Crock pot "fauxtissery" chicken

This is adapted from O.B.B.
1 whole chicken
1/4 C butter, divided
1 lemon, sliced
fresh rosemary
fresh sage
fresh thyme
4-5 cloves garlic, halved
season salt to taste
4-6 slices bread
poultry seasoning
celery salt
3 crumpled balls of aluminum foil or rack for crock pot

Remove chicken instructions (giblets), rinse chicken and pat dry with paper towels. Put little pats of 1/8 C. butter, garlic, fresh rosemary, sage, and thyme under skin of chicken (I only did the breast side). Butter bread slices and sprinkle with celery salt and poultry seasoning. Cut into 1/2" squares and stuff into chicken cavities, stitch closed. Rub season salt into skin of chicken on all sides. Place chicken, breast up on 3 balls of foil in crock pot to keep it off the bottom of the pot. Top with slices of lemon. Cook on high or low until done. (I'm hoping it will be done on high after 5 hours. Check with meat thermometer for done-ness.)

Gravy:
Use chicken drippings for gravy. Add a little milk and whisk flour or corn starch in to thicken.

Serve with potatoes or rice or quinoa or polenta.

Hot Water...

...is a funny book written by P. G. Wodehouse. It is also something we currently don't have at our house right now.
Clarification: I mean our current residence, not our new house. Although if I were still talking about the book, it is at neither. Clear as mud?
Thursday there was plenty of hot water. So hot I almost scalded my hands. Friday morning the best we could get was room-temperature water. So I went down and turned the water heater up. Hours later, still no hot water.
Turns out the water heater needed to be replaced. By then it was Friday evening and the plumber requested we do it Saturday (today) morning since it had been a long day for them.
First thing this morning, they came and replaced the water heater. I waited half an hour and turned on the hot water...and nothing...no water.
I found the plumber investigating stuff outside still and turns out that when the hot water is turned on, the downstairs kitchen floods. Awesome.
So, I showered at the neighbor's house because we wont have any hot water til at least Monday.
All in all, this is our first major problem after living here for 4 years. Not too shabby for how old the house is (abt. 90 years).
If you see me at church tomorrow and I stink...now you know why. ;)

Explanation

Dave suggested I keep a log of the recipes I use/create since I can never seem to make the same thing twice. It's mostly for my record keeping, but feel free to try them out yourself. Just note that the measurements are usually estimates.

Reboot update

I guess it's a good thing I've been too busy to post updates.
I have been waking up at 7 all week, but not necessarily because of my schedule...it's more because Joshua decided suddenly that 7 is the best time in the world to wake up. Boo. The whole idea was to be up before Joshua to have some quiet time to eat, read my scriptures, and get ready for the gym. Now 7am - 8am (sometimes 8:30) consists of me waking up to screaming and pounding on the door to his room, or his persistent "mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom.....mom, mom, mom?" (usually the former) until I let him out of his room and then I hand him a banana, throw him in our bed, turn on Cars, and sleep through as much of the movie as possible.
I have been doing great at exercising though, as my sore muscles will tell you. Last week and this week I have exercised 4 of 6 days planned: a mix of swimming, running, stationary bike, road bike with trailer, and weights.
I hope to do some water running next week, which I haven't done since high school XC. I'm super excited!
Joshua has been doing great at the gym child care, and I have loved being able to shower and dress in peace, even if it is in a tiny shower in a locker room.
I still need to work on other aspects of my new schedule, but I didn't really expect to master it in 1 or even 2 weeks. It shall always be a work in progress.

Lasagne

1 lb ground beef, browned with
1 small onion, chopped
3 - 4 cloves garlic
1 1/2 jars spaghetti sauce (or make your own)
Mix 3 above ingredients for marinara sauce layers.
16 oz + cottage cheese
2 eggs
Food process 2 above ingredients for cheese sauce layer
Shredded zucchini
Shredded cheese of choice
Sliced fresh tomatoes
1 1/2 boxes lasagne noodles

Layer as follows in largest pyrex dish:
Small layer marinara sauce (enough to cover bottom of pan so noodles don't stick)
Noodles
Cheese sauce (1/2 of it)
Zucchini
Marinara sauce (1/3 of it)
Noodles
Cheese sauce (rest of it)
Zucchini
Marinara sauce (half of remaining)
Noodles
Marinara sauce (rest of it)
Sliced tomatoes
Shredded cheese

Cover with aluminum (seal as well as possible) and bake at 350 for 1 hour. Uncover and bake another 10 minutes. Let sit 15 - 20 minutes before serving.

