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We are excited to announce a small shop update for September of 2023 with three new stickers and a mini cross stitch pattern in the works. All of these items can be found in Oscoey Shop found here. My favorite item for the new shop […]
Eight years ago when we moved into our house I pared down my book collection by about 25% and put the rest into boxes. Until a few months ago those boxes largely remained untouched as we navigated life and I stopped reading all together while […]
I thought I would make a list of books my kids are reading during summer of 2023 as a fun way of tracking where my kids are at and to share book ideas with other book loving families. Last year I posted a couple of […]
When I was in early high school I read this book called “Ecotopia” by Ernest Callenbach. It had been recommended to me by my dad during a period of time when my family was headed towards chaos. At the time the book was eye-opening for […]
Eight years ago when we moved into our house I pared down my book collection by about 25% and put the rest into boxes. Until a few months ago those boxes largely remained untouched as we navigated life and I stopped reading all together while […]
We are excited to announce a small shop update for September of 2023 with three new stickers and a mini cross stitch pattern in the works. All of these items can be found in Oscoey Shop found here.
My favorite item for the new shop update is this Midnight Holographic Pumpkin Sticker which shines and sparkles in the sun. This was my first attempt at freehand drawing digitally with just the mouse. I am pretty happy with the result but definitely want to invest in an iPad when I am able to so I can use the pen that goes with it.
I put one in my planner this week to get me motivated to start using it again. I fell off the planner bandwagon towards the end of the summer after my classes finished and I am now determined to get back in the habit before fall quarter starts again in a couple of weeks. I am taking 10 credits and working part-time so I will be super busy and need to stay organized.
This is one of my favorite pictures of our newest pumpkin sticker. It really shows how beautiful the holographic effect is in the light!
Our next sticker is our Midnight Holographic Bats sticker which can be found here. I spent a lot of time on this one figuring out where the bats would go and although I really like this sticker I may revamp it for next year. I was trying to get the effect of the bats flying out of a tree in a sort of abstract way. Let me know what you think of this one down in the comments. I will be making a cross stitch pattern out of this one and getting it posted up in the shop by the end of September.
Our last new sticker is our Fall Rainbow Heart which can be found here. I love the fall colors on this one and this shade of purple is one of my favorites.
This Fall Rainbow Heart is smaller than my other stickers and looks great in a fall planner. I am going to use one of these next week in one of the corners as an added decoration.
I also thought these would be great as an envelope sealer. They match perfectly with our bronze envelopes that we use to ship out orders and would be great for fall cards. I may try and do a sticker sheet of these for the holidays as well.
Thank you for reading about our September 2023 shop update! I am starting to get ready for our first winter shop update coming up in the next few weeks!
Please note: Prices in the Esty shop may be higher to cover increased fees. If you are in the U.S. and Canada I recommend shopping our regular site.
Shop Site Links:
Oscoey Shop for U.S. and Canada
Oscoey Shop on Etsy for Outside of U. S. and Canada
It’s been a while since my last garden update so I thought I would write up a quick one today even though my garden is in pretty bad shape. It looks like my last garden update was in April of 2022. Every year I think […]
I thought I would make a list of books my kids are reading during summer of 2023 as a fun way of tracking where my kids are at and to share book ideas with other book loving families. Last year I posted a couple of […]
As I sit here mid-way through 2023 with my first official Covid infection I thought I would take some time to look at my progress with my 2023 goals. For 2023 I wanted to focus on self-care and take time to relax every day. I did great the first couple of months of the year but then I was swamped with school work for myself and with kids activities in March and April so things kind of took a downwards turn for a couple of weeks but I am pretty proud of myself for getting right back on track once deadlines has passed.
I needed to remind myself of exactly what I had written for my goals and here they are below:
Ignoring the messiness of my deck you can clearly see that Luna is great at practicing self-care by laying out in the sun on a hot day to soak up some rays. Overall I would say I have done great at my first goal. There are some days when I only get a little bit of time for self-care but I definitely have it on my mind every day and am getting good at recognizing when I need a break.
