Birthday 13

 This week we celebrated Megan's 13th birthday. So now all our children are teenagers. And we are so blessed! I was looking forward to these years and I am not being disappointed. Yes there are challenges and I sure loved the little years too but this time period is pretty cool. These children of ours are all so close to stepping out and living life without us (less than a month before Mara gets married) and we are seeing how God is using them and their potential for serving Him in the future and it is pretty exciting!

We did some measuring after I took this picture and found that Mara is 5' 9" (no change lately), Jonathan is 6' 4 1/2", Aaron is 5' 8" and Megan 5' 2". The youngest 3 have all been growing lately and I am guessing especially with the youngest 2 that there will be quite a bit of growing this year. We shall see.

   Megan's birthday is fun. She more than any of the others likes to make it a special event. So months before the birthday arrived she was designing a dress to wear and a cake to make. She drew pictures of dress designs, made a pattern and figured out fabric (from our stash of course - we generally don't buy things when we are making things we use from things we have been given) and then started sewing. I helped a little here and there with advice but it is her project.

She isn't ready to go professional with her dressmaking but she did a pretty good job.

The white fabric came from a duvet cover that we had been given, the dark blue fabric was leftover from a project years ago, the light blue chiffon fabric was leftover from a bridesmaids dress that I made over 10 years ago. The buttons, trims and zippers had been in our stash for a long time. It was lovely for her to put these items to use.

She has been watching tons of cake decorating videos on Youtube and this was her creation for the day. A 3 layer chocolate cake with chocolate pudding, frosting and cream cheese fillings and then mint chocolate chip frosting with chocolate glaze and cream cheese frosting roses. On top is a 3 layer angel food cake (made from scratch).

She set aside the day before her birthday for making it. :-)

 It was pretty rich but quite delicious.

Megan has been wanting a hope chest and that seemed like a good 13th birthday present. So I took a break from the wedding sewing and projects and with Ken's help in cutting the wood (I can use a chop saw fine but the circular saw and table saw scare me a bit) we made her a hope chest.  

 It turned out plenty big and she thinks it is fun to get inside of it.

The boys think that is fun too and they then get on top of it. Silly boys!

 We used wood that came from a tree that we cut down while building our house and then my dad cut it up on his sawmill and with his help we planed the boards later. I used an old leather belt to make handles on the ends. We used screws and hinges that we had on hand.

 My mom gave her some doilies for her hope chest that had been made by my Grandma. Keren and family gave her cake pans and cake decorating things and MollyBea and family gave her a lovely apron so she is getting all sorts of kitcheny things for her hope chest.

 Three of my nephews were over for Megan's birthday and they were the most adorable helpers for getting all the presents unwrapped!

 Megan was pretty excited that because she is now 13 she could get a accounts on Facebook, Gmail and Pinterest.

  Megan thought her birthday was super fun and we had fun with it as well. We are so blessed to have a Megan in our family.

Birthdays - A Fun Time to Have Company

 This has been a busy week. The weather has been lovely which means we are trying to get more done outside and we have had various things going on - one of them being the birthday of  Megan! So that is why I haven't posted much and today I planned on doing another hospitality post and so this one is - kind off. This is really a post about Megan's birthday but birthdays are a fun time to have company so that goes with hospitality too.

   We have never done the traditional birthday parties where you have over a bunch of kids the general age of the birthday child. There are several reasons that we haven't done that one of them being that we just like to have family events usually rather than age segregated events and also I dislike hosting a party (at least for someone in my family) that causes somebody to feel they have to give something. So generally our birthday parties are pretty much family parties and we may include some others but they aren't necessarily of the birthday child's age.

   This evening we had our final party for watching "Cabin Fever" a reality show that my brother is in and so that and Megan's birthday were combined.

  Our family gives birthday gifts in the morning before breakfast. Megan has wanted a typewriter for a couple of years and this year I managed to find one (a used one in good condition for only $15 at a local thrift store). I was so excited! So was the rest of the family as they knew how much Megan wanted one. We were really looking forward to her getting it. She was definitely excited! Typewriters are the new rage around here. Both Jonathan and my Mom are now wanting one too. Everybody else had fun typing on it as well.

  Today Megan wanted waffles for breakfast. I made them (and they were pretty yummy!) and they used up 4 eggs. That left us with only 7 left (we have not had so many eggs lately as they boys were saving them to put in the incubator for hatching) and Megan wanted an angel food cake. The recipe called for 11-12 eggs. 3 eggs were collected at the morning chore time but one was a duck egg and I was told that one was still needed for hatching  (Aaron's ruling but Megan agreed - it would be better to not have enough eggs for the cake then to go without getting another duck). So the boys kept checking the chicken pen. Jonathan found 2 eggs but then one broke when getting washed. Aaron found another egg but then it was broken too (we don't normally break so many but I guess today was the day for breaking them. Finally Mara just went ahead and made it with 10 eggs. I found the whole saga of the eggs pretty entertaining.

