Everything BUT Stitching

 I am not complaining - please don't think I am. Everything I do . . well, mostly everything I do is by choice. I don't HAVE to do most of this. But . . I must just be a very poor planner or maybe just wanting to do too many things.

This morning getting out of bed, I was thinking about what I planned to do today:  Fix breakfast, wash a load of clothes, heat up leftovers and spend the rest of the day cross stitching.

Here's how the day really went!

- Fixed breakfast

- Vince told me he needed more rye bread, Ezekiel bread and sunflower seed butter. Didn't need it all today - any time this week is fine.

- Checked email and saw that my order of raw milk and eggs was ready to be picked up. Could be picked up any time between today and Thursday. I told Vince I'd rather get it today because there are some things I want to get done tomorrow and Thursday and Wednesday is my stitching days.

- Ground grain and got the rye bread mixed up to rise. Baked it later this afternoon.

- The washer was done and as I was putting clothes in the dryer, I thought . . it's such a beautiful day. I should hang clothes on the line. Did that!

- Didn't have time to make the Ezekiel Bread but since I had all the jars of grains out, I measured them and got them in the bowl. I'll grind it all tomorrow and make that bread.

- Made two pints of sunflower butter for Vince. Got the blender cleaned and put away. I dislike cleaning the blender after making those nut butters.

- Left to go get milk and go by Aldi. Vince wanted to go by Walmart. Then we decided to go by Lowe's and check out the faucets there. I wouldn't mind getting a new kitchen sink. The one we have now is probably the one put in the house when it was built in 2003. I thought it was cast iron but Vince looked underneath it and said it's some kind of plastic. Not sure about that. It's white and everything stains it because the finish is pretty much gone. I want stainless but honestly, I just don't care. At this point I want a faucet that isn't leaking so I can put everything back under the sink.

Got the milk, 2 dozen eggs and 1 dozen duck eggs.

From there we stopped at Aldi. Thank goodness they had jalapenos and pistachio cream. Both seem to be quite difficult to find around here these days.

Oh, actually - Aldi was out of jalapeno peppers. Vince stopped at Walmart for something and found jalapeno peppers in there. The guy in the produce area told Vince they are having a very hard time getting them now. Crazy. I'm going to plant at last two jalapeno peppers in pots and try to keep them alive either in the greenhouse or in the heated garage downstairs. We use so many and I hate having to search for them in the grocery stores.

- Then we went to Lowe's. The man working in the kitchen sink, faucet area was VERY helpful. Vince was determined that our sink has one big hole and two small holes. The big hole he said was for the thing that controlled the water. The small holes were for the actual faucet and the sprayer. We actually have a brand new Moen faucet still in the box from Texas that we bought and didn't use when we re-did the kitchen there. It has the sprayer thing that is attached to the end of the faucet and that's what I've been wanting. Anyway -- the sink man confirmed what I thought that it would be VERY unusual to have a large hole and two smaller holes in the sink. Vince came home and looked at it again and they're all the same size so we're he is hopefully going to change the faucet some time very soon!! I'll just keep the sink I have and be happy.

- Came home, put everything away. Decided to pour the cream off the milk I got today and make butter. In the picture with the rye bread  you can see the butter and the buttermilk left over from making butter.

- It was time to clean up the mess, and it was a big one, get the clothes off the line, folded and put away. Now I'm tired . . and it's now 8 p.m. How many stitches can I get made? Probably not many!

Stitching on The Lord's Prayer

I'm very pleased with the progress I made on The Lord's Prayer. This is where I started when I picked this up again on March 29.

My plan is to work on a project for five days. Each week I stitch with a friend and we're stitching on patriotic projects so, while I document my progress on that project each week, I don't count that day as one of the days I work on my five day project.

This "five day" plan turned into a seven day plan because one day, I was working on organizing my linen and didn't make a single stitch. Saturday I was getting started on the food for our Easter meal and only got 116 stitches made. My plan was to start a new project on Sunday but I was tired after Chad, Nicole and Addie left so I took a quick nap, had a hard time getting motivated to stitch so I worked one more day on The Lord's Prayer. I thought I wouldn't get many stitches done but I did get 446 stitches made.

