From My Home to Yours
1/2/26
~ Welcome 2026 ~
The Christmas decor is packed away, my Christmas notebook has been updated with all the happenings of Christmas 2025, the sweet goodies have been all eaten or frozen for future treats and now we're staring 2026 in the face!
Not much will change in my writing for 2026, yet everything will change in my writing for 2026.
I'll continue sharing about the same things as 2025, but with a new depth that comes with aging.
The big gardens are out, we're no longer able to keep up with all that it entails. We will however continue to do raised bed gardening and container gardening as it doesn't require the same amount of strenuous work.
For years we've been working and planning toward this season of life when we would be forced to slow down and that time has arrived. Our fruit trees are in place and give us all the fruit we need plus some to share, my herb garden is established and requires minimum upkeep and we have planted plenty of flowers that come back year after year to share their beauty with us. Please note, we are in no way ready for the 'rocking chair' so to speak, but we are wise enough to realize that we need to start doing things differently.
So, if we're not planning on growing a BIG garden this year, how will we keep our pantry stocked? Oh dear reader, there is more than one way to keep our pantries well stocked other than raising a BIG garden. We will take advantage of farmer's markets, sales at the grocery stores, gleaning, foraging and when offered, the surplus of others who share their garden produce. Where there is a will, there is a way!
Our pantry doesn't need to be as large as it has been in the past, so the need for huge amounts of produce is no longer necessary. We've set the size of pantry we want to keep and will be working towards maintaining that. I will always do my best to maintain a well-stocked pantry, it's just too important, but the ways and means of doing that will look different going forward.
In other areas ...
For 2026 we're going to focus on paying as much extra on our new to us vehicle as possible. We really want to retire this debt as soon as possible.
In order to accomplish the above stated goal, we will be focusing on ways to cut our expenses and live more frugally ... not deprived, but more frugally!
I'll continue sewing, planning ahead, living frugally, living prepared to the best of our abilities, being more health conscious, making Bible study a priority, writing Bible studies for women and all the other things I did in 2025. If I had to choose a word for 2026, it would be 'intentional.' Our plans are to be intentional about slowing down, resting more and taking care of ourselves while maintaining the simple, frugal lifestyle we've enjoyed for many, many years! Yes, enjoyed! Choosing to live a frugal lifestyle means we have more options open to us because we've been careful with our resources. Someone recently commented that, 'you've had a hard life.' A hard life, the thought never occurred to me! I don't consider the life we've built a hard one, it's been full of work, sometimes hard work but a hard life ... I don't look at it that way at all. I enjoy the creativity that is necessary to make the things we want to do happen. If we want to take a trip, we save and sacrifice for it. If we want to be able to have quality gifts ready for gift giving when the occasion calls for it, we shop sales and or make things ourselves ahead of time. If we want to make a big to us purchase, again we save and sacrifice for it (Exceptions are vehicles and or major house renovations or repairs.). We don't have everything we want, but we most definitely have everything we need and then some. God has been very good to us!
A hard life? No indeed, working hard doesn't equate to a hard life in our minds!
Now, that we've got our intended direction for 2026 mapped out, let's take a look at what the last week in 2025 and the first day in 2026 looked like ...
We made a big batch of sausage balls to enjoy Christmas morning and for breakfast a couple of days afterwards, then we froze the rest. These will come in handy when we need a quick breakfast or maybe even a snack in the future!
I took the broth from the chicken I canned last week and turned it into 7 jars of canned broth for my pantry. For my non-canning readers, instead of canning the broth, you could freeze it in freezer containers instead. The point is to not let the broth go to waste, preserve it using the method of preservation of your choice.
I started reading a new to me series, the Bregdan Series by Ginny Dye and I am hooked. I'd been playing around with starting this series in 2025, but life stepped in and I lost my focus on reading. This past week I started reading book one again, Storm Clouds Rolling In, and am finding myself looking forward to the parts of my day that I can steal a few moments to read. The series has a historical setting based on the Civil War Era, and since I'm a history buff, this really suits my taste perfectly! (Psst! My personal goal for this year is to collect every book in the series (I think there are 21 thus far) and read them all! I'm scouring used book stores online and in person for each sequel, so far I have found the first 7 and they were all less and in some instances quite a bit less than half their full price. I'm not using household monies to purchase the books, these purchases are coming from my own personal allowance. Any surplus household monies has a purpose and it's not buying books!)
I also started crocheting a baby doll blanket for my gift trunk (I use Bernat baby blanket yarn for this project.). I gifted the three I had made up and now it's time to 'restock' this item for future gifting. I already had the yarn on hand so nothing needs to be purchased for making the doll blankets.
In addition I finished the final two of the seven drawstring bags I've had in various stages of completion for several weeks. This gives me a total of seven of the seven finished! The outer fabric on the three on the left came from men's shirts (2 pink and one black gingham) that were headed to the 're-home' pile. The fabric from the one in the center came from my 'fabric pantry.' The outer fabric on the three on the right came from a thrifted vintage sheet. Now that they're all finished, they will be bagged and added to my gift trunk. These drawstring bags are perfect for filling and giving as gifts. I've never given one that didn't thrill the recipient ... of course, I always try to fill it with things that are appropriate for the recipient.
We had to be in a larger city earlier in the week and I stopped in at a nationally known craft store. I did not go shopping the day after Christmas intentionally, but there were a few things that I did need to replace so we would be ready for gift wrapping next year. I went in with a specific list and the only thing I came out with that wasn't on my list were three $.50 McCall's sewing patterns. One pattern drawer held all that they had left and so I took the time to go through them one by one and found three that I could use.
All the Christmas stuff was 60% off but some of the items rang up with a bigger discount. I purchased plain red bags (these can be used for Valentine Day's gifts as well), various sizes of Christmas designed bags and boxes and holiday tissue paper. That's all I needed for next Christmas so that's all I purchased. It's part of our being intentional, buy what we need and leave the rest in the store. Oh, don't think that I wasn't tempted! The store I was in still had a tremendous amount of Christmas merchandise on the shelves, and I could easily have purchased more, but we have other plans for any surplus monies that we have this year and it's not buying Christmas decor or supplies we don't need!
That's it for this week, I hope you've found something in my ramblings that will help and or encourage you in the upcoming week.
Until the next time ...
mrs. patsi @ A Working Pantry
~ quietly holding the home front ~
She looketh well to the ways of her household … Proverbs 31:27
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