 The cake didn't get super tall but it was yummy anyway.

Tonight my niece Jaten got to be on the TV show too (as did my sister-in-law Holly). What fun to see them on TV.

  We had a fun day celebrating Megan's birthday!

Glimpses of Our Life Lately {And how we have been frugal}

 I was wanting to share some more pictures of our life but since I missed doing Frugal Friday yesterday I thought I would also share throughout the pictures some of the ways that we have saved money recently.

The above picture is of Mara out on the swing. The boys made the swing lately with some rope and a board that we had on hand. It didn't cost us anything but the kids have enjoyed it so much.

 Megan had fun making a dress for herself this week. She used some fabric that she had gotten for free when we went to the fabric store last month. She also used some fabric that a friend had given us and some buttons that were salvaged from an old garment. This was quite the learning experience for her. I was pretty busy when she started it and only was able to oversee it sporadically. There were many mistakes made and it is far from perfect but it works and she looks very sweet in it.

This is the pattern that she used. It is one that I have had for quite some time. Both Megan and I enjoy the vintage look. Because of some mistake made and the dress simply being rather short we did have to do some altering which I ended up helping her with yesterday.

She got the dress done in time for her 10th birthday (today).

The hair-bow I made for her as a present -a free one just taking a little time and some stuff we had on hand.

We generally don't spend a lot of money on presents unless there is something that we know somebody really needs or would like. In other words if we have the money and if we think something would mean a lot to someone we will spend more but we won't spend a lot just for the sake of giving extravagant gifts. The gifts to Megan from our immediate family were quite frugal this year but that didn't seem to bother her at all. She got:

• A large canvas to paint on that I had bought on sale and with a coupon months ago. I think I spent around $5. She was quite excited about that as she is an artist and has wanted a canvas.
• A package of Water balloons $.99
• A package of yogurt covered pretzels (that is a treat around here and I think consumable gifts are nice as we tend to get to much stuff!) $.99
• The hair bow that I had made. I had thought of making her some leggings and a hat for our back packing trip this summer but with all the helping to finish up her dress on Friday I didn't end up finding time. I figured that it was worth more to her for me to sew with her then sew something for her without her.
• Mara got her a whole stack of books. They were from the used book store but were in fine condition and cost only $ .25 each so she only had to spend a few dollars but had a gift to give that Megan was delighted about. Mara had checked them all over carefully as we are quite picky about the types of books we have on our shelves.
• Aaron and Jonathan had both gone shopping on eBay and also had traded some things with friends so that they had some fun Lego figures to give to her. They were careful in their shopping and did not spend a whole lot.
• I also gave her a coupon for a special date with Mom this coming Thursday. At time to do something fun together - her choice. Sometimes I can get super busy and don't have the time to do the sewing projects, etc that she would like to do together.

 Megan wanted an angel food cake for her birthday. I made one from scratch -which wouldn't have been frugal except that we are getting lots of eggs right now so it worked just fine. When making it I remembered are trouble with finding enough eggs for it last year and how they kept getting broken (the kids were practically hanging out at the chicken coop waiting for another to be laid.) I used around 14 egg whites in the cake this year!

 The bowls pictured were a somewhat frugal purchase from not long ago. I had seen this set of three heavy, blue and white glass/pottery mixing bowls for $20 at the thrift store a while back. I liked it but didn't want to spend that much. Though I think they would be worth that if I needed them but I didn't truly. That store puts rotates having things on 50% off so I asked Mara to keep an eye on them for me and pick them up if they went 50% off as she likes to go into that store regularly as she works nearby. The next week she brought them home for me.

 Megan and her cake. The decorating of the cake did get a little spendy as she wanted Reeses on it. We made sure there was enough for everyone (there was 16 of us there) so I bought two packages which cost $6. Pussy willows and an African Violet (which I had won as a door prize at a volunteer appreciation lunch last week) provided our free centerpieces for the party.

  It was all of my family that came over for her birthday. For lunch I made BBQ chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, pickles and deviled eggs. We had cake and icecream for dessert and water to drink. My mom also brought some homemade goat milk cheese to add to the menu.

