My Baby Girl is 1 Year Old!

Today, one year ago, my little girl was born right here in our home! What a precious memory I have of her birth...albeit a long one. As with our other children, we didn't find out ahead of time whether she was a boy or girl, and what a WONDERFUL surprise to have a sweet baby daughter! The boys were and are so proud of their little sister, and they are always looking out for her, helping me with her (feeding her, even changing her diaper), and kissing and hugging on her. We are just so blessed to have her!

Still Searching...

We had an appointment scheduled to view the house we were thinking of, and ended up cancelling. One night we were talking in bed, and we both decided that neither of us felt right about the house. If the sellers had accepted the offer we could give them, we still would have had NO money left, no cushion for emergencies, and for our first move out to the country, that seemed especially risky. And we just didn't feel right about that location/neighborhood either. So, we aren't moving right now. And I'm OK with that. I like our house, and that we are close to our friends, and so forth, and just don't feel like anything that is available at this moment is right for us. We're in no rush, so we will just wait until the right place and circumstances come along. But we will still keep looking....

Chasing Chickens

Today I got a knock at the door from the neighbor across the street, who spotted one of my chickens in the front yard while he was mowing his lawn. I live in the suburbs, folks, so that must have been a sight. Apparently, some unnamed person in our family didn't get the gate all the way closed, so it escaped. So, I started chasing the chicken around the yard, and it did NOT want to be caught. Fearing I would chase it out of our (small) yard and into the street, or a neighbor's yard, creating a scene, I decided to lure it with food. Instead of it running to the food, it crouched down really low, and FLEW straight over the fence, back into the back yard where she belongs. I'd heard that some chickens CAN fly over 6 ft. fences, but I'd never actually witnessed it. So, the moral of the story, my friends, clip your chickens' wings, even if you don't think they will attempt an escape!

A Potential Home on the Horizon?

So, we have spent many evenings lately driving out to view possible homes, only to be sorely disappointed that it wasn't quite what the pictures represented. :( But this week, we DID find one that we are actually considering! It is on a little over 6 acres, with a nice wooded area, and some pasture as well. It is a mobile home, but a nice one, with over 2000 sq. ft. living space, and with that amount of land, there is room to build a site-built home. We could then sell the mobile and have it moved off. The only problem is, the sellers are asking a little more than we can pay....

I know that if God has this place in mind for us, he can move the heart of the sellers to accept our offer. And, if God has a different plan in mind, I know it will be better than this one! I'm waiting to see what happens. In the meantime, we need to go tour the INSIDE of the house (we could only see a few rooms through the windows), and I'll update you when we look again. Maybe even with a few pictures. ;)

Garden & Chickens

Check out the butterfly in the above picture I caught visiting my oregano today. If you want something very satisfying and easy to grow, start with herbs! The ones I've planted have grown enormous, survived snow, and don't seemed to be bothered by insects or lack of water. In fact, in one garden box, I have some huge basil that I didn't even plant! I think it may have reseeded itself from last season, so now I have basil! Last year's basil got eaten by a bird, all but a tiny section of 1 leaf. I thought for sure it was hopeless, but I left it anyway, and the thing grew back to be huge within just a few days! In the background you can see my lavender, which I'm growing because I just LOVE the smell!
The chicken tractor! A movable, bottomless chicken house, where they scratch and dig for bugs, poop (aka, fertilizer), and there are a couple nesting boxes where they lay their eggs. Up until a week or so ago (when they stopped laying eggs, presumably from the heat), we were getting about 4 eggs a day from our 4 hens, which I found out is super. :) I guess I'll forgive them for their hiatus. There is also a section for their hanging food and water containers inside the tractor. We give them a grain mixture that we mix up ourselves - a recipe we found on the web, and of course, all the kitchen scraps they can handle!
Here's a close-up of one of our three garden boxes we have this year. We are using the All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. This is our third year doing it. It is very easy to maintain, almost no weeding needed, but our tomatoes haven't produced as well this year as they did our first year. I think it might be due to our lack of watering sometimes. :) We added some leaves as mulch to maybe help retain some of the moisture. It seems to be helping. We added fencing around the garden this year to keep the chickens out. :)
Here are some of the chickens, hiding in the bushes because it is SO HOT! Their combs are looking a little dry, like they might be getting dehydrated in spite of all the water they have. I added some ice to their water, and they decided they wanted to drink it after all. We had one chicken die about a month ago, and she had a very dry comb right before that, so I am keeping a close watch on them all.

