Jenyfer Matthews

But someone has to do it and that someone usually turns out to be me.

I’ve spent most of the morning sorting out all the stuff I set aside for my upcoming garage sale, which after taking a look at my calendar for the next month, I’ve decided has to be this Friday. One day only, I’m pricing things to sell.

Or at least I think so. What exactly is an old pan worth? Or a twin sized mattress cover? Books and t-shirts are easy. Kids toys imported from Egypt are a little trickier.

I guess we’ll see what happens!

Had another house inspection yesterday and the inspector did not seem overly concerned so I am hopeful we can get this all wrapped up by next week. Guess we’ll see on that as well.

I drank some more apple cider vinegar yesterday only this time I heated the water first and added a spoon of sugar. It tasted better but the fumes wafting up my nose in the steam were awful. Also, by the time I’d finished my cup, I felt as if I had been swallowing bile my esophagus felt so rough. I’m not even sure I’ve got the right kind of apple cider vinegar – it seems too filtered. Anyone got any clever ideas on how to use up nearly a gallon of it – because I don’t believe I’ll be drinking any more of it!

I just drank my first “dose” of apple cider vinegar. What can I say except ACK! That was nasty. You know I am tired of my ongoing stomach troubles if I am actually considering doing it again anyway. (Next time I’m going to add the vinegar after the water though because adding the water after made it all foamy!)

Another inspector is going to the new house tomorrow so fingers crossed we’ll get some good news and progress out of that appointment. That would probably help my stomach as well.

For now I’m distracting myself by excavating the rooms my children call their bedrooms. My daughter’s bedroom smelled like something died in it. I finally figured out it was her soccer cleats. Pee-U! I washed them, along with several other pairs of tennis shoes and they are currently sunning on our front stoop. I also found my son’s missing soccer training jersey where it was wadded up behind a bookshelf. I thought they were both suffering from seasonal allergies. It might actually have been the dust bunnies under their beds.

It’s entirely possible I left that job a wee bit too long.

In the process of cleaning their rooms, I’m also gathering items for the garage sale I am planning to have on Friday. I have to get this show on the road! I was wondering if I had enough to bother with, but then I saw what some other people were trying to sell and decided I don’t have a thing to lose by trying. If I’m lucky I’ll make enough to buy some things for the new house. Worst case scenario, I take it all to Goodwill. Either way, I won’t have to move it!

This week hasn’t gone as planned.

We were supposed to have closed on our new house on Tuesday. By Monday, that looked as if it would be pushed back a few days because the seller’s title company wasn’t ready. Then our own bank called on Monday evening to ask for some addition documentation, which I very helpfully sent them ASAP in order to keep things moving. Only it didn’t work out that way because one of the items opened up a can of worms we weren’t expecting.

Ugh.

I am hopeful it will be sorted out by next week, fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I took out some of my frustration by finally getting back to sanding the latest dresser I brought home. I really need to get a book to try and figure out how old it is and what sort of wood it might be. I’ve never seen a drawer put together like this – can you see the scallopy edge and pegs rather than the usual dovetail construction?

It wasn’t so easy to get all the old varnish off because of the detail but when I did, the wood is light colored, light, and fairly soft. I had to be very careful when using a blade to scrape out all the grooves.

I had some Danish oil left from my last dresser project and since it worked so well on that one, I decided to go with that. So far I’ve only got on two coats and it already looks fantastic. More pictures soon!

It’s already been established that I like a good deal, so how could I pass up free strawberry plants? A coworker of my husband has a small garden in their backyard and apparently their strawberries were taking over. She gave me eight plants in all. I have grand plans for putting in a garden in our yard someday, but for now, they are living in pots on my front steps.

I also did my weekly garage sale crawl this morning because what else did I have to do? I chatted with an old guy who also likes to troll the curb and garage sales for furniture to pick up, only he sells his projects. He mostly seemed to specialize in fixing up chipboard laminate stuff, but he did give me some good tips for painting if I ever choose to do that again. For the most part I was just looking because mostly it was baby items for sale. I did pick up this mug though.

I need another mug like I need a hole in the head, but how could I pass up a handmade pottery mug for $.50?

