We’re approaching another end to yet another year.

It’s another time for reflection of the months we passed through and another chance to make plans and dreams for an unknown future.

While New Years isn’t quite here yet, I’ve already made my first decision about what I won’t be doing in 2013.

I won’t be blogging anymore.

I started Garden Gal in July of 2008. It soon transitioned to In the Land of Wood, which then became In the Land of Ridd.

This will be my 265th post. It will also be my final post…at least on this particular blog.

In the 4 years I’ve been in bloggie land I’ve had 12, 333 views. My busiest day was on December 10, 2010 when 82 people clicked on my little slice of the internet to view the first installment of Ridd Quicks.

If you’ve been one of the loyal “followers” of my blog, then you would know that this year has been my least blogged-about year yet. And that’s pretty much the main reason I’m wrapping this season of my life on the Internet up.

I’M TOO BUSY!!!!!

OK – I know there are boatloads of mommas out in the blogosphere who choose to spend their time writing a blog. So, I know that it’s possible. But, it really just isn’t a priority for me anymore. For instance, I have thoroughly enjoyed the amount of reading I’ve done this year. For a glimpse, check out my 2012 Book List at the top of the page. I truly believe that is the most books I have read in one year since I gave birth to my first child!! I’m pretty sure if I wasn’t reading those books, I would have been doing more blogging. I just can not do both.

Hubs and I are still on a journey to becoming foster care parents and I am very hopeful that 2013 will be the year this happens. The time to carve out for blog writing gets yet another bump in the downward direction once that happens.

I miss certain things that I’d love to take up again. Things like crosstitching, letter writing (not on a computer, like, real letter writing…), playing my piano, continuing to figure out how to take a good picture on a point-and-shoot camera without using a flash. You know, really important things!

I hate email. Know what happens the more you blog? You get even MORE email!!

You get the idea. I am well aware that an explanation for ending a blog is not necessary. So, consider this post more essential for me than for you, the reader. Just taking some time to process life stuff as we enter another December.

So, good-bye dear blog. Maybe the Internet will see my writing again.

Or, maybe not.

And yes, those are my new rain boots in the picture. And yes, I love them!

This post was originally written on March 7, 2011.

About 3 times a year we travel to visit my in-laws for a few days. To make it easy on everyone, we all typically eat out for dinner, except on the first night of our stay. It’s been a long drive and everyone’s a bit tired, so my mother-in-law, Jane, makes a simple dinner in. Sometimes it’s lasagna, other times it’s pizza. The last few times we’ve been down she made us chicken soup, probably because of how much I rave about how yummy it is! I finally remembered to ask her for the recipe and I’ve since made it several times.

It is delish.

The whole chicken is by far one the thriftiest purchase you can make at the grocery store. Why? You can get:

• 3 dinners made from one 5 pound bird, or
• 2 dinners and at least 6 cups of homemade chicken broth, or
• 6 cups of shredded chicken meat that will yield at least 3 dinners

Either way, buying a whole chicken is thrifty goodness that comes straight out of your kitchen.

I like to wait for the organic chickens to go on sale. I picked up 3 birds last week when the chickens were down to $1.00 per pound. Oh, the dream of a deep freezer beckons!

The past 3 days I have made 3 different dinners with 1 chicken. I baked the chicken on Friday after rubbing it down with olive oil and covering it with an array of spices. We had chicken alongside some steamed veggies and rice pilaf.

After dinner, I took a good portion of meat off the chicken carcass (about 2 cups worth) and put the entire carcass (including remaining meat on the bones and any skin) in a plastic bag and stuck it in the fridge. If I wasn’t making a dinner within 1 or 2 days, I would just label the bag, freeze it and then use the carcass at a later point to make chicken broth.

Saturday I made chicken enchiladas with the 2 cups of meat I had pulled the night before. I highly recommend making your own enchilada sauce. It’s a little cheaper, about 20 minutes to simmer, and the taste is so much better than the canned stuff. I recommend this recipe, but there are plenty of good enchilada sauce recipes out there!

Sunday morning I chopped up some onions and celery leaves and added them to the chicken carcass in the slow cooker. I threw in some seasonings and about 12 cups of water, turned it to “high” for 1 hour and then turned it to “low” for about 4 hours. I pulled the carcass out of the slow cooker along with any other bones that I could find and with 2 forks, I picked through the carcass to separate the chicken meat from the bones. Threw the meat back in along with some chopped up celery and carrots and let that stew for another hour. I turned off the slow cooker and let it all sit for another 2 hours before I added 2 cups (or so) of cooked noodles.

