Before Baby To Do List

I have a list of things I need to get done before our princess arrives. I'm hoping that by posting here, they will actually get done! Please help keep me accountable.

1. Clean ceiling fans
2. Scrub down interior doors (I'm not sure how these got so dirty)
3. Paint baby room PINK
4. Get 14 meals in the freezer
5. Re-organize my closet
6. Clean out my nightstand
7. Re-stock birth box (we homebirth)
8. Weed front flower garden and plant pansies
9. Finish Ted's quilt
10. Write thank you notes
11. Thorough scrub down of tub and shower (I splurged and bought that new Scrubbing Bubbles automatic shower cleaner with some extra ECB's at CVS. I have been so disappointed. There was a nice thick layer of soap scum when I started using it, and there is still a nice thick layer of soap scum two weeks later. I don't think it has helped at all. Steer clear of this one ladies, nothing beats good ol' fashioned elbow grease.)

Blog Makeover!

Shauna from See My Designs gave my blog a make-over, all for just $20. Didn't she do a fabulous job? She was super fast too. I contacted her yesterday around noon, and by 5 pm, everything was up! I am so excited to have a unique look, finally. I'll be re-arranging and tweaking a few things in the next few days. Go give Shauna a look-see, and let her know I sent you.

Easy Crust Removal

This is just a very basic kitchen tip, but one that has come in handy for me a lot recently. I do not normally remove the crust off of my children's sandwiches, but I have an 18 month old with only about 6 teeth, so I try to make it as easy as possible for him to chew.

We use our Pampered Chef pizza cutter to remove the crusts in one fell swoop. It also works great at cutting the sandwich into itty bitty teensy weensy squares. It ends up being much easier than sawing away with a knife.

For more kitchen tips, be sure to visit Tammy's Recipes for Kitchen Tip Tuesday.

Quilt Fabric and Pattern

I am so excited to get this quilt done. There was a sample quilt up in the quilt shop made from the fabrics pictured. Usually, I would pick my own fabrics, but, I am 36 weeks pregnant and lacking in the creativity department at the moment. To read more about how I decided to start (and finish) a quilt in my last weeks of pregnanty click here

For more Sew Crafty Projects, click here.

Quilt Fabric Pictures Coming Soon!

I need to find the camera, but I still plan on taking pictures of the fabric I bought yesterday to get Ted's quilt done.

Stay tuned!

Pay Per Post

I was just approved to be a writer for payperpost! I am so excited about this opportunity for my blog! As you all know I am always looking for new ways to bring in a bit more money to apply to our debt snowball. What better way than being paid to write!

I recently looked through the different topics that are available to write about, and I must say, I am impressed by the variety. There are several products right now that I can easily write a review for, one or two in fact that I was already planning to write about!

It looks as though most blog entries need to be at least 200 words. That’s easy work for us long-winded gals, maybe not so easy for the men though!

You get paid $20 to write your first post. All other posts are individually priced. I saw some being offered for $5, and others went much higher.

I applied for payperpost a little over a month ago, but was denied because your blog must be at least 90 days old, and I was a week or two shy of that mark.

Pay Per Post claims that I can earn $500 a month working for them. We will see! I will post an update in a month as to how the system ended up working out for me, stay tuned.

Cheap Meat!

As some of you may know from reading here in the past, we consider ourselves a small homestead. We have chickens, goats, and now, a pig. We moved to this little homestead two years ago with the intention of learning to be more self sufficient, and we are constantly working toward that goal. We do not have a large amount of land, 2.5 acres in fact. But, we have found that have just a small plot has helped us to take our time in learning about all the different aspects of animal husbandry.

We just got our first pig, Piggly Wiggly, two weeks ago. We are raising her for meat, and will be butchering her with the help of a good friend toward the end of April. We are estimating that we will end up with about 123-150 lbs of meat in the freezer. We will be grinding between 75-100 pounds of the meat into sausage, or ground meat if you will. It is easier to stretch the meat farther in the ground form than in roasts we have found. We will be keeping the ribs, and probably about five three pound roasts for barbecue also, but the rest we will grind.

