Last Saturday, I cooked. I took photos. I was going to show you what I’ve done this week – my successes and failures.

I was so jazzed!

And then I came down with a bad cold yesterday – the worst I’ve had in years.

I keep coming down to my computer, trying to work myself up to post the recipes I made. “You can do it,” I tell myself. “You’ll be happy once you do. Go! Go! Go!”

But my nose is running like the creek behind my Grandpa’s shed. My head is as stuffed as the Revere Ware lids I have jammed into a drawer. My chest is as tight as the nylons I used to be able to wear before I gained the last ten pounds. My eyes are tearing up as if they want to help me cry in a bucket, in the same way I wanted to cry when I drove into a bush and scratched the side of our Toyota mini van.

I’m going to surrender to it.

I’m going to climb into my bed with a heating pad and watch all of the movies I’ve got piled up on my DVR. I’m going to look pathetic, so that my family will bring me ice water with lemon and Popsicles. I’m going to moan and groan and feel properly sorry for myself.

And then, once the cold is gone,  I’m going to come out here and post the following things:

1. The Great Banana Bread Extravaganza. Last weekend, I baked three banana bread recipes in a row. Two of them were my aunt’s recipes and one of them was the recipe for the banana bread I sent to Gary on his mission. (Now, that’s a story for you. I’ll tell it to you when I write the post.) I made the members of my family taste all three breads without telling them which was which and they all voted for the same one.

Which recipe won?

You’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

2. 7-Up Jello with pineapple cream topping. Delish. It’s my favorite Jello salads.

3. Blonde Brownies with chocolate chips. Even though I made a mistake when I baked these (which I will tell you about), my family snarfed them down so quickly that I didn’t get a chance to get my share. Bummer.

I also have it in mind to finally fix the hem of one of my favorite skirts. It’s currently draped across a chair in my bedroom as a reminder that I want to fix it before winter’s over. It’s been there for two months now and it’s getting pretty wrinkled, because Gary keeps sitting on it. I’m going to show you how I fix said skirt, because it seems that my little clothing repair posts are quite popular.

You guys are AWESOME!

Your amazing support of my declaration that I need to be real as I write my blog posts in the 7 Reasons Not to Overly Organize Your Home essay has re-kindled my enthusiasm for this blog. My plan is to show you what I’m doing as I sort-of keep my home going and if one of my idea fails – because I did it wrong or because it was just a bad idea – I’m going to go ahead and post the failure and tell you what to do so that it will turn out better for you than it did for me.

It will be so tempting not to show you my failures. But I’m going to do my best to be brave and post what really happened, because sometimes, we learn more from seeing what other people did wrong than from thinking that they never make mistakes.

Hopefully, I’ll have more successes than failures, but if I don’t… you’ll hear about it.

It will be weird. It will be strange. But it will be my real life.

So tell me… has anybody got a home remedy that will help me feel better? The over-the-counter medicines I’ve been taking aren’t helping much.

The post The Real Life Starts Here appeared first on How Mom Did It.

I love reading blogs, and I love bloggers. I find great bloggers inspirational, and it’s interesting to see how different people live. I learn tons of neat things in the mountain of blogs I follow, even though I find myself sighing – more than I should – that I feel unable to be like them.

My uncomfortable feelings heated up recently because a lot of the bloggers I follow currently seem slightly obsessed about organizing their homes. While perusing their lovely websites (and viewing images people have pinned on Pinterest), I’ve seen such beautifully organized drawers, closets, and rooms that I’ve felt kind of intimidated.

No, that’s not right. I’ve felt very intimidated.

Finally, after worrying about the fact that even though I have this little homemaking blog, I’m not super-organized; am I, therefore, setting a bad example for my readers? I started to ask myself if people actually live the super-organized lifestyle that their blogs portray.

Is it possible to live in the organized manner I’ve seen in these posts, factoring in how actually people are?

Is it possible to keep an office drawer so organized that there is always three inches of space between each item? See my desk drawer below.

Is it possible to never have dirty clothing pile up in your laundry room? I have a small mountain I’m working my way through right now.

Is it possible that perky-looking children always make their beds when they get up? Mine didn’t, even though I attempted to get them to do it.

Do said beautiful children always put their Legos in color-coded bins when they are finished playing with them? Mine didn’t. Just ask my feet.

Are there cooks out there who always hang up their utensils after each and every use? I jam mine into drawers and containers.

So really… what do you think? Do people actually live like that?

I’m going to confess something now. Last night, as I read a new batch of organizational blog posts, I began to feel kind of bugged.

Actually, I began to feel rebellious. I felt such a level of rebellion bubble up inside of me that if it were bottled, it might inspire grandmothers from Pasadena to start wearing black leather jackets after they get “Back off, Gridley!” tattoos swirled in green snakes burned into their foreheads.

I realized that while I like order (because order is great and I’m glad that I’ve completed a certain number of organizational projects this year), I would feel like I was tied up in a bale of hay if someone required me to live like that.

My Light Bulb Moment

Last night, as I studied yet another blog post that demonstrated the benefits of having a color-coordinated, almost-empty office desk in one’s home, I realized why I hadn’t posted in this blog for so long…

Too much pressure.

You see, sometimes –  when I post in this blog – I feel pressured to be someone I’m not.

I feel pressure to present a meticulously clean home, a ridiculously healthy menu, and piles of yummy-looking cakes, beautifully photographed on vintage glass platters next to jars of fresh daisies.

I feel pressure to live on a ranch and ride horses while dressed in a hand-made coat,  sewn from wool cloth I made after shearing the sheep I keep in the corral out back.

