Things are coming together

Well, nervous as I am, things seem to be coming together. My procedure is set for Monday afternoon. It will be fine, it's just never fun facing this kind of thing.

I feel as though I have left my colleagues in a good place with what I accomplished this week at work. At home, I'm caught up on laundry and almost caught up on the dishes (and I still have all day tomorrow).

I have a meal plan made up that is full of easy options that my husband will have no problem pulling together himself until I'm back in the saddle.

I've done a little extra decluttering and cleaning this week, not as much as I should in a 'normal' week, but this week was not normal.

I'm even all caught up recording our receipts in my budgeting system and we have cash on hand to cover the ridiculous parking fees at the hospital.

All that's really left to do is to pack. I've been thinking about it a little and I believe I have a good idea of the bare essentials that I want to bring. I'll take care of that tomorrow.

Praying for peace and a speedy recovery.

Thank you for joining me on my journey as a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me on the Homemaking Diva Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/HomemakingDiva

Thinking About Christmas?

First off, I have to tell you, yes, in my opinion, it is still way too early for Christmas decorations and music. But, now is the perfect time to plan!

It's mid-November, craft shows are in high gear and we're starting to get into make-ahead season. Now is the time to set aside some extra time and some extra money (if you haven't already) to make sure that Christmas doesn't surprise you.

I encourage you to spend some time thinking about what you are going to do this year. Just ask yourself some questions and write down the answers:

• Who is on your gift list?
• How much money do you plan on spending on gifts?
• What might you get for each person?
• Are there any crafts you need to get going on?
• How many get-togethers do you want to go to?
• Are you hosting any of these get-togethers?
• What goodies are you going to bake?
• What baking can be made ahead?
• And don't forget your family traditions!

November is a great time to get started on crafts and baking. A friend of mine has a craft show every year with her mother and one or two other vendors. I always go and usually get all my stocking-stuffers there.

My sister and I bake together, and we had our first session on Saturday. It was extra fun this year because now my seven-year-old niece is old enough to help (not just busy-work 'help' but actually help). We make our list, pick our dates and split the groceries. It's always a lot of fun.

If you start planning now, you can beat the rush and avoid the malls on crazy December Saturdays. If you can swing it, try going on a weekday-day during November to get a head start on your gift buying.

Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me on the Homemaking Diva Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/HomemakingDiva or by email at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Countdown to the Holidays! Chow Down

Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming!

We all have extra shopping to do in December, let's help ease the burden and chow down! I challenge you to do less (regular) grocery shopping in December. Eat what you have, go 'freezer diving', get creative, and save some money!

I have the habit of putting  leftover sauce into the freezer. Plus I usually stock up on the meat that's on sale for half price at my store. I know I have another half a bag of black beans, plus a few 'cans' in the freezer. And I REALLY need to finish that box of rice I bought... too long ago.

Is your food storage in a similar state? Will you accept the Challenge?

Chow Down Challenge:

1. Wait as long as possible to go grocery shopping this month and buy as little as possible. (I'm talking about regular grocery shopping, not Christmas Dinner.)
2. Use up what you already have. Get creative. Dig to the bottom of the freezer and the back of the pantry.
3. Save some money.

Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me on the Homemaking Diva Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/HomemakingDiva or by email at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Countdown to the Holidays! - Use it or Lose it!

OK Canadians!

If you still have turkey dinner leftovers in your fridge, this is your warning. You want to finish up what you can for dinner tonight and then freeze or throw out the rest. Tomorrow is officially cootie-ville! :)

I had turkey dinner leftovers for lunch, and we'll be having some more for dinner. I've asked my husband to 'do' the turkey today (get the meat off the bones) and I'll be starting bone broth in the crock cooker when he's done and chopping the meat and freezing in baggies for other meals.

Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me on the Homemaking Diva Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/HomemakingDiva or by email at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Countdown to the Holidays - Are you Ready?

Well, tomorrow is Turkey Day for me. Doing what I can now to make tomorrow easier.

I made the marshmallow salad (family tradition, NEEDS to be made 1 day ahead) and the white bean dip (from Saving Dinner, CAN be made a day ahead), I also chopped up a large cucumber, carrot, some celery, and a yellow bell pepper, and put them in a large zipplerware (ziploc + tupperware = zipplerware) container covered in water in the fridge. They're for dipping in the white bean dip, I'll fish them out with a slotted spoon tomorrow :)

That's three things ready and done. I also washed all the dishes and did a 15 minute tidy. Now I can relax, play with my sewing stuff, read, and hang out with my husband. (Which are great things to do on a holiday weekend!)

