Christmas Shopping Tip

FYI: If you are doing any Christmas shopping online this year, check out amazon.com. They have a program called amazon prime where you get free 2 day shipping. It costs $80 a year, but they have a free 30 day trial. Perfect for Christmas shopping. Just don't forget to cancel before the 30 days is up!

Tree Stand

I dream about Christmas decorating . . . not a lie. I love it! I am kind of obsessed. When my husband and I were looking to buy a house, in every (and I mean every) house we walked into I would think to myself, "where would the tree go?". So, don't be surprised that the next few posts will be about decorating for Christmas.

A few years ago I got really bored of hiding my Christmas tree stand with a tree skirt, so I decided to try something new. I found a trash can for $10 at Walmart and headed to (you guessed it) Home Depot for some plumbing supplies. Drilled some holes in the bottom of the can, attached the (I don't know what it's called, so I will call it "thing") thing to the can with bolts and nuts. Then screwed in the pipe. I filled the can with gravel to keep my tree from falling over. I love the clean look. I have done this with a live tree as well. You just leave out the pipe, make sure you have a long trunk, and pack in gravel around the trunk.

Hot Sauce

This year I decided to try planting a garden. I don't know why I thought I could keep anything alive, since my record with anything green is 0 and about 250. Sure enough, most of what I planted didn't survive. Coincidentally, my tomatoes all decided to get flower end rot until I completely gave up and stopped caring for them at all. Then, when I went to rip them out of the ground a few weeks later, I had a huge bagful of good tomatoes on the vine. I guess the secret for me is to stop caring for my plants completely. 

Anyway, I found that the one plant that flourished under my care was a serrano chili plant. Great! I hate spicy food! What am I supposed to do with all those chilis?!?!?!?! I decided (since I am a selfless and loving wife) to make hot sauce for my husband who loves spicy food, but never gets it made for him. Since I had done some pickle canning this summer, I thought that it should be a pretty simple and similar process. So I tried it, and it turned out to be (quoting my husband) "the best thing you have made with that machine yet". (By machine he meant food processor.)

It is not too spicy, a little bit sweet, and has a ton of flavor. 

Who would have thought that such a simple process would turn out such a spectacular sauce.

Here is the process.

wash chilis, then trim the stem and end

chop them in a food processor

then I packed the chilis in jars, added a pinch of salt,
and then filled  them with vinegar that I brought to a boil first

then I processes the jars in a canner for 10 minutes

I am sure that this whole thing could be done with any type of pepper or chili and would turn out great. 

Now, I just have to watch and see what all my husband will think to put this on!

Was there an October this year?

To say the last month has been busy would be the understatement of my life. I feel like I missed the whole month of October. My lofty dreams of posting to this blog at least twice a week quickly flew out the window when I got an unexpected job offer a month ago. Don't get me wrong. I am thrilled to be working again, but going from no job one day to full time the next was quite the adjustment. Especially since my life wasn't exactly sitting around doing nothing with my time. There is a house to run, a ministry to help with, and countless people that need to be fed. What am I doing you ask? One of my favorite things in the world, painting. Yep, painting. I love my new job for many many reasons. I love to paint, pick out paint colors, go to Home Depot almost daily, all the while getting paid. One of the best things about my new job is the fact that for this week, there is no work. It's the best of both worlds. I get to work when there is work and get time off when there isn't work. So here we are a month later and I finally feel like I can breathe again. Whenever my life gets crazy there are always a couple of visual clues which even the most novice of detectives would come to the conclusion that this woman has had a busy few days/weeks/month. The first one is the amount of dirty dishes that accumulate in the sink. Dishes is my least favorite of all household chores, so they are easily the first thing that I procrastinate to get done. It feels fabulous right now to (for the moment) actually be back on top of dish duty. 

The second clue to how busy my life has been is my purse. It seem that when life is out of control, my purse accumulates all sorts of stuff, which when added to the amount of stuff I carry around on a normal day makes for an interesting combination. 

I cleaned out my purse the other day, and this is what I found.

5 pens, a wrench, a multi-tool, a tide-to-go pen, 2 surgery markers, a packet of nail files, glasses cleaner, bandaids, a chapstick, a lip gloss, a lip stick, a pair of earrings, hair clips, an apple, nail polish, nail stickers, a lot of trash (the pile in the upper right corner is all trash), a pile of receipts, 3 hand sanitizer gels, hairspray, 2 packs of hand wipes, lactaid pills, lotion, an attachment for my paint sprayer, a blinking light, gum, tic tacs, my check book, wallets, money, a menu for a mexican restaurant, a survey about being on jury duty, and a pad of paper . . . no wonder my purse was so heavy!

So, all that to say, I am back in the land of the living and functioning and posting blogs. I hope to keep posting regularly . . . until the next job calls.