It's been a day!!! Mondays are usually when Mr. Wonderful goes back to work for the week. He works evenings so he sleeps all morning. Poor guy! I woke him up at 7:00 this morning, after only being asleep for a couple hours, to the bad news that our carpet in the master bath, master closet, and living room were soaking wet. Yep! The water heater had died. He had to take one of his remaining vaca days....which he was going to enjoy in two weeks....to shop for and replace the old water heater. Bless his heart! He's had about 4 hours sleep and is still trying to get everything fixed and cleaned up. I've helped where I can. Thank God, that it happened on Monday while he was still home and not another day during the week. We also got a great deal on the new water heater.

I'd recommended calling Sears.....the main 800 number...and ask to talk to the water heater department. Because I called to ask them a question, we ended up getting a bigger water heater than we were looking at and a $50.00 discount. It ended up costing us less and they had one in stock in our local store. It's also a self-cleaning one. The original one we were looking at wasn't. Sears comes through again!! It stinks that our water heater went out, but God was definitely on our side. It needed to be replaced and we didn't know it. No other damage was done. It happened on a Monday, when my hubby was home. We got an upgrade for a cheaper price than expected. I couldn't ask for more.

Day to Day

I am exhausted already and it isn't even noon.

I got my chicken broth put up. I only had enough room in my freezer to set two 12-count muffin tins, so I had to put the rest in plastic bags and freeze them flat. I probably have about 30 cups or more of chicken broth stocked up in my freezer. I still have 2 more bags of scraps to make into broth. I think I'll have to save that for another day. :-)

I have spent the morning organizing and straightening things that normally get missed. My favorite was my cedar chest. Blankets had kind of been taken out and thrown back in during the winter months. I decided I'd go through them and look at some of my old quilts I knew I had in there. I found some beautiful table cloths I had forgotten about. My favorite is one with chickens and farm stuff on it and it's trimmed in red. I'll have to iron it and take a picture and share. It's home made and it's my favorite one. I set it on top to be sure I found a place to put it. I'll probably just set it in the center of my kitchen table....once I'd done sewing and put my machine away.

It's such a beautiful day here. I have my wash hanging on the line. Of course, this means that I will have to iron some things later. I actually love to iron. It's so relaxing to me. Kinda like therapy. I hum and meditate while I'm thinking of the person who's clothes I'm ironing. I take the opportunity to pray over them while I do it. Kinda like a point of contact. I think if we look at our day-to-day chores in that way, they seem less like chores and more like expressions of love to those around us. I love my family!

...A Penny Saved

My friend, Tracy Lake, and I decided to do a frugal living conference. It was held March 3, 2012. We had such a great response with the suggestion that we do another one or two. So.....we have decided to do more conferences in the future.

 Tracy takes care of the 'Coupon' part of the conference and I do the 'frugal living' part of the conference. Because we did this first one at our church, we provided a frugal lunch of a baked potato bar and salad. We had cookies for dessert.

We had a ton of information to pass out to everyone. Tracy used a folder with binder clips and I used a 1" binder. I really didn't want the extra expense of having to go to Wal-Mart and buy binders. So I said a prayer and went Good Will hunting...to borrow a phrase from my frugal friend, Sherri Murphy. Wouldn't you know, I found and bought fifteen 1" three ring binders for .50 each. Isn't that just like God. That was perfect confirmation that I was in His Will. Thanks!!

The day was perfect. No wrenches thrown into that day. Again, Thank you, God!!!!

We are planning to do more conferences in the Carbondale, IL area soon. We are securing SIU-C for our next conference. Yep! It was that successful. All glory goes to God! I didn't know what I was doing. I just took the first step and let Him lead.

If you would like more information on upcoming conferences or would like us to come to your area, please let me know in the comment section below.  You can also email me at renee.furlow@yahoo.com.

Home Made Simple

I'm on the church BBQ team. Some months ago, I brought home the scraps from the chicken we were fixing. I put the scraps in the freezer until I could get the time to make some home made broth. Making broth is so simple and can save you money, especially if you use a lot of it.
This is a pic of the meat scraps I brought home from church. It's quite a stash. It includes chicken and beef scraps.

Here are some different ideas about chicken you can use:

• save the carcass from a deli chicken
• save the neck and back pieces if you cut up your own chicken
• save the carcass if you roast or boil a chicken

I'm sure there are more, but those are off the top of my head.

To make home made broth:
Put your chicken carcass in a large pan. Add 2 onions, quartered; a few stalks of celery; a couple carrots; salt (optional) and pepper. Cover with water but, leave enough room in the pot for the chicken to make its own broth. Otherwise it will boil over and you will have a mess. Cover; bring to a boil. Turn down to simmer and let simmer for 2-3 hours or longer. Let cool and put into muffin tins. Pop them in the freezer and once frozen, put as many as will fit into a freezer bag. You can also just pour the cooled broth into a freezer bag. Freeze flat to save room.

The white specks on the broth muffins are ice crystals. I left them in the freezer too long. Oops! My bad. If you put your into freezer bags right away, they won't look like that.

See how easy that was?!

I took pics of the process, but forgot to put my memory card back in my camera. I don't know where my cord is....or if I even have one.....so they are stuck on my camera for now. :-) I'll take pics the next time I make broth and post those. Have a Happy Jack day!!!

In the pantry

It's Monday!!! My only problem with Mondays is that my hubby has to go back to work. :-( Other than that, I find myself constantly looking for different places to start over; whether it be organizing a room or beginning to blog again. Such was the case today. I opened up this blog early this morning, but it's now 3:28 and I'm just now posting. It's been that busy.

I have 2 upright freezers. One is a frost-free and the other is a manual frost. I love them both for different reasons. My favorite is my frost-free because, well, it's frost-free. The only thing I have to do is keep it clean and organized. One thing you should know about frost-free freezers is....the same thing that keeps them frost-free also dries out your food faster. When I heard this I though, 'hm, makes sense!' I love my manual frost freezer because it was a good find. I got it at an auction for next to nothing. And hey! Now I have 2 upright freezers.

So, today I find myself defrosting my 'good find'. I haven't defrosted anything since I still lived with my mother and we had a frig with the freezer on top and it was manual defrost. Defrosting it became my job when I was old enough. I kinda enjoyed it, to tell the truth.

Here's what I do: Unplug and empty the freezer. Put everything in a different freezer or coolers. Then, I fill 2 stainless bowls with very hot water. I set each bowl on a different shelf in the freezer. I put a large bath towel in the bottom of the freezer to soak up the water as the ice melts. It's about a 2-3 hour job. I keep emptying and refilling the bowls with hot water to keep the ice melting. I sometimes, carefully, use a knife to pry the somewhat melted ice off the shelves.

I didn't start out today thinking....Hooray!! I'm gonna defrost the freezer. I chose to do the defrosting today because I decided to take some meat scraps out of the freezer to make some home made broth. I call this the 'but first' syndrome. This is when you start to do something and your eye catches something else that needs to be done. You do the second thing 'first' which leads you to something else. You do that thing next which leads you to something else. By the end of the day, the original thing you started to do still isn't done. Do you have this problem too?

You can find out about how I make my home made chicken broth/stock in my Home Made Simple post. Needless to say, I haven't even started my stock yet.