I think my New Year's resolution this year will be to declutter and weed crap out of this house! The less things you have the less likely your house will look messy!
I feel as though I fight a losing battle around here with keeping things clean, organized and picked up. We opted for a smaller house with smaller utility bills so there is no room to have any extras of things that don't get used. It will be a lot of work for one person I will tell you that. Hubby works all day and if I get kids to help weed out toys then nothing will ever leave. So it's solely up to me.
To make things go faster and better for me I find that taking things to a drop box is a plus. Trying to sell things, waiting for Kidney Foundation to pick them up once a month or putting them on Freecycle just puts me behind when I could be going full speed. Plus by taking them to the drop box helps me to declutter knowing the good items won't get thrown away and will be put to good use by someone else.
You could take your unwanted items to Salvation Army or other thrift stores and get a receipt for them. Keep track of every donated item and the market value in a notebook possibly with pictures. You can use these items as a tax deduction.
Here is a guide to donating items and what you need to do...
http://taxes.about.com/od/deductionscredits/a/CharityDonation.htm
Salvation Army has a donation value guide to help you figure out what your items are worth.
http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf/vw-dynamic-
index/D477340FFA28755C8525743D0049D1EF?Opendocument
Here is one for Goodwill in PDF format...
http://docs.goodwill.org/alfresco/d/d/workspace/SpacesStore/36cf5260-0bd6-4eea-acfb-8a80e3e014b0/Donation_Valuation_Guide.pdf
----------------------------------------
It's 2:46pm and the living room/dining room is almost done other than vacuuming.
I can breath easier now, at least with this part of the house anyway.
Now sitting here deciding what to have for supper.
I have leftovers that need used up in the fridge:
ham
black olives
shredded cheese
mushrooms
spinach dip
cream cheese
peaches
eggs
tomatoes
sweet orange marmalade preserves
crushed pineapple
This is where you have to get creative, lol!
What would you make with all this.
(no peeking below before you answer)
Whip together omlettes with leftover spinach dip instead of milk.
Add in cheese, ham, olives, mushrooms, tomatoes and
maybe a little bit of my bell peppers and onions that I have in the freezer.
I have the milk, veggies and meat covered in this main dish.
------------
If you have a big family that wants different things in their omelettes
here is an easy way to make them.
Set all toppings out on the counter.
Give everyone a zip loc sandwich bag and crack open 2 eggs in each one.
Have them go around and pick and choose about a Tablespoon of each of their favorite toppings and insert them in the baggie.
Zip up baggies and then have them squish it altogether.
Bring a medium-sized pan of water to a heavy boil.
Drop Ziploc baggie into the boiling water. Boil for 5 minunte.
Carefully, remove baggie from the water. Open the bag and roll the omelette onto a plate.
-------
Back to my supper for tonight,
Now for the bread, fruit and more milk to get all the food groups in...
I found a banana quick bread made with bisquick BUT I will change it
to use what I have on hand. I could make this and serve on the side of
the omelette and wallah, leftovers used up! Oh yeah my big
box of Bisquick cost me .60 cents. So I needed to find something
to put that to use also instead of it sitting in the pantry.
So here is my version of a PINEAPPLE PEACHES AND CREAM QUICK BREAD.
See how easy it is to change recipes into something different!
Ingredients:
* 1 cup granulated sugar (I used 3/4 cup)
* 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, room temperature
* 2 ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 cup mashed)
(I used 1 cup peaches and 1/2 cup pineapple. I beat the peaches up with the blender so it was half pureed and half chunky)
* 2 eggs
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2 cups biscuit mix
(I also added 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg)
Preparation:
In a large mixing bowl, cream sugar and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Beat in mashed bananas, the eggs, and vanilla. Stir in biscuit mix just until ingredients are moistened. Pour into a greased 9x5x3-inch loaf pan. (I also floured my loaf pans on top of greasing them) Bake banana bread at 350° for 1 hour, or until wooden pick comes out clean when inserted in center. Cover with foil the last 15 minutes of baking if too brown. (didn't cover with foil) Cool banana bread before slicing.
I added a sprinkling of powdered sugar on top before serving.
It's in the oven now.
And if it's as good as licking the beaters, I can't wait. Yummy!
----------------------------------
I am also considering making some beef (sausage) jerky.
Found sausage on sale so opted to use that instead.
Might make and put in fridge overnight.
Still need to dig my dehydrator out of the basement and clean it up.
Got that free off freecycle years ago.