Tomorrow, I'm making the garlic smashed red potatoes in the morning, and having them on keep warm in my crock cooker all day (with a little butter over the top). Plus I'll cut my bread for stuffing before we leave to pick up my in-laws.

Sometime around noon will be time to preheat the oven, make the stuffing, and prep the bird. When the turkey's halfway done (or so) I'll make the pumpkin pie and pop it in the oven, too.

Gravy and the green beans are the only things that'll need to be done last-minute and they're both pretty easy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me on the Homemaking Diva Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/HomemakingDiva or by email at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Countdown to the Holidays! - Thanksgiving Prep

Hello everyone!

Since I'm making Turkey Dinner for my in-laws on Monday, I'm trying to spread my prep work out so I'm just doing a little each day.

Today I turned my turkey over (hoping this will help it thaw more evenly) in the fridge. I went over my recipes again and pulled out the rest of the ingredients I needed out of the freezer so they will be thawed in time.

I got out my turkey roasting pan (which I pretty much only use for Thanksgiving and Christmas) and washed it along with the rest of the dishes. DH put the dishwasher on for me, and I'm having my normal laundry day.

I'll also have a '15 minute tidy' later on, to baby-step the whole 'cleaning the house for company' thing. It's not too bad, just needs some touch ups. :)

It's cool and rainy today, maybe I'll do some baking, too. We'll see.

Are you getting ready for the big day?

Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me on the Homemaking Diva Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/HomemakingDiva or by email at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Coundown to the Holidays! Getting it Together

Well, they DID actually have turkeys in stock yesterday morning, yay! So now I have two. One is defrosting in my fridge for Thanksgiving and the other is waiting patiently in my chest freezer for Christmas.

If you're cooking a turkey this year, it's time to get it thawing :) And  while you're putting the turkey in the fridge, you might want to clean it out. Not clean-wash, clean-declutter. Well, you can clean-wash if you want to. I'll be cleaning out my fridge today to make room for Thanksgiving.


While I was in town yesterday I also picked up bread at Westons - so much cheaper than the grocery store. They bake the name-brand bread and deliver to the grocery stores. What the stores don't sell the day of, gets returned, and I can get one-day-older bread at the Westons thrift store for less than half price! I was nice and grabbed two squished loaves as part of my purchase - they can be for stuffing.

Today is Thanksgiving grocery day for me. I'm going to look at my Thanksgiving Planner and pull the recipes for the dishes I picked. Then I'll check the fridge, freezers and pantry for what I already have and make a grocery list for what I don't, then it's off the the store! Shouldn't be too much. I already did a 'normal' grocery trip. This is just holiday 'touch-up'.



Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me on the Homemaking Diva Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/HomemakingDiva or by email at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Countdown to the Holidays! Planning for Sanity

Thanksgiving is going to be here soon, so I'm doing my best to be prepared. Hopefully by the time you read this, I will have purchased my turkeys. I am bound and determined to find some at a good price, so I will be going to Walmart for a THIRD time, first thing at opening this morning (I'm writing this last night). You'd think Walmart would realize that they should stock up on items that are on at a really good price; I mean, if you keep running out of the turkeys that are on sale, maybe you should start ordering MORE?? Maybe?

Sorry. Rant over :)

I did sit down and finalize my Thanksgiving menu and update my planner page.

• White Bean Dip and Veggies
• Turkey
• Stuffing
• Gravy
• Garlicky Smashed Red Potatoes
• Nutmeg Green Beans
• Marshmallow Salad (family tradition)
• Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Cream

I've got the basics covered and a bit of my weird upbringing thrown in. The plan is to make the dip, chop the veggies, and make the marshmallow salad on Sunday. And the pumpkin pie can be baking somewhere around when the turkey's half done.

My favorite trick (and one you'll love too!) is to make the mashed potatoes (whatever kind you like at your place) EARLY. Then put it in the crock cooker with a little butter over the top on 'keep warm' until dinnertime. One less thing to do later. Just be sure to test run your crock pot first (you can make a potato chowder if you want afterwards) you don't want scorched potatoes on the big day! I got that tip from Leanne Ely who got it from Flylady.