We are feeding dear Piggly Wiggly kitchen scraps like veggie peelings, so far carrot are her favorite. Also, she loves eating egg shells, leftover eggs, just about any of our left overs really. She is also getting chicken feed. Yes, you read that right, chicken feed. We have our chicken feed made to order, along with a much bigger farm. The corn used is raised locally, without pesticides, and it is not genetically modified (which most corn is). There are a few other things added into it, like kelp that will only make an animal healthier! So we figured, Piggly Wiggly would do just fine on the chicken feed, and hey, if by chance she should lay an egg, we won't complain.

We will probably end up buying a bit less than $100 worth of feed for her, and she cost $50. So, we are getting our home grown, hormone free, non confinement raised, happy, healthy, clean pork for about a dollar a pound. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Now, onto the chickens. Chickens were the first animal we brought to the homestead. We now have about twenty laying hens. These lovely ladies generously supply us with between 12 and 16 eggs a day. These are very high quality eggs! Their yolks are very dark, orange really, and they are packed to the brim with nutrients. If I were to buy these eggs in the health food store, they would be between $3.00-6.00 a dozen.

We buy about $30 worth of chicken feed a month for these girls, much less in the spring and summer when there is more forage. So, our eggs are less than $1.00 a dozen. This is a huge bargain considering what a nutritional powerhouse the egg is.

Now, onto those goats. We have them for milk, and is the milk ever delicious. We will have three goats in milk in May, and will hopefully be getting about 2 gallons a day. We buy probably about $15 worth of feed for them to eat on the milk stand, and hay for them in the winter.

If we were buying this delicious raw goat's milk from a goat share program it would cost us $6-8 a gallon. This is a huge, huge savings. We get our goat's milk for 25 cents a gallon!

Another bonus from keeping goats is that they have kids every year. Some of those kids will be males, and we will raise the males for a few months and then add some more meat to the freezer. Goat meat, called chevon, is very similar to venison. We will be putting mostly chevon roasts in the freezer.

So, there you have it. Animal products will never be cheaper than if you raise them yourself! And the benefits are so much more than just food. Children will learn where food really comes from, and will develop a great work ethic from caring for all of these creatures.

So, if you have a bit of land, or you are fortunate enough to live in a town where zoning laws don't prohibit small livestock, look into raising a few animals!

For more frugal tips, visit Biblical Womanhood for Frugal Friday

Baby Quilts Anyone?

I decided today after my midwife appointment that I need a project to help the time fly! I still have four weeks left, but with orders from the midwife to "take it easy" I need something nice and loooooong and draaaaaaawn out so that I can stop thinking about how uncomfortable I am.

I had decided to hold off on making quilts until after baby arrived. I still have child number 3's quilt to do, and then of course, a PINK! quilt to make. I changed my mind though and have decided to tackle with full gusto child #3's quilt.

The fabric is in the dryer right now and then I can start cutting it out. I will have to post pictures of the fabric tomorrow, and I'll give you a little hint about the pattern.

There are appliqued sail boats and ric-rac. It is super duper cute, and little Ted will LOVE it!

This will be the fastest quilt I have ever made if in fact I can accomplish my goal. My first quilt was done in just over 4.5 years for my son, it was supposed to be ready at his birth! My second quilt, you can see here was done in about a year start to finish.

So, what do you think? Can I do it? Can I accomplish this goal? Only time will tell. I have FOUR weeks!

Frozen Pancakes

In anticipation of our new baby's arrival I am trying to get as much prepared food into our freezer as possible. This week I am working on breakfast foods. I will be making a quadruple batch of whole week pancakes, cooking them on the griddle and freezing them in ziploc baggies in sets of 3.

My mother always bought huge boxes of pancakes from Sam's club when we were growing up. It was nice to be able to have a hot breakfast without all of the preparation and clean-up that goes along with it.

It's so important to me to know that while I am recuperating and gaining my strength back, my sweet little family will still be well fed and taken care of! I've never been one for convenience foods like frozen pizzas, tv dinners, bagged dinners, etc. But, after previous births this is what we relied on for awhile.

