Wednesday Wit & Wisdom: 2/29/12

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Melonie

Accensa domo proximi, tua quoque periclitatur – “When the house of your neighbor is in flames, your own is in danger.”
(Source)

Quick Tip Tuesday: Pinterest

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Melonie

Here’s a super quick tip – if you’d like to see what “stuff” our team is into, head on over to Pinterest. American Virtue is officially Pinning to our hearts’ delight.

You can follow us by clicking the Pinterest button over there on the right sidebar.

You know you wannnnnna……

(Make sure to leave us a comment if you’re a Pinterest user who would like to be followed back, or if you have a suggestion of something we should check out. Our staff is especially looking forward to sharing our Made in USA board with you, as well as what we’re currently reading and watching over on our Staff Library board!)

Money Saving Monday: Cloth Diapering

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Malia

Considering our current budget and our financial goals, I started toying with the idea of TRYING cloth diapers for our fifth child. As I considered it, one major drawback was that to use cloth diapers, you have to sink quite a bit of money into it, just to give it a fair try.

After lots of encouragement, I decided to try to make my own diaper covers. A friend mailed me her pattern. I bought the material for about $4.00 per cover, including the PLU to make them waterproof. I should mention now, I hardly ever sew. I have sewn about 3 things in my life, and each time with much nervousness and pain involved.

But, even for me, these were fairly easy. I watched several YouTube videos on sewing cloth diaper covers, called my friend 4 times,and did it. I made my first cover. It took all day. (Remember, I never sew and I am not very good at it.)

Here is what it looked like:

Then, as soon as I finished that one, I was hooked! I LOVED how adorable it was, how easy it was, and how well it fit. It was planned to fit him until he was 22 pounds. After that, I did the remaining four assembly line style and finished them all in about 3 hours.

Now, I take a prefold cloth diaper (free from freecycle) and put it inside there, then velcro it onto him. Five were plenty to get me through the day, since you can wipe them out after each use (hence, the PLU).

When I change the baby, I take the soiled diaper to the bathroom and rinse the soil into the toilet. Then, I drop the diaper in a bucket in there, already partially filled with water and a small amount of detergent. When I wash them in the machine, I first drain the water from the bucket into the toilet, then put them in the washer with detergent and wash them in HOT water. I hang the covers to dry and put the pre-folds in the dryer. Usually one time through the dryer is not quite enough, so I hang them on a line to finish drying.

Malia Russell is the blessed wife to Duncan, thankful mother to five children, ages newborn to 20 and an author, conference speaker and director of www.homemaking911.com and www.wheat-n-things.com. Visit her site for inspiration, encouragement and practical help in your roles as a godly wife, mother, homemaker or home educator.

Frugal Preparedness for your BOB

Posted on February 25, 2012 by admin

I am always trying to think of frugal ways to get the things we need into our emergency backpacks!

Sooo, as I was clearing out some herb and vitamin bottles awhile back, I couldn’t bring myself to toss them. There just HAS TO BE some good use for these waterproof, great little plastic bottles!

Dad has the children currently working on their fire lighting skills….and then a light bulb went off! MATCHES!

These little vitamin bottles are PERFECT for housing ‘strike anywhere’ matches in a dry, compact location; not only that but I can fit some cottonballs (tinder) in them as well! Yeehaw! Great use and a great item for everyone to have tucked in their bags!

~Lisa

American Virtue Magazine is pleased to partner with Lisa Barthuly of Homestead Originals to present a Frugal Living series here on our “Taking the Hill” blog. Mrs. Barthuly is the author of Homestead Simplicity: Natural Clean and the creator of the Homestead Originals line of all-natural, handcrafted candles.

Each week we will feature recipes Mrs. Barthuly has created for use on her family’s homestead. Whether your homestead is rural, urban, or somewhere in between, we trust that you will glean something of interest from these offerings. We invite you to leave comments here on Taking the Hill, on our Facebook page, and to visit the Barthuly family’s web site to learn more about her company’s offerings.

Bacon and Cheddar Biscuits from Scratch

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Malia

This week a friend gave me a bunch of pre-cooked bacon, so I decided to try the following recipe with it. It turned out some very savory and delicious biscuits. If you mill your own flour, use soft white and add baking powder and salt to this. If you use White Lily as suggested in the recipe, be careful because there are several varieties. Some are self-rising and others are all-purpose. You can adjust the all-purpose in the same way as described above.

These savory biscuits are yummy and wonderful! Serve them with your favorite meal, or fill them with fried eggs for a great breakfast dish. I have best results with White Lily flour, but if that’s not available, use another quality brand.

Bacon-Cheddar Biscuits
What you’ll need:

10 slices bacon, diced
1/3 cup vegetable shortening, plus butter for greasing pan
2 cups White Lily self-rising flour
½ teaspoon garlic powder.
1 tablespoon Cane Juice Crystals
1 cup shredded four-cheese blend (cheddar would be fine)
1 cup whole milk
Melted butter

Directions: Fry bacon until crisp, then drain. While bacon is frying, preheat oven to 425 degrees and grease baking pan with butter. Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the 1/3 cup of shortening and blend with a fork or pastry cutter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Gradually add milk while blending. Add cheese and bacon. Work dough until the cheese and bacon are evenly distributed.

