Archive | January, 2008

Ways that we saved in 2007

By Lindsay on January 11, 2008 in frugal & simple

For Frugal Fridays, Crystal shared her 5 ways they saved $100 dollars last year. Here is our list, posted a little while back (more specific one frugality and being good stewards). It is a good refresher to review this list, and add to it this year.

Here it is in simplified form:

1. We choose to cloth diaper and we love it too!

2. We switched to CFL bulbs.

3. I hang my laundry to dry (it is possible, even in the Pacific Northwest!).

4. Paid bills and charity gifts online.

5. Limit trips out. We limited our errands to 1-2 a week to save gas money. Having one vehicle also helps with this!

6. We eliminated paper napkins and towels (cloth napkins are so elegant!)

7. I am in process of gradually fading out all store bought cleaners and body products and making my own.

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Decorating on A Budget – Part 1

By Lindsay on January 11, 2008 in making a home, natural & green

Did you know that your home is an embassy of Christ’s kingdom? It is especially designed by God to be a place for others to find refreshment, encouragement, a haven of rest to their souls from the weariness and trials of this world. This haven must be a welcoming place to display the glory of God! This should always be our chief goal in our decorating. How can I make my home more of a testimony to the work of Christ in my life? How can I seek to refresh others as they enter into my home?

Now I am no decorating expert. In fact, I am not quite sure why I am talking about this topic right now. The gift of creativity passed me by and was given to my younger sister…so most of what I have written below come from her creative juices! My house is far from being decorated as I would like…but maintaining a simple home is my goal anyway!

Continue Reading →

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Our Goal in Parenting

By Lindsay on January 10, 2008 in building the family

Psalm 145:4

“One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts.”

We are called to proclaim the glory of our Lord to the next generation – and who would that be? Our children, our siblings, or simply anyone younger than us that we come in contact with! This should be our main goal and purpose in parenting. If we are purposeful in declaring often of His praises, they will grow to treasure what we treasure. Every moment is a teaching opportunity. If our time spent in conversation together is always centered around the latest movie, sport activity, social event, what do you think they are going to become passionate about? I believe this to be especially true about what we make our family hobbies.

We must always be looking for opportunities for reflecting and sharing how the Lord has changed our life, in addition to how He has worked throughout all the ages. That is why solid history resources are so important! As the saying goes, they who know history will not be doomed to repeat it.

I have been reflecting upon this lately as I have been studying the Scriptures and asking myself, how can I start making this a habit now, even while my baby is too young to understand?

Here are some thoughts:

- Sing truth together and have it playing in your home so they can learn to praise the Lord. I started posting different worship songs over my changing table and singing them to my baby. I want her to hear of the goodness of our God from her infancy.

- Be a worshiper at church for those little eyes are always watching. I have been blessed with parents who love to worship the Lord and you can see it now in the way my siblings worship. There are other families I have observed that the mother and father barely sing, neither were they raising their hands (not that this is necessary, but it is an outward sign of an inward attitude), and guess what? The children were the same way! This has stirred within me a passion to worship the Lord with my whole heart, so my children might see how much He means to me.

- Read the Word together - I am so thankful for the faithfulness of my parents from my youth in getting us up early on a regular basis and reading the Scriptures together. I remember many a time greatly hating this event, waking up early, reading together…boring! But then God transformed my life. I was a new creature! I had a fresh desire to study and know the truth, and I attribute this awakening to the mercy of God but also to the faithfulness of my parents.

- Be students of history! Have lots of good biographies, auto-biographies, history resources for your children. Be students together of the great works of God throughout history. For in fact, it is His Story!

RESOURCES:

Vision Forum supplies some wonderful resources on history. I have been blown away time and time again by their thorough coverage of history. Great resource!

Treasuring God in Our Traditions – by Noel Piper – an excellent resource! She defines a tradition as “a planned habit with significance. Tradition is the handing down of information, beliefs, and worldview from one generation to another by word of mouth and by regular repetition of example, of ceremony, and of celebration. For a Christian, tradition is laying up God’s words in our own hearts and passing his words to the next generation.” She supplies an abundance of ideas of incorporating God-centered traditions in your family life!

