New in June Update

We’re a little more than halfway done with our New in June Challenge so I thought I’d share a little update on my goals.

1. Grow something new – This one was easy. In the end my celery died after a week of downpour and my lettuce just quit growing after it hit about 4″ so I fed it to the turtle. On the bright side, I harvested my first cherry tomatoes and thai peppers this weekend :)

2. Start jogging – I am still jogging 3 times a week, though some recent pain in my legs has temporarily taken me down to a shuffle. I have been doing week 1 of C25K for 3 weeks now, I think i’ll give it one more and hopefully be able to move on. Yes I was THAT out of shape. Am THAT out of shape.

3. Make hamburger buns – I have tried to make these twice and still haven’t found the right recipe or method. My last batch was pretty close but too dense so the crumbled. I’ll keep working on it.

4. Find a new, lung-friendly way to clean my windows (that actually works, I might add) – I normally use my homemade lemon cleaner but it takes more elbow grease than I’d like, especially since we use our sliding glass doors as huge white boards. I can’t handle ammonia, it really messes up my asthma, so I started using straight-up rubbing alcohol on the doors and it works. Elbow grease is minimal, smell is acceptable (to my lungs) and it’s cheap enough.

5. Stop buying plastic for food storage – well this one has been easy, I haven’t purchased any plastic to store anything in because the budget hasn’t allowed it. I have been reusing plastic storage bags and saving all of our glass/plastic containers from condiments, etc.

6. Read a fiction book outside of my favorite genres (Anyone have a Harlequin Romance novel I can borrow?) – I started The Hangman’s Daughter, historical fiction. I got it through BzzAgent (seriously, if you’re not an agent, sign up!) I don’t read historical fiction, it’s hard for me to relate to, but since this is a murder mystery I thought I’d enjoy it. I didn’t. I got about 40% in and just put it down. Instead of finding myself dying to finish house/school work and pick the book up I found myself finding excuses not to read. I felt obligated to read it because I was reading it for BzzAgent, but I let that go. I also have the sequel, The Dark Monk, and one day I may pick them up again. The Hangman’s Daughter (who isn’t really in the book very much, btw) isn’t a bad book, it has all the makings of a very good book but in this case I can honestly say I think the movie may be better than the book (is there a movie?)

7. Try an ethnic food I’ve never had before (btw, have you ever wondered what an American Ethnic food section at a grocery store looks like? Take a look at this little video from Germany – This one was tough for me. We already eat a lot (A LOT) of “non-American” food. I looked around for other foods but most of it we’ve eaten or it was so similar to what we do eat that I didn’t see it as “different”. Oh, and there’s the whole being on a severe food budget this month. Still, I’m going to keep trying this one and check into Iranian food next :)

8. Find a new use for something I was going to throw away – Easy peasy. I’ve been having an issue with storing my homemade laundry detergent practically. I ended up putting my next batch of detergent in repurposed ketchup and salad dressing bottles, now I just shake and give a squeeze! These make it very easy for the kids to measure out the right amount of detergent, not that they do it very often, but they COULD…


and a brand new one I’ve added: Not Doing Everything Myself! I am used to do all of the chores myself, and not usually happy. I realized that I was doing a disservice to my kids. It doesn’t matter if they don’t load the dishwasher correctly, the point is to have them DO it. They aren’t very happy when I ask them to help out and I’m done explaining why I’m asking them, but they’ll get it eventually.


How have your New in June Challenges been going?