Like I said . . I'm really pleased with my progress on this one.  Sometimes the progress is easy to see and sometimes it's spread out over the entire project but I think the progress on this project is easy to see.

Lots of color was added and I'm really pleased! The entire top border is finished except for filling in the center of one flower.

Now it gets put away for a while. I'm not sure what I will pick up tomorrow. Right now I'm thinking I'll pick up This is the Day because I might could finish that one. No telling what I'll decide by the time I get back to stitching tomorrow.

Week 14, 2026 Stitching Report

 

Monday, March 30, 2026
Project: The Lord's Prayer (Day 2)
Stitches Made: 583
Percentage Stitched Today: 
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Project: The Lord's Prayer (Day 3)
Stitches Made: 459
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today: 33.92%

Wednesday, April 1, 2026
Project: 4th of July Rules
Stitches Made: 284
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Thursday, April 2, 2026
Project: No Stitching - Worked on organizing linen
Stitches Made:
Percentage Stitched Today: 0
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Friday, April 3, 2026
Project: The Lord's Prayer (Day 4)
Stitches Made: 408
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today: 35.68%

Saturday, April 4, 2026
Project: The Lord's Prayer (Day 5) (Cooking for Easter -not much stitching time!)
Stitches Made:
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Sunday, April 5, 2026
Project:
Stitches Made
Percentage Stitched Today:
Percentage Completed as of Today:

Stitches Made in Week 14, 2026

The Lunch Report

Our Easter Lunch was amazing. Not only did I get to spend most of the day with Chad, Nicole and Addie but the food turned out great.

The Jalapeno Raspberry Chicken was maybe one of the best dishes I've ever made. When I made the sauce yesterday, I made about 1-1/2 x the sauce recipe, put jalapenos in half and didn't in the other half. Vince and I ate the batch with the jalapenos. We had two thighs leftover. Can't wait to have that for leftovers. The chicken was so quick and so easy. I seasoned it last night and left it in a zipper bags in the fridge so seriously, all I did today was brown the meat, cook til the temp was 165 degrees, pour the sauce over it, simmer it for a few minutes, add the fresh raspberries and it was done.

The Dinner Rolls were good - also very easy, but not the yeasty, pillowy type rolls I'm looking for. I will make them again when I need an easy roll recipe. I made these 60 grams each. I'll probably bump it up to 70 grams next time.

The Mac & Cheese is the recipe I use most all the time and I'm always happy with it.

The Lemon Blueberry Cake was equally as good as the chicken. I am NOT a dessert baker. I can make bread all day but I love eating bread more than I love eating dessert so maybe that explains it. But . . this cake . . so delicious.

It was a three layer cake! That was quite an accomplishment for me.

Easter Meal Preps

 Chad and his family will be here tomorrow (Easter Sunday) so I decided to do as much as I could in the kitchen today (Saturday). 

I spent almost the entire day in the kitchen.

Using magic tape, I taped the four recipes up where I wouldn't have to be constantly picking them up or moving them out of the way. I planned to make Jalapeno Raspberry Chicken, Rolls, Lemon Blueberry Cake and Mac & Cheese.

A while back I had seen a receipt for Jalapeno Raspberry Chicken and have been wanting to try it for over a month. I decided this was a good time, except neither Chad, Nicole or Addie will eat jalapenos and finding jalapenos at any of the Walmarts around here has gotten to be a challenge lately. I had a few still in the fridge from Aldi so I used those and made one batch of sauce for Vince and me and one batch of sauce for them.

Below is a photo of the seasoned chicken thighs along with two separate jars of sauce. There's also a dish of mac & cheese. Tomorrow I will put the topping on the mac & cheese (Panko, grated Parmesan, melted butter and paprika) and bake it.

Next thing I stirred up was the rolls. This recipe is super easy and they can be shaped into hamburger buns too. I had planned to let the dough sit while Vince and I ate lunch, then shape them into rolls, put them in the fridge and tomorrow, I'll take them out, let them rise and bake them but the rolls were rising way faster than I expected. I guess I need to get used to the kitchen being warmer, except we have frost tonight and tomorrow night. Poor garden.

