Dinner Plans 11/11 ~ 11/17

Monday ~ Baked Pork Chops, Rice, Carrots


Tuesday ~ Corn Chowder, biscuits


Wednesday ~ Baked Ziti, Garlic Bread


Thursday ~ Cottage Pie


Friday ~ Homemade Pizza


Saturday ~ Chicken Pot Pie, Mashed Potatoes


Sunday ~ Italian Sausage Soup, Bread & Butter



Shared with Meal Plan Monday

Happy Birthday To Me

Tomorrow is my birthday and the hubby and son are taking me out to dinner, my choice. A nice break from cooking right before the rush of holiday cooking is soooo nice. I am hoping I can sleep in, but if my body has anything to say about it, I will still be up at 6am.

I promised the hubby I will make French Toast for breakfast (so much for my day off from cooking I guess. LOL). Then I will be curling up in front of the tv watching Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel all day long.

A Confident Heart Chapter 6

When God whispers "I'm not good enough"


Wow, what an eye opening chapter. It reminded me of a lot of my past failed relationships. While I had not forgotten about the way I was treated and felt in these relationships, I had them pushed and hidden away because they hurt so much. I truly think that God wanted to work on those past hurts through this chapter.

One boyfriend made me feel like I was never thin enough. He would tell me that I needed to wrap my waist up in plastic wrap to help suck in my belly and burn the "fat" faster. At this time in my life I weighted 125 lbs. That is 20 lbs under weight. I was in a size 6. Of course now I am 30 lbs over weight, but I am happy and the hubby doesn't care about my weight. He knows he has to loose weight too.

Another boyfriend cheated on me for one year of our two year relationship. This hurt a ton. He made me feel like I was not good enough to be with or love. I kept wondering what I did to cause him to cheat. This relationship took a long time to get over. I know now that the problem was not with me but with him.

The relationship that has the most hurt and emotion to it is one that will never leave me. No, it is not with my husband. It is with my daughters father. We will always have a connection to each other through her. He also cheated on me. Again this opened up wounds and wonder of what I did wrong to deserve to be treated like that. He always made me feel worthless, not worthy of being a good mother or proper wife.

I remember this one time how he criticized me and the way I made tuna sandwiches. All I did was make them the way I have always made them growing up. But because the sandwich was not made "his way", it was gross and my fault for him not having something to eat for lunch that day. He even mentioned something along the lines of how do I expect to be a good and proper wife if I couldn't even make a good tuna sandwich. I know that this sounds like a little petty thing, but it was the start of a long emotional abuse. Every now and then when I talk to him, he still does it, but I just let it roll off my shoulders. I don't care because I am with someone who loves me and the way I am.

The thing that finally opened up my eyes to the way he was treating me is when I had a miscarriage. He didn't care at all. He was rather happy that this child would not be. It hurt to loose my baby before I even got to know him or her, but what hurt more is the way he treated me. I kept a journal at this time and wrote down every emotion I felt at that time. I found it a few years ago when we were moving up here to NH. I read it and then threw it away. I do believe that God took my child home to him because I was in a bad way and couldn't deal with another child at the time. I know I will see this child one day. I left him shortly after this and never looked back.

To this day, I am always wondering if I am being a good and proper wife. In fact just the other night, while I was buttering up some bread to go with the homemade chicken noodle soup I made, I told my husband that I am trying to be a good wife for him. He told me that I am doing a wonderful job. Of course this made me happy, but deep down inside, I still wonder if I am good enough.

For example, when my RA and Fibro flare up, I have a hard time doing anything. I will skip my shower because it wears me out so much that I need to take a nap after. I will skip doing the dishes because I can hardly hold a dish. Sometimes I will have the hubby bring supper home. Because of my auto immune diseases, I feel lazy and am ashamed that I did nothing around the house while my hubby worked so hard for our family. I feel like a failure as a wife.

Thankfully my husband is living up to the "through sickness and health" part of our vows. He knows I have my bad days, so he does what he can to support me. All he said he wants from me is a hot meal when he gets home from work. He doesn't care that I didn't pick up the living room or did the dishes. He wants me to rest and allow the flare to die down.


This weeks blog topic that I chose was to talk about what area of my life I struggle with the most and write myself a letter to remind myself that I am good enough. As you can tell from this post, that struggle is with being a good and proper wife. Writing this letter was very hard and took sometime to do.


My Dearest Heather,

I am here to remind you that God is always here for you. He wants you to use your past issues to help you to heal and learn from. You are worthy of being a proper wife and mother, and a person in general. You left these relationships for good reasons. God helped you to leave and supported you through them. He gave you your life partner to love you and respect you the way you deserve. He found your soul mate that will be with you through thick and thin. Continue to listen to him and you will have the life you deserve and know that no matter what, you are perfect just the way you are.