My biggest score was at a church rummage sale. It was bag day – fill a bag for $2. I found two great skirts, a blouse, and a dress. Since my bag was only 1/2 full they let me have it for $1. That’s what I call a deal!

I also bought a jug of apple cider vinegar but I admit I haven’t consumed any yet!

I won’t have to look for distractions this weekend – we have no less than FOUR soccer games TOMORROW. I’m tired just thinking about it!

Please send me good house-buying vibes for next week and have a great weekend.

Sorry I was MIA on Monday but what a weekend! My daughter and I played hooky on Friday and drove down to Indianapolis for her soccer tournament. The games themselves were fairly disappointing, but Indianapolis was fun. I was looking forward to jumping right back in to the week but Monday morning my daughter woke up sick: super congested and fairly limp. Since she goes from congested to ear infection in the blink of an eye I decided to take her to the doctor – and there went my day.

When will I ever learn that there is no catching up, there is only ever unexpected occurrences and more stuff to do?

Lately, in addition to everything else, I’ve been trying to get back to basics. I have always been thrifty by nature (doesn’t sound better than cheap??) so aside from thrift stores and upcycling old furniture (I love that term – upcycling!) if there is a way for me to make something for less, I’m all over it.

I used to make my own cleaners. It’s not hard at all and so, so much less expensive. For a long time I used baking soda as a scouring scrub – it worked beautifully in tubs and sinks (and to get crayon off walls!) and smells so much better than a commercial product like Comet. Then I moved abroad where finding baking soda wasn’t so easy and when you did find it, it wasn’t cheap! I continued to use baking soda in spite of that until we moved to Egypt – at that point I ended up importing baking soda in my suitcase every summer so it wasn’t practical to use it for cleaning.

I also used to make my own all purpose cleaners by either putting a drop of dish liquid in a spray bottle of water or a 50/50 mix of water and white vinegar with an optional drop of tea tree oil. I did the same with mopping. Both of these options work very well but I got away from using them when I had a housekeeper coming in while we lived in Cairo because it was too difficult to explain what was meant for what. I did put my foot down when she tried mop my house with bleach however. Pee-U! It’s not an operating room – merelyclean is good enough.

I have a husband who actually likes to grocery shop but unfortunately he sometimes comes home with odd items. One week he bought a container of buttermilk to use in smoothies – then remembered he doesn’t actually like buttermilk in smoothies. What to do? I decided to try something I’d seen on another blog and use the buttermilk as a facial.

I admit it was a little odd to dab buttermilk all over my face and neck – it isn’t an unpleasant smell precisely, but it seems wrong to be putting it on your skin! All I did was dab it on with a cotton ball, wait about 5 minutes for it to dry, and then wiped it off with a washcloth and warm water. I could not believe how smooth and soft my skin was afterwards. From what I read about buttermilk before trying it, it contains lactic acid which gently sloughs off the old skin cells. Apparently it can also lighten dark spots over time as well. I haven’t used it long enough to see any effect on the few dark spots I have, but I’m totally sold on the skin softening aspect. It is certainly cheaper than the bleaching treatment and prescription creams my dermatologist pushes.

And with what buttermilk is left, I can make a batch of pancakes. Win-win.

I recently read that drinking apple cider vinegar is good for stomach ailments and also headaches. If I can actually stomach it, maybe I can put all my doctors out of business…

I have always wanted to master the art of making pie crusts. It is an art: though the ingredients are few, a successful pie crust lies in the hands of the baker. You’d think that as cold as my hands are, I’d be a genius at making pie crusts, but no. Somehow I always manage to over-handle them and they end up hard and the opposite of flaky. Crunchy? Brittle?

I made one really good pie crust once – or two since it was an apple pie. I grated a stick of cold butter into the flour with a cheese grater instead of letting it soften first. I’ve tried that again since then and no dice.

I even bought a pastry cutter, convinced that it might do the trick, but it was no good. I’m much better off sticking to graham cracker crusts or cakes. Now that I am back in the land of refrigerator pie crusts (halleluiah!) my pastry cutter hasn’t seen much action. Until recently.

