It is so very odd to be able to say that I have to adjust to life outside of the hospital. It's even odder to actually be used to this cycle of hospitalizations and returns to normalcy. I told my husband today though that God has a purpose for this or else He would cure me so I need to see the bright side of things and to make the best of the situation. Today's bright side is being back to MY life. I was released from the hospital last Thursday but my mom was in town and that just doesn't mean normality here. You know how it is when you have out of town guests....wanting to make sure they are always comfortable and don't need anything. I understand my mom was here to help me out but you just can't break that learned habit. My mom left for Illinois this morning and life is starting to settle down around me again, like the comfortable blanket it was before the latest meningitis disruption.
It will be a relatively quiet week (due to the vociferous shouts to TAKE IT EASY from so many) but I am so glad to have some of my routine back. This happened to be my monthly grocery shopping week so I will have to be wise and stretch out the shopping through next week so that I don't overdo it. I do have some doctor appointments this week. Follow ups from the hospital and flu shots for the kids (due to the fact that I'm immunocompromised everyone here needs to have their flu shots in order to avoid bringing gunk home to me). Other than that, it's just relaxing and preparing for our annual football party which will be this Saturday. Since I have wonderful friends, everyone is going to be understanding and ignore the less than stellar cleaning. :) We have cheer tonight, youth group Wednesday night and Friday night is my church's monthly craft night where we can bring our individual crafts and get together for some fellowship.
Today though I tackled the Sam's Club portion of my shopping. I was sad to see that the only yeast I could buy there was instant, which I just don't nearly use as much of as regular yeast. A good find though were the 5 pound bags of shredded cheese. We go through a lot of shredded cheese in a month so I bought one of cheddar and one of Mozzarella and then just separated them out into 2 cup portions to freeze.
Here is today's haul of cheese. Obviously, the fancy shredded cheddar gave me more baggies than then Mozzarella but this should still last us until next month.
I'm baking English muffin bread this afternoon because I've been seriously craving English muffins. I hope this turns out. After a little lie-down I'll head to my doctor to be told yet again that I'm a medical oddity, and then after dinner tonight my baby girl and I will go visit with a friend who just got back from vacation before we go to cheer.
Here's to hoping the rest of you have a happy, uncomplicated week!
One of the most nerve wracking aspects of Sjogren's Syndrome is that there is no predicting when the symptoms will strike and how bad they will be. I woke up in the middle of the night last night shivering and feeling horrible. I had a fever, my head was pounding and my neck hurt. I was still able to bend my chin to my chest but it was painful. Hubby hopped right out of bed and made a mad dash for the medicine cabinet (which is quite well stocked in our house) to get me the Prednisone. This has definitely been my worst "attack" since I was hospitalized in April and my poor husband is a wreck. I woke up feeling a bit better this morning (the joys of steroids) and my temperature is back to normal but I am completely wiped out. Purely exhausted and there is no energy or motivation to be had. This makes me so thankful that I am able to stay at home. No boss to get angry if I call in sick...the worst that will happen is that the daily cleaning & laundry may not get done. I am so blessed to have a supportive husband and great kids who will pitch in and help out when I'm laid low by my SJS.
Now on to updates on monthly grocery shopping and the homemade journey. On Monday I attempted to make a few loaves of bread for use in French toast and sandwiches. The texture was wonderful but I'm going to have to get used to the fact that the homemade stuff isn't going to be the same size & shape as the store bought stuff. Does anyone have any suggestions on getting it to turn out more like the store bought stuff?
The rest of this week will be relatively easy on the homemade front. Today I will whip up my first batch of homemade laundry detergent. Tomorrow I need to make some buns for the hearty Italian sandwiches I will be making for dinner. Friday I will do the next week's desserts...I'm thinking homemade Thin Mint cookies. Num!
Here are a few of the crafty projects I've undertaken recently.
Mason Jar Mummy
This was a super easy project that simply required Modge Podge, a mason jar, sterile medical gauze and googly eyes. I have a LED tea light in the jar.
Thankful pumpkins
I still think these would have looked better with white pumpkins but I couldn't find darker letters.
