Three Things Thursday~2/20/14

 

It is that time again!  I am so excited that our snow is melting, I have finally seen the grass for the first time, I think, this month!  I have to say that Winter is probably my least favorite thing because of the cold and being stuck inside.  I thought that maybe if I listed 3 things that I liked about winter it may leave   for good this year!

1.  I love the snow.  It is one of God’s most beautiful creations in my opinion.  I look at it as God’s winter blanket for the world as it sleeps.  I love the glistening that it does during the day when the sun is out.  I love the fact that snowflakes are like people in the fact that no two are alike.

2.  I love the extra time that the family has together because we slow down in the winter.  There are less things to do (work or play) outside when  the temperature dips and the snow comes.  We watch more movies as a family, or host family game night (electronic or board games it doesn’t matter).

3.  I actually like winter foods more than summer.  That may sound weird especially since I am a fruit and veggies kind of girl over  meat, which says light summer meals to me.  However love cooking those hearty soups and stews for the family.  My crock pot gets used year round but definitely more in the winter.  Maybe it is just knowing that I am providing a good hearty meal for my family I don’t know.  I just like to cook those Winter favorites dishes.

Here are three things that you may or may not have known about me.  Want to join the hop?  Would you like to read what my friends are saying?  Hop on over to   Heidi's Head!

Happy Thursday!

Three Things Thursday~2/13/14

 

It is time for another Three Things Thursday!  I thought with Valentine’s Day being tomorrow I would share three things that I LOVE about my husband.  It won’t be easy finding 3 but I will try really hard.  Okay, I am just kidding about that because if it was that hard I would pick a different topic .  It will be hard to narrow it down to just three and these are not in any particular order at all.  However, here goes…

    1.  I love his pride in his work and his work ethics.  When my husband does a job/project he doesn’t do anything small or half way.  He only wants to do things one time so he does it right the first time.  He takes great pride in his family and works hard for us in everything he does.

  2.  I love his sense of humor.  When he is not working he does have a lighter side. He makes the kiddos and I laugh pretty much daily.  He plays pranks, jokes and does little things that bring smiles to us all the time.  Being married to him for 16 years I have gotten him a few times back now.   

3.  I love the fact that he was my bestest (that may not be a real Webster’s approved word but I like it)   friend in the whole wide world long before we got married.  He has been a part of my live for over half of it(since I met him in grade school)!

 

There you have it!  This is just a very short list (hence Three Things Thursday) of things I love about my husband.

 

Check out what my friend Heidi has to say this week here!  You can also check out what my other friends are saying who have linked up to the hop! 

You can also join Three Things Thursdays!

Happy Thursday!

Spaghetti Squash~A New Favorite Food

  Are you looking for a healthy alternative to pasta?  Do you need to cut your carb intake?  Do you have Celiac disease?  Maybe you don’t need to change anything in your diet however, you  just like to try new foods.  Whatever category you feel you fit in I wanted to share with you my recent find.  Spaghetti Squash!  Over the years I had heard of it, however never tried it.  I love pumpkin, though and zucchini is grown in our garden every year!  I have started on a journey to go gluten free and more maybe rawish, if that is a word.  I haven’t eaten meat in almost 3 years and I feel better from that.  I haven’t been diagnosed with Celiac but have some the same issues as people with it  and figure it can’t hurt, right?  What is bad about eating more healthy?  A few weeks ago we went to my sister’s for dinner.  I suggested spaghetti and meatballs because it is an inexpensive dish for larger crowds (2 hubbies and 3 teenagers plus the rest of us is a lot of food).    My sister said that she was going to have spaghetti squash also.  I thought this would be a good time to try it.  If I don’t like it the rest wont be a waste of money as I throw it to the chickens.  It was delicious!  I had to add it to my favorite foods list!  It is also versatile as you will see. 

         So here goes my scoop on this squash.  First you want to pick a good squash.  Your squash should feel heavy for its size.  They should be about 4 lbs.   Here is mine with the holes pierced for cooking. 

Second, is storing it.  You can store your squash your squash in the fridge however due to the moisture in there it will deteriorate faster.  The best place to store it is on the counter, or in the pantry.  If you happen to purchase one that is green you can put it in the sun to let it ripen.  If you  store the squash between 50 and 60  degrees it will keep for several months!

Third, cook it!  You can cook this a couple of ways.  The easiest is to pierce it a few times and cook it whole in the oven for about an hour at 375 degrees. You can even put it in the microwave whole for about 15 minutes.  I haven’t tried this as I prefer the oven over the microwave.  If you cut it into chunks it will cook skin side up in about 20-30 minutes.  You do have to use some muscles to cut it and to get the seeds out, when it is raw.

