Well here we sit

So I'll start by explaining where we are at in a paragraph:

A year ago we found out we may be moving to OLIVER BC.  We went to Mexico to celebrate the new year. Then we went on a missions trip to South Africa. Came home and deleted my Facebook. Then we moved! OH and I decided to start homeschooling... hahahaha...


Fast forward to today...


Since there is no more Facebook on my horizon, I decided to kick this up again. Too many people have no clue what is happening with us and I would love to fill them in! I miss everybody! Getting information that I didnt ask for from everybody, but was exciting to know, for nothing! Just turn on my phone and peruse! lol..


So homeschool.

(A photo of my life, a devotional #wildandfree Learning to Shape Spaces, Little People, and Your Own Heart to Inhibit Grace. MORE UNPACKING, and a strawberry daiquiri :)


Its been interesting... fun to get to know more about each one of my little blessings. But its a bit of a handful. A lot more paperwork than I expected. But its nice to know there is a whole community out there just for homeschoolers, and its GREAT! (lots of talk on Grace and hey! I need that!)


Its been a bit of a stretch, living 4 hours from my family and friends. I miss the connections, the hugs when I don't speak, the coffee dates, the unasked for advice ( :)), being able to "pop-by", and having people be able to help me out when Im having a hard day.
But we are settling in, meeting new friends, getting a new church, and getting used to living in a small town.

Today was Carver's third birthday. Oh my is he crazy pants. Its this age, and its hard. But I know in a few months it will be all behind him, ...right??!!

We are also getting used to stepping on little Cacti all over the place here, since its the desert. Its constant, and starting to be funny. Until one of my kids makes up a game of "throwing cactus at faces", then its not so funny (well not to them, and not when they do it (ok, maybe a small smile)). Its DANGEROUS... (snicker), don't EVER (snort), DO that AGAIN! Ugh, if only they weren't so FUNNY when they were bad...

Sometimes its a choice between lying on the floor crying, and laughing on that same floor. Sanity is only so fleeting...


Nice chatting with you. :)

What to do What to do....

I'm sitting here and after not writing for so long, my mind is exploding with ideas on topics, but I cant pick one. I write a line, and then delete it. That one can stay now. Phew. Hmmmm..... school.
So after having 4 kids, I am thinking into the future and wondering what am I going to do? I can be a stay-at-home mom, and struggle to pay bills every month. Or I can go back to work now. Or I can go back to work when the kids are in school. I think I have decided to wait until they are all in school full-time. I do Spas right now in my spare time (har Har!) and I love them, and I will for sure continue doing them, but I have other passions I'm discovering right now that I am thinking about exploring.

Therapy - I LOVE a good mystery and theres no bigger mystery than our minds. I am constantly having to 'help' my friends and family (not by them asking) to fix some problem in their head. It feels like a puzzle to me. Like if this piece fits here, this one might go here? I am thinking about becoming a therapist. but I'm worried that if I do it for a living it will take the fun out of it.

Business Advertising - Something else I have discovered, I love thinking of ways to help small businesses get customers. I have TONNES of ideas... I actually cant help but think of more ideas. It wakes me up at night. I would like to do this, even for direct sales ladies. :)

Plumbing - I am already a journeyman, Ive done the work, I like it. I have lots of room to grow and I have lots of avenues to do it on. With 14 plumbers in my family, I wont be walking on untended ground, but why does that matter? My husband does it and I'm not sure about working with him, but its definitely a choice.

I know these have NOTHING to do with each other, but I think each one has a different feeling for me and I would enjoy doing all of them.

Just what Ive been thinking about... :)

Thoughts??

What do you think I would be best at and like the most???

Not Supermom or even Superwomen, feeling the sting of failure. Or I like to call it - learning.

So after almost 2 months of living like this, no processed food, no bread, ect. There have been some trials we have gotten through. We have leaned quite hard on the No processed food bit. Thats what this whole thing was about and Im keeping to that! Ive dropped a few things and came up with a few new ideas.
Biking my kids everywhere where I live right now??? Isnt really going to work. There are hills galore! Plus its very cold... :)
The only eating meat and veggies/fruit thing, is GREAT! but for us right now, the kids eating constantly, Deacon and Joes tummys not really being full, isnt really working for me. :) So Ive decided to bring back home-made bread! Maybe later, we can try again. Or we can try a different flour! :) For right now, Im making bread.
We have also decided to buy more frozen veggies for right now, because thats what we will be eating next winter, we should get used to it!
We have decided to buy another deep freeze, with the 100 chickens, plus frozen fruit and veggies, we will DEF need more room! I have thought about canning, and we will do a bit of it, but canning adds more sugar and less fiber. So instead if you freeze them, you will get more fiber and you can use them for more uses!
That brings me to my latest obsession.

