Prices going up...way up...

Okay, I was at the Superstore yesterday and guess how much a 10kg bag of flour is now...(it was $6.99 at Christmas) drumroll please....$13.49!!!!! I managed to buy the last bag of Five Roses 10kg flour at Walmart today for $9.99! I feel like I got a bargain!

In the US, cattle are being sold younger and young for meat because farmers can't afford the grain prices. Right now beef is affordable...they predict that within 9-12 months there will be a beef shortage and those prices will skyrocket...

So, if ever there was a time to make up a little pantry it is now...if you can afford it on grocery day and you see good nourishing food on sale, buy it...because your guaranteed that grocery bills are going up...way up!

For all those homeschooling mamma's...

I used to have this comic on my fridge when my kids were little...I was uploading photos and came across it...just had to share...

and this one...

Skyrocketing Wheat Prices Hit Home On Arthur Ave.

100-Pound Bag $19.50 One Week, $47-Plus The Next

Kirstin Cole
BRONX (CBS) ―

We've been facing higher grocery prices and gas prices for months now. But some have been quietly dealing with a wheat crisis that is sending prices skyrocketing 150 percent.

CBS 2 HD has learned why you'll be forking over more for some of your favorite foods.

At Addeo's Bakery in the Arthur Avenue section of the Bronx, you'll always find your favorite bread, biscuits and rolls. But customers lately are swallowing higher prices for their daily staples.

"We were spending $19.50 for 100 pounds. It will go up to $47 and change and there is no end in sight," Laurence Addeo said.

At first Addeo let it slide. But eventually the third generation baker had no choice but to pass those higher prices along to his customers. He's even thinking about shutting the shop one extra day a week. Even worse, he's already heard the dreaded "R" word.

"Ration, ration flour," Addeo said. "So if we got 100 bags in a week, we might only get 70."

It's a perfect storm out of the wheat belt. Farmers planted more corn to sell as bio-fuel grain, which fetches higher prices. But there's been a much higher demand for grain from places like China and India. Meanwhile, other countries have stopped exporting wheat completely. Now, the U.S. is left with a shortage of wheat, causing flour prices to explode.

At Borgatti's they're famous for the ravioli on Arthur Avenue but they're having to learn about trickle down economics with the price of eggs, cheese and wheat all rising dramatically.

Mario Borgatti, 90, opened during the Depression and never saw 40 percent price increases until today. So far, the customers roll with the prices.

"I think they're going to go up wherever you are," one customer said.

But Mario knows eventually the business will suffer.

"Right now, we have to lay off people because we won't be doing the business (if we keep raising the prices)," Borgatti said.

"I hope that we can ride this out, and make our customers understand so we can keep selling bread for another generation."

The price of groceries made its highest year to year jump last year since 1990. And experts don't expect to see a reversal in the trend anytime soon.

http://wcbstv.com/local/wheat.price...r.2.658137.html

A Peek into our previous house

This is the second home we built by ourselves...a lot of sweat equity went into this house...and we lived there for four years...three more than planned! We built the house planning to live there one year then sell and build again. However, I got pregnant and had a very rough pregnancy and after ella was born, we decided to stay.










Our livingroom


I loved my kitchen!





Family Room Downstairs. You could walk out the patio doors to the backyard.













I loved my hammock. I would swing with Ella and Jack.


Our deck where we ate supper every sunny day!

Wanna take a peek at my bathroom before I transform it????

Call me crazy...but one thing I appreciate on other people's blogs is real photos...not those perfectly posed, perfectly coiffed rooms that look as though no one lives there...so with that in mind...I have decided to show you my bathroom before I renovate it. It really is a perfectly acceptable bathroom in the scheme of life...I don't plan on spending more than $200 on this room and I hope when I am finished it will look much better.

So, being a nut for honesty, I decided to share my bathroom with you on a typical day. We use this room to do laundry, for the kitty litter, to access my cleaning supplies for the house, for ella to wash her hands fifty million times a day, I put my makeup on here and of course, we use the loo!

Isn't this an awesome shot of my loo..those are my dried hydrangea from my garden. The wall colour is not bad...kind of a coffee cream colour.

