Littlesister

When I get more time I am going to work on getting some pictures on here. WE2 your idea did not work for me as these pictures are already on computer. Ann I am looking at your suggesting and going to work on that one a bit later. Getting ready to feed DH as I am going to have to wake him up for dinner and then go work in garage a bit longer.

OK, this is an order: Everyone that is sick is to get well now. Prayers still going your way. Being sick is no fun. DH went with me to grocery store to pick up his RX. He walked around store checking prices and was not happy. I kept telling him they were going up. Helman's mayo. 4.99 for 30 oz. That is crazy. Wonder if I could make mayo. Though when he got home he was worn out. So now he is in his recliner sound asleep. I am just going to let him sleep. Getting out like that tells me just how weak he is now. I got all the clothes washed and started working on garage. I have two very large shelving units with chest freezer sitting in between them under window. I have one with 3 shelves cleaned off and now working on the bottom shelf of cleaning supplies. I am going to move all the cleaning supplies to top shelf. and use bottom shelf for my water supply. I have 8- 5 gal. water containers I want to fill up and put the stuff in so they will last 5 years. Then I also have 6 boxes of the 50 year cans of water. That gives us 144 cans of long term water. I will get anyone the site I order it from that wants it. Got applances in trunk of car to take to good will down the street. That alone has given me a lot of free space. I think this garage is going to be a lot of work and time consuming trying to do it by my self. But it is what it is. When I am done I hope to be able to get to what I need as well as see what I need before going to store. And yes, buying from Sam's club and B.J.'s wholesale club in doubles adds up. But less trips to store that way. I think right now I have 4 or 5 large bottles of dawn dish detergent as well as dishwasher detergent. I like to take advantage of when you buy one item you get the other one free. Saves some money and B.J.s takes manufacturer coupons with their coupons. So if they have a 2.00 off and I have one for 1.00 off they will take 3.00 off. Also if the product has more than one of the items in it they will take 2 or 3 manufacture coupons. So it really keeps my cleaning supplies stocked for cheaper than the grocery stores.

Miki those are good ones also. I love that I can now have a lot less applances on my counters or having to run out to garage to get the one I need off the shelf out there. I am hoping after getting the garage cleaned out that I will have room for my canning supplies on shelfs in garage instead of the shed. Then I won't be having to run outside in cold or raining weather when I need something.

Wish I could figure out how to put pictures of my make shift pantries on here. Don't know how to transfer them. Though they are from I think 2013 or 14. But would give you an idea of my situation on space.

Jeepers, you will love it if you do get one. The one I got replaces several of my 14 applances. Most of those were given to me by way of Christmas presents or what have you but I don't have that kind of counter space. So most have been sitting in garage on shelf. So far the only ones I am keeping out of those are my blender, mixer, bread maker, and though this air fryer also works as a slow cooker, I am keeping my slow cooker. I also have another one that is a slow cooker, oven and I can bake in it as well. I am thinking about keeping that one or not for back up.

I wasn't going to say that earlier, but yes it does look like he is laying down on the job. That would be something my DH would have done. We took out our old kitchen floor 20 years ago. It was no picinic. Hard work. Ann, so sorry to hear about loosing your hen. Just wish I could figure out how we could raise chickens without all the wild animals we are now having issues with due to their homes being ripped out for cement. I haven't seen any here yet but some neighborhoods are seeing bobcats in their yards as the woods are getting cut down around them. Also bears. We have always had the deer even coming into our neighborhood, but bears and bobcats that's another story. We did have a bear crossing down the road from us. Think goodness it just went across to the other side. All that remodeling going on. I know you all will be happy when it is all finished. Then you get to relax and enjoy it.

Love pickled eggs. Haven't made any in a while. Now I will have to try that receipe. It sounds good. I have never canned any, as I never really thought about it. So I am goingt o try that.

