A morning's labor

Scrumptious Saturday...what's not cooking

The bread is baked.

The tomatoes picked.

It's cooled off here, but still I try not to cook too much.

It's summertime; the time of fresh eating.

And, I try not to think about it, but time to start the first thoughts of next year's garden.

Seed saving is in full swing.

I let some of the first green beans go to seed so that I could get more seeds for next year.

My provider green beans have been going berserk...they produce so well and continuously.

So the first dry beans have been picked with hopes of seeds for next year.

I have also been going to the farmer's market to buy tomatoes.

Varieties that I didn't plant this year.

Why?

I save the seeds.

The seeds that will grow next year.

For example I bought "heirloom" tomatoes from a farmer who said they were the variety

"heirloom"

(Some of the family farms, the rest sell at the markets so the sellers don't know as much about the produce as the farmer part of the family sadly.)

I think it's a Cherokee Purple.

Let me know if you think otherwise.

To save the seeds, I scoop out the seedy goo from the tomatoes and place it in a cup.

Then I add a little water (enough to cover the seeds and then an extra inch or so.)
Then I give them a stir to loosen the seeds from the goo.

I put it on a window sill and let it build a moldy crust (about 3-7 days)

Then the goo is removed and the seeds are cleaned from their protective gel.

(This is why tomatoes are moist, but don't sprout inside a good tomato.)

Then the seeds are placed on a towel and dried for about a day.

Then the seeds are placed in labeled envelopes and put in the seed bin part of our fridge.

This process only works for open pollinated "heirloom" tomatoes.

Ones bought at the store unless they are labeled as an heirloom variety usually will not grow true to the parent (they won't look like the tomato you bought and/or may be sterile.)

That simple.

Lets talk cost.

Organic seeds cost about $2.50 for a packet of 20 seeds.

I get about 100 seeds from a tomato (depending on type and size.)

I only spend about $.50 for an organic heirloom tomato or $2.00 for a pint of cherry tomatoes.

See the savings?

Not to mention from those 50 cents I get tomatoes to feed a family for a year.

For many years to go.

For the cycle keeps on going.

For this I am thankful.

Frugal gardening at it's best, the way it was meant to be.

Back in the saddle again...

While we've been "homeschooling" through the summer as planned, it hasn't been our traditional type lessons.  We have spent time in the garden, taking care of chickens and charting production of both.  

We have been exploring the world around us and thinking about geography in relation to where we are and where we are going.  

We have been thinking in a way about multiplication and division, without using those terms.  

And as usual we have been baking, cooking, and talking about our friends the "yeastie beasties" that make bread soft and fluffy.  

I am tempted to create a child's bread baking book in a story format..."Once upon a time in bread land princess wheat was kidnapped by the yeastie beasties..."  it is a story told too often in our home.  

After scouring the internet, I finally found the cure for the crankiest sewing machine on earth...and cured it from it's issues (which two sewing machine fixers couldn't fix.)  

C. is very interested in creating a princess costume for Halloween (she's been talking about Halloween since November when the candy ran out.)  

"Home Ec" may be her idea of a good time.

But now it is the time when we start the formal lessons...

It takes a while to get back in that saddle again.

W. is really looking forward to a history book that I got out of the library.

It is so far over over his head, but that's okay...I know how to paraphrase.

We are continuing on in Saxon Math and Phonics Level 1.

For science we are exploring the world around us.

And reading...lots of it.

I read a chapter of On the Shores of Plum Creek...

W. reads about 10 pages of Hop on Pop...

or a Biscuit book...

or a reader from his Phonics program...

and for math, reading and science all in one...

there's always reading the cookbook.

bubble bubble buzz....

Despite my total absence from this space for the past few months...things have indeed continued on here on the Country homestead.  There is plenty of updating and filling in to do.  Reflections on summer.  Changes in the landscape and on the animal front.  All that.  But for today, late as it is, I can tell you that amidst a house full of children, lawn mowing and thunderstorms, and in the face of an oven repair that was two months in the waiting...I was kitchen bound! 
Things have been bubbling, fizzing, buzzing and rising all over the place.  City sister, during her recent (and super fantastic) visit, left me with some sourdough starter that actually originated from another lovely homesteader so many miles away.  By a stroke of miracle I did not kill it.  It is living on the top shelf of my fridge.

