Living Like the Past

Wow, May has been a whirlwind here in our home. We have been so busy with normal things such as gardening and housekeeping but adding in finding ways to live with less use of electricity and water makes for some sore muscles.By the way those balls in the photo above belong to our pets. Our little dog Bernadette collected those for that spot. I am guessing she wanted to dry them.The right tools and equipment is very important to live with less grid such as having a way to dry clothes when it is rainy outside.We are fortunate that we have some family living today that are in their 90s and have clear minds for us to ask questions but our family in their 90s all lived rural, ......

As some of you know from my last article Charles and I are trying to live with minimal electric and water. We do not have city gas, we are an all electric home in the city. I am hemming a blouse while sitting in front of the window for light.I have concerns for our young adults today. Many of them are struggling with starting off on their own. Many if not most of them do not have any exposure to how things were done in the past. They don't know how to do without many things that they could do without because they have had them around them since they were born so they don't know how to reduce their bills.Since we have been living like the year 1942 it has caused us to think ......

This photo is of me in the 1960's when my husband and I were living in Dill city (not Dell City) Oklahoma. Dill city is close to Burns flat where Clinton Sherman Air force Base was located. That base was closed after we did our tour in the military. I was expecting our son Tim and this was our dog Shakey. He always had one ear up and one ear down. He is sitting on a brick that is on top of a air vent to a storm/root cellar. I am wearing a homemade maternity dress that was sewn on a treadle sewing machine that was generously given to me by an elderly couple that lived close by. She had gotten a new electric machine and I was tickled to get this treadl ......

We had a few sweet potatoes left over from the potatoes we grew last year so I put a few in water to grow some slips.You would think with all these roots in the jar it would be ready to plant but sweet potatoes are a bit different.We want to pinch off the stems that are growing from the sweet potato and make slips out of them.This would be a slip and now I will root this and when it has roots I will plant this in the dirt, not the original sweet potato. The slips make sweet potatoes.So I put the original sweet potatoes back in the original jar on the left and put the slips that had roots in one jar and the ones that did not in the other.Now they will sit on our kitchen window ledge to ......

For the end of our fourth month living like 1942 I want to share with you a very special knitting pattern and discuss what we have been doing this month. I cannot show you the completed wash cloth because this is it. I started knitting and have found this to be just beautiful and so I wanted to share it with you right away.During world war 1 and world war 2 people at home wanted to help the fighting soldiers and they would knit socks, sweaters and vests for those fighting in the war. They knitted stump wraps and other items for wounded soldiers and knitters in a red cross unit during ww2 got the idea of knitting these wash cloths for the servicemen in hospitals. Later ......

The handkerchief case...This is part two of Vintage accessories. My mother had the most beautiful accessories. When I was a child I loved to peek into my mothers dresser drawers. I was respectful of the lovely things in her drawers and I knew not to move them from where they were kept.I was a child and I knew that when I became an adult then in time I could have these lovely things. Time has changed many things and children of today have many grown up things given to them by their parents. The clothing that some children wear today is very inappropriate. If it was not appropriate when I was a child it is still not appropriate today.The jewel on the handker ......

I have had a request for further information for the napkin cover and I will include the knives and forks cover as well.If you would like to make one I will give you the measurements so you can make one.You start out with a rectangle piece of fabric 25 1/4 inches up and down by17 inches side to side.It is 25 and 1/4 inches long.17 inches.The bottom flap goes down 8 inches and it is 9 inches across.The side flap is 9 inches and it juts out 4 inches. You would curve the edges.the top comes down 8 inches.You could cut it on the fold so it would be easier to make it even.This is how it folds. You would need to make your own bias tape to go around the edge or purchase it from the stor ......

Many years ago Charles and I stopped drinking sodas. Charles drinks coffee in the morning but drastically reduced his coffee intake. We mostly drink warm water every day.Some of you have asked me, why do we drink warm water? Charles and I became a convert to drinking hot/warm water years ago after reading and article then searching more information about the belief of drinking warm water being better for your body. So the story goes, Charles and I became addicted to drinking warm water. Yesterday I dehydrated some strawberries. They came off the dehydrator almost leaf thin and I decided these would be good for strawberry tea.I will keep the strawberries air ......

I recently read an article in the news about the difficult time that millennials are having and how it is so different for them to leave the nest so to speak. Many are ending up back at home with their parents.The article talks about college and large student loan payments and many not being able to get a good job after graduating from college.This made me do some thinking since three of our Grands are working jobs and taking college courses at this time.The time we live in right now is so different than how it was in the past but only because we make it that way.Many young people now do not understand, and is not their fault, that after we leave the nest we start at the starting point ......