Mt. Rider going up for you and your DH to get well fast. No fun in being sick. WE2 You are a good cook from those photos. Making me hungry and it's to early for dinner. We had a pot roast with onions, potatoes, carrots and some greenbeans. We don't usually do bread with our meals. That is only once in awhile due to diabitics. The potatoes made up for the starch. This morning I went through and gathered all the tax papers together. Yes it's about that time again. Then got all the canning things together and got that all put away. Took down all the appliances that I am going to get rid of. Thought the one granddaughter would want them but she has a small airfryer like mine and a toaster. She wasn't interested in the rotisrery. The Large airfryer I bought takes the place of all of those and is larger than the airfryer I was given a few years ago. It never did chicken very well. Got DH outside today to walk a little bit as it is about 74* out today. He got out of breath and had to hold on to me and stop to rest every few minutes but made it all the way around the house back to garage. He is very swollen today. And I think he got into the crackers left over from Christmas, so I am going to pass them to the kids. Need to get them out of house. So though he is not suppose to take fluid pills today, I gave him one to get that extra fluid off. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. Taking a much needed break right now and drinking a nice tall glass of ice water and thinking about what to fix for dinner as I want something with no salt at all for DH. Might be some homemade soup today but it's really to warm today for soup. Maybe just a nice big salad. That sounds good and quick to put together. Homesteader and WE2 seems you both have your work cut out for you getting your homes redone. Did that about 20 years ago but have some other things that need to be repaired. After replacing driveway and front porch, it will have to wait a bit. Need to build back up my emergency money again. We always try to pay cash for what we do as we really don't want the bills. So far so good.

Guest Ana Pirs, My grandkids would not touch that type of pasta. They like the normal speggetti sauce. But it does look good.

Had enough cash back from my discover card to buy the Emeril Lagesse XL power air fryer 360. This one does everything. I can even deydrate food in it. Though I haven't tried that yet. Just got it the other day, so haven't used it for much yet. Though I did some toast in it and it was better than the toaster. I can even cook a 14 lb turkey in it. It has a rotistery as well. So going to try a rotisery chicken in it soon. This will replace about 3 or 4 applances from my counter and give me more counter room. That is including the toaster. I can toast up to 6 slices of bread in this. Can't wait to try grilled cheese sandwiches in it. Going to try airfrying some chicken wings and maybe some fries as well. Love that I don't need any oil or any fats for fried foods. The best part is that by using my cash back bonus from my card, it was like getting it for free. I have done this also with another card that I got points from. Bought a newave burner with them. That works really great when I need an extra stove top burner. Though it is electric and not gas. But works great.

That sounds good to me as well. Just wish they would have something like that around here close by so I could go to one.

Been trying to get things back in place from Christmas. Nic Nacks back on fireplace and a couple of chairs I had to move for the tree to go up. Then got the table cloth back on dinning room table. Dusting and vacumn and mopping floors. Now I am tired. DH felt much better today though his feet are swollen, so he is sitting down with feet propped up. He even cooked dinner tonight. Corn beef and cabbage. He hasn't done any cooking for about 5 months now. So that was a good sign. He usually fixes dinner when I am really busy. It does help me out a bit. His only complant was that it was bland. Sorry, but no salt shaker. Don't want that fluid building around heart and lungs again.

Yep, that was pretty much how we had 28 trees removed from our yard.

WE2 prayers going your way for brother and friend with cancer. kappy, praying for your surgery and rehab to go very well.. I have had a very busy day today. Don't think I have sat down for more than 10 minutes all day. So now trying to wind down a bit. Put up the deydrated veggies in the mylar bags Then started canning the chicken. Got 16 pints canned. Then had to clean kitchen and get everything put away. DH had another bloody nose during night last night, so had to wash sheets and get that all cleaned up. Blood thinners are a pain, a mess and a lot of work when these things happen. Jeepers, this coming from web MD. as my DH has restless leg syndrom as well. If you have low iron counts, take iron, also, folic acid, magnesium and Vit. B12. All these will help with the symtoms. There is no cure for it. Web MD had other things you can try as well. Might be worth it to check it out.

