Joyful Living

Orange Rolls

Menu for Aug 24 - Aug 30

Date Night With My Hubby - Finished Bird Feeders

It took us two Fridays-date-nights to finish our bird feeders.  They sure turned out cute.  Trevor's is the one with the red roof and mine is the yellow roofed one. 
You may not be able to see well enough, but there is iridescent glitter on the roof of the  yellow and blue feeder.

Cleaning and Decluttering

Noodles with Cabbage

How we plan to save on gas

Menu for July 16 - July 22

Date Night With My Hubby

Trevor and I like to do something together each Friday night.  A few weeks ago, we decided it would be fun to decorate a bird feeder together and hang it out on our back porch.  So we went to Michael's and picked out this cute little bird feeder.

Then we had to pick out the paint.  Trevor wanted to do one in bright primary colors, but I wanted to do one in pastels.  After much yelling, punching, gouging, gnashing of teeth, hair pulling, kicking, screaming, and threat of divorce, we found a solution to our problem. (scroll down)
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I'll post the pictures after we finish painting them this weekend.

Finished the laundry room cleanup

I forgot to take a before photo, but here's my after photo anyway.  I completely removed everything from the laundry room, wiped everything down, and put everything back neatly.  Those bins are filled with all of my holiday decorations and the brown box has my Christmas tree in it.   The big pot is what i use to make my laundry soap in and underneath the pot is my laundry soap making ingredients.  That light blue and silver thing on the bottom shelf is my Scooba and next to it is my tool box and magic eraser stash.  The second shelf up is home to my small pile of cleaning rags, dustpan, package of clothespins, extension cords and energy saving light bulbs.  The laundry room is also where I keep my broom, dust mop, iron, and sh-mop. I keep my ironing board behind the laundry room door.  I will be getting an on-the-back-of-the-door-rack to hold it and my iron soon.  :)



Also this week, I've been working on going through the stuff we have in storage.  I got rid of enough stuff to empty 4 18 gallon sized rubbermaid totes and one large (30 gallon???) sized tote.  I still have a few more bins to go through, but I'm still pleased with the progress I've made so far.  :)

Baby Afghan for New Nephew

Our Trip to New Bern!

Things are finally getting back to normal around here and I can get back to blogging on a regular basis.  A few weeks ago, my husband took me out to New Bern, North Carolina for my birthday.   New Bern is the first established colony in North Carolina and was the capital before Raleigh because is right near the ocean. It was such a wonderfully romantic trip!  He didn't tell me where we were going until that morning.  I packed our bags and we were off.

The drive out to New Bern was beautiful!  Most of the drive was through the countryside with corn and tobacco fields.  We drove past the air base and they were out doing maneuvers; that was really neat to watch!!! 

When we got to New Bern, I was delighted to find out that we were staying in a quaint Bed and Breakfast.  Here is a picture of where we stayed. 


That evening, Trevor surprised me with a carriage ride through town and along the river.




The carriage dropped us off at an amazing restaurant on Pollock St.  We ate on the top floor and had an amazing view of downtown.  The food was amazing.  We had fried green tomatoes with melted mozzarella and parmesan cheeses.  Then we had grilled scallops wrapped in bacon. 

Here is my sweet.



After dinner, we walked down the main street.  The street was lined with old buildings and churches that were lit up. 

The next morning, we walked the historic streets and looked at all the amazing buildings and homes.  Most of these homes were here during the civil war and a few during the revolution.  The air was heavy with history! 



This house above was were the General Burnside lived and it served as his headquarters during the civil war.


After we walked through the historic district, we stumbled upon the old city cemetery.   Some of the graves were 300 years old.  There were sprawling trees with spanish moss hanging all around.  It was beautiful! 



In the cemetery we also found a civil war monument with a mass grave of 71 soldiers from the war.  They perished in the battle of New Bern.  The monument read, "Here lies our dead" and it listed the names of the soldiers and which state they were from.



One thing I found interesting was that they "paved" the streets of the cemetery with seashells.  After the cemetery, we went to the Tryon Palace.  Tryon Palace was originally built between 1767 and 1770, as the first permanent capitol of the Colony of North Carolina and a home for the Royal Governor and his family.



We also were able to go inside of the Stanly House.  George Washington came to the house twice during his tour of the south and it was owned by one of the richest families in the area.  One thing I found particularly interesting was that many of the houses weren't in their original locations.  Many had been picked up off of their foundations and moved.  Most were moved in the 19th century.  Wow!

This was an amazing trip that I won't soon forget.  We were told that around Halloween there is a ghost walk.  We're considering going.  It sounds like a lot of fun.

Been away again

Savory Sausage Casserole

Menu for July 3 - July 11

Plans for the week

So, this last week flew by so fast and now it's already time to start planning the next.

Other than my usual housecleaning I plan to:

Monday - go through 2 boxes in storage and work at least 20 rows on my nephew's baby blanket.  Clean off desks.  Hang planters.

Monday is also family night and my husband and I are going to start on our charity work for Christmas.  This year, we've decided to make hats for preemies and newborns and also angel pouches for hospitals.  Trevor has a knitting loom he will make his hats on and I will crochet and knit mine.  I plan on sewing the pouches.  We will send our projects to Newborns in Need.  Here is their website and you can find your local chapter there if you wish to help.  http://www.newbornsinneed.org/

Tuesday - Go through 2 boxes in storage. Clean washer and dryer. Work at least 20 rows on baby blanket.

Wednesday - Go through 2 boxes in storage.  Work at least 20 rows on baby blanket.  Clean cat fur off of furniture.