I've got a few things to do each day from Thursday to Monday (including tidying the house in babysteps) so I'm not doing everything at once. Sounds like a plan to me!

Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Countdown to the Holidays! The Turkey Hunt

 It's October! Can you believe it? Neither can I! But it is, nonetheless.

October is time to officially kick off your holiday planning. And I'm not just talking about Christmas. There's Thanksgiving (and even Halloween) thrown into the mix, too. (Plus Hanukkah, or whatever else you celebrate at the end of the year.)

Head's up, Canadians! You have just one week until Thanksgiving! Turkeys are on sale, pick one up ASAP. Ninety-nine cents a pound for a frozen turkey is a good price. If you can afford it, pick up two and you have Christmas dinner handled also! That's my plan. I'm heading to town tonight. There are two stores that have turkeys on for ninety-seven cents a pound, so I'm picking up two turkeys. One for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas.

Later this week, I'll do the rest of the groceries. But I don't want to be going to 7 grocery stores the last weekday before Christmas hunting for turkeys EVER again! (That's what happened last year - boo!)

I like to keep my holiday meals simple and make up a 5-day plan (or so) I just recycle and tweak the last one, most of the time. I spread the meal prep and house cleaning over 5 days and then I only have a little bit to do each day. That'll be the job for tomorrow.

Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

 Please comment here or send your questions to me at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Homemaking Diva Routines

Last time, I told you that routines help you know everything will get it's turn and allow you to relax. Let's talk about how to set up some great Homemaking Diva Routines.

Start SMALL; Rome wasn't built in a day. If you go too hard, too fast, you'll just crash and burn. Babysteps are KEY here. Choose one or two small things that you can work on and then work on them consistently. That is your goal. Two small things, consistently. After a few weeks (not 15 minutes, not 1 day, a few weeks) of doing your two small things consistently, you can add a third small thing, and your babysteps can grow. But only slowly. If you go too fast, you will get overwhelmed and you will stop.

I like to start in the kitchen (but I do work for Saving Dinner, so I may be slightly biased). In any case, everyone needs to eat, and eating tends to require a little cooking, and both eating and cooking tend to create some dirty dishes. (Now, you can start anywhere you want, this is just a good example, feel free to start with the laundry or clearing your desk, or whatever works best for you.) If you decide to start in the kitchen like I usually do (yes, I am not perfect and I have started more than once), there are two simple things in the kitchen: washing dishes, and having food ready to cook.

Washing dishes: PLEASE don't wash all the dishes for 2 hours straight if you are far behind. We're starting small, remember? If you have a dishwasher, empty any clean dishes, put those away, fill the dishwasher up again and turn it on (even if it's not quite full), then do ONE load of dishes at the sink. You're letting the dishwasher do most of the work, and you're making progress. That is IT for day one dishes. Day two, empty the dishwasher, put away the dishes you washed by hand, and wash one more load at the sink. From now on, the dishwasher gets emptied within 24 hours of when it was turned on. Preferably closer to 12 hours. Part of emptying the dishwasher is putting any waiting dirty dishes into it. Also, whenever you're starting to run low on something that is in the dishwasher, run the dishwasher (we tend to run out of spoons first). Incorporate one load of handwash dishes a day plus checking on the dishwasher into your new daily routine.

I find now, that I'm mostly caught up, I'm just doing one small handwash load of dishes on weekdays. Plus it's a LOT easier to wash more 'recently dirty' dishes than 2 week old spaghetti pots :)

We'll talk more about having food ready to cook next time!


Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Love,
Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Frugal Hospitality

Some of you may remember last time I told you that I was going to try and be especially frugal for the next while as we just invested in a sectional.

On Sunday, we decided to invite my in-laws over after church. This is frugal for us because we often end up going to a restaurant for lunch. But that meant I needed to figure out what to make. :)

Brunch is always a delicious and frugal choice. It doesn't get much cheaper than eggs and toast. Especially since I get my bread from Westons for 99 cents! (They're the bakery that makes the bread for the grocery stores. Whatever the grocery store doesn't sell gets returned to Westons and sold in their 'thrift store'. Bottom line, the bread is one day older and a heck of a lot cheaper. I go when I can and get some for now and some for the freezer.)