Butterscotch oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

1 c butter
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c brown sugar
1 t vanilla
Cream 4 above ingredients together, then add
2 eggs (I think....?)
2 1/4 heaping c flour
1 c regular oats
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
1 c butterscotch chips
1 c chocolate chips
1 small pkg butterscotch pudding mix

Bake at 375 for 10 - 13 min.

Alfredo lemon pepper chicken fettuccini

Alfredo sauce
3/8 c butter
1 1/3 c heavy cream
2 small cloves garlic
2 c parmesan
(Source: all recipes...link later)
Chicken
1 1/2 lb chicken cubed
1 t lemon zest
1 t lemon juice
1 t fresh ground pepper
2 T olive oil

Pasta al dente

Reboot day 6 and summary

Changing your schedule from laziness most of the day to include daily exercise and chores is mentally and physically exhausting. Mentally because you have to hype yourself up to do the chores you don't want to do. Physically because it's like getting in shape...no, it IS getting in shape.
Going from no exercise (physically and mentally) to some exercise, even if it just a little is tiring on your body, especially the first week. It doesn't help if you change your sleep time, too.
But, also like getting in shape, your body will adjust and you will get more energy. So they say at least. I'll let you know. ;)
I'm so tired I'll probably go to bed shortly after Joshua does tonight.

Reboot Day 4

Despite yesterday's late start, we made it to the gym, got a few things done. Dave had a schedule change and ended up with the night off so we had dinner together, played with Joshua at the park.
I'm definitely still behind in my chores scheduled out for the week, but the house looks better already with the things I have been able to get done this week.
Tomorrow I'm having a quilt tying party to tie one of my quilts tomorrow, so I have to finish up with the chores I wasn't able to accomplish during the week. I'm thinking I need this kind of motivation regularly. Maybe have people over every other week, possibly every week?
Right, well, off to do more chores before Joshua wakes up! Update on today will be posted later tonight.

2012 City Services Fair

On Monday, our city had a free fair to showcase all the city services. There were firetrucks, fire demonstrations, fire hoses you could spray, police cars, an airplane, a helicopter, bucket trucks, little fishing games, candy, otter pops, and lots of open parking lot roped off for running around.
Joshua and I went and we had a blast! I thought it was going to be super crowded so I showed up right when it started and it was pretty empty. It stayed pretty empty probably because the weather looked like it would turn nasty, and it actually did...at about 6. So we got a good 2 hours of play time in. Here are some pictures from the event (a select few...the rest are on my fb):

 Checking out the police booth. He was not a fan of McGruff the crime dog.

 Hat's off to you!

 Little Fireman Joshua

 Impressive fire department demonstration. Note the menacing skies in the background!

 Fireman Joshua on the firetruck

 Checking out the helicopter

 Looking at all the neat stuff in the helicopter

 Spraying some buckets painted with flames with the fire hose

 Pretending to fly an airplane together.

 Pilot and co-pilot...and best friends

 Ready to go up in the bucket truck!

 Up we go!

 Higher and Higher! (Don't worry, we definitely went all the way up, and I was clutching the side and Joshua very tightly...oh it was so high)

 Fireman friends!

More from the airplane. When he was by himself, he hated it, but with Henry, he loved it!

Reboot Day 3/New House Stuff: PICTURES!