In the spirit of Cinco de Mayo, which is coming up over the weekend, I’d thought I’d pass on a little tip.

I was making guacamole one night from scratch – unlike many people if the packages of prepared guacamole available in my grocery store are any indication – and getting aggravated because the chunks of avocado were skittering away from my fork as I attempted to mash them. Then I thought of my lonely pastry cutter. Voila! When used in a suitably deep and rounded bowl, my pastry cutter worked so well to mash the avocado I’m surprised it isn’t marketed as a guacamole tool.

And seriously – why buy guacamole when it is so easy to make? I mash an avocado, add lemon and salt to taste and sometimes a dash of cumin if I’m feeling crazy. That’s it. Don’t over-complicate it. If you eat it fast enough you don’t have to worry about it turning brown either!

I’ll be in Indianapolis over the weekend, watching my daughter’s soccer team play at their big tournament so I won’t be home to celebrate the “holiday” with a pitcher of beer margaritas as would be my wish, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. Another easy-peasy recipe: 2 cans of beer, 1 can of limeade concentrate, and a limeade can-full of tequila. Mix well and serve over ice, with guacamole, chips, and friends. Have one for me and enjoy your weekend!

I have a fairly expensive sewing machine – a Bernina Aurora 440QE (quilters edition). I bought it back in 2004 when we were living in the United Arab Emirates. I’d just finished a temporary part-time job and had a little extra cash and the price of the machine was approximately half of the manufacturer’s suggested retail in the US so I leaped on my opportunity.

Truthfully, when I went into the quilt shop to make my purchase, I was aiming at the lower model because I didn’t think I required such a fancy machine – it has 379 stitches and also the new-at-the-time BSR, a stitch regulator feature for machine quilting. Of course the shop owner was trying to steer me to the upper model and I might have resisted except that the machine I was looking at didn’t come with a walking foot which I did definitely want and she also threw in a 10% discount for cash. Sold.

Since then, I have used my Bernina an awful lot but I do confess that I have primarily stuck to straight and zig-zag stitches. I’ve tried out the stitch-regulator feature a few times and have not had much success with it – I get much better results when I just machine quilt freehand. In short, I could have gotten by with a much less expensive machine. Buying this one is like buying a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store once a week.

(Previous to my Bernina I’d had a very simple Singer that had 5 stitches and that ran perfectly well in spite of my neglect)

I took my Bernina in for service last week. There was nothing wrong with it, but it had given me a service message before I left Egypt last year and then sat around while I was away. I needed a new US power cord anyway and was happy that there was a Bernina dealer within half an hour of where I live. They cleaned it up and gave me the stats – 100 hours sewing time since the last service and 2 hours with the BSR. That sounded about right.

When I went to pick it up I got to chatting with the lady working the Bernina counter and she was scandalized when I told her how little I was utilizing the various features. What can I say? Usually when you buy a machine you get free classes but my dealer was new at the time and didn’t know how to work it herself!

In short, seven years later, I’ll be taking a 2 hour private lesson on how to use my machine – which incidentally has been superseded by a new model that retails for $4300. (Not biting this time!) Hopefully I can learn some new tricks that will not only help me in my quilting but also in my plans for furniture upholstery and possibly curtains!

We are *supposed* to close on our new house next week. I’m trying not to think about it too much because I don’t want to jinx it and there is so much I want / need to do before we move!

So far I’ve spent much of Monday catching up from being away traveling here and there to soccer games over the weekend. Saturday my daughter’s team played in Ann Arbor in 38F and rain (brrr!) and Sunday they were in 70F, sunny Grand Rapids. I wish I could brag about how well they did, but I can’t. Overall, the results were disappointing for everyone. It’s very difficult to play soccer well on wet astroturf and Sunday’s team was just better than we were. Almost five hundred miles of driving and a hotel stay and we were knocked out of the tournament. Oh well.

Next weekend we go to Indianapolis.

I’ve had more than one person question my sanity and even my motives for going to such lengths for a children’s sports team. It’s just a game, right? Yes and no. It is a game, but it’s a game that takes a high level of athleticism and skill to excel at. It is also a competitive sport and therefore winning does matter.