I almost made lasagna for dinner, but that meant buying a ricotta, and the day ended up being way too hot to turn on the oven. I decided to make burgers. I originally didn't want to because I'd just pulled the ground beef from the freezer and knew it would be VERY cold on my hand mixing it up later. But then my brain clicked and I decided to let Todo do it. Todo is my stand mixer... we named it that because it's shape reminds us of two droids from Star Wars, one of which is called TODO-360. (Yes, I'm weird.)

But aside from the fact that I've named my stand mixer, it really IS handy and makes a good burger. I used the Basil Burgers recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and the regular 'blade' in the stand mixer. Want to know ANOTHER ground meat trick? Doesn't matter if it's meatballs, meatloaf, burgers, or something else. Mix all the 'stuff' together first, THEN add the ground meat. Everything goes together faster and more evenly.

So we had burgers for dinner, and I had everything on hand for them. Score more frugal points!

We all enjoyed each others' company and tried out the new sectional while watching some episodes from Shark Week :)

None of it cost me a cent!


Thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!


Love,

Valerie :D

Please comment or send your questions to me at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Christmas is Coming! But First: Company and Carpet :)

Confused by that title? :D Let me explain.

First of all 'Christmas is coming' - not very difficult to comprehend. I know many of you are groaning: 'But it was just Halloween, gimme some time!' Please don't get upset, I agree with you! It drives me crazy that there's Christmas stuff in all the stores already and personally, I refuse to decorate one iota before December 1st.

But! NOW is the time to plan and prepare! Flylady's Holiday Cruising Missions are in full swing, and the organizing sites are bursting with time-saving ideas. What's a Holiday Cruising Mission? Well, simplest way to put it is Flylady sends out one mission per weekday, starting mid-October, and she helps us to baby-step our way through preparing for Christmas. There's a fun little game behind it where you're pretending you're going on a cruise December 1st-21st and you HAVE to get everything done ahead of time. It's a great system, keeping you on track, one baby-step at a time.

While I'm not exactly following the Cruising Missions, I am baby-stepping my way through Christmas.

My sister and I do our baking together, and we've already planned what we're making, who's bringing which ingredients and supplies, and when we're making each recipe. This is our third year doing it, so we have it down to a science, I have a simple spreadsheet with recipe names across the top and ingredients down the side and the amounts of each ingredient per recipe in the middle with columns on the end for totals and initials (who's bringing what). We mostly make our same traditional goodies each year, so all I had to do this year was pull up last year's spreadsheet, do a 'save as' and make some minor tweaks. We're making 7 recipes, plus icing over 3 days together and we already did one day. We have fun and get it done, and THAT'S the Flylady way :D

I pulled out my Holiday Control Journal (a free printable from Flylady.net) and I have all my little notes from the last few years. I don't use it quite how Flylady set it up, but I do have everything together. I added a non-Christmas section, and that's where I have my sheet of paper that lists how many kids we had for Halloween each year, so I have a good idea of how much candy to pick up. I also have my Thanksgiving meal planners in there - one page checklists of what order to make each dish, how far ahead... Sound like a lot of work? Saving Dinner just posted theirs and you know it's gonna be fool-proof :D

So I'm starting to THINK about Christmas now, plan a bit here and there, I've picked up a few things already. I got all the stocking stuffers already - a friend of mine had a craft sale with all kinds of pretty and useful and yummy things :D A word of caution: If you're picking up gifts ahead of time and hiding them, be sure to either note where they are (put a reminder in your phone's calendar to ding at you on, say, December 12th, and then you can wrap the gifts and put them under the tree) or keep them all in the same place. I have a spot in my house that I usually hide DH's gifts, and he hasn't found it yet, not that he's been looking. So I know where things are, because they wouldn't be anywhere else :)

ANYWAYS, what was the rest of the title? Oh yes! 'Company and Carpet' right.

So I'm having overnight guests on Saturday. They said they'd get here around 8pm and they're visiting someone else on Sunday before they go home, so I'm figuring a snack Saturday night plus breakfast Sunday morning. I'm keeping it simple, but fancy at the same time. Old bananas were reduced drastically a while back and they called to me, so I brought them home and made two loaves of banana bread. We ate one, but I froze the other, so there's my Saturday night snack :D

Also, I wanted to do something fun for breakfast. I have a cookbook that was a fundraiser for the hospital I bought at a concert and recently I've been trying some of the recipes. And guess what?? The chocolate crepes recipe (which is sooo good - oh yeah, I'm making that today, too for post-night shift 'breakfast' - see my post on shifting) it says to make the batter 1-24 hours ahead of time! (I actually didn't notice that the first time I made it, and didn't care the second time... whatever) So I can make the batter and the whipped cream to go with it (I do Dream Whip: packet + milk + vanilla = DONE) sometime on Saturday before they arrive and then breakfast will be a snap!

