Goodbye 2017

This morning I woke up thinking about all the things that have happened over the past year. It was super easy for me to focus on all the negative things. I let my mind wonder for a few minutes and decided to stop that line of thinking and start thinking of all the good things that happened. Even though it was a rough year I am still standing. .

As I started making a mental list of all the good things that happened I realized that the list of good definitely outweighed the bad. I have an amazing family who love me. Seriously do you need anything more than that? I have amazing friends who love me. Our oldest daughter got married and we gained a son in law. We got to see them purchase their first home. My baby boy graduated high school and started college. Both of my college kiddos are doing great in school. I have no idea how I got such smart kids. We grew more of our own veggies this year. We raised more of our own meat this year. I could go on and on an on.

There are just two things that I want to accomplish today to end my new year happy. One is to make a tinted lip balm that I love. I had one failed attempt, like it didnt add color to my lips and it eventually molded.  The other thing is to make a quilt. I have never made a quilt and I am sure I could just whip one up in a day. I am just kidding about that. I was going to be more realistic and make a quilt block pot holder.

As you look back at your year today please try to not let the bad outweigh the good. If you are still standing you are doing fine. When making goals or resolutions be realistic. Would I have preferred to grow all my own veggies and have canned enough to last us through the winter? Of course but because I didnt that does not mean I failed. Every time in the coming year when I use my quilt pot holder and will smile and realize one day I will have a quilt on my bed that I made but for right now the smaller one is just fine.

Restoring TIme

As we are only two days away before that ball drops and we ring in a new year I have been thinking about time. All the time we waste on things that don't matter, like being angry, perfectionism, worry, what other people think and the list could go on for days. As I focus on my word RESTORE its a little sad to think I cant restore lost time. Oh the things I would like to tell myself in my 20's and 30's to save myself from a lot of lost time with a few of the things I mentioned above. Even though I can not take back time I can sure make more of it in my life to enjoy the things that matter to me.

If you get easily offended please skip this next paragraph. The best way to manage our time more wisely is to have a schedule. If you wake up at 6am every day then you should continue with that trend on the weekend. Thats right no sleeping in. I know this is making a few of you a little mad thats why I told you to skip this part. When you have  set time for waking up it will eventually give you a set time for going to sleep. Thats of course if you dont take a nap. Dont worry I am not going to talk about your naps,

Our alarm is set for 6am on the weekdays. We are actually normally awake before then but as winter days get colder its nice to stay under those warm blankets as long as possible. Today is Saturday and both of us are awake and up at 6am. In fact its not even 8am and we have had breakfast, morning tea or coffee and two loads of clothes are washed. The breakfast dishes are drying in the drain as I type. Even though we are early birds we are still in our pjs and take the mornings slower on the weekend. I am a firm believer your weekends should be as relaxing as you want them to be. If you keep your same sleep schedule on the weekends when your alarm goes off on Monday morning you may still not want to go back to work but at least you dont look like you got hit by a truck.

I mentioned having a schedule. write down a few things that you wished that you had more time for. Post the list somewhere you can easily see it and easily add things to it. The first thing and only things on my list right now is blogging. I enjoy this and if I have it scheduled right it will not take up that much time. We will discuss our lists later after the new year but a few other thing on my list are meal planning. I know that may not side like fun but I like to cook and honestly if you have a good plan it opens more time for other things. I really want to start experimenting more with new recipes and trying some old forgotten ones as well. 

You may have noticed the clock in the above picture runs backwards. It says its 8:03. The boy loves watches and clocks so I had to grab this one for him for Christmas. It was less than $9 on Amazon. It takes a bit to get use to but its the perfect example for this post, When trying to tell time with this clock you have to really stop and think about reading it, As we are rushing around checking our phones or our cars for the time stop and think about if what you are rushing to do really that important. Why are you rushing and running late and how are you treating those around you in your rush?

Enjoy your weekend. We are going to the feed store in a bit for chicken and rabbit feed, maybe a stop over at Lowes and this afternoon we will be headed to Mellow Mushroom to spend $10.50 on $25 worth of food. Yay for Groupon deals and cheap family dates.

An Evening on Mrs Ladybugs Urban Farm

Tonight our children ages 18 and 20, so not little children, have went out. Mr Ladybug, don't tell him I called him that, and I are bout alone and the house is so quiet. There is a fire going in the wood stove, a kettle on top with water in it ready for tea whenever I want some. The dogs are snoring and the cat is pretending to be asleep but ready to hit anyone who walks too close with his paw. I honestly never could fathom this sort of evening. We are finding ourselves alone more that not these days. I actually thought when this time came I would be really sad. Even though I miss reading stories to little ones, its hard to be sad when your children are growing up and doing what they are suppose to do. As for the stories, I sometimes download free ones from Amazon and read them to the cat and dog. They don't seem to mind.

