31 days of You Might Be a Homemaker IF.....

I am joining the Nester once again in October for 31 days of Blogging.  I decided my topic will be

Hopefully, I can shed some light on topics that are hot in the homemaking community. I will be using my 15 years of experience in homemaking to see the funny and humorous in these topics. So welcome aboard my crazy train.

My definition of a homemaker is overly broad.

 A homemaker is one who keeps the home and it's inhabitants. 

I don't care if you are single, married, man, woman, gay, straight, childless, fur baby, mega family etc.. If you have ever cleaned a toilet in your abode your in.

Treat this post as a permanent linky to all the posts in my series

You might be a homemaker IF.....

 Day 1: You think the removable toilet seat is the best thing since sliced bread

Day 2: You have a Command Center

Day 3: You have a Dish Loading Philosophy or Dish Washing System

Day 4:You are a CLEAN FREAK or if you know who the Fly Lady is and you want to hunt her down

Day 5: Sometimes you JUST WANT TO HAVE AN ADULT CONVERSATION

Day 6: You get positively giddy over the Sunday paper BECAUSE of the coupons

Day 7: You might be Crafty not Handy

Day 8: You BULK UP!

Day 9: You routinely have Squirrel Moments

Day 10: You have ever lusted after an Appliance 

Day 11: You have a deep rooted obsession/addiction to pinterest

Day 12: You know where the best (fill in the blank)

Day 13: You ever wished Martha or Rachel would show up

Day 14: You hate the dreaded "What is for Dinner?" conversation

Day 15: You are Memory Maker or Memory Keeper

Day 16: You are familiar with all the homemaking Buzz words and phrases

Day 17: You are Everyone's Emergency Contact

Day 18: You got SPIRIT

Day 19: sometimes you feel a little like MacGyver or you believe Google is a homemakers best friend

Day 20:  You get by with a little help from your friends

Day 21: You have a Side Gig

Day 22: You might have referred to your appliances as your servants

Day 23:  You are adept at dealing with various bio hazards

Day 24: You have ever engaged in the make it or buy I debate over pancake mix

Day 25: You have referred to yourself as a Modern Day June Cleaver of said my super power is I make People

Day 26: Your Heroes are Bloggers

Day 27: Laundry is a Dirty Word

Day 28: You Know what to do with all those Pumpkin Seeds

Day 29: You have determined your worth. And that works out to about $96,000 for all your services

Day 30: You believe Home Ec skills need to be taught so everyone can conquer the world

Day 31: You have ever been ashamed to say aloud that you are a homemaker

September Booking It

I am linking up with Life as Mom and the 2013 Booking It.

I read 52 Loaves - A Half -Baked Adventure by William Alexander.  William Alexander was also the author of The $64 Tomato.  I thought it was a wonderful book.  William baked a loaf of bread - peasant loaf once a week for the entire year.  He was after the perfect loaf but along the way discovered a lot about bread and himself.  I learned that flour has additives in order to prevent pellagra.  His quest also lead him to France to teach some monks to bake bread.  The book made me want to renew my interest in baking bread beyond my breadmaker.  It also reminded me of my favorite loaf of sourdough from a local bakery.

I fell victim to the Hot Picks shelf at the library once again.  I picked up Shelter by Frances Greenslade. It reminded me somewhat of  This Life is in Your Hands by Melissa Coleman.  It was about two sisters basically abandoned by their mother.  Some sensitive subjects are covered. It was set in Canada.  It was ok for me.

Lastly, I read the bonnet novel Leaving Lancaster by Kate Lloyd. I don't recommend it.  It was just a little too contrived.  I think there are better bonnet novels.

Project Life Tuesday - Week 33

I am linking up with The Mom Creative Project Life Tuesday.

I am back tracking a little. This is my week 33 layout.  We had a slower week as our company left. It got really quiet, quick.  We did spend some time hanging out with our friends at Hovander Park, Tenant Lake, and Point Whitehorn.  At Point Whitehorn, we found these cool rocks with inspirational sayings on them.  I love the quote cards found in the Project Life: Cobalt Edition.

We had an incredibly busy Saturday as we made it to the "Center of the Universe" for the Geocaching Blockparty.  We had never done that and that was incredible.  After that we decided to make it an Epic geocaching day.  Our goal was to try to find almost every type of geocache - earth cache, micro, regular, puzzle,virtual etc.  So on our way home we tried to accomplish that.

Supplies
Project Life: Cobalt Edition - journal and title cards
Photo Protector Design G
Epic Journal Card - made in Photoshop Elements

Summer Wrap UP!

Cody at Fort Casey

We had an incredible summer.  I thought I would do a little wrap up of our summer. The first day of fall seemed like the perfect time to wrap up.

Charlie snorkeling in the Hot Tub

Charlie and I watched all the Harry Potter Movies after he finished reading the entire series.

We visited a total of 41 State Parks!  Wahoo!  We are SO close to getting 50 State Parks as part of the Centennial Washington State Park Geocache Tour. Hopefully this fall we will make it to 50!