I myself was never a sporty person. I never participated in team sports and the only team sports I watch now are the teams my children are on. Even after several years watching them play, I still probably only know about half of the rules of soccer. What I do know is that if you are going to do something, you ought to put in your best effort. If you are going to be part of a team, then you have an obligation to your teammates to be serious about your part of things.

When I make a quilt, I do it to the best of my ability. The same goes with furniture refinishing, cooking, writing – you get the idea. Why do something if you aren’t going to give it your best effort?

If my child was a bookish, studious sort and I refused to take her to the library or if she were a musical child but I didn’t support her wishes to take lessons, I’d catch flack for being unsupportive as a parent. Ironically both of my children happen to be very athletic and sporty and I still catch flack for not making them take art or music lessons. People feel very free to brag about their child’s grades by putting honor student stickers on their cars, but if I brag about my children’s sporting accomplishments, somehow I’m made to feel like an evil Tiger-mom.

When did excelling at sports become a crime?

Just as it takes an honor student many hours of work to achieve their grades, it takes many hours of practice to gain the skill needed to be a good athlete. I don’t make my children go to sports practice – I’m supporting their desire to play. Even when they don’t have practice with their team they are playing with a ball. They like it. I’m merely a facilitator, photo-journalist, cheerleader, and chauffeur.

I’ve already admitted to being fairly competitive by nature and yes, I can get a little intense when it comes to the games. I’m not going to sugar-coat my opinion of their performance if they don’t play well. What good does false praise do anyone? I’m also not one of those parents that is going to make headlines by getting into a sidelines brawl or abusing my child on the field because I also know that the kids are harder on themselves than I could ever be.

I am however getting a little sick of people telling me that I’m ruining their childhood by “making them” play sports. I can’t make either kid pick up their shoes, let alone play sports and frankly, we’d have a lot more fun money if they weren’t in sports. If your child is into art or Legos or music – great. My children are into sports and I’m okay with that.

You may have wondered why I haven’t posted in a while about any new recipes I’ve tried. Who has time to try new recipes?? I’ve been reduced to feeding people, not cooking meals.

Since both children were invited to join travel soccer teams, they have three 2-hour practices a week. I’m actually very very lucky that they practice on the same nights and at roughly the same time! It does however mean that three nights a week they are gone right when I would normally be serving dinner and so need to eat both before and after practice. (Oh, to be young and be able to eat and eat and eat and never gain any weight!)

In addition to three nights of practice, there are two soccer games (one per child) on both Saturday and Sunday – and one or the other or both games might be out of town. I am fairly organized about things, but I have yet to get to the level of cooking a meal when I’m not actually home.

(This weekend I will be in Ann Arbor and also Grand Rapids – hubby will be on his own!)

Eating on the run doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking – I’ve just stuck to simpler, more familiar meals. I still strive to offer healthy options – I have much higher standards for what my children eat than for myself! In colder weather, I like to make a big pot of soup at least once a week, half of which I freeze for a future meal. Last week I made two pans of lasagna which made for a really convenient and tasty meal on one of the days we had nearly back-to-back soccer games. Other days I just put out sub-rolls, cold cuts, and veggies. We’ve had pizza several times as well, but we’ve only bought it once. What can I say – some days I have more energy than others.

Another six weeks of soccer season and then we’ll have the summer off to rest up… for the even longer fall soccer season. Sigh.

Maybe I’ll be more inspired to cook when I’m in my new kitchen in my new house… only two weeks til we close!

What’s your favorite fast-food meal?

This has not been my week for technology.

I spent most of Monday trying to figure out why we suddenly lost our internet access. After half an hour on the phone with a computer, then finally talking to a live person, we determined that our wireless router is the problem. I was so aggravated by that point, I simply connected to my neighbor’s unsecured wireless connection, putting that issue off until another day.

With two “away” soccer games this weekend that will take me something around 7 hours accumulated driving time, I decided to have my car’s oil changed today. That shouldn’t have taken long, but of course it turned into a longer project. In the course of their “safety check” the dealership found that I had no less than 4 burned out bulbs, 3 of which were in my brake / tail lights. I am all for driving safely so I asked if I could have them replaced there. Oh yes – for $89. Hmmm… let me think about that for a nanosecond…

I decided to do it myself.

