of shoulder pain lately. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I've been told by my doctor that often times women of my "certain age" get frozen shoulder....... just because. I've been trying to avoid this problem by stretching, massage and adjustments, but sometimes the stress of life becomes too overwhelming and it catches up with me. 

My shoulders have been KILLING me the last few days. But I completely forgot to heed my own advice. You know the old fashioned remedy of soaking in an epsom salt bath?

So it turns out there is some science behind all this.  Epsom salts are just pure old magnesium sulfate. And magnesium is a natural muscle relaxant.  Remember how when you go to the hospital for pre-term labor and they shoot you full of stuff that makes you all jittery but stops the uterus from contracting?  It's magnesium. So too much magnesium probably isn't a good thing. But I'll share a little story.

Last year TL suffered from some major back spasms. He couldn't even stand up straight. I took him to my trusty myopractor and he was able to release a little of the tension but he told him to go home and soak in some epsom salts. Well, I know very few men who enjoy soaking in a hot tub, the only exception being my sons, who love to read in the tub, however, that may be TMI.  He absolutely refused.  So I sat him in a recliner, and had him soak his feet in a nice warm epsom salt mixture, and gave him about 500 mg of magnesium tablets.  It really seemed to assist in the healing of his spasms.

So last night, I took my hot epsom salt bath and tossed back a few magnesium pills and I can honestly say that I was able to sleep better and woke up with less tension.   I'm not a doctor and not prescribing this as the cure for all ills, but it sure helps me out!

I just need to remember to heed my own advice.  And maybe get rid of a little more stress........

Five Facts on Friday

1. I've been getting up at a ridiculously insane early hour to go out and walk before the sun is up. Somehow it tricks my body into the fact that I don't live in Satan's backyard in the summer because it's less than 80 degrees at 5:30 am.  After the sun gets going, fuggedaboutit. Too hot.

2.  Relative to the hot weather, I finally broke down and got a pool boy this year (giggle). Yep, he's kinda cute. I can't believe I waited this long to get someone to take care of the pool.  It is SO nice to have a sparkling clean pool to jump into without fussing over the maintenance all the time. It doesn't feel like a bathtub yet so we have enjoyed it a lot so far.

3.  Every morning TL asks me, "so what's on your schedule today?" As I looked around my house this morning, I realized I was staring at my schedule.  We hosted a bachelorette party last night, (see #4), I got some free corn yesterday (yay!!) which needs to be processed and frozen (did 21 bags on Tuesday), the laundry needs to be finished, and there are a myriad of odds and ends that need to be tied up, including replenishing my water supply.......never ends does it? The FIRST thing on my list tho, is get a pedicure! (let's get our priorities straight around here, right?)

4.

A bunch of cute and crazy excited girls, hopping into the limo to go pick up the bride for dinner.  They returned a couple of hours later to play "put the kiss on the stud" and open the lingerie gifts (I discretely retreated at that point to allow them their fun).  Alyssa planned the whole thing and it was really fun.  One of the girls commented, "wow, you guys have the perfect party house!"  Meaning that my kitchen/dining/family room is huge and open.  She's right, we do have a party house. We host a LOT of parties. In fact, we are hosting Amy's baby shower in a couple of weeks.  YIKES!

5.  We are in the process of spreading germs around here again. Daniel came home with it first and has been dragging around ever since. Kid #2, Alyssa, is out for the count today. She had to call into work. Too much partying.  I've been feeling like it's headed my way too.  NOOOOOO!  I've got too much to do next week.

Five facts.

Oh, here's an extra random fact thrown in. I turned off the comment verification. Giving it a try again and hopefully I won't get a ton of spam.  So if you haven't commented in the past because it's crazy annoying, go for it!  :-)

Tuesday's Tip

Hey! Are you all getting strawberries in your grocery stores and/or gardens now? (I wish I had strawberries in my garden!)

Here's a little tip I learned recently, I can't remember exactly where, I don't want to get credit for this because I didn't make it up.

So you know how strawberries mold really fast if you don't eat them up quickly?  Well, here's my latest magic trick and therefore is worth of a Tuesday Tip:

The magic trick is VINEGAR. Strawberries come all nicely packaged with mold spores included (isn't that nice...:-/)

So in order to kill the mold spores, take a splash of vinegar in a large bowl, add some fresh water, and dump your strawberries in, fresh from the grocery store.  Thusly.....