I feel pressure to antique every wooden belonging we own in a to-die-for shade of sky-blue after I  artistically draw our annual dinner menu on the ceiling-high chalkboard I’ve swashed on my kitchen wall with the homemade chalkboard paint I stirred up in a recycled bucket.

I feel pressure to lose 40 pounds so that I’ll look fabulous-darling while holding three dozen dazzling doughnuts on a plate in the YouTube videos I’ve made to demonstrate my ability to amuse the masses.

But guess what? That’s just not me.

(Well, making amusing YouTube videos might be. I love doing that. But I’m not losing 40 pounds first before I show you one. Nope. Not happening.)

I’ll never be like that, and I guess if you’ve come to this blog looking for perfection and the sort of inspiration that makes you sigh with delight, well… then… I can easily give you some recommendations for astonishings blogs that are feasts for the eyes.

But right now, I just need you to know that I’m just not that way. I’m too gosh-darn real to be that way.

I have to write my blog posts from the viewpoint of someone who is not perfect, who makes messes, and who often grabs a slice of cheese and runs off down the hall with it dangling from her mouth, because that’s all the time I have to “cook” that day.

My blog posts must be written from the viewpoint of someone who constantly spills spaghetti sauce on  her white shirts, who forgets to charge her camera batteries before family parties, and who would like to decorate her front porch for holidays – but never quite gets around to it.

I’m sometimes frumpy – am never very “cool” – and I often have my head so high in the clouds as I busily consider the meaning of life – that I often float by things that need to be picked up, repaired, and cleaned.

I like to cook simple, uncomplicated recipes that don’t require expensive ingredients – when I have the time.

I like to clean and organize my home just enough to make things easy for me (and so that I don’t get decapitated when things fall out of closets) – when I have the time.

I like to craft, paint, and entertain family and friends – when I have the time which unfortunately isn’t as often as I’d like.

Why? Because I’m a business woman, a dreamer, and a writer. My homemaking has to fit into my life, not the other way around.

So now that I’ve confessed all of my homemaking crimes and self-imposed insecurities to you, I’ll hope you decide to hang out with me, because I think it would be awesome of those of us who are in this situation to get to know each other. I’ve love to talk to you about your own homemaking experiences, good and bad.

Maybe we can help each other.

Real homemakers unite!

And besides, I do know quite a bit about this topic. Really, I do. Mom and Grandma made sure that I do. I’m just going to talk about things in a more realistic way in my posts from now on. I want the blog to be helpful to you – not harmful. I don’t want my posts to make you to feel like you are unable to measure up to a fake picture I paint.

So I say, let’s keep a home, but let’s not suffer while we’re doing it. Let’s have a little fun!

Now… the article I have promised will begin…

Here’s list of reasons I’ve come up with about why I feel that we shouldn’t overly organize our homes, illustrated with shots of real-life messes from around these parts.

7 Reasons Not To Overly Organize Your Home

Gotta love the snow boots piled up on top of the vacuum hoses at the bottom of this closet.

I recently had a birthday party for my oldest son, and I (uncharacteristically) purchased party decorations. Because I was afraid that I’d forget that I’d uncharacteristically purchased party decorations, I kept them on the counter until it was time to decorate. The swinging white lid you see on the counter was a reminder to myself that I needed to bring the clean dish towels down from the second-floor laundry room.  The soda pop is on the counter because… well… Gary keeps putting it there.

1. We live with other people.

We may organize our cabinets with all the vegetable labels facing east, so that they can greet the sun each day.

We may line up our pencils, straighten our stapler, and style the coat closet with the mittens arranged in order of the colors of the rainbow.

We may enthusiastically plump our couch pillows and put the remote controls in the cute, wooden cubbies we purchased for this express purpose.

And once we are finished, our homes may be so bright and shining that they can blind people driving on freeways three counties away (if they have the poor luck of pointing their heads our direction), but unless we live alone, chances are pretty high that someone will come along in a few minutes and mess things up.

I say, why put that kind of pressure on our loved ones – or ourselves?

Tell the people in your life what you are doing, if you must. Teach them your system, if you must. But if they don’t obey your laws exactly, try not to hyperventilate or yell at them.

It really doesn’t matter what your closets look like, but it does matter that your family knows that you love them more than you love your stuff.

Real life in the Paxman house on display.

2. Life happens.

You will get sick. The dog will pee in the living room. The television will break, the bag of lettuce hiding behind the mayonnaise jar will turn into slimy toxic waste, and someone will track mud on the freshly cleaned carpet.

You can either roll with your life or not. I recommend rolling with it.

Yep, this stovetop needs cleaning. I’ll do that later.

3. We are not perfect. We will never be perfect.

My experience is that attempts to be perfect are indicators of unresolved inner conflicts. The eventual outcome of perfectionism includes feelings of failure and unkind dissatisfaction with the activities of our loved ones when they can’t measure up.

Bad idea.

Note: I am guilty of occasionally setting unrealistic goals – such as when I took on my 365 Days to a Homemade Life challenge. It was a bust because keeping up with it required near-perfection, and I am not perfect.

I always fail at such attempts, so I will now make another broad statement: I’m going to attempt to forget about making lofty goals. From now on, I’m going to merely try to live my life the best I can.

We will consider this my formal declaration that the 365 Day challenge has ended.

As I wrote this post, I suddenly realized that I put the unopened mail in a cute red can next to my monitor last Saturday afternoon. I forgot about it because it isn’t lined up in front of my monitor, as it usually is. I guess I better open it and see what people want….