Really, I've let the housework slide a bit too much, so having company coming is a great deadline to get myself into gear. And THEN once I've tidied everything up, it's so simple to maintain and I can have a stress free Christmas!

Carpet: My last post was all about how I'd finished painting DH's office. Well, the carpet guy is coming on Friday, so I need to tear the old carpet out (it's cheaper if I do it, once I get into it, I'll decide if it's worth the $35 savings :D it's probably easier than you think). So not only do I have to prepare for company, I have to make space for the carpet guy. But that ALSO means that we can start setting up DH's office :D and then my 'Joyous Snowball' will start rolling down the hill!



Please comment or send your questions to me at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Have great day!

Valerie :D

Workin' The Night Shift!

As I've mentioned before, DH works shift work and I change with him.  We flip between days and nights (6:30-6:30, either way) with days off in between. It's challenging at times, but not too bad in our situation. (Young, without kids.)

A while back I received an email asking how I deal with the changes. And I'm finally getting around to answering her. :S

To start with, days are 'regular days' and we keep the 'normal' schedule and eating pattern. It's just a LONG day with a 12 hour shift. Nights is where we get tricksy. Instead of having breakfast-lunch-dinner like most people, when we're on nights we do breakfast-dinner-breakfast. Yep! Two breakfasts. The main reason for that is when DH gets home around 7am, we eat and go straight to bed, so we need something lighter.

Also, when we're on nights, DH is typically one dinner behind me. All that means is that if I'm cooking chicken on Monday, he's eating it on Tuesday. So I'm cooking dinner for me and putting some straight into a glass container for him to take to work. (Not crazy about microwaves, but at least I nixed the plastic.)

Being on shift has it's advantages. Living in Ontario, electricity is cheaper at night and on weekends (read: they jacked up the prices for when you actually WANT to use your stuff). So while I don't avoid using my appliances during the day, night shift and weekend shifts are when I do the laundry marathons and get all caught up so I can go back to the FLYlady way of one load a day.

Also, I love the summer heat, but DH... not so much (he likes warm, but not HOT). We don't have air conditioning, but I'm able to have the windows open from 2-6am and cool the house down (when I think of it, of course). I can only do an evening thing, but tend not to go out too much (I do LOVE that my grocery store is open until 10pm, so I can still do groceries on night shift, I just have to do it first after DH goes to work), so I have to do 'everything' on days so that's when I schedule time with my sister and friends and maybe do a little shopping.... But not every 'day'. :D

So anyway, thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Please comment or send your questions to me at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Have great day!

Valerie :D

Losing It With Leanne Challenge Day 27 - Pants

Have I mentioned I'm loving Losing It With Leanne? Because I really am. I'm doing well, I'm only hungry when I get too 'busy' to eat on time, and I'm learning so much!

Before I started this plan I was eating way too much. Most suppers I was having 1.5-2.5 servings! But now, I have learned so much about portion sizes and, most importantly, I have learned that I will not go hungry eating 'properly portioned' meals! That was an underlying fear in the back of my mind.

The best thing about Losing it With Leanne is that it teaches you a great way to eat AND cook for yourself with real food. This is a sustainable way to live! I think when I'm done, I'll probably go back to three meals a day with the random snack, and breakfast and lunch will be a LITTLE bigger, but not that much. I'll probably keep Kashi on hand for a guilt-free snack when I get hungry between meals. And I'll be cooking Saving Dinner recipes at least 80% of the time. I'm going to KEEP what I learned about portions and run with it!

So after all this, I bet you're wondering where the pants title came from - I'm getting there! :D The last time I bought pants was mid-July?? And I bought size 15 the time before was size 16 well, this week I broke out a pair of TWELVES my sister gave me, and I don't feel intimidated at all by the pair of elevens my friend has offered me :D

Had a dinner party with friends on Friday and I did pretty well. I did my best to bring safe foods for me. Not 'on-plan' but I definitely ate way less than I would have had before. I'm starting to switch my mentality from "look at what I can't have" to: "I can't believe people eat all this!" (That's mostly for amount of food, mind you.)

