Another Low Key Holiday Season Is On The Horizon!

 

Since retiring we have all embraced the idea of what I like to refer to as our “low key” approach to the holiday season.  It used to be a huge source of stress for most of us to get ready for Christmas.  After having “the talk” we all agreed to ditch the gift giving and just concentrate on the actual day instead.

 

We still give gifts to each other but our criteria has changed dramatically.  Since prices continue to rise and everyone is on the move or about to be on the move or downsizing gifts need to be small, inexpensive and useful.  I personally love to give and receive gift cards and consumables.  Soaps, lotions, coffees or teas, wine or alcohol, chocolate, cookies, pumpkin bread, cheeses or fruit, those types of things are very much appreciated.

 

We definitely do not buy any clothing items for each other anymore.  None of us truly knows what the other likes and with sizing being unpredictable you often just end up giving someone and errand rather than a gift and no one enjoys returning stuff to the store.  And honestly, how many pairs of fuzzy socks does one person truly need.

 

The holidays are much easier and far less stressful now while saving all of us a ton of money.  No one is going into debt or feeling pressured to get just the right gifts.  Instead we focus on the yummy foods and desserts and create loads of fun new experiences, which is all we ever remember anyway.  With a quieter, less hurried and more relaxed pace we enjoy this time of year and now instead of dreading it, we look forward to it.  No way are we going back now!

 

Getting The Ladies Ready For Their First Winter

 

Last week I was able to get outside on a nice cool sunny day and get the coop ready for my new girls very first winter.  I use a deep litter method in my coop which means you keep a deep layer of pine shavings and their droppings in the coop and as long as you keep the inside of the coop nice and dry it will decompose and create its own heat.

 

There are a lot of good benefits to doing the coop this way, the biggest being that there is no odor and I don’t have to clean the coop as often.  I will remove some of the droppings under their roost, but not all of them and then I add another big pile of pine shavings which they will spread out for me just the way they want them.  In the spring once the weather is warmer I will clean out the coop entirely adding the contents to my compost bin.  They get another big pile of pine shavings to spread out and we repeat the process.  I personally do not find that this works as well with straw as I do with pine shavings.

 

In the pen area I give them a full 55 gallon trash can I fill up with mulched leaves when I do my annual Fall cleanup raking leaves.  They will spread them out and pick through them.  This creates a nice layer that will keep down the mud and help break down their droppings while it composts into a soil additive.  Each month during winter I will give them more mulched leaves I have saved for them.  It has the added benefit of entertaining them and keeps them busy.  During the spring and summer I will rake this up and it gets incorporated into the compost bin, my flowerbeds and the raised garden beds to fertilize and amend the soil.  Again keeping the pen area, like the coop, nice and dry is my key to healthy chickens and an odorless process.

 

During freezing temperatures I use ice cream buckets to give them water.  Since they don’t drink as much water in the winter as they do in the summer I find that by swapping out one bucket a day works well most of the time.  During really cold temperatures when it doesn’t get above freezing all day I will do it twice.  Each time I bring the frozen bucket inside at night and allow it to thaw and then it is ready to go back out in the morning to be swapped again.

 

I will give them their regular feed along with the addition of cracked corn or scratch grains that I toss on the ground.  They will need more protein to help them stay warm so I will also give them meal worms, which they love.  I also make them homemade suet cakes by melting beef or pork fat I have saved for them when I cook and I will freeze it for this purpose.  I use a plastic bowl as a mold and after placing a layer of  scratch grains, cracked corn and/or meal worms in the bowl about a half inch thick I pour in enough fat to cover that.  Once the fat has cooled and solidified I can pop it out of the bowl and give it to the girls.  Cool Whip containers are perfect for this.

 

Egg production slows down considerably in the winter and even stops sometimes because of the colder temperatures and fewer daylight hours.  Some people will add lights and heat to their coops, but I choose to allow them to naturally take a break and rejuvenate during this time as they are meant to do.  In the spring, once the temperatures rise again and the daylight hours are longer, they’ll get back to business.  In the meantime my job is to make sure they are healthy, happy and well cared for.  They are definitely loved.

 

 

Honey Mustard Salad Dressing

 

I always like to make my own salad dressing because I want to control what goes into my food as much as possible.  This honey mustard salad dressing is so tasty and delicious, not to mention super easy to make, that I just had to share it with you. 

Honey Mustard Dressing 

1/2 cup mayonnaise

3 Tbs. avocado oil

2 Tbs. yellow mustard

2 Tbs. honey

1 Tbs. lemon juice 

Combine all ingredients in a small blender jar and pulse blend until well combined and emulsified.  Keep refrigerated in an airtight container.