We hosted some guests.  We had my Aunt and Uncle, my parents, and my nephew.  We got to celebrate a 70th Birthday and 15th Birthday.

We hid our first geocache this summer.  It is located in Peace Arch State Park. We decided to make some predictions about our first geocache. Here are the results.

Who would find our cache first?
Charlie - GeoBees
Cody - Lola and the Gnome ***
Heather - PNW Brat
Kevin - Lola and the Gnome ***

How many cachers will find the 1st day?
We had one find on the first day so Charlie was the closest to the number

Co - 6
Ch -5 *
H - 10
K- 8

Number of hours/minutes before the first find?
Our cache was found later in the day so I believe Kevin got this one
Co - 1 hr
Ch  - 30 minutes
H- 45 minutes
K- 2 hrs

The number of times found before the start of the school year (September) Our cache was found 223 times by September 3.

Co- 20
Ch- 300*
H- 100
K- 700

Nearly Harvest Moon

Took a little walk last night to look at the moon.  I am not great at night photography so most of the photos are by the Giant Man Child.



My photo

Photo by Kevin

Photo by Kevin with Mt Baker in the background

Project Life Tuesday- Week 36

I have gotten behind on my Project Life Tuesday.  I actually got stuck on week 32 and I decided that is ridiculous.  Project Life is meant to be easy so I am embracing that concept. I am picking up at week 36 and I will go back and complete the other weeks later.  Week 36 was back to school.  I have a 5th grader and 10th grader.  The owl photo was by my husband.  He saw it at work when it swooped into grab a mouse. I am keeping it simple and letting the photos speak for themselves.

I am linking up with The Mom Creative Project Life Tuesday.

Supplies
Project Life Cobalt Edition - journal and title cards
Photo Protector Design G

Flooding in Colorado

The video is from the 13th. I have been glued to the news and Facebook as the updates about the flooding in Colorado.  My hometown of Loveland has had some flooding.  My family is fine and safe.  

I am very familiar with the areas being shown on the news. I was there in 76' when the Big Thompson Flood occurred.  I was a young child so my memories are distant. My cousin was visiting at the time of the flood in 76'.  We were suppose to go to a picnic in the canyon at Vienez-Smith Park which is located in the canyon but we didn't go.  I remembered we had to boil our water and we couldn't flush our toilet.  My Dad helped with the clean-up in the canyon.

Spider Webs

It feels like fall is upon us.  We are pretty much fogged in this morning.  I love mornings like this where it feels like the world gets quiet.  There are some pretty spectacular spider webs in our yard. Of course these pictures don't do them justice.

Update on Tigger, the Wonder Dog

Chalk picture of Tigger by Charlie

Unfortunately, poor Tigger had to have part of his tail amputated on Wednesday.  The open wound became infected and wasn't healing.  So now he has half the wag he once had. 

 

Close up of the tail

It has been a pretty rough week. The good news it appears that the tail is now healing up.  So hopefully in 10 more days, he will be completely healed and the staples taken out.

The Worst Patient EVER!

Our dog got his tail slammed in our door by a friend.  It was an accident but his tail was hurt badly. He has a large open wound on his tail as there wasn't enough skin to close the wound. He has been wearing the cone of shame and has a well wrapped tail.

Photo by Charlie

He is the worst patient ever as he constantly whines and tries to get his tail. He can't reach it very well with the cone. It has been a long recovery as our dog is use to being kenneled when we are not home and at night.  Consequently, we haven't been sleeping well as the dog cries, A LOT, in the middle of the night in our bedroom. There is nothing like having a plastic cone rammed into your backside in the middle of the night.

 I was told that a tail injury is extremely painful.  I believe it ! Hopefully it heals soon. Tigger is not a good patient.

The Great Potato Harvest of 2013

Potato Plant Grown in Garbage Can

Yesterday, I dumped my trash can potato plant and below is what I harvested.  I just beat the rain by minutes.

Potato Harvest

I thought my harvest was pretty decent.  These are all red potatoes.  We roasted them in the oven and had them with sausage.  They were fabulous. The remaining ones I will turn into mashed potatoes and freeze.

Great blog post on storing potatoes for winter at 100 Dollars A Month
My posts on my Potato Garbage Can

1st Day 5th Grade

Today was Charlie's first Day of 5th grade.  I hope he rocks 5th grade.  I know he will. I however will miss hanging out with him.  He is my best helper and always ready for a laugh.  It is going to be real quiet around here.

Back to School for One

My oldest starts 10th grade today.  I feel OLD.  We had an awesome summer and I will truly be sad not to hang out with him all day.

He is getting really tall too.  He is 5'8" last time we measured. He has a 1/2 inch on me.

****edited to add - I was looking through Cody's Student and Handbook and on the back page was this quote. I thought it was worth sharing

" If you don't go after what you want, You'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place. " Nora Roberts

Back to School Linky Edition

School starts for my oldest tomorrow so I thought I would do a Back to School Linky Edition

10 Steps to Successful School Drop Off - This is pretty funny. I feel so lucky my kid lives in shouting distance of the school.  The only drop off I have is sending him out the door. 

Mom's Response to the Autism Letter