And finally, Aidan's winter scarf for this year
Oh and a grocery shopping update: I didn't plan well enough in regards to shredded cheese & peppers so when I make my run tomorrow for milk and eggs (in the last week & a half we've gone through 4 1/2 gallons of milk and almost 34 eggs!) I will have to pick some up. It'll be another $30 added to my grocery bill for the month but still much better than the $600 I would have normally spent in the past!
Whew! I have spent the last two days doing enough grocery shopping to last us a month. I spent most of last week reading suggestions on how to do this, coming up with meal plans, seeing what I have in stock here and making up shopping lists. On Sunday, we picked up the newspaper so that I could also go through the ads and coupons. I feel confident that the next time I do this, it won't be as time consuming and it will definitely be more efficient.
This time around, I wasn't always sure which store had the best prices. I took the advice I found in both blogs and in the book "America's Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money" by the Economides and started noting the price and size of certain items (like flour, sugar, cornstarch, etc) at each store. I also had to go on a scavenger hunt to find the supplies I will need to make my own laundry detergent, fabric softener, household cleaners and hand soap. This resulted in going to both Apple Valley Health Foods and Harvest Health Foods. I won't need to pick up those supplies regularly in the future and now I know that Harvest Health Foods is the place to go. I'll also be looking online for a good resource for essential oils since HHF did not have all of the scents that I wanted.
All in all, the shopping spanned over two days, at eight different stores and probably took me about seven hours including unloading and putting away. Yesterday I hit Target, Meijer, the dollar store, Apple Valley Health Foods, Harvest Health Foods and Sam's Club. This morning I finished my shopping out with a trip to Horrock's and Aldi's. Because I am way too particular, I had to put everything away as soon as I came home from each trip. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of all of my great finds...but here is one from my final trip to Aldi's this morning:
This was my largest trip and took the most time to put away. Now it feels like every nook and cranny is stuffed to overflowing and I feel like I've accomplished something!
Here is our back freezer....I don't think I could fit much else in.
And some of our pantry cupboards
I tallied up my receipts and it came out to a total of $437. It went over my budget of $400 but it's not bad for my first trip. I also bought several items that I won't need to buy every month like all of the supplies for my laundry detergent, etc etc. In addition, Aldi's had boneless turkey breasts for $7.99 and we always get one for Thanksgiving in addition to a 16-18 pound turkey so I just couldn't resist for that price!
In further homemade adventures, I started my very first attempt at making yogurt this morning. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!
Yep, that's what my BFF (and yes, I still call her that..or bestie...how old am I?) has started calling me. She is convinced that I have gone over to the domestic dark side. Don't think she won't use this domesticity to her advantage though. She has issued a challenge that I just had to accept to create baby chicks out of deviled eggs like so....
It is highly coincidental (nudge nudge) that my nephew's birthday party is this coming weekend and said nephew just happens to adore deviled eggs. Yep uh huh....
Enough of that...I will post pictures (if it turns out!) once I create the baby chicks.
Life has been busy here in the Chase home. We had our full family together this weekend which always involves lots of cooking and dishes as well as laughs and good times. I took all the kids to see Finding Nemo in 3D. We all love that movie and most of us can quote it by heart("I will call him Squishy and he shall be mine. He shall be my Squishy.") It was neat seeing it on the big screen but it definitely was not worth the 3D ticket prices for 3D. After that, we all watched Snow White and the Huntsman which is one of my new faves.
In my homemade adventures I made my own taco seasoning, baked some delicious and ridiculously easy crusty bread (recipe here), and made my husband some peppermint mocha coffee creamer (he is addicted to the York creamer). This week is also our first attempt at doing our grocery shopping only once a month in order to be better stewards of God's money. It feels like I spent all morning shopping and I still have two more stops to make tomorrow. On the other hand, it'll be great to not to have to go to the store two or three times a week. I will still need to get milk but only once a week or so. We tend to go through about three gallons here a week and it would be impossible to store it for an entire month. I will share tomorrow about all my finds and how close I stayed to my budget.
And on a completely unrelated note.....Aidan & I had a conversation about college today. On our way to his PT session, we saw a city bus dropping off several students at one of the downtown campuses for GVSU. Aidan asked me if it would make me happy to have him go to a local college. Of course!!!!! He then proceeded to ask how far away GVSU was because he wanted to make sure it wasn't too far of a drive for me to drop him off at class everyday! LOL I find it absolutely adorable that my pre-teen boy thinks I will be driving him to class when he's in college.
