(Here is a list of some of the wonderful websites this post is linked with) This is a re-blog of a post I did a few months ago outlining our family’s chore system. I wanted to republish it because I created a nicer printable chore chart that I thought some of you might enjoy. It’s at the bottom and free to download and use as you wish. I wanted to share what’s working for us these days regarding chores (we call them jobs). We’ve had a number of systems and charts over the years. Some worked well, others not so much. Some systems worked for a time, but then life shifted and so did our needs. I encourage you to try a variety of things. If one system doesn’t seem to be a good fit for you and/or your children, don’t give up. Just try something else until you find something that works. Since we homeschool, everyone is home all day and our house gets quite messy. I really feel that we should all work as a team to clean up the day’s mess, not just mom and dad doing it all. I don’t ask for perfection. I don’t think perfection is really even possible in a home with children … let alone 5 of them! And I don’t want perfection anyway. I’d much rather our home feel comfortable and lived-in, than sterile and unwelcoming. On that same note, things can quickly go from lived-in to utter chaos around here. So we take a few minutes a few times a day to put things back in relative order. There are some […]
Homemade Mayo
SOYBEAN OIL, WATER, WHOLE EGGS AND EGG YOLKS, VINEGAR, SALT, SUGAR, LEMON JUICE, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA (USED TO PROTECT QUALITY), NATURAL FLAVORS. That’s the list of ingredients on a jar of storebought Mayo. Admittedly, it’s not as devious as some of the other condiments we may find in our fridge or pantry. But it’s still not great. Soybean oil? I’m not a huge soy fan. Added Sugar? Why? And the mysterious “natural flavors” thing. I won’t comment on calcium disodium EDTA…because that would require me to have a single clue as to what it is. And I don’t. I sort of rejected the idea of homemade mayo (I don’t have time for that!!) until I was making a mac salad recently and realized that I was out. We really don’t use a whole lot of mayo in our house. I’d say I buy a small jar 3-4 times per year on average. So that means that there’s a funky jar of mayo sitting in my fridge for months on end. Yum. -_- This recipe is really super easy. The taste is superior to store bought mayo, in my opinion. AND there are no mystery ingredients. 5.0 from 1 reviews Print Homemade Mayo Author: Ashley @ Grow.Pray.Build. Recipe type: condiment I highly recommend using a blender or food processor for making mayonaise. I tried doing it by hand with a whisk, and it just doesn’t emulsify (blend together) as well and the consistency ends up being quite runny. Ingredients 2 whole raw eggs, preferrably pastured a tablespoon or so of cider vinegar a squirt of mustard 1½ cups of LIGHT olive oil (regular extra virgin olive […]
Technical Difficulty & Frugal Fridays
Hey guys! Sorry to go MIA on you. I’ve been experiencing some technical difficulties. NNothing major, and I should be able to have it fixed by the end of the week and resume regular posting. For now, I’ll do a quick frugal Fridays from my smart phone. Successes/Blessings: – the kids harvested about 5 cups of black raspberries from our yard. I froze them all. – I mulched my entire garden with straw. It wasn’t as cheap as the free wood chips, but my husband has been way too busy to spend hours shoveling mulch into his truck for me. We got the straw for $5/bale and needed 5 bales to cover all of my gardens. Not bad! I’ve already noticed the plants looking mulch greener and more lush. – we ate meatless multiple times this week. – I made bread. – I ordered a book off of Paperback swap using credits. – I purchased the workbook that goes with our science curriculum (Sassafras Science) in ebook format so that I could pay for it once, but print it off multiple times for each of my school aged children. – I was given a solid wood end table that is in great shape…just needs a little refinishing! – we attended Mass at a closer parish this week, which saved gas. It was supposed to be in the 90’s on Sunday and our van AC doesn’t work, so we didn’t want the kids having to sit in the hot van for the 30 min drive to our usual church. – I harvested more lavender to dry. – I dehydrated 2 lbs of carrots […]
Frugal Fridays #32
