Monthly Goals for November 2015

     November is going to be a busy month. I have set a lot of goals this month. There is a lot going on too. My favorite holiday is this month! It is Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving it is the only holiday that can't be over taking by gifts. 😊

Start of my monthly goals for my binder 

Monthly Goals 

1.  Workout- I want to workout everyday according to the T25 workout program. The days I workout I will mark with a sticker. 
2. Cooking- stick to my monthly menu and don't eat out. If I stick to the menu I will be on THM most of the time. This will help me get healthlier. 
3. Healthy Eating - Eat every 3 hours, and try to keep it on my THM program. Also I want to work on giving up sugar. This will be hard because I'm not going to add any stevia to my diet right now. 
4. Personal - I want to take a weekly photo of how I'm doing with losing weight as getting healthier. I also want to only use the scale once a week. 
5. Gardening- start to post more with what is going on in my garden. I really have not  been posting what I'm doing. 
6. Gardening - I want to pick 5 things this month to learn about and post something I learned about them daily on Facebook.
7. Gardening -  I want to plant Mums and mulch around my fruit trees. 
8. Church - I want to have my weekly lesson plans planned by Wednesday of each week. 
9. Home - I want to keep up on keeping the house clean and stick to the cleaning schedules. 
10. Family - I want to have a Family Home Evening (FHM) once a week. 

     These are the major things I would like to do this month. This helps me sticking to my yearly goals by breaking them down. I also can feel like I did something this month and not let the holiday stuff over take me. What are your goals in November? 

      

Cooking - Weekly Menu

     It's time to get back to my THM lifestyle! Break from it and I gained back to good amount of weight. With most of the recipes you can adjust it for your family and what works best for them. 

SEP 28 - MONDAY
breakfast	(THM-S) Coffee With Protien
lunch	(THM-S) Turkey Wrap
lunch	Red Pepper
lunch	Strawberries
snacks	(THM-E) Yogurt
dinner	(THM-S) Taco Salad
SEP 29 - TUESDAY
breakfast	(THM-E) Peach Oatmeal
lunch	Beef And Vegetable Soup
snacks	Almonds
snacks	Cheese Stick
dinner	(THM-E) Chicken Breasts With Sweet Potatoes
SEP 30 - WEDNESDAY
breakfast	(THM-S) Strawberry Cheesecake Smoothie
lunch	(THM-S) Chicken Salad With Dressing
snacks	(THM-E) Yogurt
dinner	Chicken Dumplings
OCT 01 - THURSDAY
breakfast	(THM-E) Peach Oatmeal
lunch	(THM-S) Chicken Salad wrap
lunch	Cucumbers
lunch	Blueberries
snacks	(THM-S) Wasa Crackers
snacks	Laugh Cow Cheese
dinner	(THM-E) Chili
OCT 02 - FRIDAY
breakfast	(THM-S) Strawberry Cheesecake Smoothie
lunch	(THM-S) Taco Salad
dinner	(THM-E) Chili Salad
OCT 03 - SATURDAY
breakfast	(THM-S) Egg omelet With Green Peppers, Mushroom And Laughing Cow Cheese
lunch	(THM-E) Chicken Breasts With Sweet Potatoes
dinner	(THM-S) Egg roll In An Bowl
OCT 04 - SUNDAY
breakfast	(THM-E) Carrot Cake Smoothie
lunch	Leftover
dinner	Leftovers

 

     This is the family menu for this week. I will change it a little person in the family so they will eat it. This is what we are planning. What are you doing this week for dinner? 

Pinterest Find of the Day ~ Canning Tomatoes

    
     Did you ever wanted how many tomato plants do I need to have a pantry of tomato products for the year? I have. I love the idea of having my homemade tomato sauce on all our food. This will let me know my family is eating healthy and organic food. It will take out BPA, pesticides, and other chemical they add to the food.

Here is my find

     Here is a awesome site I found on Pinterest about knowing how many tomato plants it takes to fill up  my pantry.  According to Kris Bordessa  at Attainable Sustainable, she need 17-25 plants to feeed her family. Looking at what she has canned I think I would need half that amount. Which leads me to plant 9-13 tomato plants for my family. Check out her whole article Tomato Math -How Many Plant is Enough .   

Join me on Facebook at  Pa Gardeners and on Pinterest at Missy Life of a Working Mom to see what I am up too.

Gardening - 8 Weeks After Last Frost 2015- Weekly Goals

My garden book with my notes

     By having a journal you can see what was going on in the garden the years before and that will help you prepare for your garden this week. As you can see last year around this week it was super hot and my plants were dying. This note will help me be prepared for hot weather and think about my plants in pots. Do you keep notes on what's going on in your garden? Does it help you with your garden? 

