My Tireless Retirement – Week 161

 

Hello everyone!  Happy May!  I hope you are all doing wonderfully.

 

I had a very busy and productive weekend last week.  I did all of that oddball cleaning you do like bleaching the coffee and tea stains from all of the coffee cups, bleaching the white crock on my slow cooker, cleaning the range hood over the stove and degreasing the filter, removing the knobs and thoroughly cleaning the stove top, cleaning the crisper drawers inside the refrigerator, spot cleaning the carpet in the downstairs bedroom, cleaning the utensil tray in the silverware drawer, etc.  I gathered up all the harder to clean items like my hairbrushes, combs, toothbrushes, the dish drainer, scrubbers, sponges and drain plugs and ran them through the dishwasher.  I gathered up all of the Easter décor and put it away in the garage.  I even gave myself a haircut, a pedicure and a manicure.  A little bit of a spa treatment, if you will.

 

Outside I pulled a gob of weeds from the front curb all the way to the backyard.  The hens and the new chicks were very well fed as a result.  I got out the hoses and my tree spray so I could get the fruit trees and all of the shrubs sprayed for insects.  I also got all of the compost material I had added to the raised garden beds turned into last year’s soil.  I got out the patriotic summer décor and hung it up on the front porch.  Things are looking pretty darn good around here.  It always feels good to get those smaller tasks completed because combined they make for a lot of big productive activity.

 

A new summer sheet set

New bath towels

I worked on Monday and Tuesday.  Ran errands on Wednesday morning and then on Thursday I took the day to rest, relax and enjoy a gorgeous day outside.  It was another fairly productive two days.  I pulled out the frozen scrap onions and a chicken carcass from the freezer to make a small batch of chicken broth in my medium sized slow cooker.  I washed up a load of new bath towels and a set of cotton sheets for my bed that I had picked up at Costco on Wednesday.  It was definitely time to replace my bath towels and my summer sheets, which was on my 2025 list this year to do.  Check.  And check.

 

I managed to carve out some time in my kitchen to do a few things.  For the first time in a long time I tried making my own sour cream.  I will let you know how that turns out as I’ve yet to try any of it.  I tried making my own cilantro lime salad dressing (recipe to come) and it turned out amazing.  I think I actually like it better than the one they sell at Trader Joes.  It has a brighter and fresher flavor and the ingredients are top notch.  I even managed to do a tiny bit of meal prepping as I had a few things I wanted to make sure got used up.

 

Two single servings of beef enchiladas

I’m a bit late getting this post up, I know.  With company staying with me for awhile, my regular schedules and routines have become a bit chaotic.  We did manage to have a movie night and worked a jigsaw puzzle which was a lot of fun.  I got outside in the lovely weather to pull more weeds for my chickens and spend some time out in the sunshine as I puttered about the yard.  I am anxious to get the truck and car washed and waxed, but the weather is set to change so I want to wait a little bit before I do all that.

 

Cilantro lime dressing on my salad

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying some beautiful weather where you are.  Let me know what is keeping you busy.