Successes/Blessings: I havested lavender and sage from my garden to dry. I also was given the opportunity to harvest mint, lemon sage, and oregano at my uncle’s house! I harvested a good amount of black raspberries from my own yard, and then some from the same uncle’s house. I’ll make jam in the next few days. I harvested garlic scapes and sugar snap peas from my garden to make stir fry. So far this is my favorite way of using the garlic scapes. Sooo yummy! I only had enough for 2 meals…note to self: plant more garlic this Fall for next year! I harvested 15 kale leaves, dehydrated them, and then ground them in the blender to make a powder. 15 leaves dehydrated down to fit into an 8 oz jar. I’ll use this in soups, smoothies, quiche etc. By the way, I’m really loving how easy dehydrating is, and how LITTLE space it takes up to store dehydrated foods. I was given some items from my aunt that were leftover from a garage sale including: place mats, Food & Wine magazine’s cookbooks, some holiday decorations, an espresso machine, and a number of other items. Our neighbor graciously offered to mow our lawn while my husband was out of town for work. I was given some zucchini and cucumber plants by a friend who didn’t have anymore space in her garden. I transplanted carrots into the garden. I know carrots are typical directly seeded into the ground, but I decided to try starting them out in peat pods since my first couple of plantings never germinated. I then carefully separated the sprouts and planted […]
A July Day Book
Outside my window… It’s evening now, so it’s cool and I can hear the crickets chirping. It’s actually too chilly to even have the windows open. I looked at the last day book I did in April. Almost exactly 2 months ago, and it was snowing on that day. It’s not quite that cold now, but we have had lots of rainy days in the 50’s. I’m thinking… About curriculum and lesson plans for next year. Do you ever do that? Just barely wrap up on year and already you’re ready for fresh curriculum? We’ll probably do some light math and daily reading this summer, but I don’t intend to do anything else really. I loved this post by Sara Mackenzie about Summer being time gained…not lost. Time to relish in your children, read, rest, and just be. I am thankful… For a husband willing to volunteer to take a 3 week work trip away from home so that we can have the extra $ for some projects around the house. These particular projects are things we need to do to get the house ready to sell. Our goal is to move to the country in 2 years…and that’s really not a whole lot of time to get several big projects done! In the school room… We’re just finishing up. Maybe a week or so left. We’d be done by now, but we got a bit behind when we had a month of the stomach flu in our house, and then a baby being born via unexpected c-section, and then another round of the stomach bug. From the kitchen… My grandpa made me a bread […]
The Children’s Chores and Free Printable
I wanted to share what’s working for us these days regarding chores (we call them jobs). We’ve had a number of systems and charts over the years. Some worked well, others not so much. Some systems worked for a time, but then life shifted and so did our needs. I encourage you to try a variety of things. If one system doesn’t seem to be a good fit for you and/or your children, don’t give up. Just try something else until you find something that works. Since we homeschool, everyone is home all day and our house gets quite messy. I really feel that we should all work as a team to clean up the day’s mess, not just mom and dad doing it all. I don’t ask for perfection. I don’t think perfection is really even possible in a home with children … let alone 5 of them! And I don’t want perfection anyway. I’d much rather our home feel comfortable and lived-in, than sterile and unwelcoming. On that same note, things can quickly go from lived-in to utter chaos around here. So we take a few minutes a few times a day to put things back in relative order. There are some days when we’re running errands, or visiting with family, when morning or evening jobs don’t get done. There’s probably 1-2 days like that per week. We have a large extended family that lives locally, so it’s not uncommon to have a few birthday parties and family dinners each month. No day or week is the same. Having the kids participate in cleaning up what is mostly their own mess isn’t […]
An Apology
So I’ve had this blog running since the end of 2013. Sometime in 2014, I changed over from Blogger to a self-hosted website on WordPress, using Bluehost for my hosting. I don’t really understand what all that means (my husband steps in when it starts getting too techie for me). It’s all over my head. I do know that being self-hosted gives me more freedom to use this blog the way I want to. Here’s the whoops: I’ve been getting e-mails from some of you for the last several months, but I didn’t realize it. You see, I thought I had set it all up to be forwarded to my personal address. I wasn’t getting e-mails, but that didn’t surprise me, because I’m no big-time blogger. I don’t expect that people will be e-mailing me often. I’m totally blessed by the comments that you all leave me. So I was just going along writing articles, approving the sweet comments that I get from you guys, but not thinking twice about the fact that no one was e-mailing me. But you were! You were e-mailing me. And I wasn’t responding. I feel terrible. It’s because the forwarding address wasn’t set up properly (apparently). So today when I logged into my hosting account thingamabob and clicked “check your inbox” not expecting to see anything except maybe some spam…there were e-mails there! I’m slowly going through and responding to all of you. I’m sorry!! FacebookPinterestE-mail
Frugal Fridays #24 and a FANTASTIC deal!