4. Creative minds are often messy.

I suppose there are exceptions to this rule (and if you are one of them, please forgive my boldness), but my personal observation is that truly creative minds create big messes as they work.

People with creative spirits must use every one of their senses so that they can observe, think, read, pile things up, and take them apart again during the creative process. Our dream is that our goofing around may produce several interesting and new ideas.

If creative minds carefully file everything they are experimenting with out of sight at the end of each day, their minds can fall asleep in the tidy, dark drawers they have used to store their stuff.

As a creative individual, I’d rather not miss blessed, shining moments of explosive, new-thought bliss by over-organizing myself. And I’d rather not stifle the creative people around me by expecting that they put their projects away before they are ready to.

We drop things on this landing in preparation of taking them downstairs. Then we promptly go blind and are unable to see what is waiting to be carried away. Average removal time: 2 -3 weeks

5. It takes just as much effort to wipe up one week’s worth of dust as it does to wipe off two weeks’ worth of dust.

I learned this lesson during the wonderful years I was able to afford a house-cleaning service. Even though I desperately needed help, I couldn’t make myself pay for more than twice-monthly cleaning sessions. After a while, I noticed that because I knew that someone was coming to save me from myself before long, I quit obsessing about the dust that piled up between cleanings. No one cared about it, and soon, neither did I.

Now that I’m cleaning the house myself again, I find that I don’t get quite as worked up about dusting as I used to. When the glass table in the family room gets covered by my granddaughter’s fingerprints, I dust.

There is a story about a widow who kept her dearly departed husband’s hat in her kitchen. Upon being asked why it was still there, she said, “When he was alive, I always fussed at him about hanging up his hat. Now, I wish more than anything that he had put it on the shelf with his own dear hand.” Gary seems incapable of hanging up his coat in the closet. Whenever I see it, I  remember this story and try to either keep my mouth shut or hang up the coat myself. I’m not always successful, but I try.

6. Visitors care more about how the occupants of the home treat them than they do about the cleanliness of the home. Usually.

Ever go to someone’s home and it’s so clean that you don’t dare breathe, because you’re afraid that the carbon dioxide you expel will spew dust all over their shiny grand piano?

Ever been greeted by plastic couch slip covers that stick to the back of your legs?

Ever have someone immediately wipe up a sink that you’ve just used to wash your hands?

Ever feel pressure to unzip and pull your knee-high snow boots off as soon as you enter someone’s front door, even though you know that you won’t go past their tiled entryway?

Ever feel intimidated by someone who repeatedly apologizes for their messy home when it appears spotless to you?

Not. Fun. At. All.

My Grandmother Stevens was a gracious host because she loved people. She made everyone feel like she was thrilled to have them in her home. Her house was clean – always clean – but not painfully so. If someone happened to tip over a plate of cake and ice cream onto her brand-new, turquoise-blue wool carpet, she didn’t flinch. Instead, she’d help them clean it up as she kept talking about the fascinating topic they were discussing before the accident occurred.

Needless to say, everyone loved to visit Grandma.

I must add an exception to this rule: It’s very uncomfortable to visit someone whose home is so excessively dirty that you feel that your health is in danger when you enter it. The goal is to fall within the realm of reasonableness. 

Moderation in all things.

I am truly puzzled by bloggers who organize their books by color. Sure, the result is beautiful – very beautiful –  but how do they locate the book they want to read? I use the sort-of-organized-by-topic system.

I believe that the purpose of drawers is to hide our stuff.  After all, when we close them, the contents aren’t in full view. I straighten up our drawers every couple of years or so.

7. There are only 24 hours in each day. Choose wisely how you use them.

When you spend time fussing about organizing the contents of your home in an extreme way, perhaps you are taking time away from other more important activities.

Ask yourself these things: If I knew that I was going to die tomorrow, would I really care that my scrapbook paper isn’t organized by color, theme, and pattern type? Would I care that my screwdrivers aren’t hanging from a sunset-orange pegboard, arranged by length and manufacturer? Would I care that my DVDs aren’t alphabetically organized by date of first viewing?

Or would I care that I didn’t go to my son’s baseball game? That I hadn’t played Yahtzee with my daughter? That I hadn’t listened to my neighbor when she obviously needed to talk about something that was bothering her?

Choose people. You’ll be glad that you did.

Here’s Today’s Big Takeaways About Extreme Home Organization

After spending time thinking about home organization and considering what I want to do about it, I’ve come up with these take-a-ways:

• People before stuff. Always.
• Make time to live your life fully instead of obsessively fussing about your stuff.
• Organize your stuff just enough that you feel comfortable in your environment. And then stop.

What do you think about home organization? Do you ever feel pressured by social media posts to overly organize your home? Do you feel unsettled that you aren’t keeping up with what other people are doing?

The post 7 Reasons Not To Overly Organize Your Home appeared first on How Mom Did It.

The post Merry Christmas from Our Family to Yours! appeared first on How Mom Did It.

After poking about the Internet for answers, I discovered that during some recent WordPress updates, two of the blog’s commenting plugins began to conflict, which resulted in the commenting functionality breaking. Since I always wait to respond to a comment someone else makes before I add a comment to a post, I didn’t have any reason to discover the issue myself. I assumed that I wasn’t saying anything worth commenting about!

I guess that goes to show us all that when we find something wrong with a website or a blog, we are doing a kindness to the owner when we send them a message about it.

Thanks so much everyone – and please, comment away. I truly love talking to you – about anything and everything!

Ro

The post Commenting is fixed! appeared first on How Mom Did It.

You make plans. The plans don’t work out.

