Living Like the Past

After my last post about the 30 day declutter challenge I decided to start my challenge backwards since I was already working on downsizing. I pushed hard with this and we made many trips to donations as well as packing up some things for our children to be kept or sold since they are more sell savvy with ebay and new ways of selling things.Just before we started this we had gone for a well check at the doctors office, one of Charles well check where you have blood work the week before then go the next week to the doctor. Well the week he went to the doctor we picked up a respiratory infection while at the doctors office. This is the second time this year we got sick after ......

I have learned a good bit lately and I am finally understand things I should have understood long ago.The best thing that could have happened to me is for my washing machine to break down and not be able to be fixed for 6 weeks due to a back ordered part.When you hand wash everything, sheets, towels, blankets, underwear, socks, pants, shirts, dresses, skirts, dog blankets, rugs, kitchen wash cloths, rags, dish towels and more for six weeks in the upper 90s to over 100 degrees you can do anything.You almost have to get mad with it until you learn your lesson. I had a lot of talking to do with my family that has gone before me. I needed to figure out some things. Their ......

This is just a reminder to please check your email address in the contact form because if there is just one letter off or one error my responses back to you will come back to me as non deliverable. I feel a bit sad when I cannot answer you back and feel you might think I do not answer my emails.I read every email that I receive, sometimes it takes me awhile to get back if I have a lot going on here but if I do not it is due to a snag in the email, either it did not forward or there is a typo when typing in your email address.I will use this post to answer some questions that I could not answer due to email issues. Also many of you notice things in the background of the photos and ......

Boy have I learned a lot this past month! We have been very busy with family visiting here and I have enjoyed seeing everyone in person, during this time we have been doing a household water study and doing a Tasha Tudor Month of cooking. Our washing machine has been out of order for the last three weeks now. Thus the previous posts about hand washing laundry.I explained to the family that was staying over that we are doing a household water study, learning how much and where our water was going and what we can do to reduce what we use. We are also doing a fun Tasha Tudor cooking month and all of our meals are from the Tasha Tudor family cookbook, just because we ......

When something unexpected happens I wonder what am I suppose to learn from this?My last post I wrote about our High Efficiency washer breaking down. I have been hand washing our laundry for over a week now and still one week to go before the service man comes out to check the washer. I have always hand washed some of our laundry but I use the washer too because I have it but I don't like how the High Efficiency washers wash and rinse because it does not clean the laundry, mostly it does not rinse them well. We have never returned an appliance before but when we bought our first high efficiency washing machine we returned the first one, then the second one and was too embarrassed ......

Well we finally managed to get the family together, at least part of us. This past weekend we managed to visit one another here at our house.My brother and sister -in -law and Niece and Great niece will be coming the end of this month. :) I will be so happy to see them.The cucumbers are coming along well and we have been eating cucumbers for about a week now. There are three pots here, two that are cucumber plants and one that is a cantaloupe.Here is one of the baby cantaloupes. I will put it in a ladies stocking when it starts getting heavy and tie it to the wire. I grew some like this a few years ago in a vertical garden.This is one of our bug catchers, I have ......

I love to let onions bloom out in the garden. They are beautiful and they make seeds :)What to do with just a hand full of blueberries and one fig? I gave Charles the fresh fig to eat because he really wanted to eat it and....I made blueberry syrup with the small amount of blueberries. I like making simple syrups using fruits. I don't measure but I take my fruit, it may be strawberries or raspberries or blueberries or dewberries or whatever and I put them in a small pan and cover them with water and a few tablespoons of sugar I put almost 4 tablespoons with these, and boiled them. I mash the berries with a fork and boil some more until it thickens enough to slig ......

We are in the first week of June and the spring flowers are already beginning to lose their vitality. I will miss the happiness they bring in the backyard but then eventually the fall flowers will appear.Charles and I have been working on a new gardening plan, one where we can manage better. This year has been very difficult crawling on the ground pulling weeds. Each year we transplant more flowers and less vegetables because of the work it requires to grow the vegetables.So we converted our cattle trough into a carrot and onion bed and we are going to gradually add these if this one works well. We had purchased the cattle trough for the outdoor bath house but then de ......

I want to follow the last post about keeping a pantry with a post about how we have made our home to be comfortable during a power outage.I simply do not like to be uncomfortable and if our power goes out or we have a disruption in our water supply we can switch over without switching anything here at our house and this is what we did.I am sharing this with you so you can get some of your own ideas. It seems almost every day we hear of storms knocking out power somewhere. We have been told over and over to prepare emergency kits and have plans for emergencies and for power outages.If our power goes out just before dinner time or breakfast or whenever we just go out to our back po ......

When we think of Homesteading we think Rural Homesteading but we do not have to live rural to homestead. This picture above is a picture I took of a local rural homestead outside our city.We are far removed from the old homesteading ways. I have noticed that there is a lot of interest in homesteading today but many people have ideas that homesteading will make them completely independent. Long ago homesteaders still needed dry goods and supplies and today that is the same. Charles and I are homesteading in the city. We are doing things the old way and growing part of our food in the small space that we have.Homesteading can be done on a farm, in a wooded area, just outside of tow ......

