Beef Soup for my Soul

With my apologies to the Chicken Soup for the Soul, I prefer Veggie Beef Soup for my soul.  I've been feeling out of sorts for the last several weeks.  Housecleaning needs to be done, actually a good, thorough fall cleaning needs to be done.  I haven't cooked a super good meal in a while.  And my mood is borderline cranky.

My Soul needs nourishment is two ways:

Taking Care of My Family

For me this means a clean, comfortable home.  I am by no means a perfect housekeeper, nor do I want to be.  But when the crumbs from last week's meals are still hiding under the kick boards of the kitchen counters and my husband's whisker trimmings from yesterday are still on the bathroom sink, I am not happy.  Recently I read about Handmade Home's Lazy Gal's Survivial Guide to Better Housekeeping.  I'm in!

My philosophy is a warm, comfortable home keeps my family happy.  Most of the housework is my responsibility as hubby travels extensively for work.  We are almost empty nesters.  I say almost because our adorable 3-yr-old grandson is here from late Sunday afternoon until Monday night every week and sometimes several other days a week. If you walk into our home you might think we have a child.  My biggest issue with keeping up with housework is I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in the spring and that has slowed me down considerably in the housework department.

Taking Care of Me

Beyond my physical needs, I need to feed my creative muse.  She is a strong muse and insists I spend time every day creating something, whether I spend time with yarn, threads, fabric or paper.  My studio is filled with projects I've been working on and not many of them are finished.  She does not demand finishing as much as I would like her to, but we have an understanding on that point.

This past summer she had me spending more money on materials than I would have liked to, but I have convinced her I have enough materials to keep me happy for quite a while.  Now it is time to hunker down and create!

So, what's next?
Over the weekend I decided to take five days off next week before hubby and I go to Scottsdale for a long weekend.  I need the time at home to restore sanity to our home and myself.  I'm not sure what I will do on those five days, although Mr. E will be here on Monday and he always brings a smile to my face.

To start the process I made a huge pot of Beef Veggie Soup, Cheddar Chive Biscuits and Apple Crisp for dinner on Monday night.  It was a yummy dinner and everyone loved it.

On Tuesday my Muse told me to start crocheting snowflakes.  I spent the afternoon trying a few patterns and wasn't happy with them.  I perused the patterns on Ravelry.com and found a collection of patterns that are turning out well.

Here they are before being starched.

The only one I'm not happy with it the one in the upper right corner.

 Happy stitching!
Sweet P