You criticize and blame yourself for not meeting your goals. You become embarrassed to tell people that things didn’t work out as planned and then you say to yourself, “Oh shoot! Why did I even tell anybody about what I am trying to do?”

Yep. I confess. I’m like that. This is why I never make New Year’s resolutions. This is why I never set goals for losing weight. This is why I don’t set dates for accomplishing goals.

It’s pointless for me to make long-term plans, because, oh gosh… my life has such ups and downs that sometimes, I feel like I can hardly breathe.

Have you ever felt that way? Or is it just me?

It’s been six weeks since I’ve updated you about this project. It’s been a little longer than that since I’ve given you a recipe or a new idea. I haven’t forgotten about you. I just had to make some choices.

Here’s why…

1. I have Fibromyalgia. This means that occasionally, I have what is known as a Fibro Flare. When it happens, I feel unusually tired and achy – the kind of achy that you get when you first get the flu.

Not fun.

I’ve had Fibromyalgia since 1988. I have a good doctor and am getting great treatment, but even with that, sometimes life comes at me too quickly. I forget to pace myself because I feel good, and then I get sick because I haven’t been taking care of myself.

Yep, that’s what happened.

Also, I have recently learned that I have Sleep Apnea and so I haven’t been getting the kind of restorative sleep that Fibro patients need. My family tells me that my snoring is so loud that they can hear it clear across the house.

Embarrassing.

If I don’t get enough sleep, my Fibro goes nuts. The good news is that I’ve been diagnosed with Sleep Apnea now, have had my second sleep test in which they figured out what kind of machine I’ll need to help me breathe better at night, and soon I’ll have said machine. I want to sleep well, so I’ll go along with it, even though wearing the mask at night make me look like a space alien.

2. We moved Mom into our basement apartment. The ceilings in the basement are 9 feet high and there are large windows down there, so she doesn’t feel like she is in a basement. She likes it enough that she’s been wishing that my father was still alive so that he could enjoy it, too.

Here’s what her living room looks like. The other side of the apartment is even brighter because it has south-facing windows. She has two bedrooms and a huge bathroom.

3. We’re putting in a little kitchen and laundry room for Mom. We’re in the final stretch with that project. We are ready for the cabinets now and they’ll be installed next Wednesday. We’re hopeful that Mom can move into it before Christmas.

The tile floors went in this week. It’s brighter in here than the photo shows. The room doesn’t have a window, so Gary has set it up so it will have lots of light. He’s putting lights under the top cabinets and under the toe kicks. I wish you could see the tile better, because it’s really pretty.

Fun Stuff

We put up our Christmas decorations. Gary moved the family room furniture around recently and suddenly, we had room to put up our big Christmas tree. When we moved to this house, we had the family room set up all wrong. Thinking that our tree would never fit in there, we bought a new narrower, tall tree. Now have two trees and for the first time, they are both up!

We bought this Christmas tree 27 years ago. It’s still as beautiful as ever. You can’t buy trees like this anymore. It’s so full.  I’ve collected some cute Santa Claus, snowmen and penguin ornaments over the years. They make me smile every time I hang them on the tree.

This is our newer tree. It’s the kind that already has the lights on it, so it’s easy to decorate. This tree has our “pretty” ornaments on it.

I love all the mixed colors and the birds I collected. Everything came from Target so it’s funky and fun.

One of my favorite things about this house is our entry way. As soon as we saw it, we all said, “Won’t it be fun to put garland on the railing at Christmas time?”

Because we don’t have a fireplace, I hang our stockings on the railings. I haven’t gotten around to that yet.

The little book shelf you see has our collection of Santa Clauses on it.

I didn’t take a photo of them, but I have lots of Nativity sets in our living room.

I love snow globes! Three years ago, I started collecting them. I haven’t bought this year’s installment yet, but I’m looking forward to shopping for it.

Gary collects CDs of Christmas music. Every year, he hauls them out and blasts the music out because he’s kind of deaf in one ear. (Yikes!)

We also have a substantial collection of Christmas movies. We always watch our favorites AND we spend lots of time watching cable Christmas movies. We’re hopeless.

Gary has to work on Christmas Eve this year, so we’re having our Christmas dinner on the 23rd.

I have ONE more thing to tell you and I’m so excited about it!

As I helped my Mom pack to move up here, I came across my grandmother’s cookbook. I vaguely – vaguely – remember seeing it as a child, but had completely forgotten that it existed. It’s so fragile that Mom kept it in a zipped bag.

I went crazy with excitement when I saw it. I carefully turned the pages and saw that Grandma had written or glued the recipes she collected over her lifetime right on top of the cookbook pages, because she was so poor during the Depression that she couldn’t afford to do it any other way. Mom said that Grandma got this cookbook in a class that she took in high school. She was only able to attend one year, because things were different then.

As I looked at through it, Mom told me that she was going to keep the recipe book for the rest of her life.

I said, “Well, at least you’ll be living in my house, so I can copy some of the recipes down.”

Imagine my surprise when Mom gave it to me on my birthday! Yay!

The front of the book

Inside

Grandma glued and inserted recipes she found. Most of the people she got recipes are gone now. That’s how old these recipes are.

This recipe for Hot Water Cake was my Great-grandma Johnson’s recipe. (Grandma’s mother)

My Plans for the Cookbook

Naturally, I’m going to share some of these recipes with you once things calm down a bit, because I’m excited to try them out.

I’ve also decided that I better type them into the computer so that we won’t lose them. I want to share them with the rest of my family.

And since, I’m doing that, I’ve decided that I will release them as collections, organized by recipe type, as Kindle books so that you can have your own copy, too!

