Month of Doing

A few weeks ago a friend of mine challenged a little group of our friends to a month of Pinterest *doing.*  Well…  Due to privacy issues and not being able to block someone who I don’t want contact with, I’ve left it to sit for a while.  I can take it or leave it.  However this challenge was great motivation to get going.  I NEEDED this so bad.  Kevin and I have had a hard year.  We’ve lost three grandparents between us, had a few other personal losses, and had a bit of other drama that left me reeling and feeling out of control.  I know we have a lot to be grateful for, a good education for Kevin, three wonderful kids, a home and a great job for Kevin, to name a very small tip of the scale.  So knowing that I wouldn’t spend hours combing Pinterest to think up fabulous projects, just because I’m being cautious about getting sucked into it, I just got to work.  Some of it needed to be done anyway.

So here’s my list, I actually also started a Pinterest board just for the stuff I’ve finished.

Canned pear jelly
Canned carrot cake jam
Canned ginger pear preserves
Made vegetable stock from scratch
We went to a “pick you own” farm and got 10 grocery bags of tomatoes, and a bonus pumpkin for $30, screaming deal!
Made butternut squash soup from scratch
Deep cleaned using my own home made cleaner
Canned 28 quarts of tomatoes with my Mom
New recipe of Sloppy Joes using a huge chunk of the veggie puree left over from the veggie stock
Mexican Hot Cocoa (normal hot cocoa with cinnamon sticks steeped, and a splash of vanilla)
Canned pizza sauce (first time using my Mom’s Victorio Strainer by myself, and first time processing raw produce with it)
Canned salsa verde, with the very last of the tomatoes
Made wassail with fresh cranberries and oranges (old recipe, but I’ve never put cranberries in it before)
Chicken noodle soup from scratch
Baking soda and vinegar cleaning, deep cleaned entire stove
Home made saltines, one batch with Sonny’s Angel Dust in the dough, the other sprinkled with sea salt

My goals before I lose steam. (don’t plan on losing steam, just know it’s kinda inevitable)

Redoing and cleaning up family job chart
write list of easy family approved meal ideas and hang it in a protective sleeve inside a cupboard door
write a list of easy Mom approved after school snacks for the boys and put it up for them
process almost 30 pounds of winter squash and pressure can or freeze
make Thai Sweet Chili sauce
Try a new pizza dough recipe
find and try MANY new great potato recipes (I have nearly 50 pounds!)
Go through entire kitchen and set aside things for donation, as well as organize things
Go through Workshop and do the same
Go through craft area and do the same
Build craft desk
get all laundry done at once
go through kids clothes and save/donate/toss what’s not in good shape or doesn’t fit or won’t fit anyone.
start a Christmas project or two for my babies

And I could go on for forever!!  Maybe I’ll be back soon with some of my recipes for future reference.  All of the canning recipes can be found in the Ball book of home preserving linked in the previous post.  Most other recipes are just out of my head of from allrecipe.com.

One thought on “Month of Doing

  • Kaylene, terrific goals. I like the idea of actually doing some of the wonderful ideas we find on Pinterest. To do that for me will require …. “ta da!” getting off the computer and DOING instead of dreaming. If you find a really great pizza dough recipe, I’d love to get it from you. Mine all fall a little short of being the “real” thing.

    I hope things continue to go better for you and your family. Have a happy day!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: