Spring Cleaning Planning with Evernote - Bathroom

We’re past the midway point in the month of March, and this is the time of year when I start getting antsy to be outdoors. Unfortunately, it’s still extremely cold here, although the snow does seem to be starting to melt some. Yesterday the hubs was able to get outside with the kids and clean up the yard a bit since it was around 40 degrees. He got a bon fire going and burned some of the brush and branches that have either been trimmed, or fallen of its own accord. It’s kind of a huge embarrassing mess right now. Living in the suburbs, there’s a bit of pressure to have your yard looking presentable. Reason #2123432 why we don’t belong in the ‘burbs. Who has time to keep a clean yard with small kids, house work, homeschooling, volunteer work, homeschool co-ops, extra curricular activities and … oh yeah, trying to grow as much of our own food as possible. People! I belong in the country where a messy yard is not only acceptable, but kind of expected. But, this is where God has planted us. And so we will do the best we can. :)

The messy yard has me thinking about spring cleaning. We’re going on vacation at the end of next month, and I’d like to come home to a nice clean house (and yard), because when we get back, I’ll be diving right into gardening season (a few things will be planted before we leave, but mostly it’ll ramp up after we get back).

I use Evernote for a lot of my planning, including lesson plans, grocery lists, meal plans, garden notes, so I think I’ll use Evernote to plan a Spring Cleaning checklist for myself. My house is different from yours, so your Spring Cleaning may look slightly different, but I can post my checklists here in order to help spark your minds for your own homes. 
 

So what about you? Doing any spring preparations?

Technorati Tags: Spring Cleaning,Cleaning,Organization

Homemade Hamburger Buns

I think bread making in general is one of those basic skills that every wannabe homesteader tackles at some point or another. I know that, for me, it was a long road with many failures before I finally got it right. It was really almost laughable. I couldn’t get a dough to rise to save my life! But once you figure it out, once you know the feel of a good dough, the possibilities are endless! Here’s a really easy hamburger bun recipe that I’ve been using for years. It yields 12 buns, which is great for a larger family!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup water
• 2 T. butter
• 1 T. white sugar
• 1 1/2 t. salt
• 5 1/2 c. all purpose flour (feel free to sub in a few cups of whole wheat flour!)
• 1 envelope of dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 T. water

(BIG T = TABLESPOONS. little t = teaspoons).

Directions

• In a medium saucepan, combine the first 5 ingredients. Stir to combine so that the sugar doesn’t just settle to the bottom. Bring to a boil, and then remove from heat to cool until lukewarm. A temperature of about 105 degrees F to 110 degrees F is good. Any hotter and it could kill the yeast.
• In the bowl of your stand mixer, stir together the flour and yeast. Pour in wet ingredients and stir until the dough starts to pull together. With your hook attachment, knead the dough for 8-10 minutes (if you’re just learning the art of bread making, I recommend kneading by hand on a floured surface. It helps you get familiar with the way everything should feel). You can stop kneading when the dough feels smooth, not too sticky, and when you poke it, it bounces back at you a bit.  Place dough in a greased bowl, turning to coat. Cover with a damp towel to rise for 1 hour OR until the dough has doubled. The doubling of the dough is more important than the time. So if it takes longer than 1 hour for it to double in size, that’s okay. Patience. ;)
• Punch down the dough and divide into 12 portions. Make tight balls by pulling the dough down around itself and pinching at the bottom. This helps the gluten develop ---> good texture. Put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Let them rest for about 10 minutes, and then press down to flatten slightly with the palm of your hand. Cover once again with a damp towel to rise for about 40 minutes OR until doubled in size.
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Mix egg yolk and water in a small bowl and brush onto the buns. Bake for 10-12 minutes. They’re done when they have a nice golden brown color and they sound hollow like a drum when you tap them with your fingernail.
• Now slather those babies with some butter and enjoy. I mean … wait patiently until the burgers are done grilling and make sure you share.

(Original Recipe Source)

I've linked this post over at: Frugally Sustainable's Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways

Saving with a Pellet Stove

I know that among homesteaders, a wood stove is generally the way we want to go. You can harvest your own fuel, and woodstoves don’t require electricity. The thing is that they’re also extremely expensive to have installed, especially if you don’t have the know-how to do it yourself. We had a quote done, and found out that it would cost us upwards of $7,000 to have a stove installed (including the stove, parts, and labor). I would be okay with investing that much into a house we’d be staying in forever, but we hope to move within the next five years. So, a pellet stove was much more reasonable for us at this time.

My grandparents offered us their pellet stove which they no longer use. We installed it for a little less than $250 worth of supplies and 3 hours of labor. I was also able to find a nice hearth pad on Craigslist for $80, which saved us another $300 or so. Installing a pellet stove is much less involved than installing a wood stove. Much more newbie friendly. It’s so easy that my husband and I were able to do it ourselves. That’s saying something, especially since neither of us are particularly handy. We’re learning, but it’s a process. How did we learn to install such a thing? YouTube of course! What can’t you learn on YouTube? Here’s the video that we followed:
Part 1: http://youtu.be/blZHAsDmVMc
Part 2: http://youtu.be/4IVHbXlbUDg

Cool. But do you really save money?
This year has been extremely cold. We’re in NY, so a harsh winter is a given, but the subzero wind chills are happening to a greater degree, and more frequently than typical thanks to these polar vortex thingies that keep coming down. With that in mind, we’ve been saving $60-$100 per month off of our utility bill, including figuring in the cost of pellets ($4.50/bag, and we use about 1 bag per day).  So, yeah! We’re saving! On the sub zero days, the pellet stove acts as a supplement to our furnace. It doesn’t get quite as warm. On the days when it’s in the 20’s or 30’s, our house 1,800 sq ft house gets up to 77 degrees with just the stove, no furnace. I’ve been impressed!

What if the electricity goes out?!
We actually have a converter on our van that would allow us to run the stove using our van as a power source. We also have a huge generator. This should get us through a few days if needed, though we don’t typically lose power for more than 12-16 hours a time. The last time we had a long term power outage in my area must have been 1991. Hopefully the S doesn’t HTF before we move onto a dream homestead with a wood burning stove.

I'm linked over at the Prairie Homestead Barn Hop and at Frugally Sustainable's Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways.