Cooking dinner is dangerous.

Last night when I was making supper, I took the lid off the ground beef with one hand. The lid has handles on both sides, but I decided to try it with one hand. I shouldn’t have. There was so much steam built up in the pan that it burned my hand and I dropped the lid.

The problem is that the lid fell onto the floor, hitting my foot in the process. It all startled me and I screamed. Stephen came running. C started screaming because I scared him too. Oops. I didn’t realize how badly I worried Stephen until I realized just how quickly he came running.

My hand still hurts a little, but thankfully it’s not a bad burn. I forgot about my foot until this morning, when I looked down and saw a pretty blue bruise.

Things are never, ever, dull around here.

I just love it when God does things that just remind you that He cares.

Last night after church one of the men that counts the money from the offering approached my husband. There had been an envelope in the offering plate with his name on it. Inside it was $20.

I have no idea who put it in there, but it sure was a neat surprise blessing!

This is a “pantry-shopping” week. I probably won’t be going grocery shopping until the end of the week so I just tried to plan based on what’s already in the house. Side dishes will be whatever sounds good at the moment.

Sunday
Breakfast – Eggs
Dinner – Leftover hot dogs from S’s birthday party (we like quick and easy meals for after morning service)
Supper – More leftovers

Monday
Breakfast – Oatmeal
Lunch – Tuna salad
Supper – Spanish rice

Tuesday
Breakfast – Eggs
Lunch – Sandwiches
Supper – Crockpot bbq chicken with brown rice

Wednesday
Breakfast – Grits and eggs
Lunch – Macaroni and cheese
Supper – Tossed salad

Thursday
Breakfast – Oatmeal Muffins
Lunch – Tossed Salad
Supper – Grilled chicken and breadsticks with olive oil and dipping spices (trying to come up with my own recipe for the spices – the bottle is almost empty)

Friday
Breakfast – Oatmeal
Lunch – Egg Salad
Supper – Homemade pizza

Saturday
Breakfast – Pancakes
Lunch – Leftover pizza
Supper – Burgers and oven fries

You can read more menu plans over at I’m an Organizing Junkie.

S had a birthday yesterday, so I made him a bag to keep all of his 1,001 little Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars in (ok, so he doesn’t have that many, it just seems like it). I also made him one for all of his John Deere tractors.

Both bags are made from heavy twill pieces left over from skirts I made a long time ago. The strings are pieces of folded bias tape sewn together. They’re a lot sturdier than plain string and since I have a ton of it in the house, it’s easy to match colors to projects. Bias tape makes great drawstrings for skirts too. . .

The tractor bag I appliqued the S on. I’m fairly new to applique but I really like how it turned out. I decided to do applique because the scraps of the John Deere fabric I had are too small to do much else with.

The car bag I just backstitched the design. It took more time than I thought, so I might not try that again. It turned out ok though.

Now we’ll see if they really help keep all those cars together when S isn’t playing with them!

Oh wow, am I ever happy. Our washer was delivered tonight. It is working again. We’re washing a load of laundry in it right now.

We ended up calling a man from our church to fix it. We figured we’d rather pay a brother in Christ to fix it rather than have the local repairman do it. And this was great. He came and picked it up the other day, and delivered it to us tonight. Woo hoo.

Stephen also took the dryer apart while the washer was gone and there was a TON of lint stuck down in it where we couldn’t reach without taking the back off. It seems to be working better now. We’ll see.

That’s really good too – I have a huge load of diapers that needs to get washed. I hope it’s nice enough tomorrow to line dry them – if I can put stuff on the line AND in the dryer. . .things will really get done quickly. . .

The chicks we ordered in February finally arrived! We selected the earliest ship date when we ordered them, but even then it was a good 2 month wait. But now they’re here.

Sunday afternoon we got a call from the Post Office. They left a message on our machine (we were at church) saying our chicks had arrived. Stephen left at 6:30 Monday morning to go pick them up.

The company we ordered from is fantastic (Murray McMurray Hatchery). They ship very quickly and even included three extra chicks. One was a rare breed, one was an extra male Araucana (the colored egg chicken), and an extra of the meat birds we had ordered. Yay! We’re not 100% sure what the rare breed is, but we’re pretty sure it’s a Crevecoeur. It’s a cute little grey fuzzball with a poufy little hat of feathers on it’s head.

We ordered quite the combination of birds – some solely for meat, some as layers, and the colored egg birds. That gave us 29 chicks, plus the 11 that hatched last week.

