The Busy Busy Saturday

I get ideas sometimes, about things I would like to try and do.  My ideas usually involve the kitchen and usually involve a big mess.  My ideas tend to make my husband a little nervous. This is because he is the chief kitchen cleaner upper in our family.  This past weekend Will was away at a men’s church retreat. I decided it would be a great day to try two potentially very messy things for the first time – bread and laundry soap.

I asked my friend and fellow kitchen-ista Jessica to come over and guide me through my first bread making attempt (her husband was retreating too).

It was a very very busy day.

8 AM Blueberry Muffins

9 AM Ace Hardware

11 AM – Bread Making

12 PM Bread has risen the first time!

1 PM Time to play outside

Super cute Natalie!

I love this one, Joanna had not fallen, she was just down there.

 

 

   

 

  

2 PM Bread has risen twice more and is ready for baking (In hindsight I think it should have been left to rise a bit more.)

2:45 Bread!  Oh, it is so tasty and good. Thank you for teaching me and sharing the recipe Jessica! See the Pence blog, she brought over her cake stuff and made TWO cakes while I made the bread and we watched and fed four kids 5 and under! Are we super Moms or what???? ;)

3 PM Time to make laundry soap

I used the recipe from the Duggar Family website. I figured they probably know what they are talking about when it comes to doing laundry.

I added some lavender and sage to the soap. The Fels Naptha smells like lemon so the finished soap smells great. I made five gallons. What you do is then pour it into an empty laundry soap container to about halfway and then fill the other half with water, my point being this is going to last a really long time.  Cost, including the new bucket and lid was 11 dollars. I can make about ten more batches with the supplies I bought, I think this comes out to like .01 per load.  (I haven’t used it yet because I’m still waiting to use up the rest of a bottle we already have)

4 PM Baked chocolate chip cookies

5 PM NAP TIME! Bella, Jacob and I all took a major snooze until almost 7 PM. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

7:30 PM We woke up and went to Chili’s. The balloon lady was there. I dread the balloon lady because it means that what I had hoped would be a quick and quiet meal ends up being an hour of major balloon smack fest between Jacob’s blue giraffe and Bella’s pink poodle. The giraffe won I think, mostly because Bella somehow popped the face of her dog (but the rest of it stayed together).

9 PM Home again & bath time. I redraw a dog face onto Bella’s poodle. The giraffe came completely undone in the car and the ensuing upset was resolved when I told Jacob it was now a snake.

Bella now cries because hers is not a snake. A few more wacks and hers comes undone and is now also a snake, with an oddly placed dog face on one side.

10 PM Children are in bed (remember they napped until 7, so this isn’t as horrible as it sounds. Wait. Yes, actually it was horrible. Bella-after-9 PM is not for the faint-hearted)

10:15 PM I discover that we are utterly and completely out of dishwasher soap. And I have a lot, a lot, a lot of dirty dishes. 

10:40 PM I dry and put away the last dish. I hurt. I am unaccustomed to kneading bread or hefting about 5 gallon buckets of slime. I am a wimp.

11 PM I comfort myself with half a loaf of homemade bread, a spoon and a jar of Nutella. Remember the Titans is on television. The kitchen is clean and the whole house smells like cake, bread, cookies, lemon, lavender and sage. Probably the best smell combination ever.

1 AM The Titans win the championship and my long satisfying Saturday comes to an end.

Sunday 6:47 AM “Mommy, wake up, wake up, Daddy’s coming home today!”

(Notice that 6:47 AM minus 1 AM DOES NOT equal 8 hours!!!)

Church & rest & a short trip to HEB to buy meat (I am done buying meat at Krogers)  Discovery channel had specials about Egypt all day long. Will slept. Despite (or perhaps because of) staying up until 10 PM the night before, Bella and Jacob did.not.nap. I snoozed while the children built the Valley of the Kings with blocks on the living room floor. Actually this was quite impressive, Jacob had the two big pyramids and the littler third one off in the distance and everything, neat. When it got dark we told them it was bedtime, even though it was only 7:45. I had that gritty feeling to my eyes and a sort of desperate tiredness. I fell into a deep sleep on the couch and missed finding out whatever it was they found out from the DNA sample of King Tut’s femur.

Monday: The tiredness from Sunday reveals itself as a full on cold. I have taken the kids to school and plan to spend some quality time on the couch with the remote. I may shuffle into the kitchen this afternoon though because chicken and dumplings is sounding really good right about now. And HEB had chicken breasts on sale for $1 pound.