Some resources Noel Piper recommends:

My First Book of Questions and Answers by Carine MacKenzie – a resource they used for teaching the catechism to children.
Most of All, Jesus loves You – the story of a lovely bedtime tradition for toddlers and preschoolers.
Hide ‘Em in Your Heart, vols. 1 & 2 by Steve Green. Cassettes or CDs of songs for Bible memory. (We had these on avideo growing up…and I can still remember the verses!)
Leading Little Ones to God by Schooland – Devotional book for preschool and young school aged children (I used this with my younger siblings, a great resource!).
Word & Song Bible, books & CD ed. Steve Elkins – the Pipers used this resource with their children to train them to have their own devotion time when they were too young to read. They also had family devotions, but from their toddlerhood the children would sit down for a short period and use a Bible and audio tape/CD and have their own devotions. Wonderful idea!

Two excellent articles written by the Pipers:

The Family: Together in God Presence
Home-Grown World Christians

Do you have any resource recommendations to share?

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UPDATE: Apple Cider Vinegar

By Lindsay on January 9, 2008 in health & nutrition

Here is a little update on my addition of Apple Cider Vinegar into our diet! Since starting incorporating ACV as a daily supplement into our diet, Aaron & I have seen great improvement to our energy levels! A side benefit: it seems to be greatly alleviating my lovely monthly pain (you know what I mean…I can’t seem to attribute it to anything else!). I found the key to drinking this successfully and covering up the powerful taste is to drink it as a tea first thing in the morning. I have been serving it together with breakfast in the morning. I recommended previously drinking it with juice as a good alternative, but I have changed my mind! This is far better!
Here is the recipe again:

8 ou. hot water
2 tsp. ACV
1 tsp. honey

There you have it! A wonderful potassium tonic!

See related posts below for more information on this wonderful health product!

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Organizing Kitchen Storage – Canning Jars

By Lindsay on January 8, 2008 in making a home

BEFORE

I have been reorganizing my kitchen storage system lately to maintain a more clean, simple, and organized layout of all my baking products, grains, legumes, etc. I have so many different varieties of containers that are just taking up a ton of space.

I have also been researching lately on the harmful PVC toxin that is added to most most plastic and vinyl products/containers, etc. It seems that plastic can be very harmful and migrates from the storage container into your food. An additive called BPA that is used to harden plastic in baby bottles, storage containers, water bottles, etc. may cause a wide range of health problems including cancer, brain damage, infertility, and other issues. It is especially dangerous for infants, they are discovering. Read more by following the links below.

With this in mind, I have decided to begin to gradually fade out my plastic storage and switch over to glass containers. I am using simple glass canning jars of different sizes, but mainly wide mouth quart canning jars. The reason I am using wide mouth jars is that I can easily pull in and out a measuring cup or spoon. These are easy to come by at your local Goodwill, and Craigslist. I bought several at Goodwill for 20 cents each. Not bad at all. It is wonderful! They are all uniform and my cupboards look greatly improved! See pictures below. I am still in progress…on the lookout for some larger glass jars (1/2 gallon and 1 gallon sizes for larger quantities for my lower cupboard). Any ideas of where to find these at?

AFTER

Here are a few interesting articles on possible harms of plastic. Please use your own discernment when viewing these sites, as I cannot recommend or agree with everything presented:

Scientists Fear Chemical in Plastic

Chemicals Used to Harden Plastic

PVC: The Most Toxic Plastic

PVC: The Poison Plastic – a cute little video helping to identify what products in your home have PVC

Visit Kitchen Tip Tuesdays for other Kitchen tips and ideas!

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Making my own butter!

By Lindsay on January 5, 2008 in recipes & kitchen tips

I had such a blast making my own butter yesterday! Yes, that is right! I made my own homemade butter. At first I thought it must be so difficult and time consuming to do it, but boy was I vastly mistaken. It was so easy and well worth it for the wonderful taste! It is cheaper and fresher this route!

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups of heavy cream (raw is preferred, but pasteurized is okay, not ultra-pasteurized) – I skimmed the raw cream off the top of my raw milk I get from a local farm (Read more about the benefits of raw milk here). From 1 1/2 gallons of milk I got 2 1/2 cups of raw cream, I could then just make it out of this, but I went ahead and added some pasteurized cream.
1/2 tsp. salt

Makes 1/2-3/4 lb. of butter and 1/2 quart of buttermilk

I used by Bosch Mixer (my favorite appliance!), but I am sure you could use a KitchenAid or other mixer.