I kicked off 5 loaves of oatmeal bread today (oven repaired just in time...phew).  A double batch of cookies.  Rhubarb muffins for the freezer.  Soaked our dry beans for crock pot baked beans.  Two quarts of yogurt culturing away in the cooler. 



One loaf taken by force with bread knife and butter...




Our own Jacob's Cattle beans soaking on the counter.



How we do our yogurt.  Cultured milk snuggled in with hot water bottles in a cooler for 8 hours.

A little of the good fermented stuff to close out a long day in the kitchen.

One of those days where it all comes together.  Busy kids, food put away for the week, kitchen cleaned.  And would you belive it...a blog post to boot!  Feels good to be back.
More details on the buzzing in a couple days.....

How trashy are you?

During an average week we...

Compost 7 quarts of compostables.

Feed the chickens about 2 quarts of scraps.

Recycle 2 large bins of stuff.

Throw out one small white kitchen bag of trash.

Then there are THOSE weeks...

The one where you clean out the cupboards and find expired weird stuff...

Or clean out the kids room and find a stash of broken toys that they were hiding...

Or this week when I cleaned out the freezer...yikes...

Freezer burnt tomatoes from 2 years ago...

A loaf of bread I can't remember making (chicken treat)

4 pints of freezer burnt rhubarb (chickens are eating high on the hog tonight)...

Soup...unlabeled and undated...going in the trash...I see meat in it...

Maybe spaghetti sauce...maybe gazpacho...anybody's guess...trash...

Cranberries...oh boy cranberry sauce with chicken in a couple nights...

Blackberries...smoothies?

I have been planning defrosting the chest freezer since I noticed it's only about half full...

Cleaning out the freezer in the kitchen will make that possible i'm guessing in about a month so that way we can use up what's in the kitchen freezer and then move items from the chest to the kitchen.  In the chest freezer there are bananas... about 1/8th of a cow...some chicken... and a few quarts of blueberries.

Menu planning will be put into place in order to use up the items left...so in our future there are...

Blueberry muffins for breakfast (in the oven)

Blueberry pie at Glummer (end of summer festival at our house...we're glum because it's the end of summer) or pineapple blueberry dump cake...not sure yet...

Beef stuff...

Banana bread...

Cranberry sauce (chillin in the fridge right now.)

Lots of smoothies.

Hamburgers at Glummer as well...

At this point of the month, I have usually done our large shopping order for the rest of the month, but I haven't had to yet...in fact I've only bought (or rather the husband stopped on his way home from work and bought) milk and coffee, two items we cannot make here.

I am truly thankful that we are able to take care of our needs via the freezer.

Locally Delicious...Very nutritious

Dinner...Ahhh Dinner

Mostly homegrown

Chicken from a local farm roasted with homegrown herbs on top of a bed of our own Swiss Chard braised with a bit of broth and fresh (homegrown...may I add) garlic...

A side of potatoes (that I grew) baked with a touch of local butter and backyard herbs...

Carrots and beets (that both grew in our garden,) glazed with a touch of local honey...

Each item cared for by either me or someone I have met in person...

Something is so right about it.

Here we go round the Mulberry bush...

It's that time of year...

The berries come.  

We used to think they were just garbage trees...

the birds loved them and showed it upon our cars and mailbox.

But after some research we found that they are in fact...

MULBERRIES

Crunchy and sweet.

Juicy and rare.

You can't just go to the store and buy them.

You have to fight off birds and pull on branches.

Foraging in empty lots and in the brush barriers between suburban homes.

But the rewards are great.

We have three (a fourth is about a year from fruiting) such trees on our property.  

None were planted, and that's the way the Mulberry likes it.

The birds do the dirty work (on the cars and mailboxes of the neighborhood.)

and the mulberries spread.

On the fringes, in the neglected areas, they pop up quickly and with strength and determination.

Tenacious as any of the traditional berry bushes are, but with the glory of a tree.

What have you foraged for lately?

My boy's in love....

That old American pastime...baseball.  

It has stolen his heart.

It all started when we decided to sign him up for T-ball.

Then we figured that my dear city husband should try and coach the team.

(I warned him that it's similar to nailing jello to a tree...it may not stick and it will be rather messy.)

W. got so excited, he got his physical therapist to practice with him.

She worked on running, torso strength, and arm strength with him.

They worked on throwing.

They worked on hand eye coordination.

After work, the husband worked on hitting, catching, and running the bases.