Ha! Today was a bust.
I couldn't sleep til after 1am this morning, and so when 7am rolled around I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I let Panda out (who woke me by wandering around and shaking her collar, who needs an alarm clock!?) and flopped back in bed until Joshua got up at 8. We watched Cars in bed for another hour or so, then eventually rolled out of bed, and got ready for the day. Ran a few errands, had lunch, did some business at the bank for like 2 hours, then went home for naptime.
There's something up with Joshua and naps. We put him down for a nap at 3pm and he played in his room for about 45 minutes, ended up falling asleep in the middle of the floor, and only slept for about half an hour. Boo. Hiss.
I only got half of one chore done today: Vacuuming carpets. I didn't even get to that til Joshua's bedtime. Luckily I already did the dusting chore yesterday. Tomorrow will be a better day!
On to house stuff:
There are 24 windows needing to be replaced. 2 need to be done more urgently (one is broken, one has a gap at the top between the glass and the frame).
Last week at an expo, I signed up for Sears to come and bid out new windows on our new, very old, house. (Did I mention it was built in 1898?)  Let me just say that their bid had 5 digits, and the first one wasn't a 1: $XX,XXX. Yikes...we could buy another house with that amount if we had it, which we don't.
Today Dave had another company come and do another bid on the windows, and I really liked it a lot better. It was literally 1/3 of the price Sears offered.
We're going to get references of previous jobs done by this company, and then get another bid by another company, possibly 2 more, just to be sure.
It's exciting to be looking into improvements like this for our very own house! It's definitely nerve wracking though. We need to look over our budget, but the salesman made some very valid points:

• He offered to pay/waive the lead paint fee for the windows (close to $1000)
• They offer 0% financing up to 4 years (we'd just do 2 years)
• If we book it now, we could get it done before winter and save hugely on heating costs, not to mention not having to have gaping holes in our walls during the cold of winter

So what I'm thinking is that either we could save like $300ish/month for 2 years and do it then, all-the-while throwing most of our heating/cooling money out the window, literally. Or we could do it now and pay the $300ish/month with 0% interest to the company who does it...what do you think? 

Anyway, I have some pictures of the inside of the apartment we'll be living in. Do you want to see them!? Of course you do!

 Looking into the living room from the east porch. The front bathroom is to the left, the northeast and northwest bedrooms are to the right, the kitchen is straight through, the laundry room beyond that.

 Looking into the living room from the northeast bedroom/office. Why, yes, that is a gas fireplace, thermostat controlled with a fan. ;)

 Front bathroom with claw-foot tub.

 Other angle of front bathroom.

 Northeast bedroom/office from the living room. (Note: Joshua's head at bottom of picture)

 Northwest bedroom from living room.

 Southwest bedroom from laundry room.

 Laundry room. We have since put in a 220 line for the dryer and fixed the valves for the washer hookups (they were leaking).

 Laundry room from driveway. Back bathroom down little hallway to the left. Another outside door straight down hallway. I'll probably put a clothes line out that door between the two buildings. I'm so excited to have a clothes line!

 Back bathroom. Clawfoot tub, teeny toilet.

 Back bathroom, other angle. Tiny vanity, tiny mirror, tiny window.

 Southwest bedroom again, north half.

 Southwest bedroom again, south half.

 Dining area. Door leads to laundry room. Kitchen off to right. I forgot to take a picture of it because the tenants were cleaning it as I took pictures.

View of front door from living room.

So there it is...except the kitchen. I'll have to post that another time. We got it rented out for til December after a hullabaloo with the tenants we thought were staying til December bailing, not having a place to go, their moms calling me (oh the drama!), etc. and then we will move in in December! :)

Reboot Day 2

Joshua had his first day at the gym child care, and he did great! I had my first shower at the gym and I forgot my face lotion and my deodorant and my flip flops (ew stinky-armpit-Sarah walking around on slimy floors!). But, we made it, I worked out, we ran errands, and then went home for lunch.
Then...bum bum bummmmmmm...
It was nap time. Joshua was cranky and tired. I was getting there, too. So I put Joshua down for a nap, then went to lie down, myself, for a half an hour before getting up to do chores while Joshua was still sleeping. That's what my schedule says to do, and that was the plan. Apparently Joshua is against the schedule and the plan, because he ended up just playing in his room for an hour...not napping! I luckily drifted off a little bit, so I eventually got him up and did chores with him awake. Of course that means everything took a lot longer to do, but I got the kitchen and living areas vacuumed and mopped, and DUSTED! Oh man, our piano looks so much better without crap piled all over it and covered in dust.

