Shine a Light on Me...or actually no don't please I can't take it

Today's fun is consisting of me wrassling dust bunnies between Etsy listings. I put my freaking adorable baby in the bouncy chair and turned on PBS so I could try to get something done.

My motivation today: its sunny out and I can see every speck of dirt and wisp of hair on the white (white? what were they thinking??) kitchen floor. I really hate sunny winter days. I think the sun reflects on the snow and highlights the worst in everything. Every pore, zit, wrinkle, dustball, and streak of mud is like GLOWING right now. I don't look up when I pass a mirror. I did manage a shower yesterday, that was cool.

I am currently trying to get State help for food, fuel, and health care. We currently lack in the insurance department as I may have mentioned, and I didn't win the damn lottery, so I'm going the more sane route. Well, it seemed sane at the time. Apparently the State of Vermont gets an extra 1 MILLION DOLLARS if they make sure they cross their "t's" and dot their "i's" according the extremely nice customer service lady I talked to.

If you are looking for the Vermont Department of Children and Families (DCF) Website click HERE!

Here is some advice for any Vermonter applying for this same help:

• If you are DOWNLOADING AND PRINTING this application from the web, make sure you call and get a form called "Termination of Employment". This is not found on the web that I can see. The number to call is 1-800-479-6151. They will not process your application if you are in this situation without it.
• Another thing they needed was a "Mortgage Bill". This is basically a statement from your lender stating your monthly payment. You know, that thing they send you every month telling you what exorbitant amount you have to pay to keep your house. I escrow my taxes and they will want to know this also (I believe there is a place on the main application for this info).
  
• Make sure that if someone in your house is still working that you include the last 30 days worth of paystubs. My husband's are extremely annoying to try to print out as they are electronic but located on a website that has no Print button. The only way to print was to use Internet Explorer (ugh) and use the File>Print in the menu.
  

I hope some of this helps someone. I absolutely hate dealing with this crap but it has to be done.

If you are looking for Vermont Health Insurance Help click HERE!

Recipe for Disaster

So that Half and Half pizza I blogged about yesterday? Well it made it all the way to the table. Then I realized it was on my teflon cookie sheet and I didn't want to run the pizza cutter over that, so my husband sez "Put it on the wooden cutting board." Excellent idea, wish I'd thought of it. Before I had taken it over to the table.

Using a spatula to slide it deftly onto the wood I then pulled the cookie sheet away. Apparently in my zest for getting the job done quickly I didn't realize that I had one end of it resting on the top of a chair. My wrists, weak from typing too much, gave and I had one of those "That did NOT just happen" moments. Oh Yeah, it happened:

So today's "Life Lessons for Chowderheads" is: Do any and all food transfers over a shelf or the sink. Ya know, just in case ;)

Bummer

Well, I bought 5 Powerball Vermont tickets yesterday. I have never bought a lottery ticket before. I went up to the Customer Service counter at the Milton Hannaford's last night after dropping my daughter off at ballet. I looked like a bum since I haven't been able to grab a shower in a couple of days and I can only fit into this long dark grey hooded sweater coat so I looked total hobo.

I asked the lady at the counter if they sold Powerball. She said "YEAH we do!!" Apparently she is a big gamer. Or whatever you call serial lottery players. I asked how much they cost. Just $1!! WOW for $1 I could potentially win MILLIONS!!! So I said "Give me whatever I can get for $5!"
She took one look at me and said "I really really hope you win." LOL!

And like I assume all lottery ticket purchasers do I left with my pocket full of hopes and dreams. I stayed up checking the online lottery numbers but apparently they don't post them until after midnight and I'm an old fogey so I went to bed.

Here are the winning numbers:


Nuts.

Half and Half Pizza for Under $10

I have 1 kid who will only eat cheese pizza, and 1 kid that will eat just about anything. Therefore I usually end up having to order 2 pizzas. Plus I'm sick of the bloated feeling that white crust gives me. This pizza left me feeling pretty darn good about myself lol

Boboli Whole Wheat Pizza Crust: $2.50
Can of store brand "Sauce": $0.49
Bag of shredded Mozerella: $2.50
Pre-diced bell peppers (1/4 package): $0.75
Black Olives: who doesn't have a bunch of these sitting around already? :)
Left over crumbled turkey burger (or whatever left over meat you have): Basically free right?

When I first put the sauce on I thought it was a little...juicy or runny for a pizza. But I've never made pizza before so what do I know. Luckily it all turned out...O.K. :)


Tasted great, no bloating. And both kids were begging me to make it at least once a week!

How Do You Make Ends Meet When What You Have is a Jumbled Mess?

As rewarding as doing housework is (cue laughter from the audience) it doesn't generate a paycheck! That part really sucks!!!!

Things I need to do today:

Clean both the 29 gallon fish tank and the 10 gallon fish tank
Clean all three toilets (whoever installed 3 toilets in a 2 level house didn't explore all the ramifications...)
Make something for dinner (possibly pizza tonight...I got nothin')
Fold 4 loads of laundry
Sweep and Mop the Kitchen floor
Empty dishwasher and fill it up again

That's going to take me like all day and its 12:30, the kids come home at 3:45, I need to go get my afternoon adult conversation fix at my friends house at 2, and ballet lessons for Fluffy #4 are at 5:00pm until 6.