I would come home at night sometimes and find pillows all over the floor.

They were running the bases.

They were working on strategy.

They can be rather intense.

Last night my husband took W. to a real baseball game.

They were the first ones in the park.

By the bullpen they watched warm-ups and my son's heart was stolen forever...

the pitcher threw the warm-up ball to him.

When the boys came home at 11:00pm last night

(W. goes to bed by 7:00pm usually)

he was still wide awake.  

He told me all about the whole game with his eyes ablaze.

He has hitched his heart to baseball.

Scrumptious Saturday

Cleaning out the freezer and refrigerator was necessary this week due to a food delivery.  Yes, our favorite grocer delivers.  They deliver fresh, organic, healthy and not so healthy food for our family (as long as it is a big enough order.)  

So I started looking through the fridge...yes old rice from earlier in the week...cranberries my sister had given me from her friends' bog...beets, but of course...and in the freezer...what meat is taking up the most room...well it would have to be that roasting chicken from the pick 8 I ordered from the butchers a few months ago (yes 8 choices of meat...about 50 pounds has lasted us months...there is still plenty of it frozen in the chest freezer and the fridge freezer.)  

And through this, I pieced together dinner...nothing miraculous...nothing to write home about as my grandmother would have said...just a hearty scrumptious meal to be shared with my family.

Scraps for dinner

or

Your Own Personal Pot Luck Dinner!

clockwise from top...chicken...cranberry sauce...rice...roasted beets.

I mixed my Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and a bit extra oregano with some sea salt and pepper.  I coated the chicken with the seasonings under the skin as well as on top.  I then also brushed lemon juice and olive oil all over the whole chicken and poured about a quarter cup of lemon juice into the cavity...this lends a lot of flavor.  Preheat the oven to 450 and roast the chicken for about 45 minutes and then lower the temperature to 350 for about 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the bird.  Pull out of the oven and let sit for about 15 minutes (while you finish the beets.)

With the leftover seasonings from the chicken (unused as  not to be contaminated by the chicken meat) I made roasted beets.  Just wash and trim about a pound of beets and rub with a little olive oil and place them in the oven with the chicken  for the first 45 minutes...remove them from the oven and let them cool down.  They should be tender.  The skins should just slip right off...slip them off, chop them into bit sized pieces and then toss with a little more olive oil and the seasonings....cook for another 15 minutes while the chicken rests.

And the cranberry sauce...well that is simple enough...Just 3 cups cranberries still frozen...one cup water...one cup sweetener (or a little less...honey and sugar work well at a 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup ratio only using 3/4 of a cup)  Bring it to a boil and boil until it looks like jelly...put it in the fridge to cool.

Heat up whatever little tidbits you have in the fridge to round out the meal...and what have you got...a cleaned out fridge, dinner, and a scrumptious delight!

Stocking up...

Last night I roasted a chicken.  

I had to clear room out of the refrigerator and freezer due to the new month's supplies being delivered this morning.  

You will have to wait and see the Scrumptious Saturday this Saturday to see what I made, but for today, I will tell you about the stocking we did last night and this morning.

After roasting the chicken, I broke up the chicken leftovers into smaller pieces and put as well as the pan drippings into a pot and covered all the bones in water.  Then I let it simmer from dinner time to bed time.  

My dear husband was actually the one to take the pot off the stove and put it in the fridge so we didn't waste it.  

This morning I woke up early as I had received a phone call the night before from our dear Frankferds that our delivery would arrive between 7:30 and 9:30 am!  I put the pot on the back burner on low and continued on my day.  

The delivery came...Stocking up yet again with flour, yeast, canned goods, produce, and dairy delivered to the door. Then, once everything was put away, I realized that we were out of yogurt, so out came one of our 1/2 gallon bottles of milk.

I figured I saved quite a bit of time, money and energy by having the delivery made.  They drive right by here anyway and the cost of gas and time out of our schedule made it worth it.

 C. and I prepared the yogurt in our usual way. With that starting to ferment, we started in on the chicken.  

I drained off one pint of ultra concentrated chicken stock and then began to pick any meat that had boiled off the bones.  I got one pint of chicken meat pieces.  I then put some of the stock over the chicken pieces and topped both bottles off with water.  With that done, I broke up the bones once more into smaller pieces to expose the marrow and all of the goodness found there.  Again, covering the bones with water, I started up the pot.

