6 Things Tag

I was tagged by Nancy-Dearest...

Here are the rules:

Thanksgiving - Friends - Snow

Being there are photos with this post here is a link to my other blog were posting photos is easy.  Thanksgiving - Friends - Snow

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Becky

The Simple Woman's Daybook ~ #11 ~ 12/1/08

FOR TODAY...

Here is a new picture of my "little" miracle.

Quick Update and new JuLee pic.

Update on Christmas cards for soldiers

After my post a few days ago about sending cards to Recovering Soldiers, I found out that is not going to work.  Walter Reed gets so many that they cannot handle them, so the Red Cross has a program to distribute cards in many areas.   Following is some information and the address to use.  Please disregard the previous post I made, sorry for the confusion. 

Also note that the cards must be sent by Dec. 10!

Another thought I had was to plan to do something for patients in your local V.A. hospital.

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Black Friday- The Day After The Insanity

 & Family!

Well, its the day after the Black Friday madness. From what I read online about the crowds in other areas, I'd say we fared pretty well here in NC. Not to say that there were no problems, just not the crowds and ugliness that seems to have prevailed elsewhere.

We got to the mall at 3:45 in the morning. The crowds were already wrapped around Penny's. I told the girls we would wait until that mob got in, then we would get out of the car and into the store. The people were calm and considerate where I was. Although Dd (18) said she heard some people (families maybe?) being really hateful to one another. She got away from that crowd fast.

We didn't venture into the kitchen/electronic area, no need to. We went to looking for coats and clothes. Those areas were pretty calm. DD gotn herself a new coat that was on sale at $50 usually $250. That was a great deal. She also picked up 2 skirts for church at $13 regularly $40.

I am proud of her choices. She had her entire Black Friday trip planned out to a "T." She knew what she was looking for and where to find it. We were in and out of Penny's in 40 minutes. Had she not tried the clothes on, we would have been out sooner.

A lot of people were lined up at Belk's to get a free gift card. We chose to forgo that line. There is nothing in Belk's that I needed nor wanted. A free $5 gift card was not an incentive to deal with the crowd that was wrapped around the store.

We then headed to Sears and Rack Room. DD got some new boots and 2 shirts for work. We then wanted to just see what Wal Mart had on sale. We got there, went in and immediately decided to LEAVE! Those people were crazy in there. No room to walk without getting shoved against someone. YUCK! And that was at 5:45 in the morning.

We finally ended up the day at another Wally World for groceries.(the ONLY place that was totally empty!) Got home at 11, unloaded the groceries and took a nap for an hour. After the nap, it was a deep clean of the house. (it was really messy from the day before with everyone here for Thanksgiving.)

We didn't go shopping for "wants" yesterday, but for needs. I thank The Lord that DD was able to get the deals she did. I am also proud that DD didn't want all of that useless (IMHO) stuff. She was very careful with her money and her time. That says a lot for an 18 year old. (sorry, I had to brag a bit.)

Oh, I did get 2 things that were "wants" for myself. 2 apple cinnamon candles at $2 each, regularly $5 each.  What can I say, I splurged!

Have a blessed weekend in The Lord!

Amanda <><
II Corinthians 5:7

Top Ten Tips for Saving Money - #4

Today is a double dose of money saving tips because I have this one on my mind today - replacing household items.  In a 3600 square foot home with 6 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms where 9 people are living, I spend every weekend with a trip to Wal-Mart to replace some item that is worn out.  From rugs, to sheets, to dish towels, to wash cloths, to cloth napkins, to blankets, to - just name it - I am replacing items on a weekly basis.

The biggest challenge to replacing these items is the time it takes to make them at home.  I need a new bathroom rug right now.  It can maybe hold off a little while, but I've had it for over ten years and it is starting to unravel.  I can wait until it is totally out of service and see if I can pick up a cheap replacement, or I can plan now for a homemade replacement.  I have been thinking and reading articles for awhile on making rag rugs.  Now is the time for me to do it and avoide the trip to Wal-Mart.  I'll be looking in the old clothes bin today to see if there are any scraps to use.

I am working on a quilt for my bed.  My comforter could stand to be replaced but will hold up for a little longer.  I am making a hand sewn quilt with a variety of star patterns.  I have one more block to sew and then I have to quilt it.  I think it will take more at least 18 more month to finish sewing and quilting it.  It is not a quick process, but with a little pre-planning I can avoid those costly purchases. 

My daughters and I are beginning to plan for the next set of quilts they will need for their beds, for dish towels, and wash cloths.  I save all my scraps from sewing and we will be turning these into quilts for the children's beds.  I am crocheting wash rags for the kitchen.  I have some fabric I plan on sewing kitchen towels out of.  The hardest part of avoiding these purchases is the planning and diligent work it takes prior to needing the item.  Most of the materials I already have around the house so this is a very cost effective way to replace items.

This concept is related to the hope chest of days past.  When young women prepared to be married they made up items ahead of time so that they would have everything they needed to furnish their own homes one day.  I discuss this with my daugthers and we already are planning for the items that will one day fill their chests.  I give them projects to work on and teach them skills that will help them one day fill those chests.

