Tag Archives: Christmas shopping

Frugal Friday

Posted in California, cooking, simple foods, swimming by

We are in for another big storm later today and thru the weekend. I’m not going down to the pool or the gym since the rain is supposed to be heavy and with wind. Not my favorite combination. 😦 I figure I need to just accept I’ll swim when I can and if something comes up where I can’t go, just relax with it. I am already though thinking of how to swim and get my Velcade shot when the time comes. Lap swimming is only till 9:25am. so If I go later @ 8am I can swim and then go to infusion by 9:30 or so. I’m a planner so I need a plan in place or at least a tentative one.

Today is just a potter around the house day. I want to get some Hanukkah candles out and put out the dark blue star cloth I use every year. I don’t plan to do gift things every night for the first few nights. I plan on making some banana choc chip bread too.

Costco went well and it was busy but we found our way around and were out in 30 minutes. We kept it fairly tight without throwing lots of extra stuff in the cart and we came out at just over $300 so I was very happy about that. We bought 2 bags of coffee so that should get us thru till mid-January.

As far as Christmas shopping, I have a few more GCs to get. One for the garbage guy who works incredibly hard in rain, snow, etc, and one for each of the kids. I’m really terrible about thinking of gifts for them when they get whatever they want. I guess with a gift card they can just get something they want.

Gas prices are dropping and that’s very exciting. We got gas at Costco for $3.99 so wow, what a difference.

Here’s the recipe for the banana bread I’m using. It’s from a cookbook I got from the library.

The cookbook is “Bake” by Paul Hollywood.

Simple Sunday

Posted in bread, cancer, cooking, Flylady, husband, meal planning, Uncategorized, Walking by

A lovely Sunday walk this morning without the jerk, who showed up yesterday after a 2 week hiatus. That’s ok we just ignored him even though he was walking in the middle of the path and we had to walk single file when he went by. It’s not worth the psychic energy anymore to even deal with it. We just went on our merry way. But it was a very pretty morning at the park this morning. We’re pretty lucky to have at least this one trail that is paved. There isn’t anything else like it at all around here. The closest would be Auburn which has one park with a paved trail otherwise it’s Folsom or up the hill to Truckee that has amazing trails all paved.

From there I started working on the nut/cheese loaf for Thanksgiving. I ended up with enough for 2 loaves and one half size one. I put them in the freezer till Thursday morning. I use the recipe from Greens. I’ll try and post it tomorrow.

Then I cut up the loaf of Tartine and put that in the freezer and started a new batch which I’ll do a slow overnight rise. That way I can cook it tomorrow morning.

I put the Costco chicken carcass in the Instant Pot to make broth. That’s still cooking. I also started a Crock Pot of pinto beans for dinner. Costco had the green chile cheese tamales which are my favorite so we’ll have those with pintos.

Tomorrow B has his IGIV. It’s in Roseville so I’ll take him and Z will go pick him up since my daughter works on Mondays. Z works too but he can take it as his lunch break. Hopefully, that will help his energy which is still pretty low and lagging.

I finished everything for Christmas. Really, don’t get too excited, as we only have us to buy for and I keep it small. I will send off something to my sister and give my brother some money. For us, I have books, a couple pairs of jammies, an Elton John album my son wanted and some other misc. Generally, I get stuff we need in the clothes dept, books, something fun and something that is a want.

Hanukkah is early this year, Dec 10th, but I’ve decided not to do any gift things and we’ll just light the candles. I like the idea of the light illuminating the dark and we need that right now.

Flylady zone this week is the bedroom. I finished it today. It doesn’t take very long since it’s pretty uncluttered in there. I did wash the comforter though and my daughter put up the new shoji screen for the one window. It keeps the cold out amazing.