I don’t know how long it will take me to get the Kindle books ready, but I’ll keep you updated. I’ll make sure to price them reasonably so that you can enjoy them.

My Progress on My Homemaking Goals

As you can imagine, I haven’t kept up with my goal of doing one homemaking thing every day. I was too sick for too long. However, I have managed to keep my kitchen clean and have developed some great habits to keep it easy for me to do. That doesn’t sound like much, but I had become such a slacker, I had to repent. Having Mom here helps me, because she pitches in when I’m having a bad day.

I’ve also started relieving Gary of some of the laundry duty, which he’s been grateful for.

I made most of our Thanksgiving dinner.

Hmmmm…. I guess that’s all I can remember right now.

Life Lesson

Let’s all just do the best we can and try not to get upset with ourselves when things don’t go our way. It doesn’t matter that we fall down. It matters if we get up!

So…tell me… how are you doing? Anything new or exciting? I’ve missed you guys!

The post 365 Days to a Homemade Life: Weeks 11-16 (Moving Mom and Grandma’s Cookbook) appeared first on How Mom Did It.

Sadly, this has meant that I haven’t been able to a homemaking project everyday this month, but I have managed to get quite a bit accomplished. It’s been slow going since I’ve only been able to work a few hours a day. I typically get up, do a little work, and then I have to lie down again and rest. This meant that I’ve had to choose carefully what I do. I haven’t felt up to blogging before today, so you can today’s post as a sign that I’m feeling a little better.

I mentioned in my last post that Mom is coming to live with us. We turned our basement into a pseudo-apartment when my daughter and her family moved in with us a couple of years ago – which was a beginning – but since Mom will be living with us for years (hopefully she’ll live a long time), we decided to complete the apartment so that Mom can be independent.

We have two large storage rooms in the basement which we have used for our food storage. One of them is a cold storage room (thick cement walls with no windows) and that’s where we store our canned food. The other one has held our buckets of wheat, oats, rice, and such, along with our soaps, paper goods, and canning supplies. We’ll turn this room into a kitchen for Mom because it was already plumbed for one. We’ll divide the furnace room next door to create a small laundry room.

There is just enough space in this room to build a small L-shaped kitchen containing all the major appliances, a couple of base cabinets and a small bank of drawers. I think we’ll put a nice tile design over the sink because we can’t put in a window. We are going to put in a lot of lights to brighten it up.

John Jorgensen will do the work for us. He has done other jobs for us over the years and because he built the home originally, I never have to tell him what supplies to get. He just goes out and matches what we have!

If you live in our area and need some remodeling, I highly recommend John. He does great work at very fair prices and is super nice to boot! If you are thinking of building a home, John’s your man!

This is the room that we’ll divide to create a laundry room for Mom. The front half will have just enough space to hold a traditional washer and dryer set. The plumber is going to move the water softener next to the back wall and he’ll move the salt tank into the garage above. Gary is happy that he won’t have to haul big bags of salt to the basement anymore. The water storage tank (containing drinkable water) will also go out in the garage.

The big job was emptying out the big storage room. We’ve had to shuffle everything and organize a lot of closets ato accommodate its belongings.

We have so many buckets of wheat and other dry food that Gary decided to hire the neighbor boys to help carry it up to the garage.  It took the four men (Gary, Andrew, and the two neighbors) a couple of hours to get it done.

We have a three-car garage with a double bay on the west  side and a single bay on the east. The food is going to take up the single bay. I’m grateful that we have the room because I don’t know what we’d do otherwise.

We still have to put all of this away. Some of it will go out on the shelves in the garage and some of it is going in closets throughout the house. This means that I had to clean closets to make room.

This house has tons and tons of storage. John originally built it for his family with the intention that they would live here for the rest of their lives, but the housing crisis changed their plans. In 2008, he owned this home and a spec home and he needed to sell one of them. As soon as we walked in the front door of this house, we felt that this was where we should be.

I didn’t understand at the time why we needed such a big home because our kids were all getting older and it seemed silly to get it, but now everything makes sense. I never imagined that we would need a basement apartment so badly. We just couldn’t have made it in our old home. There wasn’t enough room to fit all of these people that have lived with us!

It was inspiration, I’ll tell you…inspiration. The whole thing was so strange since we hadn’t had a yen to move. We’d just spent eleven years remodeling our West Jordan home and had finally finished it a few months before. But then, three of us had dreams that we moved so we decided to look around and see what we’d find. Before we knew what had happened to us, we had moved over here and had sold our home. We sold it in less than two weeks for the list price! I guess it was just meant to be, because homes weren’t selling well at all.

Anyway… because John built this home for his family, he put storage closets in ever spot imaginable. The upstairs hallway has three large closets and the laundry room has another one. He also put big storage closets under the eves.

When I started this organization project, every single closet was full, but – as it turned out – they were full of junk. We didn’t have time to sort through things when we moved here so we just shoved our belongings anywhere they would fit. Since I needed to create space, I decided that I better go through everything we own and get rid of what we no longer use.

Two of the hall closets held linens. Once I had finished, I created this much extra room. I washed and aired out all the blankets and quilts as I went.

This is the other linen closet. I love seeing all the blankets lined up so neatly. I know… I know… everything is not match-y, match-y, (I am not Martha Stewart) but hey… that’s okay with me. This is my real life – not a “I’m a cool blogger” life.

Here’s an organization trick I learned while collecting images on Pinterest: Store sheet sets in one of the matching pillow cases to keep everything together. My bundles aren’t perfectly lined up and super tidy, because my sheets aren’t folded perfectly. I don’t fuss about things like that. Good enough is good enough, I always say. I’m just happy to know that when I want to change my sheets, all I have to do is grab a bundle and I’ll know that everything I need is in it.