I asked Vince if we could put dinner off for half an hour while I got the rolls shaped and, of course, he was fine with that.

The last thing was the cake. I made this Lemon Blueberry Cake. It looks so good (and the batter tasted yummy). I hope it turns out good.

This one by far had the most ingredients of anything I made today. You can kinda see to the right where the Mac & Cheese ingredients start but there was a lot for the cake and I combined all the baking powder, soda, etc. in the bowl with the flour and I combined the brown sugar and the white sugar in one bowl or there would have been even more containers.

I ended up using 9" cake pans where the recipe called for 8" pans because I think I threw out my 8" pans because they were dented and looking pretty gross. I need to remember to get more because I prefer 8" layers.

The layers cooled and I took them out and put them in separate gallon size zipper bags and will ice and assemble the cake tomorrow morning and stick it back in the fridge (as directed in the recipe).

I will report back on how the recipes turned out.

Milk!

Today was a happy day for me! I was able to snag a gallon of raw milk. When we lived in Missouri from 2007 - 2011, we hadn't been here long when I heard about a dairy in Carthage where we could buy raw milk. It was in the middle of winter. Vince got home from work, it was kinda getting dark and I said "Would you like to go to Carthage and get raw milk so I can make yogurt?" I know that these days, he would say no but for whatever reason, he said ok. We left, we got near Carthage and I told him which exit to take. It had started snowing and it was very dark and neither of us have ever liked driving at night. We got off the highway at the exit and he said "What now? Left or right?" Hmm . . I have no idea. Did our phones even have GPS back then? He was rather upset with me, and rightfully so but in my defense, I have zero sense of direction, I cannot follow directions and I cannot read a map. I think I ended up calling the dairy and getting directions (again). Every single time we go to the dairy, one of us will say "remember that night . . " and yes, we both remember it. Today it was funny because we had been somewhere else in Carthage and were coming from a different direction and had to use GPS to get to the dairy. We both started laughing without either of us saying "remember that night . . ".

But, I got my milk. The dairy lady told me that so many people are wanting raw milk, they've set up a plan where you reserve your milk at least a week in advance. Our milk order has been placed for next week.

This is our milk shelf. My first choice is the raw A-2 in the gallon carton. My second choice is the Kalona brand (pasteurized but not homogenized) but it's sometimes hard to get too.  Vince bought the A2 milk a week or so ago, just so we would have whole milk in the house but I didn't drink it. I'll use it for biscuits or other cooking. Vince drinks 2% milk (he won't drink raw milk) and we both drink buttermilk. Kalona is my favorite buttermilk here. There's no place I can buy full fat buttermilk here . . that's my favorite.

Today it dawned on me that during the winter when the dairy doesn't have milk, that's when I cannot get the Kalona milk. I guess everyone buys it there when they can't get it from the dairy.

The Wood Stove - Report

 The wood stove isn't happening. :(   Not right now anyway.

The guys came out Monday morning, measured everything, talked about where we wanted the stove. We all decided leaving the two gas fireplaces alone and adding the stove to the corner where it could be easily removed and the gas fireplaces wouldn't have to be taken out was the least expensive option and probably the best because a future owner might not want to mess with a wood stove.

Vince and I had talked about it and we had a price in mind that we had decided we would do. 

The price quoted us for leaving the two fireplaces alone and putting in the black wood stove was very close to double what Vince and I had said we would pay. Really, they have to put one hole through a wall, and add the stovepipe. The pipe does have to go from the basement to the top of the main floor (basically two stories) and I think he said 8' above the roof but when Vince and I were making our calculations, we looked at the prices for double and triple walled stovepipe. 

In addition, and no matter who puts in the stove, we will have to move the radon pipe. Vince talked to the guy from Kansas City who installed our system and he will come and move the pipe. It will have to go through the deck, which isn't ideal but it's a big deck and if I had my way, I would have made it smaller when we re-did it several years ago so I'm not concerned about the pipe going through the deck.

There's a Mennonite guy who does some work for us and Vince is going to call him. I'm sure they install quite a few wood stoves in their community. They do such good work and are usually reasonable. 

So, while this isn't the way I had expected it to go, there's still hope.