WE2, I think you are making everyone hungry. OK, you guys will have to fight my granddaughter over that bacon. She has a bumper sticker on her car that says fueled by bacon. And yes her mother works for Smithfield foods. Yum! Bacon. To chicken to try to can that one. But have heard of people doing it. I have about 20 packs of bacon in freezer now. Doesn't last long with grandkids. Best diet food around. Midnightmom. I think someone wasn't listening in math class at school. They can't put a square peg into a round hole. But nice try. That is so funny. This morning I helped DH cook collards at market and then came home and canned 16 pints of red potatoes. Getting a bit run down now but still got to go in and clean up kitchen for tomorrow. I am canning chicken tomorrow and deydrating frozen veggies. Need to get a good dent in that freezer. It is a huge chest freezer and is full to the brim. Makes it hard to find things when it gets like that. Then I am going to have to figure out where to put it all. So I am thinking it will be sitting on dinning room table for a while as the sweet potatoes I canned after Thanksgiving is still sitting on floor in my office/sewing room. So got to get them moved out of here. Going to redo the closets as they need a bit of organizing again, so hoping to have more room when I am done. Want to get this all finished before early spring.

Out of the ordinar: Our Big Lots has gone down as well. That was the first time I had been there in 6 months or more. I was disapointed in them. dought I will be going back unless I hear it has improved a lot. DH is still doing better with his fluid issures but still not much in the line of having any energy. He still just sits around and watches TV all day. Need to work on that and get him moving around. Hoping going to Church tomorrow will get him moving a bit. Was going to get started with dehydrating and canning but I have had a down day today. Feel like I might be coming down with a cold. Though I feel a bit better tonight. Got red potatoes, chicken, and brussel sprouts to can and also to dehydrate the frozen veggies. So going to get that all done on Tuesday as after Church tomorrow, I am going to get everything together and put chicken from freezer in fridge to defrost. Monday morning I have to take DH to hosp. for a swallowing test. His swallowing seems to be better right now but needs to be checked out. Then his next test for the CT scan is on the 17th. Praying all will be good. Homesteader, I know you will be glad when your homestead is done and you guys can sit back and relax. I am playing with the thought of moving out of what used to be country, and now a town. If anything happens be it civil war or whatnot and living in VA. we are not in the best place to be. They say in war, they have Washington DC a target and Norfolk is a target due to it's huge military bases. So here we are stuck inbetween the two. Bad situation to be in. So looking at options, and then again it may not happen. Just something to think about but not going to worry over spilt milk. What happens will happen and it would be beyond our control anyway.

DH still doing well and fluid and swelling is still under control. Praying this will continue to do well. Seems everyone is having a mattress sell. Hope you find a good one. Went to Sam's club today. DH stayed home. Bought 45 lbs of rice that I now need to get into mylar and the 5 gal. bucket. Finished off the 50 lbs. we had. Took 3 years to finish it off. So now I know how much we need for meals. Picked up some cleaning supplies we needed as well. Used almost all of that up so had to replenish it. Then went to Big Lots. They used to have great sells, but now you have to pick through everything. Did find a few bargans like freeze dried fruit and red hill veggi soup mix. Also found something new called Frontier soups these are also freezedried. They are put out by Anderson House. Seem to be from VA Blue Ridge. Only 20 mg. of salt so DH can eat this. Bought all they had for $1.00 each. Only had about 10 of them. they are non GMO, nothing artificial and no added salt. So hoping they will be good. Came home got everything put away and started cleaning the house. mopping floors and getting everything from Christmas cleaned up. All the boxes and decorations being up made it a bit hard to dust in some places. So all that is now out of the way and back to the normal house work. Bought 10 lbs of red potatoes as well to can and also some chicken that Sam's had reduced. So will have a busy couple of days. Made a space to keep my deydrator. So I am going to have that running for a while as I deydrate some frozen veggies. Might make somemore veg. beef soup as well to can.

