Flooding!

I genuinely thought the storm wasn't that bad until I was driving home Sunday afternoon. Most of the traffic lights were out on our ride from Bucks County to New Jersey and this was the flooding we passed on Rt. 1 in Lawrenceville, NJ.

Scary no?

Granola in the Rain

Shane and I are trapped inside this weekend due to hurricane Irene. Rather than just read books and watch movies we started getting crafty in the kitchen- you know before the power goes out. A big thank you goes out to Mrs. Johnson, who sent Shane this recipe back in 2008. He liked it so much we're making it today.

Here is the recipe for the granola.  I don't really measure most of the stuff I put in so the measurements are guesses.

All ingredients are gathered.

Mrs. Johnson's Granola
6 Cups rolled oats
1-2 Tablespoons cinnamon (I vote for 2 tablespoons, you are making a lot of granola)
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup slivered almond
1/2 cup pecan pieces

1/2 cup olive oil
1/8 cup honey
1/4 cup apple juice (we substituted apple cider which is not as sweet, add more honey if this is an issue for you)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix together the dry and wet ingredients.
Bake on cookie sheets at 350 degrees, stirring every 10 minutes or so until well toasted.  This can take 30 to 45 minutes depending on how much is on the cookie sheet.

Add 1/2 cup of raisins after baking. (We used craisins, I highly recommend you try this).

First attempt to mix all dry ingredients in the pan.

 Shane and I misguidedly tried to mix everything directly in the pan we intended to use to bake our granola. Unfortunately we completely underestimated the amount of granola we would be making. We ended up separating the mix into a large bowl and this pan. In all it took three trays to cook all of our mixture.

All liquid ingredients naturally separate so mix well!

Final product, yummy granola that we can eat if the power goes out.

Vintage Finds

Sorry folks not much writing getting done this week. In case you are not local we've had an earthquake, which will be followed up by a hurricane/tropical storm this weekend.

I know, I know you really don't want to here my excuses, but I am working on new content. In the mean time here is some eye candy from my most recent antiquing trip with Shane.

Cash Register

Physician's Bag

Western Style Saddle

No clue...Shane took this picture.

Again, no clue. A little help Shane?

Goodwill Hunting and Sneak Peak

This past weekend Shane and I went to central Pennsylvania to visit a train caboose converted into a tiny home. It was a great day trip (photos to come) and allowed us plenty of time to stop by antique stores and thrift stores as we meandered home. 

We only came home with a few picks: a tool belt for Shane and three balls of ripped sheets for me. We've got a new philosophy about thrift stories - unless you can't live without it or know exactly where you will use it don't buy it. It's our way of making sure we finish projects already in process and don't burst out of the seems of the tiny amount of storage available to us between our two homes. Shane is currently renting while he completes student teaching, while I have moved back home to save up for a house.

I was inspired during our thrift runs to make my first rag rug. I finished the first rung in two hours on Sunday morning. It's tiny, 20.5" across, but I love the colors (only one color section is shown below). 

Here is a sneak peak of  the rag rug!

Sunday was very productive. After dropping Erica off at her first day of college orientation Shane and I decided to run errands including trips to the tailor, Goodwill where I bought more supplies for rag rugs, and Borders. We also made a short trip to another thrift store further south where I picked up an awesome navy tweed hat - bring on the cold weather! 

I've got my work cut out for me today - organizing my new craft supplies, cataloging some upcoming projects, and completing another of the 22 bag posts. Time to be productive!

Dresser Drawers!

Just got back from dropping off a BIG bag of clothing at the Goodwill. My third bag was the biggest so far!

Big Friggin' Bag

Those are the discarded contents of my dresser. Well most of them. Anything that not fit for good will got tossed.

The dresser was certainly the most fulfilling bag project to date. I don't think I'd seen the bottom of some of those drawers in at least a year. It's terribly how much clothing I had that I never wear. For some people it's probably difficult to get rid of some of these things, but trust me I didn't have any emotional attachment to the awful dress shirt I bought on an emergency shopping trip before a presentation, or the high school t-shirts that no longer seemed fully - or cute!

