Category Archives: Home & Family

Homemaking, parenting and special needs

Go See This Movie

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I noticed banners for the movie “Fireproof” on a few blogs last week.

I mentioned the movie to my husband on Friday.

On Saturday I saw in the newspaper that “Fireproof” was at our local theater. We decided we should go see it sometime.

At church on Sunday, the pastor mentioned that he had just seen “Fireproof” and that he wanted to recommend it to everyone, and especially to married couples. He said we could buy discounted theater tickets after the service.

We’re not dense. We can take a few hints. 🙂  We bought tickets, and went to see the movie on Monday.

Definitely worth it! The movie has a great message, and it has humor in it despite some heart-wrenching moments. I read an interview with the star of the movie, Kirk Cameron (one of the kids on TV’s “Growing Pains” from back in the last century). What I found most interesting is that when his character was supposed to kiss an actress in the movie, he substituted his own wife. She’s also an actress, and she put on the lead actress’ dress and did the scene with her husband. How cool is that?

Do you and your honey a favor. Go see “Fireproof.” And bring Kleenex.

fireproofbanner

 

Saving Money at the Grocery Store

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Our public library has a table where people can share magazines. I love this! It’s like a treasure hunt. You never know what you’ll find. I also like leaving my own magazines there instead of throwing them in the recycling bin for the garbage man.

This week I found the September issue of Good Housekeeping. Years ago, I subscribed to GH, but over the years its editorial mix changed to more of a celebrity/decorating/beauty type of magazine, and I stopped getting it.

But this issue had a few useful things in it, including a time vs. money list of grocery store purchases. Some examples weren’t that impressive. For instance, if you make your own ground beef patties instead of buying them preshaped, you’ll save 13 cents per patty (92 cents vs. $1.05 each). Using dried beans instead of canned beans will save you just 15 cents per serving (10 cents vs. 25 cents). Shredding your own mozzarella only saves 8 cents per serving.

But most of the examples made it clear that you can save a decent amount of money by shunning convenience (all price examples are per serving):

Romaine (head) vs. precut Romaine: 25 cents vs. 97 cents

Whole carrots vs. preshredded carrots: 25 cents vs. 48 cents

Baking potatoes vs. frozen steak fries: 20 cents vs. 43 cents

Jello cooked pudding mix vs. Jello refrigerated pudding: 20 cents vs. 62 cents

Celery (in a bunch) vs. precut celery sticks: 29 cents vs. 62 cents

Fresh green beans vs. fresh green beans in a microwave/steam-in bag: 37 cents vs. $1.33

My personal favorite is the brown rice example:

Raw brown rice (cooks in 30-40 minutes) vs. precooked brown rice in microwaveable pouch: 19 cents vs. $1.10.

And that’s per serving, so for a family of four that’s a savings of $3.64, just on rice!

(Here’s another article from Good Housekeeping about saving money when grocery shopping.)

Saving Flower Seeds

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I know it sounds silly, but I love going out to save seeds. It makes me feel like a good steward, I guess.

Today I picked all the seeds off my balsam plants along the front walk. (I bought a packet of balsam seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (they’re homeschoolers!) last spring, and they grew very well —wish I’d taken a picture of them in bloom to share here.)

Balsam plants are fun because once they bloom, little seed pods form along the side branches of the plants, and in the fall you can pop them open over a cup and all the seeds come tumbling out. (When my kids were little, they loved doing this 🙂 )  I’ll let these dry in the unheated garage over the winter, and next spring I won’t need to buy more balsam seeds.

Other plants whose seeds I’ve collected in the past include:

Cleome (the long stringy pods under the blooms are full of tiny seeds)

Marigolds (the old blooms are seeds; save them once they’ve dried up)

Hollyhocks (the seed pods contain comma-shaped seeds)

Four o’clocks (the seeds are hard and black and found inside the blooms-they’re ready in mid-to-late summer)

Store seeds in a dry place where air can get to them and where they’ll get good and cold over the winter.

You don’t have to collect seeds; if you just leave them, they’ll come up again in the same spot next year. But by collecting seeds, you can scatter them where you want in the spring, plus you’ll have more than enough to share with friends and neighbors. Or, if you’re like me and think you might be moving, you can take the seeds along to the next house.

In recent years, most people bought blooming plants instead of planting them from seed. Most of the people who do grow flowers from seed buy new seed packets every year. Saving seeds is something people used to do when money was scarce. I think it’s going to be making a comeback.

 

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

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When we lived in Illinois (i.e. near relatives), we often had Thanksgiving dinner at our house. I know it’s not a big deal—after all, someone has to do it—but when you have several children who do not leave the house to go to school each day, it’s not that simple. And if you prefer that pretty much everything be homemade, like I do, it becomes a project.

Women who work full-time can take personal time off to do the shopping and cooking before the relatives arrive, and even most stay-at-home moms send their kids off to school each day, so they can shop and cook in peace.

But those of us who homeschool have to accept that we can make Thanksgiving dinner, but it will take a fair amount of planning. One good thing about all of this is that we do have children to help us. The older they are, the more help they can be.

It looks like this year, there will be only six of us at our house for Thanksgiving dinner. My daughter and her boyfriend plan to come up our way, while our son and his wife (ten hours from here) will be with her folks, who live in the same city. I have to admit that I do miss the old days, crazy as it got sometimes, when all of our kids lived at home and I had a big family Thanksgiving to prepare.

Back when I was in the midst of the fray, lol, I set up a plan so I could manage all the work involved in getting ready for Thanksgiving. You’ll find the details in the feature article of this month’s “Imperfect Homeschooler” newsletter. It’s called “A Simple Homeschool Thanksgiving.”

(You’ll find the November issue here. Get your free subscription here.)

Not Ours

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We live in a really nice house. It’s made of wood and stone. It’s got beautiful woodwork in it, and lots of storage. There’s a big backyard full of trees and plants, and down the street a few blocks is the beach.

But it’s not our house. We rent it from a nice lady in Minnesota who bought it as an investment. We know we won’t always live here. But for now, it’s a very nice place to live.

We used to own a house, but had to sell it because of some financial setbacks. We considered that house ours because we watched it being built, and we picked out everything in it, and we lived there nearly 20 years, so it’s where most of our family memories took place. But it’s not ours anymore, and it never really was.

Funny how that house became a burden to us. As much as we loved it, we couldn’t afford to keep it. During the long ten months it was up for sale, it became an albatross around our necks. We were greatly relieved when it sold.

From that experience, we learned that nothing on this earth is truly ours. After all, nothing on this earth is forever, and that’s a good thing, because this is a fallen place. Our home in heaven will be forever. Still, it’s easy to think that what we have on this earth is ours.

Both the house we sold and the house we live in now have been loaned to us by God. And I must admit that there’s a certain freedom in knowing that whenever it’s time for us to go somewhere else, we can just pick up and go (without calling a realtor) and find the next place God is going to loan to us to live in.

I’m writing this because I know that some of you are losing your homes. You can’t make your mortgage payments because of a job loss or sickness or the worsening economy, and you’re faced with moving to a smaller house or an apartment, and it scares you.

I know it’s scary, and it’s also very hard to leave a place that you love. But don’t forget that God is in control. He knows the plans He has for you, plans to prosper you, not harm you, as the Bible verse goes.

No matter where you end up living, as long as you have your family with you, you’ll be fine. We considered our old house our family home, and this one temporary. What we didn’t realize was that the old house was temporary, too. Our family home can be wherever we happen to be together.

So don’t fear the future. If you’re forced to move, make a conscious decision to bloom where you’re planted. Then you’ll learn firsthand that a place doesn’t have to be officially yours to be your home.