The Pantry

Wow, that was one crazy week! I really hate having something to do every night of the week. Being the homebody that I am I'm mostly content to stay at home eat a nice meal and snuggle with my honey, but I don't think I got to do that once the whole week. Oh well, this weekend made up for it a bit and we are starting to reach homeostasis around here.


Anyways, I mentioned on my last post our kitchen organizational woes. Which have really been going on for quite some time. Well, last week we finally did something to fix the problem and it only cost us $14 and few spare hours (which of course was the hardest thing to come by).

We were given an old pantry for free which was a little warped, beat up, and without any hardware. With a trip to the hardware store for hinges and self paper and some paint we had, sandpaper we had and our time we now have a place to store our bulk food that isn't the girls closet! I used my left over chalkboard paint to make the inside door usable for a grocery list. This thing holds a lot of groceries, it's as deep as my fridge. I still have to use our other cupboard and our chest freezer most of the time too.

Buying in bulk is one of the things that really helps keeps our families grocery budget down. We try to eat mostly organic whole foods and still try to stay within budget. This usually means we don't buy "fancy" food like bagels, chips, snacky foods or sodas. Things we do buy are 25lb bags of oats, wheat berries, popcorn, beans and 10lb boxes of organic cheese. We go through a co-op up in Oregon that delivers our bulk food their truck route. With a tiny kitchen we have had to be very inventive with meeting our shopping and cooking needs, but this pantry will definitely help!

Pretty Little Things

Today was a good day. Such a good day in fact that I almost have a hard time believing that tomorrow is in fact Mother's Day. I got to do two of my favorite things sewing and shopping and I even won a gift certificate from a local craft store! Good times. I love those gentle reminders from God that he does love us and want us to have joy in our lives, it truly lifts my spirits.


Upon waking this morning I immediately went to my craft closet (before even going downstairs) and riffeled through it looking for a few fun things to make. I remembered that I had been wanting to make a brooch from an old belt buckle I found in a button bin. Such a simle project so I knew that that was going to be one of my projects for the day. I just broke off the back piece and hot glued a pin backing on and I wore it around all day. I wish I could find enough belt buckles to make a whole bag full of these babies!



While riffled I also came across an old pair of curtains which really fit the bill for the pillow I have be working on. My mom always taught me to save all my linens even if they don't match your current decor and I have found this to be such good advice. Years go by, things change and sometimes they end up being just what you were looking for (even if not for there intended purposes).

The rest of my day was spent on an outing with my mom, 2 of my sisters and my girls. We shopped and went out to ice cream and just had a really good time together. My mom is a self professed shopaholic and is such a fun person to go on these outtings with. We talk, eat, and find that in some cases we do actually have similar tastes.

Happy Mother's day everyone!