My favorite day

This is my favorite kind of day.

It's cloudy and a steady rain is pouring outside. I don't have to go anywhere, I have PLENTY to do inside. One task is making a large pot of soup, probably a Mexican-chicken type soup and some jazzed up cornbread. I'd love to bake up several things, but I must concentrate on the high priority stuff first :)

I like Mondays. Usually. The weekend is a nice break from the weekly 'grind', but then it seems everything I worked on during the week gets demolished in one day on the weekend. At one point of frustration I actually asked my husband, " Am I the maid?" He promptly got to work picking up after himself. Normally I wouldn't mind as much, but it has only been a month since I had a baby and surgery, and I am the primary caretaker of her. However, my beloved husband made all the meals this whole weekend, just because it seems the baby always needs to eat when I need to cook.

Back to Monday. I usually have the same work awaiting me on Monday morning. The girls' massive amounts of clothes need washing as do mine and dh's. It's probably not that much clothing, just that I have four girls to launder! I used to follow the clean schedule on Candy's blog, so on Monday's I would clean my stove and all appliances and do laundry. All those things need cleaning, but I didn't even put that on my list of MUST do's today.

I'm in the process of creating a new plan for us instead of just writing a daily list of tasks and keeping things afloat in my brain :) I'm still thinking on it...

About the baby wrap, I bought it. It's one LOOOONNGGG piece of stretchy soft fabric. After you tie it on and put the baby in, it sort of feels like the baby is inside your shirt. It's very comfortable and snug. For more info go to www.sleepywrap.com It cost $30 and there are lots of colors. I felt it was necessary because now that I have 4 children and only two hands, freeing them up when going out would be nice. I chose this green color in case we ended up with a boy and also if my husband wants to wear it.



The peanut butter cups! I got the recipe from the Nourishing Gourmet, click it on the left hand sidebar. I had to modify it though because something WEIRD happened to my chocolate the first time. This is what I did:

I used 1 cup all natural peanut butter- melt it with 1/4 coconut oil and about 1/4 c raw honey. I also added a pinch of sea salt because I love the salty with the chocolate. I had to melt it in a double boiler to get it mixed because my peanut butter was old :( Once smoothed out, I spooned it into a mini muffin pan. Then you put this in the freezer till solid, around 30-45 minutes.
The recipe calls 4oz unsweetened baking chocolate that you sweeten with the honey, but, mine seized up into a brick! Luckily I had some semi sweet chocolate chips, so I melted those and and spread it on the top of the little cups. Pop it back into the freezer. To eat, just use a butter knife to pop them out. You can let it thaw a minute or so, or start licking on it like a popsicle :)


I LOVE peanut butter anything, and Reese's are my absolute favorite candy with Snickers a close second. At Christmas I adore making the ritz crackers filled with peanut butter and dipped in chocolate- salty, chocolaty and peanut butter!!! So, I am very glad to have a healthy dessert to keep around for those cravings. I'll try to just keep a good quality dark chocolate on hand for this though instead of the baking chocolate. I'll reserve that for, baking!

Ok, I'm really getting the itch to cover my home in fall colors! Every time I need to run to the store I have to go drool over the fall decor. I did buy a tablecloth last week, so this week I'll try to get some candles and some flowers and whatever else I can fit into the budget :)

Also, I would like to have an 'Open House' discussion. What I mean is, I need to 'cozy up' my kitchen and make it more homey. I might take a closer video of it to put up here and see what you all can contribute to give me some ideas. It feels pretty sterile right now because I have a huge blank white wall and fluorescent lights. Whatever I do it needs to be simple- no major painting or wallpaper- since my time is needed elsewhere right now.