Snow is falling and the tree is up!

Christmas is here in the Evans' house! Snow if falling outside, the tree is up, and the sugar cookie candles are out! Yumm...

I love this time of year! Bring on the hot chocolate and Christmas music! :-P On a side note, I have added a link on the left so you can always see up-to-date photos of my stockpile. It's always a work in progress... I did come across this website today (http://dehydrate2store.com/) and it has definitely inspired me to dehydrate more then I do. And I love the ideas of dehydrating soup ingredients and having them stored in the same bag together. I'm definitely going to be trying that out. Speaking of trying things out, I am trying out the bread recipe that is on that site. I'll let you all know how it goes!

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, I have totally slacked on posting to the blog because I have been busy. Thanksgiving was a blast. Definitely ate way to much food! I'm now busy trying to get all the Christmas decor out and get the tree done. I'll post pics when it's all done! So, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and I'll post again soon! :-)

Reorganized My Cabinets!

So, I completely reorganized my kitchen cabinets and I wanted to share with everyone! Things are much easier to get to now! Also, update on my monthly budget spending: Spent $57.46, so $42.54 left. Not to bad. :-)

*Sorry the pictures are so small. Hopefully this will kinda give you an idea.*

This cabinet has most of my cans, baking supplies, tea, peanut butter, etc.

Above the stove. Some more cans and broth and stove top.

Cabinet left of the stove and to the right is the fridge. This is where I keep home canned foods (which is small this year as the garden did not do well at all) and overflow of canned goods.

My spices. I love these glass jars!

My prep center. All sugars, potato flakes, cornmeal, oats, as well as salt and oils. And in the back left corner is where I store my wheat grinder. It was being used at the time. :-)

Health and Beauty storage in the hall closet. Kid specific items are kept in the kids bathroom and grown up razors are kept in our bathroom.

Garage soda and soy milk! What a combination, lol. I'm not sure if you can see in the pic, but to the left is our treadmill and to the right is our workout bike. On the top shelf is a TV and when we want to work out, we just take the xbox out there and play games or watch a movie. Makes working out a lot more fun to do! And, since the garage is heated, we are freezing while out there. :-)

Homemade Butter and Buttermilk!

So I had some heavy whipping cream in the fridge and was trying to come up with something to make with it. I remembered reading a few months back that you could make butter from it, so I decided to give it a try. And guess what, it worked! Super easy too!

What you need:

1. A good mixer, I have a Kitchen Aid.
2. Wire whisk attachment and mixing paddle attachment
3. Mixing bowl
4. Spatula
5. Heavy whipping cream
6. Ice water
7. Jar for buttermilk and a jar for your butter

Pour in the heavy whipping cream into your mixing bowl and start mixing on high with your wire whisk.

It will start to separate, as you can see in the picture. At this point, take off the wire whisk and put on the mixing paddle. And keep mixing!

As you can see it has separated out. At this point, pour your buttermilk into a jar and leave your butter in the bowl.

Add in some ice water and mix some more. Pour off the water and repeat until you get clear water. Once you do,  use your spatula to press any extra water that might be in the butter out.

And here you are, homemade butter and buttermilk. It really was super easy and did not take long at all. I used a pint sized container of heavy whipping cream and was able to get a jelly jar size of butter.

Halloween and November Challenge

Happy November 1st! I hope everyone had a great and safe Halloween and didn't eat to much candy ;-) Ben and I took the kids to Northway mall and let them walk around and do their trick or treating. They seemed to enjoy it and we didn't get to much candy, which I'm happy about. :-)


Rozalynn is a kitty cat (Meeeowww!) and Elijah is Iron Man.

On to my November challenge. Because of the holidays coming up I thought I would challenge myself and try to only spend $100 on groceries for the month. I'm going to try and only really buy produce each week and try to use up some of the stockpiles I have. We'll see how it goes. It all really depends on the sales coming up later this month, as it's baking season and those supplies should be going on some good sales soon. I plan on keeping you all updated each week on my spending to help keep me on track. I just have to keep telling myself, "I think I can! I think I can! I think I can!"