 

This dressing goes together quickly and tastes amazing.  If you need other homemade salad dressing recipes click here.  It always feels wonderful to make my own stuff over buying it pre-prepared.  Enjoy!

 

My Tireless Retirement - Week 188

 

I began this past week of my retired life feeling very humble and very grateful.  I have been blessed in so many ways and although I never take it for granted I do feel that it is important to pay it forward whenever we can, especially as we are heading into the holidays.  Friday morning before I started a full day at work I delivered two bags of groceries to a single mom in need.

 

I was blessed with the opportunity to take part as a volunteer last Saturday morning in the SNAP $40 voucher event at the Boise Farmers Market where we handed out tokens and tickets to people in need.  The tokens allowed people to shop vendors for fresh fruits and vegetables while the tickets allowed them to purchase other SNAP eligible items like eggs, bread, milk and cheese.  There is nothing like having someone literally burst into tears in front of you when you hand them these to realize how fortunate you truly are.  I am so grateful I was able to be there to help out and even more grateful that this even was even happening.

 

The BFF has taken over this month’s grocery shopping and it has freed me up to work on other things.  We have both felt compelled combine forces and not only beef up our own food stocks as we head into winter and 2026, but we have also felt the need to start a shelf in the LTFS to store food items for donating.  Since I have the space and more available time than he does to manage this it was decided that these food stocks as well as the donation items should be kept at my house.

 

Because of the sudden increase in food stocks the BFF convinced me that the purchase of an additional small freezer might be prudent so he didn’t take over mine adding that I’d be able to better organize things using the new one to store produce, flour and homemade breads while mine was used to store the fats and proteins.  It worked and I acquiesced to his sales pitch.  My payment for keeping the freezer at my house is that I can eat whatever I want out of it, organize it however I like and he’ll keep shopping for whatever I tell him he should buy.  It sounds like a pretty solid deal to me.

 

I picked up cranberries on sale at Fred Meyer and made my own cranberry sauce for the very first time.  I still had oranges I had brought home from the senior center and the rinds were starting to dry out so it just made sense to use my grandma’s juicer and get them all juiced and add that to my cranberry sauce as part of the liquid.  It is delicious!  And, needless to say, it is very easy to make your own cranberry sauce.  I canned it in small jelly jars so it will last for quite a while and I can give some away too.

 

While at Fred Meyer I picked up two five pound bags of good quality flour on sale or $3.49 each, a really good price as I normally pay well over five dollars a bag for this flour.  At home I vacuum sealed them and placed them in the new freezer.  I also picked up four pounds of butter on sale for $2.99 each and vacuum sealed those as well.  They were added to the freezer in the garage.

 

The BFF picked me up a bag of chocolate chips at Costco.  I cannot believe the price of baking chips this year.  I normally buy them on sale this time of year and I’m good to go, but this year they aren’t on sale as in years past.  This bag was the better deal and will last me for at least a year if not longer.  I am very much ready for some holiday baking and possibly making a pan of fudge.

 

It was very much a food focused week around here.  Not only with the new freezer purchase and some home food preservation, but also with the SNAP event and food donations and food drives currently going on around here.  It is kind of a crazy time right now.  My hope and prayer is that people will be able to have what they need as well as enough for Thanksgiving coming up soon.  I am so grateful to be able to share with others.

 

Making My Dreams Into Reality? What A Concept!

 

Long before I bought my motor home I had contemplated purchasing a van and turning it into a campervan.  I follow a handful of vanlifers on Youtube and I really enjoy their content as they travel about and go on their adventures.  I have watched them build out their vans, rebuild their builds as their needs changed, repair their vans and go through the various ups and downs as they navigate this lifestyle and it has always intrigued me.  I really wanted to do it too.

 

As time went on I eventually changed those ideas and bought the motor home with the idea that we’d use it for camping while I still had kiddos at home and then I’d use it to live in the first few years I was retired and do some traveling.  At one point I was even ready to sell the house and load the motor home, but I was still battling some health challenges at the time.  For those that are new to this blog I had a series of mild heart attacks, a stay in the hospital, a trip to Minnesota and two weeks at the Mayo Clinic and then a battle to find a good cardiologist who would work with me to get my medication straightened out, all of which caused me to retire a year earlier than I had originally planned.  My, how our plans can change.  In a blink!

