Top Ten of What's Keeping me Busy in no particular order...

Top Ten of what is keeping me busy .......in no particular order.
This is basically a catch up blog. Things that deserve separate posts, but will be satisfied with just one.

10. Constructing a padded headboard for our bedroom. Something that has been on my to do list since we moved into our house a year ago. I have wanted to do one of these for a long time. I still need to attach it to the wall and do a little tweaking. But overall I am satisfied, even though it isn't perfectly square.

9. Organizing and cleaning. Brinton and I wanted to be able to park in the garage for the winter so we got our garage semi-organized. I say semi because as you can see there is still a mountain of stuff, the great feat is that it is all stacked at the back of the garage. But there is room for two cars. All we need to do now is get the garage door opener working properly!! The cars were parked in there when we were on vacation, but haven't returned there since.

8. Refinishing project. This will be our toy storage when I get it completed. So far I have sanded and will be priming and painting next. We’ll see if I actually get pictures up on the blog when I get it done.

7. Loven up our little munchkin, I mean Turkey. This was her Thanksgiving duds!

6. Cruised to Mexico and back. We took a great family vacation with Brinton’s parents, sisters and their spouses. We had three stops, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, and Puerto Vallarta. The weather was wonderful and warm, almost a little too hot. It felt like summer all over again which has wonderful! We went on an “Extreme Canopy” tour. It started with an hour boat ride. After our smooth ride on the water, we entered a mix between a hummer and a jeep and took a bumpy ride up into the jungle canopy. Next we rode mules up more windy trails. Then the exciting part where we rode back down out of the jungle by zip lines and repelling. In our group of around 15 I was the first one to go on nearly each platform. The first zip line was around 150 feet above the jungle ground. It was thrilling and ended far too soon. Three quarters of the way through we got to the waterfalls where we repelled down. Well at least we repelled down the first. The second they told us to go over the edge, then free fall and they would catch us on belet. ?sp?? We then stopped suddenly before hitting the pool of water, they took our picture, then all of a sudden we were dropped into the water. It was a wonderful memorable adventure. The last cruise I went on I didn’t accompany my friends on the canopy tour and regretted it, that is one reason it was a must for this trip. I would post pictures from our excursion, but really they are a little too revealing, ya know with the tight harness and all.

5. Baking Bread. I am learning how to become a home maker. It has been fun. Each week or so I try out a new bread recipe. So far I have tried four different recipes including Sister Hinckley’s. They are all good in some way or another. So all of you who have yummy whole wheat bread recipes pass them my way. I would like to give them a try. I have two or three more before I run out of recipes that I have stumbled across. The picture is from today's batch. I even experimented with making cinnamon raisin bread.

4. Food Storage. This is in combination with couponing, I suppose. I have been subscribing to five Sunday papers so that I can get five sets of Sunday coupons so that when there are sales I can stock up on items. It has been a lot of fun. There are some things I need to continue to get for our storage. But over all we have a great start from what I have canned and gathered. Costco had a great sale on their 45#s of wheat. I stocked up and purchased seven. On my to do list, I will make a fabric cover to cover all this wheat. As you can see, in our garage clean up we finally set up both of our Shelf Reliance. I still need to work on filling the second unit, but we will get there. One of the big things we still need is a way to store large amounts of water. Anyone have any thrifty resources for barrels?

3. Managing our rental. Our renters are moving out at the end of the month. We are grateful that they have been good renters for the most part. There has been a couple of late rents, but over all they have gotten us the money. We are so grateful!! So keep you ear out for us. We have a three bedroom two bath in West Boise with a fireplace, washer dryer, fenced yard, two car garage for $850+deposite. It will be available Jan 1st.

2. Working Out. After having a baby, lacking sleep and going on an all you can eat cruise. All I can say is that my body is in desperate need of some TLC. I have been using the elliptical that was gathering dust and Brinton’s TKO machine which was gathering even more dust. I put Daisylyn in the doorway jumper and she has a great time “dancing” to the music as I workout. It is great to have a punching bag to work out any frustrations.

1. Cutting back on Holiday shopping. Typically I thrive on getting good deals and shopping. Brinton and I are trying to cut back on our spending to focus on more important things in life. I did however have to do one Black Friday shopping trip. I got a gift for Brinton and one for Daisylyn at Kohls. It was fun to hear the stories of those who hadn’t been to bed yet and had been shopping since 11pm the previous evening, at the time it was 10:00 in the morning. They were complaining. I was thinking, why on earth are you doing this to yourself????? I love getting a good deal and I don’t mind getting up super early for the deal if it is really that important to me (which I must say it has been many years since I have done any early shopping on Black Friday). If I do, I sure hope you don’t find me whining as I wait in line to buy something for someone (or myself) that they probably didn’t need that bad!

Now I know why I don't blog very often. It takes way too long to convert my pictures to a smaller file for the internet so it is essentially faster when I upload them, but it took me well over an hour to do this post.