These are my white wooden blinds I recently purchased for $5.00!!!! They were a miscut and even though I had to watch and wait, they finally hit a sale price even I never expected! That is my garage in the background.

Okay, I have four kids...doesn't everyone run out of toilet paper...this is being replaced along with the old heater...My sister informed me that the rust is due to pee pee accidents and not condensation as I had always believed...eeew! The rusting came BEFORE we moved in!

Okay, I can't change the tile right now as it runs into the hallway. However, we are painting the vanity a rich chocolate brown and replacing the counter top. Behind the April Cornell fabric is our kitty litter...

I hope to add some moulding around the doors and drawers to give it clean shaker look. Right now the vanity is just a very plain wood.

Okay, why am I showing you this...it is because of the oil leaks we get from our hinges and to point out the lousy paint job done by the last owners...

And they don't even match! We plan to replace the hinges with new dark bronze hinges to match our new door handles.

A shot of your basic door knob...I can't wait to replace them with my rubbed bronze door knobs...they were one of the more expensive items but worth it!

Odd knob number two!

A pile of clean laundry and a shot of my cheap mirror which I will either replace or frame out but going horizontally and centered under the sink.

These lights boxes are a thorn in my side. We have to remove them, gyprock the openings and reposition the light sockets. If possible, we will remove the whole bulk head if we can. That amazing painting of a sunset was painted by my nine year old son Jack!

Another shot of the sink area. I want to position one light socket over the sink. I have new taps to replace the older ones which I bought three years ago when we were planning to build a new house.

We were preparing to paint our ceiling in this shot.

So, there you have it! I could have waited and taken the photos once I had tidied the room and finished painting the ceiling. But, once again, I remembered to take the photos once we got started. I hope my bathroom doesn't offend you all to much!

Rain, rain go away...

This beautiful painting is by local artist sherri burhoe

This past couple of weeks we discovered that our porch leading out of our basement has sprung a leak! The water gurgles in, fast and furious into our family room through the door. It seems to be coming in where the house foundation and the porch foundation meet...it wasn't poured all at once so there is a definite seperation which has allowed water to leak in. Then we had a record breaking rainfall of 78mm and this added to our mess!

Thankfully, a good friend loaned us a pump (not a sump pump) to remove the water from beneath our sub-floor. We put sandbags around our porch to divert the water, we even made a berm around our sub-floor frame to hold the water in to the one area to allow the pump to suck it away...we have spent many hours with two shop vacs sucking up water and dumping them outside in the pouring rain till the wee hours of the morning. This storm we are experiencing today has been very managable and not as stressful!

Knowing this, we will now have to plan on fixing this asap and this will also include new rain gutter as the rain gutter we have is old, leaks and desperately needs replacing. Part of the problem with the leaking is the fact that the rain gutter leaks in the same spot where the foundation leaks. So, the two are related.

So, I have risen to the challenge of cutting corners and really trying to live our lives more simply...I have always enjoyed decorating my homes on a strict yard sale budget. Our goal of renovating this house reflecting our schedule and budget restraints will be revised once more to fix this issue which takes priority over new siding or new windows.

So, as I sit here on another very windy, wet night...I think of sunny days ahead when we will tackle our porch and rebuild it to be strong and water tight! I am grateful that I have a husband who can do much of the work himself which will save us money and the satisfaction we will get from fixing this very stressful and expensive mess!

Snowy Day...

It has been a chilly cold day with a mixture of heavy blowing snow and freezing rain. Right now there is a chicken stew bubbling away on the stove. I still have to make up the dumplings to go with it... and it smells amazing!

I had to clean out the woodstove today...I hate doing that....but it is done and I cleaned all around the fireplace. What a mess! But, you can't beat the heat!

I ventured into my basement today. I want to clear it out...I managed to clean out a filing cabinet. I found lots of beautiful notes from my kids when they were little and some cards that I wrote to my kids...it made me miss my boys when they were little. They were so amazing and sweet and fun...they still are, but I miss so many things from that time.

I have a huge collection of vintage Fisher Price toys that I need to part with. We all played with them as kids and I realize now that I will never get around to selling them on ebay. That hurts, cause you never get as much locally for vintage items. But, I need to raise some cash for a few items on my wish list...Plus, I need to organize my kids huge collection of Star Wars!! When I say huge, I mean huge!