1. Fit your mixer with the plastic beater, or whisk. Blend. The cream will go through the following stages: Sloshy, frothy, soft whipped cream, firm whipped cream, coarse whipped cream. Then, suddenly, the cream will seize, its smooth shape will collapse, and the whirring will change to sloshing. The butter is now fine grained bits of butter in buttermilk, and a few seconds later, a glob of yellowish butter will separate from milky buttermilk. It took about 15 minutes in my machine (I let it do it’s thing while I fed Karis). See the pictures below.

2. Drain the buttermilk. Keep for other uses as it is perfectly good raw buttermilk.

3. Add 1/2 cup of ice-cold water, and blend further. Discard wash water and repeat until the wash water is clear (it took me 3-4 times).

4. Add 1/2 tsp of salt, to taste, if desired.

5. Squeeze out excess water. Take the butter out of the mixer and place on paper towels (or put on a clean towel as I did, since I do not have paper towels) and squeeze out any excess water. You can also place it in another bowl and use two forks or a potato masher to work out the excess water, pour out the water. Another option: put in large covered jar, and shake or tumble. Continue working, pouring out the water occasionally, until most of the water is removed.

6. Store. The butter is complete! Wrap up in wax paper, or place in a butter plate, or some other container. I froze mine in small glass jars to preserve it longer.

ENJOY! TASTES FABULOUS!

UPDATE 4/7/08 -After much experimenting, I have discovered that homemade butter doesn’t last long at all before spoiling, due to the difficulty it is to remove all the butter fat. It does work well to freeze in portions.

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One last update!

By Lindsay on January 5, 2008 in news & updates

We rearranged the template one last time for the year! I prefer simple and clean; therefore, we have modified the look. Thanks for joining me and for your patience as we were making some changes!

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Natural Body Products on A Budget – Part 2

By Lindsay on January 4, 2008 in natural & green

Visit here for part 1 of this post.

Here are a few more additional recipes for all natural body products! Enjoy!

Liquid Soap – Fill your empty soap dispensers with Dr. Bronners liquid castile soap. It is rather thin on its own so dilution is not recommended.
Shampoo – Baking Soda & water (approximately 1 Tbls soda to 1 cup water)-make use of your old dispensers! Combine these two ingredients for an excellent shampoo. I make a paste with baking soda and water, massage this into my scalp and rinse well. It definitely does not have the soapy feel of your regular shampoo, but it actually feels like it is cleaning your scalp more thoroughly. This is called the no-poo method.

Here is another shampoo recipe using apple cider vinegar. ACV works effectively as a conditioning agent. This substance must be refrigerated between uses.

Add the following ingredients in a blender:
1 oz. Olive oil
1 egg
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon ACV.
Use as you would a regular shampoo

Conditioner - Apple Cider Vinegar (Approximately 1-2 Tbls. cider to 1 cup water) – Spray this solution to the ends of your hair and again rinse well. Cleans and detangles. Makes hair feel very soft. I do not recommend using an old cleaning spray bottle (I washed it in the dishwasher too!). I did this at first and it added a horrible smell (probably not good for the hair, either). Use a small spray bottle. The smell takes a little getting used too, and I increased the water quantity to decrease the scent. It would be worth trying to add an essential oil of some kind to overcome the ACV smell.

Apple Cider Vinegar has not only proved beneficial to take internally but also offer as many topical health benefits too. When you incorporate apple cider vinegar into your body-care regimen, you will quickly find that you don’t need many of the commercial beauty aids. Many of which contain preservatives, and synthetic perfumes. Apple cider vinegar (ACV), on the other hand, is an all-natural remedy that helps the skin/scalp Ph balance. Healthy skin has a protective acid mantle that can be stripped away by overuse of alkaline body soaps. The skin is the largest organ of elimination; so maintaining an acid mantle assists the normal detoxification process.

For refreshing and deep cleansing face wash
Add 1 c. of ACV to basin of warm water to use as a refreshing face wash. For a steam deep cleanse, add 3 tablespoons of ACV to a pan of boiled water and lean your face over it. Cover your head with a towel for five minutes, allowing the steam to open up the pores and loosen any impurities from the skin’s surface.

