Weekend Rambling

Another cold although less windy weekend.  I ended up having something of a long weekend since I had to take Friday off due to Lacey being sick.  She decided to rip open a brand new bag of dog food Thursday while we were at work and gorged herself.  Of course once I got home she proceeded to start vomiting a good portion of it back up all over the carpets.  She is my problem child.  Thankfully when I ordered the bar soap for my laundry soap I decided to buy a bottle of the liquid soap as well (also in peppermint scent) so it masked the smell wonderfully.  I was concerned about diarrhea Friday so I decided to stay home and play it safe because diarrhea and carpets do not go well together.

Lacey the Problem Child

Saturday:
Breakfast: Donuts
Lunch:  I had leftover ravioli and Matt made a PB&J
Dinner:  Brats and coleslaw with cranberries and sunflower seeds

Sunday: 
Breakfast:  Egg in a Hole
Lunch:  Leftover brocolli cheddar soup and roll
Supper:  Chicken and noodles with mashed potatoes (I've been craving this for weeks!)


I got myself motivated early and cleaned the bedroom and bath along with running a couple loads of laundry and working out on the treadmill before I headed out to do some thrift store and grocery shopping.  I'd planned to hit 2 of the thrift stores in town but hit a jackpot at Goodwill so I didn't bother with Salvation Army.  I picked up several queen and king size sheets for a rug project I'm getting ready to start.  I think I paid about $10 for all 4 sheets, which should make a rug from what I've read.  I may go back and pick up the other green striped sheet just in case.  I also picked up 2 Patterson novels for Matt and several books for myself.

My afternoon was spent canning beef & vegetable soup.  I canned 6 quarts of soup.   While the soup base was simmering on the stove I put together a pie using some of the Gala apples and pear apples (asian pears?) from the Bountiful Basket along with some leftover cherry berry smoothie mix I had in the freezer.  It wasn't bad for a thrown together treat especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  I'd planned to can some of the 25 pounds of carrots I bought but Matt doesn't want them "mushy" so I guess I'll have to freeze them instead.

After I got done with that I was ready to kick back and watch the Olympics with Matt.  Matt and I both spent a good portion of the weekend kicking back.  I have been feeling mentally exhausted.  I think all the mandatory overtime is starting to wear on me.  I could use a vacation but since that's not on the calendar any time soon this mini vacation helped.  I really wish I had snowshoes or cross country skis so I could try that and do some skijoring and snowshoeing with the dogs.  I'm sure some good outdoor exercise would do me a world of good.  Hopefully next winter.

My reading for the weekend included a mystery and a romance.  I downloaded a free Kindle book called A Shot in the Bark by C.A. Newsome.  Excellent book and I will definitely be purchasing her next 2 books in the series.  The book centers around a dog park so dog lovers will definitely enjoy this book.  I worked on Mansfield Park.  The movie is not my favorite Austen movie and the book is turning out to be the same which is causing me to not be enthusiastic about finishing it.  Thankfully I have over a month to finish it for the discussion group.  I just keep getting annoyed she doesn't seem to have any backbone and she's so timid.  I also purchased A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg and started that.  For some romance I read One Magic Moment by Lynn Kurland.  I adore Kurland's books about time travel.  I thought I had all them and to discover one at Goodwill that I didn't have was so exciting.   This one is definitely up on my favorites list.

New Year's Ramblings

Happy New Years!  I hope everybody has an awesome and blessed year.  2013 was a wild year for us to say the least.  Hopefully the blessings we've had follow us into the New Year and continue to grow and expand for us.  I have high hopes for this coming year!

After being sick for the past 2 weeks I'm finally starting to feel a smidge better.  It's just not fair to be sick for not just 1 but 2 holidays!  I've got a cough that is typically not too bad in the morning, but gets progressively worse through the day and just drains me.  I've started applying eucalyptus oil at night, which might be why it's lighter in the morning. 

We barely made it to see the New Year last night.  Matt fell asleep in his chair about 10 and woke up just before midnight so he could open the champagne.  After we drank our champagne it was off to bed for us. I know we're dull.  I did offer to take Matt out for supper if he wanted but he decided he'd rather stay in so I went ahead with the taco salad I had on the menu.  When I made the menu up for the week I'd forgotten it was New Year's. 

The pups actually let us sleep in until nearly 8 this morning! Considering it was -22 out, I can't blame them for not wanting to venture out.  When I opened the door to let them out it was lightly snowing. I was surprised as cold as it was.  We've gotten maybe an inch over the past 2 days.  Matt was happy because a lot of our snow had melted a couple days ago when we had a heatwave of 36' and he's been wanting to take the snowmobile out so any snow is a good news to him.

It just hasn't felt like Christmas this year for me so I decided to take down the tree today and put everything away.  It went pretty quickly too.  What a mess the needles made though.  Even though Matt made sure it was watered the needles dried out and they were as sharp as a sewing needle.  I don't think we'll go with this type of tree next year.  It was pretty though.  As you can see the cats pulled down the lights and branches on the bottom of the tree.  I'm glad we put the tree on the linoleum entry way in front of the door.  Trying to get all those needles up off the carpet would have been a nightmare.  I had a heaping dustpan full of needles. 

Otherwise our day was pretty laid back.  I finally got my new Garmin Nuvi that Matt got me for Christmas out and uploaded the updates to it so it's ready to go.  I also did a couple posts for the blog and caught up reading some blogs.  Matt offered to go out and pick something up for supper after I had several coughing attacks, which was sweet of him, but I wanted to have a nice meal for our first day of the New Year so I prepared meatloaf, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and gravy.  It was very filling and comforting.  I've read that you should start the New Year like you want it to progress and I feel cooking food ourselves instead of eating out so much, especially since we have such limited options, is very important.  We also were able to watch the Red Wings play today even if they did lose.  Our channels rarely have their games on so it's a special treat when we can watch them.  I washed the bedding and vacuumed all the rooms.  Boring, but it's what I needed.

I walked into the bedroom to put away some laundry and found Moo trying to take over one of the dog blankets for a catnap.  Lacey decided to join her and you can see her glaring at me like it's my fault.