Tag Archive for Family Stuff

Bad Days

Posted by html404 on November 1, 2011
in Family Stuff, Parenting

I hate bad days. They usually start because of one person and their attitude and it totally throws everyone in the whole house off. Today is a bad day. My attitude stinks. I will admit it. My day started ok. I got down to business and homeschooling, then a certain little person broke a new and currently my favorite mug. Material thing, an accident, I know, but still I reacted to the mishap and my attitude after that incident completely changed. Why do we sweat the little stuff? I have no idea why. I think I have grumped at nearly any child who has come near me and now all I want to do is climb into my shell and stay there. If I were a turtle that would be easy to do, but I am a mom of eight children and it is pretty much impossible to do!

I could have climbed back in bed, I know of two little people who would have climbed right in beside me because they do that every night anyways! But no, I got up and made lunch, cleaned up and came back to the computer with a silly blog post. Now I really need to apologize and get our day back on track so we can at least finish well.

The good thing about bad days is apologies and making the day better than it began! Off to strap a smile on my face, an apology on my lips and laughter in my heart as I enjoy a beautiful fall afternoon with my
“crew”.

Enjoy your day no matter how it started, even if it means an attitude adjustment by you!

By the way, the picture in this post is how I have felt most of this morning. 🙁


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Transformation – Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on October 31, 2011
in Blog Stuff, Business, Family Stuff, Monday Motivation, Organization

I don’t know about you but I am always seeking new ways to do things whether that is in the organization of my home, my children or our businesses. Just this morning I was asking my daughter for her advice on what she finds most effective in keeping all her blogging organized and she confirmed that I needed to go with my gut and resolve the frustration in “My Documents” with our Young Living business, as that folder is getting more and more documents and it is getting harder to find things. Solution? It’s time to create new folders with in the one main folder to get the documents more organized and easier to find so I am not wasting time searching. 

The above is a simple example to start with but it can go much deeper in our lives as to what needs transforming. Perhaps it is relationships for you – family or God in the spiritual realm, but it’s business for me.  Or maybe it is home organization for another. I find that now that we have moved to a larger house with more storage a lot of our organizational handicaps we experienced in our small townhouse have nearly been eliminated. (Praise God for that!) The children are older and while the younger ones are still a work in progress they now have a place for everything which takes away a lot of the frustration of keeping things in order. Most days we are able to stay on top of things and keep our home neat and tidy. It is when mom (me!) slacks off of staying on top of the children to pick up what they were using, playing with etc. that things get disorderly. And all it takes is me not feeling like making my bed and everyone follows…..better to make my bed!

Transformation in any area usually requires effort and goals on our part or else transformation will not occur.

What area do you need to transform? What goals are you ready to write down and take action with this week?

*This post was inspired in part by a webinar series I participated in last night for my Young Living business since I am still thinking about things she said and the goals I made for my business.


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Car Shopping

Posted by html404 on October 26, 2011
in Family Stuff

Admittedly it has been a number of years since we have gone car shopping. However, due to my getting into an accident (no one was hurt!) a week and a half ago and my husband’s work van taking a turn for the worse, we have been surfing the web for a new family car. We have also visited a couple of local car dealers and have a friend who is a car salesman also keeping his eyes peeled for us.

Due to the size of our family our choice of a car is somewhat limited unless we desired to travel in two cars, which is really not our preference. Another 15 passenger van? Or an SUV?

We are leaning towards an SUV, preferably in this century. Yeah, our old vehicles were a ’93 and a ’95. It is our hope to get into the 2000 range. Talk about getting with the program, eh?

What have we been doing for a vehicle? My husband’s mother has been in the hospital due to an operation so we have been fortunate to have the use of her car while she recovers.

How many of you have gone car shopping this year? Did you buy used or new? What was your experience? Any suggestions?


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Garlic Bread – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on October 12, 2011
in Family Stuff, Food and Treats


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You Know You Are a Farmer When……

Posted by html404 on October 12, 2011
in Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Gardening

I thought it would be funny (to us anyways!) to include a post about “You know you are a farmer when…” or “You know you live in the country when….” because we have had a few things happen that make us chuckle about living in the country/becoming farmers:

1. You buy a pair of overalls – for yourself, not your kids. 

2. You are dragging home manure in the back of your van to fertilize your garden – not from the store mind you, freshly shoveled stuff into bags from a local farm!

3. Pet food costs nearly as much as your family’s food bill (not really but if we keep adding animals it could – for real!)

4. When the stars and moon keep you awake at night because they are so bright.

5. Your garbage pile is nearly as big as your neighbor’s manure pile. (Ha! Not really, I was just running out of quick witted things to list! But we do put out more garbage here.)


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Fall Canning and Apple Picking Photos

Posted by html404 on October 6, 2011
in Family Stuff, Food and Treats, Health and Nutrition

Thrifty Thursday is all about canning and finding ways to provide good food for our families. Canning can be expensive, but if you are going to do it for the long haul then the initial investment is worth it. I bought canning supplies back in 2001 and we have only used them a handful of times until this year. Friends have been good to us providing produce and jars.

Apple picking. Check local orchards, neighbors who do nothing with the apples just falling to the ground in their yards and gleaning programs set up by non-profit organizations and farm partnerships. This applies to other fruits and vegetables too. We do this not only for ourselves but to provide local food pantries with fresh fruits and veggies – the ones that take them anyways.