Twenty five years ago, when we first became parents, if you had asked what we would do when we had a free night with no kids we would have said sleep and watch tv.  I am happy to report that we are doing something a little more productive than that. We have discussed ordering our seeds for this years garden. Mr Ladybug finished a book he was reading and I started knitting a dish cloth on my loom. We have never been known as wild and crazy. Well maybe a little crazy. 

My cousin posted something on Facebook last night about what would be our word for 2018. Normally I think of the new year as a new beginning but after really giving her question some thought I think my word will be RESTORE. We are so quick to restart and to get something new that we don't even think about restoring what we have or use to have. I pass by an old building several times a week that they have started restoring. Its actually one of my favorite things to do. My husband recently said it would have been cheaper to have torn it down and build something new.  I don't know anything about construction and he could be right but so much would be lost if they did that. This building has history, it has character. I for am glad to see it will continue on and I hope that its new occupants will love it as much as other had when he was originally built.

In 2018 I want to restore relationships, old traditions, old ways of doing things. Be prepared for those sort of posts. You have been warned. Are there any things you wish to restore? I asked a few friends a few weeks ago what were things that people just don't do anymore. I got some really good answers like big Sunday afternoon. after church dinners, Elaborate dinner parties, sending people cards and thank you notes, sitting on the front porch just to name a few. What would you add to this list? Anyone care to join me in restoring some things in the coming year?

What do we Americans spend 30 billion dollars on each year?

As you can tell by the picture its pizza. Lets be honest, its fast, easy and you can eat it with your hands. We love pizza at our house but when we order it it can get expensive. The hubby wants whole pepperoni, onions. mushrooms and cheese cheese cheese. The girl is veggie only with peppers, mushrooms onions and stuffed crust, the boy is chopped pepperoni, ham, mushrooms, and stuffed crust. I am whatever is leftover from making everyones and I like thin crust. So when we order pizza we are lucky to get it under $25. I can easily make these pizzas for less that $7 total and have gotten it to an art of getting it completed start to finish in about an hour. By the time I order. pick up and get back home you are looking at an hour and if I ordered and tipped the delivery guy and you should always tip the delivery guy I chose to make it and save the money. Plus lets be honest it does taste better homemade.

I am not going to lie and say we never order pizza. If its a rough day and I have no idea what to do its pizza. I got a great deal on pizza from Groupon, like $25 for $10.50 so we will be grabbing a pizza this weekend. With all the seed catalogs coming in and my hubby and I snuggled up in front of the fire planning an even bigger garden the $18 I save each time I choose not to order pizza can be used to order seeds. We have only made decisions on cabbage and onions and are ordering 3 different kinds of each. I dont even know how many varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, radishes and herbs we end up with.

 Do you know how much you spend on pizza either homemade or ordering each month? I would love to know how much of that 30 billion each of us are responsible for. There are something like 61,269 pizzerias in the United States as well. I wonder if someone has it on their bucket list to visit them all?

So the broccoli sprouts look very  much like they did yesterday. I plan on seeing a difference starting in the morning. I actually went to bed and forgot to drain and rinse them so I had to get up and do that. It was not fun being all snuggly warm watching youtube videos on how to grow the best onions and
having to touch the cold wood floors.

I turned them sideways because I saw this lady do it on Youtube and I thought it made more sense. You can leave them straight up if you like.

I am off to the grocery today. I have a menu, my Shopkicks app ready, my Ibotta deals downloaded, my price comparisons made and am ready to start the new year with saving. Wish me luck. Have you any grocery goals this year. I would love to get out weekly grocery total down by $20 a week, I would love to earn at least $25 a month from Ibotta and $5 a month from Shopkicks towards amazon purchases. I find it hard to make lots of money off of either since I dont buy lots of prepackaged foods. If you do you should really check them out.

Planning Ahead

The other day my husband was watching Jas Townsend on youtube. He was showing you how they made sauerkraut in the 18th century. My husband commented to me that back then you really had to plan ahead for some things. If we want sauerkraut we just have to go to our local grocers. You can even get the fermented kind, similar to how Mr Townsend was making,  at some stores today.

I watched a first episode of a cooking show with Martha Stewart and Snoop Dog last year and they were having a cook off on who could make the best fried chicken. Snoop explained his recipe as get some chicken add this and that and fry it. Martha's instructions started with soaking your chicken in a brine for 3-4 days prior to cooking it. The other people on the show asked her who know they were going to eat fried chicken 4 days from now? They thought she was crazy, she thought they were crazy Its was pretty funny. You should look up the episode. It seems they both fried up some good and very different chicken. 


