Using up old curling ribbon

 A while back the kids brought home a bunch of helium balloons from somewhere. (That seems to happen every so often when we help to clean up after events.) Pretty soon the balloons were all limp and getting old and they had all of the curling ribbon strings on them.

 The curling ribbon wasn't  looking the greatest but I figured it could be used for something. We cut it into pieces of similar length.

 Tied them together in the middle and then used the edge of a scissors to curl up all the ends.

 The result was a nice curly little "bow". Perfect for some colorful and cheerful package. And once again I was happy to use up something that would have otherwise been thrown away!

Have you done any fun "reusing" lately?
What are your favorite frugal gift wrapping methods?

Parenting with less stress {No cry babies}

 I have this theory. It may or may not be right, but I think it is. My theory is this: I think parents (caregivers) for the most part create cry babies.

 You know what I mean by a cry baby don't you? The child (sometimes a baby still crawling or a toddler or even an older child) tumbles in the grass, they are not really hurt but yet they cry. Or they get accidentally bumped by a playmate, and they wail and wail like they are dieing. In my humble opinion, that sort of child can be a little stressful to be around.

So, how do parents create this not so wonderful trait in their child? I think it often starts quite young. As the baby begins to get mobile, roll over, sit-up, etc. They tend to fall over every so often too. Some parents quickly run and pick them up and act excited and ask them over and over again if they are okay, even though it is quite obvious they are. They parents react quickly and with emotion every time they think their little princess may have gotten a bump.

   Now I am not opposed to comforting a child that gets a bump but I think how we react speaks volumes to our children. When we act all excited and concerned, rather than calmly and sometimes with what seems to be a bit of indifference take care of them, we are going to cause our child to be emotional too. I don't try to make a child feel like they shouldn't cry when they truly hurt, but to cry as a means of showing that I am upset over a bump happening I don't appreciate so much.

   I have seen parents train kids in being a crybaby far past babyhood. Toddlers easily notice when their parent is upset or excited over an "accident" and they will then get upset too. Older children will get "hurt" just to get their parents reaction (and attention).

  My rule of thumb was to wait to see how my child reacted before reacting myself (unless of course they were little infants or did something that was truly dangerous- not just a little bump). Sometimes kids will just get up and go again or sometimes they do need to cry, then I can calmly comfort them or give them a band-aid if needed.

  This has worked well for us and we don't have any cry babies in our household. They are tough but still sympathetic to the hurts of others and they aren't afraid to cry when they need to cry though. They don't cry over stuff that doesn't really hurt however.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on this. If I have been confusing in what I write, please just ask.

Make Your Home a Haven

 Monica over at The Homespun Heart has been hosting "Make your Home a Haven" this week. This is something  that has been on my heart and so I thought it would be fun to join in. I had meant to post about it the last two days but with Internet issues and lack of time that hadn't happened yet. But I will start now with the posting about it.

 I think of Haven as a place that you can go to rest, to get away from the struggles you might be facing elsewhere. A place where love is. A place of peace and joy. That is what I want our home to be. We live in such a busy society- there are so many demands made upon our time, I want our home to be different.

   Our home hasn't always been different, I wouldn't be able to number the times that I have told my kids to "hurry up" we need to get this done or go here or do that. That is one thing that I am trying to work on in making our home a haven.  I have been really working on staying home more and honestly doing less. We had gotten our schedule so busy that I was overwhelmed and I was often pushing my kids. It is my goal to be more fully focused on each moment as it comes rather than always trying to get ready for something else.

Here are some of the ways I am working on this:

• Prayer. God is the giver of all wisdom and strength. He knows what I can handle each day and I need to go to Him at all times for guidance.
• Stay home more. I have never been one to shop a lot or do a lot of running but this summer and the beginning of fall we ended up being on the go a bunch anyway. Somethings I have done to help change that are: Stopping our visits to the Chiropractor- this was done after much prayer and I think it is a good thing at least for now. Stretching out our visits to the grocery store as long as possible. Limit the amount of social visiting that we do right now. Asking Ken to run an errand for me every so often as he comes and goes from work.
• Not saying yes to new ideas for using my time without much prayer and thinking. This one has been interesting for me. I am the type of person that usually gets excited about new ideas- fun ways to decorate places and so forth. Both in our Republican group and at church I have usually been quick to say yes to helping with events or whatever. I have been challenging myself lately to really think: Is this truly necessary for getting our message out or is it simply taking up my time to plan it (or work on it) and then going to take up more of others time later without any real fruit. If the answer is "yes" to that, I am trying to avoid saying "yes" to doing it.
• Giving my family(God, my friends, whoever I am around) my full attention. I am a huge multi tasker and my mind is also going very fast much of the time. I have had a tendency to "listen" to my kids while thinking about something else and working on something else. I will probably continue to work and listen because that really can work together but I am working to stop thinking about something else while I "listen".

