Living Like the Past

Charles and I have been having some serious discussions lately since Charles is considering retirement. It will not be this year and possibly not next year but soon after that.We have always been very close and the older we get the closer we get. We are husband and wife and Best Friends as well. We never tire of each other and I feel that other than the fact that we love each other so very much, we are both creative and enjoy making life and adventure right here at home and that keeps us happy.Charles, is a wonderful man, it seems as if he came from our Grandparents Generation instead of his generation. He is very interested in history which makes our life interesting ......

We have had much rain the last several weeks. Quite a bit of rain before the tropical storm Claudette even got near and since then it has rained every day. Mosquitoes are now the problem but we have to take the bad with the good because many other states are in a serious drought. I am thankful for this rainfall.Charles and I live a much more old fashioned life here at our home. Old fashioned compared to those around us but I feel many people are taking a step back as well and going back to basics. So this post is about the way we live and what is going on around our home and garden. The long beans have done well in our small patch of beans. ......

I am slowly getting our home to where I really want and need it to be. I moved the enamelware to the top of Windsor, our 1920s icebox, because it is cooler here for the fresh vegetables.I have been going through drawers and cabinets and back over them again because I have lived a good while now and we have accumulated a lot of things by this time. I feel better about it though because it is more comfortable.When life gets unjumbled and uncluttered it is easier to do the the daily things such as cooking and baking. To us there is nothing better that southern cooking when summer vegetables are being harvested. When we are raised on home cooking there are smells that we ne ......

I originally posted this post on June 1, 2021 but I unpublished it after only leaving it up for a few hours. I felt it was too long and and I felt it had too much of me in this post. The past couple of years I am guilty of letting my thoughts measure good and bad by what I have read in the news. I have tried to not let it affect me but occasionally it leaks out.I had to take some time to pray about this and refocus and keep my perspective of why I am doing this blog. That is to share what I can remember of the past and what we have studied in our history research of the past because I feel it is important.I have brought this post back because someone that read it told ......

Today is June the 2nd and the garden, I have been painting and cooking and gardening and the garden is getting full but not harvest time. I thought I would just show what is going on in and around the house.But I will go back inside first.I decided to try a new carrot cake roll that I found online because I wanted a small cake.***It is a simple cake and just a sheet cake and rolled in a bakers towel, unrolled after it has cooled and filling spread over...Then it is iced and rolled back into a roll.It is then dusted with powdered sugar and placed in the refrigerator to chill. The cake is more dense than a regular fluffy carrot cake but the rolled cake would be good with a cup ......

I am doing a part three of One room proper to answer some questions.A long while ago I was trying different cleaning methods for cleaning our home. I did the cleaning card system where you write cleaning jobs and maintenance down on index cards and put them in a box. At first I liked cleaning this way and I did a post about it but I had too many cards after a few months of using this system. I kept trying to add things as I came around to noticing something needed to be done and I could not keep up with the cards. So I came up with a new way and called it One Room Proper where I clean one room really well each day of the week except on the Sabbath. I divided up the room ......

Charles and I have been spending a lot of time at our kitchen table. We have our meals here and we sort items here, we plan here. We recently re-arranged again and put our smaller white table into the living room to use as a planning table.It is important to keep the kitchen or dining table cleared for meals and so this helps us to have a table to sit together and talk with our notebooks and journals at the smaller table.This is where we put our smaller white table. We have learned that not having a plan can be expensive and so we are doing much better planning. We do not set goals as much as we plan and take steps to follow our plan. This is how we paid our home and ......

Sometimes we find ourselves in overwhelming situations and some household projects and chores seem too much to complete. But if we keep on moving in the right direction it can eventually happen.I love this figurine shown above because it reminds me of a more simple time. I love to imagine stories about this little boy and I do not see him as poor but as a child that will be running along to school with his slate, book and lunch getting fresh air and exercise. For the last year and so many months now, just like many people I have felt lethargic and in a brain fog of sorts with the events in the world.But during this time I have been working towards a goal of having our home sorted ......

This is our backyard from what we call the bottom end. Our yard is like a triangle. It is not a big yard. Each year we change and add new things after observing what worked and did not work. Gardening is different each year because of wet or dry or hot or cold, pests are worse some years.We are at a point in our small space that our perennial plants are set. These produce each year on their own now. These are lemons, satsumas, berries, plums, pears, peaches, apples figs. Some are still young and some mature. Then we have our annual beds where we plant our vegetables and a few annual flowers. We do have vegetables that are perennial such as our asparagus.Ou ......

We each can change the things in our lives that need improvement. We should never just settle with something that is making our life stressful. If each day, we do just one thing to improve whatever it is, then in thirty days we will be thirty times more improved. Charles and I have been crunching numbers so to speak. We have been budgeting and figuring out how to save money more than we already are.I added a tab to one of my journals that says Study. Some of you may feel I have abandoned our living like the past and our 1930s studies but we have not. We have to live in this real time of 2021 but we are still learning about the past and practicing the t ......

