A wish and a will

It sure is no secret that my dream is to move out of this city, out to the country, and own a bed and breakfast on a small homesteading farm. I love to host people, cook for them and make them happy and feel at home. I love animals, and I love gardening and being outdoors is just wonderful. I also love hard physical labor, there is something about getting your hands dirty and flexing your muscles that is so satisfying to me!
For the past two years, all of our savings has gone, due to financial hardships. Since my husband has still not found a good paying job, we are living hand over fist. After  months of being unable to pay our mortgage, and weekly "chats" with the mortgage company to be more patient, they have started the foreclosure process anyway, and we are desperately trying to save our little homestead in the city. Funny that our goal was to never stay here, but now so that we wont be homeless, we are fighting to keep it. How do things end up this way? How ironic.
Everyday husband will go off to work, come home and spend sometime helping me, playing with the children and then starts job searching.
Everyday I take care of the little ones, homeschooling, cook and prep meals, clean and do laundry, make soaps and detergents when needed, bake desserts. Research ways to save money and sew orders and for stock for my online store.  By the end of the day my head is spinning and I'm exhausted. Then I get to sleep poorly at night and get up and do it all over again. I know that all of our hard work will eventually pay off but when you are struggling for so long and you have no idea how much longer you have to keep trod ding forward it is so very hard to keep up with everything and remain positive. But remain positive I will. I will try to keep up with my blog more, Keep updates of everything that is going on here during the winter months on the little city homestead.
Until then, I wish you all well and hope that everyone of my readers is having a great start to their new year. 01 02 18

Happy 2013!!

This year there are going to be alot of changes! Changes for my life and changes for the blog!

One major change is becoming more organized! I just found a new blog called "Delightful Order" and the owner is having a monthly organizational challenge. To learn more go here
<a href="http://delightfulorder.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpv04mxKbWatbAoOfHf9bomKW8whc1oi4Wsf-nEGP9QDuH0-h5a-j3oonIEcjrYGI7IsPKQcDDCz6QaueZ0XOXbkgeu3ufAOaTOCVFWGS3ltts2JVf-J0PD_qGBdOYApx2Vk0Jm8UeFlM/s489/Challenge%2520Button.jpg" width=150 height=150></a>

01 02 18

Freezer and Fridge Staples Part 3

Here is a list of items that I keep in my fridge and freezer. Some of the items I get from Aldis on my stock up day, and some I make from scratch and keep frozen for later use.

Fridge

• milk (whole or skim) I like organic
• cheese -block, shredded and sliced. (cheddar, colby,or whatever else I'm in the mood for)
• cream cheese
• sour cream
• eggs usually about 7 or 8 dozen
• fruits and berries whatever are in season
• veggies (collards, mushrooms, celery, carrots,and other yummy goodies i find on sale. sometimes ill try something new)
• maple syrup
• butter 6 pounds
• crescent rolls
• bread

Freezer

• bananas that have browned ( you can later turn them into sweet breads or muffins to freeze and eat later)
• frozen veggies. I stock up when stores have them 10 for 10 and I use them in soups, side dishes, pasta the possibilities are endless!
• frozen fruit. good for smoothies, to make pie fillings and to thaw and eat as a treat. yum!
• homemade pizza dough
• yeast breads
• sweet breads
• ground turkey
• chicken breasts (boneless)

Tomorrow I will write out all the menu possibilities there are with just these staples alone! 01 02 18

Pantry Staples -Living on a Budget Part 2

So as I promised, I am back to share with more money saving tips. As I said before, we have had some really hard times, at more then one occasion we have had to swallow our pride and take food donations from a food pantry. We are very blessed! You don't know what poor is until you have to chose what to spend the 20 dollars you happened upon and don't know when you'll see more money again. That is how bad it was when my husband lost his job a year ago. I was pregnant, had no health care or benefits for me or my two oldest children, the unemployment and government assistance were making us jump through months worth of hoops and in the mean time, we were stuck looking for handouts and trying in anyway to make a buck while my hubs searched desperately for a job in the tri -state area. When he finally did nearly 6 months after unemployment it was not a high paying job. So we are in an incredible amount of debt, and still have to feed five (7 counting our cats) mouths while catching up on all of the bills we were deferring before.
Here is what I prefer to keep in our pantry. When you have a odd assortment of food in your pantry you really get creative in order to make a yummy AND nutritious meal for your family. That is always a fun challenge, and I have created some really good keepers to add to the recipe binder.

So no more yapping , here is the list!

• cream of mushroom soup
• cream of chicken soup
• a variety of pastas
• Panko bread crumbs
• crushed pineapples
• creamed corn
• whole corn
• olives
• jalapenos
• tuna
• yeast
• flour
• pie fillings
• rice
• dry beans
• Lipton onion soup mixes
• taco seasoning packets
• spices of all varieties   salt, pepper, onion powder, savory, basil, parsley, garlic powder, paprika, red pepper flakes, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg,all spice, dill, thyme, rosemary, lemon pepper salt. these are what we keep in our pantry.
• stuffing mix
• evaporated milk
• sweetened condensed milk
• sugar
• brown sugar
• 10x sugar
• pasta sauce

Next post I will give you the list of the items I always keep in my freezer and fridge. The post after that I will give you guys a list of the recipes I use on a weekly basis, and all of the different recipes you can make with the lists. Yesterday I made corn and peas to go with the chicken stroganoff and had leftovers. Today I sauteed up some ground turkey with taco seasoning, mixed in the leftover corn and peas and put them in a taco shell sprinkled with shredded cheese! Two meals out of one side dish. :)