If I put in the hard work now, my family's diet won't be compromised at all! As I feed my freezer this coming month I will be updating about my progress.

For other kitchen tips, don't forget to visit Tammy's Recipes for Kitchen Tip Tuesday!

Piggy Update

For all those wondering, yes, we did find the run away pigs. We kept one, and our neighbors kept the other. We are raising Piggly Wiggly for the freezer, she will be ready to go towards the end of April.

We are also using her to dig up our garden area, fertilize it, and compost it. It's great when you can use animals to do the hard manual work! She is enjoying her work, digging around, most days she has dirt up to her eyeballs, the sign of a truly content pig! Happy pigs make yummy pork!

Taco Seasoning Recipe

I do my best to avoid MSG like the plague that it is. In most cases, there is a great alternative, but I had a hard time finding an alternative to the little taco seasoning packets. I tried different seasoning blends from the health food store, but none of them had a nice zip and zing to them. So, I started a search for a recipe, and I found a great one! You can make this up in a big batch and keep it in a mason jar, that's how I do it.

Taco Seasoning

2t. dried minced onion
1t. salt
1t. chili powder
1/2t. corn starch
1/2t. crushed red pepper
1/2t. garlic
1/4t. oregano
1/2t. cumin

Mix it all up!

This will season 1 lb. ground beef or chicken, or whatever.

I have made it without the cornstarch, and it works just fine too.

For more kitchen tips visit Tammy's Recipes for Kitchen Tip Tuesday!

Missing: Two Pink Pigs

If anyone sees two pink pigs, about 100 lbs each wandering around loose looking hungry and lost, could you please let me know?!?

They were delivered yesterday to the ol' homestead and promptly escaped.

Reward: 5 lbs. sausage!

Super Frugal Lunch!

I always struggle with lunch, so I am always trying to figure out something super cheap, and super healthy. I had a great idea this week that went over really well with my little boys.

Dried lima beans! You don't have to soak them overnight like a lot of dried beans, they cook up in 1 hour, they are super healthy, and they cost less than a dollar for a bag which will feed me and all three boys.

I cooked them for 1 hour in boiling water, then drained them. I added about 3 or 4 tablespoons of butter (butter is so good for growing boys and pregnant mamas) added some garlic, salt, pepper, and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. We were in heaven. A hot, delicious, healthy, frugal lunch for less than a quarter per person. Now THAT is frugal!

For more frugal ideas visit Biblical Womanhood

Working Through the Pain, Five Minutes

I have six weeks to go in my pregnancy. I am feeling the aches and pains acutely, still throwing up several times a day, heartburn, you know the feeling. There is still so much to be done in preparation for my fourth child, first daughter.

I have to figure out a way to get things done in spite of my discomfort. I am testing out a method that I think might do the trick.

I'm going to clean/organize in five minute increments. Five minutes here, five minutes there. It will add up, I'm counting on that! I can do anything for five minutes! I have my timer ready. I'm not planning to move mountains today, but a little shove day after day, eventually that mountain will move!

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me! One shove at a time, the mountain will move! I have six weeks to Make my home a haven

Accumulating a Frugal Fabric Stash

I have caught the quilting bug. The big question is, how to do it on a frugal budget? Finding fabric for super cheap is the obvious solution. But how???

The other day I came across a pair of flannel pajama pants of mine that have a huge hole in them. I raised my arm to throw them in the trash, but caught myself. There is still a great deal of fabric in those pants that is in very good condition. The hole was WAY to big to fix, so what else could I do?

I put it in my fabric scrap box. When I get enough fabric scraps I will be able to make a quilt, for free! Those pants will provide a good deal of fabric for that quilt, and just think, I almost threw it away!

Now if you don't quilt, don't despair. You can still put those old holey clothes to good use! There are tons of tiny projects you could sew up, like pin cushions, stuffed animals, pillow, etc. Don't just throw away what can be used again, think of a creative way to give it a second life!

For more frugal tips visit Crystal's blog at Biblical Womanhood