Using It Up

For years I made grocery lists according to what we wanted to eat for meals. Lately, I buy what is a on sale for a great price and then make it work for meals. I think it's the next level of grocery shopping.

Last week Top Foods had carrots on sale 2 lbs. / 69c. Good, nutritious food, good, money saving price. I bought several bags. I've been getting really creative with how to use them and realized yesterday as I made a carrot raisin salad to go along with dinner that I've used up the five bags I bought! I made several soups and stews that I filled with carrots, added carrots to our sloppy joes, doled them out as before meal appetizers, added them to three freezer chicken crockpot meals, and made a double batch of carrot raisin muffins.

When I think about it, this is how most of the recipes we know and love today were born. Women had what they had and they used it. If there were apples available, they baked them and fried them, stewed them and put them in to pastries. How funny that today we decide that we want an apple pie and go out to buy the ingredients.

Check, check and check...

Becki's beef stew in the crockpot. School is finished for the day. Bills done, Paperback swap books wrapped, mail sent. Nap time. Ahhhhh.......

Names not to use...

When does a name just become a generic label?

Since Jennifer was the number one name for a decade and a half, it seems that anyone my age is a Jennifer. My mom says that they knew no Jennifers at the time and it was such a beautiful name (I remind her that it has fur in it...) She says that it was either that or Amy, the number two name for the year I was born - not a lot of originality. I was determined not to do that to my children! I am shocked and appalled to see my eldest daughter's name on the top 100 for our state.

Curious as to where your children's names fit in? Here are the latest stats on the top ten names. Cruise around the site for top names by year or state. Have fun!

Crying Out For The Messiah

My family just loves these little guys. My three-year-old daughter was singing this song while eating snack this afternoon and my four-year-old is riding his bike around the kitchen/dining/living room loop singing it right now. I hope you like them as much as we do.

Large Family Mothering

Away in a manger....

The finishing touches were put on the sukkah this afternoon.

First, the canvas clothed the naked structure, then the lights were added, decorations and lastly the tree branches on the top.

Here is our complete sukkah for the '09 festival, complete with hay bail seating, cornstalks and gourds from the garden and a newly built fire pit out in front for those frosty evenings. These pictures are especially for Gail, who requested them.

Chag Sameach!

Sukkah Raising Party '09

As with most things around our house, one person's project turns in to a family project very quickly.

My husband started to get tools and lumber out to put up the sukkah today and everyone got in to the act.

A few innocent bystanders.

Me, pretending to help. Before this I was sitting on the bench in the sunshine with the camera taking pictures of free range chickens and free range children.

The littlest worker.

My husband had sent me to the store to buy bales of straw for the sukkah and while I was gone he got the structure up with the help of all of the children. They are really becoming a good work crew!

Sukkot, or the feast of booths, will be going on this year from October 2nd through the 9th. Consider building a sukkah with your family this year and following the Word:

Leviticus 23:39-43
39"On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD seven days. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest. 40And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days. 41 You shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It is a statute forever throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. 42 You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths, 43that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God."

Nehemiah 8:14-18
14And they found it written in the Law that the LORD had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, 15and that they should proclaim it and publish it in all their towns and in Jerusalem, "Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths, as it is written." 16So the people went out and brought them and made booths for themselves, each on his roof, and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God, and in the square at the Water Gate and in the square at the Gate of Ephraim. 17And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths, for from the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing. 18And day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the Book of the Law of God. They kept the feast seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the rule.