Puzzles. Well, I started out strong with my puzzle game but then I became more focused on stitching which is ok. I only have limited time available to me for self-care tasks and although I do want to work on more puzzles I have been on a a stitching kick as of late and that is ok too. I do want to finish at least one puzzle a month for the rest of the year and I think I can do it. We tend to do more puzzles over school breaks and this summer will hopefully be no exception. This flower puzzle I started at the end of April and I am still working on it. I have the border and some of the pieces put together. It doesn’t seem like a difficult puzzle so I should finish it quickly when I get back to it. Maybe for July I can work on finishing two puzzles.
My third goal was to finish up some cross stitch projects and I have definitely achieved this. I finished this Thank You one and I am about half way through a bookshelf bookmark for my son. I also finished several pieces for my store and made good progress on my Alphabet Zoo piece. I got sidetracked from some of my initial projects by stitching pieces for my store which was equally as fun but some of my other stitching goals got shuffled to the back burner while I have been stitching up samples. I am now focusing on stitching some fun pieces during the week as well as getting through the samples I need to stitch.
My fourth goal was to keep up with my Commit30 planner and I have done a much better job this year than in years past. There were a few weeks I skipped but overall I have been keeping up with my planner weekly and it has really helped keep my organized. School has been busier than I anticipated the last two quarters so I haven’t had time to add as many pictures to my calendar as I had hoped but I am still tracking my daily self-care habits most weeks and it has been great to look back and see what I have achieved.
My fifth goal was the very vague “Read some books.” which was purposefully not to specific. I wanted to focus on reading more for fun and not make it a chore. I used to be a very avid reader but as I got older and had more kids time to read became much smaller. I am someone that likes to read a book nonstop until I finish it. I can’t put it down and pick it up and read small chunks at a time, I need to keep going or I will forget everything I have read after a couple of days. So far this year I have read at least four books which is four more than last year so I will take that as a definite win! I read the Silo series by Hugh Howey coincidentally just in time to watch the TV show and I just finished a book my daughter gave me for Mother’s Day called “Daughter of the Moon Goddess” which was excellent. I traditionally read the “Outlander” series by Diana Gabaldon every summer but this summer I may tackle the much more weighty “Lymond Chronicles” by Dorothy Dunnett which is another favorite of mine.
My sixth goal of maintaining the status quo with our finances has been the most difficult goal for me this year. I wrote these goals in January before we found out that our biggest expense every month was going up by a large amount. All of our expenses went up this year but this one was a doozy and I knew immediately that I would have to work a little bit to make up for it. I have been focusing on my business and working hard at Oscoey Shop but businesses take time to build and I recently took on a part-time job to help out. I found one that is very low stress and will work around my kids’ school schedules. The job is also temporary and finishes up right around when my school is done which is super convenient. We are continuing to keep a close eye on our budget and have cut back some of our other expenses to help out.
Growing my YouTube channel has also proven to be more difficult than I thought but only because there is only so much time during the day and I can’t do everything. I would have loved to have filmed all of my grocery hauls this year and done Fridge and Freezer Recaps every week but I have not had time. My husband has been doing more of the grocery shopping and it is hit or miss whether I can film what he buys before it is put away or used. I would also have loved to have filmed my puzzles and more of my cross stitch but finding quiet time to film in my house is challenging. I am going to continue to work towards this over the next six months and see how I do.
My last goal for 2023 was to continue to work on my health and I have done a great job at this so far. I have been exercising more and I am eating much better. I graduated from meeting with a nutritionist every couple of months and just need to keep up with what I am doing. We recently took our first vacation in a long time and I was able to complete two 3 mile hikes within a couple of days of each other without having some of my health issues flare up so I was pretty proud of that. I am continuing to walk a few days a week and once I am over Covid I plan on starting back up again with my swimming. We are continuing to help my dad chop wood on a regular basis which is great for upper body strength and I am still doing a lot of gardening. I am hoping that by the end of the year my strength and endurance will be back up to where it was previously. My best takeaway from the last year of working on my health is that even small steps will help you reach your goal!