I have a great deal of store bought frozen veggies in my freezer. I am getting ready to deydrate them. From frozen state for canning, I have only used them for canning my soups, etc. They worked out well for that. I think if I remember right that to just can them, you would have to heat them up so they wouldn't break the jars. Seems putting them in hot jars and then adding the hot water would crack the jars. So heating them up or blanching them a bit might work.

A bit late. Happy New Year to everyone. May it be a very blessed year. Hoping that everyone's garden will produce an abundence of food and the canning will go great.

This type of thing does run in families. DH's father had it. I also had family members that passed from cong. heart failure. The good Lord has been very good to DH. No male in his family has lived to see 70 years of age. His brother passed from melinoma at 69 years. My DH is now 82 years young. With God's good grace he has beat the odds. I am going to try to keep him around as long as I can. But when the good Lord says time is up then I will at least know he is in a better place and not suffering. Today he has had a much better day. Fluid is down a lot. . God is great. Today I finished getting all the Christmas stuff into the shed. So all that is put up. Now I can get car back into the garage. No more going out to scrape frost off car and getting it warmed up. Been cleaning and getting furniture that I had to move for Christmas decorations back in place. Getting things together for dehydrating and canning from freezer. That got put on hold, now I think I will be able to get it done. Checking out seed cat. so I can order some seeds. I am working on getting some raised beds in this spring. Hubby won't be able to helpp but he can watch.

Thank you for the prayers for DH. I have been researching about cong. heart failure and there is nothing we can do. Keeping it under control and watching his liquids, weight, BP, and diet. He had a hard time last night with loosing his breath. So we had a long night. I am very concerned about him as now if he does anything at all he gets out of breath. Though he is also a bit on the lazy side and we went through this when he had the stroke and had to do exerizes to get his muscles back. He got the idea that he better do it then and now I am struggling with trying to get him to take short walks just to keep his heart pumping blood a bit better. He seems to do better when he does short walks. though it does tire him out. I am learning how to do like I did when I lived on my own 35 years ago. DH never liked me doing yard work nor any heavy lifting. He always said yard work is a man's job. But he can't do it and I hired a man to cut the grass and do the edging 2 years ago. I am thinking about this spring turning the whole yard over to him and letting him deal with the flower beds as well. I really think I will have my hands full for the next year. We are going to have an easy Christmas next year without having to do all that work to get ready. We really do need that break. I have been doing all of Christmas cooking, decorating the whole house, etc. now for the past 50 years with the last 35 years with DH. So a much needed break next year. I might still make the sweet potato casserole for my middle granddaughter as she swears her mother doesn't make it right. It taste the same to me but she just likes mine better. So early this morning I went out to garden shed that DH has not done anything with in 2 years. He parked the tiller just inside the door and left it this past summer. That was the last time he was able to do much of anything in yard. So I moved it and cleaned out his shed. We have an extra gas hot water tank that was in my shed past 3 years. It was like an elephant in the room. So I moved it out of my shed into the garden shed. That gave me so much more room in my shed that I use as my attic. I reorganized a lot of things in there and made better room for the Christmas things. I found all kinds of things I had forgotten about that I have bought over the years in case of SHTF situation. life straws, extra parts for my berkey water filter. etc. So going to get all that into one box as I go through things and have it where I can get right to it. They are scattered in boxes everywhere out there. I am feeling my muscles from all the lifting today. So going to go fix dinner shortly and then take a nice hot bath with epsonsalt. Hopefully I won't be hurting after that. WE2 wish we could use the knorr,s products. They are really good but way to much salt for DH. My engine light came on again, so got to find the time to get car looked at. Don't need car problems now. Hope everyone has a wonderful NEW YEAR. God bless.