My plan for today in making my home a haven is this:

1. Get up early. This morning Ken had to leave early so I decided to get up with him at 5:30. It is neat to have all of this morning quiet time to pray and work and get things ready for the day.
2. Pray and Read the Bible and Meditate on God's word.I have been working on praying for God's help in being patient, gentle and kind and really in tune with my family's needs.  Here are some verses that I am finding helpful:  "So that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. Titus 2: 4 & 5 This one also was a good reminder to me that we do need to be busy in doing good things but to meet pressing needs not just wasting time: "Our people must also learn to engage in good deeds to meet pressing needs, so that they will not be unfruitful." Titus 3:14 I think it looks like the woman in Proverbs 31 was good at making her home a haven too: "Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future. She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and bless her; Her husband also, and he praises her, saying; "Many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all." Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her the product of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates." Proverbs 31:25-31
3. Eat fruit and Oatmeal for breakfast (one of my kids' favorites!)
4. Do some general cleanup to make our house look orderly and inviting.
5. I have been working this week on fixing up our main living area (kitchen, dining and living room) to look more inviting and fixed up for fall. I had already done some painting (adding new color- I will share pictures later!) but today I hope to touch up the walls that are going to remain cream (or "lantern light" which is what the color's name is!). I am looking forward to the lovely walls!
6. School work will also be done this morning. It is my prayer to really show patience to my children and that they would be diligent and enjoy learning.
7. Lunch- Watermelon (from our garden!) and leftover soup from last night. (I love having leftovers for lunch as it makes our days much simpler- I having trouble making enough sometimes of late in order to feed my growing family and have leftovers however!)
8. Next comes reading together (We love this time!) and rest time for all of us. I love the down time we can have and getting a few minutes to shut my eyes too. In my private reading I am really enjoying some herb books that I got from the library.
9. This afternoon I want to enjoy the beautiful weather that we have been having with my kids. Explore a little, admire the beautiful leaves. This warm time will be gone fast and I want us to enjoy it while we can.
10. If I have extra time, some of the projects I want to work on this week are: New pillows- in bright fall colors- for our couch, Doing a clutter purge through out our home, going through all of our clothes and getting rid of everything that we don't really use or care for.( I was very inspired by Money Saving Mom's Vlog showing her very limited wardrobe. I don't think I would ever go that slim but I made me realize that we sure could get by with a lot less!), Finding some stuff in our home to give to others who need it, Arranging wall hangings in our living room, Decorating for fall all over the house.
11. Supper- My goal is to have it done when Ken walks in the door. I have been running late quite often anymore. The menu: Fruit Salad with nuts and real whipped cream, Zucchini and Carrot Patties and Steak chunks.,
12. Tonight we have church and I am teaching a kids class again this month. I have everything ready to go already so I am happy about that. I just need to carry my bag out to the van -besides putting together a quick snack.

 My main goals are: To have a joyful and loving attitude. To simplify our lives in the amount of things we do and the amount of stuff we have. To really be focused on those that are around me.  To look to God for Strength and wisdom in everything. I am so thankful to God because with Him even the worst and ugliest house can be turned into a haven.

 Are you working on making your home a haven? What things are you working on?

a receiver

 "What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" 1 Corinthians 4:7

When I was reading this lately I found it to be such a great reminder. So often we can get caught up in thinking about what "I" can do, forgetting that every breath is a gift from God. All things came from Him. Without God there would be absolutely nothing! He deserves all our gratitude and praise and we have no room to boast about what we do.

Bringing in the Harvest {Freezing Peppers}

We have been very busy lately bringing in the harvest! This is a pretty fun time of year though some days leave us pretty tired too!