Why didn’t I think of that before? It’s such a great idea.

This is my favorite closet. Gary didn’t think it was possible to put all of our soap storage in the laundry room closet, but I had a feeling that the mess in it was hiding a lot of room.

Wah-lah! It fit!

Just in case you are wondering why we store so much stuff…

I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and our leaders have taught us for years – longer than I’ve been alive – to store food and other necessities. When I was a child, they advised people to store 2 year’s worth, but later, the recommended amount became 1 years worth.

Building a store of food and supplies doesn’t happen overnight. It took us six years to put what we have together. We started by buying extra products when things we like to use went on sale. Periodically, we’d buy buckets of grains and other long-term storage items. After two of our children got married (Julianne and Stephen), we decided that we’d better bump it up more – in case something happened to the kids.

Gary is our food storage man. He has enjoyed the project of getting us prepared for the future and often says that if there is a big disaster, we can help others.

Over the years, we’ve experienced a few periods of unemployment, but because of our practice of storing food, we were able to get along okay. No matter how tough things got, we knew that we could eat and do our laundry. Living through those times has shown us the wisdom of preparing because you never know what will happen next.

Note: I’m planning on discussing food and necessities storage (getting it, where to put it when you don’t have a lot of room, using it, rotating it) in future posts. It’s a great way to save money and protect yourself from inflation and, as we’ve just seen with the Superstorm Sandy, when emergencies occur, grocery store shelves empty out quickly. If you don’t store anything else, you should store water!

Here are a couple some photos of our basement food supply. (We also have pantry storage in our kitchen.)

When Julianne and Kendyn moved out, Julianne went shopping in our storage which gave them a little start. I always tell her that there’s no reason for them to ever go hungry. That thought has comforted me as I’ve adjusted to not having them around. (I’m a mom. Moms worry, even about their adult children. I think it’s in our DNA.)

Speaking of which… I can’t have an update post without a picture of my cuties! Julianne and Miss Baylee came to visit this morning.

Miss Baylee always expects Grandpa to give her some candy when she visits and he didn’t disappoint her today. He let her pick out a couple of pieces of Halloween candy from the big bowl.

I also cleaned out one of the closets under the eves.

I didn’t think to take any before photos of the closets I cleaned and it’s hard to describe what a mess they all were. The white shelves came from the storage room in the basement that will soon be a kitchen. The big filing cabinet at the end of the room holds my music (I was a music teacher for decades). Before I filed it away last week, all the music was in boxes which made it nearly impossible to find anything.

I kept all the music I use to teach piano lessons, but I decided to give away most of my choral and violin music. It was quite traumatic to give away the string music, but since I sold my 1770 German violin to raise money to start Scrap Girls (my former company), I just haven’t had the heart to think about getting another violin. I did keep some of my favorite pieces – just in case a miracle occurs and a violin drops into my life. I couldn’t bear to part with them because they were all marked up by my violin teachers.

Such wonderful memories on those sheets of paper.

This is the other end of that big storage room. You can’t see them well, but I have a lot of plastic storage bins by the window that hold my craft supplies and the kids’ elementary school papers.

I keep all of our tax records in accordion folders – one per year. I’ve filing them away like this and it makes tax preparation super easy. If I need a receipt for any reason, it’s a snap to find what I want.

These boxes contain tons of framed family photos. Someday, I’ll hang them on the stairwell and on the 2nd floor landing. I’ve collected ideas on Pinterest for over a year now.

These are my favorite ideas. I think it’s interesting how the top one has images inside of “empty” frames. I have so many older family photos that are odd sizes and I don’t want to pay to have them framed. The frames were to match.

The second and third samples don’t have matching frames. I like the idea of putting fun items – such as that bird house – inside of interesting frames. The frames don’t match in the third sample either. I also like the idea of mixing vintage prints with my family photos.

Once I get all of this organizing done and Mom is moved in, I’m going to tackle this project. I’m excited to start. It will feel like a reward for all the hard work I’ve done.

Continuing on…

Because of my work with Scrap Girls (the digital scrapbooking company I used to own), I had collected massive numbers of scrapbooking magazines. I decided to go through them and cut out the ideas I enjoyed the most. It took two days to get through them all and once it was over, this was all that was left.

Here’s the last closet in the upstairs hall. The bottom shelves hold our games, which are going to go downstairs once I clean up….

…this mess. This is the closet next to the family room.

I also need to clean….

…the closet in my office. What a disaster. I’ll probably move the books up to those white shelves in the storage room under the eves because I don’t use them much. (It doesn’t help that I can’t get to them.) I’ll move all of my scrapbooking supplies, family photos, etc. into this closet so that I can organize and scrapbook them.

And now… a food photo! Yay!

One Sunday, I made some cinnamon-apple-raisin rolls using Mom’s sweet roll recipe. They were awesome. Since I haven’t made them for so many years, that I decided I better practice before I show you how to make the dough because it happens in an unusual way. You can look forward to that recipe coming along in the future.

Yummy!

The china plate comes from Mom’s wedding china set. We’ve had discussions about whether I should give it back to her when she moves here. (She’s using my grandmother’s china now.) This set is incomplete, but I really love it because it has pink peonies on it. I told her that it doesn’t matter who has it because it will be in the same house and if she wants to use it, she can!

Funny.

Well, better run now… I have closets calling my name.

Talk to you later.

—

P.S. I hope that you’ll excuse any errors I’ve made today. I’m feeling pooped and my editing brain cells feel broken.

