biting.

i mentioned in my new years resolution post that i was hoping to utilize the downloadable book - one bite at a time. with lots and lots of great tips for simplifying life. i decided to start with something i falter at, but had been endeavouring to get the hang of: meal planning. this has become even more important as we adjust to both of working and being out of the house often for more than 12 hours a day. there's no time for detours to the store, and because we commute by public transport, it's actually not all that easy to pick something up on the way, particularly when the local shop has closed!

i've found a great resource - plan to eat. what a genius idea! it allows you to plan your meals using an online meal planner, you can type up meals that you have in recipe books, or import recipes from online sources. it's really incredibly simple, and once you've added a recipe, it's stored in your online file! this is a paid for service, but the first month is a free trial, so there's no risk. i am LOVING it. particularly because we've simplified grocery shopping. we're now doing grocery delivery. delivery in london is very common, and not terribly expensive. plus i'm already seeing a reduction in our grocery bill simply because there are very few impulse purchases. it fits around our schedule and means that i can shop on my lunch hour and have groceries delivered the next morning before i leave for work! so online meal planning, coupled with online grocery shopping is a huge simplification of my life.

the second 'bite' i took on, i did so accidentally. i had meant to try and start a morning routine - but it wasn't going very well, a series of late nights and variable mornings has lead me to putting the morning routine idea to the side for this month. instead, as i read through the book and this just kind of 'happened' i most noticed it over the weekend.


clean as you cook:  as my mother and sister will attest, and my husband, while i'm a pretty decent cook, i'm not so great about the mess that is created during the 'creative process.' yesterday was a big cooking day. i made this delicious casserole (chicken and butternut squash and pasta and parmesan cheese? yes please!) but that meant roasting a squash and a chicken, which i did early the morning. a practice run at le boy's birthday cake and then the actual creation of the casserole meant for a huge mess. but actually, i cleaned as i went, putting away items as i used them, gathering scraps in a bowl, wiping up spills as they happened, soaking dishes for easy clean up later, wearing an apron. really none of it was hard, but it made the cooking and the clean up a breeze!

some of the tips from one bite include:


• Place a “garbage bowl” or container for food scraps and peelings on your main work surface.
• If you have a double sink, run one side half full of hot soapy water for hand washing and dish rinsing, leaving the other free for washing vegetables or draining pastas.
• Keep a broom and dustpan handy for flour or sugar spills on the floor.
• Have a few clean dry towels on hand for countertop spills and drying dishes.

i've taken the last one a bit further and adopted a 'side' towel, as explained here. such a great thing to do and so easy. what i've realised is that this will mean i have slightly more kitchen laundry each week, but it also means that i'm not stressed about the state of my kitchen.

pantry.

what to do in a kitchen with no space? we have about 5 cupboards in our teensy kitchen. and both food and dishes for cooking and eating, to store. so how to fix this?

we've put up a couple corner shelves, painted white to match the walls, and we're using glass jars.

to keep from mixing up the sugar and salt, icing sugar and flour and the different types of flour i use, i printed cute labels found on pinterest onto sticker paper (seriously, the most useful stationery item i own!). this was an inexpensive project, gets us away from using plastic to store food in and prettied up the kitchen! all with the added bonus of random food no longer falling on our heads when we open the cupboard doors!

Source: sissyprint.blogspot.com via Brie on Pinterest

i love the look, the old-time feel and the ease of it all. the kitchen is 100% more functional! which makes me one happy lady! 

glass jars from ikea, variety of sizes: £0.90 - £2.69

sticker paper: free

corner shelves (4 total) : £4/shelf

Total cost for new pantry: £30

operation: preparation

we have grace of time right now. we have the grace of knowing what is coming next. we have been allowed to prepare.

in a week i will benefit from decades of research and medicine, i will have medicine repair what cannot heal naturally. my knee, injured in a skiing accident, has kept me much more sedate than i would prefer. i long to run hard and fast (for me) along the pavement. i long to sit cross-legged on the floor. i will, in time. i will have surgery to repair what cannot be healed all on its own. ligaments do not naturally heal. but they can be healed with invasive and intense surgery.

isn't that what god does on us? there are parts of us that cannot be healed with just time, or tenderness. there are parts of us that require much more. so while we favour that part of ourselves, learn to protect it from harm, learn to not sit cross-legged, it never actually heals, it cannot heal on its own. and we require god-surgery. on our souls.

i said that god has given us the gracious gift of time. i go in for surgery in a week, but we've known about this for months, we've known about the long recovery. we've been able to make provisions for that time. marvellous is offering up herself to us that week - we are humbled by her willingness to leave life and come walk with us through the early stages of healing. the slowcooker is working overtime as i prepare meals to be frozen, and i get the house in order. le boy is making minor adjustments to our living space that will make major adjustments to my (our) quality of life. our friends are praying and planning for food and company. we have been provided time to prepare. 

