Delaware Deal Chicken: Johnnie's Dog House

Today's daily deal on Delaware Deal Chicken is $10 worth of food and drink for $5 at Johnnie's Dog House. We eat at Johnnie's 2 or 3 times a year, so this will make for a really inexpensive meal one day this fall!

Johnnie's Dog House also provided the inspiration for the summer Hot Dog Challenge that I've been posting...trying new twists on the familiar hot dog without eating out! I really like their Texas Ranger hot dog, and my husband is a fan of the Delaware Destroyer - two hot dogs on a kaiser roll with mac and cheese and chili! Johnnie's has also won best family restaurant in the northern part of Delaware several years in a row. It is a fun place, and I am excited to go and use our deal!

Get yours today!

Today, I'm thankful

...for cooler mornings that make me put on socks (even if they are mismatched!) 

...for time while my kids are still sleeping to read. 

 ...for my husband who made my coffee (I'm thankful for coffee too!).

...for my little people who are now up, even with their wet sheets that need changing and diaper that needs changing.

...for homemade chocolate chip scones, made in preparation for Irene, the storm that did not even affect our power.

...for lukewarm chocolate chip scones, coffee that is no longer piping hot, and a book I'll probably not get to read this morning because I'm a mommy first.

...for encouraging words from Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches:

Joy is not giddy. It is not an emotional rush--it is what happens when you accept your lot and rejoice in your toil. So rejoice in your children. Look them in the eyes and give thanks. You will not even remember the work of all this planting when the harvest of joy overwhelms you.

Today, I'm thankful for joy.

Children's Art Gallery

The same week that I did this side table makeover, I also started working on a frame that I rescued from (yet another) neighbor's trash. The end result looks like this:

The perfect framed art gallery for all those children's art projects!

My frame started out looking a bit worse for the wear. It was trash after all!

If I was doing a really good job, I would have spent a good bit of time sanding all that yucky old white paint off, but since this was supposed to be a simple project, I opted for just painting over it. I ended up needing about 3 coats of black paint to cover all the cracks and holes in the wood. My vision for this was to mimick this wonderful kid's art wall from A Soft Place to Land. Maybe one day I'll get the chance to add to our gallery wall! 

I love that this is a big frame, so we can hang several different pictures together. Also, I won't be constrained by the size of the artwork, even though the ones currently hanging are all the same size. I'd like to get some cute clips to hold the art, but for now we're just using sticky tac...it has worked well so far!

I'm also hoping this will be an easy way for us to love the art projects and enjoy them without building up a ton of clutter. It hard to know what to do with the doodles that my daughter loves to make. They have sentimental value, but I don't need a whole box of them to store! Now we have a great place to enjoy the projects, and when there is a new picture that needs a spot to be displayed, something else will have to come down. It will likely get recycled at that point, though I'm sure some "extra special" artwork will still get saved. 

Do you have any fun ways to display your children's artwork? I'd love to hear about it!

CSA Week 13

Last night for dinner we used several of the items that we picked up from the farm in the afternoon: peppers, squash, and lettuce. It's awesome knowing that the food we are eating was picked that very day! Everything tastes so much better fresh, doesn't it??

We got another watermelon this week, though they are much smaller now than when we first started them...a sign that summer is wrapping up! Also we got lettuce, the purple and orange peppers, summer squash, and potatoes. Yum!

We are just waiting on Hurricane Irene now. I'm planning to do a little baking this afternoon since the storm is not supposed to really hit here in Delaware until late afternoon or early evening. It's kind of fun knowing that we'll be hanging out at the house and not going anywhere today and tomorrow, but we're also trying not to take things too lightly. Thankfully our house is on quite a hill by Middletown standards, so we should be safe from any flooding. Stay safe this weekend if you are in the path of Irene also!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I hope you will participate with me in food waste Friday, too! 

Oh boy....after doing so well with our food waste this summer, the past week has been pretty rough. The little bit of leftover pizza sauce and salsa should have just been used up instead of getting stuck back in the fridge. Its so much harder to use a little bit of something! The corn and carrots were both from our Colchester CSA. I just never got around to dealing with them either. And the only thing that I will claim was not really my fault is the leftover orzo. Martin took it to work two different times and never finished it up. I guess I could have eaten it instead, but rejected leftovers never seem super appetizing to me!

One of the good things about the accountability of taking a picture of our weekly food waste is that I am able to pinpoint why food is getting thrown away. Pretty much everything this week was a result of my own laziness. A lot of the time I can get away with not being as diligent as I should and can still salvage our food from ending up in the trash. But this week it all caught up to me. Whew! I'm all the more determined to fight my lazy attitude towards food waste (and a number of other things) this coming week. Thanks so much for joining me as I learn to live a purposefully, thrifty life!

Hot Dog Challenge: Corndogs

This summer we're trying out different toppings for our hot dogs instead of the old standbys of ketchup, mustard, and relish. Its been a lot of fun so far!

I found this recipe for homemade corndogs from Farmhouse Table, and we decided to try it out! Here's a look at our finished product:

Since all the corndogs I have ever seen were on a stick, I used these wooden skewers and stuck them in the ends of my hot dogs. This ended up being an unhelpful step - the skewers prevented the hot dogs from laying flat in the oil! I ended up getting flustered and pulling them all out without taking any pictures. It was pretty funny looking thinking back on it now! But I also had to redo the hot dogs that I first tried with the skewers, too.

Anyhow, once that all got sorted out, I finally had something that resembled a corndog. On the whole, I was actually disappointed with how they looked...not like the pictures on the original recipe. But, I think the main problem was that my cornmeal batter was too runny. I'm not sure if that was because I added too much liquid or if something else was different. Next time I will make sure that my batter is thick enough that it does not roll right off the hot dog before they get in the pan!

I ended up spooning batter on top of the hot dogs as they sat in the oil to get full coverage. Certainly not the prettiest thing I've ever made, but they tasted amazing!

Mmmmm! Crispy and golden brown on the outside. We dipped them in spicy mustard, but the flavor was so great they would have been amazing by themselves.

Our taste tester agrees! Homemade corndogs are excellent!

Check out the rest of our Hot Dog Challenge specialty dogs!
Texas Ranger
Salsa Dog
Avocado and White Sauce
BBQ and Peppers

Cloth Diaper Sale: Cotton Babies

Cotton Babies routinely runs sales on "seconds", merchandise that is not perfect, but has minor enough flaws that it is still functional. Right now there are a number of items on Clearance from Cotton Babies, which is a great way to add to your cloth diaper supply. 

The Flip covers for $9 caught my eye, as well as the bum Genius 4.0 covers for $10! Neither of these come with inserts, so be aware of that. There are some organic flip inserts on sale as well. 

When we went from one to two in cloth diapers, we opted for the Flip system. Not only is it cheaper than the full pocket diapers, but you need less covers since they can be reused without washing, and since the Flip is a bit more streamlined, it fits a little bigger than the pocket diaper. For more of my thoughts on the Flip diapers, check out this post.

I really would love to upgrade some of my 3.0 bum Genius diapers to those new 4.0 covers that are just $10, and it is so tempting when Cotton Babies runs a great sale like this. We decided that our diapers, while showing a good bit of wear, still have plenty of life left in them. And now that E is potty trained except for overnight, we have extra diapers on hand! So I'm passing up another great deal because for us right now the thriftier option is to spend nothing, even when it's on clearance.