Being happy for others

 This weekend my parents were going to a Christian Convention as well as visiting my sister and her family and they invited Mara to go along. Mara was pretty excited about the trip and the younger 3 weren't sure it was quite fair. In the minds of younger children I think it often feels like the oldest gets to do quite a bit more than they do. I don't remember thinking this as a kid (I was number 3 and I think I was able to tag along quite a bit) but lately my younger kids have been thinking this to be true.

  Anyway, to go on with the story, on Friday morning the kids and I were all ready to go bright and early to take Mara out to Mom and Dad's so they could leave on their trip but our van wouldn't start. A door had been left open a crack and the battery had gone dead. Since we needed to hurry I told the younger kids to just stay home (they had wanted to see the new baby goats at my parents) and I would take Mara quickly in the car as Ken still hadn't left for work. I felt bad for their disappointment but it was what worked best.

  When I got home I figured they still might be feeling bad but instead I was greeted in the garage by a very excited Aaron who told me they wanted to have a carnival on Saturday and "could they use some sweets that we had on hand as prizes?". When I got inside I found that they had worked on chores, started on schoolwork and written up a list of all sorts of fun things that they could do this weekend all in the less the 1/2 hour that I was gone. I was impressed. They faced disappointment and were making the best of it. (I thought anyway).

Notice that the first thing on the list is to have a clean room contest.
I like that kind of thinking! (and I am sure it was Jonathan's idea.)

 We did have a fun weekend....

 -On Friday we had an evening away at a Republican endorsing convention in a nearby town. The kids had fun playing with other kids there.
- On Saturday morning we went and helped others do some yard work at the church building. It was beautiful weather and we had fun.
-Coming home I let the boys walk on a trail part of the way and race me home. They thought that was rather exciting.
-We had treasure hunts.
-The kids had contests.
-We made crafts together (and I will be blogging about that later).

-We cooked some of our supper over the campfire.
-We ate outside on the deck.

-Granddad and Nana called and visiting for quite a while.
-We had company over for lunch today (suggested by the kids).

It was a fun time. I was happy that the younger kids had been able and willing to plan fun times even though they weren't able to do what they wanted to do. Happy until they told me: "We wanted to do exciting things so that Mara would feel bad that she missed out." Oops! I think the motives for the planning weren't so great! It made me think of a verse that maybe we should talk about:

"Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep". Romans 12:15

 Now my kids aren't the only ones who have ever struggled with this problem. Jealousy is actually pretty common. Regretfully I will find it cropping up now and then in my life,  "Why do they succeed at that when I don't?" and so forth are thoughts that can go through my mind. It isn't very pretty. I don't want to be that way, I don't want to provide that example to my children. I want to be someone that always rejoices with those that rejoice!

I hope you do too!

I don't buy.... Herbal Tea

I enjoy a nice cup of herbal tea every so often. I used to buy boxes of bagged tea which though it wasn't extremely expensive, it wasn't all that cheap either. I also prefer less packaging if possible.

Since herbal tea was what I like anyway it wasn't to challenging to switch to growing and using my own herbs. Peppermint plants grow very nicely up here in Northern MN (zone 3 and sometimes more like zone 2) and come back year after year. Catnip has also grown and thrived here. Echinacea is another good herbal tea source. Last year I also gather Wild Bergamount, Hyssop and Yarrow (though I don't like the taste of yarrow - I decided that would be strictly medicinal) from the wild.

 Those herbs have been my main source of tea so far but I am hoping to both grow more herbs and find out about more wild ones. It is fun to have a variety, both for the fun of drinking them and also for the different medicinal properties that they have.

To use herbs we grow or find for tea the process I use is:

~Collect them, I generally cut off the whole stem of the herb and bundle a bunch of stems together. It is nice to get them when they are clean after a rain and you do want to look them over to get bugs off and pick off any yucky leaves. For Echinacea I simply pick leaves.

~Hang them up to dry. I just bundle them together and hang them up (my best place right now is above my kitchen sink) to dry.

~After they are dry put them in a container so they don't get dusty and to keep them in better shape.

~To make tea for just one I use my little metal tea leaf holder (shown above) but when I am making it for the family I just put a couple of stems with the leaves on it into our teapot which strains out leaves at the spigot. If you don't have a tea ball I found this cool idea and instructions for making reusable cloth tea bags.

~To drink I like to sweeten it with honey or maple syrup.

We also have discovered that we very much like iced herbal tea. It is a very inexpensive, but very enjoyed drink around here.

 Do you like herbal tea? Have you tried growing your own herbs or collecting them? What beverages does your family like?

I am linking this post to Frugal Friday at Life as MOM.

Excitement...

 It was an exciting day at our house as a package we had ordered from Amazon arrived. The item that created the most excitement was an air soft gun that Jonathan had ordered. We waited until Ken got home this evening and then a little target practicing was done.

 Jonathan was generous to let the rest of us try it out too.

