a week (5 days) of crockpot cooking

Because I feel like it, I am attempting a week (well a workweek anyway since R wants to grill this weekend) of crockpot cooking.  Monday was pork ribs.  They were so done they fell off the bone so they became pulled pork sandwiches.  They were yummy and I had plenty left over for the freezer.  Tuesday was ham cooked in pineapple.  Delish.  Tonight is salsa chicken breasts.  Tommorrow (thursday) I want to do a beef roast and friday I am not sure what I am going to do yet.  I might cook the 2 pork roasts I got out to make pulled pork for tonight.  I do not want pulled pork twice in a week though.  I intended to have ribs, then ham, then pulled pork.  Unfortunately my plans don't always turn out. 

I have been keeping up with the decluttering.  Albeit slowly lately.  There is only so much I can get rid of.  I will meet my goal but probably just meet it. 

I finished the stair project as much as I could do by myself.  I have the good ones painted and the stair treads on them.  I still need someone to help me tear out the old ones (without damaging the riser part of the stair...this is why I haven't done it myself) and to help me cut the new ones.  I am leery of cutting them myself because of the angles on 3 of the 4 stairs.  Hopefully I can complete that project over the weekend.

We applied for a block grant to do some much needed repairs and maintenance to our home.  Our house is not bad but it does need new siding and some other things.  It is certainly livable as is however the improvements would be great.  I turned in the app last week and am just waiting to hear back.  I probably won't hear anything until the end of May.  I have an acquaintance from high school that I am contracting with to do the work.  He has done other work to our house and does a good job so we will be contracting with him.  It is so nice to have a contractor you have known for many years and someone that you can trust. 

When the contractor comes I have a few other projects that R and I can do parts of but we need to know if they are even feasible.  One is cutting out 1/2 of a wall to make a bar type counterspace for eating at.  It will look into our living room and make for a nice wide open space.  I am pretty sure the wall is load bearing so I need some advice on how to proceed.  The other project we intend to do in a couple years and that involves some major work that we will hire the contractor for.  Our current bathroom is 1/2 the size of our laundry room.  It is annoying and too small.  We would like to A. switch the bathroom the laundry room, with a door in between and keep the entry for the current bathroom, making it the entry to the laundry room.  We would enter the bathroom through the laundry room.  We would make the current laundry room entry a wall and add cabinets and countertop to that corner for the kitchen.
B.  We would keep the rooms seperate but make the laundry room the bathroom and make the bathroom the laundry room.  I am not too keen on this idea as the bathroom entrance would basically be on the end of my kitchen and in the middle of my "work space".  However this may be the way we have to go as I am not sure option A is feasible without spending boatloads of money.  The high point is that both rooms already have plumbing and electric so that would only require some minor changes.

So we are in a holding pattern right now.  Waiting on the block grant and then waiting to see what we can and cannot do with that.





~Jess~