Jim Sammons & a Wedding Miracle

In addition to Dave Ramsey's advice, Jim Sammons' Financial Freedom Seminar really changed the way we looked at money. His seminar is filled with testimonies of miraculous ways that God has provided for people, when they follow His principles. Praying for God to provide things that you actually have the money to purchase, so that you can have a testimony to share, was a breathtaking concept. To think that God would really care about such "small matters" in my eyes is just amazing. So, I tried it.

The first thing wasn't even a prayer, just a desire I discussed with Jeremy. One Sunday night, I told him I'd really like to get a small desk to put in the breakfast area to use as a sewing desk. Not even a couple of hours later, as Jeremy and our 4 yr. old were riding bikes around the neighborhood, they saw a desk on the curb with a sign that had $10 crossed out and "Free" written right next to it. And now it is my sewing desk.

For my sister's wedding, the boys needed pink ties, and our 4 yr. old needed a black suit coat. We had already borrowed a tux for our two year old, and I wanted our 4 yr. old to have one, too, but I decided that since he already had black dress pants, our NEED was for a suit coat. So, I put out a request to our homeschool group, thinking it was a long shot. One friend replied that she knew another friend whose little boys had pink ties , and she was willing to loan them to us. Another friend with twin boys my 4 yr. old's age, said she had 2 tuxes she had been wanting to pass along to someone (and hey, we only needed one!). When the lady with the ties couldn't find one of the ties, I was worried for a second, until I realized that I already had a bowtie pattern in my sewing stash, and a 40% off coupon for fabric. God not only provided my need, but my desire as well.

I can't wait to see what God does next, but in the meantime, I hope I get to be a part of someone else's "miracle"!

Dry Cleaning Savings

We do not own many dry clean only clothes; one trip to the cleaners would be more expensive than just going back to the thrift store for more clothes! LOL! This weekend was my sister's wedding, and DEFINITELY the occasion for itty bitty suits and bowties and other things that can't be machine washed. Enter Woolite's DryCleaner's Secret - very much like Dryel, but without the bag to get your clothes all wrinkled. $9.99 will clean 24 pieces of clothing, and unlike even the $1.99 drycleaners, an itty bitty bowtie counts as LESS than 1 piece of clothing! I'm not technologically inclined, but if you can make the below link work, you can use it for a mail-in rebate for $3 off DryCleaner's Secret. I'll let you know if I get my rebate check....

http://cvssavingscentral.com/Media/04_DRY_10052_WooliteDCS/Images/04_Dry_10052_WooliteDCS_rebate.pdf

The Process of Becoming Debt-free

Our journey started in Sept. 2005. I was due with our first son in 3 months, and a friend was talking about Dave Ramsey and how they were on his plan to become debt-free. Wow. Debt-free. Who doesn't want to become debt free? No one likes debt. Not really. Some people might not think it's possible to live without debt; some might want possessions more than they want to be debt-free. In the end, I think when people find out it is possible, they'll go through extraordinary means to get there. That was us. We sat down at the dining room table and made out a budget and decided we were going to do this thing.

For months to come, I learned new habits - shopped at thrift stores, garage sales, ate at home, and learned how to bargain shop. We learned that we actually could live without going to the movie theatre! Finally, less than a year later - we paid it all off (except the house). What a feeling! But we weren't there yet....

In the process of trying to lower our budget, especially with groceries, I was trying to still keep up our organic diet. After all, who wants to trade health for debt-free status? It wasn't just theory - I could feel the difference when I ate unhealthy foods. The cheapest way to have organic food is to raise your own. So, thus began my gardening and cooking from scratch! I found that I really LOVED doing these things, and when I would visit the farms where we bought our meat/milk/eggs, I also loved the country/farming life. We decided we wanted to have our own homestead; land of our own, and a house we could call our own, no matter how humble. Our OWN. Not the bank's - OURS! Well, that's where we are today - still looking for the piece of earth to call our own. We're saving up our money and hunting for whatever we can afford. We're working like it all depends on us, and praying like it all depends on the LORD. We still owe a mortgage on our current home, but we are working right where we are, building our little suburban homestead on 1/10 of an acre (including the land the house is sitting on!) until the day we can pay cash for our land and sell our house. It may be weeks, it may be years, but we are waiting on the Lord to provide, and trusting that HE wants us to "owe no man anything except the debt of love".