Whether you have pears trees, buy in bulk , or find a great price locally, freeze drying pears is a great way to preserve the harvest. Today I’m sharing not only how to freeze dry pears, but also my freeze drying routine/schedule, and how eat freeze dried pears. Freeze Dried foods has a longer shelf life than canned or fermented foods – lasting up to 30 years, so it is a great way to preserve food seasonally, financially speaking, and for the highest nutritional value.
We eat apples all year, but there is nothing like a fresh apple picked from the tree! If you are looking for a way to buy in bulk and process apples this year (and you have a freeze dryer) freeze drying apples is a wonderful way to preserve apples when they taste the freshest.
I have been buying freeze dried snack for years as an alternative to processed baby snacks, but since investing in a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer now the whole family can enjoy a variety of freeze dried snacks! We did a family experiment freeze drying a different variety of apple on each of the freeze dryer trays during our first run to see what our favorite varieties were. I’ll share below how each of the apples rated!
I will also share links to the tools I use and how to keep them fresh in the pantry.
(more…)During the pandemic I was able to mostly keep on our pantry and household needs, but I was never able to really get a rotating stock our pantry and linen closet. Add in the fact we had baby number six in the spring last year and I just continued to buy what we need, when we needed it. Therefore, my big homemaking goal of 2023 is to keep an inventory of what we use and consume so we can work on stocking the pantry and linen closet (toiletries). Enter: The Home Manager Binder.
Not only do I want to get a good rotation system down I needed a way to track how much we need for a 3 months/6 months/12 month supply for our large family. This will also help me when items go on sale, especially for those items we rotate through quickly.
(more…)We have never chosen to have a big gender reveal, and with baby number six has been no exception. It has just been my husband and I, or as we had more kids, we included the kids by bringing them to the ultrasound. The difference with this pregnancy because of the Covid precautions, no one but me was allowed in my doctor appointments.
I wanted to come up with a something a little more fun than just coming home and announcing, “it’s a ….” to the family. So, after a couple weeks I came up with this easy, low key gender reveal idea one night while lying in bed trying to fall asleep (thanks pregnancy insomnia).
I think half the battle of growing a garden is actually preserving the abundance in ways that we’ll actually eat it come wintertime. Today I wanted to share three ways I preserve my garden chives and how I cook with them come fall and winter.
(more…)The baby nesting phase hit last Fall, followed by the birth baby number five, Connor, before Christmas, COVID started in March and by that time I was more than ready to get back into a better routine and declutter our home. All of those reason tornado’d into buckling down and get started simplifying and really focus on declutter.
“Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from it.”
It’s almost comical how badly our small bathroom needed a makeover. We’ve went back and forth not only on the color we wanted to paint to whether or not to rip it down to studs and do a total remodel. My husband is handy like that!
Lately I’ve been in the mood to finish projects up and do things that I’ve wanted to do but continued to put off (like white washing the brick on our house- see that post here). It very well could be the second trimester pregnancy surge of energy 😉
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I’m super excited to share this video tutorial on How To DIY Stain Interior Wood Doors. We actually ended up replacing and staining 7 of them!
The kids have been asking me to do a Costco Haul video at least the last 5 Costco trips! I think all my YouTube-watching Costco Hauls have rubbed off on them too, haha!
We picked up some of our basic Costco items and a couple family requested things including: butter, pb2, quiche, and some proteins bars. I spent $107 and got out with 4 kiddos in less than 45 minutes!
You can watch below or click over to YouTube here. The kids really want to make more vidoes, so the plan is to post more of our adventures, nature walks, grocery hauls, and I really would love to video some of our home projects we are doing! So feel free to subscribe if you want to follow along! Our DIY Front Door Makeover would have been a good one to video!
So, we did a thing… And started a YouTube channel!
For years I have read blogs and finally started one, and I’ve also watched YouTube over the last couple years. Something my husband said has really struck me.. If I spend “all this time” reading blogs and watching videos, why am I not doing it myself? .. Our vision is to be family centered: family trips, homeschool, one income/stay at home mom life, recipes, kids fun, nature walks, etc!
Let me say this, videos take practice to create 🙂 Yesterday I uploaded our 2nd video: Apple Picking with Daddy. Feel free to watch and if you want to stick around to watch our adventures just hit subscribe!
do you watch YouTube? If so what kind of videos do you enjoy the most?