Thank you, Leanne! You teach me so much!

So anyway, thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Please comment or send your questions to me at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Have great day!

Valerie :D

Welcome to Homemaking Diva!

Welcome to Homemaking Diva!

I am not an expert, but I'm learning and I have great resources that I'm learning from! Right now, my three mainstays are FLYlady, Leanne Ely of Saving Dinner fame, and my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.

I want to help new wives and homemakers see that it's really not that hard and that you, too can be a Homemaking Diva!

FLYlady helps me keep my act together and Leanne has been convincing me that cooking is not really that hard if you have a plan. And my cookbook is just a great reference. I'm sure that other cookbooks are great, but I just need one good reference cookbook and I bought this one on recommendation from my oldest sister (plus it's kind of fun that we both have the same cookbook and can do some things together and talk about cooking and baking with a common frame of reference).

If you haven't heard of FLYlady, you need to check her out. This is one lady who used to live in CHAOS and organized her home by using routines and by being nice to herself. She gives her system away for free, it's definitely worth your time to try it for a few months and you will see how much she can help you. I have been a FLYbaby (follower of the FLYlady) since May 29, 2008.

Leanne Ely is The Dinner Diva, and yes, I borrowed my name from her. She is actually a friend of the FLYlady and shares some of her recipes with the FLYbabies. She has two websites: LeanneEly.com where a lot of free resources, recipes, and her blog are, as well as SavingDinner.com where she sells menu mailers (a week's worth of recipes with grocery lists), freezer menus, and much, much more! She has published several books including her most recent, Saving Dinner (a new edition that came out this year, it's the same as her original Saving Dinner, but revamped and with Freezer menus added). I have this book and am loving it so far.

A little about me: I'm a stay at home wife, qualified as a junior-intermediate math teacher, FLYbaby, librarian, and internet junkie. I am doing my best to be a good homemaker and that in itself is half the battle: making homemaking a priority. Now, my DH is not forcing me to do any of this. He is wonderful, and when I was super busy in my final year of university and doing classroom placements for my teaching degree he took over the housework because that was fair. But now, I'm off and he's working, so most of the homemaking falls to me, and that's fair.

Now, today was a very good day, and I've gotten a lot done. We had an appointment in town at 9am, so we just grabbed some breakfast bars since we didn't get up early enough for a full breakfast (which is a little too normal for us) but we came almost straight home afterwards and I did an experiment and made 'egg mcmuffins': english muffins, eggs over hard, cheese, and peameal. They turned out great. I think I'll make them again tomorrow.

I'm doing Leanne's Rubber Chicken this week, for the second time. OK, I know you want to know what that is! Rubber Chicken is a cute name for this because it makes chicken flexible - hence, rubber chicken. It's basically one chicken eaten over three days in three different meals (not just leftovers). Day one is roast chicken with mashed potatoes and salad (I've been cheating and getting a cooked one from the grocery store, but one of these days I might try roasting a raw chicken), day two is chicken and bean burritos (using up the leftover chicken meat), and for day three you make chicken stock out of the bones and make soup that you serve with lots of bread. (I'm sharing all of this because I know I got this recipe for free, so I can share it.)

So anyway, today is rubber chicken soup, so I made the chicken stock shortly after 'breakfast' and I also put on some beef stock since I had a bone from a roast we had earlier in the week. That's just about done, so I need to finish up this post. Anyway, I made both stocks, and since there's only two of us, I'm keeping some of the chicken stock aside and will freeze it for future use (last time we had lots leftover, so I know I can do this). I'm also planning on making corn muffins with the recipe from the Saving Dinner cookbook I have.

And I have choir tonight. That's why I started the stock so early. So now, I'm not rushed. I also got a load of laundry done and put the dishes away. I know this all sounds like a lot, but this was a VERY productive day for me, I'm not this good all the time, but I don't need to be. I just do what I can, as I can. Take yesterday, for example. I was at my sister's house all day (which I tend to do about once a week) and we had leftovers for dinner and all I got done was hand washing the dishes. Life varies.

So anyway, thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Please comment or send your questions to me at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Have great day!

Valerie :)
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