Overall I feel like my goal getting for 2023 is going well. There have been a few hiccups but that is to be expected. How are your goals going this year? Leave a comment below to let me know!
On Friday 05/05/23 Oscoey Shop will have our Tulip Collection 2023 drop at 10:00 am PT. I was very inspired by my trip to the tulip fields a couple of weeks ago and took so many photos! I knew right away I would try to […]
Recently we went to the Washington Arboretum near the University of Washington in Seattle. We have gone there many times in the past but have not been there for quite some time. We love to walk the trails and learn about the plants from all […]
It is tulip season in the Pacific Northwest. I love tulips and the years we make it out to the tulip fields are my favorites! We don’t go every year but we try to go at least every other. We have been to RoozenGaarde and Tulip Town and both are great. We try to switch it up since they have very different styles. For 2023 we went to RoozenGaarde and it was beautiful! We went super early on a Sunday morning and the crowds were not bad at all. It was raining most of the long drive up but once we got there the rain stopped.
We didn’t go quite early enough to get the gardens to ourselves but it was pretty empty when we got there just after opening on a cloudy Sunday morning. Cloudy days are the best for taking photographs because of the way the light bounces off of the tulips. I always get the best pictures on cloudy days.
I loved the combinations of purple hyacinths and red tulips. They were very beautiful together!
The pink and white tulips were some of my favorites!
These purple and yellow ones were not quite open yet but I took a picture of them so that I could remember which ones I like in case I am ever brave enough to plant tulips again. I am going to have to take some serious pest control measures because the moles ate all of my bulbs from underground. It was very disappointing!
I thought these raggedy looking pink ones were beautiful as well. They also were not quite open but I loved how the water drops looked on the petals so I took a picture anyway.
I am not always a huge fan of daffodils but these apricot an cream ones were so stunning! I may try to grow more daffodils next fall since the squirrels and the moles tend to leave these alone more.
My kids called these daffodils “egg flowers” because they looked very much like an egg. These were also some of my favorite flowers I saw that day.
I tried to get a good picture of these flowers but it was slightly windy and there wasn’t a lot of room to get a good angle. I am not sure what these were called but they looked like upside-down tulips. We all loved these ones!
It isn’t a trip to the tulip fields without the obligatory picture taken across seemingly endless fields of blooms. I wasn’t able to recreate my purple tulip photo but I did get some great pictures of the reds and yellows that made up most of the fields.
There were only a few rows of the purple tulips this year but they were still stunning.
Surprise alpacas! We took a break from walking to watch these alpacas eat. They were super cute!
My favorite tulips this year were these red ones that almost glowed in the light. This photo hasn’t been edited at all and it really shows how bright the tulips were under the overcast sky.
We had a great time at RoozenGaarde this year. I saw a lot of tulips I have not seen before, or don’t remember, and it wasn’t too cold for us. We just made sure to wear our rain boots since the fields can be muddy. I did buy one bouquet of some deep red tulips for my mom but otherwise we didn’t spend much more than the admission tickets. Parking was free with our ticket.
I should also probably note that this year there is a new farm called Tulip Valley Farms which we have not been to. If you are local you might have heard about some of the controversy around Tulip Valley Farms versus Tulip Town. I won’t go into detail here because I am no expert but basically the person who started Tulip Valley Farms used to be one of the owners of Tulip Town and there is now a lawsuit going on around it. I did link their website below if you want to check it out.
Thanks for reading about our trip to the tulip fields this year! Each field has different pricing and policies for dogs, parking and drones so be sure to click the links below if you want more information on that. RoozenGaarde was open the earliest in the morning which is why we chose it. We are all early risers and we had afternoon plans so we had to be home by a certain time. Also look out for another shop update at Oscoey Shop in time for Mother’s Day with tulip stickers, postcards and a new mini tulip field cross stitch pattern!