This is actually fermenting sauerkraut and it is a before photo as I think it was a failed first attempt….maybe….haven’t tasted it yet to know for sure. Kind of scared to and you’ll know why by the next photo. A friend told me it should be fine, but I still have my doubts….

And here is one of the second batch with the first batch….notice the difference in coloring:

This is our stash of some of our canned tomatoes. We also have salsa, jam and applesauce. We are planning to make more applesauce tomorrow with two families. We will have three moms and 24 kids…..thankfully we will have a few over the age of 16! Plus some other young ladies helping equal the number above age 12!

Gleaning often means taking the leftovers that have fallen to the ground and are not perfect. However, they are perfect for canning and dehydrating.

Apple picking/gleaning is also a wonderful way to spend a beautiful day together as a family.

Happy Thrifty Thursday!


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What I Hate About Photography

Posted by html404 on October 5, 2011
in Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

I love taking pictures of our family, of our outings etc. Photos seem to make memories last longer.

What I hate about photography is is getting the image so it can be used in multiple ways. For example: I changed the theme of Faith and Family Reviews last tonight and discovered that I could customize the header. I thought, “This will be great because then I can use family photos and make it more personal!” Yeah, right.

I went through dozens of photos only to discover that many of our photos are completely useless in regards to being a header. As with the one featured, it is blurry. Bah humbug. So bear with me as I learn the art of taking photos so they make great headers.

Perhaps we will take a vote on this month’s header from the few that are sort of useable. I will try to remember to switch them out over the next week so please let me know what you think.

Just maybe I will get some shots taken that will be useful….either that or I will find out my camera is the problem…..


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$2 Tuesdays

Posted by html404 on October 5, 2011
in Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Health & Garden Tuesday, Organic

We recently discovered an organic raspberry farm in our area that has $2 Tuesdays. So this morning that is what we did – pick a few pints of raspberries. What fun we had! The children loved it and the farmers were very hospitable. We hope to go again as they will have berries for a while yet as they grow them in high tunnels, which they are doing in conjunction to a research project they are participating in.

This farm also had sheep they raise for wool, chickens that they had for pest control and they also hold different classes throughout the year. They have a couple I am interested in but I am not sure if the timing is right or not….have to wait to see.

We are hoping to put up some more jam if the berries last that long….

Of course, I forgot my camera yesterday and for some reason it is a pain to get photos off my phone, so while I have a few of us I did not get many nor did I get us actually picking berries. I had planned to go back but ran out of space on my phone, of course. The trials and tribulations of a mom trying to capture family memories. Any suggestions on how to be better prepared? Would love to hear them!


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Long Awaited Photos – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on October 5, 2011
in Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Gardening

Guess what I found at the townhouse on Saturday…..yes! The cord for my camera to connect to my computer! Yay! Here are some long awaited photos from the summer through yesterday and a peek into our lives:

Clouds over Mrs. A’s Farm.

This was when we just started planting out in Mrs. A’s field in the spring!

Early morning at Mrs. A’s Farm.

Some of these photos were taken by my 8 year old son.

Hairy little man. These next couple were taken by our oldest.

Thought this one was cool. We think our 9 year old took it.

Lefse making.

Hairy man loved lefse making!

Pretending to fish.

Lefse.

Rolling out lefse.

Happy boy.


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Canning and Dehydrating – This Week’s Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on October 3, 2011
in Family Stuff, Food and Treats, Home

If my camera cord wasn’t lost I could post a real photo of the things we have canned in the last couple of weeks. But alas, it is still MIA (military term for missing in action for those of you that go blank with abbreviations…I know the blankness because I use to experience it ALOT!) so you will have to make do with this photo I found on Microsoft Office in their image gallery. Boo hoo….

Two weeks ago a friend had us over to can 5 bushels of tomatoes. We had a great time spending time with them and have been enjoying the fruits of our labor in spaghetti, chili and pinto beans. We made canned tomatoes and a few jars of salsa.

Since we enjoyed canning so much we came home and made several jars of grape and strawberry jelly and applesauce….yummy!

We are hoping to make more applesauce this week with friends coming to our house if schedules allow for it.

Due to laws changing in Illinois in regards to farmers selling homemade baked and canned goods made in their own kitchens, we are hoping to sell some of our wares next year. Farmers use to have to use commercial kitchens to do this sort of thing. I even looked into using one this summer but it never panned out and I am glad now since we can do it all in our own kitchen. There are stipulations though…of course.

When I get into the whole kitchen thing, my husband likes to call me “Suzy Homemaker”….well that’s what I use to be before 2008 when I started working from home. I love all the so called lost arts. Love to cook, love to bake, love to can, love to sew, love to knit (even though I am not very good at it) and now we are getting into dehydrating since that does not kill all the nutrition in the food. It is very satisfying being able to provide my family with healthy, homemade food and clothes. What can I say? I am from the old school where I believe a woman’s place is in the home taking care of her family and house. It gives me great joy to fulfill my calling as a wife and mother. Not that I don’t enjoy my other “work”, as it helps pay the bills, but my greatest joy is being a wife and mom.

I know you all aren’t going to agree with me, so what is your calling? What gives you joy as a woman?

Disclaimer: This does not mean that I do not enjoy being a small business woman, I do. The thing is it would not be nearly as satisfying doing it on my own. I love the look on my husband’s face when I can say, “Honey, I made XXXX amount of dollars today/this week/this month.” And I love being able to include my children in my work. Just saying…;-)


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