Swirl them around in the vinegar water for a bit, then put them back in the fridg. I SWEAR this helps amazingly well! (unless you eat your strawberries within 24 hours of purchase)  The ratio is about 10 parts water to 1 part of vinegar, but hey, I never really measured.  I PROMISE the strawberries don't taste like vinegar........

Also because I'm an insane woman AKA Matriarchal Madwoman, I'm off to the farmer to pick up some sweet corn for my adventure for the next few days......If you want another tip on how I freeze fresh corn, go here, because I don't have time to write another explanation on how to do it. Perhaps today is a double Tuesday Tip then.....

Wish me luck!!

Manic Monday

It's just another manic Monday....whoah whoah.......Dang, now I'm going to have that song in my head all day!

So often when reading blogs, probably mine included, it seems like life is pretty perfect. No one ever reads about our warts and failures. I'm not going to be Debbie Downer, but actually mostly life is pretty hectic and even boring at times, right?

Soooo, it's no secret that I'm a fan of alliteration (I've already done it four times so far!) but I thought, well, if I have themes for some of my days, it makes it easier to write.   So here's my Manic Monday thoughts.

Does anyone else wake up Monday morning with ten zillion things on their to-do list? (raising hand here) I always have a list a mile long and then not even a millionth-way through it, I realize it ain't going to happen. No way I'm going to get all this done in one day. It's like I have a massive brain dump onto a piece of paper that is in no way realistic. It's like going to the all-you-can-eat buffet and sitting down to eat and realizing there's no way you are going to finish all that food.

So I'm feeling rather manic this morning. Probably because I've only slept a couple of hours the last two nights. Sorry moms with littles, not sure if you will ever catch up on that missing sleep because as soon as the kids sleep through the night, they start staying out late and coming home later........and you are laying awake worrying about them......or you are sweating your brains out with a massive hot flash at 1 am......or your brain won't shut off....or........

So here's my latest manic-ness....

Remember this?

And I USED to have this.....

 And now my room looks like this:

 

And there really isn't a plan yet to replace everything. TL is not too happy about the whole thing. I kept telling him that the furniture was too massive for the size of our room and the mattress is 22 inches thick!! I get a hernia every time I change the sheets. So I'm hoping that this week there is a little more of a plan (the room really isn't green) I wasn't expecting to sell the furniture so quickly.

Corn is coming off RIGHT NOW. So I've got that on my list of things to do. I freeze 60-70 bags to last a year and I used the LAST one last week.

In other news, one of my dear friends from the branch announced that she and her family are going to the English ward and I felt like bawling all afternoon. My calling is SO incredibly HARD, I get worn out sometimes. I've got quite a few visits to make this week too......

Anyone else going crazy trying to eat right? I am very interested in studying nutrition but there is SO much contradiction out there. I've got family members who are losing lots of weight not eating grains, but I have such a hard time reconciling the Word of Wisdom (and my food storage) with the no grain thing. What's a girl to do????

We are hosting a bachelorette party this week,  I've got to finish Amy's quilts before HER baby shower (hosted here) and try to cope with the ever increasing heat.....

So.... that's my imperfect Manic Monday....time to get started on the list.....

Five Facts on Friday

Or should I double that since I missed last week??

1.  I missed last week because we were traveling most of the day. The funny thing is, the night before I had watched some crazy show about flying on TLC. They were showing all the hassles and problems people confront when traveling. The very next day I felt like I was living that show as we were sitting on the runway, waiting for the pilot to "fix" a problem in the aircraft. Uh.....yea.....I'm super glad they discovered the problem while on the ground and not in mid air. I'm also very thankful that we were sitting on the aircraft in Monterey, California, and NOT in Phoenix, Arizona, because everything had to be shut down for awhile, including air conditioning, and it would have been miserable in Phoenix.


2.  Speaking of Monterey, I did not take ONE picture with my camera. Shameful, I know. I took a few with my Iphone. I just didn't feel like lugging around my heavy DSLR camera.

Gorgeous succulents, I'm going to get some for me! We did a lot of walking

 Toured Pebble Beach and this is the famous logo of the Pebble Beach Golf clubs. P.S. It was COLD COLD COLD!

 We stayed on Cannery Row. Monterey is rich in history. Wherever we go, I love to hear about the history of the places we visit.

3.   After arriving home, we jumped right back into life. I was kind of dreading returning to the desert temperatures, after freezing for almost a week, but we were blessed with fabulous weather from the weather gods for Memorial Weekend. I spent almost all weekend outside schlepping around my garden.