  Today was potato harvest day. We did our annual potato gleaning and picked up our normal truck load (The back of the pick-up very loaded!) and stored them in my parents root cellar. You can see more about our annual potato gleaning here. We are so thankful for how God blesses us with potatoes each year!

 But I am not actually going to talk about potatoes in this post. I thought I would share my simple methods of putting up peppers for the winter.

I actually am not that talented at growing peppers. This year the plants looked pretty beautiful and actually they did produce better than ever before but I still just have enough to eat and put in Salsa. But a friend had been given more peppers than she wanted (from a local gardener) and she offered them to me. I gratefully said "yes!" So I was able to freeze some for winter use. Yea!

First you start with the peppers. Wash them carefully.

 Then slice them in half and pull out the center pulp and seeds. And if you, like me, aren't sure if you are working with hot or sweet peppers, then you taste test them. You enjoy the sweet ones you try (the long red and green in the picture were sweet but another one that was almost like them was not!) and about choke on the hot one. On the little ones I just assumed they were hot and didn't bother to taste test them all.

 Then for the sweet peppers I chopped them up with a knife into the medium size pieces that I like to use on pizza and other things of that sort.

 The hot peppers I decided to chop in the food processor. I would have used this for all the peppers put I don't know how to make it do bigger chunks. If I do it for less time it has some tiny chunks and  some peppers that are hardly cut.

 With hot peppers you may want to use gloves especially if you have sensitive skin. Be careful not to rub your eyes while working on these. I am warning you- it can hurt! I like the hot peppers chopped pretty small as most of my family doesn't like big bites of hot things. :-)

  Just put into a bag and freeze. The peppers are pretty easy to break apart after they are frozen so you can freeze them all together and then just get out what you need later.

  That is my simple method of caring for peppers. Do any of you have any more tips? What is something you like to cook using peppers?

Parenting with less stress {Celebrating Birthdays}

 We celebrated our oldest childs' 11th birthday this week (as well as Ken's). It was a pretty laid back celebration but it was fun and it was genuine. It started me thinking about why we celebrate the way we do.

 We have made some choices concerning our children's birthdays that are not really typical but they have worked well for us. We have never had one of those birthday parties where we send out cute little invitations, prepare a bunch of little favor bags and then have a houseful (or restaurant) of little kids. I don't think there is anything wrong with that sort of thing but we do have our reasons for doing things differently.

  I thought I would share what we do and why. Not to make you feel guilty if it is different from you, nor to have you feel sorry for us or our kids if that is your reaction. I simply thought I would share so if you were wondering if it would work to scale things back and if others have done it, then you will know that the answer is "Yes!" and it works and we have fun with less stress.

What we do:

• We give gifts (usually fairly simple, often homemade) in the morning before breakfast.
• The Birthday person gets to pick the menu for the day.
• We have a birthday cake. The Birthday person chooses what they want and usually I bake it (unless my Mom or sister does).
• We have my parents and siblings over and every so often somebody else of our friends from church.
• We often alter our schedule a little in a effort to do some fun activity. Not necessarily hard or expensive. For Mara's birthday we had a picnic for Ken's we played games and he came home a little early to play catch with the boys.

 We have chosen not to do the normal party thing. I have some reasons on why we have made that decision. You may or may not agree with me and that is perfectly fine but I thought I would share.

• I don't really like all of the gifts that come with big parties where you invite lots of other kids. We try to keep the number of toys that we own within a reasonable number, and really try to have ones that they truly enjoy and use. My observation of normal birthday parties is that the birthday child gets tons of toys that may or may not be his/her style.
• We haven't allotted  the time or money for the big parties. We could I suppose (though I know the parties I have seen around here can cost a lot when you rent out a pool or whatever) but we have chosen to use our time and money in ways that we enjoy more.
• I have observed children that were totally overwhelmed by parties given for them. To many people, to many gifts and so on. I didn't want that for my kids.

 I guess what it all comes down to is I like simplicity and I don't like waste. I know not every birthday party is that way and I have seen some super cute ideas out there (that do tempt me for a minute to throw a party!) but over all what we do works for us and I am quite happy.

Now I am curious, what do you do in your family? Why have you made the decisions that you did?