During all of this we:

Ate breakfast

Read one chapter in "Little House In the Big Woods"

Did a phonics lesson

Did a math lesson

Had some free play time with connect 4

Did a puzzle

Got dressed

Got very silly with a monster chase game.

That's my story...

What did you do this morning?

UPDATE: Weighed remains of chicken after 2nd boiling...Used all of the chicken except 8.6 oz (from a 6 pound bird) Pretty good EH?

Reading...

My boy is not the only one who is growing up.  It is amazing how they grow.  One day they are tiny red screaming lumps, and the next they turn into little people, full of their own ideas and having adventures of their own.  My dear little C. has decided that W. will not be the only reading child in the house.  

We've been looking at letters for a while.  She loves putting together alphabet puzzles.  At this point, I think it is time to move on.  Last Friday we were at homeschool group, where they have a "mall" a.k.a. a long table filled with items people want to get rid of with money boxes and where the money is being donated to usually.  Last Friday we got...

A world wall map (a little old, but it will serve it's purpose at this point.)

A CD-ROM for history

A Clifford teacher's book

A story book

Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons.

All for $5.00

Where else can you get that for $5.00 and give to a good cause.

I had plans for the last book.  C. has been showing interest in reading books.  She's picking them up and pretending to read out loud using the pictures as a guide.  She does a pretty great job and I love hearing her babble on about how the stories relate to her current life status ("The princess was looking for kitty cats, but the mommy said 'NOOOOO tackling the cat.'")

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy...

Siegfried Engelman...

Best Price $5.98

or Buy New $12.49

Privacy Information

Today we had our first lesson.  She started insisting on helping point to the sounds.  She is even working on the phonemic and phonological awareness sections.  

The book recommends the program for three and a half year olds and older.  She just turned three, but she is loving it.  She loves anything that big kids do.  She is such an early riser that we have about 2 hours in the morning just for "us girlies" so I am planning on doing a lesson in the morning (it just takes 15 minutes or so) and then another lesson in the evening.  So maybe in two months I'll have an emergent reader...who knows.  I remember my grandmother teaching me to read when I was little.  I felt so special during our reading lessons because it was just the two of us.
I love getting our "girlie time"  with my little C.

What dreams are made of...

It's amazing to me.

One day you are knee deep in snow, trudging through it to take care of the chickens and tap the trees, then overnight the warm wind blows and melts it all.  Sure the neighbors complain that their basements flood (plant something other than gravel!) but you instead see the beauty of it.  The mud, the faintly green of the grass and weeds.  It's the urge that you get to buy seeds, and the way that you wait for them to come.  Last year's food scraps have magically turned into beautiful crumbly soil, fertile and ready to be added to the beds to nourish a new year's growth.

You go to the feed store to stock up on other seeds that you want to put in right away, or maybe it's for the seed starting supplies.  The fresh spring air has a certain scent that is intoxicating.  The smell of barn and dirt, moisture, growth.  It may be hot in the sunlight, but cold and blustery in the shade, just a reminder from winter that he is still lurking in the shadows.  

The early seeds that you plant start poking their little heads up out of the ground, spinach, lettuce, and carrots sending up their first two leaves towards the cold early year sun under their makeshift cold frame.

 The berries start putting out little grey leaves, and those tenacious weeds complain and try to hold fast when you pull them up. Strawberries stretch out last year's hands between mothers and daughters.  The Rhubarb starts poking out bright crumpled green leaves on the deep red stalks from their white winter cover.

The mint and oregano start their yearly quest for garden domination, while the chive hangs out between them and attempts to avoid the rabbit's gnaw.

The garlic, so carefully planted from the previous year's best and biggest bulbs and then mulched the fall before, starts poking up to remind you that they are there.  Little chirps from birds working hard fill the ears, as does the slashing sound of the hoe.  You send the kids out.  Their quest is to pick up all the limbs, sticks and twigs that the harsh winter broke from the trees.  They will make a wonderful start to a birthday bonfire.

  It's a magical time of year.  

One full of possibilities, dreams and over planning.  

Thoughts of canning in the blazing summer heat have barely entered your mind.

Yet, you have planned everything that will become dinners, canning adventures, and freezer stuffing.

It is Spring.

Note: The page for Citysister's harvest has been updated...I am finally writing it all down!

Scrumptious Saturday...a pie for my guy

My husband starts a new job on Monday...Friday was his last (official) day at his old job.