Despite the hot temperatures, we have been getting a steady supply of cucumbers, peppers and squashes. My tomatoes are SICK again! I yoinked out a couple of too-far-gone plants and I'm hoping the best for the rest.

4.   This past week was full with family, family, family.  We inaugurated the pool for the summer season on Memorial Day.
Soaking in some sun.

 Cute little preglet! Less than 8 weeks to go!! All is well with the little one

Gettin' crazy with the big boys.

 They decided to match today....(nope this is not her momma)

 He was freezing cold, his teeth were chattering.

 That lily white skin pretty much blew out the photo. Left over from the days in Alaska!

Spent lots of time this week with grandkids. No that is not a mirror image. It says "grandma."

 Kindergarten grad.

 She loves to sit on grandma's lap.

 

5.   I have no bedroom furniture!  A friend of Jen's, who is a brand-new interior designer, came over to check out my house and give me some suggestions.  She had some ideas for my bedroom and suggested I sell the furniture to fund the new design. I said, sure! TL agreed that it was fine, I put the posting on Craigslist.....

SOLD!  In less than five hours.......We will be sleeping on the floor on our mattress until we figure out what to do next................

Five Facts!!

Five Facts for Friday

Sheesh! I just go schlepping through life and all of a sudden it's Friday again! There's always stuff rattling around in my brain but somehow it never arrives here!  I'm thinkin' I kinda like this Friday facts thingie because it forces me to sit down and just DO IT! So without further ado.....

1.   I've discovered the SECRET to getting things DONE!! Really!  And I'm not going to charge you $29.99 in four easy payments to tell you this secret!   The secret is:

STAY HOME.

Yep, that's pretty much it. I realize that for many people, staying home is not an option, but for those of us who are stay-at-home moms/homemakers, we have more flexibility. The weeks I am able to stay closer to home, I am able to accomplish so much more! You know, the things that are on your list that are "someday" to-do. There seem to be weeks that I'm constantly out running around, doing the necessary tasks of life, but I REALLY wish I could be more organized so that I could get those things done in one or two days outside rather than every morning or afternoon having to jump in the car to get an errand done.......For instance today I was planning on sticking around because I've been out so much and dang it, there's some have-to-do stuff that has already popped up....and it's not even 8:00 am yet!!  So here's to taking my own advice......

2.  The heat has arrived.  !#^*&@!!  So now I begin my annual whine-fest.  Last month I was in Utah and took an early morning walk. 

For the past week it has been over 100 degrees, closer to 104-105 degrees, and my body just can't take it. I was so exhausted Saturday after being outside and running around nearly all day that it has taken me days to recuperate. Uggggggggggg.  I took this photo recently on an early morning walk at home......

Whine, whine, whine. Compare and contrast. Yea, I know in January it looks a lot different, but this is my whining time......

3.   In the garden news, I'm sad to report that the tomatoes are sick AGAIN!.

 This is not a super great photo, but I think they have curly top virus.  We went to a local garden center a couple of weeks ago, and I learned from the experts there about all the stuff I was doing wrong. Meh... I have decided that we are going to concentrate on the soil and redo our watering system before the next fall season and let the chips fall where they may.....or maybe tomatoes???

All is not lost in the garden tho...It looks like I may finally get a bumper crop of cucumbers (which ironically is one of my least favorite veggies) I grow them for TL. The picture is super blurry but that is a pickling cucumber!  Hello pickles!

4.  Mother's Day was awesome!! All of my blood children took me to lunch on Saturday and it was so much fun.  Someone took a photo but I pretty much refuse to put it on my blog because it looked like I weighed 200 pounds.  If you are friends with one of my kids on facebook, you've probably already seen the dreadfulness.   We also had a great party in the branch...(we ALWAYS have great parties!) Mother's Day is a big tradition and this year the men did it up nicely for us. We had a really nice dinner and a beautiful program with piano music.  Here's a few photos of some of the mommas with their kiddos.

 5.   This is the first year that I've not had a child participating in all the end-of-year craziness. It feels kind of weird.  Last year my baby graduated from high school so we are moving into a different phase of life. The other day I realized that my nest will probably be empty within the next year and it felt kind of weird. I've had kids at home for 35 years.  It's going to take some time to adjust to that fact. So in lieu of my own kids, I can run around and watch the grands on their big day....

Here's one of the littles on her pre-school graduation day. There's another one next week but I have to miss it because TL and I are going out of town. (I'll do my five facts in Monterrey, California next Friday! Whoo hoo)  There is a kindergarten graduation the week after we come home so yay-I'll be able to watch that!

There you have it-my five facts!