LUCKILY I clean best under pressure!!! I just need to figure out how to put this baby down...

I am also trying to get my Etsy store up and running so I can try to generate a way to pay for some of my smaller monthly bills. I make jewelry (or, used to when I had time and less kids) and I also am an avid photographer. Since photography is a little easier for me to do and I have a ton of great photos stored on my various flash and hard drives I decided to concentrate on that.

I decided to charge $12 for each 8x10 print, and $5 for shipping/processing. Originally I said that each one will come matted in your choice of black or white. Yeah well little did I know that a mat costs on average $3.50!!!! The print itself costs about $3, and the packaging costs $3. Postage costs around $3 also. Lets do the math: Charging $17, costing $12.50. So I make only $4.50 and that does not count the driving time to pick up the photos or the postage for having them printed and sent to my house!!! I have sold a total of 6, but only charged for 2 mats out of those because I didn't think properly. Thinking properly is one of those things they don't teach you in school.

So this lesson in "Thinking for Dimwits" is: find out how much things cost such as materials, postage, packaging, etc. BEFORE you price any item that you may list. I know this sounds like common sense stuff, but this blog is for people like me who learn from their mistakes, or from reading crap on the internet!!! :) I usually learn things the hard way also.

Etsy.com is a great way to get your handmade items out there but its a game to play just like anything else, and it is HARD work for sure. It doesn't just happen. There are a lot of really talented people out there who are just like you and me, trying to make a living with what we have.

Another great place to make some money is Seed.com I heard about it on one of the national morning news shows (I know I know they are like gossip rags now) and I checked it out. If you are a writer or a photographer you can definitely make some money. Take a look!

Teriyaki-ish Chicken in the Slow Cooker

Since my kids said they are sick of beef and carrots I decided to try cooking chicken in the slow cooker. My friend Maggie gave me the basis for the recipe: put frozen chicken breasts in what I fondly now call the Crack Pot and dump a can of Swanson's chicken broth on them. Well I couldn't stop at that. I got the bright idea to put the only recipe for any kind of tasty thing in there: teriyaki sauce. Its the only thing my mother taught me to make and HEY I remember it 15 years later!! See Mom?? I WAS listening! You could have taught me more!! Ok enough angst.

So here is what my recipe ended up being for today's "Cooking for Chumps" lesson:

4 FROZEN chicken breasts
1/2 cup of brown sugar, give or take 1/4 cup
a bunch of olive oil (probably about 1/3 cup)
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 chopped thingies of garlic (the small thingies that make up the big thingy)
can of Swanson's Chicken Broth
1/2 tsp Ginger I didn't have Ginger, so I used the closest thing I could find: Szechwan Spice.
1 lemon, sliced into circles not wedges. Probably doesn't matter but it looks nice :)



First, you are going to want to take the chicken out of the foam package its in, but you will most likely find the damn things are frozen tight to it. I asked Maggie what to do and she said to give it a warm bath. So I held it under warm water and then pried it off the foam. Then I had to break them apart since they were also stuck to each other! You may want to wear safety goggles for this hahaha


Dump them into the broth inside the cooker. Next add all the other ingredients except the lemon. Well, honestly I don't know if it matters when you add the lemon, but I waited until 2 hours before it was done and it was quite tasty. Hell, throw caution to the wind if ya want!

Turn it on High and cook for about 4 hours. I started it around 12:30pm. If you start early in the morning I would assume you would put it on Low!



As I said I put the lemon slices in around 3ish. That is because my lemon juice expired in 2007 and I had to walk to the grocery store and buy a lemon!! You can tell I don't cook often can you?

I also baked a batch of brownies for posterity, and boiled 2 bags of 10 min white rice to put under the chicken. I still have a sinus issue right now so I can't smell anything, but everyone seemed to think it smelled delicious.



We sat down to eat and everyone gave it a thumbs up! The chicken was smooth like buttah and pulled apart easily with a fork. The sauce in the bottom of the pot was good enough that my husband made more rice just so he could use it on something! He often eats 2 dinners so I wasn't too shocked. Somehow the man is 6'3" and 140 lbs and eats like a hogger. I learned long ago that such a metabolism does not run off on me just because I married him.

Simple Pot Roast

I grabbed a hunk of beef (about 2 lbs i think) that said "Great for Pot Roasts" on it, and was on "Manager's Special" which I don't even want to know what that means, which cost me about $6.

I then peeled 7 small Yukon Gold potatoes and dumped in a bag of baby carrots. I also cleaned 3 white button mushrooms (clean by wiping gently with a damp paper towel as holding them under running water kills the flavor) and chopped them up and threw them in.

The "juice" is Campbell's Onion Soup with Beef Stock and half a can of water.

I turned the Crack Pot on High from 8:30am to 2:30pm and then put it to Low from 2:30 to 5:00pm.

The meat was like buttah.

Even my picky 5 year old daughter liked it.

The mushrooms turned black but my son insists they were delicious and ate them all...he's a sweet boy.