Home Life

It’s live!  Finally!  I’ve gotten around to creating a resource website on the things my family and I do to ‘work with the land’ and save money.  It’s no where near done - I have a ton of articles I am still working on but felt I had enough content to put the site up.

http://www.motherhoodnaturally.com/homestead/home.htm is the link.  Bookmark it and check back often.  As I go through my day I keep getting reminded of things that might be helpful to add to there, so I add it to my list and when I have a few minutes to write it up, I will!

Let me know what you think!

Holidays are approaching!  Something home made, from the heart, can make for a very special gift for loved ones.  You can create thoughtful, useful, and memorable gifts usually for much less than what you’d pay for something in the store, too.  This can help keep your holiday spending budget under control.  Also, keep in mind that the holidays are not the only time you can make homemade gifts!  Birthdays and anniversaries count, too!

If you do a search online, you’ll come up with a TON of home made gift ideas.  Here are a few to get you started:

• Kitchen accessories for the ladies in your life.  Tube-shaped grocery bag holders, placemats, silverwear holders, cute dish towel racks, etc.
• Home-canned jams, jellies, preserves, salsa
• Create a “homecare” basket with home-made cleaning solutions, soaps, detergent and write up a booklet full of other cleaning recipes and nontoxic cleaning ideas.
• Sew clothing or accessories (bags, purses, decorate belts, etc.)
• Home-made household notebooks, pregnancy journals, “baby’s first year” or “school year” scrapbooks for the young and school aged children (made for their parents to write in, of course).  Many free forms and templates are available online, or you can create your own.
• For the kids: bake up some home-made dough threading items, big beads for threading, puzzles and geometric shapes.  Create a felt board or a flannel board (view my personal blog to see how I did it) complete with a set of felt or flannel board peices.  Sew up cloth diapers for a new baby in your life.  Dollhouses, dollhouse accessories, wooden trucks and a toolset (created out of tools you no longer need) can make nice age-appropriete gifts, also. 
• Mason jar mixes: dry cookie and soup mixes make for nice, easy gifts.

Make a list of the people you need to shop for.  Then list their interests, wants or needs.  Then search for gifts you think they’d enjoy!

What have you done, or plan to do?

Do you have kids and want to find neat activities for them to do, for free?

Look no further than the internet.  Doing a search for “free printables” or “(specific topic) printables” will yeild an overwhelming result.  You can find free ideas, activities, worksheets, printable games, puzzles, and coloring sheets ’till your heart is content.

We just began homeschooling my oldest in her preschool year and we plan to homeschool all of our children through the school years.  The internet is a main resource for our schooling, to find relevant material to help her learn while having fun.

You can also find great printables in the Yahoo!Groups geared specifically for the sharing of free printables and great learning activities.