summer soul camp update: household/food

At about a month into our summer soul camp, my plan for household projects and food is going pretty well.

Household

• finish breakfast room
• work on office
• work on powder room
• hang pictures
• thrifting
• Add to list: my daughter’s bedroom

We finished the breakfast room AND hung pictures in the room. I’ve been pulling more pictures out of moving boxes in the basement to hang them in the second-floor hallway. I also found some pictures to frame that were taken by my dad. I’ll need to buy more frames from Ikea for them; Ikea is my go-to resource for inexpensive picture frames that include a matte.

With the breakfast room finished, I decided to tackle the wallpaper in the office. I hate being in that room because of the wallpaper. I haven’t been able to find the moulding I want for the powder room which means rethinking what we’ll do. In the meantime, I’m going to paint the existing white moulding with bright white paint.

The kids and I have been thrifting whenever we can. I do want to make a run out to Roanoke to Black Dog Salvage. Finally, my daughter decided she wanted to repaint her room. Yay! I can’t wait to get rid of the beige.

Food

• cook new recipes from new Israeli, Palestinian, and Indian cookbooks
• pantry challenge
• use never/seldom used items

My son, Ted, and I have been digging into our new and old cookbooks to cook new recipes. This past weekend, he made a delicious pot pie. Before that, he made shepherd’s pie, both traditional and keto versions. I tried a salad recipe from Wholesome Yum that was outstanding.

While I haven’t done much in terms of using stuff up, I have been inventorying our supply of homemade jams and pickles. Some we can use up on toast, etc. Others I’ll use in my apple spice cake recipe to replace sugar and applesauce.

Unfortunately, I’ve only used one item from the basement, an egg poacher. However, I went through the kitchen items in the basement and donated a number of them to Goodwill.