Back to Blogging with Monday Musings and Plannings

 I usually do my blogging on Mondays as I plan through the upcoming week, but the last two Mondays have been away from home. We got to visit my mom, maternal aunt, two daughters, paternal aunt, and two cousins all in a whirlwind trip through Ohio and Indiana in four days. It was good and fun.

Then the next Monday I visited a friend downstate who is going through a very rough time of tearing down her life because of divorce and trying to build a new life while undergoing permanent health difficulties and uncertainty about how much money she'll have to live on. We had a nice visit anyhow and, though tears were shed, she's trusting God to work things out. I prayed a lot on my drive home. 💗

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In between those Mondays we worked some more on our homestead, adding some meat to our freezer and making plans to put a drainage hole in the Critter Corner.

I also started growing my microgreens in a different way - with re-usable clay pebbles instead of soil and a cool way of self-watering invented by Mike VanDuzee of Keep On Growin' on Youtube.

He makes and sells bottle and jar lids that help the jar stand upright but have little holes on the sides so water will dribble out into the pebbles as needed. You can also buy the pattern and print your own if you have a 3D printer. I may enlist my daughter and her friend to do that for me since they co-own one. 

I'd like to have several bowls going, but not have to spritz them several times a day like I do with this bowl of pea sprouts. We'll see.

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The fun of learning cheese-making continues. So far my Farmhouse Cheddar is turning out more like Parmesan - quite sharp and hard, but we both like it (though I would prefer a little less sharp), so I continue as is, making the process a little more effecient as I go. Maybe I should just call it "Parmhouse Cheese" and be happy. We are eager to taste the latest two batches because I mixed in dried, minced garlic and onion and they sure smell good!

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Another recent and quick project was to make drapes for our favorite his and hers chairs that have been unbeautified by a naughty but loveable kitty.

So, I did this...

I wanted to do both in the buffalo checks, but they didn't have enough of that fabric, so I went with the gray. I bought those clips with elastic between them for holding sheet onto mattresses, but they just didn't work with trying to keep them hidden, so I ended up with four safety pins per chair and they're pretty hidden. So far we're liking them.

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This week's goals:

* Finish organizing the sewing room. I moved furniture in and out and reset up some stuff on Saturday,     but it is far from organized. I also want to improve the lighting in there.

* Neaten the bedroom. I have a similar situation here in that I cleared my corner desk, but just plopped     stuff on the floor so now I need to sort through it and organize/trash stuff.

* Move canning jar shelving to the storage room that's cooler and more suitable.

* Bind the Christmas wallhanging that I hand-quilted. 

* Fix a friend's boyhood quilt that his grandmother made him. It seems to have been attacked by mice       and I hope to applique over the holes.

I have other hopes, too, but I tend to have gandiose plans that I can't meet, so I'll try to tame myself. And, of course, I still have my ongoing cross-stitching in the evenings (that may have to command a greater portion of my time so it can get finished in time for birthday gifting).

Oh, and I just remembered that it's coming to the end of the month and I haven't done much of anything on my Chookshed Challenge. Yikes!

I hope your week is productive and enjoyable!