Top Ten Tips for Saving Money - #3

Health and Beauty

The overall key to saving money is to examine what you buy and figure out if you can make it, trade it, or buy it used instead.  I could certainly do more in the area of health and beauty, but remember every little bit helps.  I also have to be sensitive to which changes my spouse is willing to make. 

Here is what I am doing.  We make our own soap and use it for bathing, facial soap, and liquid hand soap.  I recently began using this soap for my facial soap and have found it works great.  It leaves my face clean and I don’t need to use moisturizer.  If I feel my face needs a little something I rub some fresh aloe on it.  In the future, I hope to make my own shampoo bars.  I have also made homemade laundry soap, but I did not feel it did as good as job as I would like.  I will probably try it again but for now, I am buying that kind of soap.

Another area that I have cut back on is cold remedies.  I now extract elderberry syrup with alcohol and add local honey, Echinacea, and Goldenseal to make my own cold syrup.  Stored in the refrigerator, I always have access to some for a child ior adult coming down with a cold or a sore throat.  I have found that this works so well that colds are nipped in the beginning and we have haven’t had a full blown cold around here for awhile.

Recently I have suffering from chapped lips and little blisters on my lips.  I tried all the store remedies and was getting no where.  After spending money several different times, I finally whipped up my own remedy.  I melted a little coconut oil in a small jars in double boiler set up with a pan.  I melted some beeswax in another jar.  In the coconut oil I added some herbs I had in my stash - comfrey, licorice root, goldenseal powder, and lavendar.  After a little while I strained off the herbs and mixed the infused oil with the beeswax.  My lips are making steady progress towards recovering.

The key is to start using herbs slowly by researching a few here and there.  Many of them are very versatile so you can find a few you like and keep them on hand.  Don't go out and buy a lot because if you don't use them they will go to waste.  Start slowly.  There is alot more that I could do with herbs, but it takes time to learn.  I research and study as I have time.  I particularly like figuring out what herbs I can gather in the wild and use, which is how I started using elderberries.  Don't forget you can also use herbs to treat your animals and pets.  Research what is appropriate but I have used herbs to treat wounds.

In the future I would like to stop buying shampoo and toothpaste.  I have begun researching these items and considering how to go about replacing these frequently purchased items.  The best part about replacing these items is that it is better for our health and environment when we make our own in these categories.

Tuckered out

That's what we both are tonight!  Hubby announced this morning that he was going to back a trailer into the shed and we were going to start cleaning it out.  Well all I could say was WooHoo!   I should have taken a picture of the mess we had, but honestly it was a little too bad.  It is a shed that is open to the south and we use it for shelter for the goats.  They have been using the front half, but there was a cattle panel across the middle and the back half was total junk!  When we moved here 71/2 years ago, we stored things we didn't know what to do with there..........well, you know boxes got damp and gave out and stuff just got to be a total mess.  I have had the best intentions every year to get it cleaned out so the goats could use all of the building as well as just getting the junk cleared out.  But everytime I looked at it, it just seemed like too big of a job to start on myself, so I would just walk away.  So when hubby was in the mood to start on it this morning, I was overjoyed!  A lot of work, but a good tired at the end of the day.  I am guessing we burned 10 or more trash bags full, plus some boxes that we just carried to the burn pile.  Besides a trailer pretty full of stuff to haul to the dump tomorrow.  There is a huge pile of used lumber along one side that my Dad had stored there, so we will have to start on that tomorrow too.  We are thinking some of it may be no good, but some can be  salvaged.  Then of course there is a row of "stuff" that we want to keep that will need to find a home before we can say we are finished. I doubt that we can finish it tomorrow, but we sure have made a good start and I am thrilled.

This shed is where we hold the Live Nativity that we host each year.  So that is another reason to be happy to get this project done now before Christmas.  Past years we have just hung a tarp across, covering up the mess.

Today was a perfect day to work outside, we were out of the wind, so not cold, but just right to work and not get hot either.  There was very little wind, so we were able to keep the burn pile going and get rid of the burnable stuff right away.

One more blessing to share with you.  I send out a newsletter from our farm, and in the one I did last week I added a wish list of things we could use here that folks might have laying around and want to get rid of.  Included was a baby monitor,  jelly jars, concrete wire, and pieces of chain link fence to cover gates.  In response, a friend emailed and offered some fencing.  We borrowed a trailer and picked it up yesterday when we were in the area for Thanksgiving.  There was part of a roll of wire, several hog panels, some are bent, but we cut them up and use the pieces for hay feeders, a chain link walk thru gate, some steel posts.  And they also gave us 2 rubber buckets, a rubber feed pan, some metal wash tubs.  I think that is everything........  We were so happy to be blessed with these items and she told me she had wondered for 2 years what she was going to do with this stuff.  So we helped her out as well.  Isn't God Good!!!

I have 2 pies to bake by noon tomorrow.  Being busy all day and worn out tonight, I was very happy that I had made an extra single pie crust last week and put it in the freezer.   I stirred up  the filling for a custard pie in no time and it baked while I got the dishes from the day caught up.  In the morning when I have a little more energy, I will make an apple and be done baking till Monday I hope!

Country Blessings,

Marilyn~at Heritage Hill Homestead