My Random Weekend...

This week work has been really slow, so I've been trying to find things to keep me busy.  My sewing machine is broken...so by the time the weekend came I was bored with reading, practicing the piano, scrap-booking...ect.  So, this is was my fun and exciting weekend...

Blueberries!

First, Friday I borrowed a dehydrator from my sister.  Then, I dehydrated strawberries and blue berries.  Sat. morning the strawberries were finished nice and crisp, and the blueberries were finished in the afternoon.  I am excited to take them on our backpacking hike this week!  Yum!

Kinda bummed that it didn't make much... 

oh well, more time to make more!

Cleaning up.  Laina, Annie, Brisa

Then Saturday, I invited my nieces over to play.  We had fun playing with finger paint, play dough, blocks, puzzles, and eating Popsicle (which is a must for an AZ summer). 

washing

Finally, as if my nieces didn't wear me out enough :) I was bored Sat. afternoon.  I remember my mom making fruit roll-ups (fruit leather) when I was young and LOVED it!  So, dragging my husband along, we went over to his dads and picked tons of yummy extra ripe peaches.  I went home, chopped, ninja-ed, blended, and cooked my fruit leather.  I used my recipe from this website..only I cooked it between 170-200 degrees. So, after cooking about 5hrs sat. night, and 3 hours Sunday morning, it turned out!  One of them cooked a little too long, so we broke that up to go with the dehydrated fruit.  The 2nd one turned out great!  I turned it into 4 nice chunky fruit roll-ups for a perfect snack!  I am so going to make more!

blending

Tips:  Spray the pan with cooking spray before laying down the plastic wrap.  Then, pour the mixture of stuff on top.  

I was able to wash, cut, blend, and have these 2 pans in the oven within a half hour.  So this is really quick an easy to get ready, then all you have to do is wait.....

in the oven

all done!

While I am kinda on the topic of making dehydrated stuff... and you might not know how much I LOVE food storage and I have been working on it... I have also been making lots of granola with my crock-pot and vacuum sealing it into quart size jars for one of my breakfast items for food storage.  I found my recipe from here.  When making it from here, it ends up kinda dry and plain.  So, I liked to add about 1/4c brown sugar to make it more sweet; I also add dried cranberries and extra honey so I can get more clumps out of it.  Oh!  And while comparing this recipe with others, one added chocolate chips, so I did that one time,  GREAT!!!  Chocolate chips is defiantly a must when I make my granola now.  I mean, how doesn't have a sweat tooth?

Two Years Down...Eternity To Go!

Monday we celebrated our 2 year anniversary!   It feels so long, but went by so fast!  After going out to eat, we went to Wal-Mart and bought some airplanes.  We had fun trying to figure out how to fly them and do tricks.  I have to admit, Will’s was the best.  He almost landed his plane on top of a light pole, and also got a couple inches away from hitting a bird.  I had the best scoring nose dives into the ground at top speed.  We topped off the night with an amazing dessert from Nielson’s frozen custard.  Yum!

Our 2^nd year high lights…

*We became home owners now endlessly working on home improvements
*We have a squirrel, named Mr. Squirrel, in our backyard… along with some very colorful birds…
*We have 90% completed of our 4month supply
*We have taken classes to become repelling/rock climbing certified, have been collecting our own equipment, and made it out on the rocks a couple of times
*We still LOVE each other!!!  I am the luckiest person to have the BEST husband there is!

Freezer Crockpot Meals

Last week Camilla and I decided we were going to make 10 crockpot freezer meals to put in our freezer.   She saw a couple different people do in on Pinterest.  She is always bad at making dinner because she gets home late from school, and I am bad at making dinner when I get home from work different hours.  I decided to make some with her because most of the meals had veggies in it ( I HATE veggies with a passion and have no clue how to cook with them to make them taste yummy), and meat in it (my sister isn’t a big fan of eating meat herself), so we decided to give it a try!

This past week we found 10 different recipes we were interested in try, typed up a shopping list, compared what she had and I had so we didn’t have to buy a ton of seasonings and some other ingredients.  So, last night while both of our husbands were at father-and-sons we made our meals!

Around 5:30-6 we went to Superstition Ranch Market (the BEST place to buy cheap fruits and veggies for cheap, you just have to be picky), where we bought the veggies we needed.  $10 dollars each for each of us.  Next we went to the grocery store and bought the rest of the items, and chicken (We both already had some chicken and beef out defrosting for about 4 meals).  We spent $40-50 each.  Then, we unloaded everything and got to work!

Groceries bought and ready to start.

Our recipes posted for easy to read use

Camilla chopping seasonings from her garden, and we used them too!

Here are my 13 gallon size bags with our 10meals in them ready to take home.

 We finished chopping and making the meals around 10:30, cleaned up, and I left for home around 11.  Now all we have to do is defrost them the night before in the fridge, and add it to the cock pot so we can have dinner ready when we come home in the evening.  I hope they tasted good!