But I am very satisfied with these newly organized drawers - BAM!

Yeah, that right. You know you are jealous!

Curry Breakfast!

Curried Eggs

Woke up at 6:00 AM Thursday morning with nothing to do until 9:00. Sure there were a lot of things I should have done, like start a load of laundry, unload and reload the dish washer, etc. Instead, I decided to slow down my morning pace and make breakfast.

2 Eggs

1 handful left over rice and corn mixture (from previous night's dinner)

1 tsp curry powder

Scrambled everything together in a pan and served with my normal dose of coffee. Add one newspaper to read (or blog, magazine, etc) and 30 minutes of piece and quite and you've got a great morning!

Yum: A Rice Dish

I looked in the refrigerator at 4:30 and things were pretty grim. No fresh vegetables, 3 eggs,  about 1 cup of 2% milk, and a pound of defrosted ground beef. That was it my friends. I decided to raid the pantry.

Not much inspiration there either. We had basmati rice and beef so I knew I could do something. Off to allrecipes.com I went. And on to the ingredient search where I typed in ground beef hoping for inspiration.

I can't rave about this website enough. I scanned the list and near the bottom of the first page I found a recipe for Cumin Corn Burgers. A few tweaks and here is what I produced for dinner.

Hamburger Rice Dish
1lb ground beef
3tsp cumin
2tsp curry powder
2c basmati rice
3c water
2c frozen corn
1/4 large onion

1. I know it's not fair, but I just dumped the water, corn, and rice into the rice cooker, stirred and pressed the cook button. If there is a gluten intolerant person in your life buy a rice cooker, it's a budget saver! (Gluten free pasta/bread/etc = $$$)
2. Next, I added the ground beef  and cumin to the frying pan. While that began cooking I diced 1/4 of a large onion (I use an electric stove so it takes a few minutes for the pan to get very hot, if you are using any other stove chop your onion first). 
3. Once the ground meat was half browned I added the onion and continued to cook.
4. Once rice was finished I mixed in the meat and finally added the curry powder. Mix thoroughly before serving!

That's it - you're done! I always feel like the meal is going to be sub-par if it didn't take a lot of work or a million spices. It's a fallacy. The dish isn't gourmet but it does the trick! Please comment if you come up with a tasty variation.

Baby Blanket

I'm crocheting again! :)

Don't worry I haven't given up on the 20 bags bit, but the posts are back logged so I thought I'd throw something new up, just to stay interesting.

It's just a giant granny square at this point, but I intent to make it much larger and personalize it with the baby's name. As always NO I'M NOT PREGNANT. Just to be clear :) But...there are two new babies in my life so I need to get moving.

I think I'm going to try to make one of these baby blanket's next!

Get yours on Etsy.

16. Armoire Drawers

Today I skipped to  number 16, the armoire. The top drawer is a bit of a disaster filled with  books, disposable cameras with unused film, batteries, and old cell phones.

Top Drawer

The bottom drawer was much better! It looks like I'd organized it some time ago, and left it alone since. This tells me two things. First, I am completely capable of organizing these drawers and second, I don't use any of the items in this drawer often enough for them to deserve space in bedroom.

Bottom Drawer

I made another interesting discovery...an old photo of myself!

Kasey at 13 with short hair!

See, acting like a 13 year old!

These days my hair is a bit longer and my armoire drawers a bit neater! Here is the result:

So This is Sunday

In case you were wondering what Shane and I do on Sundays...here's a sneak peak.

We were creating a master grocery template. I know terribly exciting, right? It's literally a master list of everything we would need to pick up at the grocery store to keep the basics on hand. I could go on and on about how we used Evernote and added check boxes so that I can easily pull up the list on my phone, check off what we need while doing a quick survey of the pantry, and then pick up the checked items at the store.

1. Junk Drawer in Kitchen

Yikes!