Voila. Dinner number 3:

That chicken cost me $5.00 and yielded 3 delicious dinners.

Here’s my mother-in-law’s recipe, only she uses her stockpot on the stove. Follow my directions above if you try it in the slow cooker.

Jane’s Chicken Soup

1 chicken carcass with meat

1 sliced carrots

10-11 cups of water

2 sliced celery stalks

10 chicken bouillon cubes (I use 5 Knorr extra-large cubes)

4 sliced mushrooms (optional)

1/2 cup chopped celery leaves

a couple sprigs of parsley

1/2 red onion, chopped

ground pepper and garlic powder, to taste

1. Start the soup at 8am. Using a soup kettle, put in chicken carcass, chopped celery leaves, bouillon cubes, water, pepper, garlic powder and onion. Bring to a boil, then turn down to low.

2. Around 1pm, take the bones and remaining carcass out and cool on cutting board (make sure you have all the bones out of the soup). Separate the meat from the carcass.

3. Put remaining meat, mushrooms, carrots and celery into the soup kettle. Cook for about an hour on low, then turn the kettle off.

4. At 4:00, boil 2 cups of noodles in a separate pan. Drain and add to rest of soup.

5. Heat when ready to serve. Works well with turkey meat, too.

Don’t get me wrong; I was most definitely all for getting dressed up and roaming the streets for candy and laughs – when I was a child.

I’m not a child anymore, at least so says my body. I’m all for laughing, but I have to be with some really good friends to get all dressed up in a costume of any kind these days and frankly, if it’s dark out, roaming the streets just isn’t my thing anymore.

Unfortunately, all of that IS the very thing my two little cherubs LOVE to do on a day like Halloween. In fact, they love to do it the very SECOND they catch wind that October 1st has finally arrived. I was able to hold them off for awhile a few years ago but now that one of them goes to school and can actually read means he’s very aware of what day – and holiday – it is.

Back to October. Being that it’s the month of costumes and candy, that means something is usually required from the mother of the home to provide any children in her household with a costume. Hubs are I are pretty cheap when it comes to stuff like this; I’m usually looking at $10 or less for a costume. I realize there are all kinds of ways to make a costume on the cheap, but unless my boys want to be “hobos” every year, then that’s about as far as my crafting / imagination skills are gonna go. So thank-you WalMart and Target for giving my kiddos the cheap but creative costumes.

There’s really only one downside to a cheap, store-bought costume. One word. Can you guess it?

ACCESSORIES.

That’s where they get ya’.

“Oh, you wanna be a doctor sweet little man? Sure! Here’s one. Oh, wait. it only comes with the scrubs. Oh…you want the stethoscope. And the surgeons mask. AND the hat?!? Well, um, how does the purple Barney suit grab ya’?”

This year I thought I had it beat. The accessory thing, not the sweet little man…

I got lucky that they both found ninja outfits, in their sizes, and that there were a few accessories included…mainly because they were already attached to the costume. Sweet! Done deal.

Nope. Not quite.

Every ninja needs more than just his hands to do his fighting, mom . They need SWORDS.

I was able to stall them for about a week with my questioning out loud, “Can I even get a sword without a costume?” or “Maybe I can make a sword…” all to which I was hoping they would just forget about the whole thing, Halloween night would get here, and la-dee-da, we would have to just do without them this year.

Nope. They couldn’t let it rest.

First, of COURSE you can get a sword without a costume, at least when it’s October. They run $8 at Target, which isn’t exactly a rip-off, but it is just an additional $16 shelled out since I have to get two of them. Second, they’re plastic, which means D will inevitably be hitting L with it which means lots of crying and two swords being taken away. Third, they WILL eventually break because they’re plastic and we’ve already lost one plastic sword to breakage in this house.

So today, I finally broke down and did something about it. I still wasn’t willing to head over to Target and spend any money on them. Instead I went to the one source for all desperate mothers out there who need a step-by-step tutorial with graphics and examples of children loving said craft item.

That’s right, I went to PINTEREST.

