What does my Fridge say about Me.

I went shopping today. I actually did all my grocery shopping today. I shouldn't need to go again for two weeks (I could, most likely, even go longer). I don't usually get to go to Costco, Target, the farmers market and the regular grocery all on the same day. The only store, that is in my regular rounds, was whole foods but I went last week and am all stocked up for awhile.

I have to say my fridge, freezer and shelves look very full. Here is my side by side in its full glory. Don't look too closely, I am sure it needs some wiping down.  So what does it tell you about us? I guess first thing I notice is that it is absolutely not organized. The freezer especially. No rhyme or reason to how I put things in there. As long as it fits it works. I think I need to work on that one.

Mostly frozen fruit for making smoothies and veggies for when I run out of fresh.  There is a bit of frozen meats and I try to freeze a lot of muffins and breads that I bake. That way I don't eat the whole batch and so we always have snacks/desserts on hand that I can just pull out of the freezer.  During the summer, frozen pumpkin or banana blueberry muffins are really nice. There is no baking involved, so the house doesn't get hot.

As for the fridge... there is a sort of organization to it but in the end I too resort to putting things where they will fit. I had a hard time getting the watermelon into the fridge. I wouldn't have bothered but I really like watermelon when it is cold and since we are planning to have it for dinner tomorrow I stuffed it in. But I had to use the shelf where half of it can be pushed back, to make room for it. The whole space will look very different come Monday when that watermelon has been cut down a bit. At the moment my fridge looks like my Mom's. No offense Mom, but usually I am able to see the back of the fridge and am even be able to put a jello in to set without too much trouble.

What about the items. Do they say something about us.  We drink a lot of milk. Three different kids are currently reside in the fridge; whole cow, Almond and rice milks. Most of the milk is up on that top shelf. Next to it is my #10 can of my freshly ground wheat flour. Behind that you will find a few containers with other flours that I rotate through; bean, buckwheat, and rice. I keep them all in the fridge so they don't spoil but I only grind up what I think I will use in a week or so.

The next shelf is eggs, bread and tortillas. Nothing that exciting there. We have been getting eggs from the farmer's market recently and my husband swears that the free range, organic eggs taste better.  We also love the tortillas that aren't cooked yet. My boys love being in charge of cooking them when it is time to eat them. One day I will actually try to make my own, rather than buy them. For now I am going with these. I am sure they aren't that hard. I am just not excited about rolling them out. Maybe that is why I haven't made pita bread in awhile either. I think we are going to have lessons on rolling out dough soon so my slaves children can do it for me.

Other than one drawer which has cheese, hummus and a few other odds and ends in it the rest of the shelves and drawers are full of fruits and veggies. I think there is a big tub of yogurt in there somewhere. Mostly likely shoved to the back behind that watermelon. I need to get back in the habit of making yogurt again. The tub is full of plain yogurt so perhaps we will add lessons on how to use the yogurt maker to our list for coming week. That way we can use lots of yogurt in our smoothies.

Everything else, butter, condiments, dressings, jam, maple syrup and such all have home on the door.  The little flip door at the top is where I keep my yeast and bouillon. A bag of broccoli always lives in that bottom section. I really should get that little metal bar replaced. I can't put anything heavier there.

So that is the tour of the refrigerator. Are you bored yet?

Do you want to see the pantry too?

Here are the bottom three shelves.

Here are the top three.
I admit they aren't very organized either. Story of my life I guess. Good intentions but don't actually follow through. I know where everything is but I send my husband or kids to find something and they don't have a clue. My husband always talks about getting one of the shelf reliance shelves to rotate the cans but we don't have space for anything like that. So instead I just keep shoving more and more into these few shelves.

Oh... and did I mention that we bought a small chest freezer a month or so ago. Guess what... It is packed full too. Thanks Dad for the beef! We topped it off with lots of Ice Cream. The kind I like was on sale this week and with a birthday next week and two more in a month or so I figured we would get a few and keep them out of sight for bit.

Those little freezer jam tubs are actually full of an artichoke hummus. We bought a huge tub of it at Costco today and I knew we wouldn't be able to eat it all before it went bad so I hope hummus defrosts well.

So that is the tour of our kitchen stores. We will have to live on this for the next two weeks. I am really trying to keep it to twice a month.

One more thing. I splurged on a new appliance. I knew I would most likely never win one from the Pioneer Woman (She gives them away all the time but when you are one of thousands that enter her giveaways.... well...you may be waiting a really long time before your lucky number comes up.) so I talked my husband into buying me a Kitchen Aid Mixer and it isn't even for my birthday or Christmas. 


Yeah... no more hand mixer.  I look forward to making bread and let it do the kneading. My arms could use the toning but I just think my bread will turn out even better when it is kneaded longer than I was able to do it.

