Shared Meals

While perusing another's blog one day, I happened to learn about shared meals. Basically, it's where you get several households to join you in creating one large meal each and then each household gives their meal to all other households in the group. It majorly cuts down on cooking, and is supposed to help with the budget. (So far I've had too many other things happening to know if it really does save money.)

We have four households in our group, and are trading meals once a week. So it ends up that we have four different cooked meals per week, and only have to heat them up. It's wonderful!

I confess, I hate to cook. So this is my answer to staying out of the kitchen.

Only, last week didn't go too well. I failed my other households and didn't get the meal ready on time. I promised it a few days later, and something else happened. So today I've spent the entire morning in the kitchen. I finished the meal that didn't seem to want to happen last week. I made the meal for this week. And I'm getting ahead of the game and made the meal for next week. Thankfully some of this can go in the freezer, otherwise I'd have to buy a new fridge to house all this till 'delivery day'.

The meals:


Cuban Black Beans and Rice; "Chicken" (vegetarian) and Lentil Soup; "Beef" (vegetarian) Stroganoff (with noodles still to come); more Chicken and Lentil Soup for the Christmas party.

Bathroom Paint-Job

We are soon hosting Dear Husband's office staff Christmas party at our house. This has been great impetus for completing a few more "renovations" around the house, one of which is the main bathroom.

The bathroom was gross. Purple in color, and a VERY bad paint job at that; caulking around the sink that looked like it was carelessly smeared in place -- if you can call down on the counter 'in place'; baseboards not even fully laid. There was also an old wall heater under the window that we are afraid to use.


So Dear Husband handled the electrical end of things and took out the heater, and then replaced the hole with new wallboard. From there, I took over mudding -- yes, again -- the patch, and various other major discrepancies all over the walls. Then, on Friday, David rolled the ceiling for me, and I rolled the walls to this new color.


I am not as thrilled with the color as I had hoped to be; it's too . . . something. It swears with the natural wood color of the cabinet and door frame. Oh, well. What it is, it is. -- For now.

We then installed some new towel bars, and did a couple other little things. I have yet to make a new shower curtain, a curtain to cover the linen cupboard, and a curtain for the window. I'm hopeful that I'll like it much better once these things are completed, which I'm hoping to finish this week. We'll see . . .

Slippers

A few weeks ago, as the weather was turning cooler, I told Dear Daughter to get her slippers on. (I had knitted and fulled her a pair a couple years ago.) She put them on, and came to me saying, "Mommy, they're too little. Will you make me a new pair? A pink pair, exactly like these?"

So a trip to our local craft store produced the yarn (although not the exact yarn) for the new slippers. A few days later, voila:


These were intended to be a Christmas gift for Dear Daughter, but how do you discreetly leave slippers out to dry in a house that Dear Daughter has full roam of? They're still a Christmas gift, but they won't be a surprise, I guess. They're already wrapped and under the Christmas tree, so you'll have to wait till later to see the finished results (after fulling). We all think they turned out very cute.

Applesaucing Again

I now have 4 bushels of applesauce in my freezer, less what Dear Husband has heartily consumed. One bushel is for an unnamed person, the rest will be gone within a few months by Dear Husband, no doubt.

This photo is from the last saucing time with Dear Sister. The apples were worse than seconds, and we paid the full price for them. That was maddening! So, as you can imagine, we did a lot of carving on them. After two bushels of carving, I was DONE. So Dear Sister took over the last bushel of carving while I processed apples into sauce. We were very glad to be done!

Play-Dough Creations

Dear Daughter shows her creative side with these guys she cut out of play-dough and arranged herself. She then insisted that I take pictures of it. So of course I had to blog about it, too!

Birthday Present

Niece recently had a birthday. Of course I needed to come up with a present for the event, and Niece gave me the idea when she mentioned she really wanted a sleeping bag for her doll. When I checked out the price of the one she wanted, I about had a cow! I told her I'd make her one. So this is it:


Dear Sister made Niece the night-gown, after Niece picked out the fabric.