This week I had a little friend cuddling with me while I read. Abby is getting so big and sure does have a personality. She is my baby and keeps me on my toes with all the things she does. She is always helping me heal and when my joints are hurting, she tries her best to "heal" me. I woke up the other day with her on my left shoulder, purring away. That shoulder had been flaring for a few days. Either she knew it was hurting or she wanted a warm place to warm up. That shoulder sure was hot to the touch.

Monthly Plans for November

Food

• Pumpkin Pies
• Pumpkin Bread
• Pumpkin Cookies
• Apple Pies
• Apple Crisp
• Turkey
• Cranberries
• Homemade Cranberry Sauce
• Fresh Venison

Garden

• Plant Blueberry bushes and mulch around them
• Garden is done for the season
• Clean up fall corn stalk decorations and put in compost
• Clean up window boxes to prepare for winter
• Mow lawn one last time and mulch up the leaves for the garden

Nature

• Birds have migrated
• Winter birds have arrived
• Cool Days
• Frosty nights
• First snow
• First freeze of the season
• Animals prepare for winter hibernation
• Hunting season going strong

Fun Holidays

• Child Safety Protection Month
• National Adoption Awareness Month
• Native American Heritage Month
• Peanut Butter Lovers Month (to bad I'm allergic)
• Book Lovers Day (first Saturday of the month)
• Housewives Day (3)
• Bittersweet Chocolate With Almonds Day (7)
• Cook Something Bold Day (8)
• My (Heather) birthday (10)
• Veterans Day (11)
• Sadie Hawkins Day (13)
• World Kindness Day (13)
• Clean Your Refrigerator Day (15)
• Take a Hike Day (17)
• World Peace Day (17)
• Universal Children's Day (20)
• Eat a Cranberry Day (23)
• Thanksgiving (28)
• Black Friday (29)
• Stay At Home Because You Are Well Day

Family Fun

• Get together with family for Thanksgiving
• Put antlers and red nose on my car
• Start making homemade gifts for the family
• Rake all the leaves into a big pile and jump in it
• Make Homemade Cranberry Sauce
• Watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
• Make cards for Soldiers 

Dinner Plans 11/4 ~ 11/10

I just realized that I never put up my menu for last week. Oops.Well here is this weeks menu.


Monday ~ Chicken Noodle Soup


Tuesday ~ Tuna Noodle Casserole


Wednesday ~ Baked Tortellini Casserole


Thursday ~ Meatball Subs


Friday ~ Homemade Pizza


Saturday ~ Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans


Sunday ~ My Birthday! Going out to eat!



Linked up to Meal Plan Monday.

Weekly Goals

I can't believe that November is here all ready. Where on earth did October go? I swear the days go by faster now that I am no longer working. I did get most of my goals done last week, along with a few that were on the honey do list for the hubby.

I sewed one side of the binding on the blanket and they pinned the other to hand sew shut. This will take me a couple of days or so to do.

All spring bulbs are planted. I even managed to divide them up to be planted into three different areas of the garden. I also got my blueberry bushes last week, so those were planted too.

The venison came to us all wrapped up in nice small meal sized packets. Only issue I had was that I needed to unwrap them to put them in the foodsaver bags to suck the air out of them. The meat was wrapped up in plastic wrap and it was a pain to get off. I made my first meal with the venison last night. It was yummy and the boys gobbled it up big time.

Most of the garden things are in storage. We are looking to get a little shed cabinet thing to put all the shovels, rakes, etc in to keep them here at home. We also need to go through the millions of tomato cages and toss the broken ones.

Ya, so I never managed to work on my bookshelves. One of these days this month I will though.

Now on to this weeks goals:

1. Go through the rest of the homeschool books to see what I have for 8th grade and up. The hubby and I were talking about taking Matt out of school and homeschool him again. I am not liking the changes that the schools are doing up here. Google Core Curriculum to see what I am talking about. Basically it is going to dumb down all the kids and teach all the kids the same way instead of implementing things and alternative work and tests to the kids who need them. Matt has an IEP and has been in need of help with his reading and comprehension of what he reads. The Core Curriculum will eliminate the special education help. I see so many kids falling behind, failing and never making it in the "real world".  Plus hubby said it will be easier to have Matt home because then we can plan our vacations for anytime and not just during the school vacations and I don't have to plan my days around when I have to pick him up from the Homework Club after school.

