HJ Waxing Moon

The Challenge: Northwest Edible Life has a yearly Eat from the Larder challenge in April. I only read about it on April 1, but it had been a half-assed goal of ours anyway so I jumped onboard. Their rules are a ZERO dollar food budget and no intentional stocking up ahead. Of course without any forewarning I couldn't possibly have intentionally stocked up ahead, but I'm not interested in a $0 grocery budget--just cleaning out some of our excess pantry storage and being a little creative. We're having an issue with our freezer & fridge that requires us to minimize our perishable food stock before fixing it, besides the excessive collection of condiments and pickles in there. Our Rules: No purchasing non-perishable food items.  Minimal purchase of perishable items.  No opening of new condiments if they can be avoided (until after the fridge is fixed, whether that's in two weeks or May).  Be creative!  Keep it simple, right? Bonus goals: Use ever...

A few years ago, I made everyone in my family a gift basket for Christmas. This was the first time I'd ever given my own gifts to extended family, instead of letting my mom put my name on a tag of something she had bought for them. It felt very adult. I'd originally intended to make my own hot cocoa mix, give it in jars or bags, but I ran out of time to do that myself and bought packets of mix instead. In a basket with paper stuffing (in case of small children or pets), I included baggies of marshmallows, some cookies, and a mug for each person in the house. For the couple people who don't drink cocoa, I gave them tea. I made gifts for 27 people by spending $73, and was very proud of myself. This year, I wanted to do a reprisal of the hot cocoa baskets, though I was going to skip the mugs this time. I was going to make my own cocoa and perhaps help with the baking of the trays my dad and brother make for everyone in lieu of material gifts. However, looking at all the in...

Next week I embark on a three week vacation. I feel like we are completely on track for preparing for this, all the laundry is done (or is getting finished tonight) and most is even folded and put away. I'll be packing my suitcase tomorrow so I can't accidentally wear something I want to take with me--and subsequently if it does happen to be currently dirty, we have plenty of time to wash it. I finished the to-do list for projects Mr. Moon can work on while I'm gone, all prioritized and everything. There's a menu plan for each of the three weeks I'm gone. We're hoping after I get back to do a monthly menu plan system (at least as far as most of the grocery shopping is concerned), though we will still have to plan which meals are on which days weekly due to the nature of flexible scheduling. Week of Dec 9-16: Breakfasts: Cottage cheese & pineapple, smoothies, bagels with cream cheese. Lunches: Grilled cheese, Bacon Chicken Cheddar Ranch pasta salad....

As I mentioned in our shed organizing post, we are big into emergency preparedness, but totally at a beginning stage of implementation.  We have three frame-packs, and realistically I'm not interested in doing any recreational hiking that requires sleeping farther than 20 feet from my car (I have an air mattress to blow up, after all). One pack will be pre-prepped with some basic gear for a day hike, since we will only need one (not one each). The first part of our emergency preparedness plan is to get us each a fully-loaded frame-pack bug-out bag. Not set up so that one has the food and one has the first aid kit, but both will be individually ready for one person to bug out of town on foot or in case we get separated (mine will have the tent which I already know how to set up by myself, Mr. Moon is more capable of building himself a shelter of tarps if necessary). I arranged things in the shed in such a way that we can get three fully-loaded frame packs stored on thes...

May 7, Mr. Moon took some "before" pictures of the shed that desperately needed some TLC. As you can see, one door (ahem, the one that LOCKS) is torn completely off the board that attaches to the hinges. It just kinda fell down in a rain storm. Like so many of us do these days, everything was just kind of... tossed. I can't even say "shoved." I know for a fact that some of these things toward the back were actually indeed "tossed" in, because I did it myself (see: rainbow umbrella). There was everything from gardening tools and supplies, painting tools that had never even been cleaned off (and actual paint and stain) to hard drives and radio equipment that had been out here since around the time the 'Rents moved in. Do you see the pile of tools (left) and the rack for them to live (middle) standing empty? It was a wreck! We'd made it even worse in the spring planting process because we hadn't had time to deal with it. After we rem...