While our income has been decreasing and our children’s appetites are increasing, food prices are increasing. Some things have doubled and even tripled in price in the last few years. The 50 pound bag of popcorn that we buy in bulk went from $17 a bag in June of 2012 to $29 a bag in July of…
I spent a lot of time working in the garden last week. I was able to transplant both the grape vine and the pomegranate tree that I was needing to transplant this month. I won’t know until April if they’ve survived the transplant, when they should both start to leaf out. I don’t expect grapes…
January is the busiest month in my garden. With our first frost usually falling in early-mid December, and our last frost in mid-February, I have a short season while my plants are dormant in which to prune in the garden. (In fact, we usually only have two or three periods of frost each winter). With 40…
One of the most frequently asked questions that I get is what my daily schedule looks like. I will answer that today, but I don’t think it will answer the real question, which is, “How do you get so much stuff done?” The answer to that is a lot deeper than just telling you my…
We spent Christmas at home. The children really liked their presents. I loved the oohs and ahhs and sighs of delight. The boys were quite delighted with their bookmarks. Winter loved the jewelry that I made for her–as well as the 10 cent bracelet and 50 cent vintage necklace that I found for her at…
We put out our Christmas decorations this week. For us, that means pulling out a faux Christmas tree, a nativity, a bit of faux greenery, stockings, and three wreaths. This year I added to those things with three new wreaths–the one I posted over the bed last week, and two that I made this week…
We started Winter’s birthday last week with presents at breakfast. That’s not how we have done things in the past, but I loved this change and it might occur a lot more often at our house. I did a silver and white theme using the back side of some green wrapping paper to wrap a…
Do you ever have the urge to ditch all of your plans for the day and just make something new? I did that this week. I put away thoughts of sewing any presents, served leftovers for breakfast one morning, and worked on a project instead. We took out the Christmas decorations and set up the tree…
I sent the children on a walk to gather some pinecones from an empty lot near our house. They brought back plenty for our Christmas decorating. I cut boxleaf euyonomous from the garden to decorate in the house. We watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. We used an HDMI cable to connect the laptop to…
Living in a zone 9a, our first frost usually comes in December. For the last several years, it has been the second week of December, so I was expecting a few more days to work in the garden–but it was not to be this year. Instead, I spent most of my week in the…
One of our family traditions is that starting on the first day of December, we sing Christmas songs together before bed. Everyone gets to pick a song and we all sing. I want to add a new tradition in our house this year that our children will look forward to each year. For that reason, I’ve made…
Last week I got a whole lot done. Most of my list, in fact. My family helped a lot. However, I did not get any presents done, so even though I had hoped to be done by the end of last month, I still have some sewing to do. We are expecting our first frost…