Links:
This week we had our second shop update for Oscoey Shop located here or by clicking the link in the top menu of this page. Opening up the shop has awoken the creative side in me I forgot I had. My journey over the past […]
Whew. Another week of meal planning under our belt. We used up a lot of things this week from our pantry, fridge and freezer. We still have so many leftovers that we won’t really need to cook for the next few days but we are having sausage burgers tonight as a break. I did not have a chance to clean out another shelf from the pantry this weekend but it is ok. I ended up going to the grocery store last Sunday to do a major stockup since we were almost out of some basics and I wanted to avoid the store for the next few weeks. Omicron is weighing heavily on our minds this month and we are limiting our exposure as much as possible. That means no seeing friends, no going to the store and we are debating sending kids to school this week. Our school has done a fabulous job at preventing the spread of Covid at the school but there is always that worry in the back of your mind that maybe this time it will spread. Most of the school was tested last week and a lot of the kids were negative. Those that were positive are staying home this week so I am hoping that will keep things contained.
Last weekend I went through the pantry and pulled some items I wanted to eat through this week. Below is a list of what we had:
I wanted to take tons of pictures and videos this week of how we were using up our items but honestly I only got pictures of most of the meals. Above is what we have left from what I wanted to eat through this week and it is kind of misleading because we did eat quite a bit but there are still small amounts left in these containers. I may put them all into smaller containers today and then show what is left next weekend but my kids immediately lose interest if I move them to smaller containers and they have been snacking out of the bags all week.
What’s left:
Overall I would say we did pretty well. We should eat through the spinach bites, lentil crackers, veggie straws, peanuts and more of the dried fruit this week. The croutons were a hard sell and I can’t eat them as well as the freeze dried strawberries and raspberries. Most of us are not fans of the Banza mac and cheese so I may just donate it since it doesn’t expire until March of this year. My Buy Nothing group supports a local senior center and the Banza may end up in the donation bag this month. We have other mac and cheese that the rest of us like so I am not worried about running out any time soon.
One of my favorite ways to use things up is to make veggie soup. I made a batch last weekend and we ate about half of it throughout the week and froze the rest. The broth I used is some I made in the fall with garden scraps. When I was blanching my greens to freeze I put all of the ribs from the kale, beets and chard into a pot with some onion and carrots and made a bunch of broth to freeze. This batch had a lot of beets in it so it was super sweet. I have been pairing it with a can of tomatoes to pare down the sweetness and this batch of soup was delicious! I will probably pull out some of the soup in the freezer for meals not this week but next week. I like to eat my freezer meals within a couple of months of freezing so we are constantly rotating and to reduce the possibility of finding it in the freezer years later.
We ate the soup for dinner and a few lunches with crackers and a little bit of sour cream. I only used one can of the corn in the soup but it was still a little bit sweet from the beets.
Using up our other can of corn for lunch. We are without a microwave and my son does not like corn so I put his peas in a ramekin to steam along with the corn and it worked really well! Don’t do this unless your ramekin is oven safe though. Plastic would not be a good choice.
Our kids were home last week so a lot of what we ate for lunch was cooked and not their usual sandwiches for lunch. We ate the Banza mac and cheese for lunch with the corn and I added some of the cooked chicken breast as well. The adults in our house usually don’t eat a lot of meat so this week was a bit much for me with all of the ham and the chicken breast. I had to cut way back on my meat consumption as the week went on. I wanted to point out that I cooked one standard chicken breast and it lasted for several meals for just me. Nobody else wanted to eat it. We don’t eat a lot of chicken breast at our house so my kids weren’t really into it and my husband is more vegetarian than me so he left it for me to eat. I will say however that it was really nice to have a little bit of protein readily available to throw on my meals when I needed it. I may cook one a week more regularly since I struggle to get my protein in.
