I was worrying about something, and then I heard my 4-year-old singing along with the cd.

“believing like a child. . .God will provide. . .”

How’s that for a powerful reminder?

I’m playing around with Etsy again. I tried it a while back, but let my listings expire. Let’s see how it goes this time around.

My Etsy Shop

I’ve been considering doing a giveaway for quite a while now, but once I read about the Bloggy giveaways carnival, I figured I’d go ahead and do it now.

The item I’m giving away is the Grace necklace pendant. I love this pendant – I wear mine several times a week. It goes great with anything from a t-shirt to a dressy blouse.

To enter, you need to do a couple of things.
*Go to my store, Hope of My Heart Designs, and look around.
*Leave a comment here on this post telling me what your favorite design is. If you don’t have a favorite, feel free to suggest something you’d like to see in the store (within reason, lol!).
*If you post about this giveaway on your own blog, leave another comment here with the link and get a second entry into the giveaway.

You don’t have to make a purchase to enter this giveaway, and you don’t have to have a blog to enter. Just be sure that the email address you use when you leave a comment is valid, or else I won’t be able to get back to you telling you that you won. Since you have to enter your email address to leave a comment, you do NOT have to leave the address in your comment itself. This is only available to people in the US though.

I will draw a winner after 12 noon (Eastern time) on Friday, August 1. I’ll announce it here sometime later that afternoon. Then I’ll drop it in the mail to you at the beginning of next week – so you can have your very own Grace pearl pendant – for free! The shipping is free too, by the way.

And for those of you who just can’t wait for the giveaway to end, or if you’d like to buy something at Hope of My Heart Designs, use the coupon code endofsummer08 to get 10% off your total order. Hurry – this coupon is only valid through the end of August.

Have fun looking around Hope of My Heart Designs. I’m excited to hear what everyone thinks!

It’s crazy how schedules can change around so often! I had gotten out of the habit of following my master schedule for a while – so when I opened it up the other day I was amazed at how much our schedule had really changed. I’ve also been wanting to redo my cleaning schedule, so while I’m at it, I’ll add those changes too.

I also get to start another binder soon. School starts soon and I don’t want all the homeschool stuff in my household notebook. Well, I’d love it in there, but my binder is so big already that I’ll just start a different notebook for homeschool-related stuff. What fun!

This week is mostly a “normal” week for us, except for Friday. Our anniversary is next week, so we’re going out this Friday night to celebrate. I’m so excited!

Here’s our dinner menu:

Sunday – chicken artichoke casserole, brown rice, cucumber salad, and sliced tomatoes
Monday – goulash, green beans
Tuesday – crockpot ranch chicken
Wednesday – meatballs, carrots, not sure what else
Thursday – Chinese-style chicken
Friday – out to eat for our anniversary – Olive Garden for us and probably pizza or something like that for the kids here (getting a sitter for the first time!)
Saturday lunch – breakfast for lunch
Saturday supper – chicken parmesan

Breakfasts – grits, regular oatmeal, baked oatmeal, overnight oats, and/or eggs

Lunches – leftovers, beans, salads, tuna, or wraps

Sides – fresh veggies

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

There’s a huge pot of apples on the stove right now, and they smell SO good!

We’re going to borrow my mother-in-law’s apple peeler, but some of the apple were so small they wouldn’t have been worth the work. So. . .we washed and quartered them and threw them into the pot. We’ll strain them once they’re cooked enough. It’s my first time making applesauce this way so I’m really curious how it will turn out.

I’m also wanting to make slow-cooker apple butter and apple peel jelly, but I’m waiting to see how this batch of applesauce turns out first.

Apple picking is so much fun!

Stephen works from home today (I love that job of his!), so he was able to go with us before he had to start working. Heh. He took the lawn tractor, and hitched up our sled to the back of it. The sled is a wooden platform with runners on the bottom – he built it to haul firewood up to the house with. He attached the sled, put a laundry basket in it, let S get in, and then took off for the neighbors’ house in it. I took C in the stroller with me.

What was so fun is this tree had several really low branches, so S could actually pick a good bit of the apples himself. He was just running around laughing because he was having such a good time.

Then Stephen climbed to the top of one of the trees to shake a few of the really ripe apples down from the top. S was so concerned. He was so worried his daddy would fall out of the tree and get hurt.

We almost filled our laundry basket. The apples are small, so instead of peeling them, we’ll just wash and quarter them before cooking. It wouldn’t be worth the work to try and peel and core them first. Ah. . .applesauce. I can’t wait!

I’m so thankful for these apples – and for neighbors who are kind enough to share them with us!

