Now, where was I?

Wow, I've been busy this week! :) So, what have we all been up to?

Tuesday I went to the dentist, strawberry farm, Aldi, Home Depot, TJ Maxx, and Lowes Foods...and Mom went with me to some of those places too. Mom and I found some baskets at TJ Maxx for storing flour in...we're going to put the baskets up on top of the cabinets and use them to store all the plastic bags of flour from the 50 and 25 pound bags from Costco. Mom also found a shower curtain for her bathroom.

We canned stuff on Wednesday and Thursday. Mom made a bunch of strawberry jam on Wednesday and canned it...it looks so yummy!:









Sorry for the picture lit purely from flash, the lights on the ceiling fan in the kitchen mysteriously stopped working tonight!
I'm really not sure what's wrong with it...the fan is working, and the light bulbs aren't burnt out, because they work in other light fixtures. In fact, one of the kitchen light bulbs is now in my bathroom light, because when I was taking out a bathroom bulb to try in the kitchen, I touched the metal end of it which was still hot and then dropped it on the floor...which effectively broke the filament and dented the bulb so that it wouldn't screw into any fixture. *hmph*

Anyway...on Wednesday I also got the big bags of flour decanted into smaller ziploc bags, and loaded up one of the baskets and put it above the cabinets. I also got the big fan down from the attic and set it up so it would blow into the kitchen, and it made the whole canning process both on Wednesday and Thursday, so much more pleasant! I must not have moved that fan for a while. Last time I remember getting it down from somewhere, it seemed so much heavier and hard to lift...so I must have been smaller! It was really easy to get down this time. Or maybe it's the getting it back up that's hard...hmm.

Here is one of the baskets (the smallest) with apples in it...don't they look nice in there?:










I had to put the apples somewhere, so I just dumped them in there, and they ended up looking really nice! I found all those apples at Aldi. They were $0.89 a pound...yes, *sigh* that is a good price! I had just the day before figured the price per pound of the 12-pack boxes of apples we can get at Costco, and they are $1.36 a pound...which is also a good deal. When I first calculated that I thought we could have been getting them cheaper at the grocery store, because aren't they on sale for 79 cents a pound at the store? Mom told me that, yes, they used to be, but not
anymore. Oh. So even $1.36 is a good deal...alright...so I was really happy to find those at Aldi for less.

I want to get some more to make apple butter with, as I used these for applesauce. I LOVE apple butter...delicious stuff. But the applesauce was faster, and that's what I had time for this week; I cooked it and canned it on Thursday. I got 4 quarts out of 12 lbs of apples...and it tastes so much better than the store-bought applesauce:








The fourth one is in the fridge because I'm not sure it sealed properly. ;)

I made oven-fried chicken sandwiches for supper on Thursday...mmm...chicken, mayo, and lettuce on a homemade hamburger bun...perfect summer food!

I also started cutting out squares for cloth napkins this week. I have almost all of one fabric cut up and then I can start sewing some napkins...hopefully I'll get some done before we finish up the bag of paper napkins we have!

Today I got my bathroom cleaned and finally got around to re-caulking around the toilet...after making clear that that toilet is off-limits until the caulk is cured! Just use the other bathroom...which isn't a problem because: Oh yeah, Mom and Dad aren't here...they went down to Charlotte today and tomorrow for their anniversary. :)

So Colin and I are on our own for a little while. I showed him how to play Chinese checkers this afternoon...it was an, um, interesting game...I won. ;) He played while I got chores and laundry done, and then we went outside and I set up the sprinkler. Oh, before we went out I was in the bedroom folding laundry and he was out in the kitchen looking at the thermometer and asking me "if it was hot enough outside yet to run in the sprinkler?" How hot is it? I asked him..."97..." Yep...I think that might just be hot enough... :p

Tonight we had pizza and watched a movie. We may walk up to the playground tomorrow, if we get going early enough and if I have time...we'll see about that. I told him to sleep in tomorrow, but I'm not sure how late that will be!

And because Dad's not home would also be why nothing has been done about the ceiling fan yet. Because in this case, I've done all I can towards fixing the thing. I'm not about to start taking it apart to see if I can fix it...not something that's on the ceiling above my head! :p