Wish me luck!

The Rising Cost of Food

I don't know if anyone else is noticing the rise in prices at the grocery store. This past year, food items are increasing dramatically. With the rise in oil prices, the increasing demand for grain...especially corn, a possible recession in the horizons, it is time to buckle down and simplify your wants versus needs list...and it can be a painful process for many.

I don't always enjoy grocery shopping but I do enjoy the challenge of using coupons to save money...which on average for us is $15-$20 per grocery order. I have always clipped coupons and I carry my coupon book with me in the van at all times. We also comparison shop and try to buy in bulk items that are a really good deal...especially meat. One thing we do to save money, especially when a good sale falls on a non-pay week is to drop by the grocery store on the very final day of the sale, close to closing time and request rain cheques. This way, we can take advantage of the sale when we can better afford it.

As a family of six, groceries are a major expense!! Milk is a huge expense, almost $7 for 3 litres, so I limit my kids to one glass per day...ouch you say....but trust me, they sneak it when I'm not looking so I do factor that into my cost. I am one of those who does not hold milk in such high esteem as others do and there are many other ways to receive calcium.

My goal is to fine tune my grocery budget even more than we have in the past. I am limiting how much entertaining we do because that has been a huge expense in the past. I plan to retire my hotel standards of what is suitable to serve to guests to a more casual fare such as chili or stews. I hope to tackle our need for meat with every supper. We all enjoy meat and potatoe type meals so my goal is to try new recipes or revisit old ones on a more regular basis such as I did tonight.

Here is what we had tonight for supper tonight:

Baked beans with apple sausages cooked with the beans...it was delicious! $4.00
Corn Bread double batch. $2.00
Pork Tenderloin $4.00 (awesome deal at local grocery store)
Frys $1.50

So, for $11.50 I provided a supper for six people, my husbands work lunch for two days, and lunch for two of my kids. The next time, I will double the batch of beans as this was a new recipe I tried out. I made the frys and tenderloin for my finicky oldest son who dislikes beans and to round out the meal as not everyone loves beans as much as others.

Tomorrow I hope to make a stew which we make at least every two weeks...cooking like this takes extra work compared to convenience foods, but it is worth it both in taste and value.

Merry Christmas Season

I haven't written in a while...I didn't feel like I had much to share...I was hoping to maybe paint the bathroom before christmas, but that isn't likely to happen. However, I have been busy doing my christmas cleaning and decorating. Then to my joy and amazement, we actually got a beautiful, lush snowfall! Never a person to waste a perfect snowfall, that night we put up our tree...I mean, you can't ignore the backdrop of snowflakes falling while Ken & Dolly play in the background...(I play it to irritate my husband and in honour of my parents!)

The photo above of the beautiful Christmas cape cod house was made by my beautiful mother! She did a replica of my house, but in the colour scheme we might like to put on the house once it is finished...right down to the cranberry red door! It is so pretty and I love it so much because she made it for me! Somehow the gene for creating pretty things skipped me and only rested in my mother and sister....which isn't so bad because they take pity on me and make me pretty things!

My decorating ranges from au natural...which is my favourite, to a touch of tacky glitzy...retro 1970's nostalgia! How's that for a description! I love the memory of my sister Linda and I driving around her hometown admiring people's christmas decorations. She remarked at one house "how could anyone like coloured icicle lights!" I took great joy in responding that I do and that I had them all over my house! I was tired from the sea of white light perfection that was the rage back then, and I craved the tacky, but colourful joy of coloured christmas lights...though I can only handle the small twinkle lights and no blinking lights either...drives me crazy!





The kids and I made our gingerbread houses on December 1st! That is always fun and the house smells delicious! I love getting people to guess whose house is whose...and the houses actually are decorated much like their personalities!

Happy Birthday Linda!!!

Linda with my mother & my little girl Ella.


This was a few years ago...just after Ella was born...

Happy Birthday to my beautiful sister! Without you I'd be lost...your my best friend and the one I trust with all my stuff! Your an amazing wife and mother...you always put your family first...your amazing...so loving and kind....and as a sister and best friend...you can't be beat!