 My sweet little nephew Ephraim was among the guests. His parents thought it would be fun to go canoeing and I offered to babysit. He was sleeping at first but then he woke up and was feeling kind of sad. I remembered that he loves to have his Daddy play guitar to him so I decided I would do some practicing. He thought it was pretty nice and sang along some of the time. Pretty nice when babies appreciate music!

 Aaron, Kitchi and I went canoeing later that afternoon. Kitchi doesn't really think he likes canoeing but he also doesn't like to be left behind. He is pretty funny about it. The other night our whole family went out in three canoes and Kitchi was with the boys but he kept looking at Megan (In my canoe) or Ken (with Mara in the other canoe) and whining wanting to be with them too. He doesn't really seem to care so much about Mara or I - with good reason as we don't spend hours petting and loving on him either. When we would get close together he actually did some jumping from one canoe to another but was never really happy because he couldn't be with all of his people at once.

 As far as frugality - canoeing is an outing we love that costs us nothing.

 I am teaching Sunday School class at church this month and we have been having fun making a huge picture (somewhat 3D in places) on the wall to go along with our study of Romans 1:20. Today we added some sand (glued on) to the edge of our river to go along with our story about Abraham based from Romans 4. Then we also added Water lilies and lily pads with some frogs to go on them.

   I had fun creating the water lilies. I had thought that styrafoam egg cartons would work well and I had thought I would like to layer them but I only had one carton like that so I didn't have enough to do that but I think the single layer worked just fine. I cut the sides into petal shapes (which is what the kids did in class too) and then I made a middle as shown below.

I cut a piece out of a styrafoam meat try and cut it like shown at right. Then I put some hot glue in the middle of it and squished all the strips up around it. It is then ready to be glued into the flower.

  I do a lot of craft projects with my kids in class but rarely do I really spend money on it. There are so many things you can make from stuff that we can save or already have on hand. I was blessed to to have been given a lot of paper (like the green that I made the leaves out of) from a friend. When we made a tree we used brown grocery bags for the trunk and painted scrap paper leaves. I did print out pictures of fish, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and such for the kids to color and then add to our picture. We added sequins to our fish as that was something that had been donated for the church craft supplies.

 Some other ways I have saved money lately.....

• I have been working to use less food by eating less. I think my metabolism has been changing and this winter I have been feeling less hungry and I also put on some weight. I still enjoy eating even if I don't feel hungry (and I have tended to be a snacked so I eat around 5-6 times a day). I have been working to show more self control, eat smaller portions and not eat unless I am really hungry. The Holy Spirit has been helping me with this as this isn't very easy on my own. Eating less will help us save more money on food.
• We have accumulated a lot of leftovers in our fridge somehow recently so in an effort that we don't waste we are spending today eating leftover for our meals.
• I cut the boys hair.
• I made our own laundry soap.
• I use the baking soda and vinegar method for cleaning my hair rather than buying shampoo.

What is going on in your life? Have you managed to live frugally lately? I would love to hear what is going on with you.

Eating what you have and substituting for what you don't have.

Last month I had fun joining in with the Eat from your pantry challange. We were (and are) well stocked up on the basics so it wasn't to hard. I did have to work at having enough variety to suit me. One of the ways that I find that really helps in economical cooking and baking is being willing to substitute. This is something I have always done a lot of as I watched my Mom doing it the whole time I was growing up. Ken teases me regularly about this trait, he is convinced that I absolutely never follow a recipe, I think I do once in a great while, but perhaps he is right.

  Your food can still turn out fine even while substituting, there are just some basic quidelines that help a lot. Here are some of the ones that I can think of right now:

• Feel free to substitute flours. I use recipes all the time that call for regular flour but I rarely use it. Instead I use whole wheat flour, rye flour, corn meal, oatmeal and other whole grain flours. As long as it is dry and has a similiar consistency it should work! :-) The product won't be indentical to that in the cookbook but if you haven't used that recipe before anyway you won't know the difference!
• Exchange liquid for other liquids. In my baked goods especially I do a lot of substituting here. My basic rule is look at how much liquids are used (Add up milk, oil or butter, etc) and then I put in whatever else I want to. I have been using a lot of pumpkin which adds a little nutrition but generaly doesn't change the flavor. (I probably wouldn't do this in an angel food cake!)
• Things like fruit, nuts or chocolate chips in baking can usually be changed however you desire. Generally you can leave them out and still have a nice finished product or add them in to a recipe that doesn't have them or change them. If it calls for blueberries but you have raspberries, then swap them! You can come up with wonderful new recipes this way!
• How about sweeteners? I am still in the learning process with this. All my life I have done things like cut the sugar in half but lately I have been working to eliminate sugar from our diet so I have been trying to use maple syrup, molasses and honey instead. This is a bit complicated as all of these are liquid. What I have found to work pretty well is to eliminate some of the other liquid and also the sugar in the recipe and then add the liquid sweetener in the amount to replace the liquid you eliminated.
• Cooking is even easier to mix things up in than baking. Feel free to use hamburger insteand of diced steak or maybe even cooked chicken for a different style. Just let yourself be creative! I usually just use recipes as an idea starter or a guideline. From there you can totally do what you want!