Then yesterday the phone rang. It was Stephen’s dad. He knew of someone who was moving, and couldn’t take all their chickens with them. Did we want them? Uh, yeah, we’d love to have them!

Stephen thought there’d be maybe a half dozen or so. There were 7 full-grown birds and 18 more babies! These are older than our other babies (thankfully!) and should make for some really good eating in another couple of months.

So. . .that brings us to 85 chickens, if Stephen counted correctly. Our coop and fenced-in area is large enough, thankfully. We’ve been wanting to raise most of the chicken we eat, and it looks like we’re well on our way toward that goal.

But like Stephen said this morning. . .what God is doing is beyond me. I can’t wait to see what He has planned!

I planned out this menu before Stephen brought home an ice cream bucket full of leftover mashed potatoes from the school and about 40 chicken sandwiches. The sandwiches went into the freezer, and the potatoes we’ll eat off and on through the week. Stephen’s dad makes the BEST instant potatoes I have ever eaten; you almost can’t tell they’re instant.

Overall I’m not going to change this menu though. The food he brought home will just be added to it (like the chicken sandwiches instead of pb&j or lunchmeat sandwiches).

Here’s our menu:

Sunday
Breakfast – Eggs
Dinner – Church fellowship – I brought Crockpot Taco Chicken Stew and No Crust Chocolate Cheesecake
Supper – Leftovers

Monday
Breakfast – Oatmeal
Lunch – Tuna salad
Supper – Leftovers

Tuesday
Breakfast – Eggs
Lunch – Sandwiches
Supper – Crockpot ranch chicken and mushrooms with brown rice

Wednesday
Breakfast – Grits and eggs
Lunch – Macaroni and cheese
Supper – Grilled chicken over tossed salad

Thursday
Breakfast – Oatmeal Muffins
Lunch – Tossed Salad
Supper – Crockpot Taco Chicken Stew

Friday
Breakfast – Oatmeal
Lunch – Egg Salad
Supper – Homemade pizza

Saturday (S turns 4!)
Breakfast – Pancakes
Lunch – leftover pizza
Supper – birthday dinner – burgers, sweet potato fries, cake and ice cream

You can read more menu plans over at I’m an Organizing Junkie.

I planned out this week’s menu on Tuesday while we were at Mom’s doing laundry. Then I forgot to post it here. This week is not very glamorous – it was a “use what’s in the house” week.

Sunday
Breakfast – Cereal or Oatmeal
Dinner – Spaghetti
Supper – Leftovers

Monday
Breakfast – Eggs
Lunch – Sandwiches
Supper – Dijon mustard hot dogs and brown rice

Tuesday
Breakfast – Oatmeal
Lunch – Tuna Salad
Supper – Tossed salads (lots of toppings)

Wednesday
Breakfast – Grits and eggs
Lunch – Deli sandwiches
Supper – Chicken and green pepper stir fry with brown rice

Thursday
Breakfast – Oatmeal Muffins
Lunch – Tossed Salad
Supper – Franks and beans (aka “beanie weenies,” lol)

Friday
Breakfast – Oatmeal
Lunch – Deli sandwiches
Supper – Ham and cheddar Stromboli

Saturday
Breakfast – Eggs
Lunch – Broccoli cheddar soup and some sort of bread
Supper – Homemade pizza

This is what I found yesterday after I let S go blow bubbles out on the porch:

Yesterday I went and picked up our babysitter A for piano lessons. I meant to tell her that C had a cloth diaper on and would be needing a change soon.

Quick explanation here. . .she watched S for me too when he was tiny. We used to use prefolds and separate diaper covers with him. Since not everybody is adept at diaper folding, pinning, etc., I kept disposables on hand so she wouldn’t have to mess with it. Now I use the pocket diapers with C, so I showed her the ones with the velcro tabs to use if we were out of disposables. Just as easy as paper. . .

Yesterday she goes in the room to change a diaper. . .and cannot find the disposables. So she looks for one with velcro. Those are nowhere to be found either. So she finds one of the bigger pocket dipes and uses that. No problem.

I felt SO bad though! There were plenty of the velcro ones left, but because of our washer situation, they were still sitting in a laundry basket in my bedroom waiting to be stuffed and put away. I’m having a hard time staying on top of laundry right now, but I’ll be making sure the diapers are washed and easily found from now on. I tend to forget that not everybody knows which liners work best in which diapers and that there’s velcro diapers and waterproof covers in the bottom drawer.

A was very sweet about it all, but I still felt really bad about it!