The beans finally started producing last week. I had been kind of frustrated about getting them in so late, but the timing ended up being fantastic. The beans started right after the squash died off.

In the end, we canned 30 quarts of squash. We LOVE squash casserole so that should make for some good eating this fall and winter. There’s still a pile of fresh squash in the house but there’s not enough to can. Maybe I should freeze it, or just can a couple quarts. There might be enough for three more quarts. I don’t know.

Last Thursday we picked two gallons of beans. Then Saturday we picked 3 1/2 more. This morning I picked another gallon – but I only got to two of the rows before I needed to come in and empty my bucket. I never did make it back out to finish picking. Tomorrow. . .hopefully. It’s supposed to be a scorcher here so I hope I can get out there really early. I’m finding muscles that I haven’t used in a long time – bending over like that to pick them. But that’s ok. A little bit of exercise never hurt anyone, and I certainly need it myself!

At the moment we have 11 pints of beans in the canner. There’s enough cut and washed in the frig to do at least that many more. It’s late though, so they’ll have to wait.

The tomatoes are doing well too. We’ve canned some juice but there’s more green tomatoes on the vine at the moment than there are red. Maybe they’ll pick up once the beans slow down. . .

There’s some zucchini in the dehydrator too. Zucchini chips are SO good. We love them, and it’s been a great way to use up the abundance of zucchini we’ve had. We filled the dehydrator, and put some shredded zucchini in the freezer, and made a double batch of cookies (we froze half – they’re too good not to). There’s still more we’ve picked as well as more on the vine. We love zucchini.

Our garden has NEVER done this well. Never. I am constantly amazed at how well it has done. But then I look back in my prayer journal and see that I prayed that God would let our garden produce well, and He has. Far beyond what I imagined. God is so good.

Then Stephen visited the neighbors tonight, and came home to tell me that they said we could pick as many apples as we wanted from their tree! They’re not planning on doing anything with them, and apparently the tree is loaded. I’m thrilled. Just the other day I was telling a friend from church that I wished I had a source of fruit to be able to put up. I love how God answered that want! We’ll need to do it some time this week too. I’m not sure when we’ll get over there, but it’s definitely very close to the top of my to-do list. Homemade applesauce is the BEST and it’s been a LONG time since I’ve made any.

Tomorrow should be interesting. I’d like to can the rest of the beans that are cut, and finish picking the rows I didn’t get to today. Picking apples would be good too. But it’s a lesson day. . .and there’s a heat advisory out for tomorrow too (supposed to be around 105 with the heat index – crazy). I don’t mind being out in the heat some but the boys don’t need to be out in it like that for long. So we’ll see.

Then on Wednesday we have an appointment, and Thursday we’re hoping to go do a triples run, and Thursday is also a lesson day. . .and it’s our weekend to clean the church. . .

Eh. Everything will get done somehow. Right now I’m just thankful for all this busyness – everything is just a reminder of how God is providing for us.

Once again we’re enjoying a lot of produce from our garden. I don’t list it every day here because it varies some depending on how much we’ve canned or frozen.

Sunday – chicken and dumplings, fresh green beans

Monday – beef tacos and wheat tortillas (hoping to make a triple batch for lunches later)

Tuesday – crockpot chicken, garden veggies

Wednesday – meatballs, sweet potato fries

Thursday – beef stroganoff

Friday – homemade pizza

Saturday lunch – vegetable egg cups (like mini quiche in muffin tins)

Saturday supper – whole wheat stromboli (working on a new recipe for the bread portion)

Breakfasts – grits, regular oatmeal, baked oatmeal, overnight oats, and/or eggs

Lunches – leftovers, salads, tuna, or wraps

Sides – fresh veggies

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

I’ve been working on a menu plan – just haven’t had a chance to get it posted here. Then my friend Erin had to go post on her blog that I post my menu plan every Monday. Except I haven’t posted mine in almost two weeks. . .lol. . .so here I am convicted about it because I’ve been slacking. Thanks for the reminder, Erin! :O)

So here’s our plan for the week:

Monday: Garden stirfry
Tuesday: chicken, broccoli, cheese casserole with brown rice
Wednesday: beef and noodles
Thursday: enchiladas
Friday: homemade pizza
Saturday lunch: fried rice with veggies and meat
Saturday dinner: hamburgers and grilled corn on the cob (if any is ready yet)

I actually planned out menus for the rest of the month so we could just do one big shopping trip. Then that trip ended up turning into at least two – once we saw how much cheaper Aldi’s is than Walmart on some items. So I wrote up a new list and Stephen is stopping at Aldi on his way home from work tonight. The prices aren’t worth a separate trip up there with the price of gas, but since he goes right by there on his way home. . .