So we all have a junk drawer, right? For those of you who don't...what is your secret?? For the rest of us...I'm airing my dirty laundry. The disaster above is one of the TWO junk drawers in my kitchen. I decided to tackle the drawer first.

How'd I do?

Better, right?

It's not perfect. That ziplock bag in the top left corner is full of items I couldn't find another home for but didn't want clanging around the drawer (like keys, a padlock, etc).

20 Bags in 20 Days

I'm feeling inspired...I found this list on pinterest last week:

Little Lucy Lu Blog

and was inspired to create a list of my own.

Keeping checking back to see my progress...the goal is to be done by August 27th!

The Library is Growing

 Lot's of techie information for Shane such as energy efficient, use of solar power, and make a wind turbine chapters and fun homesteading information for me for example chapters on keeping bees, growing your own, and making cheese.

Self Sufficiency for the 21st Century by Dick & James Strawbridge

Favorite Software

For anyone who has ever gotten tired of having a million bookmarks I'd like to introduce you to my two favorite pieces of software: Evernote & Pinterest.

Evernote's got a very obvious tagline, "Remember everything." And they mean it! My boss first stumbled across this program in the book 4 Hour Work Week. The book was pitching it as a piece of productivity software...I use it as my own personal filing system.

Evernote allows me to collect all sorts of information. Web pages, screen shots, voice memos, the works. I know that on it's own that is not very impressive. My iPhone does all of that, but I'm not going to use it to house my client documents for the office, right?

Well Evernote also allows you to organize  content (just like google docs) and then search it. And by search it, I mean search anything.  With google docs, my old online filing system, you upload your files photos etc (read time consuming) and tag them and later are able to search tags.

With Evernote I don't have to log in to the software and upload from my hard drive. The Evernote app is on my phone, in my menu bar, and on my web browser. I just click the little elephant icon to take a screen shot and it's automatically uploaded to Evernote. I  can also drag and drop content into an open Evernote notebook (read folder).

Next, you can tag your content and search within individual notes. So I can choose to pull up all notes with the words "cob" ANYWHERE in the document, or I can choose to search for documents that are tagged "receipts" and contain the word cob.  A-mazing.

I use Evernote for everything. The app is on my iPhone, and I can access my account from my desktop or any other computer connected to the internet.  So I can snag a picture of these cute boots at DSW

and tag them under "Wants" "Clothing Budget" and "September" (because they will come out of my clothing budget for you guessed it...September). Later when I want to impulse buy an expensive shirt I can actually see the items I snapped pictures of on Evernote and decide if I'm willing to sacrifice a pre-planned budget item for the impulse buy. It's about a 50/50 chance that I'll go with the impulse buy, but at least I'm making an informed choice!

 

So my Evernote is a bit personal. It's got grocery lists, client docs, and the super secret present ideas list. Basically, Evernote is for me, I'm not sharing my notes. But my Pinterest account is for sharing with the whole Pinterest community (still in beta folks so you have to request an account and sit on a waiting list until you're invited to join, sorry) and it's visual . 

Pinterest allows me to curate boards by a topic of interest and share them with the Pinterest community. I signed up for the site when I realized Sherry @ Young House Love was using this software to pin DIY projects, tutorials, and items for mood boards. Now it's an addiction. I've got 10 boards where I capture all sorts of inspiration for things like tiny houses, recipes, interior design, and DIY projects.

If you find you've accumulated a million bookmarks, which despite your best intentions you never go back to I highly recommend one, or both of these pieces of software. Happy pinning!

It's Here!

Remember when you were a kid and you were so excited to get mail? That was back in the day before you got piles of garbage and bills everyday, but it happened!

Yesterday I got to relive that kid feeling when my Amazon book order arrived!

America's Cheapest Family on Amazon for $3!

Another great thing about online shopping, you know in addition to the fact that I got this book for about half the price I would pay at Barnes and Noble - even after shipping,  is that moment when you get to relive your childhood and finally get excited that you got mail!