Many things have been going on at our house in between posts. We are in the practice stage of Charles retiring. We want to know what we are doing before it is real.We realize since we are considered middle income bracket here in the U.S, we must lower our expenses even more than we have already. Our home is paid for but health insurance cost is very high and so is deductibles, medical expenses after insurance pays and deductibles.We are still studying the past which helps us to understand difficult times. I am not saying that we will have difficult times when we are both retired but we are realistic that there will be quite a difference. I am very thankful that we started these h ......

As keeper of our home, I take my role with utmost importance. I was born before computers, cell phones and television. I remember a time that was more quiet and respectful.I grew and changed and experienced and now I realize the burden of too much. The way this world is today has become scrambled, out of balance and spilling over. I want our home as simple as it was long ago. I want to be the Grandma with graying hair that has a garden and wears baggy overalls and old shoes and a big floppy hat. The wife, mom, grandma, great grandma that wears an apron as I am all of these things and I want to resemble my Grandmother as I remember her and hope I can become as ......

The morning sun is shining in through the windows. Another day to do the best we can. Another day to continue on with the things left from the day before.This is all we can do, we are just one person and truly we can only do one thing at a time if we want to do it well.This day will come and then it will go and it is up to us to use this time we are giving to do the best we can.I feel the best we can is when we focus on just that one thing at a time. If I have many things to do and try to do them all quickly then I normally will not finish them all and it would not have been done well. These are long beans that have germinated and have emerged from the soil. There ......

Before I get started with this post, I would like to say that our kitchen walls are not this color of yellow. I have noticed that in most all of my kitchen pictures on my blog that the yellow show anywhere from school bus yellow to orange yellow to whatever color than how it actually is. My camera does not show the color of yellow as it really is for some reason. The yellow on the walls are a soft pale butter cream.I have decided to paint over the yellow paint anyway so this part of the kitchen will be changing. I am not painting over the yellow because it shows up a non lovely yellow in photos but because I do like white paint in the kitchen and it a neutral color and when I chan ......

Long ago I lived in a little white wooden house. This was in the 1960s and I had only been married for a few years. I was new a being a keeper of my home. I have been thinking quite a bit about that little white house. It had two small bedrooms, one small bathroom, a very small living room and a combination kitchen and dining area.There was no telephone and cell phones had not been invented at that time. There was no television or cable anything. There was no computer anything because we did not have them in our homes at that time. Life was good. Our bills were few and our military pay was low but we were happy. We had all we needed. ......

Sometimes we get stuck where we are. Some people can move on, pack up and start over but some people, at least for now must stay where they are. This does not have to end your dreams or never live like you want to live. I cannot speak for others and I can only talk about the things I know about. With this blog it is about real life and experiences just for us. Some people that write to me tell me that they come to my blog for peace or to feel home. Some are searching and many of us do search for something that we feel we do not have but often we are not sure what that is. It might be right there and you just do not recognize it.Charles and I enjoy a simple li ......

In this photo it is early dawn. Just as we adjust to the days with less daylight it starts to change again. Many people do not consider when daylight begins and sunset ends the day. This is because of modern electricity and often people have lights on all hours of the day and night. It seems that in this modern world there needs to be a better plan to not upset our Circadian Rhythms. If we could only let our bodies adjust to morning light and evening darkness naturally.There are things we can do at home to bring a more settled and restful state in our home.It seems to me that it helps us to wake with a softer light and give our body time to wake slowly. A blog friend and I w ......

As we moved into March, I thought and looked back at where we were in March of 2020 and as the old saying goes, a lot of water has flowed under that bridge. What a year it has been. It has had it's highs and lows but the most important it also has been a learning experience.Charles and I started this notebook taking our temperature and blood pressure and pulse every morning. We have not missed one single day. On March the 14th it will be one full year of taking these vitals. We added columns to our book, we started recording oxygen levels after we purchased a finger oxygen monitor. We also added our weight. We took this virus serious at the very beginning and we a ......

Long ago families were much closer than we are today. They often lived close enough to visit. and If they did not they visited with neighbors and friends. Many of my older diaries spell out this information.People took care of one another and also they took care of their homes and they had in their homes the tools to live without electricity and running water because they did not have it. They had the items needed to live a life not dependent on food stores just around the corner.I cannot name the number of posts I have done on living a more prepared life before this past year happened. But I just cannot quit trying to get my message out that we all need to take responsibil ......

It is up to us how we choose to live. Life is full of choices.I enjoy living more like the past and I cannot remember one single home that was minimalist in my earlier years, unless it was because they were just starting out. Keeping home long ago was wonderful because often many items in the home were homemade. Quilts and curtains, tablecloths, placemats and rugs. My grandmother would make doll clothes, several of my Aunties and family members were very skilled with sewing and knitting and crochet. This is tatting and my mother passed down to me a very old tatting shuttle. Sadly I had to teach myself to use it because those that used it before me were no lo ......