Thursday 

Finally Settled

If you've read my blog in the past, you'd know that we had been planning a move from Utah to North Carolina.  We just made the move within the last few weeks and that's why I haven't blogged in 2 months.  Our house in Utah is an old one and needed a LOT of work before we dared put in on the market, so we were incredibly busy for quite a while. 

This is the new living room floor, baseboards, and walls.

This is another view of the living room with the new curtains.

This is the stairwell leading upstairs.  I painted the floor, stairs, railing, rebuilt the walls and textured and painted.

This is the color we did in the bathroom.  We also put in a new surround and textured the walls.  We don't care for texturing, but we had no choice with the amount of defects in the old walls.

This is the upstairs bedroom.  We pulled up the carpet, painted the wood planks underneath, textured the walls and painted.  We also built in a window seat bench.  That picture will follow.

I think I've found a system that works for me!

I procrastinate... a lot... and I've been practicing for 27 years.  When I was a child, I could be found doing anything and everything but my homework and chores.  I've now perfected it to the point that I can spend nearly an entire day doing nothing but unimportant things.   Seriously!

I took a class a few semesters back that addressed procrastination.  The classes' definition of procrastination is, "letting less important tasks take priority over more important tasks."  I think that's a great definition. 

Some may look at my list of things I do each day and think I have no problems with procrastination.  Some may look at my home and think nothing is wrong with me.  My house is clean and orderly without much clutter.  I get decent grades in my college classes and food is served in a timely manner in my home, but if only people knew the truth! 

If you knew the truth, you'd know that I often wait to start my daily chores until after 10 am.  Sometimes, I don't start them until well after lunchtime.  Then, I panic and I become a whirlwind of brushes, brooms, rags, and soap.  I manage to get everything done, but I'm exhausted and I've come to loathe chores.  I don't like the way this feels.  I hate feeling guilty all day.  I hate rushing at the end of the day when I should be winding down. 

I've tried for years to try to figure out why I do this to myself and I think I've figured it out;  I'm a perfectionist.  I figure that if I can't get a chore done perfectly, I didn't do it well enough and if I want to do it well enough, I need to spend hours on each chore.  I dread this and so I end up doing nothing.  Since this realization, I've tried to figure out what I need to do to get over this problem. 

I've discovered that if I give myself permission to make mistakes and that as long as my home is pretty clean, that's good enough.  I've also started timing how long it takes me to complete a particular task and that helps a lot.  I now know that it only takes 3 minutes to wipe down all the surfaces in my kitchen and it's okay to only spend 3 minutes on it; it doesn't need to take an hour.  This also helps me with over-scheduling my day which is another habit of mine.  I tend to write big long lists of thing I want to do and then when I can't get it done, I get so angry with myself and stay up late trying to finish it all.  I've also discovered that my husband still loves me even if the dishes aren't done by X O'clock and the only thing he really cares about is clean underwear and a full tummy.  :)

Trevor's Graduation Cake

I was right; I didn't have a picture of the cake, but my brother in law did and he sent it to me.  So, here it is.  BYU's colors are navy, gold, and white.  The flavor was chocolate devil's food on the left half and lemon on the right half.

Birthdays and graduations

I haven't posted in awhile because my husband just graduated from Brigham Young University last week and we had a ton of family here all week.  My father's birthday was the previous week, so I made a cake for him.  That's it pictured above.  I did the roses two toned.  Here is a close up. 



I was in an extreme hurry, so the scallops aren't even, but I think it still turned out nicely.  I made a 1/2 sheet cake for my husband's graduation, but sadly, I don't think I have a picture of it.  It turned out even nicer than this one.  I will have to see if anyone happened to snap a picture of it.

Menu for April 13 - April 19

Marathon training (yep!, I'm still at it!)

Stack of Pandas

I used to have a hard time getting rid of my things, but then someone told me something that will stay with me always.  They said,"If you hold onto something simply because you *may* need it someday, you are preventing someone else from having the joy of using it now."  These words echo in my mind every time I think about hanging onto a shirt I haven't worn in years or a basket I've been keeping *just in case.*

Sugar Cookies

These cookies are sooooo soft!

Sugar Cookies
1 Cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
4 cups flour

Cream together shortening, sugar; add eggs and vanilla.

Sift together flour, salt, soda; add to creamed mixture.

Heat oven to 375*F

Form dough into 2" balls and place 2" apart on cookie sheet. 

Bake 8-10 minutes or until edges start to turn golden.

You can roll dough balls in sugar, sprinkles, or coconut before baking.  They also taste great with a hershey kiss pressed into dough ball before baked.  You can also frost these.

Menu for April 6 - April 12

Sunday Breakfast - Waffles and sausage
Sunday Lunch - Leftovers
Sunday Dinner - Corned Beef

Monday Breakfast - cereal
Monday Lunch - sandwiches
Monday Dinner - corned beef

Tuesday Breakfast - Cereal
Tuesday Lunch - tomato soup
Tuesday Dinner - Homemade mac n cheese

Wednesday Breakfast - cereal
Wednesday Lunch - chicken noodle
Wednesday Dinner - casserole

Thursday Breakfast - cereal
Thursday Lunch - leftovers
Thursday Dinner - Leftovers

Friday Breakfast - cereal
Friday Lunch - chicken and rice
Friday Dinner - Date night out

Saturday Breakfast - cereal
Saturday Lunch - leftovers
Saturday Dinner - Leftovers

Plans for the week

For one reason of another, I didn't get everything done in the areas I wanted to last week, so I'm going to attempt the goals I didn't finish this week.  I did get the hallway and small bedroom cleared out, though.