So this ends this long post. I can't believe you made it to the end of this long boring post. I just feel so blessed to be able to live in such luxury. To have all this when I know so many have much less. We certainly don't starve and hopefully eat pretty healthfully.

How Random!

Sorry it has been a bit since I had anything to say. It isn't that I haven't wanted to write some witty posts. I just haven't had time or energy to put thoughts together. So here is another of my random thoughts posts. I guess I could have just picked one to write about but that just wouldn't be as fun. So bare with my rambling.

It is hard to do school in December. At least it has been this week. After having a number of days off last week and all the excitement of playing with cousins and traveling to Grandma's house my kids didn't want to jump back into "doing school" on Monday morning. We got in just about everything but it was with tears over math and lots of breaks between. Tuesday wasn't much better but, luckily, Wednesday and today have gone more smoothly. Not perfectly and smoothly but when does it ever go exactly as planned?

We put our Christmas tree up Monday night. Maybe that has something to do with the craziness. The kids are very excited about all the holiday decorations. They have had such a great time rearranging the ornaments each day and the nativity that sits under the tree is getting well played with. Ian and Henry have had their knights and pirates there at the stable paying homage to the baby Jesus. Sometimes they even kidnap Mary or Joseph. Sophie is a little more reverent with the figures and acts out the story. The shepherd usually stands in as the inn keeper to show Joseph where they can stay. So far nothing has gotten broken, but we have a long way to go before Christmas.

Be careful when reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Even the children's versions are a bit "frothy". I didn't preview the stories and have read only a few of the original tales so I didn't remember them being quite so "earthy". I sat down with my kids to read this version of the tales and made it through a few of them but was glad when they said they had read enough for that time. I didn't pick it up to read again either. The book made it's way back to the library today. We did enjoy Chanticleer and the Fox which is one of the tales. Maybe we will revisit Chaucer's tales the next time around. The bum kissing and bed swapping was just a little too much for me when reading to my 3,4 and 7 year old. They thought it was funny but even Sophie said "this is crude".

Our Rainbow resource order arrived today. I ordered Ian his new math books. I decided to just start him in the Singapore Math 1A book. He was doing the earlybird math and it was so easy for him so I figured we will just move slowly through the first grade stuff. He didn't waste any time and broke out a pencil to do the first assignment. I was really surprised that he could read the number words which was the first lesson. He is doing much better at reading then I had previously thought. But then those may be just memorized words and not something he is sounding out.

Along with the math books Sophie got some new books as well. A few weeks ago she mentioned that she wanted explode the code books too. I ordered Ian the next books because he is almost done with get set of the code and will fly through Go for the code in just a short time. When I looked at the Explode the code site for what I thought Sophie's level would be. I decided to order her Beyond the code. She is a great reader so I knew she didn't need the phonics. Since she expressed interest in having something like Ian's, I got her a Beyond the Code workbook. She grabbed the first one out of my hands as I unpacked the box and set to work. The first few pages were pretty easy and not much of a challenge but it does require her to read a passage and answer questions about it. I don't think it is going to be something we do everyday. I still want to do our language lessons The lessons, dictation and reading have been going well, for the most part. So the workbook will be something we do once or twice a week and see how it goes.

Yesterday we saw some of Sophie's Cranial Facial team and they told us we should go ahead with braces and surgery next year. This is the big surgery where they do a bone graft and upper jaw adjustment. It scares me a little, since I have been told the grafting is very painful. I need to call her orthodontist and schedule an appointment so we can get started on the braces and spacers that she needs in order to make room in her mouth for the bone they are going to harvest from her hip. On a happier note the speech therapist said she speaks very well and still doesn't need any therapy sessions or surgery for her speech.


Settlers of Catan is one of our families favorite's games. I bought the Card game version for my husband a few years ago. It is for two players so I figured it was something we could play together. Well we finally broke it out the other night and played it. It has a lot of the same elements of the original game but some added dimensions. We took a lot of time just figuring out the game and know that the next time we play it will be much easier. The next morning my husband said "that was a lot of fun. We should do that more often". We used to play games and even read books together but lately we have become lazy and often just end up watching movies at the end of the day.

Do you need some food storage items? I found a great site. I have been looking to round out my food storage with items that I can't buy at the store and that our church's cannery doesn't carry. Honeyville has just about everything; powdered eggs, dried fruits, veggies and a bunch of grains. The shipping price is great and they ship FAST. I placed an order on Monday and it arrived today, Thursday, along with my Rainbow Resources order. That is quick! I put together an order with some friends to take advantage of the price on cases rather individual cans and have been pleased so far. I haven't tried the ordered items yet so I will have to let you know how they are. But give the site a look if you need or want food storage items.

I could keep going with these random topics but I think I will stop now. Unless you really want to read my thoughts on Primary, Band, juggling Christmas activities and all the other things flying through my head. If you made it this far and haven't been bored out of you mind thanks for coming with me as I wander through my thoughts.