So technically he is unemployed this weekend.

So I made pie.

Somehow it seems fitting.

He wanted cherry pie.

I didn't have enough in the freezer.

So this is what he gets.

Mixed Berry Pie

One recipe double pie crust

about 6 cups blackberries, blueberries, and cherries

2 TBS cornstarch

1/4 cup flour

3/4 cup sugar

Mix the berries, flour, cornstarch, and sugar in a bowl.

Roll out the crust and place in a greased pie pan.

Put the berry filling in.

Put the top crust on in any manner you see fit.

(I did lattice, but I saw a lovely one done once with cookie cutters and seasonal shapes.)

Brush top crust with milk and then sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

Bake at 350 for about an hour.

You may want to cover the pie with tinfoil once it turns the correct color brown.

Enjoy it.

A pile of fermentation

We got back from a mini-vacation yesterday afternoon.  

Typically I make yogurt on a weekly basis, but I didn't have time to before I left, 

so our old yogurt was a bit icky.

So today I had to revamp the yogurt from here.

I also received a package in the mail from Alaska thanks to 

This is my life at 720 square feet, she is such a sweet fierce momma!

In it was a pack of sourdough from Alaska!

(Have I ever mentioned my obsession with Alaska...

I have a ULU my parents brought back for me and now a living sourdough... and some beautiful books! 

Oh it is just too much!)

I love sourdough.

I love it with passion.

I have wanted to make a good one for a while, but just didn't have the courage to make one from scratch 

(what if it made awful sourdough) 

and I couldn't find a starter that was an old strain locally.

C. and I mixed it up (with a bit of a struggle over the whole spoon issue.  

C. didn't want to use a wooden spoon.  

Her metal spoon would spell certain death for the dough.)

So now I have that fermenting over the top of my yogurt on a heating pad.

I have a large pile of fermentation slowly cooking away.

I love all the little creatures making food yummy.

So I will post this without pictures in hope that I find my camera after the long car ride and will later post a picture of my heap.

Scrumptious Saturday...Cook once for 3 days.

Sorry, the whole household has been sick.
The seasonal flu and cold took me out for a while.
I was planning on posting this last Scrumptious Saturday.
But, better late than never.

I love making roasts.

Why?

You cook once and can eat for days.

I made a 2 pound pork roast make 3 meals for 4 people

(aka 12 meals or about 1.25 oz/person/day at a cost of less than a dollar a meal.)

Day 1 Recipe

1 2 lb pork loin roast

1 can tomato paste

4 cloves garlic peeled

veggie stock

seasonings to your liking

Rub seasonings onto pork.  Cut 4 deep slits into the pork and insert garlic into the holes.  Place the roast into a hot pan with some oil and sear it off.  Pour in veggie broth mixed with the tomato paste.  Put in oven at 300 degrees until tender. Serve with rice (hint...make too much rice so you have leftover rice) and savor.

Save the roasting liquid and make into BBQ sauce by adding

sweetener (molassas, brown sugar, and honey all do nicely and play together nicely as well.  Amounts vary as some like sweet bbq and some like hot.  It also varies by the type of sweetener(s) you use.)

hot pepper powder (I use a touch, like 1/8 tsp of chyanne pepper)

garlic powder (as much or as little as you wish)

ketchup (about 1/4 c)

lemon juice (about 1/4 c)

vinegar (again depending on what kind you like and how sweet/sour you like it.)

Take half of the leftovers and dice...refrigerate with your leftover rice and then make fried rice.

Take the other half, shred it using 2 forks and cook in the above bbq sauce.

My family doesn't always like to eat "theme and variations" style, so I will let you know that the bbq and the fried rice all freeze nicely. 

What else would you do with this "theme and variation"

Maple Syrup...part one

Last fall, the brilliant leaves of my neighbor's sugar maples caught my eye.  They looked like they were on fire.  To tell you the truth, these three trees drive me nuts.  

They shade one side of our house making it impossible to grow anything shy of hostas on that side.  

So when life threw lemons at me, I chose to make lemonade...

I got  the courage one day (while handing off another dozen eggs free of charge) to ask my neighbor if we could tap her sugar maples. 

 "Those are sugar maples?  They don't look too sweet to me."  

We discussed the leaf color and shape, at which point she said that it was fine by her.  