Freezer bags.

So Im trying to live more GREEN, and Im going to go out, buy a bunch of zip-loc bags and use them? OR Im going to spend lots of $ on Tupperware containers that dont always keep out the freezer burn and take up too much space???

How does that make sense?

I now dream of a sewing machine....

I am going to make a few things:

A double velcroed freezer bag, (think of those old sandwich bags with the double flaps - now imagine them with velcro on those flaps...)

A laundry bag, To hang in my bathroom, kitchen, kids rooms, ect. A wet-bag (With PUL) to put dirty clothes in! Also going to make one for my diaper bag!

Snack bags!, to put the kids snacks in, anything you would put in a ziploc bag. :)

So Im thinking, where do I get cheap fabric???

Then it came to me,

Why dont I buy from VV and UPCYCLE!?!?!?

So turn that old T-shirt into a bag! Or old sweater, ect!

After 1 month the status IS....

Well There is still a huge inward battle going on within me. :( Its so hard to go from one way to the complete opposite. And not go crazy at the same time. My brain is too full, and its trying to muddle through all this information sometimes I think when I touch my head, its going to feel like one of those burnt out motors - VERY HOT! But at the same time, the differences I see in my kids everyday, make it all worth it.

So its been 1 month:

Ive lost 10lbs
sleeping better
more energy
less tired
I FEEL better about the future
Deacon's poops are SOOO much better!!
Joe is feeling alot better too!


and to tell the truth, its less expensive and a little bit more time. Thats it.

It takes me once a week about 1 hour to make milk and cheese. (thats actual work)
Instead of taking me 15-20min to make lunch (or toxic chemicals that seem like lunch) it takes me 30min
breakfast is always either: eggs, apple 'porridge', or oatmeal (10min)
cutting up veggies is probably the most time consuming, (30min a day) thats for lunch and dinner put together. But I do have my Pampered chef chopper thing and soon to switch to Tupperwares new choppy thing.
More dishes! (plus for some reason I have decided that I dont like buying dish washing detergent, so I hand-wash them all)

When I tell other moms what Im doing, there 1st reaction is to feel 'guilty'?? and try and tell me a number of excuses as to why they arnt doing it too.. which to me is weird. I have felt a calling to make my family and my own lives better by spending MORe tiem prepping. Instead of buying everything packaged and just cooking it (like I used to). If you dont think thats something for you or your family, thats cool. Whatever its not my business. :) But I think God has had me do this, maybe to show people that this crazy, (INSANELY) busy young mom, who has her own booming business from home and REALLY isnt a good housewife, can do it, then ANYBODY can do it, WITH EASE! lol...

1st excuse:

Im too busy.
ok. This is the thing. Im doing things the most inefficient EVER. By cutting and prepping before each meal, total waste of time. If I was more efficient, I would spend an hour or two one day a week, PREPPING! Even making all the lunches for the week. It would be SOO easy! Plus dinner planning?? Oh wow....
So lets say your making Kraft Dinner, takes 5min for water to boil. You mix it all together taking a total of 15-20min (if you throw in hot dogs... lol) Instead, you COULD make a huge casserole on Sunday, with like potatoes, almond milk, VEGGIES, chicken even, and Almond cheese on top. MMMmmmmm!! Soooo good. Takes EVEN less time!!

Its too expensive.
ok, buying processed food, is WAY expensive. We used to spend $150-$200 a week on food. BASICS! So now we are spending $75-$100 a week on only fruits, veggies and meat. (including almonds, oats and eggs!) The only thing its expensive with is your time.

What good am I really doing?

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2001/1/2001_1_8.shtml

This is an article on Cheese and Mr. Kraft himself. What did he do TO cheese to go from 1 person consuming 3lbs of cheese to 30lbs of cheese?

So I urge you to go into your cupboards, look at the ingredients on your food, and GOOGLE it. You will see what you are really feeding your kids and eating yourself. Oh, and by the way... the Europeans are WAY ahead of us, look at what THEY are banning....

OH WOW!!! :)

So I tried again and made Almond Cheese. This time it actually worked!!

