Money Saving Monday: My Crockpot!

Last week I was posting crockpot recipes for a friend to see(and to share with anyone else). 

That leads me right into WHY I use my crockpot.  Most of the time I use it to save my sanity!  Tuesdays & Thursdays are CRAZY busy for me.  I am running kids to Bible study, piano & fitting my errands in between!  So if I can leave the house with supper taken care of then I am one step closer to surviving those days.  Let’s face it.  Life is hard but it can be easier if we use a few tools.  I like being able to just walk in the door at 5 or after and know I am about 10 minutes from having dinner on the table.

BUT my crockpot saves me $ also!  Here is one way

We love beans and we make them often.  It is not unusual for us to have beans 3 or 4 days out of 7.  They are cheap too.  Lately I have been making them from scratch & not buying the cans.  That makes it REALLY cheap.

A can of beans—about 2 cups is around $.60(aldi’s)

A small bag of beans—makes roughly 6-7 cups costs $1.10(walmart)

Hmmm do the math. 

Beans seem hard to do but they aren’t.  Hardest thing is remembering to do it ahead of time so that they are ready when you need them.

Grab a bag of beans, we use a lot of black beans in our Mexican dishes.  Rinse them and pick out any stones or yucky looking beans.  Dump them in the crockpot & cover with water so that the beans are under the water by 2-3 inches.  The beans WILL soak up this water over night so make sure there is plenty covering them.  The next morning add more water & turn on the crockpot to low.   By late afternoon or supper time you will have nice soft beans ready to bag & put in the freezer.  Next time you need beans you can pop them in some hot water or the microwave & you are ready to get cookin’

3 Bean Soup—so easy the kids can make it!

1 can or 2 cups cooked black beans

1 can or 2 cups cooked white beans

2 cans or 4 cups kidney beans(I like Aldi’s canned chili bean because they already have a sauce with the beans)

1 quart diced tomatoes

1 quart water

Optional:  1-2 cups cooked hamburger

Heat & serve with tortilla chips, sour cream, avacado chunks,  shredded cheese

Thankfulness

Somehow this looking for things to be thankful for has created a monster in me.  I am generally thankful.  For my family, friends, house, food, clothes, freedom etc.

So this weird thing keeps happening.  I find my self thankful for things that I don’t always like.  Why is that?

For example

Voting—a privilege but not “fun”—hard work figuring out what my stance on some issues were

Joshua—love him but being thankful for his chatter & quirks can be interesting some days

Busy(tiring)—days

Mending?—I hate to mend things—hence the pile up

Anyway. 

Posting something on Facebook causes me to look for things to be thankful for in the everyday.  Of course I am thankful for the above mentioned “normal” stuff.  On a bad day it can be challenging to find things I am thankful for.  However, I find that it has changed my attitude as I go through my day. 

Being thankful is a choice.  I am growing through that choice.  How about you?

Good friends

You know how sometimes you just know someone will be a friend from the first moments?      The first time I met Sarah(name changed to protect the innocent!) she just felt like someone I’ve know for a long time!  She and her family are just SO much fun to be around.  They are a blessing & encouragement to Steve & I. 

We need that. 

It is not enough to have just have people who you are acquainted with in your life.  You need people to KNOW who you are and what you believe.  Her husband has also been an encouragement to Steve & that just warms my heart.  Guys don’t have an easy time getting to know other guys.  I hope that continues & builds both men up.

They are now going to church with us and it is even sweeter to know that we get to worship together & celebrate weekly as a family the GOOD news of Jesus!

Today I am thankful for new friends who feel like old friends but are really eternity friends.

Mending & maintaining

Our house has been in mid remodel for several years.  We’ve taken an unusable bathroom and made it lovely & peaceful.

  

However remodeling is messy.  We are only now finding things that have been stashed since the beginning.  The school supplies are accessible.  Nothing is under my bed except blankets & summer clothes.

This morning I found the time to mend clothes that have been in my sewing machine for 2 years.  They will be ready for Megan when she needs them.

We were able to clean house and put things AWAY!

What joy.

I never thought I would be thankful for my sewing machine and places to put things in my home.

But I am.

Frantic Fall cleanup!

I cannot believe the last few days we’ve had!  It is November right? Well it was close to 80 Tuesday.  I figure it is going to turn ugly really soon so we took the afternoon on Wednesday to tackle those leaves our sycamores have been dropping.  The kids have been out in the leaves playing several times but I have been avoiding all the work it takes to clear our yard of leaves.  This year it wasn’t as bad because we had our trees trimmed in the spring so there weren’t as many branches this year.

The kids helped by laying in the leaves.  We used the largest tarp we have to put loads of leaves on and then pull them to our branches/leaves pile outside our yard.  I was really missing Michael’s help on this job but everyone jumped in to help.  Steve was home and he even did a couple of loads after he finished his jobs in the garage!  Wow what a workout.

We had some huge weeds and the two littles tackled those—with bungie cords?  I am still not sure how that game worked out but I didn’t card because they pulled them up & took them all to the pile.  Joshua was especially diligent in removing all the marigold plants.  He is a hard worker!  Elizabeth has been mowing the yard all summer and she stepped up to day to do the final mow.  It was pretty easy as she was mostly just mulching the leaves.  There wasn’t a lot of tall grass but it will be so much easier in the spring now that she has done that. 

We cleared the tomato cages/fencing & put all the stakes away in our newly cleaned out garage.  I almost didn’t recognize our neat and tidy front yard when I pulled in to the garage.  It is like all the hard stuff has been done & now we can just hibernate & wait for the cold.  Is that like harvesting, putting all the food in the cellar, and cutting enough wood for the winter?  Probably not but it is still a nice feeling to have that project done before the rains come later this week.