Place dough on floured surface and knead about four times. Do not overwork! Using your palms, pat biscuit dough out to a half-inch thick. Cut biscuits out with a round cookie or biscuit cutter.

Place biscuits in pan, allowing them to almost touch – about ½ inch apart. Bake for about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and brush tops with melted butter. Sprinkle lightly with additional garlic salt, if desired.

Wednesday Wit & Wisdom: 2/22/12

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Cheryl

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.“

~ George Washington ~
(source)

Quick Tip Tuesday: Clothespin Storage

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Melonie

In our area, very little can be left outside without succumbing to the humidity, which has even rusted through entire patio covers in under a year. (Don’t ask how I learned this, please!) That means having a cute bag out on the clothesline to store my clothespins just isn’t a good bet.

Instead I grabbed an extra Snapware container (Made in the USA – woohoo!) for storing my stash of clothespins. They await use on a shelf in the laundry room, where I can toss them into the basket on my way out the door. Because the Snapware canister is BPA-free plastic, rather than glass, I have no concern of it shattering in the event of an earthquake either.

If you remember that old game of dropping clothespins into a jar, you’ll already know that little helpers will enjoy doing this for you when it’s time to take the laundry back down off the line. Add a few good stretches while you’re hanging and removing belongings from the line and you’ve got a good quick workout and a way to keep young ones occupied. Works for me!

(The link shown above is not an affiliate link and neither the author nor American Virtue Magazine have any affiliation with or compensation receipt from Snapware/World Kitchen, LLC. The link to the product is shown as an example of what works for this blogger – but if you visit them, please let them know how you heard about them!)

Money Saving Monday: Coupon Organization

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Malia

Getting started using coupons is not as hard as you may believe. I took a basic couponing class and from there, I gleaned a lot of helpful information, but then I needed to find my own way to make things work. When standing in line at the supermarket, I get tons of questions. This post should address many of them.

So where do you find coupons?

There are many places where you can get coupons, such as online printable coupons, e-coupons that you can download to your store loyalty card, and in flyers distributed by local stores. Of course, we all know that coupons come in our area newspapers. This is probably the location from which most shoppers acquire their coupons, thus I’ll focus primarily on this resource. Usually, an individual will buy only one paper a week. I purchase four and recommend that you purchase multiple papers a week as well.

Every week there are usually one to three sets; such as Red Plum, Smart Source, as well as P&G (Proctor and Gamble) brand in each paper. Make sure that when you buy your papers that each one has the correct number of sets in it. Really all you need for easy couponing is…coupons!

1. Preparing: Now that you have the coupons, you can start clipping.

Make sure that you have a large, flat, clean area to work on. Next, take all the sets of one type, for example all of the Red Plum sets, and then take the first page of each set and stack them on top of each other. I cut each set of pages stacked together. Repeat this process with the other pages.

2. Cutting: Avoiding the bar-code, staple the coupons together or use paperclips to prevent the pages from sliding around. Cut your coupons out slowly and carefully, to keep from cutting the bar-code. Paperclipping or stapling is optional. It just helps keep everything straight and neat.

3. Sorting: After cutting out the coupons, the sorting begins. During the cutting process, I sort my coupons by alphabetical order into an index card filer. You can also sort them by product, such as: meat, fresh produce, dairy, breads/crackers, household cleaners, medicine, and so on. Alphabetical is the way I settled upon after much trial and error.

4. Organizing: After coupons are cut out and sorted, you will need to put them into some type of organizer. There are many different styles out there. I use a three-ring binder with baseball card protector pages in it. I place tabs in alphabetical order on thirty-six pages (one for each letter). You will find that most letters will need additional pages. The beginning of each week check what type of deals your store is having and pull the coupons you plan to use. Place them into an envelope and they are ready to use. On days that I have limited time I take the envelope of coupons for advertised deals only. When I have plenty of time to shop, I take my binder with me, to match up unadvertised deals and clearance items.

DIY Homemade Toilet Scrubbing Powder

Posted on February 18, 2012 by admin

I love to make my own homemade cleaning products– they are not only SUPER FRUGAL, they work great and keep all those nasty toxins out of my homestead!

Scrubbing Cleanser

Fill a pint or quart size canning jar about ¾ full of baking soda (if you have heavy stains, make a 1/4 of it Borax) and use a straw or butter knife to create holes in the baking soda for essential oils. (You could also dump your baking soda/oils in, in layers. You just want to make sure that your oils get mixed into the baking soda really well – no clumps!)

Dump in around 20 drops of lavender essential oil (or tea tree, lemon, or orange–or a combo of your favorites!), put the lid on and shake well. Then use a small nail to punch about five decent sized holes in the lid; you’ll have your own shaker of cleaner that contains NO chlorine or chemicals and works even better than the smelly commercial version!