This weekend I want to have shrimp tacos. Even though I can go to the store and buy some cilantro I have several packets of sprouting seeds in my cabinet. They take about 4 days to grow and I am using things I already have and that I need to use up. I like to think I am a bit like Martha and have things planned a little better for my meals.


Sprouting supplies can be a little pricey and can easily be made at home for most of us. All you need is a canning jar or any glass jar that's tall and some loose woven fabric like cheesecloth. To start you just have to place sprouting seeds in your jar. I just did 1/2 Tablespoon and a few inches of water for them to soak 8-12 hours. Since I did this around 7 this morning I will drain them and place the cloth over them later this afternoon, set my reminder to rinse and drain them again in the morning. I will repeat this process of rinsing and draining for about 4 days until we make our tacos.

I will keep you updated on how the sprouts are going. I am using Botanical Interests sprouting seeds but I also have some seeds from Mozybeau Farms and I have used raw sunflower seeds that I have gotten from the grocery store as well. The only negative thing I have to say about the Botanical seeds is that the detailed instructions are inside the package. That makes it a little hard to read without tearing up the package.

 I highly recommend Townsend and Sons videos. They are interesting and educational. They also have a website where you can purchase some of the things they use on the show. I especially love the homemade whisks in the videos. Let me know what you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axFFUdQdyJg

One less thing to buy

As I think back sipping my tea my first thought is "why did I make a rule that I can not buy anymore tea until I have drank at least half the tea I already have?" and then I give my self a mental slap and think about all the things I have accomplished this year. Every year we try to be more self sufficient, make more of the things that we use to buy and try to make less waste and recycle more.

There are so many things we make instead of buying like soap, shampoo, laundry soap, toothpaste, deodorant and a few other things that slip my mind because I am probably thinking about what I will do if I run out or Earl Grey. My daughter sometimes gets a heat rash in the bend of her arm and my hubby has been knows to get one as well. He asked me if I had anything for a heat rash and I found a recipe that's suppose to work for diaper rash as well but lets not tell him that please.

RASH CREAM

Use equal parts coconut oil and corn starch. Whip the coconut oil with an electric mixer until its light and creamy, about 8 minutes. With a spatula mix in corn starch. When you have it mixed then you can use the mixer again. If you don't mix it first then the corn starch goes everywhere and your bowl looks smokey like you have dry ice in it. True story! I didn't want to make a ton of this so I just used 2 Tablespoons of each. Once it's mixed I added a few drops of lavender because it smells so good and a few drops of peppermint oil for its cooling effect. Its light and creamy and smells wonderful.

Notice how I label the container. That's very important when you make so many different things. Its not like if you use the wrong think it will harm you but I wouldn't want to brush my teeth with this and it does look a lot like my homemade toothpaste.

My hubby used the cream and did say it worked. Its always good when things work. That doesn't always happen.

Merry Christmas

The past month has been so busy. I started a little business, got all the things done that need to get done to have Christmas, was in a car accident (no one was hurt with the exception of our car), survived Christmas and got to celebrate Christmas with my favorite sister in the whole wide world for the first time in several years since she moved out of Kentucky. Okay so maybe she's my only sister but she's still pretty awesome.

I am also blogging to you today from a Chrome Book, I don't, even know if that's suppose to be one word or two, that my kiddos got me for Christmas. They said now I look like a real blogger and they also said they thought that I  might not even like my gift when they read on my blog that I didn't think I needed anything new to type on. That's about the time I burst into tears because my kids read my blog and they think of me as a real blogger. We will see how happy they are to have to help me figure out this thing in the days, weeks, months and years to come. I am a little slow.

Now that all the celebrations are over and the presents are unwrapped its time to move on to the coming year and reflect on the one that's almost over. I will talk about that on another day. Today I thought I would share a recipe to get me back into the swing of things.
There was this amazing French Bakery that we use to love to go to before they closed down that served chocolate filled croissants. They were delicious and expensive. Starbucks also has them. The boy and I decided that we could make them at home whenever want and save a little money.

First you need to buy some canned croissants. These will have to do until the boy and I decide we want to make them homemade. Unroll them all and place 8-10 chocolate chips in the center and roll them up into a croissant shape. Bake as the instructions on the container tells you. While they are baking take 1/4 cup of chips and a teaspoon of shortening and melt it on your microwave or on the stove top. Once croissants are done drizzle chocolate on top. Yummy and delicious!  The boy did these all by himself and whenever I don't have to cook something myself that makes it even taste better.