Successes: I successfully stayed away from Starbucks. I don’t really go there often (once every other month … usually even less than that). But I was tempted by their Happy Hour. I resisted temptation and made some delicious iced coffee at home instead. I made homemade rolls for our pulled pork dinner. I hung laundry to dry in the beautiful sunshine rather than using our dryer. I harvested dandelions to make infused oil with. I’ll use that oil for a healing salve. I also plan to harvest more for dandelion jelly. I started some calendula infused oil (also for salve). I buy dried calendula here. For that fantastic deal I mentioned: I’ve been waiting for several months for Zulily to have a sale on ErgoBaby carriers. A friend of mine clued me in that they run the sale once a year or so after hearing me say that I’ve always wanted one, but couldn’t bring myself to pay $120+. I saw the sale today and purchased one for $69!! I can’t wait for it to come. I have been doing mega deep Spring Cleaning around here. I’ve been using a cleaning solution of water, vinegar, and lemon essential oil for just about everything. It’s smelling so fresh and clean around here! It’ll probably take me a month to get through my entire house because I can’t dedicate entire days to housework. I have kiddos to homeschool, munchkins to cuddle, and that precious newbie of mine to nurse (constantly). Not to mention the other daily stuff that we all do on a regular basis. I’ve been enjoying the All American Homestead channel on Roku for […]
Frugal Fridays #23
Confession time? Since the birth of baby #5 in early March, we’ve sort of fallen off the frugal bandwagon. Not to say that we’ve been living a lavish lifestyle. I’ve continued to do frugal things, but there have also been a lot more convenience purchases since I’ve been out of sorts while healing from the unexpected c-section. I’m not going to beat myself up about it. I recognize that it was something that I needed for a short season so that I could focus on my family, new baby, and my health. I’m just thankful that we were in a financial situation to afford it at the time. But now it’s time to get back on track. Successes: I purchased 4 tubes of toothpaste, 4 bottles of Dawn dishsoap, 2 bottles of multivitamins, and 2 bottles of ginger ale at CVS and only paid $10 out of pocket using ECBs and a 25% off coupon that CVS sent me in the mail. The original total was $35 before coupons. I’m sure I could have gotten it lower if I’d used manufacturer’s coupons. I’m happy with my purchase, though. I finally (!) pulled out the small sized cloth diapers to use on the baby. He’s 8 weeks old at this point and nearly grown out of the smalls, but better late than never, right? 😉 I finally (!) planted my carrots, onion sets, and transplanted some beet and snap pea sets this weekend. I still need to transplant the rest of the peas, kale, and shallot plants. I picked up some brussel sprout seedlings from the garden center at my husband’s request. Son #2’s birthday is coming […]
An April Day Book
Outside my window … Cold and snowy. Can you believe it? It’s not unheard of for late April in Western New York, but it sure is annoying. I’m thinking … About lesson plans and laundry. I’m going to get back to “looping” our lessons, like Sarah does over at one of my favorite homeschooling blogs. I did this a bit in the beginning of the year when I was struggling with morning sickness, then got away from it when we got back to a season in life where I could schedule things. Now we’re in the throws of newborn life, and I know that looping will help us stay on “track” without leaving me feeling pressured and overwhelmed. As for the laundry …. well. Yeah. I am thankful … That we live near most of our family. Sure, there are times when we want to run for the hills. But for the most part, we are surrounded with support. We may not always see eye to eye on things (I think we mostly don’t, actually), and we might just totally drive each other nuts, but I’d still rather be with all of them than away from them. I can’t imagine living in an area where we have no support system. Would we survive it? Yes. But I’m glad that (for now) God hasn’t called us to that. In the school room … We are LOVING (loving, loving, loving) The Green Ember by S.D. Smith. Yowzers. If you’re in a read-aloud lull and looking for something that kids and adults can enjoy, I can’t recommend this book enough. Seriously! It’s a story with depth, moral significance, and […]
