~ from my home to yours, living the Working Pantry lifestyle ~ surviving today's economy ~ a can-do spirit and attitude ~

Saturday, January 28, 2023

A Journal of My Days: 1/28/23

  Welcome to A Working Pantry and today's post!

if this is your first visit, we hope you find something that will make you want to come back.  If you're a regular reader, please know that you are appreciated so very much!  I love the little community of frugal living, like-minded, pantry building people we are building here and am happy that you've chosen to be a part of it!

Today was a home kind of day, meaning I didn't have to go anywhere!!!  I absolutely thrive on my stay-at-home days.  So what did I do?   I sewed ...


I started working on 'crumb' blocks.  This will be a leaders and enders kind of project.  Every time I sit down at the sewing machine to work on a project, I'll sew a few of these 'crumbs' together before I start on the project at hand and do the same thing whenever I'm through sewing on the project at hand for that session.  Since there is no pattern, rhyme or reason to how the crumbs go together, all I basically have to do is grab some fabric and start sewing.


I worked on the quilt my sister and I are doing via technology.  The step we're working on now is to sew the 'topper' to the lightbulb.  I got all of them done except for 4 and the reason I didn't go ahead and finish those four was because I miscounted how many toppers I needed.  I thought I had cut and stitched enough but found out today that I was 4 short.  I was kinda disgusted with myself and decided it was time to walk away from the project for a little while.

So, I worked on the memory quilt I'm doing for a friend and called it done for my sewing for the day.

I vacuum sealed the ground beef we purchased on sale yesterday and got it ready for the freezer, fixed dinner (leftover porkchops and one burger, home-canned fried potatoes and home-canned collards), cleaned up the dishes, exercised and called it a day.

I watched this sewing video by Rosery Apparel and picked up a really helpful tip on acquiring good quality fabric.  She mentioned that she shopped for good quality linen tablecloths and used them as fabric and a lightbulb went off in my head!  I thought about all those linen sales I had bypassed because as a general rule, we don't use tablecloths on our kitchen table.  You can bet I'll be shopping for clearance and markdowns in the linen areas of department stores from now on!  My list of places to find fabric other than a fabric store grew with this addition ... thrift stores, castoffs from others, yard sales and now the linen department in stores.  I call this 'creative shopping!'

I looked out the window as I sat and sewed today, my view was one area of my container garden ... I'm ready to start playing in the dirt but the weather's not quite ready for me too!  Come on Spring!!!

That's it for me today!

Let's close with a quote to encourage and inspire us ...

Look at what you already have with new eyes, before shopping for something new!

From the archives ... a series I wrote and taught in 2020


I hope you've found something helpful or inspiring in today's post!

Until tomorrow ...

Patsi 

Sharing 42 years' experience of frugal, prudent living and pantry building 

A Working Pantry

My second blog:  From This Heart of Mine 

She looketh well to the ways of her household … Proverbs 31:27 

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6 comments:

  1. One of the salvage stores here had two huge pallet size boxes of misc. linens for $1 each on Friday. It never occurred to me to think fabric!! I have stacks of tablecloths here and I love them so we do use them mostly when we have guests.

    Today we took that ten pound pork loin and turned it into 5 pint jars of pork carnitas, three quarts of pork stew, 2 packs of stir fry strips and a two pound roast. More MRE's on the shelf!

    A deal on Amazon that I just ordered is a gallon of Happy Belly vegetable oil for $6.45.

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    1. Lana, I would love to find a linen sale like that!

      You really did good stretching that pork loin and adding to your pantry with it. That's a good price on vegetable oil too! I'll go check it out. Thanks for the heads up!

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  2. Let’s try this again😀you’re sharing helpful information with these series posts. Thank you so much. We’re totally debt free but still learning.

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    1. Lee Ann, thank you! Staying debt free is like keep weight off once it's lost. You have to keep learning and doing what you did to get there or else it'll all come right back!

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  3. I understand being ready for spring and planting! We have another winter storm this week, but we're only in a watch not a warning thank goodness, but the temperatures and rain are really making spring seem far away. Hope you have a great day Patsy!

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    1. Stacie, thank you! We'll start planting in February, so we don't have much longer to wait before I can start playing in the dirt!

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