2. Make up a list of the homemade Christmas gifts to make and make up a shopping list for the things I may need to buy for them. I try to give my kids mostly homemade gifts for Christmas. It is hard now that Matt is older and only really wants video games. He still loves building forts, so my mom is making him a fort building kit for him. Chantelle got mostly bought things this year, but I got them for discounts so that is always good. For the things that I do buy, I pay with cash. We have no credit cards and when we did have them, they only got used to pay for bills. Gifts are always bought with cash so that we never have holiday debt.

3. Now that Halloween is over, I go into holiday mode. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas. I need to plan my meals for Thanksgiving. I am just having dad down this year, but we are all meeting at my sisters for desert, so I need to figure out something to bring. I always make more food than we need to eat. Leftovers are good. Turkeys are starting to go on sale now, and with the additional chest freezer, I am able to grab a few more turkeys and put them in the freezer to eat year long. I will do the same with hams around Easter time.

4. Work on the Advent calendar. Every year we do a little countdown to Christmas. Something different every year. This year I am also adding daily devotions and Bible readings for the whole family. I have a nice list of the Bible readings and bought a Kindle version of a daily devotion. it is for kids, but seeing how Matt had pretty much no religion growing up, it will be good for him.

5. Organize my magazines. I have a ton of subscriptions to magazines. Most I did not pay for, thanks to the Coke Rewards thing that I do. The hubby drinks way to much soda, but I use the codes on the Coca cola products to get points. I save these points to get items or magazine subscriptions. I got Matt a nice 5 in 1 wireless headset for Christmas. A few years ago I got season one of Glee on dvd. The magazines I do pay for are mostly homesteading types. These I want to keep, so I need to toss those that don't apply after I read them and organize the ones I will be keeping in nice binders.


What do you have for weekly goals this week?

New Additions To The Garden

Now that fall is here, the garden has been pretty much put to bed. I did plant two new things for the garden, but they won't start to produce until spring time.

The first new item is three blueberry bushes that we purchased back during the summer and they got delivered a week ago. We put them in the ground thee day after they arrived, but didn't get pictures until today.

They don't look like much right now, but with hope, they will give us blueberries starting next summer. I picked out three different varieties that need each other to produce a better harvest. One blooms in June, another in July, and the last in August. This way we will have some berries all summer long. These are second year bushes, so we don't have to wait a year or so for any blueberries.

I bought them at Stark Bro. The varieties that I picked out are: Earliblue, Bluecrop, and Jersey Blueberry. I can't wait to taste them. I am hoping that some blueberries grow next year, but if not then the year after will produce for sure. Because I ordered them very early, I got a 15% discount. I love discounts andso does my bank account.

I also added garlic to the garden. This is another new thing for me to try out. I planted 5 or 6 rows that are about 5 feet long. If these grow good, I will have more garlic that I will know what to do with. Good thing my sister and her family love garlic. I plan on sharing them with her.

They had started to grow. I planted them a month ago when we started to get 30's at night. Now of course it has been in the 60's during the day and low 40's at night this past week. I put more straw over them to protect them from our cold snowy winters. I may need to put more on, but for now, I have enough to cover all the garlic, so you can't tell it has started to grow.

The blueberries also have a nice layer or straw around them to protect them this winter.

I cleaned up most of the garden. I just have to dig out the stalks from the sunflowers. Matt mowed the lawn one last time the other day and mulched and bagged up the leaves. He then added them to the garden and I mixed them in with the new compost.

Speaking of new compost, we have expanded the garden. This past summer, the garden looked like this:

There was spaces in between all the beds that were wide enough for the lawn mower to get through. Once we put the fencing up, Matt stopped mowing inside. Last month we had 5 yards of compost delivered and dumped into what was the corn bed. We need more compost, but will get it in the spring. From there, Matt and a friend of his worked for a few days moving the dirt all over and filling in all the empty spaces. Now the garden looks like this:

Now it is one big bed. I can plant more next year. I don't mind walking in the dirt, I love dirt. I hate wearing gloves or shoes in the garden. I want to feel the dirt. Of course walking around with no shoes on with bees around is not a good thing. I learned the hard way and now have to carry an epi pen around with me. I still love bees, my body just doesn't. 

The bed that had our tomatoes in it this year and last year, we got rid of. We need to get a new oil tank and lay it on its side. Seeing how that bed is right in front of our tank, it had to go. No worries, I planned to move the tomatoes somewhere else next year. I just need to relocate my garlic chives.

Seeing my garden like this, makes me excited about the spring and starting my garden all over again. I just love to see what God can do with some seeds, water, and sun.