This Week With Dee ~ Menu, Home Tasks & More (9/25/23)

This Week With Dee – where I share our menu, my planned home tasks for the week, what I’m reading, self care plans and more. I hope it will give you some ideas for planning your own week or at least a glimpse of one homemaker’s life.

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THIS WEEK WITH DEE

Check out this week’s music “vibe” video. Is that not the coziest outdoor scene ever?! I could happily spend a few hours there sipping coffee and watching the leaves fall. Total bliss…

It’s going to be rather warm this week so some of my original plans for this week’s menu (chili, for instance) are being postponed.

MENU:

Monday…

grilled burgers
ranch style beans (leftovers)
chips
salad

Tuesday…

We ended up not having this meal Sunday. We had sub sandwiches from Jimmy John’s for lunch and all three of us saved half for dinner.

French toast
sausage links
eggs
OJ

Wednesday…

Chicken Divan (a vintage recipe – will share if we like it)
mashed potatoes
carrots
salad

Thursday…

Tex-Mex casserole
salad

Friday…

pork tenderloin
rice
baked corn and tomatoes (vintage recipe I’m trying)

Saturday…

leftovers

Sunday…

Eggs Florentine
English muffins
roasted potatoes
fresh fruit salad

IN MY HOME:
REVIEW OF LAST WEEK

Last week I kept up with basic housework and stuck to my menu for the most part. I picked up groceries and dropped off recycling on Wednesday. I had three Zoom calls and spent a lot of time on blog related tasks. The week seemed to go be rather quickly!

THIS WEEK

We have an appointment Wednesday morning to get the three female kittens spayed. Someone asked if I’d ever shared a picture of them and I don’t believe I have. Here is one I took the other evening when my son brought in three of them at a time. We’ve been putting them in the laundry room at night. This particular picture includes two of the three females and one of the males (the black one). From left to right, this is Elaine (from Seinfeld), Fran (The Nanny) and Niles (Frasier):

Our other female is Roz (from Frasier) and the second male is Frasier. We didn’t need five kittens but they are awfully sweet.

Last week I had planned to focus on Zone 4, our bedroom, bathroom and balcony. I regret to say that all I managed was to dust and polish the furniture.

This week is Zone 5 – the living room/den/family room. That works out well because I want to finish decorating for fall. Most of the decorations I have go in the family room and a few things in the library. I’ll give those two rooms a good dusting and vacuuming first and then put up the fall decorations.

WORK

This evening we have a Zoom meeting for our nonprofit. We have stopped hosting events this year but we have a few items of business to attend to. It will also be nice to “see” everyone. On of the best parts of our nonprofit was the wonderful people on our board. I don’t miss all the work but I DO miss the people.

I spent a LOT of time last week writing a post about “romanticizing autumn”. I included well over 50 ideas so it took me a long time to put it all together. If you missed it, here is the link:

Romanticize the Season ~ Autumn

A friend mentioned that she was going to make a list of the suggestions and print it out. I thought that was a great idea and to make it easier for anyone else who wants to do so, I’m going to create a printable list and add it to the post. It will be free to download.

READING

I’m not sure what happened last week but other than my “morning books” that I read a bit from each day, I didn’t get much other reading done. I’m really going to make an effort to get back into a regular reading routine. I should mention that I finally caught up with the Bible readings. I got behind on our trip to California but am now back on track.

The Living Bible – The Book of Common Prayer daily lectionary readings.

If you don’t already have Audible, you can get a free trial here. We’ve definitely been enjoying it on long drives.

SELF CARE

I did a super quick, one-coat polish of my toenails last week. I love the new color for fall!

I hope to color my hair sometime this week. My Amazon “subscribe and save” order is due to arrive Wednesday and my hair color is in that order.

HEALTH & FITNESS

I’m doing a bit better reaching my water consumption goals so I’m going to keep pushing along with that.

FUN ACTIVITIES

It was a beautiful day this past Wednesday so we went to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. Matt, Joy and little Charlotte joined us. As usual, we had the patio to ourselves. Charlotte loves to dip tortilla chips in queso or guacamole and then suck it off, leaving the chip behind – ha!

After dinner we drove her home in David’s pickup. She’s been begging to ride in it so we bought a car seat. I do believe it took David a good half hour to get it properly installed. He came back in the house and commented that they are way more complicated than the ones our children had. They used to simply use the seatbelt to attach to the seat of the car. I’ve always been very safety conscious where kids are concerned so I’m happy to see improvements like these.

As we drove by some construction, Charlotte informed us that there was an “excavator”. Honestly, I’m not entirely clear on the difference between a backhoe and an excavator but she is. She loves tractors and construction equipment. David has been rebuilding his tractor and it’s almost ready for him to give her a ride. She is going to be so excited!

I had mentioned that we might go to the homecoming parade Saturday but we slept in and then forgot about it. David worked on his tractor this weekend and I didn’t do much of anything. I just felt the need to rest and relax so I did.

We don’t have any plans yet this week. I would like to do at least one night of stargazing and we will continue our Friday night “cocktails and The O.C.”.

HABIT OF THE MONTH (September)

I mentioned last week that I had taken a break from my daily walks due to hip pain. It’s quite a bit better so I’m easing back into my walks. I did a little over 10 minutes this morning with David. His knee is bothering him so he just did a couple of laps with me. I’ll do another 10-20 minutes this evening.

For the month of September, our LWD group challenge is to take a daily walk. I’m committing to a 30 minute walk every day but if you want to join, choose what’s right for you.