 

01 02 18

How to make meals on a budget Part 1

Our bulleton board

This is going to be a many part series to how my family and I eat on a very very low budget. I think I speak for most people these days, no matter how much money you have, we all need to spend it wisely. This economy is rough! It is not easy starting out a family in the recession. We personally have been hit left and right with financial woes. So we are always looking for ways to save money. I have been doing a weekly meal plan, for all three meals AND snacks every Sunday. Saturday I will sit down with my coupons, my grocery sales flyer and my list of items we ran out of during the week. I will then ask my family if they have any requests. This week my son wanted chicken stroganoff. ( he calls it chicken strong enough haha) I have seen alot of cute menu boards you can attach to your kitchen wall. I put mine on a bulleton board that hangs either in my kitchen or my dining room.

    As I go through my list of ingrediants that I need, I look through my coupons, and the sales. If I can find sales that I have coupons for, I will get that. I sit with my calculator and plug things in as I go so I know if Im getting off budget. Now make sure you know how much you want to spend for the week. Do not go over this, for any reason. If you want to make sure that you do not go over your budget, shop using cash. So if you are only budgeted to spend 300 dollars for your trip, make sure that you only bring 300 dollars. That way you know that while you are shopping, you will not just throw in that exta treat becuase it was on sale.

   I have things that I always keep in my pantry. I buy it once a month in bulk. I get most of them at Aldis but if I find them on sale AND have a coupon I will get them at Pathmark or Giant. Im going to type up the staples in my pantry tomorrow. I will also post some simple recipes to make with these items. I will later post what I always keep in my bulk freezer as well as my fridge, so keep checking back!

  My kiddos are starting to wake up so that is all for today, I hope I helped in some small way today to get you started and on track to saving money.
01 02 18

A Day on the homestead

What is a typical day for me? busy...especially the three weeks leading up to the first day of school. I will go through everything we own and donate or throw away things we dont use. Then I will wipe down all the walls and wood work and windows. I leave no stone dirty in this house. That way we have a nice fresh start to the school year.  Here was my schedule for today.
6 am woke up
6 to 730 i cleaned out my lady bugs closet, went through  my moms shoes and put them away. threw out the trash before the truck came.
730 fed kids breakfast and ate mine
8 am did a craft with the kids
830 did dishes and wiped down kitchen
9 am put baby down for nap
10 am made strawberry jam
1130 made lunch for kids
noon folded laundry
1 pm put both babies down for nap
1 to 3 checked emails, entered contests and pinned on pinterest
3pm snack time
3 to 430 colored with the kids
430 to 500 played outside with the kids and weeded the garden beds
5  to 6 made and ate dinner
6 to 730 more outside play, more weeding
730 to 8 bathed all 3 kids, put on pjs and read a book.
now Im back to emails, pinterest and blogging, I did a lot of tidying up after the kids through out the day too, But this is our typical day. 01 02 18

Learning About My Mother

This time of year has been hard for my family and I ever since 2010. Its the time where my mom got seriously sick, and we had started to allow ourselves to believe that she wasn't going to recover. It was around this time, she had planned to go see the Phillie's with my oldest son Talon. She doted over Talon, her first grandson, tremendously. She loved him so much. So when she called to tearfully tell me she was too sick to go to the game, and that we should just take the tickets and go with someone else, I told her no, that she had to go, we could make it work. I did not want to believe what she was telling me. She told me more firmly that she could not go. And how all she wanted was to go there with him, but she was just too sick and weak. Not knowing how to cheer her up, I told her not to be sad, there will be another game. I think I was the last person to really believe that she wasn't go to make it. Even as we took her off of life support a month later, on September 13th, I stood by her side and said to her, I would see her tomorrow. I just believed that she would start breathing normal again, and that she would miraculously survive this horrible cancer. She did not.
Summers have never been good for me, If I could, I would just skip from spring to fall, (my two favorite seasons) and sleep through summer. However I cannot. From the summer I lost my friend to cancer, to the summer I lost my mother to cancer and each summer in between that things have just never looked up for me. I am not sure why I have bad luck in the summer. But I am determined to set things straight. Next summer I vow, to the Gods, that I will have a good summer. There will be no mishaps, no mistakes made, no people I love dying or turning on me. No hardships whatsoever. But for now, I grieve for my mother. I relive these days two years ago, all the last times i hugged, kissed and talked to her. I think of all the questions I have still to ask her. I had so much more that I wanted to learn about her. And I might never know. I have been going through her clothes, for now its all my dad will let me take of hers, and since they all smell like her, I am happy to take ALL of her clothes. As I put them up in my closet, and remember all of our memories we had while she wore this dress, or that shirt, or that skirt with those shoes....I realised I'm learning things about who she was by what she wore. She was so darling! She has the four of the same shirts just in different colors, and the same shoes in different colors. Each outfit had a reason she bought it, a certain intention. It showed her character.  A lot of who she was. Even her pajamas. I cannot express how much I wish she was still here, wearing these clothes, but since besides my memories, this is all I have of her, I will search her clothes for all the answers to the questions I wish to ask her, and hope that they will tell me the story I am trying to read, without the author. I will use them, to keep her alive. I miss you mom. Everyday. 01 02 18