Reusing Tissue Paper

Pin It After my Grandma came to visit I got to work on my tissue paper pile. She is the one who taught me how to salvage tissue paper so it is always on my mind after she stops in.

It is very simple. IRON. I put all of my tissue paper that I get from baby gifts with my ironing pile and after I'm done with my ironing I unplug the iron and spread my tissue paper out on my ironing board and smooth it out with the iron. It looks like new afterwards. Then I fold it up and store it away with all of my gift bags to be re-gifted at a later date.

I have not bought tissue paper since I got married. Four kids in four years = a lot of tissue paper.

A couple tips:

• If you have water in your iron...dump it out. Water and tissue paper do not mix.
• If you just want to do the tissue paper, put it on the lowest heat setting your iron has.
• If the paper is ripped to begin with, throw it out. No amount of ironing will make that piece look like new.

Goodbye Student Loans... You Will NOT Be Missed

Pin It It has been almost exactly 12 months since we read the Dave Ramsey book and decided to knock out our debt. We have had student loans ever since we've been married and would have probably had them until our children were married if we had not put the pressure on ourselves to get free of debt.

Today we wrote our last check on the student loan and said goodbye to that portion of our budget. Now we are free to put that money somewhere else... and it feels so good.

We were not as diligent as we could of been staying exactly on budget, but we were disciplined enough to put any extra toward our debt rather than new projects, plans or dreams (and believe me, the opportunities were endless).

I know not everyone is in the position to pay off large chunks of debt. Sometimes the Lord gives us exactly what we need for that moment and not a penny extra. We have been there too, but we were in a season of life were we could revisit what we spent in certain areas and cut back enough to pay down our debt. It felt good to say no to some things and look toward a bigger goal.

This could have never happened with the the Lord as our Provider. He designed work and created us to be able to do it and has provided us with enough to pay our bills and more. It could have never happened without my husband who faithfully gets up every morning and pours his heart and soul into his jobs so that there will be enough money to get us through.

I am very grateful today... and excited.

Pretzels

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Here is our Holy Week pretzel recipe. I had a few people ask for it. I snagged it off the heavenlyhomemakers blog that I love, but as always there are little things you change and tweak to make it work for your house.

I want to be a whole wheat flour kind of lady, but I struggle with the battle between health vs. my bread not rising. I know the answer is to find a really finely ground whole wheat flour, but until I do that I will be using up my 50 lb. bag of white flour and feeding the empty calories to my children. Hey, at least they are homemade, right?

This is the heavenlyhomemaker recipe, but cut in half. I can't fit 8-10 cups of flour in my mixer and if I can't fit it in my mixer, I want nothing to do with it. I also added more flour because her recipe still seemed too sticky when I added the amount of flour it called for.

Here is my slightly modified version:

1/2 c. water
1 T. yeast
1 t. honey
1 1/4 c. milk
1/2 stick of melted butter
1/4 c. honey
5-6 cups of flour

Toppings:
Butter
Salt
Cinnamon
Sugar


In a bowl mix the 1 t. of  honey, yeast and 1/2 water. Let it it sit.

Mix butter, 1/4 c. honey and milk in mixer. Add yeast mixture. Slowly add flour until the dough is still a little sticky (if you are using a dough hook a portion of the dough will be on the hook and some will still be stuck the the bottom of the mixing bowl). Let it knead for 5-10 minutes.

Remove it from the dough hook and let it rise for 1- 1 1/2 hours. After it rises remove it and knead it down very well. My dough had a lot of bubbles in it.

Roll out long cords (they need to be a lot thinner then you think. My first batch had no holes in the pretzels because I made them so fat... they were like huge hamburger buns with a twist on top). Make a circle with the dough and cross the ends together twice. Then connect the ends to the bottom of your pretzels (this is why we used them as a Lenten food, because they were our praying hands).

Put them on a cookie sheet (if you have a stone...use that) and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Have some melted butter ready and slap it on there. I let the kids have a little bowl of melted butter to dip their pretzel in and they thought that was very fun.

We also did some cinnamon and sugar pretzels. I put the melted butter on when they came out of the oven and then sprinkled cinnamon sugar over top. You could make a little frosting to dip them in and that would be a party waiting to happen!

Freezing: I froze most of  these right after I shaped them. We eat them all up in about a week or two, but they tasted the same frozen as they did fresh. I put them in the freezer on the cookie sheet and then took them out a   couple hours later and put them in a Tupperware and then back in the freezer.

These are a super easy lunch (not to mention budget friendly) or even a great bread to serve with dinner. Soup and pretzels? I think so!

Bacon Chowder

Pin It This is my moms Bacon Chowder recipe. It was her grandma's Bacon Chowder. But... as kids we didn't really care who came up with the recipe, we just knew we LOVED it.

Mom gave me this recipe at my bridal shower. It has obviously gotten quite a bit of use.

I make it for my family because it is cheap (minus the bacon, but you can get it on sale) and I can throw a lot of leftovers in there. If you are cooking on a LOW budget you will have a lot of leftover potatoes and carrots.

This was the perfect rainy day meal last night. Mmmmmm... so cozy.

The recipe above is for a BIG BATCH as my mom called it, but it really just fed our family of eight growing up. I cut it in half because we can't destroy that kind of food yet.