Ok, dusting wasn't supposed to happen until tomorrow, but it was just so much easier to do it as I vacuumed. I'd just switch attachments when I got to an area needing it. (Note: To my parents and Chelsea, currently grimacing over me using the vacuum attachment to dust the piano...I didn't...I used a swiffer sweeper pad towel thing...To Alex: the piano misses you)
I've been scribbling all over the chore chart I made, and next week there will be some rearrangements (like I won't have "trash to curb" on Tuesday, because I need to put it out there Monday evening because our garbage pickup is at like 6am Tuesday...durrrr). I'll post about all the rearrangements later in the week when I get it all figured out.
Then, after dinner, we went and played outside. I mean, I shoveled dirt into the wheel barrow, while Joshua ran around like crazy.
I discovered THE best time to clean the bathroom: During bathtime! I cleaned the toilet today during Joshua's bath, and it didn't matter that he was sloshing water everywhere, because I was, too. I'm a big fan of this. Huge fan...give it a try.
And...now I'm late for bedtime. Goodnight!!!

Reboot Day 1

Last night Dave and I ended up sitting up talking until after midnight (1), and so 7am came sooner than hoped once we did fall asleep. But I kicked myself out of bed at 7am 7:15am ;) and got up to eat breakfast and read some scriptures. Then I went to the gym, leaving Joshua behind because he wasn't up yet, and Dave got a decent amount of sleep so he was ok getting up with him when he did get up (2)...which means I didn't get to do any dishes while he was eating breakfast...(3) I forgot we had a 9:00am appointment at our new house for a measurement and bid on the fence we need to put up for the dogs (4), so at the gym I only rode a stationary bike for 10 minutes, stretched for 10 minutes, and went home to shower (5). Then we headed to the new house for the appointment and fixed a few things and ran some errands until noon. I was starving, and so was Joshua, so I went home with Joshua, leaving  Dave at the house to finish fixing some things, and made lunch. Then Joshua was super cranky (he fell on his face down a cement stair at the house) so I put him down for his nap a little earlier than planned (6)...and I was exhausted, so I took a nap for half an hour an hour, too. After nap I folded laundry while Joshua played, made Dave some lunch, ironed Dave's shirt, packed Dave a dinner, skyped my parents, and folded some more laundry. Then, at 4pm, we headed over for a fun city fair at the mall with all the firetrucks, police cars, parks & recreation, utilities, etc. booths where we played for well over 2 hours! (time flew!) until it started thundering (glorious!) and wind...ing? and then raining. (Post to come on that when I get more pictures from a friend...)

We had dinner a little late (7), which I just grabbed out of the fridge (mac & cheese for Joshua, and I'm still not hungry yet...) (8). Then Joshua and I played for a while in his room, cleaned up his toys, changed his sheets (he drew on them with dry erase markers...bah!), and he went to bed. That brings us to now. I'm collecting myself after a long day, getting ready to finish up the last 2 hours strong.
If you're still there, props. So, if you noticed my counting, 8 things didn't really stick to my planned schedule, but I'm ok with it. It was the first attempt. I'm not going to get frustrated with everything not going as planned. It's the first week. I'm expecting it will take probably 2 weeks to get into the swing of things. The first week will be adjusting, and the second week will be practicing, and then hopefully the third week will make it into habit. I do like how this schedule is semi-flexible. With two or three big chunks of time during the day left open to be used as needed, it allows for things to "come up" without throwing off my whole day.
Well, in order for chores to go well, I need to do some chores from last week (laundry, ironing) and some chores from today (dishes, vacuuming, mopping), see this post if you're interested in my planned chores.

Life Reboot plan

This morning I brainstormed some more on our lovely white board. Here's a picture of it, then I've copied it out below so you can actually read it:

Monday:
Empty Trash
Vacuum hard floor
Mop kitchen
Clean BR Sink
Groceries

Tuesday:
Mop hardwood
Clean toilet
Run dishwasher
Trash to curb

Wednesday:
Mop bathroom
Dusting
Vacuum carpets

Thursday:
Vacuum/mop kitchen
Clean shower/tub
Run dishwasher

Friday:
Wash laundry
Clean bathroom sink
Hand wash dishes

Saturday:
Fold laundry
Ironing
Run dishwasher
Work on calling

Sunday:
Plan menu/week

Daily Schedule:
7:00 am – up!
Breakfast
Scriptures
?am – Joshua up
Breakfast -> unload/load dishwasher
Dress
Dress and pack for gym
(clean clothes, small towel, big towel, shower stuff, brush, deodorant)
At gym – workout, stretch, shower
Joshua snack
} – About 2 hours for options**
Noon – Lunch
12:30pm – Clean up toys
1:00pm – Joshua naptime
->do chores
2:30pm – Prepare Dave’s meals
3:00pm – Joshua snack
} – About 2 hours for options**
Prepare dinner
6:00pm – Dinner
6:30pm – outside time (work on yard)
7:30/45pm – Bath, clean up toys, pjs, etc.
8:00pm – Joshua bed
1 hour sewing
1 hour bookkeeping/organizing (every other day)
10:00pm – Clean up kitchen
Night routine
10:30pm – Bed