We got an email on Monday about a maple sugaring class being held at the local nature center for a local home school group.  Would we like to tag along?  But of course...

In my camera's infinite wisdom, it decided to malfunction yet again, so I only got one picture, and not of the process...

We learned all about trees, maples, and sap.

They even told a story about how the maple came to be tapped.

Tree selection (must be over 35 inches at 52 inches height and of the maple variety.)

Materials (drill, gallon milk container, nail, straw.)

When (freezing nights, warm days...before buds appear.)

So now that we have that info...just wait to see what we do.

That is, if the neighbors are still okay with it.

Yarn along...

So I decided to join the yarn along since my sister is MIA

...In Ginny's words

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? ~

We are reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder for school.  I think it will take us a few weeks to get through, but W. loves how different "real" school is vs. "long time ago" school vs. "our school."

I am reading Growing 101 Herbs That Heal by Tammi Hartung.

I'm thinking about growing some herbal tea and making some lotions for my childrens' very dry skin.

I am knitting MY SOCK!

I was at the pool last weekend for W.'s swim school knitting.  An older lady started asking me about it and told me that I look like an old pro...yikes!

Soulemama had a giveaway a few weeks ago...and guess who won...again!

When it comes to her giveaways, I win the ones I want the most...art supplies and now beautiful yarn.  

It truly lives up to its name.

"Squishy"

The color was inspired by the movie Titanic.

I tried to get the beautiful subtle hues in it.

It is so nice.

I am planing on making a pair of socks for each of the kiddos out of it.

It is from Katie's etsy shop

 knit IT UP.

If you buy from Katie, put Citysister in the notes to seller 

PLEASE!

I want to be able to get more from Katie's beautiful shop!

And it is also grand to be able to help a "momtrepreneur."

And just one more shot of my sock...question for you knitters...

I always knit everything inside out...

what can I do?

What I've been doing while MIA...

Well, after my last post, things kept happening...

The drain pipe for our tub burst leaving our kitchen and basement flooded.

In its wake, I ended up throwing out food and parts of the ceiling 

(and at times both in one mushy handful.)

Then I called my mom.

"At least everyone has their health."

Mom why did you have to jinx us.

W. got sick the very next day with a fever of 103.6

Well life goes on.

We've been...

Making honey wheat bagels.  

The recipe I used I decided was too sweet.  

Next time I won't use so much honey.

Maybe when I get the recipe perfected, I'll post on that.

Making popcorn.  A true comfort food.

All of our paper bags were destroyed in the flood, 

so I made in in a pot the old fashioned way.

I've always been afraid of this method ever since my cousins got really bad burns from hot oil while making popcorn this way many years ago.

Studying plants.  This is our lavender that we planted a few days ago in coconut coir.  

The onions are starting to poke their little leaves up as well.  We also started sweet potatoes, but we'll see what happens there...it is a big experiment for us this year to attempt those.

I am thankful that we have so many opportunities.  

That our pipe burst didn't destroy too much.  

That we did not truly have a flood such as many have to endure.

Things could be much worse.

At least I can do one thing well...

It was a bad week.

Our "new to us" van broke down after owning it for 1 week.

Transmission!

(thankfully still under power train warranty.)

It came home on Tuesday night.

Our old faithful car broke down...again.

(not under warranty, but we have a great mechanic who is honest and affordable.)

It went in the shop Tuesday night and has not yet returned.

Our oven broke.

The fix took 15 minutes and some know how from the repairman.

Not having an oven inspired a genius chocolate chip cookie recipe
(if I do say so myself.)

The sink faucet broke.

Luckily, I have an amazing husband who is an expert in this faucet's repair and who has a very cute assistant.

Just as everything was fixed and we started saying, at least nothing else can break...

The vacuum started smelling like fire as my very dear husband was vacuuming C's room.

That was the last straw.

I am not paying for anyone to repair this.

I KNOW HOW TO FIX A VACUUM CLEANER!

My diagnosis...broken belt (it has broken before and will break again most likely.)

"W. Screwdriver + sign style. Stat!"

The husband helped him get it.

I undid all the screws...there it was, the broken belt.

I need a size 5 belt for a vacuum cleaner.

Now if I just had a car to go get one...

All this prompted us to do the taxes as well...

At least that part of life is done!

They say noting in life is guaranteed except death and taxes...

I'd like to add that it is guaranteed that things will break down all at the same time if at all possible!