So here it is:


1 lb hamburger
1/2 lb bacon
1/2 onion
2-3 potatoes
2-3 carrots
1 c. water
bacon grease
flour 1/3 cup
1-1 1/2 quarts milk
pepper
season salt

Brown the meat with the onions. I like to add a little season salt too. When it is done put in a cup of water and let the potatoes and carrots simmer together until they are soft.

Meanwhile, fry bacon in another pan. You can cut the bacon up before or break it up after it is cooked. When it is done throw the bacon in with the simmering veggies.

Save a 1/8 - 1/4 a cup of bacon grease in the pan. Add the flour and about a cup of milk to start. Then whisk, whisk, whisk. You want to get the flour mixed in very well or you will get flour clumps in your soup. Yuck. As the mixture boils it will get thicker and you can add more milk gradually.

It should look like this when you are done. You want a alfredo-like consistency.

Then add it to your hamburger/veggie combo

Add season salt and pepper to taste. 

Bread and soup. You can't beat it. We could eat it every night!

All In a Morning

Pin It It is 9:30 and I just need to reflect.

I got up at 6:00 to do my devotions. Score one for the day. I have been struggling to get in some good quiet time with the Lord before these 7 a.m., early risers run out of their room.

Did my devotions, took a big chunk of time to pray for dad who was going into surgery at 7:30 this morning, and I even got a few minutes to soak up a book before the stampede came running out early at 6:49. 

Made lunch for Just, got bottles ready, cuddled Spencer for 15 minutes, doodled a few Thomas the trains for Jack, and prayed for Papa Horses surgery.

Started bread.

8:00 Spencer came in to confess he woke Abigail by accident. We all went in as a "family" to get Abigail. The boys played and Abigail and I sang.

8:30 Breakfast on the table, clothes changed (not mine sadly enough), conversation with my sister and "yes you can drop the boys off this morning."

Lets see... what else. Jack stuck his finger in the fan. Cuddle, cuddle cuddle. Abigail stood up under the table. Cuddle, cuddle, cuddle. Caught a glimpse of my sheets. Threw them in the laundry and flushed a toilet on the way. All the while, Spencer is quietly working on something at the table. The tinker toys. He almost has a whole tractor thing built. I had no idea he could do that by himself. That was at least 10 minutes of ohhhing and ahhhing, "I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!" And... it quickly came to an end with Abigail's diarrhea blow out.

Another load of laundry started.

Oh, but not before I took my fabulous deal of the day out of the dryer.

(Before picture)

Washed and ready for wear

Keen Sandals for $6 at the consignment store. Exactly Spencer's size. One of my life dreams come true.

9:00 put in a call to my mom. I couldn't wait any longer. No answer. But the phone rings and it is the sister. Nope, she is not dropping the boys off. Some one threw up all over the high chair. "I am so sorry for you. Drop them off when they are feeling better."

Check the bank account. We still have some money.

Wash the dishes, clean up breakfast, pick up the million Styrofoam pads from the carpet cleaners yesterday,

9:30 take a break to check the blog and reflect on this beautiful morning. Jack still has his finger, Spencer grew up overnight and Abigail has some kind of saddness or sickness that I can't figure out and probably won't today.

It is 9:50. Abigail is on my lap and the boys are chatting about their construction project at the table. Blog is done.

Bread is out of the oven.

A typical Bartlett morning.

Used Clothing

Pin It We lived in hand-me-downs growing up. I still remember when my older sister got a new winter coat... she had a grand mal seizure the week before (you lucky dog, Julia). I think my parents were just happy she was alive so they treated her to a new article of clothing. I couldn't wait for the day that little baby would be mine.

Now my kids ask me things like, "who bought us this? Nana Bartlett?", "can we look for that at a garage sale?", "who used to wear this?". I hit the jackpot last weekend in the used clothing department. Justin's cousin has a little boy just a year older then Spencer. She brought me three tubs to go through and I clothed my little man for the next year, head to toe, for $45.

Here is what I got:

• 2 pair of sandals and a pair of shoes
• 4 winter jammies and 1 summer jammie
• 9 long sleeve shirts
• 11 short sleeve shirts
• 1 pair of jeans
• 2 cozy pants
• 2 hooded sweatshirts
• 2 button down shirts

I even got to send a pair of jammies, and some shirts over to my sister, who has a little guy the same size. What a blessing!

This is one of the ways we keep children from being a financial burden. They don't care what they wear so if I can get rid of my desires to see them in the latest, cutest thing (any other moms need to stay out of Target? Oh my!) we can keep our kids happy and the clothing budget low.

Another mom-to-mom sale awaits me this morning. It's your turn Abigail!

$$ Money, Money, MONEY $$

Pin It Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover has taken over at our house in the last month. I ordered the book and talked Justin into reading it two mornings a week. It has taken us a month just to read through the myths and obstacles, but now we have go to the game plan. We (me and with Justin's approval) refocused our budget and got some fire under our buns and today we paid off our first two big chunks of debt. Our goal is by December 31st of 2012 we will be debt free. We will still have a house to pay off, but that will give us something to work on in the next couple years.
In just a few weeks we have had so many new revelations about money. God doesn't want it to consume our life, he wants us to be able to give it to others freely without concern for our own well being. We are so excited to slowly get to this place. We want to teach our kids to have a biblical view of money and have the freedom to spend more time with them because we have been good stewards with what God has given us.
If you haven't read this book, GO PICK IT UP. It is such an easy read and will motivate almost anyone to put every penny they have to the freedom of being debt free.