This is not a "real" gun but we will treat it basically as if it were as this could hurt an eye or perhaps something else if it hit someone. We think that hitting a target is a good skill to learn and Jonathan also plans to help keep chipmunks out of our garden. In my goal of encouraging my boys to be manly I think this is a good thing.

 It is fun to see my kids grow up!

Paper Projects ~ Magazine picture books

 Where do the months go?!!!

I thought April had just begun and now it is the 10th and already 1/3 over. Oh well, life flies by but we will try to enjoy every moment as it passes.

 This month I said I would have a new theme of repurposing items. As we have oodles of paper things around here -tell me we aren't the only ones who seem to quickly get over run with newspapers, magazines, junk mail, sale adds, used up school work pages and more - I decided that would be the are of repurposing that I would concentrate on.

  Even though I have tried to stop the flow of paper when I can (we have cut down on subscriptions) and we take it regularly to the normal recycling- we still have ample supplies for projects!

   Paper projects are fun because you actually can make them very intricate and fancy or you can just let your kids have fun with all of these paper scraps and see what they create. Lord willing, I will be sharing both adult and kid projects this month. Today's project is a kid one.

 Megan has been learning how to read this year and lately she has really taken off and has been enjoying reading what she can, doing a lot of writing of words and whenever she can have some time on the computer she absolutely loves (rather passionate about it in fact!) typing out the stories that she writes.

 Megan's most recent story (hot off the press just this evening) is titled "The Big Clump of Hair" (complete with a picture of Dot with a very large hair-do). It beings like this: "Do u see a hat?" said Dot. "Is it brown?" said Sam. "No" said Dot, "It is white."  and it goes on from there with much conversation between Sam and Dot but no mention of the big clump of hair (and very little punctuation).

 We have been quite enjoying this story writing phase. As Megan writes her stories she knows how to spell some of the words from memory or sounds them out but many she asks for help with in spelling or she was copying out of her reading book (she didn't copy the story just words from here and there). While over and my parents a while back it was discovered that a little alphabet book with words and pictures was very useful for her for her writing.

 When we got home she was wanting something like that and then I had a "brilliant" idea for her to make her own book. I stapled some pages together and then she cut out lots of pictures from a magazine and glued them in and then she wrote the names of all the pictures (with spelling help from me) next to the pictures. That has allowed her to add all sorts of variety to her stories which she enjoys. Aaron thought the project looked fun and decided to make a book to which he figured Megan could then use. As he is still a beginning speller (it hasn't come so easily for him) this was good practice for him to sound things out and write them down too.

This was a rather fun recycling project and it has been good for learning too. I hope all the rest of our projects go as well!  Would your little one enjoy a project like this? Even if they are before the reading stage they still might have fun cutting and gluing. It can make a bit of a mess but not that bad and it is pretty cheap entertainment.

Rendering Tallow

 This year I have been attempting to do a better job of using what I have (and buying little) and that prompted me to find out more about using beef tallow in my cooking and baking. I had requested tallow when we got our beef (we buy 1/2 of a grass fed, hormone free, natural beef) but then had left it in the freezer not quite sure what to do with it. It was time something was done!

I did a little research on how to render it and then I went to work (using bits and pieces of what I had read and did it my way). I don't think this will ever be my favorite job but it went fine and I feel very happy to have it done.

 I chopped my big bunch of tallow up into fairly small chunks- taking out any yucky, meaty chunks that I found.

 Then I put it in the crockpot, put the lid on and turned it on low. It took quite a few hours to cook down and every so often I would take my potato masher and do some mashing on it to help get it broken up.

 When it looked pretty cooked down then I strained it using a fairly fine meshed strainer. I strained it into a bowl and then promptly moved it to jars.

  They hardened up fairly fast and I can see now how you can use it to make candles.

I have also found it to work quite nicely in baking (especially bread!) though I do have to soften it in order to use it.

  I am storing some of it in the fridge and the rest in the freezer.

  Though I find this to smell a bit it really is not bad to work with.

I like using it because for me it is basically free (I can get it along with the beef at no additional cost) and according to books like Nourishing Traditions this is actually a healthy fat. Since oils (especially healthy oils) are so expensive, I am happy to find some economical healthy fat!

I am linking up with:

Jill @ The Prairie Homestead

Kendra @ New Life on a Homestead

and Amy @ Homestead Revival

From Death to Life

    When I was working out in the garden this past week (doing some cleaning up and then planting peas and lettuce) I happened to come across a cute little Johny-jump-up in the strawberry bed. It was our first flower to bloom here so that was a pretty fun find.

   This is one of the reminders of the life that comes from God. From ground that has been all frozen and looking dead comes life. When we plant seeds we bury them with the faith that they will grow, that God will give them life.

  These are little reminders of the life that God can give. They point us to something even more important.

  Today on Resurrection Sunday we are reminded of Jesus' resurrection and we are in awe of what God can do!

  "Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen." Luke 24:5b and 6a

That is wonderful, wonderful news!