Hope that helps with a few ideas for natural body products! Any other ideas?

I just came across this website that has many more wonderful body product recipes. Some are similar to what I have tried above. Check it out!

Here is another site a reader sent me on going shampoo free. Very interesting information! Thanks Jerilyn!

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Organization Helps: Baskets

By Lindsay on January 3, 2008 in making a home

Wow! I love storing things in baskets. They are so incredibly useful tools! I personally do not like using plastic containers, because you can see right into the box and nothing is hidden from view (aren’t we trying to hide it?). Also, I am trying to keep away from purchasing plastic items as much as possible (in concern and care for the environment). In my process of reorganizing and de-cluttering this week, I have found some wonderful baskets for sale at my local Ross. The prices were so reasonable, and the baskets so cute, I couldn’t turn them down! I paid no more than $5 on a large basket ($3-4 dollars for most of them). Goodwill is also another place to get great deals on these storage pieces. They will last longer and be more attractive to look at as well. I have included a few pictures below of my baskets and the uses that I have incorporated them for. So if you’re thinking about organizing…think about investing in some nice baskets!

Do you remember when I was organizing my kitchen junk drawer? Well I found an excellent wooden divider that I am now using in this drawer. It works wonderfully!

This small basket I am using in the closet for our simple games. We only own a few card games, and such, so this basket holds them all nicely.

This basket is storing my linens and extra towels in the laundry room.

This basket is storing our movies and CD’s of sort. The first picture shows it on the shelf in our closet and the second is all that it contains.

Lastly, here is the baskets that contain miscellanous gifts to give away for upcoming events, and shoes that Karis has yet to grow into.

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Goals from our home for 2008

By Lindsay on January 2, 2008 in building the family

Aaron & I spent last evening setting some goals for the new year, while using the questions by Donald Whitney that I listed previously. We also went over the questions provided by Doug Phillips to review God’s Providences on our behalf this past year. It was such a refreshing time together. I will treasure making this a tradition each new year. Having these thoughts, events, areas of growth, etc. recorded will be making our family history so memorable. I am going to paste the document we wrote out in the back of the our photo album for the year.

2007 HIGHLIGHTS

- At a mission conference in the beginning of the year, Aaron & I received a clear burden for missions. The Lord challenged us to be preparing to go rather than just willing to go and planning on staying. We are preparing to go if the Lord calls us!

- The Lord protected us in a crazy car accident in January and provided the funds to repair our car (as we were at fault and had no full coverage insurance).

- We went to Orcas Island in Northern Washington to celebrate our 1 year anniversary in April.

- Karis Ruth arrived on May 4 through a miraculous and a surprise breach birth at home.

- We started a mission mobilizing group in our church to increase mission awareness.

- We had several doors close in business and school plans for Aaron (things we felt like were needed for preparing to go on the field), but God is continuing to lead, direct, and provide for our every need. Even though we are lacking a lot of direction and wisdom in this season, God is faithful and will never leave or forsake us.

- We are growing as parents in learning patience, growing in our communication as a couple, and becoming more faithful prayer warriors.

GOALS FOR 2008

- We both desire to increase our enjoyment of God this year by increasing our reading. I am aiming to read one book each month for a total of 12.

- We are both seeking to keep each other accountable in reading through the Bible in a year. We are using the Discipleship Journal plan for this.

- Fresh structure in our schedule. I am seeking to keep my priorities in the right place by limiting my computer time to when Karis is napping. It has been a distraction and temptation to get on here and blog when she needs my attention first and foremost.

- I want to be in more purposeful prayer for my husband and children (Lord willing!). I have been slacking lately, and will begin afresh by using Stormie Omartian’s prayer cards, which are taken from her book, The Power of A Praying Wife. Powerful prayers that have greatly enriched my prayer life.

- Wiser in my food spending. I am seeking to decrease our food spending this year by starting to make a few more things on my own. I am seeking to eat more nutritiously on a budget (I will definitely be sharing through the process). I am going to start eating more grains and legumes. Mapping out my monthly menu plan is greatly assisting with this. I also want to learn how to make a few of my own dairy products, dressings and condiments.

By God’s grace, I will seek to review these things throughout the year!

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