Your an amazing writer and decorater and you inspired me so much this past couple of years with your fearlessness in starting your own business and stepping out into new adventures! Sorry I couldn't be with you today, but I'll definitely be there for your 40th birthday bash!

Be sure to drop by her blog to say happy birthday!

My smelly house...

I just came back into the house and the delicious smells hit me....I have been making homemade chicken noodle soup for Jack's family birthday tomorrow. I just finished baking his chocolate cake and the smell is delicious! We had homemade bread for lunch and that always fills our house with the loveliest aroma.



I have been cooking so much lately...something about the fall and all the holidays gets me into full swing. I feel good when I make a meal that is economical and delicious! Tomorrow I'll make my homemade chili so that there is lots to eat tomorrow.

Festive Fall....

October is such a great month...I love it because of Thanksgiving and Halloween, the crispness of the air, the blowing leaves and decorating for fall. However, I have to say, I am glad it is all over! I will be putting away the clutter to enjoy a nice bare look before I decorate for Christmas. This morning...November 1st, Ella wakes up and promptly tells me that Christmas is next!! Gotta love the anticipation that kids fill you with!

The night before Halloween I got together with my brother and his family for the first time to carve out pumpkins. I made homemade stew with dumplings, homemade rubhard crumble pie and a apple crumble pie. It was delicious! We had so much fun, and the kids except for one, really enjoyed my stew which had plenty of turnip, parsnips and cabbage mixed in with all the other delicious ingredients! I finished off the night by roasting lots of pumpkin seeds...yum!

I had a big pot of beef stew on the stove and I was preparing two pies.

Earlier in the day, I had to clean out four pumpkins with the help of the kids. How is it that after 15 years of carving pumpkins, I only now discover the little carving sets at the dollar store??? They work great!! I'm going to buy a few extra so that I can use them for squash throughout the year. Patricia my sil, brought quite a few pumpkins and she carved out some beauties! She inspired me to carve one out with lots of stars...and this is my favourite, even though my stars are wonky.

I was dreading cutting the tops off and cleaning out the pumpkins till I discovered the $ store kits for carving pumpkins.

I made up treat bags with the help of Ella for the trick or treaters and Ella enjoyed her first Halloween party at pre-school! She dressed up as a cheerleader and is not shy in showing you how to cheer!

The kids all dressed for Halloween were raring to go...well, maybe not Ben...but he had the excuse of taking his little sister around so he will get some candy without having to dress up beyond wearing an army jacket! We are waiting on some friends and cousins to show up to join us and then they are off!







All in all it was a great October, a great Halloween! The only sad thing was my nephew was insulted by a rude adult about his weight...nothing like making a young kid feel bad about himself in the hopes of guilting a kid out of a bag of candy! My brother and sister in-law were really hurt by this...and Patricia talks about it on her blog which you should check out...you see, her son, my nephew has Aspergers and he hasn't gone trick or treating for years...he was so happy to go with his cousing Jack! Why can't people be more thoughtful in what they say?? That old saying of "stick and stones will break my bones but words can never hurt me"...is a lie! Anyways, I hope that Mathew remembers how much he is loved and how we appreciate his unique take on things!

For the Love of Crows....

ORIGINAL handcolored WOODCUT

I was just visiting my sisters amazing blog Restyled Home and she was singing the praises of crows once again...so since it is the season, I figured I would feature an artist that I love and admire...my Pastor who is also an artist, David Hayward. He seems to have an appreciation for crows that I just don't share....but I love everything else he paints! If you love crows, or if you love great art, then you are about to discover a wonderful artist!

Winter Redbird

He has an ebay store that you can visit if you like the thrill of an auction or the ease of buy it now. Or, visit his etsy shop where he features large and small pieces and his prices are amazing! His art is featured in local art galleries and it resides in homes around the world. If you buy a piece, you'll discover that his art touches your soul, it speaks to you! So, if your looking for a unique holiday gift for friends and family or some beautiful art to grace your home....then look no further! He also has his blog where he discusses technique, etc...you can check it out here.

Enjoy!

Stormy Sky Crow Calling

Early Winter Leaves Fall

Crows Evening Roost

Taking the Christmas Tree Home

Winter Treeline