Fourth, prepare to eat.  Once the squash is out of the oven and on a cutting board you are ready to scrape out the strands.  Check out how the strands have pulled from the skin.

  Check out the “spaghetti strands”!  I have to say I was surprised when it really did look like actual pasta!

You are going to completely scrape all  the strands out, which practically fall out of the skin!

 

It mostly all came out.

Now to eat.  You can dress this with a pasta sauce, a bit of butter or olive oil, or as I did,  sauté (in olive oil) green peppers and onions then tossed with the squash.  I have also scrambled eggs and made the squash, eggs and peppers.  Lastly, I sautéed it will broccoli and black eyed peas.  This wasn’t my favorite because of the peas. I love black eyed peas, just not with this.   I have to say that my favorite was the squash with farm fresh eggs and peppers!

  I think the squash has a slightly sweet smell and a light taste.  My kiddos wanted to give it a try and their response was that it didn’t taste like anything with out sauce on it.    It is very filling and with only 27 calories, compared to the 158 in pasta it is the lighter alternative.    This is definitely going to be a staple in my house from now on! 

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Three Things Thursday~2/6/14

  
  Here we are again for Three Things Thursday!  I can’t believe that the week has passed!  We have been so busy I guess that it has  just flown by.   Here at Clubb Academy we haven’t had any snow days nor do we have to do any blizzard bags as some of the brick and mortar school have to.  I have to say that we have been cooped up with the unusually cold weather here, so I thought that I would share three things that I dislike about winter that you may or may not know about me.  So here goes:

1)   I dislike being cold and the cold temperatures.  I am tired of wearing 2 shirts,  pair of sweatpants and really thick socks around my house ( and it is 68 degrees not artic in here).  I switched my hot chocolate drinking to hot lemon water.  With as much hot chocolate as we have been drinking around here we may have to roll out of the house in the spring!

2)  I dislike the ice and snow on the roads and in my trees.  I am hoping that we don’t loose any trees this year with the ice pulling our evergreen branches to the ground.  It looks as if they are very sad under the weight of the ice and snow.  I feel trapped in my house because I don’t drive when the roads are bad.  I have tried it a couple of times and it hasn’t resulted in anything good and it usually adds a tow bill somewhere.  I figured I could spare that if I just stayed home.

3)   I dislike having to go out several times a day to change out the water for the animals.  I am grateful for the electric heaters we have for the dogs and the chickens.  How did anyone get along with out them?  We do not have heated rabbit water bottles so we have to switch them out a couple of  times a day.
     So there you have 3 things I dislike about winter!  I hope you enjoyed.  If you would like to join Three Things Thursday or check out what others are saying hop on over to Heidi’s Head by clicking here!

Three Things Thursday

 

I thought that this might be a fun way to beat some of the winter blues or cabin fever that some of us are experiencing.  I heard that we may be in for another round of snow! Oh I so hope not!  Anyhow, for right now I am warm and cozy in my pj’s and I thought it would be fun to join this blog hop!

 

So here goes this is Three Things Thursday and I will share 3 random things about myself that you may or may not know. 

 

1.  I live in the country now but I was raised in the city!  I love living in rural Brown County, however it wasn’t always this way.  You see when it suddenly takes you about an hour to get anywhere instead of about 15 minutes, it is a bit of a change.  I have adjusted though and wouldn’t want to go back to the city.

 

2.  I wanted to go to college to be a special education teacher!  I changed that half way thru my second year of college at Wright State University and switched to nursing.  After my mom’s passing I decided to take some time off of school.  After I am finished raising my kiddos I will go back and be a neonatal nurse!

 

3.  I am in the process of reteaching myself the piano.  As a kid I played the piano for many years.  I thought it was like riding a bike and once I sat down it would come back to me.  Well, at the slightly over 40 years of age that I am, I am thinking that if this statement is true then I should never get back on a bike!  It is slowly coming along, though, and I won't really be hesitant about bikes either :)

 

That is it for this week!  If you want to read other Three Things Thursday posts, or participate in the blog hop, you can check out Heidi's Head by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Waterless Dog Shampoo~ Does it work?

     

Here are my two dogs. Daisy, on the left is the lively and spirited one.  I know you wouldn’t know from this pic!

Dixie on the right is our calm, docile one.

