In Our Cozy Home This Week No. 23 – Spring Pansies, Recipes, Home Organizing

It’s a pretty early April morning here today after a very nice spring Sunday. We were able to able to purchase my spring pansies online and do a drive up pick-up last Thursday so at least that part of our life is normal. I may have missed my college basketball tournament this year, but the pansies are present. They are a different variety this spring and more like larger johnny jump-ups in a wide variety of color combinations. They are very sweet and cute. I’ll take some pictures and share once they get going a bit.

I spent yesterday cooking and baking which felt very good. I made the Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Muffins for David and Caroline as well as the Garden Herb Bread. I also made a new mocha sauce to try to replicate my Starbucks coconut mochas. I’m going to experiment with using it today and if I can get a solid result, I will be sure to share it in a post as part of my comfort food recipe collection.

I also started experimenting with using my triple slow cooker like this one. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time.

Part of the reason I was able to do more cooking is due to the fact that I solved a space problem in my kitchen. Our kitchen is relatively small with limited counter space and no island. I had an idea that is working well, but I’m going to write about it separately or else it will get buried and lost here in this post.

(If you’ve never seen pictures of the inside of my home, you can see some here: Our Cozy Home Remodel. I just realized I need to post some new pictures. We’ve changed the family room and dining area quite a bit!)

I’m pushing forward my homemaking goals from last week. I spent a lot of time working last week. Partially because I have been trying to tie up lose ends (like updating a popular but woefully out of date post – Bumblebee Made with Toilet Paper Roll Craft) and finishing up the Editable Homeschool Planners.

The other reason is I signed up for a blogging course, something I’ve never done. I’ve considered Income School’s Project 24 for many months after watching them on YouTube. Their way of thinking about writing fits mine better than anything else I’ve seen out there. I’m not using it to create a new website, but as a way of helping me get a handle on what I already have here. I needed something methodical and all organized for me because there is a lot of helpful content on this site that people aren’t finding for a variety of reasons. Project 24 was truly the best option. I will probably write a review post to add to my home based business posts once I get more of it done, but I will say that it is excellent.

Working also keeps me from thinking about the world at large.

So here are my goals for this week.

Goal 1 – Keep working on cleaning up and organizing the basement. I really want to be able to set up my sewing machine.

Goal 2 – Try again to clean out my homeschool materials drawer. I have a large file drawer in my desk and it is full of homeschooling stuff from the past year. A lot of it we are done with or won’t use again and I need to clean out the drawer.

What do you have on your to do list this week? It can be anything big or small. I hope you’ll leave a comment and share what you are working on. Are you cooking and baking more? Sewing? Cleaning?

If you need ideas and don’t have a copy of A Quiet Simple Life Planner and Guidebook, you will find lots of inspiration and ideas in there.

Have a lovely week!