A simple Friday

My usual Friday plans have been interrupted by the "light dusting" of snow we were to receive.  Apparently, in Indiana weatherman parlance, "light dusting" means "huddle inside your house for warmth".  So, instead I am making more bread and we've got PBS Kids on the television for Little Guy. 

One of my New Year's resolutions this year is to become more organized and manage time and money better.  The rapidly changing schedule is making it more important than ever to do so.  This month, I am working a split shift.  I teach one class in the morning and one class at night.  The week after next, however, my schedule changes for the next month.  I'll teach mornings and afternoons, leaving my evenings free.  I've been teaching nights for so long now, I'm not going to know what to do with myself.  Big Guy will get to be home during the day with our little monkey. 

If we can keep up the work we've been doing, we can survive just fine.  Big Guy and I need to take an opportunity to sit down and figure out a plan for the next few months, like what we'll do if I don't get two classes.  I've got a plan to save up money so that when the break hits, I'll be able to transfer over money to cover it.  Things may be tight and sort of complicated, but luckily we have the communication skills to figure it out. 

We're still looking at getting out of our current rental and, at this point, I am so done living here.  I'm sure some of it is just basic impatience on my part, but living here has not been the best experience.  This place had a purpose when we moved in, but that purpose has long since passed, and it's time for us to move to our new chapter of life.  Our life has changed so much since we moved in that our needs in a place have changed as well.  We're also not under pressure to move, which is a pleasant change.  We have been looking for a good place to live, price-wise and also life-wise.

We're not going to be able to get the perfect place, but we'll be able to find something that will serve us well.  And right now, Big Guy and I are in agreement that everything happens for a reason.  Hopefully the purpose of all of this will become apparent soon.

Game Day

Today is game day in the Kitten household.  We have friends coming over and I am preparing a rather hearty meal in order to feed the fam and anyone else who chooses to eat.  Game day is always fun despite the nerdiness that generally ensues.  

Big Guy has been running a “GURPS” game for the group.  I apparently managed to cement my nerdiness by commenting that I preferred the GURPS magic system to D&D.  *shrug* It just makes more sense.  Admittedly, it can be a pain to deal with, but magic shouldn’t be easy.  We’ve gone through our fair share of characters already in the game.  

Dinner to go along with game is pot roast, homemade bread and mashed potatoes.  A warm and filling meal to go with the snow-laden day.  I actually began cooking the pot roast last night.  Chopped the carrots and potatoes, seasoned the roast and stuck it in the crock pot to cook on low for 12 hours.  It smells delicious.  I woke up a few times throughout the night and smelled it.

The bread is shamelessly stolen from Oregon Cottage, who shamelessly stole and adapted it from the easy artisan bread in five minutes.  I slightly adapted it myself, mixing the dough in a gallon sized ziplock bag for easy fridge storage.  I think I also may have added less flour than the recipe called for, but I ran out of flour.  I popped it in the oven today and worried because it was definitely more liquidy than the pictures on the website.  I had visions of a flat, black, almost bread.  I was pleasantly surprised.  It puffed up and looks BEAUTIFUL.  Seriously, if the bread tastes half as good as it looks, I am excited.  

The mashed taters will come from a box, but that is because one of our friends prefers boxed, instant taters to homemade.  Meh, whatever makes him happy. 

Weekend's end with guns and bread

I love weekends with my family.  This weekend has been an excellent weekend in terms of recharging the batteries.  We've been clearing out space for Whiteybare which required  moving much of Little Guy's stuff into his room.  We moved his car table which holds his collection of Hot wheels and his train set into his bedroom.  We also moved the TV and PS2 into his bedroom.  I'm feeling kind of torn about that one.

On the one hand, we are now one of "those" parents.  The ones whose four-year-old has a TV and PS2 in his bedroom.  On the other hand, this effectively limits what he can watch.  When the TV was in the front room, it was hooked up to cable and Little Guy discovered Cartoon Network.  I wasn't too thrilled with him watching it since I prefer that he watch good programming.  I became even less pleased when this new programming he had discovered led to him actually punching people and laughing about it.  That was a swift trip to no TV for a while.  However, now that he has the TV in his room, it's not connected to the cable and I know exactly what he can watch. 

But moving the rooms around wasn't the only thing we did this weekend.  We also picked up our Mosin Nagant rifle from the gun store.  Big Guy and I spent the evening yesterday cleaning it off, wiping it down, and learning how it works.  It's a beautiful bolt-action rifle that we've polished and cleaned up nicely.  We're looking forward to target practice out at my mom's place and maybe even hunting.  We were talking about how great it would be to have a Thanksgiving turkey that we just caught ourselves.  Yum!  Needless to say, it was pretty cool getting a gun made in the 1930's all cleaned up.  Big Guy and I Were talking about how cool it would be to find out the history of our gun in particular, but I wouldn't even know where to begin. 

This morning we woke up too late for "church", so I made coffee and waffles instead.  I added powdered sugar and vanilla and made a large batch of waffles.  Little Guy ate about 5 waffles and Big Guy and I decided we could not find better waffles even in a pancake place.   I put the pack of uneaten waffles in a ziplock bag in the freezer.  It will make a great breakfast throughout the week.  This evening, I even dug out an old jar of strawberry jam that hadn't set to use in bread. 

We got a breadmaker off of Cheapcycle for $25 and have definitely gotten our money's worth.  We've made loaf upon loaf of bread, spending only the money needed for the flour and the sugar.  It's been working out extremely well.  Currently, I have the batch of bread with strawberry jam in the breadmaker in an effort to produce a good breakfast bread. This will leave our day-to-day bread free for sandwiches and give us a good, hearty fruit bread for breakfast.  I have plans for cherry bread and perhaps even berry bread.