P.P.S. Sorry that this post is so long. Three weeks was a long time!

The post 365 Days to a Homemade Life: Weeks 8-10 (Organizing Closets, Storage, and Basement Kitchen) appeared first on How Mom Did It.

Naw… Better not.

Last Thursday, I made a big batch of yummy spaghetti sauce that I stuffed full of garden vegetables and fresh herbs. I was able to freeze two quarts to use in the future.

We went down to see my mom for the weekend and while we were there, it was pretty much decided that she will be moving into our basement apartment. We’ll turn a storage room into a small kitchen and install a washer and dryer for her so that she’ll feel independent. Our basement has huge windows and it’s light and airy, so it should be comfortable for her. But oh my… There’s a lot to do.

I’ll think about it once my head stops spinning. (Feeling kind of dizzy at the moment.)

Talk to you later.

The post 365 Days to a Homemade Life: Week 7 (Spinning head. Spinning life.) appeared first on How Mom Did It.

Here are some great blog articles I found this week:

• Harvest Tart
• Winter Garden Starts in Milk Jugs
• Neat Idea for Hanging Photos on a Stairwell
• Halloween Jack-o-lanterns Made with Milk Jugs
• One-hour Miracle Bread
• Are you a blogger cheater?
• 7 Things You Can Do Right Now to Reduce Your Paper Clutter

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Harvest Tart. I just love reading David Lebovitz’s blog. He’s a great cook that lives in Paris and the stories he tells as he teaches you how to make a recipe are fascinating. This tart looks wonderful!

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Winter Garden in Milk Jugs. Here’s a fun post by Annie at Savor This Moment. I would have never thought of doing this in a million years. It might work for starting seeds for your spring garden and, perhaps, it would work to create an indoor herb garden for the winter.

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Neat Idea for Hanging Photos on a Stairwell. I’m toying with the idea of hanging family photos on our stairwell and landing. What has stopped me is figuring out how to deal with all of the odd-sized heritage photos I want to include because I can’t find the right frames. When I saw this idea on Pinterest this week, I got so excited. You’ve got to see it.

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Halloween Lights Made from Milk Jugs. Milk jugs as Jack-o-lanterns with Christmas lights to light up a path? Cute city!

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One-hour Miracle Bread. Can you imagine? Homemade bread in an hour from start to finish? Hoping that it’s true!

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Are you a blogger? Amy Renea from A Nest for All Seasons writes a very thought-provoking essay on what is right and what is wrong when you use photos you’ve found around the web in your blog.A lot of people are having trouble with bloggers using their photos without permission.

Also, some bloggers are even taking blog posts directly from RSS readers and posting them as their own. Not only is this wrong, it causes trouble for the original blogger because Google penalizes people for having duplicate posts. (This is why I watermark my images. It helps identify who wrote the original post and that I took the photos.) But if you are wondering, it’s perfectly fine for you to pin my images on Pinterest. In fact, I love it when you do because it helps get people to my blog. Pin away! (Please.)

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7 Things You Can Do Right Now to Reduce Your Paper Clutter. Ever feel like you are drowning in papers? Don’t know what to do with children’s artwork or your paper memorabilia? Wondering how to safely dispose of those credit card offers that keep coming? This blog post has some very practical ideas.

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Do you have a blog with homemaking, home decorating, recipes, or other articles that my readers would be interested in? Link up your blog to this article and I’ll take a peek. But even if your blog doesn’t contain that kind of article, I’d love to see it!

The post 7 Links Worth Looking At appeared first on How Mom Did It.

Here’s a great green tomato pie recipe. I’ve never made green tomato pie before, but this year, I decided to go for it. I modified my apple pie recipe to make it. This green tomato pie recipe was helpful, because I wasn’t sure about the green tomato part when I started.

I used my family’s pie crust recipe, which always turns out wonderfully. Gary loved it so much that he ate three pieces. He didn’t spot the green tomatoes until after he had woofed it down and was surprised that they were there.

I added raisins to it because to balance  the sour nature of the green tomatoes. You could make it without the raisins. Dried cranberries would also be good.

I brushed some beaten egg on the top of the pie and sprinkled on some sugar and cinnamon. I used butter-flavored Crisco, which made a lovely crust.

Make sure that you bake the pie for at least 60 minutes. I took it out of the oven and pulled out a piece of green tomato to make sure that it was soft enough.

I did not peel the green tomatoes.

Here’s the recipe:

Green Tomato Pie Recipe (with Apples and Raisins)

Print recipe

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• Print text only

Ingredients

• 5 cups chopped green tomatoes (Chop them on the fine size.)
• 2 cups peeled, chopped apples
• 1 handful raisins (if desired)
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• juice from 1/2 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
• lemon peel (I used the peel from one lemon.)
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon (We love cinnamon so I used a lot. You could cut down this amount, if you wish.)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 5 heaped tablespoons flour

Directions

Step 1

Chop the green tomatoes and apples.

Step 2

Stir all of the ingredients together.

Step 3

Pour into prepared pie crust.

Step 4

Bake for at least 60 minutes. Taste a piece of green tomato to make sure that it is cooked.

Note

1. This recipe is a mix of my apple pie recipe and this recipe I found on the Internet.

2. If you cool the pie before you eat it, the filling won't be runny.

3. This pie would be good without the raisins or with some dried cranberries.

4. I brushed the top crust with beaten egg. Sprinkle top with cinnamon and sugar.

5. You do not need to peel the green tomatoes.

The post Green Tomato Pie Recipe (with Apples and Raisins) appeared first on How Mom Did It.