I use this to scrub my stainless steel kitchen sink, bathroom sinks, and our shower with one of those old green scrubbie pads.

~Lisa

Making Homemade Baby Food

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Malia

She also rises while it is yet night, and provides food for her household, and a portion for her maidservants.

Proverbs 31:15

Today, the Homemade Baby Food Market has come out with all kinds of gadgets that are supposed to help you make baby food at home. In spite of what the marketers would have you to believe.

Your initial investment for homemade baby food should be very small. You will need:

8 ice cube trays
Freezer Quality storage containers or Freezer bags.
A Blender or food processor (if you do not have one, it is not absolutely essential)

If you start with fruits:

The easiest one to make at home is applesauce. You can purchase a huge economy size jar of Unsweetened organic applesauce and simply open the jar, pour it into the ice cube trays, cover with foil and freeze. It is also fairly easy to make your own applesauce. But it is not absolutely necessary.

Bananas are just as easy. When they get a tad bit ripe, fork mash them if you do not have a blender and put them in the ice cube trays. Whenever we had bananas going soft I would just mix up a batch in the blender and put it in trays. If you are concerned about the color (it will look a little brown) you can add a drop or two of lemon juice, but I would not do this unless baby is older and has had citrus. You do not want to introduce two foods at once.

If you want to start with veggies, pumpkin is the absolute easiest. Go to the aisle where you buy canned pumpkin (what you buy to make pumpkin pie). Check the label. Some of it is 100% pureed pumpkin. This is what you need. Do not get any with added spices. Buy the biggest can. Open it and put it into ice cube trays. Wrap it in foil and freeze. Other very easy ones are: sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, green beans, peas.
In a day or two when it is hard frozen, you pop the cubes out and place them in the freezer baggies.

I used to keep one Tupperware container in my freezer that had all veggie cubes and one that had all fruit cubes, then each day I would go through and grab what I needed. I usually just thawed them in the microwave. Mix them well and test the temperature with your finger. If the food is too thick (maybe it will be at first) you can mix it with a touch of water or breast milk or formula.

As baby gets older you will use 3-4 cubes per meal, but at first you may just use one cube per meal.

These are highly portable. I just had a few little containers. I put the frozen cube in there and if we went out someplace it would melt, or I could add a little hot water and melt it quicker if needed, then mix in cereal to get the perfect consistency.

Apple sauce, bananas, avocado and pumpkin are the simplest to make and if you do nothing else, that will still save you money.

If you want to go a step more, all the fruits and vegetables can be prepared for her by simply cooking them until softened (retain all the water that you use to mix in to make it soft and runny). The water will have a lot of vitamins in it after the veggies have been cooked in there. Once they are soft, run them through a blender. Keep adding in the water that you used to cook them until it is a soft, baby food consistency. Once it is nice and soft, pour it into the ice cube trays. Freeze. Pop it out a few days later and wash your trays to use again.

I did a big batch of something about once a week. Then the next week I would do a different batch.

Check the library for a book called Super Baby Food. It gives great details about how long to cook each vegetable, and how much water you will need to add. I just used it as a spring board to get started, then referred to it occasionally when I was trying a new food.

If you decide you want to try to make your own cereal at home, it is easy too.

To make about a two cup batch of baby cereal, once baby is ready for adding protein:

1/3 cup whole dry grains (brown rice, millet, oatmeal, barley, etc)
2 Tbs dried legumes (lentil, dries split peas, etc)

Put those in the blender (DRY) and grind it to a powder. It will make about 1/2 cup of powder. When you are ready to cook the cereal, you stir that into two cups of boiling water. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 10 minutes (double that if you include soy beans). Whisk it frequently while cooking. You can just store this in the fridge for two or three days or freeze it. Be sure you freeze it in small portions. This recipe came from the Super Baby Food book. She has all kinds of great recipes to make nutritious foods from scratch for babies.

Once baby gets older and is ready to try meats, your regular blender will probably struggle with that. We have a Vita Mix. Cook up several chicken breasts with just water (no seasoning). Then take a fresh pear from the grocery and put it in the blender with a piece or two of chicken, adding enough water to make it smooth. (Baby will be old enough by this age to eat raw pear that is mushy.) I would freeze that and use it rather than the baby food meats. Those smell yucky anyway, and the homemade chicken smelled quite appetizing. Since I did not have a strong blender, I would take it to a friend’s house who had one and grind up a bunch at one time, then freeze enough to last several weeks. You could use a food processor as well. You can also add formula or breast milk or baby juice to any food to get it to the correct consistency.

You can also freeze milk in ice cubes. So if you have milk in the fridge and you know you are leaving for a few days, you can freeze it to make it last longer, and use the cubes when you need fresh milk but do not have any. These will work fine in making your homemade mashed potatoes or for baking.

Taking the Hill

~ the official blog of American Virtue magazine ~

Monthly Archives: February 2012