Working from home

I'm working from home today - and I love it.

I am wearing a tee shirt and athletic shorts

I have music on (105.9 the brew at the moment - which is playing "Hells Bells" - interesting work selection, haha)

I have my woof wandering around the house (though I think he put himself to bed...)

I have a cup of tea next to me

Earning money this way is heavenly

Jam Success!!!

I am so pleased to say, my jam turned out!!! And yum oh yum! I don't think I can buy jam anymore. I know where these berries are from, I know that the only other ingredient is sugar...what's not to love?

I mixed my Nancy's brand plain honey yogurt with some of my jam and mmmmmm, stamp of approval. This was ridiculously easy and after making "old fashioned jam" without Pectin, I cannot figure out why people think that freezer jam is easier-although I haven't made it. But check this out:

Mash Berries
Add mashed berries to pot, bring to a rolling boil, boil for 2 minutes
Add equal parts sugar to boiling berry mush (1 cup of mashed berries, 1 cup of sugar, etc)
Bring back to rolling boil for 2 minutes
Pour into rotary mixer
Mix for 4 minutes
Pour into mason jars
Put mason jars in large boiling pot of water with towel on the bottom
Ensure that jars arent touching each other and that there is water above the lid
Boil for 5 to 10 minutes
Remove
Place on counter to cool
Listen for "pop" meaning jars sealed themselves

EASY!!

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My dog is not normal. Most dogs get a treat and eat it practically without chewing. Not my pup. He savors bones. Sometimes he carries them around with him for a while. Sometimes he hides them around the house- he particularly likes to hide them behind pillows on the couch.

Here is is with a treat he got 10 minutes prior, just holding it in his mouth on our bed (Not exactly where I would like him to enjoy said bone) - he eventually went to the living room and carefully dissected it and savored every bite. Silly woofy!

Raspberry Jam

I made jam - for the first time. 

Remember - I am not domesticated, so I don't own canning tools. I had to improvise. 

I purchased a flat of Raspberries from the farm down the way for $10

I looked a recipe up on google. I chose the "old fashioned" one because it was simple - A pot, fruit, sugar. 

The recipe called for equal parts sugar and fruit. 

 Mmmmm. Mashed Raspberries

After boiling the sugar and fruit together, I decided they needed to be canned -

 Poor-Mans Canning set up. Towel on the bottom of the pot, large soup pot.

Poor Mans jar tongs - BBQ tongs

Finished product cooling - lets hope that they actually sealed and that what seemed to be pretty runny thickens up to become "Jam"

But I just want to say, hurray for me for trying this, doing it without any of the tools and (succeeding?)

Oh and on another note, our household no longer has car payments. I officially own my car! And Nick has owned his for forever. We only have 2 "debt" items left to pay-off, one of which is our house :-) YEAY!!!

Changes - Accidentally Domestic Wife

I am starting to explore the wide world of the web and have decided to alter this blog. My original plan was to start over with a new blog entirely but I need to spend some time exploring how websites work in order to do that. This blog really didn't have a purpose and truthfully, it won't have a whole lot more purpose now but whatever. What it will have is a direction.

So here it goes. As you can see, I have changed the blog title to "Accidentally Domestic." I fell in love with the title "The Accidental Housewife" but upon Googling it, I discovered that someone else had it. I played with synonyms for Accidental but didn't really like the way they sounded with housewife. After about ten minutes of brainstorming and Googling various names, I determined that Accidentally Domestic Wife is not in use in case I manage to figure out how to make a web-site out of this. In the mean time, I just have to hope that no one else takes it as a domain name in which case, I would have to ask myself to come up with a new name.

So why would I name my blog Accidentally Domestic Wife? Because I, by a complete fluke, went from a crazy 50-70 hour a week job that paid well, had me wearing business casual, had me running around like a chicken with my head cut-off, had me opening my laptop in bed to get some client work done, eating lunch out daily, filling my car with gas 1 or more times per week, neglecting housework to being a full-time housewife.

I am not a self described Martha Stewart and I am not a natural at anything crafty, cooking, cleaning or decorating. I am learning, stumbling, failing and at times discovering that I can be domestic, sometimes. I have definitely failed. I turned on the gas stove, put the teapot on and then promptly forgot about it and headed out to garden. I came back to a bright red teapot, minus water, minus acrylic in areas with the flame still burning. I took off the chrome coating of the bathtub drain trying to bleach the grease from the bathtub bottom. I haven't crafted anything. I still enjoy eating out because I have what I call the grocery store conundrum. I go to the store and blank out. What the heck should I buy? And generally, I come home with yogurt, fruit, bread, boxed risotto, not exactly Martha. I learned that you can avoid streaks when cleaning windows with a squeegee, the one I bought had little indents that smeared.    


This blog will still follow our lives, but I want to move toward being more organized and maybe writing a little more about becoming domestic. I read many blogs about being domestic and I admit, I am jealous at how easy it seems to come to these people. I always have to wonder if there are other people like me, who don't seem to have a domestic bone in their bodies, trying to navigate their way through laundry, dusting, decorating, window washing, cooking, sewing (oh wait, I don't even know how to operate a sewing machine) and all other things domestic. 


So here we go, this is my journey and my husbands journey as we try to navigate a new life with a stay at home wife. And just FYI, I may change the name again because to be honest, I was so in love with "The Accidental Housewife" that I can't quite fall in love with anything else at the moment.