Sister Week

What a fabulous I week I have had.  My sister and her two kids took a 10 hour bus ride just to spend part of their spring break with us.  We didn't have any tremendous vacation plans laid out for them, it was mostly just hanging out in our jammies till late in the morning, drinking coffee & tea together, feeding the children (frequently!), washing their muddy clothes from their daily trips into the back woods & creek, and enjoying a sunny hot dog roast by the river.


My beautiful sis - proving that 40 is fantastic!

My sister is a huge source of inspiration for me in regards to healthy living, shopping with conscience, and knowing how to stretch a dollar by cooking from scratch.  I made sure to ask lots of questions this week and here are a few new things I learned:

1.  You can pretty much freeze anything!  Cook a big batch your dried beans in a slow cooker, spead them out on a cookie sheet to air dry a bit, then put them in a freezer bag.  It's so easy to just get as many as you need for a salad, soup, or stew and toss them in precooked & frozen.

2.  If you've got an old sewing machine that was given to you - learn how to use it!  Get it serviced if you need to. If it's old that means it has a metal motor and some serious sewing power!  Those $100 machines from Walmart will be made entirely of plastic.

3.  Rice will stretch any leftovers into a meal for the whole family.  We had some leftover sweet & sour pork & honey garlic chicken from our lunch at the food court.  She diced it up, cooked some rice, and made a fried rice meal for six!

4.  Quality sheets from the thrift store make great duvet covers.  She made a duvet cover for my daughter's bed with a couple pretty sheets, and filled them with two old blankets that were too ratty for words.

It's a lot easier to make a top bunk bed just with a simple duvet, rather than fussing with top sheets and multiple blankets.

5.  Borrow movies from the library.  Even if it means that you have to wait to watch them because you've had to place a request.

6.  Less is more for beauty products on your face - she mostly washes her face with water and uses a little bit of baking soda as an exfoliant a couple times a week.  And she gorgeous!

7.  Laugh.  Often.  And we did!

I hope you have a sister as awesome as mine - and if you don't - then at least I've shared some of her wisdom with you.  :-)