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This week has flown by!

The husband got a promotion (yay!) that included a switch back to day shift; he’s worked nights for years and years, so this is a bit of an adjustment for both of us. It’s awesome to be able to do things as a couple in the evening; we went to the mall one night, and watched a movie on another. And we get to eat dinner together!

The middle son is learning to drive, and seems to have a propensity for speed… Going to have to keep an eye on that one. He practices every chance he gets, which probably isn’t often enough for his liking.

We’ve got the new garden ‘installed’ in the backyard and half planted. I will sow seeds in the other half this weekend: peas, beans, zucchini, pumpkin, lettuce, etc. There is a long list of yardwork waiting for us, as we’re still pulling out undesirable plants and putting in ones more suited for each area.

I’ve been going to Zumba classes for about six weeks now and have dropped a few pounds. My legs are stronger and I’m starting to see a hint of the waist that’s been hiding for decades. I’ve got a ways to go yet, but I am enjoying the classes and have let go of my inhibitions so that I shake and shimmy with as much energy as I can muster. I’m sure my kids would be mortified, and I am certain nobody over the age of about 25 should be attempting these moves in public, but nobody has asked me to leave yet.

In knitting news, I have been working on a couple pairs of socks, a shawl, and a market bag, and occasionally put a row into an afghan. I will finish off one pair of the socks this weekend, for sure.

I’ve got a craft show coming up next month, so I need to spend some time prepping. There’s a new tent to test out (to make sure it’s going to keep out the rain so we don’t have a repeat of last year), labels to print, lotions to make, signs to update, displays to finish…

Plus, we’ve got an exchange student arriving in seven weeks. There is stuff we need to get done before she gets here.

Summer always seems to go so quickly!

Pay it off quicker

With my mortgage refinance in the works, I figured today would be a good day to share a simple tool for calculating how you can, by paying just a little extra on your monthly mortgage bill, pay it off sooner and save tons of money in the process.  I’ve always rounded up our payment to the nearest hundred dollars – for the past few years, that means just $35 a month extra – but while that seems a rather insignificant amount, over the course of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage that would knock SIX YEARS off the end of my mortgage period. Six years, and some seventy-thousand dollars in interest payments.

Working on my new mortgage terms, I wanted to see how I can pay it off sooner, like in 20 years instead of 30, and so I pulled up a handy-dandy calculator in Excel that lets you play with the numbers. For me to shave ten years (and save over $80k in interest payments) I would have to send in an extra $300 a month – but on my new terms that is still less than what I was paying so it’s very doable, and would save me so much money…

If you want to give it a try, here’s a link to an Excel worksheet that you can customize with your mortgage balance and interest rate, and lets you play around with other info (like the extra payments): Home Mortgage Calculator in Excel

If you are not an Excel fan, you can do this kind of thing online as well; here’s a link to a very simple one:  Mortgage Payoff Calculator

Got the urge

Waking up too early on a Sunday was a good incentive to tackle an organizing project I have successfully put off for years: getting my printed knitting & crochet patterns separated and put into binders. I usually just stack them up on a shelf, which is not only messy, it makes it nigh impossible to find one and I end up printing out duplicates.

‘Net-less

Comcast / Xfinity has been out of service in our area for a few days now and the recorded message says to expect 40+ more hours of outage. I’ve got a hinky connection at the moment with a mobile broadband device, but it’s rather like being on dial-up, so I’m keeping my internet forays brief. I do have a smartphone, so I’m not totallly cut off – but watching movies on the wee screen is not much fun. We are so deprived. (or is that depraved?)

In the interim, I’ve been mucking about the house cooking and baking, sweeping and dusting, making soap and spinning. Knit a small project yesterday, a bandana cowl that is soft and scrumptious – it’s mystery yarn from the stash, feels (and acts) like wool and knit up beautifully in warm copper tones.

I bought yarn for a few more projects (and before you give me a bad time about buying yarn, just shut it. I had yarn money tucked away for the Seattle-to-Portland Yarn Train event, but that was cancelled on account of the snowmageddon that rolled through the west coast. They were planned purchases, and there are projects lined up for the new yarn, and I stayed within my budget. So there. *insert raspberry noise here*)

And the spinning – I finished a bobbin of merino wool, 4 ounces to be exact, spun nice and thin. It will be plied with a merino/silk blend that I just started on. The color of this single is somewhere in the mauve family, but with a touch more purple. I still don’t have a real camera, so the phone pic will have to suffice.

There’s a beef stew in the crockpot for dinner, and I am considering doing a bit of quilting (bought a new thimble yesterday, to replace the one that has gone missing – probably stolen by the kitten) while watching Firefly episodes. I may not be able to watch Netflix, but I have Firefly on DVD so all is not lost.  I’ve spent a lot of time at home the past week but have not made much of a dent in the housework; I’m starting to think I’m not very fond of housework.  Baking, yes – we’ve been enjoying an array of nummies – but the dusting, not so much. Any volunteers?