2C of almonds

Put them in water overnight. Blanch them (throw them in a boiling pot of water for 30 seconds, then pop their skin off).

Put 2C of water and almonds in blender. Blend smooth. Place in dish with cheesecloth covering (or a stocking).

wait 12Hrs

Put cheese mixture into cheesecloth, hang dripping into bowl.

wait 12 hrs.

Put into fridge.

Now I took it and divided it up into 3 containers.

Roasted garlic Almond Cheese


4 garlic cloves
2 TBSP extra virgin olive oil
salt
pepper

Take the garlic cloves, slice. Throw into pan with oil. Add salt and pepper. Roast until just brown. Put mixture into moater and use pedistal to mash. Add into cheese.


Hot Chili Almond Cheese

4 TBSP Crushed Chili
2 TBSP Paprika
Salt
Pepper
2 TBSP Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Put everything in pan, roast. Put it in moater and use pedistal to mash. Mix into cheese.

ENJOY!!

I thinkIve decided to bring some food to taste at my MOMS meeting Im talking at. :)

Im making Ratatouille tonite!!!!!

So abit disappointed today. :( I tried to make a certain almond yogurt and cheese from this recipe... totally didn't work. Booo... so I am trying a different one today, maybe this one will.. :)

Last week when I did my once a week shop I spent $200, $45 on meat, $65 on veggies and fruit, and $80 on extras (like WW flour, and honey). So this week I was quite excited that I was going to be going to Organic World for my meat and the local produce market for veggies and fruit. I spent $30 on meat and $50 on fruit and veggies!!!! I was SO pleased with myself!! Then I went to Bibles For Missions and bought a dehydrator, a food steamer, a thermos, an ice cream maker and some VHS's all for $30! :) So I got home, started right away making dehydrated apples and chocolate ice cream (with almond milk). Apples are delish, but ice cream not so much.. :( Its a really old machine and the recipes all call for evaporated milk or gelato. ERmmm.. No. So I just put Almond milk, unsweetened chocolate, sugar and vanilla. Going to try another recipe today... maybe use up the last of the cows milk. :)

I am having lots of fun trying making things from scratch though. The only difference is a little bit more time and effort. I DO need to start making a HUGE batch of some stuff, so I can just reheat. I haven't made bread since Sun, So doing pretty good there. :) When we eat we eat mostly veggies and then some meat. Last night we made ribs with sweet potato shredded and then made into patties... MMMMmmmmm!! Soooo good!! I gotta say, our plates look a little funny... :) Its really working quite well for us, and we really enjoy it!!

Typical meal plan:

Breakfast:

porridge with cocoa powder and vanilla in it. Mmmm

Snack:

cucumbers/apples/beans

Lunch:

Soup (homemade from scratch)
leftover dinner
sweet potato fries
green bean salad with chicken and sauce

Dinner:

any kind of meat
sweet potatoe
cauliflower
potatoes

ect...

I'm making ratatouille tonite!!!! :)

Tapped, the bottled water battle. Human concerns part1

So the problem with saying, 'Ok, ok ok, I was wrong, this is really bad___' . Is that all of a sudden you must now challenge all of your former ideas, thoughts and beliefs. Like, Hmmmmm.. I remember someone once saying this to me, I wonder if its true??
So I have been using my trusted NetFlicks to watch documentary after documentary. A few of them have been unbelieveable!!

The education of Shelby Knox (about sexual education in the school systems)
www.netflicks.ca/wimovie/the-education-of-shelby-knox

Frontline: The Vaccine War (obviously about vaccines)
www.netflicks.ca/wimovie/frontline-the-vaccine-war

Maxed Out (about credit card debt and the big companies)
www.netflicks.ca/wimovie/maxed-out

Tapped (about bottled water)
www.netflicks.ca/wimovie/tapped

I am still watching more, So I am going to do a few blogs on these issues. :) I will add more as I go

Tapped:

So I have spent maybe 10min total before my conversion thinking about plastic containers. I had to spend SOME time, cause my kids did drink out of bottles. So I switched to BPA free bottles and moved on.

I saw this movie and thought - Why not? Little did I know that this little movie would change the way I looked at several things. Forever.

It looked at about 6 different reasons why bottled water is lunacy. The sneaky way that information is given to us, like we are stupid. Stealing the water from hick towns and selling our own water to us, for a 1900% profit margin. LOL! Plus the litter is insane!

Anyways... just dont drink bottled water. buy a nice bottle and fill it up yourself at your tap. :)