Recalculating

Have you ever been in a car with a GPS  and decided not to travel the suggested route? Whether you are making the change because you know a better route to travel or because of road construction causing a detour to be necessary, that poor lady in the GPS has a conniption urging you to “turn left now”, “go back, turn left”, and make a U-turn!” until finally you hear a resigned voice saying “recalculating”.

I find that I do the same thing with my life. When things don’t go according to plan, when I am thrown something new that I wasn’t expecting or that wasn’t on my schedule, I sound just like the GPS lady. “Wait!”, “No, that can’t be right”, “How am I going to do that?”, until finally after I’ve had a chance to think (or a nap), I sigh and say “recalculating”. Sometimes the things that throw me off aren’t even bad, they just weren’t in my plan and the new information leaves me scrambling to process it.

I am trying to come to the place where I skip the freak-out mode and even skip the resigned tone of “recalculating”, and just trust. Yes, trust. It really is that simple. I need to trust that God sees the detours ahead, He has a much better route for me than any I could plan for myself, and I do not need to worry about the new things that come whether they be good or bad. I just need to trust in the One who knows me best and Who loves me most and rest secure in the knowledge that He will never lead me astray.

Playing in the Dirt

I bought several plants yesterday and today and have gotten most of them in the ground or in containers. It was so nice to come home from this evening’s ballgame and play in the dirt for a while. I don’t follow any sort of method to my planting. I just pull out any containers I can find and start filling them with dirt from the inexpensive bags of topsoil that I buy at Rural King or I add more soil to the planting beds I have around the house and tuck in the plants and seeds. I need to get more dirt and finish planting the flowers, rhubarb, and some more seeds, but our garden is beginning to take shape. So far, here is what is growing in my garden:

raspberries

strawberries

tomatoes and cherry tomatoes

peppers (sweet bell, sweet banana, & jalapeno)

Japanese eggplant

red okra

Swiss chard

lettuce (red and Romaine)

corn

blueberries

lemon balm

oregano

mints (spearmint, apple mint, and chocolate mint)

pineapple sage

lemon thyme

rosemary

lavendar

sorrel

flowers (geraniums, dianthus, snapdragons, petunias, celosia, coleus, moss rose, etc)

I still have more flower and herb seeds to plant as well as squash, zucchini, lemon cucumbers, cucumbers, bush pumpkins, and more okra and chard left to start from seed. I am praying for a good growing year with an abundant harvest. What’s in your garden?

Gardening Time

I did a little gardening this week. So far. most of my gardening is in containers and in a small patch of our landscaping. The raspberries, oregano, mint, and strawberries, that I planted last year all survived the winter and are up. The blueberry bushes that I keep in pots in the garage for the winter are blooming with the promise of blueberries this summer. Most of the herbs and flowers that spent the winter in my kitchen also survived and are now outside and blooming.

In addition, I planted a tomat0, a cherry tomato, a Japanese eggplant, a sweet pepper, and some lettuce plants in a large pot and some 5 gallon buckets. I also sowed a few seeds of corn, red okra, and Swiss chard into these containers along with the plants. I plan to put out some more plants in containers as well as in the patch of the landscaping that already houses the raspberries, mint and oregano, I am also hoping to start a new garden patch or two this year. I have a rhubarb plant ready to put put in alongside the raspberries and plans for blackberries, more blueberries, and maybe figs as well.

This is the fourth year for my little garden and most years it has done well. Last summer was extremely hot and so the plants did not do as well as I had hoped. I am hoping for a better yield this year as I would like to have enough produce to can this year.

In addition to the plants and seeds already in the ground, in the next few weeks, I plan to put in cucumbers, squash, more tomatoes and peppers, sweet potatoes, and more herbs and flowers.

I am looking forward to lots of fresh fruits and veggies this year as well as a flourishing herb and flower garden that will attract hummingbirds and butterflies.

I Choose Thankful

I have had a Murphy’s Law sort of week. You know, the kind of week where if anything can go wrong it will? In the last 7 days I have: had a broken water heater, a broken window mechanism on the car, lost a grandparent, found mold in the carpet thanks to the broken water heater, went through a viewing and funeral, had taxes due, and found out that my work hours are being cut. This along with the normal craziness of being wife and mommy along with a few bruises to my little ball players. Whew! I could choose to react in a lot of different ways, but this time, I choose thankful.