Weekly Gardening Goals

1.  Plant Fall Seeds - I need to plant lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, and turnips.
2. Hornworms - I need to keep an eye out for Hornworms. 
3. Cleaning veggie and fruit - I need to make some veggie and fruit cleaner. 
4. Mulch - I need to mulch around the fence around the garden. 
5. Harvest - harvest squash, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, raspberries, and beans. 

This week I also want to work on my gardening goals for 7 weeks before last frost. What are you doing in your gardens his week? 

Check here to see what I did last week in the garden. 

Gardening - 6 weeks after last frost 2015 - weekly garden review 

Gardening - 7 weeks after last frost 2015 - weekly gardening goal review

Gardening - 7 Weeks after last frost 2015 - Garden Goals review

    I hate to say this but I'm going to perfectly honest. I didn't get any of my goals done this week. I don't want to lye and say I did. I know what your thinking then what did I do this week? Did I do anything around the homestead? The answer is yes we did a lot.

This week I 

1. 

   Hubby and I harvesting raspberries

   Harvested raspberries! We harvested over 3lbs worth. We harvest in the rain, and after work. You can read more about our adventure on my post Gardening- Harvesting Raspberries .
2.  We also bought $10 worth of corn last Saturday and we worked on storing it. On Monday night we froze the corn for future use. You will see a post about this later on when I finish with all my ways of storing my corn. 

   

   Freezing corn

3.  I also bought $20 each of blueberries and strawberries and cleaned and froze them for future us!!



Baggie of freeze raspberries

4. I also stored our raspberries that we picked this weekend by freezing them!  You can check out my post Harvesting and Storage - Freezing Raspberries for my step to step instructions for how to freeze raspberries. 
5. I also weeded around my vegetable garden and planted flowers. It's ready to be mulched. 

   

   My weeded area!

Last Weeks Garden goals

1. Rooting plants - I want to start to cut plants that won't seed and start to help them grow roots. I would like to do this to the lavender and rosemary. - didn't get to
2. Blossom Blight - It has rained her so much that I need to keep a good eye on my plants. I have to really keep an eye on the squash so it doesn't get blossom blight. - I didn't get to
3. Plant seeds for fall harvest - in all the areas around the garden that haven't gotten plants growning in them I want to start to plant carrots, turips, Swiss chard, brussel sprouts. - I didn't get too
4. Plant the plants that are growning - I have flowers and veggies to get in to the ground. I want to work on that this week. - started but didn't finish 
5. Mulch - mulch around the garden fence. I planted plants in it but the wedding are coming back so fast. I really need to mulch it - started but didn't get too 

Check here to see what I did last week in the garden. 

Gardening - 6 weeks after last frost 2015 - weekly garden review

Harvesting and Storage - Freezing Raspberries

Harvesting and clean raspberries

     After harvesting so many raspberries, we had to save them for use though out the year. This week we decide to save them by putting them in the freezer. I have 6 easy steps to have raspberries in the freezer. 

Laying out the raspberries and freezing them

How to Freeze Raspberries

1. Harvest raspberry/ or buy them
2. Clean them - soak them in 2-3tbsp of vinegar and gallon of water. I let them soak for about 15-20 minute. This kills bacteria and any bugs in it. 
3. Drain - I drain then and let them dry for a few minutes. 
4. Cookie sheet - Put them on a cookie sheet and speard them out. 
5. Freezer - I stick the whole cookie sheet in the freezer and freeze them for about 4-5 hours. 
6. Freeze Bag - I take a spatula and scoop the frozen berries off the cookie sheet and but them in a freezer bag. 

my 2/3 full gallon freezer bag of raspberries

     It's that easy! Then you have raspberries to cook with or eat frozen. Do you freeze any of your fruit? If so how do you freeze it?

Gardening - Harvesting raspberries

Mmmm raspberries on the vine

          This weekend red raspberries have come in! I was so excited. I love fresh fruit. We try to harvest more then we will eat in a week to freeze and us though out the year. It helps us save money. It give us free organic raspberries. 

I harvest these with Hubby on Sunday

     We had my niece and nephew over for the day on Friday and the picked about a half of pound. It was nice to see them picking them and having fun. 

Everyone helped even the dog 

     Hubby and I went harvesting on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon. We took the dog with us. He love eating the few berries we dropped. We did find some black berries too. Mmmmm 

Here are the other ones harvested this week. One from cass and one with hubby. 

     We harvested about 2.5lbs of berries this weekend. It was a lot of fun and there are still many berries to harvest next weekend! Are you harvesting wild berries near you? If so what kinds are you harvesting.