 Personally I have a lot more fun in the kitchen if I can be creative and do something different. I would love to hear your good or wacky substitutions!

  If you want to do some very careful substituting check out this very comprehensive list!

  I also thought I should report on how I did on the Pantry Challange. I finally got all the reciepts together and added it up and now tonight I can't find my paper! Here is what I remember:

For Dairy and Produce I had alotted $100. In this area I went slightly over and spent $104 and a few cents. It was interesting to see just how much we spend on milk! I am curious how much milk other families use. We drink it usually for every breakfast and supper (for lunch and in between times we drink water) and we go through4-5 gallons a week. If you don't drink milk for meals what do you drink? I am just curious.

I had bought some Gluten free diet for our experiment with having Megan go Gluten Free. That cost $31. That was according to my plan. We are off the gluten free diet, I had fun doing it for her for 2 weeks but it seemed to hinder more than help.

I did "cheat" and bought Ketchup for $1.88.

I did a little stocking up but not nearly as much as the $75 I alloted. I spent around $35 in that area.

My total was around $172 which was under the $205 that I had allowed myself. I was pleased with the end result.

I also did not go to Walmart as planned. I am hoping not to go to Walmart in February either. I am hoping to stay under $250 for groceries this month. We still have quite a lot of food to eat from the pantry. Some of my other goals this month are going sugar free (using natural sweeteners instead) and drinking a lot of water!

For more frugal thougts please visit Life as MOM.

Pictures of Our Life Lately

 We have a had a lot go on in the last couple of weeks but I haven't always gotten pictures. But here are quite a few pictures that we did take....

Aaron having fun with a balloon.

 Dad showing us how to graft apple trees again. It is kind of tricky.

 Granddad and Nana came to visit!! This visit was an exciting one because they bought a house here!

 Aaron bought a new (to him) mandolin off of Ebay. He had been wanting an F style so he saved up his money and bought one. He has been enjoying it.

 Mara has helped me some as I have worked to graft our apple trees. That has been a challenging job.

 We saw a kayak for sale in town so Aaron bought it with the rest of his money (not counting what he has in the bank). He is now nearly penniless but has two things that he has been wanting for a long time - a F style mandolin and a Kayak. Nana was trying it out in this picture.

 Megan's 11th birthday was on Sunday. She wore the dress that she made and we curled her hair. We had family over to help celebrate.

 Angel food cake is her favorite.

 Megan loves to swing. The one that the boys had hung on a limb here got knocked down when a dead tree was cut down last summer. Megan has been wanting a swing ever since but we didn't have any more good limbs for swings. Dad fixed up this frame for her and Aaron made her the swing. She is enjoying it.

 We have some "teenage" chicks at our place. I meant to get pictures when they were little and cute but I failed to do so.

 Thursday evening we went to our electric co-operative meeting where Mara was recognized for having been chosen to attend the Rural Electric Companies youth tour to Washington DC. Here she is meeting the CEO.

 Here is Aaron in his Kayak. We have been loving getting out on the water!

 Practicing my cello. I have been really working to spend more time practicing my instruments. I love doing it but it is easy to put off. In February my goal was to practice (not just play - actually work to improve) the piano every day. I think I may have missed 2 days but I did pretty good. March I chose to focus on the violin/fiddle and this month the cello. I have missed more days with both of those instruments but I am practicing many more days that I don't. It has been good for helping me improve.

 We have been transplanting a lot of crab apple trees that we got the first Spring we owned this land and I planted them temporarily in the garden area. I have been finding them permanent homes and moving them. I have also been moving my highbush cranberries. It has been fun but rather exhausting work (especially working on it today following a 17 mile bike ride). I have also been working to graft most of the crab apple trees.

 Maiden hair fern coming up in the woods.

Megan working on her fort. She is making it with sticks and adobe. She plans to make it into a hobbit hole.

She made this wood stove for her fort but when she tried it out the tape (which I thought might be heat resistant) she had used on her chimney melted and she ended up with a chimney fire. Trying was good experience however.

What has been going on at your place lately??