       As a dog owner of not one small dog, but two large Labs, it is a constant struggle to keep them clean and smelling fresh.  My labs are girls so they are smaller compared to their male companions that can easily be over 120 pounds.  Weighing only 70 pounds each my girls are still rather large to be indoors, however that is part of our crazy life.  Originally we had one lab in the house.  Then along came a stray that we decided to keep outside.  Well being black and hot in the summers I started to bring her in for a few hours in the afternoons.  Then suddenly they both were indoors full time!  I don’t know how that happened at all
     When the weather is warm and dry it is so easy to give the dogs a bath outside and they truly love it.  We then tie them up to the deck so that they can dry.  When it rains or is cold like it has been outdoor baths are not an option.  I have resorted to washing them in my bath tub a time or two.  That is a disaster though as I have to then wash the bathroom walls as well as the rest of the bathroom literally top to bottom to rid it of the dog hair.  Not very fun on my part.  We have them groomed from time to time, however that is an hour away.
    In my quest to make my own cleaning things like laundry soap, window cleaner and dishwasher soap I thought about waterless shampoo.  I knew there was a said product for people what about for dogs?  I found a recipe from The Krazy Coupon Lady.  You can find the recipe here.   Who would have thought that you could use cornstarch and baking soda to freshen up your dog? So does this really work?  Well, Joe and I talked about giving it a try and we finally did it.  I made the recipe and put it in a mason jar.  Joe punched holes in an old lid, making a large salt shaker looking thing. I recommend doing this outside as we did about Thanksgiving time.  The pictures are from today when we had to do it inside due to the recent frigid temps here.  The shaker worked awesome to distribute the powder over the dogs.  Then it says to leave it on the dogs for about 10-20 minutes.  Well, we thought that it couldn’t hurt to leave it on for about 30 minutes.  As you can see on the left we put them in their kennels to wait out that 30 minutes.  Once that time was up we used our FURminator brush to brush the dogs.  It doesn’t pull the powder out as I thought it would, but it did get most of it out.  
    So we then did the sniff test.  Did the dogs still smell?  NO!  I am so excited to report that this stuff does work.  It sweeps up really nice.  It works by clumping to the oils and dirt in the hair and then that gets removed when you brush/sweep the dog. I wouldn't recommend using this all the time.  I couldn’t see how it would replace an actual bath, however it is a great in between.
Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Homemade Dishwasher Powder

  With 4 kids in the house we use our dishwasher a lot.  Like the washer, it runs at least 2 times a day on average.  We are currently on our 4th one with in 16 years.  One of those dishwashers we replaced because it just didn’t seem to do a good job so after about 2 years we replaced it.  Another dishwasher had to be replaced because the control panel caught on fire,  thank goodness we were home
  With our latest purchase, my husband did a bit of research and found that Bosch is one of the top names in dishwashers.  My mother in law purchased a Bosch when she purchased her last one and loves it.  So guess what we bought?  Yep a Bosch.  We purchased a midgrade model, as kiddos are hard on appliances!
     With a dishwasher you need of course, dishwashing soap.  You can't use Dawn, trust me, I accidently put a bit of Dawn in my dishwasher a long time ago and we didn't like the bubble show that was all over my kitchen.  Fortunately it was a drop and not a full dispenser worth!  So along with a few dishwasher searches we have visited the detergent search a few times as well.  At one point one of our dishwashers couldn't even clean off a bit a ketchup left on the plate!  Yes, I said Ketchup.  Can you guess which one this was?  If you said the one that was only 2 years  old you are right!  Even with coupons the  detergent that we had to use to get clean dishes was the expensive cascade ones in the tub.  You get 20 packets and we would make about a week with the it.
    I started to make my own laundry detergent about 2 years ago and it works as well as Tide if not better.  To find a dishwashing detergent that I liked I had to try several recipes and I think I have found one that will I will stay with.  So this is what I use:

Homemade Dishwasher Soap:

         2 cups of borax

        2 cups of washing soda

      1 cup of citric acid

      1/8 cup of kosher salt

Now, when I made my first batch I thought I could take it and keep it in a mason jar with a cute little tag attached with raffia.  Well that was a failure and resulted in one big hardened clump!  So now I take these ingredients and mix them up.  I spread it out on a large cookie sheet and let it sit for a day or two.  Then I can put it in that mason jar tied with raffia!  I was told at the citric acid makes it harden.  So make sure you let it dry out well first.

Do you have a homemade dishwashing detergent that you use? Feel free to share.  Did you try this one?  I would love to know how it worked for you!