Yes, thankful, because there is much to be thankful for. The grandparent is now in Heaven, the funeral was a chance to see family from all over, the window is at least mostly up on the car so that rain doesn’t get in, the water heater has been replaced, moldy part of the carpet cut out, the ball players have only minor bruises (and nothing is cooler to a Little Leaguer than a bruise with baseball seam marks on it), an unexpected financial gift arrived which will help with some of the repairs, even though hours will be cut, I still have a job as does my husband, and …….God is good.

So for this past week of things not going the way I would like,  I set aside my normal stressed out reactions, and I choose thankful.

But Murphy is welcome to move out now. I think a week is a long enough visit. 😉

Unglued

I am in the process of reading Unglued by Lysa Terkeurst and recently finished the devotional by the same name. In both of these books (the devotional contains excerpts from the book), Lysa talks about women’s emotions and encourages making “imperfect progress” towards emotional stability. With honesty, grace, and humor she covers the gamut of women’s emotions from anger to jealousy to hormonal mood swings. She shares candidly from her own life writing not as one who has it all together but as one who is on her own journey to making imperfect progress with her emotions. The chapters include simple steps to overcoming unglued moments and plenty of Scripture passages to point us to the source of our emotions and the one who brings healing. I will be re-reading this book many times, I am sure. I am thankful for one who is brave enough to stand in the gap and show that I am not alone in my unglued moments while pointing the way to progress.

More From My Frugal Book – Biscuit Mix

One of the early entries in my frugal book is a recipe for biscuit baking mix that I copied from Miserly Moms by Jonni McCoy (an excellent frugal living resource ,by the way). I honestly don’t remember the last time I bought a box of biscuit mix in the familiar yellow box. This mix works well for any recipes that call for a baking mix and also works for making biscuits and pancakes. I keep mine in a plastic container in the refrigerator and it keeps for several months.

Baking Mix

8 cups flour

1 1/4 cups dry milk powder

1/4 cup baking powder

1 Tablespoon salt

2 cups shortening (I’d like to try this with butter next time)

Combine everything except the shortening in a large bowl then cut in the shortening until the mixture is crumbly. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator or other cool place. (Makes about 10 cups of mix).

My Super Easy Peanut Butter Pie Recipe

I don’t remember the original source for this recipe. I think it was one of those community fundraiser type cookbooks. I do remember my mom helping me to find an easy peanut butter pie recipe that required few ingredients and could be made in a college dorm kitchen. I was dating the man I am now married to and had found that peanut butter pie was one of his favorite things and so I naturally wanted to make one for him. I still make peanut butter pie for him and for our two sons, but I’ve changed the recipe a lot over the years.

Here is my version of my guys’ favorite dessert.

Peanut Butter Pie

1 graham cracker or chocolate cookie crust

1/2 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup powdered sugar

3 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 small container whipped topping

Mix the peanut butter, powdered sugar, cream cheese, and whipped topping well and spread into the crust. I sometimes top this with a few chocolate chips or a swirl of chocolate syrup. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Yields about 8 pieces.

Avoiding the Drive-Through

This is the season when the temptation to run through the drive-through or grab supper at the baseball concession stand is greatest. Both of our boys play baseball, my husband is a high school band director with a busy spring concert and competition schedule, and I work as a Title I instructional assistant in an elementary school, so time is short in the Spring. Today is my first test of the season with our oldest son’s first middle school track meet. My plan for today included running some snacks to my son at the middle school so he would have food for the bus ride to the track meet. My younger son and I will heat up leftovers from yesterday’s Easter dinner for our supper. I will also put some leftover ham in insulated containers in one lunch bag and put some potato salad and fruit in containers in another lunch bag with some bottles of water. I’ll take the lunch bags with me to the track meet so that my husband will have something to eat when he meets us there and our son can have supper on the way home after the meet.

I’m hoping to continue with similar strategies throughout this busy season so that I will not continue the overspending of the grocery budget that began about this time last year.