and god gives us this time before be have soul surgery also. he allows us time to clear our schedules and simplify our lives. to prepare for the healing. for the recovery. years ago, before i spent time sorting through who i was called to be, god made space. a job that allowed me time off for appointments, a friend to live with who was supportive, an income that provided. i trained a marathon that year. i was broken of all my defences. and because i no longer could shield the parts of me that i protected, i handed them to him and he was merciful. 

he is always gracious. and he has provided for preparation. 

lately.

it was a weekend of projects and friends and relaxing and it was wonderful. all of my photos are of half-finished things, so not yet ready to post.

but i wouldn't leave you empty handed.

on saturday after i had spent time painting and sewing and cleaning and organising, le boy was tasked with dinner. he pulled a ziploc bag out of the freezer and asked if this was the spaghetti sauce? i glanced up from what i was doing and said, oh yes! umm, just kidding. i talked myself out of a meltdown - it wasn't the end of the world, but man was a hungry and a little annoyed, it all got better with food, even if it was inventive!

now, i know this has happened to all of us, and i know you're saying, brie, come on, a sharpie would solve this. but now, where's the fun in that? so to avoid eating brisket over pasta for a second time (although, actually, it was pretty good!) i've downloaded, printed and cut out these freezer labels. courtesy of our favourite, martha.

i used a few sheets of sticker paper and voila! amazing.

i'll be back later in the week with an update on our kitchen organisation project. it also involves labels and food storage. and a printable!

for now, download, print off and keep these handy in the kitchen. save your marriage, save yourself.

twenty-four::newlywed::food

::: to see all 31 days of posts please click here :::

it's something i do. freeze food for later. use up old bits from the vegetable bin. recently, i was on a train (a daily occurrence around here), and two men were having an interesting, if slightly self-congratulatory conversation about wastefulness and food and how people no longer know how to do simple things to conserve, things that people from previous eras would have done without thinking twice. i should probably pause and say i completely eavesdropped on this conversation, but it was a grouping of four seats, so it was hard not to hear. on this particular morning i was knitting. most mornings on the train find me knitting or reading. and i'd like to think of myself as semi self-sufficient. i do try, earnestly, to converse food, and make good use of household products and needs. i'm investigating homemade bath and body products, trying to make informed decisions about the foods we eat, the cleaners we use, the products we buy. 

after a little research i've found that in the uk we throw away 8.3 million tonnes a year of food from our homes, which costs the average family more than £50. as much as possible, we try to throw away nothing. with a little forward planning, and a freezer, most food can be kept good until later. most food can be used for multiple meals, and most food is not bad once it's past it's 'use-by' date. one prime candidate is milk and dairy products.

• i sniff most days before i pour milk, why? i've had 'good' milk go bad, and i've had 'overdue' milk, that's still perfectly fresh. keep your milk inside the fridge and not in the door, keep your fridge cold and food stays fresh longer. 
• use veg that is a little 'off' for soups, stews, sauces. the slightly wrinkly red pepper languishing in your crisper can be chopped up and used, maybe not for eating raw, but it can definitely be added to something cooked. wilting celery, stand in a mug of water with fresh cut ends for an hour - and it's revitilised! and in the end, when in doubt, freeze it. spinach (add to sauce), most vegetables (soups and stews), meat bones (stock), ends of bread (whizz in the food processor for breadcrumbs).

in honour of using up old bits: 

chicken soup. 

use as the recipe calls for soup. reduce for chicken pot pie filling.

ingredients:

3 cups chicken stock
1/2 lb cooked chicken, shredded (i had some extra bacon frozen, so i added that too!)
2 carrots, diced
2 leeks, sliced
1 lb green beans, trimmed
2 large potatoes, cubed
large onion, diced
*or really any vegetable lying around the kitchen in desperate need of cooking
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup heavy cream

 heat olive oil in heavy stockpot, sautee onions, carrots and leeks until soft. season with salt and pepper.

add potatoes, chicken, chicken stock. simmer over medium-low heat for 1 hour. 

add green beans. stir in cream. simmer for a further 5 min.  check seasonings, adjust as needed.

serve hot with toasted bread.

twenty::newlywed::homemaking

::: to see all 31 days of posts please click here :::

i mentioned that i was changing out our curtains the other day. the old curtains were intended to match a purple wall - which is no longer purple. and really, the flowers weren't really our style anyway. i was looking for an inexpensive option (remember, we're on a budget). inspired by pinterest to go with drop cloths and yes, i'm a little behind the times, i realise this was cool about two years ago, but i didn't have a flat to decorate two years ago...

