Living Like the Past

We have been doing some serious organizing the past few months. Our goal has been to catch up on repairs and organizing the house. We will never be finished because we live here but we have made much improvement.We have decided to go back to the early 1940's again. Those of you that follow my blog know we did the one year experiment of living like 1943. We wanted to learn about how it was to live in the home front during 1943 and learn about the rations. We learned so much more than we expected during that time. We moved to 1948 for awhile to see if that was where we wanted to be but because of the upcoming election we started keeping up with the news so w ......

Meet Walton. We have been very busy since Thanksgiving. The end of November we went to buy a small amount of sod to replace an area that died due to drought. We passed this poor old primitive cupboard and fell in love. We did not get it that day because it was so banged up, broken, it had holes and the inside had fake grass where it had been used as a display at the nursery.. But there was something that just kept pulling us to rescue it.After much thinking about it the decision was made we would go get it and bring it home to restore it. (This was just before Katherine's herniated cervical disc).This was the back and after much inspection we found the entire cupboard was made out ......

It is not snowing here at this time. The preview photo is a picture from the past. But it is expected to get in the 20s this week. I have three things to mention before my post on fruit bread.It is really amazing how things change. I posted recently about a desk that came to us that belonged to my husbands Grandfather. Now we have this small sofa that belonged to my husbands Great Aunt. It had been passed down to my mother-in-law many years ago and she ended up storing it for many years. It was recovered with a Fort Knox proof covering and now it has made it's way to our house once again. I say once again because when my husband and I married we had it for a brie ......

Photos taken about an hour and forty five minutes drive from where we live.We can find beauty in nature and also inspiration. But happiness is quite different. Standing here looking could cause, wonderment or even sadness if this spot is a memory we had with someone no longer with us. Either way it is beautiful.When we see this beauty looking at it in a picture we can study the image and be in awe of natures beauty.But when we are present we feel the wind and we hear the sounds and we start becoming part of something.To Feel seems to me to be the most important link to happiness.Life is about change. We and things around us are constantly changing so we have to adjust t ......

Thanksgiving has come and gone. We had a nice visit with family and friends. Thank you Sue for the beautiful flowers.Just before Thanksgiving we got a call from a family member that my husbands grandfathers desk was needing a home. It had been donated years ago to a church and they were buying a new desk for the pastor. We were asked if we wanted his desk and being that it once belonged to my husbands Grandfather we said yes, we would like to have it. Many many years past he was a sheriff of a small town in Mississippi. The desk came with much history.It caused a shifting of furniture and chairs throughout the house. So we have made changes once again.&nbs ......

Yesterday we harvested our lemons and satsumas. These came from two small trees that we nearly gave up on several times.Our little lemon tree struggled to grow and for three years we could see little improvement. We thought it was dead once and considered digging it up and starting over but we left it due to other things that needed to be done.Two years later it started growing and produced long wild limbs and took on an odd shape. Then this year to our surprise it produced Lemons that you see here. The satsumas are basically the same story. We just need to be patient because some things just need time.This started me thinking...Many people today want instant gratific ......

Last week was a blurrrrr... I am glad it is over. I must admit I was exhausted after the election. I needed time to absorb all that happened. I needed time to talk things over with God and to settle myself. I needed to do what I said and that is to do the things that I can control. Remind you I was hoping for a President that was intelligent, sensible, had lived a good life, carried no old baggage, was respectful of others and had the ability to make good choices and decisions. I would have felt this same grief whoever won but the exhaustion was much worse than I expected and for my husband as well. I felt like each day we have been going to a h ......

Well, we finally made it to the most difficult election day that I have ever known. I just do not understand how we got to this point. I have been feeling sad and for the first time in many years I have considered not voting but my husband and I dragged ourselves to the polls.We prayed and made a final decision which I will not post, just know that we did not like our choices and I hope whoever wins will step up and be more than we expect them to be at this time.So how can I turn this around and make something positive about it? Well we have decided that the only thing we can do is do the best we can at the things we can control. We cannot worry about what others are doing ......

The last article I wrote was to address some questions of how I go about doing what I do during the day. I do not work all day because I know that my body needs rest but while I am on my feet I try to keep going and get all I can done that needs to be done.Do we have our priorities in order?People are very busy these days and there are a lot of things that are causing stress so what I am going to post about is a first priority.If we set our day with the first priority being that all the family members get adequate rest then our day could start off much better.There is always something to do and if we have the rest we need then our body would be stronger to do the things that need to be done. ......

A popular question some of my blog visitors ask is could I post my daily schedule. I don't have one so this week I paid attention to my routine and did my best to take pictures when I could. I do certain things on certain days but often I change that for various reasons.I paid attention for several mornings and found that I do many of the same things each morning. But each morning is different.I took pictures of my stove clock so I could keep up with what I had done by a certain time.The morning I took the photo above of the clock that says 5:24 AM I had been up since 4:00 AM, my husband had already left for work when I took this picture. Part of my early rise time is get ......

