Less Hustle More Coffee

My little Grandson is growing! He is six weeks and counting. Katy posted this a few days ago. I thought it was a sweet pic and she is looking great! They are getting more sleep now. She joined a program called “Taking Cara Babies”. (The lady that owns it is a nurse and a Mom and her name is Cara and she is a certified pediatric sleep consultant). I’ve mentioned this before but I’ve connected a link and given you the name of the program in case you know someone that needs information as to how to get babies on a schedule. At the time she enrolled it was $99 and she said “it was the best $99 I’ve ever spent. I wish something like that existed when Katy was born. We just fumbled about and figured it out and I have loved and guarded my own sleep schedule ever since, vowing I’d turn into a pumpkin if I stayed up past 9:00! But I’ve been thrilled to hear “how” and “why”. She has been given scientific information as to why babies do what they do. Katy has learned so much. So I wanted to share this program in case you know someone who could benefit from the same. It has helped her quickly and she has resources to the program for a year I believe.

Snowy Roads in the Neighborhood and Driving in to Work

I just thought of it, seeing the hood of my car in this photo, but I guess it could be dangerous being a white car on a snowy day. I’m invisible! So here was what I had to drive in to get to the main roads! There are hills getting out of either side of the neighborhood. But the connecting roads were better than our road so that was good. George got it up the driveway for me (uphill). It took two tries but finally we made it. He took me around the block, applied brakes and such to show me how to test a snow road for “slippability” and it was fairly dry packed. The other roads had ruts. And the main roads and interstate were dry with water here and there for the melting. When I left it was 40. I waited until it got to 40. So I think I left around 9:30 or 10. And I worked until about 4:15 or so. Got a LOT done. I knew I had to do a lot when I got there but….I realized just how much I was behind.

The first order of business was printing everything that needed to be printed: PTO requests for the next Payroll, tax receipts paid, w-2 resends from requests that came in, check statements for the TN plant that needed to be stuffed into envelopes for 111 employees, and the list goes on. I also had garnishment sheets to work on for payroll as there were some changes. I did as much as I could and I am glad I have today to work on payroll related things as I have a ton of PTO requests as you can imagine from nearly every one of our plants b/c of the snow/ice storms that swept our nation. I have to look up their avg pay with incentive and make sure they are eligible and make sure they have the balance to take it and then put it in the plant’s payroll folder. So I’ll be doing that today and doing time sheets. Ahhhh I am so thankful it’s going to be above freezing all week so we don’t have to deal with snow, or at least much of it anyway. Some nights get down below freezing and sometime we have to watch for freezing fog but I’m hoping not this week!

I know it will be a looooong week this week as I’ll be working six days in a row. And then Friday I’ll be headed to Mom’s for a girls night. I will likely work enough hours all week to get off around 3 so I can get down there, and get our dinner picked up and get to her house before or around nightfall. I knew I was going down there the last weekend in FEB, and Mom had to remind me it was this next weekend. How did I not know that? I guess the last week was just a blur since we were iced/snowed in for 8 days. I just hadn’t realized time passed! I thought it was one more week away. So I’m looking forward to our time together. I’m taking food in when I get there Friday night and then Saturday we will go out to eat. She says she is READY to go SIT DOWN at a restaurant and eat! So we’ll do that. She does not want to shop, but I told her I needed to go to one store and buy a quilt ladder if they still have them. I think they were about $20 to $30 cheaper than buying them on line. On line they have to account for the shipping I guess but I want a quilt ladder for the den to put our quilts on. I enjoy them year round – sometimes the a/c in the summer gets to be too much for me and of course the winter chills and seasons changing. It’s something I’ll enjoy a lot and need to get them in their “place” instead of just laying around.

One of the things that surprised me of my drive in to work yesterday were the hills of snow on the side of the road. Our snows are usually not big enough to have snow banks on the side where the snow has been plowed.

Finished Organizing the Pantry Storage

Working on the Pantry has been a project I started a year ago, or was it two? I got some ideas from other bloggers and from Pinterest. Some of the ideas I already had in place. Our pantry shelves have deep shelves and it’s a lot of adequate space for us. We have plenty of room to buy extra things for back up. We use a lot of sauces and marinades and keep a lot of dried beans, pasta, and grains on hand. I don’t care so much about how it looks so much as “can we find what we are looking for”, “can we reach it easily”, and “grouping like things together”. It’s NOT perfect or pretty so much but I worked on it some yesterday and I think we have it better organized. I did NOT work on our back up supplies and I probably won’t as George usually likes to organize those things (hot sauces, condiments and such) but I did work on these shelves here a bit. Here are some things I’ve used or done to organize the pantry:

• Lazy Susans – for Canned Veggies and Soups – Not all fit of course but I try to put canned veggies that we use as sides with our meals on them, as well as soups and then let the canned tomatoes and sauces and stuff hang to the back.
• Dinner trays – The dinner trays slide in and out to where you can see what’s behind and look for things. This was a great idea. You can see below that I put the baking things on the right, including the jello, lol. On the left tray are canned chicken and tuna, soup and pasta kits. I mainly put those there so it was at eye level and we can use those up soon and not let them sit. We tend to forget about such “kits” when we are planning dinner for some reason.

• Little shelves so you can double your space. I have pasta and some rice on the bottom and the topped is filled with dried beans of all kinds.
• Baskets can be pulled out to see what is in them. WE have all kinds of rice and quinoa in the basked here.

• I have bought into some air tight storage systems for oats, sugar, flour, and I had one left over so I put tea bags in it. WE have two lifetimes of tea bags in our house, LOL! George says he loves his little corn meal container that he has used for years and didn’t want me messing with it! (Story of my life). So he has his little corn meal container in there. Mainly he said when he uses this he knows how much he is adding when he pours from it.
• And it’s nice to have some of these lights to use when finding things. But you have to remember to turn them off.

So I finished that project up with my storage containers as they arrived yesterday. It’s not the “prettiest” organization but it IS functional and I’m happy with it! I think the only thing I might add is a little container for sauce/spice packets but honestly I think if we lay them about we end up seeing them and using them more often. I through away a bunch of OLD flours too, stuff from 2014 to 2018 that I had no idea it’d been in there that long. Our daughter used to bake a lot and when she left – enhhhh we just don’t bake much! I filled up the trash can and made a lot of room! So be sure and check your expiration dates.

And now I must get ready for work and head out! What are you doing today on this fine Monday?

After work we are meeting up with my SIL and BIL nearby for a beer and dinner. Looking forward to that so much! (Reasons to love Monday! It doesn’t have to be a Friday to enjoy some fun!)