Source: theletteredcottage.net via Brie on Pinterest

i dispatched le boy to our local diy store - he's definitely making friends with the owner! and he returned with two drop cloths of 12'x12'. we've got one of those drapery hanging systems which has hooks and eyes - i wasn't really looking forward to the sewing, but determined to make this experiment work! as it turned out once i'd washed the drop cloths and looked at the whole system - that i could wiggle the hooks through the drop cloths without any sewing - a big bonus is that drop cloths are already hemmed! 

here's a before: 

and here's a few afters...taken at night (darkness is falling at about 6pm these days...)

the next afternoon le boy and i took a walk around the neighbourhood and our local park.

can i pause for a moment and just say how blessed we feel to live in our neighbourhood? there are families with children everywhere! which might seem normal for a neighbourhood with a park, except that this is london and generally children are nowhere to be seen. the park has a small pond/lake, a couple of playgrounds, a track and field area, enormous playing fields, three sets of tennis courts, a mini-putt and a fantastic running/cycle route - we LOVE it.

on the way back i asked le boy to go in ahead and draw the curtains, i wanted to ensure they looked good from the street side too! and in the process i took a few shots of our lovely house. oh how we love it!

where's le boy?

the wrought iron:

our red door:

 

and the gate: 

eighteen::newlywed::homekeeping

::: to see all 31 days of posts please click here :::

the grocery budget is the line item that seems to have the most variance in our lives. some weeks it's enormous, others, not so much. the grocery stores in the UK don't really have weekly fliers which i suppose is good for the environment, but really, is bad for meal planning on a budget. that being said, there are some items which are consistently good deals: whole fresh chickens (3 for £10), ground beef/mince (2.1 kg for £10), or fish that is 'reduced' read: needs to sell today...but can be most definitely frozen for later.

the freezer is filled with bits - soups to be eaten, ends of vegetables that never get served but can be added to casseroles and soups (broccoli stems for instance), homemade spaghetti sauce, meat that was on special, overripe bananas for muffins and stock.

this week i'm exploring the world of baking bread at home. i'm tweaking a recipe i've found online and had two (!) good successes with - will definitely post more as things are ironed out. this week alone we've saved over £8 on bread. turns out flour and yeast? pretty inexpensive!

this week's meal plan looked like so:

• saturday: homemade fishcakes & creamed spinach (recipe coming very soon)
• sunday: pumpkin parmesan pasta using pumpkins in place of butternut squash from this recipe - the thanksgiving centrepiece is slowly being demolished...yum! 
• monday: soup made on saturday and homemade bread with a small cheese board
• tuesday: le boy is out this evening, i'm polishing off the soup (with bread freshly baked this morning)
• wednesday: we're doing an alpha course at our new church (dinner's included!) - if you're interested in exploring the christian faith, or brushing up on the basics, this is the course for you - click here for the international website.
• thursday: vegetarian lasagna - will report back 
• friday: dinner at friends. 

meal planner download.

fifteen::newlywed::food

::: to see all 31 days of posts please click here :::

it's pantry week here. we're hoping to trim a little off the grocery budget and use up some of the stuff that's hanging about, just waiting to be created into something delicious.

i came up with this 'recipe' for soup when i was in university. it's nothing fancy, but with the colder days setting in, i find a deep need for soup. for warmth. bonus: it's cheap. and healthy! 

bacon vegetable soup. 

this soup instantly warms you up, is filled with lots of vegetables and tons of flavour! don't worry about a chopping the veg nicely, this gets whizzed with a blender at the end...

ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup red wine

6-12 rashers of bacon

2 onions, roughly chopped

4 carrots, chopped

4 sticks of celery, chopped

4 potatoes, rough large dice 

3 tins tomatoes 

3 cups chicken stock 

salt and pepper 

cream (for serving, optional)

cook: 

in a large, heavy bottomed stock pot, heat olive oil over medium heat, add bacon and brown, scraping at bits that get stuck to the bottom. add in onions, carrots and celery, allow to soften (3-4 min). 

add red wine, simmer until at least half the liquid has evaporated. add potatoes, tomatoes and chicken stock. simmer for 40 min, or until liquid has reduced and thickened. (the volume in my pot reduced from 3.5 qts to 3qts).

season to taste. take off heat and allow to cool slightly (10 min). blend until smooth (i use an immersion hand blender). 

serve warm with fresh bread, and if feeling indulgent, a drizzle of cream! 

this recipe is really just a starting point, i often use whatever i have around the kitchen that needs to be used up. 

happy weekend! 

eight::newlywed::homemaking

::: to see all 31 days of posts please click here :::

it's thanksgiving weekend around our house. so this will be brief. just a quick peek into how we've decorated for the holiday, and a link to the printables - loving what can be found online these days...

 

we are abundantly blessed. 