In with the new

And out with the old! I bought six new blouses today (majorly on sale!) and before I hung them up I chose seven shirts, two dresses, and two pairs of pants from my closet that I no longer wear and bagged them up for donation. That’s been my new standard procedure for clothes shopping: must donate at least one item for every new item purchased. Feel free to join me if your closet is out of control.

Long weekends

I must say, I could get used to four-day weekends. Thursday was full of family and food, Friday was a fun day of soap sales at my first open house, and Saturday so far is mostly for knitting and watching Breaking Bad episodes on Netflix. I do need to go out and tidy up my soap room a bit, and get out for a walk this afternoon – but for now, I have my slippers on and a cup of tea at hand.

On the knitting front: I’ve been plugging away on my wooly rib warmer but am running out of wool… I have pulled a darker brown from my stash and the upper back will just be a different color than the front, nothing I can do about that. I’ll call it a Design Element. Or a Happy Accident a la Bob Ross.

On the home front: we know that winter has truly set in when Snickerdoodle starts to brood over the heat registers.

Speaking of cats, I’m still not certain we should put up a Christmas tree this year… The kitten continues to be a chewer and all-around pesky hooligan that is prone to psychotic freak-outs that involve gymnastics on her cat tree and wind sprints across the wood floors. Earlier I was making eggs and watching her contortions on the cat tree, I turned away for thirty seconds and when I looked back she had raced across the room and grabbed my knitting. A Christmas tree just sounds like too much of a temptation. Wonder if the kids would be disappointed if we skipped it?

Brief and random

It’s raining the proverbial cats and dogs out there and it’s a holiday week. Hooray! I’m looking forward to having four days off with very little to do – aside from eating copious amounts of turkey tomorrow and hosting an open house soap sale on Friday. I foresee lots of knitting and movie-watching and maybe a bit of sewing.  Oooh, maybe I’ll finish spinning up the wool/mohair I got for my birthday!

In other news: I learned a new word yesterday: spatchcocking. It’s not as naughty as it appears – go ahead and Google it. I’m going to have to give it a try soon.

And: I have to reiterate how great it is to work next to the Pike Place Market. While the throngs of tourists annoy me with their sidewalk-clogging ways, it is awesome to have such ready access to fresh produce, meats, and seafood. Last night I picked up a couple of rainbow trout for dinner and they were mmmmm-delicious with a light breading and pan-fried.

I’ll leave you with this little bit of cuteness:

Domestic Saturday

I kicked off the day with a cup of coffee and the last chapter in my book club book, but then had to don my domestic hat and take care of some business. I put it off as long as possible, but the house was in need of serious attention. Today I got the kitchen and front room clean – carpet, floor, windows, drapes, and furniture covers. I even dusted! Did some laundry, and mopped the dining room and bathroom, too. Tomorrow I have to tackle the dining room table and the family room, give the bathroom a once-over (I keep the bathroom pretty clean, so it doesn’t need much), and put new sheets on the bed. I toodled around in my soap room a bit too, packed up a wholesale order and updated my website. Chris got the fans and some random camping stuff put up in the attic, then he worked on the car all afternoon. We’ve got a bag of stuff to drop off at the Goodwill tomorrow, and I’m going to take our old CPU to the recycling place. Feels good to clear out the clutter.

Since the kitchen was clean, I went ahead and messed it up again by making peanut butter bars, then got some dinner going (a roasted chicken, plus a cheesy potatoes & carrot bake), and there will be corn bread later as well. All of the recipes came from my trusty red plaid Betty Crocker cookbook. Sure smells good in here.

At the moment I’m relaxing, waiting for dinner to cook. There’s still a good half hour on the timer, so maybe I’ll pull up something on Netflix and knit on my mittens a bit. They are almost done and I can’t decide what to make with the extra yarn – a hat? A cowl?

Jam time

Things are finally ripening around here, and yesterday we went to pick strawberries. Came home with six pounds, plus a flat of fresh raspberries and a pound of rainier cherries. I pulled out last year’s blackberries from the deep freezer, and after a quick run to the store for pectin and some supplemental fruit, made jam. A lot of jam.
Put up in the pantry are now nearly 60 jars: strawberry, raspberry, blackberry (with a touch of sage), boysenberry, cherry-apple, peach-pineapple, and strawberry-kiwi (with lime juice).

No-bake cookies

In a large saucepan:
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
1/2 cup milk
2 cups sugar
4 Tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Bring to rolling boil, boil one minute. Remove from heat and add:
1/2 cup peanut butter
3 cups “quick oats”
2 tsp vanilla

Stir well, then drop by spoonfuls onto parchment or waxed paper; allow to cool. Enjoy!