Lo and behold, there are plenty of mommas out there who also need to make things like pirate swords, ninja swords, numchucks, you name it! And one momma was even gracious enough to include pictures with her tutorial. A big shout-out to Lindsay Boardman of Filth Wizardry for making this momma’s day!

Once I realized I had everything in my home to make the swords, I got to work. Newspaper, cereal box, tape, scissors. I decided to make my swords extra sturdy by wrapping them with ductape, since I’m really hoping they’ll last 2 more weeks.

Bing, bang, boom – DONE.

Ninjas…

you may now FIGHT!

Where is the sun
and why is it still night
why is it cold
why still so dark

An afternoon with quiet rest
birds searching for food
leaves continue to drop
clouds still threaten

So gray is this day
will the sun be here soon
will tomorrow bring rain
or more gray once again

So gray is this day

It’s been nearly a year since my last Ridd Quicks; an update is highly overdue!!

~ 1 ~

Summer. For some reason I’m still stuck on Summer. I had so many great plans in the works for the boys and I, mostly with the help of a gazillion Pinterest ideas that would help me utilize my backyard with items like plastic sheeting, bed sheets or pool noodles. Tried the tent. It worked, sort of…but it didn’t help that it was HOT and the tent wasn’t entirely in the shade. Got some pool noodles, but all they ended up being used for was something the boys could hit each other with. The one thing that seemed the most successful was slime. I suggest white glue over clear glue, but either way, it’s still an activity that helps keep my guys busy at the kitchen table while I’m getting dinner ready.

~ 2 ~

So while we did have some fun over the summer, like a great camping trip with family in Oregon, it was also a very frustrating summer. I battled migraines throughout most of it and along with the migraines came fun things like nausea, vomiting, the works. I figured it was all due to the hormonal funk that I’ve been in for 2 years now. But I was getting the headaches so often that we decided to do further testing. Thankfully nothing was found to explain why I was suffering from them. I did begin to see a pattern in them, though. They would typically start in the overnight hours, which would mean there might be something in the house that was affecting me. Our 45-year-old house still had original windows in it and we thought there may be a level of toxic mold that was affecting me. All that to say, we got new windows! And so far, I’ve only had a few minor headaches, but nothing like the migraine or associated nausea.

~ 3 ~

Speaking of the house, it’s looking quite different from when we moved in nearly 5 years ago. Here’s what it started out as:

And here’s what it looks like now:

The windows are by far the best investment we’ve ever made in a house. Still need to replace the front door, and I still have loads of work to do on the front and backyard landscaping. One project at a time…

~ 4 ~

We have acquired 2 new “members” to our family over the summer. The first being a bigger car.  When we bought our Highlander 6 years ago, both Hubs and I were convinced we would never need another car, at least until our children were grown.

Hah.

For anyone buying a car before the baby is born, let me recommend one thing: take the biggest car seat you can find with you when you’re shopping for the car. Install it in the backseat and then decide if the car will be big enough for your needs.

Needless to say, 2 humongous car seats in the backseat of our Highlander essentially eliminated our backseat and any extra space we thought we may have for other items, or people, while traveling. Thankfully we were able to get into a Sienna that is comfortable for our family while on road trips, and it also allows for me to carpool additional children. It also means we’ll be able to comfortably  receive a foster child when the timing is right.

~ 5  ~

The second addition to the family came at a much lower price but was also much more than I thought I would ever spend on a vacuum cleaner. We have mostly carpet in the house and a cat. Still unsure if my headaches were due to mold allergy or maybe dust or pet allergy, we decided to take the plunge on a Dyson vacuum. It helped that Costco had a coupon and the model we bought was already at a discounted price. After reading reviews, I decided that Dyson’s were a lot like cars. You either loved them or hated them. If you loved them, it’s because they are superior to anything else you’ve ever tried. If you hated them, it’s because you essentially got a “lemon” model. So far we have completely loved our Dyson! Granted, it’s absolutely disgusting each and every time we vacuum, but that’s only because of how much dirt, pet hair, and other icky stuff gets pulled up from the carpet. It’s amazing how “clean” we humans think we are!

~ 6 ~

I now have 2 children in school, which is kinda crazy and kinda cool at the same time. D continues to thrive in the private “homeschool setting” school we have him in and L is starting his first year of preschool at the same preschool D attended for 2 years. It’s given me a few hours of “free” time in the mornings each week, but I’m still amazed how long it takes me to get anything done.

Like posting to a blog…