I took my list of bulbs to the parts store and got them for just over $5. The problem with changing light bulbs is not actually changing the bulb, it is figuring out which bulb is the bad one – not easy to do there are three or four in a row per rear light panel and you are alone, with no one to push the brake pedal.

I could have waited for my husband to get home from work, but that would have been too easy. Instead I brought my daughter’s full length mirror outside and propped it sideways in a drawer of the dresser that is currently out in the garage for refinishing. That worked well enough until I discovered that I was one light bulb short and had to go back to the parts store.

In short, my car is good to go for the weekend, but it’s another day down the tubes.

My husband and I haven’t gone out much on our own since the children were small because 1) we are homebodies and 2) finding a suitable babysitter isn’t always that easy. Also, my daughter really hates staying with babysitters.

This weekend my daughter was the babysitter.

When I told my daughter that we were going out for an evening and that she would be in charge she was thrilled. Her exact words were something along the lines of “Y-e-e-s-s-s-s! Don’t worry – I’ll keep my soldier in line!” I was slightly worried about my son as we were heading out, but he seemed quite relaxed and told us to “stay out as long as we liked.”

I had my phone handy the whole time we were out but there were no texts or frantic calls (phew!) When we got home, I noticed that they’d made themselves hot chocolate and polished off the marshmallows. A small price for a couple of adult-only hours.

My mother was lucky – my sister is six years older than I am so my mother had a built in babysitter. My sister was lucky because my mother paid her pretty well for watching me. My sister took babysitting to new levels. She didn’t need one of those Barbie heads to play with hair – she cut my hair instead. She did such a nice job that my mother used to encourage her to cut it. She wasn’t a bad medic either. Once, I was riding my bike with barefeet and slid to a final stop – right across the top of a wooden divider in the cement sidewalk. I got a ginormous splinter in the arch of my foot just under and parallel to the surface. I limped home and went up to my room to cry. My sister found me, assessed the situation, then got some ice and sliced my foot open with a razor blade to get what amounted to a small twig out. What a bargain for my mother – childcare, beauty treatments, and medical care for $20 week!

I myself didn’t have a younger sibling so when I wanted money above my weekly allowance, I had to find other poeple’s children to babysit. I was probably about my daughter’s age when I started to babysit.

The first couple I babysat for had two children, a boy and girl ages 7 & 5. They weren’t bad children overall and the parents always left me bags of chips and candy bars to entertain me. For a while I babysat for those children every Friday night, 7pm to midnight, for the princely sum of $10. Those were some brave parents! There were no cell phones and I am fairly certain they used to go “into town” which involved crossing a bridge and driving at least 30 miles. I was a responsible child but in retrospect, they were expecting a lot from an 11 year old. It was a pretty good gig for me, but one week I cancelled on them in favor of going to a school sock-hop and they never called me again.

The only other child I babysat for was a terror. He was 18-months old and very used to getting his own way. I myself had no real experience with such young children. His mother would go out for a couple of hours in the afternoon every week. I spent those hours keeping that child from wrecking the house, listening to him cry, and being petrified that the mother would see his red cheeks and tearful eyes when she returned and blame me. One time, some careless person set a pair of hedge clippers down in the corner of the playroom (which was next to the front door) and I found the little boy running his fingers up and down the blades, which were shut. I removed the clippers and shut them in the laundry room, which was the beginning of a very long winded tantrum. I did the only thing I could do and left him to scream in the safety of his playroom and went to sit on the couch in the room next door. Deprived of his audience, he followed me and came to scream in my face. When the mother came home and told me, quite happily, that she was pregnant again I made up my mind never to babysit for her again.

I don’t expect that my own daughter will have the time in her busy sports schedule to start babysitting for other people, and my son is mostly over the tantrum stage and is fully toilet trained, so she’s got a pretty easy assignment right at home. I myself was quite pleased with the experiment as well since no one was injured or upset when we returned. We might even go out again sometime!