 

Now however, I am onto a future plan with no particular timeline and plenty of time to make my final plans and decisions.  As my BFF and I have been hashing things out and coming up with ideas one of the topics that popped up about two months or so ago was my very early ideas about building my own campervan and traveling in it.  As we were talking he said my face lit up, I was animated and passionate about the discussion and had a jillion ideas of what I would do, how I would do it and where I would go.  It was so fun to talk about it.  My BFF then told me that he thinks I should do it because if I don’t I may someday look back and really regret that I never did.  I think he is right.  Truth be told, I know he is.

 

I’ve been allowing myself to start thinking about this idea, this dream of mine.  I’m going to sell my motor home, my beloved Laverne, because regardless of what I end up doing she doesn’t fit into my plans anymore.  So if any of you want or know someone who might want a sweet little motor home that sleeps up to six people (four would be more comfortable) and has a lot of new stuff including tires (even the spare) and a nice heavy duty cargo rack (brand new, still in the box), at a really fair price, then email me.  She would make a really sweet weekend adventure mobile or a tiny home on wheels.

 

My new camp stove works very well

In the past few months I’ve been looking online at vans.  I’ve been making plans again.  I’m making lists.  I’m drawing pictures.  I’m looking at maps and travel guides.  I’m looking at the stuff I already have and re-evaluating it.  Could this work?  Could that work?  I’m coming up with a plan.  I’m getting excited.  And, oddly enough, what has given me the confidence to jump back into this idea, this long abandoned dream of mine, was the Subaru.

 

So does the new coffeemaker! 😍

Working on the Subaru really reinvigorated my inner “gear head” as one of my friends likes to say.  It gave me that boost of confidence that I didn’t know I needed to tell me I can still do stuff.  Stuff I really love to do.  It brought me back to a place where I used to be before all of the medical crap hit me in 2021.  It restored my faith in me as a physically strong and mentally capable human being and in my abilities.  The Subaru project gave me back…  my sense of self.

 

Will I do it?  Will I buy a van, build it out and hit the road to travel and see all of the places I’ve ever wanted to?  I don’t want to look back with regrets.  I don’t want my dreams to just be dreams.  It is definitely an idea that is in the running, that’s for sure.  I guess we will just have to wait and see... but, I wouldn’t be too surprised if I end up doing this.

 

Lessons Learned From My Maternal Grandmothers

 

I was very blessed to know both of my maternal great grandmothers, one of them even came to live with us for a while.  I remember going to her sweet little apartment that she shared with her sister at the time and how she would insist on fixing me a snack as soon as I arrived – saltine crackers and a can of Vienna sausages laid out on a little plate.  I also fondly remember how she would take my hand in hers and tell me “your hands are so warm, they’re warm as toast”.  She was a very special lady.

 

My maternal great grandmother

In her simple tiny kitchen always wearing an apron (1967)

My other maternal great grandmother was also very special to me and we were pen pals from the time I could write a letter until she died just after my freshman year of college.  We would visit her about once a year at her little one bedroom home she and my great grandfather purchased as their retirement home.  Although their home was tiny, perfect for the two of them, it was situated on a good sized lot where they had a larger vegetable garden, a few fruit trees and berry bushes and a chicken coop.  It had a nice patch of lawn with a clothesline and where they would set their lawn chairs up in the shade to sit and rest after their chores were done.  It was the sweetest little home.

My other maternal great grandmother

My great grandparents in their backyard (1971)

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree with me as far as my great grandmother and her daughter, my maternal grandmother.  She and I were also pen pals and we swapped letters from the time I was in high school until she died when I was in my mid thirties.  Often our letters would include recipes, either handwritten on an index card or clipped from a newspaper or magazine, as well as a rundown of our latest happenings.  She and I both shared a love of cooking, baking and all things kitchen related, the same as her mother, my great grandmother.

 

My maternal grandmother

Both of these women were very practical when it came to home management and life management as well.  I remember when we cleared out the house after my great grandmother passed away in preparation of putting it up for sale that it was, well to simply put it, easy.  We were there for a few days and it was pretty much done.  She didn’t keep a lot of stuff in her home, only what she used and needed to have for her every day living.

 

She kept a pantry in her utility room where she stocked extra groceries and cleaning supplies so she wouldn’t need to go out in inclement weather in the winter time.  She only had a washing machine and my great grandfather had installed two lines across the length of the room so she could hang the washing up in there to dry during the winter.

 

She always wore an apron when she cooked and cleaned the house or worked outside in the yard to protect her clothes.  She always cooked from scratch, healthy whole food meals and desserts, there was nothing processed or pre-prepared in her cupboards or refrigerator.  She shopped with a carefully crafted list and walked to the corner market and the drug store in that same strip once a week to pick up what she needed.  In her kitchen she only kept enough dishes, pots and pans and bake ware to meet her needs and an occasional guest or two.  The majority of that kitchen came home with me and I still use a lot of those things today.