Another meal we ate a lot of was oatmeal. I discovered I could cook a large pot and reheat the rest when I needed to on the stove in just a few minutes. This was super handy since I was missing my microwaved bowl in the mornings. I bought a 25lb bag of gluten-free oats from Bob’s Red Mill a couple of months ago and we have been working through it. I really want to make one of the oatmeal bakes we love but it takes a dozen eggs and I am not sure that the ones we bought at Costco last weekend will last the month if I use that many all at once. For reference, we go through one to two dozen a week since eggs are a huge source of protein for us. It is slightly silly of me though, because there is nothing stopping us from getting another five dozen from Costco when we are close to running out but I want to avoid the store as long as possible.
One meal that lasted for several days was the ham we baked on New Year’s Eve. We ate about half of it last week and will try to finish the rest this week. I did put the bone in the freezer to make broth at some point in time but I am not ready yet and I want to eat through some of what we have before I make more. We ate it with mashed potatoes and green beans or some other vegetable. It was delicious!
One meal we ate this week that has become a staple in our house is feta and tomato pasta. You basically put a bunch of tomatoes, garlic, some feta and olive oil in the oven and then stir it in with cooked pasta. It is super easy to make gluten-free and most of us love to eat it! The pasta lasts a couple of days in the fridge so it is perfect for lunches.
We pared our pasta with green beans and some steamed Kielbasa. Our selective eater will not eat pasta so they were given the Kielbasa, rice and seaweed so they could eat their “sushi” along with us. I always snag a little bit of seaweed when the kids eat it since it is so healthy and a great source of Iodine.
Wow. We ate a lot of pasta last week now that I am looking back. This week I will try to make more roasted vegetables and see what else I can come up with since one of our kids doesn’t like pasta. This broccoli cheese bake my husband made was delicious! We ate it for dinner last night and I already have it on the meal planner for tomorrow night. We are skipping a night with it tonight to avoid burnout. I am a huge fan of casseroles and I am loving that we are eating them more often.
I gathered some of the items we want to use up this week. Yesterday instead of going through another pantry shelf I went through under our bathroom sink and oh man did I throw a lot out. We had tons of stuff that expired two years ago and opened items we weren’t using up that were just old. I don’t think I have really gone through that cabinet in at least three years. I did find this dish soap that I bought for bubbles when my youngest was about two that is still good. I filled our soap dispenser by the sink with it and we will use it up as we go. I also discovered one of the pears we bought last week went bad so I am going to try and make fruit leather this afternoon. I make it with pears and whatever berries I have in the fridge and my kids love it. It is super easy to make too!
Items to use up this week:
We started to write out this week’s meal plan as a family at dinner last night. I will probably add more in on Tuesday when I know where we are at with leftovers. The kids don’t like to commit to lunches and breakfast until usually the night before so I usually fill those in as we go. Since the adults are all working from home we usually try to eat leftovers for lunch or something fast like soup. Muffins have been requested and if I have time today I will make some of those as well. A batch usually lasts a day or two and I know you can make a bunch and freeze them but I just don’t know if gluten-free flour will hold up in the freezer as well as regular. I am almost out of my one to one Bob’s Red Mill flour and I probably only have enough for one batch of muffins right now. I did order more and hopefully it will come in the next week or two but who knows with all of the road closures around us. We do have ingredients to make our own gluten-free flour mixture so I am not super worried about running out but I like to have the pre-mixed kind on hand since it is easy.
How are you reducing your food waste? Does meal planning work for you?
Links:
In honor of my 6 year Blogiversary coming up at the end of March I thought I would share a little bit about what is going on in the Oscoey world. First, the most exciting thing, is we are opening up a retail store called […]
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed […]
A few weeks ago I found the Uber Frugal Month Challenge over at the Frugalwoods and I was immediately hooked. What a great way to start out 2018! I signed my husband and I up and we have spent the last week reading through the daily […]
Have you seen these cool candy toys made in Japan? They have all kids of fun food items to make! This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend […]
My grandma made fruit salad for us growing up and it was always my favorite because she put a few marshmallows in there. My mom was always trying to eat healthy so marshmallows were a rare treat in our house. I made this yummy salad […]
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