The first few days of start up hours, for my husband's work can be crazy. It's a time of feeling whack-a-doodle, as far as routine goes. He's either working 2nd or 3rd or who knows what shift, and it throws me off completely.
It takes us a good few days to try and get flow to our daily routine, mornings, evenings, all of it. I took the day off from purging and organizing and moving stuff, but it has been overwhelming for me. I love to create crafty items, but it's sort of at the point, where I don't need to create so many items anymore. I have to come to a point of deciding what to get rid of what to keep, in that area.
I used to make homemade gifts, that required bottles, or jars or whatnot. Not anymore. The kids are all grown, and do not put up Christmas trees, so I'm not making ornaments like I used to. By the way, the "starbucks" ornaments in the making, made their way to the trash. I took off what could be useable, and tossed the rest. The kids did not want one for their homes/apt.
I used an old bookshelf to store craft items in my closet, so that is the focus, but now I'm trying to decide if I want to paint the bookshelf and put it in the upstairs bedroom. It is a solid wood bookshelf, so I will think a bit longer on that decision.
His schedule also throws off my meal plans. I managed to clean a large amount of fresh spinach, blanch and freeze it. I may be using some to make a breakfast frittata. I do sort the spinach, because the last few times, I have found weeds, and sometimes grass it in. I also lift it out of the soak water, and rinse again, before blanching it.
Our weather was a bit warmer yesterday, but we are still drying out from the recent downpour of rain. We are back to cooler weather again.
The chickens are back to regular egg laying, but their coop door is falling apart. We'll need to start thinking about the new coop now. For now, we will have to rig it, so the door shuts properly.
My saved hot banana pepper seeds have not sprouted as of today. I saved them from pepper plants we purchased, and planted, so I'm not sure what's going on . I may need to purchase Hungarian wax pepper plants and try saving those seeds this year (or buy seeds from my regular sources). Also, the Cherry Bomb pepper seeds I purchased from someone on Etsy (I should learn my lesson after twice), did not sprout. Only one did. I can live without the cherry bomb, but I do use quite a bit of the hot banana peppers for a few canning recipes.
Speaking of canning. I can confess, the first year I started growing a garden, I went nut-so with canning. Boy, can you dive right into all those interesting recipes and end up with way too many condiments the first few years. I have been very careful now, on only canning some "interesting" and delicious condiments for gift giving. I decided not to can corn relish the last few years, after realizing we did not use it as much as we thought we would.
I have been discussing canning and the garden with my husband lately, and I may can some jalapenos to compare with freezing this year. I'm not talking more cowboy candy, but just canning them.
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With the price of food going up, I have been making chicken stock every time I get a rotisserie chicken from Costco. I cook it overnight in my slow cooker. It comes out great with very little effort. I strain it, defat it using my gravy separator and then either freeze it or pressure can it. It’s just a bit odd to wake up to the aroma of chicken soup.