Citrus Pulled Pork

Made awesome Pulled Pork based off of a post from Aarti Sequeira.

Brown pork butt.
add an onion
put in 2 cups of citrus juice.  I used 4 lemons, 4 limes, and a blood orange.
Let it rip at 350F for hours.

Serve with roasted cauliflower

With God All Things Are Possible!!!

With God all things are possible!!! Truly I have been praying for inspiration, tenacity, and courage to tackle Mount Pool Table.  And today my goal was to clean the top of the pool table.  Here is before and after.  Yes I now have a few boxes of things on the floor.  1) Give.  2) Stuff we will do two years or later from now. 3) Stuff we have done that I want to save.  I found extension cords, a remote control, and a pool table!!!!  Imagine that.  Thank you Jesus!  

Day ??? Organizing Frenzy

I really have not given up three days into this cleaning frenzy....  I am really keeping with it.  I am just not blogging it!!  Really!!!  We went to visit my folks for a few days and so I had unpacking from trip one, packing for trip two and now unpacking.  Exhausting.  However....

---- The carpets have been steam cleaned while we were gone thanks to the wonderful husband!  Kid might freak out with wet floors and so they did it while we were gone.

---- The carpet cleaning necessitated us taking everything off the floor.  This does not mean that I became organized overnight.  However, I did do some partial organizing and will do more of it while I put all the items back.

---- I am tackling the unpacking one step at a time.

---- My sister helped me put up cube shelving in the 'back room' and so now I have a blank palette with which to work with!!!  I can't wait to start organizing.

BEFORE

I can't quite call this 'after'.... but this is how it looks presently.  (Notice I do not pan out on the picture.)

My silly sister who helped me ;)  Thanks Sissy.  

Maaaaailllll timeeeee.....

I am trying to figure out what to do with my mail.  I have 'several' traveling file boxes like this:

The problem is I never look in them.  And so now I have three (I think) boxes as well as a giant basket full of stuff.  And when the mail comes in the door, it goes on the kitchen table and then in a bin or a box or a pile.

And no solution...  Is this a problem everyone has?

At work I used to do binders but my bookshelves are full.

HELP!!!!!!!!!

Book Shelf.. day ?

I was going to blog both the bookshelf and desk on the same day but I think each one is worth it's own post.  Don't you?  First is the before picture.  Mind you, this was FULL at one point with books from top to bottom...cookbooks.  The bin on the bottom was FULL with "science stuff I want to do this week."  Except the same items have been in there for probably a year.  

So I parted with fifteen books as you saw a few days ago.  Today I wanted to order two new cookbooks so I parted with two more.  (Don't tell anyone but I have two other areas where I keep cookbooks and they are quite 'full.'  Eventually I want them all in this space but I will have to bring myself to part with a few more for that to happen.)  

So actually this isn't the before picture.  This is "midway."  

And here is 'after.'  Nice eh?  Sepia makes everything look better!  It might seem strange to have weights there but hubby uses them all the time for his exercise regime.  The bin is gone.  (Ok the bin is on the floor full of books that are going to go to the 'back room' when my sister comes to help me build my cubicle bookshelves.  Hey!  I got rid of 17 cookbooks!  Cut me some slack.)

I put the pictures up there because if I left it empty it would accumulate more items.  It is a nice space however for me to put a coffee cup when I am at my desk.  I want to find a table for between the bookshelf and the desk because the milk cartons that are currently there say "early american college."

Day 4... The Unpacking After Vacation

Ug... 1 day to pack.  2 days gone.  3 days to unpack and clean up and not make progress on anything new.  And I will have to repeat this in about a week.  Oh well.  We had fun.

So that is what happened today.  I unpacked, cleaned the kitchen and still working off the kitchen table.  I have to find my rebate info that I picked up at the eye doc right before I left and I thought I put in a pile.. it is not here.

So I decided to google, "unpacking after a vacation."  And there were many good articles.  Here is an assortment.

I really like this note on Facebook.
I actually do some of the things in this blog post.
I still have a bunch of brochures from our MN vacation this summer.  Here is just one blogger's thoughts on that..

I usually have a pile of brochures and guide books about everywhere that I visited while on the trip. These are meant to form the basis of a wonderful scrap book. Sadly, this has not happened yet! I try to be realistic by making some notes, but all too often I find a faded colllection of these souvenirs on a window sill long after the event. My hard advice would be to just throw them out!

I'm not there yet.

The rest is just more of the same.  So the bathing suits were taken out right away, laundry is in a pile, dishes are done... car is tomorrow.  Cleaning the car is always left for tomorrow.

Day 3... The Travel List

Well...lest you think you can come and rob me, I am not hitting publish on this one until we get home.  Today I got ready for a trip we will be taking for a couple of days.  For some this is a no -brainer.  Add in special diets and keeping a kid happy in the car and it is just a tad more complicated.

So, although I am not the best of planners, I have a master travel list that I pull up each time we go somewhere.  I have each medication, piece of electronics, clothing we might need.  I have swim suits and boat shoes on there year round.  No need to modify.  I can just cross it off if we don't need it.  Over the years it got quite lenghty.  No longer need bottles.  He's eleven.....  But I never got around to fixing the list. Finally when we got a new computer- I lost the list- and started from scratch.

I also used Cozi.  It really did serve me today.  The little things like yell to the neighbor to please see if we have any packages that need picking up.  For some reason he doesn't want me to have his phone number so the minute I saw him leave his house I stalked him.  I have to say I feel PRETTY DARN good about what I accomplished.  I even read off my list to the kid to show him how busy I had been today!

I still have to get up early to do the usual last minute thing but most of my packings are sitting right here to load in the car.

But we are back now.  And although I am writing these words before we leave..  I am sure we had a great time.