 

My grandmother didn't keep a lot of "fancy" items so
I remember how special it felt when she gave this to me

When my grandparents got ready to retire they downsized into a travel trailer.  In the year preceding that they loaded up their car with certain items they wanted to pass down to their children and grandchildren and made visits to our homes to hand it all out.  We were told this was our inheritance so don’t expect to receive anything else.  The items they gave us were very practical.  My inheritance was their microwave oven, a framed print and a cut crystal bowl.  At that time I ended up giving away the microwave to a friend because I didn’t need it.  I just recently donated the print to the thrift store, but I still have the bowl and I do plan to keep it.

 

So very true

For quite a while my grandparents traveled and every summer they came to stay a couple of weeks here in Boise to visit family and then head off again.  We would sit and visit and my grandmother would give me her heartfelt advice.  She especially liked to share her thoughts on home economy, spending money and more importantly saving it and making it grow too.  A lot of those principles I have used and still do.

 

I think I know where I get it from

That practicality allowed all of them to live a good life with comfort and security in their retirement years.  They lived very simply and enjoyed every day they had left to live to the best of their abilities.  I admired them all greatly and how I wish I could have just one more visit, one more conversation with them.  With my great grandparents I learned by watching, with my grandparents I learned by listening.  They were remarkable people and I miss them very much.  If I am sentimental about anything it is the people in my life, not the stuff they left behind.

 

My great grandmother's pot is so very useful

When my maternal great grandparents and grandparents passed away none of them left behind any large estates.  There were no giant sums of money to inherit and nothing for anyone to fight over either, not that it didn’t stop some from trying.  I think there was an assumption that if they were living so well they must have a bunch of cash somewhere.  The truth is they had plenty to live comfortably and take care of their final expenses once they died and that was it.  That was enough.

 

Last year's bumper crop

They had it all pretty much written down and organized too.  They were all planners and they took care of their own business.  When they passed they didn’t leave us with a huge burden to deal with, just a little bit of clean up.  Because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree my goal is to do things the same way they did.  I want to clear away and give away the things that I will no longer need, want or use, much like they did.  When I do kick the bucket I want it to be as easy on those I leave behind as I possibly can.  It is the best legacy I can hand down to my heirs, in my opinion.

 

Only 20 Basic Grocery Items (Or Less) To Save You $$

 

By keeping things streamlined and simple I am able to save a lot of time and money.  This couldn’t be truer than when it comes to grocery shopping for healthy and nutritious foods that won’t bust the budget.

 

In the past few years I’ve found I keep buying and using the same old things over and over again.  This has allowed me to easily keep tabs on prices and how they might fluctuate from time to time.  It also makes it very simple to make a list, stick to it and get in and out of the grocery store in short order.  The beauty of this list of items is that I can do a lot of different things with them which gives me a ton of variety when it comes to meal preparation.

 

Because I prefer to eat a mainly low carbohydrate diet the first ten items on my list are the things I purchase most often.  The rest of the items on the list are also great for the average American diet, however these are the things I purchase the least.  They are also items that tend to last longer so I don’t need to purchase them as often.  The most important thing about this list is that all of these items are things we can purchase at the best quality for the amount of money we may have to spend.  Even more importantly there are no ultra processed foods, which is the real key to a healthy lifestyle.

 

Each item on this list allows me to be flexible with regard to what I actually buy allowing me to take advantage of sales, digital coupons, special offers, seasonal savings, markdowns and clearance pricing.  I don’t need to be brand specific either as long as the ingredient lists read clean and clear meaning I can easily identify what is in a particular product.  I don’t want any artificial ingredients, GMO ingredients, unnatural dyes or chemicals in my food.

 

Produce is one of those items I find is the easiest to buy.  With produce I can be as flexible as I need to be as there are so many different varieties of most items you can easily gauge it by price, freshness, quality and availability.  If iceberg lettuce spikes in price maybe I’ll buy kale or cabbage instead.  If the yellow onions are looking less than stellar I just choose a red or white onion, or maybe scallions.  The same can be said in the meat and dairy department as well the frozen fruit and vegetable aisle.  We are blessed with the luxury of choice.

 

Keeping a shorter list of basic groceries does not limit me in any way.  I am easily able to make so many different dishes and sides to go with my meals on any given day.  It makes meal planning and preparation super easy.  It allows me to boost my health, streamlines the way I shop and saves me a lot of time.  Best of all, it saves me a lot of money in the process and helps ensure I stay well within my monthly grocery budget.