When I was a child I loved to lay my head on my grandmother's chest. I would put my ear on her chest and listen to her talk. I could hear what her voice sounded like from the inside.I didn't want to move as she talked, it was a different sound hearing her voice from inside her chest. It often would lull me to sleep.It was comforting...Life was so very different during the time I was growing up. I started out in a time that was more simple then it seems everything took off in a rush.World war two was over and we were moving into a time of new innovations. We went through the age of poodle skirts, then bell bottoms, leisure suits, long hair then short pin curled hair, then lo ......

Our Grand dogs Rosie and Riley are ready for Halloween. For them it is not mean or cruel to dress them up because they like it :) They think they are children anyway so they want to take part in anything that is fun. I thought this would brighten your day.When I posted about our outdoor bath and laundry area little did I know that we were on our way to a drought. We have been trying to reduce and reuse our grey water even before we started going into a drought. When we garden we become more aware of the needs of the small plot of earth that we reside. We understand the importance of water, too little or too much and how we can deplete or enrich the soil.&nb ......

We have been growing ginger in a pot in the backyard. I love fresh ginger. This is our 4th year of growing ginger and it started from a piece of grocery store ginger. I had to keep waiting to get a good piece for planting from the store, I think you might be able to purchase some for planting online. I had to find a piece that had nubs that were trying to sprout and I finally did one day and planted it.So I took what I needed which was not a big piece. If I had dug around more I probably would have found some more plump.I cleaned it up at the compost pile so I could put all the stalks and things I was cleaning off into the compost.I chopped up the stalks so ......

It will soon be the end of October and we are in a severe drought. Most everything is dry and brittle and we need rain. We are using our laundry water and dish rinse water to water our plants.We are concentrating on keeping water to our citrus by using any leftover water from most anything. We have water restrictions as well.There is a burn ban in our state and the our city officials are telling us there will be no fires of any kind at this time.This was our first year to grow lemongrass and I have learned much this season. First is we should not plant so much into one pot. This does not allow the lemongrass to grow nice and plump at the base.This is what happened to our le ......

Long ago people traveled by wagon and they had to carry their goods with them. Most important was water and food and some type of shelter. Our Pioneers had to plan and think things through before they left. How would they cook and wash? How would they make their supplies last? What would they do if they got sick or injured? How would they feed and water their animals? How would they have enough water for themselves?We would be in a world of hurt if we tried this today because they hunted for food, washed in streams and had skills that are mostly lost today.That was a long time ago and there are still people interested in this form of travel, they have form ......

I wish that I had asked more questions because when our generations before us leave they take knowledge and skills with them.I am hanging onto the skills I know from when I was younger and the experience I have gained from living life. If we simply live a life of consumerism giving no thought where our food comes from and endless spending then the only knowledge we gain is how quickly debt can accumulate and ignorance of things that can affect our health.Due to growing older and lack of garden space we have been slowly moving to the direction of permaculture. Growing food is important so if we cannot physically maintain a garden there is permaculture. This past weekend my hu ......

Just a reminder, occasionally I cannot send an email reply due to an error in typing the email address into the contact form.Other times I just do not know why it will kick back to me.Bessie, you sent me an email that I would love to respond to but my responding email is coming back to me. Please check to see if all the dots . and @ are correct or too many letters or too little. Something is wrong with the email address in the contact form. Please send another email with your correct email typed in the email. To all others, if you have not received a response email within a reasonable time please jog my memory or send me another on but do check your email address.I am ......

First of all I want to say that I am praying for all of you that are in the path of Hurricane Matthew. For all my blog peeps that are in the area of the hurricane please send me an email when you can to let me know you are ok.We are ok here and far enough away to only have a breeze and right at the edge of the cloud cover, nothing expected here at least at this time. We are hoping that Matthew will go out to sea.Now about the laundry soap.Some of you have asked me how I make my laundry soap.Since I first started making it I purchased a scale and it really does make a better laundry mix.I put a lightweight container on the scale and zero it out.Grate the soap you are going t ......

I have been busy hand washing laundry and sewing.I moved the large barrels indoors to the bathtub. These are queen size sheets that I have been washing with the new laundry plunger.The other laundry plunger works loose from the pole and gets annoying, this new plunger I got on Amazon and I like it very much. It is very solid.This is what the bottom looks like.My husband bought us an electric clothes spinner. This is a Panda Stainless steel spinner. It does a very good job and spins more water out of the clothes than a washing machine does and it does not take the clothes long to dry after they are put in this spinner. I like the hand crank wringer for outsi ......

This bread is ready to put in the oven. It has risen for the second time.This is wheat bread made with fresh ground wheat berries that we keep air sealed in the pantry. I use the same bread recipe that I use to make white bread, rolls, cinnamon rolls etc. My recipe for a single loaf of white bread calls for two cups of flour and this wheat bread I use 1 and 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour and 3/4 cup of white flour . When we put 3/4 cup of wheat berries into our grinder we get one and a quarter cups of wheat flour. So I simply top off the 2 cup measuring cup with white flour. I could make 100 percent whole wheat but for sandwiches this makes a lovely soft loaf. ......