GROUND BEEF JERKY
1 1/2 to 2 lbs. extra lean ground beef
1/3 c. soy sauce
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/8 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 1/2 tbsp. brown sugar
Mix all ingredients together in a good sized mixing bowl. Use your hands to make sure the seasonings are evenly distributed throughout the meat. Refrigerate the mixture for at least a couple of hours or up to 24 hours for a stronger flavor. Roll the meat out in strips or patties and dry in 150 degree oven with the door ajar for 4 to 8 hours.
Drying time will vary depending on humidity and the fat content of the meat. Once removed from the oven jerky is cooled and stored in an open container to allow drying to continue. Seal the container to prevent further drying. Store in refrigerator or freezer.
----------------------
Here are some good coupons to print out:
Special K Buy 1 Get 1 Free cereal
http://www.specialk.com/
Coupons.com
be sure to print these now as it's almost the beginning of
a new month so coupons will get rotated or have a different
expiration date.
I myself could use the cereal coupons, bisquick coupons
and cookie (mixes or premade) coupons.
----------------------------
Well this evening me and Tony went to look at a 1999 Suburban
he saw on Craigslist last night. It was in Hilliard.
I'm tired of the 1999 Expedition. You can't work on it yourself
and gets quite costly taking it to a shop like GoodYear.
You can't even change your own spark plugs in this thing.
To take to a shop and have 8 spark plugs replaced costs around $300!!
I want something we can work on!!! We've been looking at Chevy's with
a 350 motor. Now even I can work on those, lol.
We liked the truck, the price was good, it ran good, it's 4x4 and has a 3 row seat.
The owner is a mechanic at a well know shop so he has put a lot of new parts into
this truck already which is a plus for me knowing I won't have to have these
things repaired:
new brakes, water pump, head work, distributor,plus, wires, cap, rotor, rear main seal, flywheel, starter, battery, balljoints, pitman arm.
PLUS he said the front 2 tires will need replaced and will be giving us
a set of tires also!!
Talking about tires, I did see another thing I liked very
well and that was the spare tire road on board inside the rear of the truck. Unlike the Expedition which has it's spare mounted underneath the truck.
Oh yeah and I asked the guy if the Suburban's key had a chip. NO! Woo Hoo.
The Expedition's key is a chip key and is like $200 or so to get 2 made because of it!! And that was cheap one after making a few phone calls. We averaged a price quote of around $300 for everyone else!
A chip key has to be programmed to the truck if you need a replacement key.
So don't lose those keys if you have one!!
The bad which is only cosmetic and something I can overlook and possibly
fix with junk yard parts is that the truck hit a deer. That shouldn't be
a problem considering this body style ran from 92 to 99. It has a dented fender on the passenger side and a little crumple on the hood where it does not close even on the one side. So if we wanted to get a new fender or hood I'm sure we could.
Oh well. The truck is basically getting purchased as a car hauler so I'm not worried about it as long as it runs good. I just don't want to put anymore money into the Expedition and haven't been too happy with it. Probably put $1000 in it and haven't had it a year.
Oh the truck has had a stereo put in it. We were test driving it in the dark when something in the truck caught my and the kids eye. The front of the radio was changing colors from green to blue to red to orange. That was different, lol.
As long as a vehicle runs good I overlook the radio or if it has one. It's a bonus if it does! One can always be put in for cheap. That's least important to me. But anyway this one does have a radio/cd/mp3/Ipod stereo in it. But hey if the radio is missing in a vehicle you're looking at point it out to the owner for a price drop.
Looks aren't everything when used vehicle shopping. It seems like the prettier they are the more expensive they are to fix. Research and find something where the motor doesn't look like it's been compressed into a shoe box. Some vehicles have even gone as far as putting the batteries inside fender wells where they can't be seen.
If you can't see where the spark plugs are located and have easy access to them then it's probably not worth it unless your loaded with money. But if you are the do-it-yourselfer finding ways to save money, go for the simpler motors like the Chevy 350 V8 Vortex and not the Ford Tritan V8!! Tritans have the power just like a 350 but forget working on it yourself unless you have your own shop.
Gosh I'm talking like I know about cars/trucks, LMAO. I know a few, lol.
I'm a Tomboy at heart and could be found underneath a car any day getting dirty.
Supposed to go give the Suburban another look over tomorrow evening and if everything
goes well we'll be bringing it home.
Here is a picture of what it looks like. Just a pic I found online not of the
exact truck as I didn't have my camera with me. This thing is bigger than
the Expedition!!
Looks like a 4x4 Limo. I told Tony I want to put TAPS in yellow letters on the back window, lol. Ok for those of you who don't know what TAPS is, it is show of Sy FY called Ghost Hunters. They run around in black trucks that look similar.