1 thessalonians scripture  

give thanks banner

seven::newlywed::homekeeping

::: to see all 31 days of posts please click here :::

one of the greatest excitements for me over the last couple of months has been moving into our new flat. by london standards we're doing pretty well - a sitting room and a dining room, a laundry closet and a spare room! many houses in london are row houses, which means they connect to the houses on either side of them - the neighbours are never far away!

what is a very fortunate feature of our little flat is that each is built to have access to a small private garden! to make space the side of the house is stepped (which also allows for windows). and this means there are nooks to be filled.

here's one such corner.

this area is what you see as soon as you walk in the front door - so it needed something. the blue telephone desk was something i picked up at a second hand store and i LOVE it. the seat pulls out and it actually makes for a fairly comfortable place to take a telephone call, albeit on an iphone these days. coincidentally this corner is one of the few spots in the house where we have good mobile reception...

so le boy was obliging and helped this process along:

and a few wedding and engagement presents later we've got this:

i love this little corner now. and although they don't exactly look it - i do promise that things have been hung straight - it's the walls that are wonky - the house is over a hundred, she's a little sensitive about her edges ;)

in all honesty, this entire corner cost us nothing. we were the fortunate recipients of some very nice presents or we already owned everything else. some of his stuff, some of hers. and suddenly, something that represents us both...now if we could only figure out the living room and dining room and bedroom.....

one::newlywed::homekeeping

::: to see all 31 days of posts please click here :::

welcome to 31 days of newlywedded bliss! i've decided to join up with a group of bloggers, who are writing on one topic for 31 days. topics are varied and it will be so great to see what people come up with. i'll be linking up via the reluctant entertainer - i LOVE her blog and find so much great inspiration for entertaining ideas!  i'm looking forward to this challenge and to exploring some of the new bits of life that come along with being newly married: hospitality, home organisation, cooking and friendships to name a few. my husband, affectionately referred to as 'le boy' on the blog, has given the green light to the slightly greater-than-usual reveal of our daily lives...but really, he started dating me after the blog was started, so it's a bit part and parcel eh?

when we were married (all eight weeks ago) i knew that our lives were changing. and there are many great, really great, benefits to being married. i'm fortunate to have been raised to know the basics of running a home and i fortunately married a guy who does know how the washing machine, dishwasher and vacuum all work! but running a home is a bit of trial and error, and a bit of learning from others, and a bit of stealing ideas from martha stewart.

recently we've been learning how to handle the masses of laundry that two (!) people generate. there's of course the personal laundry - which we just do together, and whoever realises first that something needs to be done, throws it in the machine. we're extremely fortunate to have a washer/dryer combo! many british homes only have a washer, which is fine, and great for the environment, but can be a little tricky given that there's not much extra space to handle laundry. our machine has a handy delay function, so you can start something in the middle of the night, and it will be finishing up as you wake! (or gets done in the middle of the day and is ready to be unloaded as you get home from work). 

figuring out the cycle for bedsheets and storage of all our wonderful shower gifts of towels and sheets was a bit of a process - but i think we've stumbled on something that's working (for now at least.) 

saturday morning (today in fact!) we change the sheets on the bed. 

we try to immediately put new sheets on - this takes five minutes, but means that tonight, when we're tired, or coming back from somewhere late, or finished having people for dinner, we don't have the moment of 'darn, we still need to make the bed.' fortunately, le boy is obsessed with a made bed, and happily helps - i think his favourite night of the week is saturday, simply because there are fresh sheets on the bed. we change our sheets every week, we change our duvet every two weeks. this seems reasonable for us now and keeps us feeling, well, fresh. 

in a small european flat however, there is always the challenge of storage. where on earth do you hide all those essentials (you know, sheets, towels, bathmats?) we had a moment of genius when buying our bed and bought a bedframe that had drawers built-in to the frame! it provides us with oodles of storage and helps because we can store items in a logical location - bedsheets next to the bed, you say? novel? well i've known people to resort to storing bedsheets in the bottom of a tv-cabinet, because that's where there was space...so yes, it's rather novel! 

this drawer has 8 towels, 10 face cloths, three sets of sheets, two bathmats and 10 hand towels...it's the little drawer that could! now if only le boy would fold the towels 'just-so' and everything would fit! but actually, in this newlywed adventure, i'm realising that you can let things go...and equally, you can gently mention the 'best-practice' i find a bit of jokey manner to be the best...but that's just my guy :) 

finally, for us, it's all about ease. can we find all the pieces we want to make that bed in five minutes flat? and here we steal from martha, again. fold your fitted sheet (tutorial for that pesky fitted sheet here), flat sheet and one pillow case to the same size, i like making them the depth of the pillow case, and then neatly place everything into the remaining pillow case. then when it's bed-making time, you just pull everything out together! plus, things fit in the drawer better this way too! 

whew. who knew i could speak so long on sheets and towels. sorry if this has been a total bore. but these are the things one thinks of when getting married and setting up home!