If I had to describe this week using one phrase, it would be: green tomato recipes. We’re going to visit my mom in St. George soon and because we are into October now, I became concerned that there might be a cold snap while we are gone and I’d lose them. I decided to have fun experimenting with various green tomato recipes I found around the Internet.

It was such great success that I’m looking forward to next year’s crop!

First, I made salsa with the ripe tomatoes.

I used this salsa flavoring I purchased at Wal-Mart to make it. (Thanks ZoEtta for telling me about it!) The flavor is great, but it is a little hot.

The first time I made it, I doubled the amount of tomatoes and vinegar to cut the heat. This time, I was alert so I started out with more tomatoes and vinegar to begin with and it turned out perfectly.

I also made a batch of green tomato salsa, as well. You can get the recipe here. The recipe calls for 3 jalapenos with seeds. The seeds made it too hot for Gary so I had to add more of the vegetables, lime juice, and cilantro to fix it.

The green tomato salsa has a nice flavor and will be great in chicken enchiladas.

On Monday, I made green tomato pickle relish, green tomato mincemeat, and green tomato raspberry jam.

My mom and grandmother made green tomato mincemeat when I was in high school – I was 16 the first time I had it – and when I first tasted it, I became a huge fan, which is amazing because I don’t care for regular mincemeat.

I lost my green tomato mincemeat recipe somewhere, so I had to find a new one.  This recipe makes a rather large batch, so I decided to cut it down by a quarter. After I tasted it (and swooned), I wished I had made more. It would be good in filled cookies or, of course, you can make a pie with it.

The recipe calls for suet, but I used butter so in that way, it’s a lot like apple pie filling. The difference is that you simmer the mincemeat it for hours, which really develops the flavor. The recipe says that you should cook it for 3 hours, but I discovered that it was ready after 1 1/5 hours.

Green tomato mincemeat recipe.

I also made some green tomato relish, which will be great on hot dog and hamburgers. I’ll also use it to make egg, tuna, or chicken salad sandwiches. It has a very nice flavor.

Green tomato relish recipe

On Sunday, I made a green tomato-apple-raisin pie. I adapted my apple pie recipe for it. I’ll post the recipe in another post.

After I had a slice, I left it on the counter and didn’t tell anyone that I’d made it. When Gary came home from work, he had a slice…and then another slice… and then another slice. It was only after he ate some that he noticed the green tomatoes in it.

Obviously, he liked it so I’ll need to make it again.

I used raisins in it, but it would be good without the raisins or with some dried cranberries.

The bummer part of this day was that I accidentally broke TWO of my favorite 10″ Pyrex pie plates. It was hard not to cry, because I was so attached to them. One of them belonged to my grandmother.

Sigh.

I’ll be haunting thrift stores until I stumble on replacements.

This is just a fun shot. The relish recipe tells you to grind up the vegetables and then drain them in a colander lined with cheese cloth for an hour. There’s something about this sight that tickled me. Maybe it’s because I’ve never done it before.

This week was also a big week because we painted the downstairs bedroom. Andrew has always wanted to have his own space – to feel more independent – so when Julianne moved out, he asked if he could have her old room. Julianne picked out the paint and wallpaper when she was in high school and so, naturally, Andrew didn’t want it.

I’ll tell you what… that saturated blue-green color (which always reminded me of the Little Mermaid) was hard to cover. Andrew removed the wallpaper. Gary painted the walls. He had to put on two coats of primer and two coats of green paint to cover what was underneath.

Once he had done his part, I zoomed in and did the touch-up, finish painting. This included straightening the edge between the walls and the ceiling, going around the trim, and painting all of the “oops!” spots.

When we lived in West Jordan, we remodeled every single room of the house. During that period, I learned that the very best brush to edge with is an oiling painting brush. The bristles are very stiff and so it’s easy to control. Because it’s smaller than the typical edging brush, I’m able to create very sharp edges. It’s indestructible and cleans up perfectly.

Yesterday, I decided to go thrift store shopping at our local Deseret Industries. I’m so jazzed because I finally found a cover that fits the glass cake platter I received as a wedding gift. (It took 36 years to find it and it only cost $3!) I love using this cake plate, but because I didn’t have a cover, it was hard to cover the uneaten cake without messing the frosting up.

I also found a funky metal lid for my sugar canister (I broke it the glass one this week) and two plates to go with the collection I’m building. I love how my collection looks like I’ve purchased the plates from around the world or at art fairs. I’ve also been collecting some matching plain-colored plates with the same basic shape to go with them. At Deseret Industries, plates and platters are $1 each.

This vintage blue platter and large plates with fruits and vegetables on them also came from Deseret Industries.

I also found this frame yesterday. My in-laws gave me the daughter-in-law sampler years ago and last month, I accidentally knocked it off the wall and broke the glass. Frames this size normally cost at least $40. I decided to look at Deseret Industries until I found one and yesterday, I scored one. I like its simple, aged look and it’s going to work perfectly in my bedroom. I need to straighten it up the sampler, but as you can see, it fits! Yay! It cost $3.

My fun find was a 1962 edition of The Secret Garden (one of my favorite books) for $1. This is the edition I read as a child and  I’m so happy to own it.

I’ve thought about this illustration for years.

Yesterday, I had lunch with my friends (Joann and Wendee) and they both remarked how much better I look. I am healthier and more relaxed. It’s neat that people can see the difference in me.

This project has been a success. I enjoy my life so much more now.

Hope you all have a great week!

The post 365 Days to a Homemade Life: Week 6 (Paint, bottling, thrifting at Deseret Industries) appeared first on How Mom Did It.