One thing in life we can be sure of and that is change. All through our lives, each day, things change. The weather, the time, the sun moves constantly into different positions.We age, we change sizes. Things that are new wear out, something we clean today is dirty tomorrow. This is life.We always have something to do. There is cooking and laundry, cleaning and maintaining the things we have. This is no matter where we live because we have to eat and wash our clothes.If we have pets then there is extra cleaning, we need to wash cages, pet bowls, change their water regularly and make sure they have fresh air, sunshine and are kept cool and warm.But what abo ......

We can look like the present and live like the past. Living like the past is simply living more simple. We can live more simple and still have modern things. I prefer the old things to the new things but there are modern items that can help us to live like the past. It may look different but does the same thing. For instance a modern stove. In the past people cooked over campfire, fireplaces, wood stoves, coal, fuel and such. Along came electricity and the electric range was made. They all serve the same purpose. Cooking homemade meals.We can string a clothesline or use a modern rack to dry clothes.They achieve the same thing, to dry ......

My mothers friend Fanny Bell was a soft spoken lady. I loved her small home and simple life. Fanny Bell was especially good at one thing, making egg custard pie.I have mentioned Fanny Bell in several posts but I wanted to bring up this subject again. Sometime we need a reminder to help us get balance back in our lives, I know I do.We live in a very competitive world now, I see it everywhere in many different ways. Personally I don't like it and feel it may be part of the evil in our world. The reason I feel this way is because it seems that we have been over the tipping point several times now. Everywhere people are trying to top the next person and I don't understand why. This photo ab ......

Do you see it? I did and we had to turn around and stop and walk to the gate.For just a little while it felt like going home. When my children were young we had a small mini farm. This gate looked like the one we had and it just drew me in. We had two horses some pigs and chickens, a catfish pond and 10 acres. That does not sound like many acres to some but 10 acres was plenty for us. Many of my family members lived on farms and I have a lot of good memories.It seems the older I get the more I think about the simple times but I have a feeling that the hectic world we live in causes some of this. As a child I was a city girl mostly but much ......

Charles and I have been two busy bees lately. We have been trying to finish up some projects and repairs. We will always have something to fix or something to do but we wanted to remove some work projects that have been on our list of things to do.One of these projects required us to take a nice short drive just outside the main circle of our town. We live in Dothan Alabama and there is a large circle that goes around our town called the Ross Clark Circle. So when someone asks the location of a place they may ask if it is inside or outside the circle.So our short trip was outside the circle.Under the recent Lavabo post I showed you how we changed an antique wash ......

There has been much to do around the house because it is spring but each season brings on new things and as seasons change so do the things we do.When we live an old fashioned life many of the things we do requires more time, more planning and more muscle. I have said before that modern easy comes with a cost literally.Above I am making the laundry soap powder I use.I grate soap and weigh what I grated and then I weigh the same amount of washing soda and add that. I also make a batch with equal weights of grated bar soap, this batch I am using kirks castile unscented, washing soda and borax. I also add some essential oil and shake it up. So I make two batches, one wit ......

This is the early morning view from our kitchen sink window. I like to watch the birds taking baths and getting a drink of water in the birdbath that is seen top right in the picture.I try to do my best to not discuss news or politics on my blog posts because we all get enough of it and it is terribly distressing. Sometimes I want to go on a rant just like everyone else. I feel that we are watching a sink hole that has no ending to how far it spreads and it just seems no end to the shocking things people do or say. I am actually scared at times at where this all is taking us. I am not scared for me but for the young people. This is all that I want to say about this be ......

As I am doing this post it is the last day of March (1944). We are still tweaking things in the house and moving a few things around but that will most likely be something that will continue for quite awhile. I went through and cut up some of the most worn kitchen towels to use as paper towel replacements.As many of you know I normally change out the tablecloth each month. I started to put my Easter cloth on but the family is scattered this year so I put one of my most vintage cloths because I like it.The weather has been warm and breezy so I have been able to keep the windows open longer at a time. The only problem with opening the windows this time of year is the po ......

First I want to share this beautiful flower that we have growing in our yard. We have several different kinds of mums and I do not know all the official names but this one is larger and beautiful. These three photos are stages of the blooms I took.Starting to open...I hope this brightens your day, it does mine. I have been thinking about how much tending it takes to run a household and keep a yard and garden tidy.If we want to harvest the garden.... We have to prepare the soil, plant it and tend it.We tend to our laundry. Some of our work in the home has priority. Laundry is on that priority list.Sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, dusting.... important to tend to to ......

The hummers are back! We spotted our first hummingbird a little over a week ago. They leave just before winter and we are always excited to see them when they come back.This morning I spotted this one on a branch at our back porch. Last year during a hurricane I ran out and grabbed branches and zip ties and tied the branches to the ironwork on the porch because a hummingbird was trying to stay safe on our porch but there was hardly any safe area for her to perch. She stayed on the branch throughout the hurricane into the next day when it was safe to leave. I did not remove the branches from the porch and this morning I see this young hummingbird perched on ......