**Options:
Chores
Deep cleaning
Errands
Outing
Organizing
Walk dogs
Just play

Life Re-boot

Lately this is how most of my days go:
Get woken up for Joshua (way too early for the time I went to bed the night before)
Stumble around bleary-eyed to get him and myself breakfast
Try to snooze on his bed while he plays with toys for a little while
Give up trying to snooze
Do random things around the house
Lunch
Naptime for Joshua, sometimes naptime for me
Shower and get dressed for the day
Do random things until 3pm
Iron a shirt for Dave for work
Run some errands maybe
Dinner
Maybe do something out in the front yard
Watch the clock tick slowly until 8
Get Joshua in bed
Relax, do a chore or two, maybe some work
Get distracted and end up on the internet for a few hours, probably watching Netflix
Go to bed way too late

You can see that it needs some change. I've decided to give my life a re-boot. Our house is a stinky, dusty mess, we're always grumpy, none of us eat well, Joshua gets whiny and throws more tantrums, and I try to bury myself in projects.
I did some brainstorming tonight and here is what I came up with:


Chores needing to be done regularly:
Dishwasher
Hand dishes
Clean kitchen
Laundry
Folding Laundry
Ironing
Vacuum Hard Floors
Vacuum Carpets
Mop Kitchen
Mop Hardwood
Mop Bathroom
Clean Toilet
Clean Sink
Clean Shower
Empty Garbages/Recycling
Dusting


Things needing to be added to life:
Chores regularly done
Study Scriptures
Exercise
Walk dogs
Go to bed earlier
Limit fast-food intake
Scheduled meals

Things I'd like to do for a set amount of time daily (instead of long amounts of time sporadically):

Sewing

Bookkeeping

Go through and organize stuff

Deep cleaning

Things I need to work on regularly but only weekly:
Budget/Finances
Getting pictures up at church

What I'm thinking is that I can set the chores to specific days and hold myself to getting them done that day. The only one that has been consistent is laundry. It has to be consistent because I only have 7 sets of underwear. Maybe I should hide half of our dishes so I have to do them more often...I can't think of ways to make the rest of the chores mandatory.

I'm going to pull out my large wall calendar tomorrow morning and schedule out the chores and put together a daily schedule. I'll post when I get it figured out.

Because you care

Lately my skin had been teenager-acne-bad. It's gross. So I decided to take action. I have more than a life's supply of skin care products from my Mary Kay days (shameless plug...buy them from me at cost! I just want to get rid of them!). I've started a new face routine.
In the morning when I shower (let's be honest...it's usually not morning anymore when I get around to showering) I use st. Ive's apricot scrub with blackhead control. Then, after my shower, every other day I use the MK face mask on the T zone and then use MK day solution and a tiny bit of MK moisturizer. Then, if I have any raging zits (these days it's more like "many") I put on the MK acne cream.
At night before bed I wash my face with MK 3-in-1 cleanser, put on MK night solution, and again the optional acne cream on zits.
Honestly, MK spouts that foundation is a vital part of skin care, but it seems to make my acne worse when I wear it. I'll only put on makeup if I'm feeling extra zitty and don't feel comfortable going out in public without it.
It seems to be helping, but another wave of raging hormones are due in the next few weeks, so we'll see if my face survives.
Now you know.

Training mom

When I tell our dogs to do something, like "out" or "go away" or "leave it" and they look at me like I'm speaking a foreign language, I add a clap to the command to let them know that I mean it.
Today Joshua wanted to get up on the bed to watch a show (which I wasn't allowing because he had already watched Kung Fu Panda today) he kept saying "upf" "upf" (he adds a fricative to all his plosives) and then he looked at me and said "upf!" and then clapped his hands at me.