Ann, glad to hear you are home safe and sound. So sorry to hear your hen lady fell. Hope she is ok. going out for her. WE2, going out for your cousin as well and that you have gotten there to see him. Stay safe. I went this morning to Lowe's to buy a few plastic boxes as I am reoranizing all the Christmas stuff. I am tired of having to retape boxes together. So went through a lot of things and tightened up. Next year it will only be the tree going up and nothing else. I have spent the day taking down all the things I had sitting on tables like candles, flower arrangements, etc. The tree will come down New years day. But all the rest is getting packed up and in garage to go back out to shed. I have to do some work in shed to get things reorangized so I can find things. We have passed the batton to my daughter that is 15 minutes away from us. So next year no cooking, just head to daughter's house. My step daughter is not happy about it but will have to get over it. She will be going there next year as we are not going though tunnels and fight that traffic. Though it has been a rough 4 or 5 months we really did have a wonderful time. Now it is back to doctor appts. DH's liver counts are way up, Don't know why yet. Mine did that and it was medication. Hoping and praying that is all his is. That can be fixed. So on Jan. 17th he will be having a CT scan and on Jan 6th the barium swallow. He is getting weaker, so please keep him in prayer. I will have to tell my daughter in law what is going on with him after we find out and I know when she does she will try to take over his care. Thank you HIPPA. They can't talk to her. She will have to go through me and her father. She has always given me issues. And you don't want to know what she put her step father through when her mother passed away. Never in my life have I heard such a mess. I am not going through that. We have a trust, so she is out of luck. Seems all he does these days is sleep. I need to go wake him up for dinner soon. But in light of everything going on, I hope everyone has a wonderful NEW YEAR. May it be a wonderful blessing for all that is here on this forum. And I thank everyone for the prayers for DH.

Wow that sounds interesting. It wouldn't help me any as I don't have a farm to be able to have pigs. But for those that do, that class could be a great way to learn how to butcher one. Can't believe how cheap the classes are. never seen any class of any kind for under at least $150.

WE2, that looks like some of our church dinners. Glad you had a great time. Our church has a Thanksgiving breafast and for Christmas we have a breafast the Sunday before Christmas. To many people from out church go out of town, so would be hard to do that on Christmas day. It's nice that your pastor can do that. We had all the family over. Don't know how I pulled off getting everything done, but we did have fun and I am so warn out now, I can't sleep. So thought I would get on here to catch up a bit. DH was so worn out that after everyone left, he sat in his chair and went to sleep. His breathing has not been the best today. I am really starting to get worried about him. Things just are not looking good. He has good days but mostly bad ones and I know he is suffering from his breathing issues. He has labs tomorrow and then they are setting up a CT scan but I need to talk with them about his kidneys. I don't think he can have the dye. But will see what they say. Then on the 6th he has the Bairum Swallow test. He get's choked easy and hoping that only needs to have his throat stretched. Just not sure how that will go as they will need to put him under anesthesia. Though it was hard on DH and myself with all going on with doctors and his not doing well, we did have a spread of food. Everyone always takes home anything left over. It is part of their Christmas to get to go home with lots of goody bags. SIL's parents usually come over but his father has been really sick with they think could be flu or something. So we sent food over to their house. They just live in the neighborhood next to ours. So fixed them each a plate and SIL and Daughter took it to them. Hoping he will get better soon. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and from some of what I have read, it sounds like everyone had a great time. Now to get ready for the New Year. Praying it will be a much better year than this past year.

Cold here as well. Was 23 degrees last night and tonight will be in low 20's but warming up tomorrow afternoon. Christmas day is suppose to be 60 degrees. So no fireplace for this Christmas again this year. Going to pull out my DVD fireplace to use instead of the real deal. I think old man winter is going to come in a bit late. But I sure hope it will end by end of March if not sooner. I really don't handle cold that well.