Since it is getting gardening time in the USA it is also canning and dehydrating time too.We can also take advantage of something being on sale at the grocery store and preserving it so it does not spoil. I got out the dehydrator and dehydrated some carrots. In the past people dehydrated many ways, smoke, sun, some built wooden units with trays and ovens. Then came along the electric dehydrator. It is not a 1940s thing but food preservation but we spent the money on one years ago so I am going to use my electric dehydrator because it makes sense.The reason I am posting this is I want to remind folks that when dehydrating vegetables, most of the vegetables need to be bl ......

Sometimes those 1940s recipes just don't work out so well.I was going to do a post on Stuffed Eggplant from one of my 1942 cookbooks but...It just did not taste that great. I will post the recipe and you can make it at your own risk, Charles said the best part of it was before putting your fork in it.Stuffed Eggplant1 Eggplant2 tablespoons butter Salt and Pepper !/2 Cup water 2 Cups breadcrumbsCut the eggplant in half lengthwise and scoop out the center pulp, leaving the rind about one-half inch thick so that the shape may be firm. Cover the shells with cold water. Chop the pulp fine, season it with salt , pepper and butter, cooking a frying pan for ten minut ......

The first daisy has bloomed. Daisies make me happy :)The girls seem to know when I am going to do a post. This is what I see when I turn my desk chair around. There is a twin bed in this room and the only bed they are allowed to lay on. They have their own quilt and take full advantage of using this special place.We have had a very busy week starting off with what we thought would be a simple plumbing fix which led to a new sink. We haven't had an extra minute it seems lately and why there are less posts but this is normally what happens here when spring arrives.Outside the garden is doing well, these are zucchini squash, the tomatoes are getting tall as well as ......

The other evening I asked Charles if we could sit down and talk. I told him I wanted his opinion about something. So we discussed these thoughts and I took notes. I told him that I did not know why I could not seem to finish anything. That as long as we have been working to get ourselves into our old fashioned simple life I feel I may never finish. We decided that some of the reason is that we never had long term goals, we just lived life. So we have spent a long time literally undoing what we had done during the time we did not have a goal.If we would would have planned more instead of just living life I do believe it would have helped prevented us from wasti ......

Since we are living Like 1942 we know that a sugar shortage and rationing is looming.In the spring of 1942 as the war is progressing supplies of sugar and other things have been cut dropping the supply of sugar to 1/3. This is when the realization that sugar would be rationed or else prices would soar and people would stockpile and hoard and then no one would be able to get sugar.An article came out in the paper in January saying that sugar would start rationing in February but it did not. The last day of retail purchases of sugar was April 27th 1942, nobody could go to the store to purchase sugar until May 5th and only with a ration card. We have less than a month to go ......

Sometimes I do things a little bit different.It was getting time to replace our pillows. I have never had much success with washing the pillows because they come out lumpy. So I made a decision...To cut open one of the pillows....Looks like they layer them now....So I took it out and carefully un -layered it. I had to be careful because it is webbed together a bit but I managed.That is when I made the decision to wash it in the tub..... And then, do the other three pillows.... It was a lot of work...I used the tub and a washtub, after the soapy water I rinsed. This was the soapy water which is not sudsy when you use real soap. I made sure to use my ......

This week has been a bit different. I was cooking some beef stew meat that was cut into chunky cubes and it had been simmering and getting low on water so I added a little bit of water and turned the heat up to bring it back to a boil but walked away and got sidetracked until I saw smoke and heard some popping and knew immediately what I had done. I ran to the kitchen, which I should have never left and a bright red burner and smoke billowing out of this pan. I could have started a house fire being distracted. I hope I learned my lesson. I have not done that in years! Well that led me to cleaning the entire house to get the smell out of everything. I have ......

I have posted a few times about patching and piecing fabric. This post is about an old tablecloth that I very much enjoy but it is getting a few holes and it has always been too short for our table.Today I am patching and extending the length.I have been using this cloth as it is and sometimes I layer a white cloth that is longer under this tablecloth. as you can see it is too short.Another issue it has a few holes.So I cut some old flour sack fabric to sew under the cloth.Sewed it to the back and ziz zaged over the holes.I had to piece together the fabric because I did not have very much fabric. I could not match the pattern but it does really matter because it is on the end.The ......

A different type of savings account.Charles and I understand the ups and downs of life because we have been through some ourselves. We look forward to when Charles will retire but the way things are today we have our concerns. It is not the same as when our parents or grandparents retired. I am a few years older than Charles, we didn't know how old each other was when we met and then it did not matter. So I was the first one to discover the world of medicare and social security and the tremendous amount of junk mail that comes with that. We have been doing all we can to save money but I wanted to do more. Charles and I have a good marriage, we are both open to listening to each o ......

As our journey continues living like 1942 our priorities have shifted. We have just passed our first week of our third month.When I look at our current year in today's time and what others are doing and what we are doing there is a distinct difference.Many of our routines and the way we do things have changed such as sleeping, eating and budget to name a few. We went through the purging of clutter, then we went through more purging and now we are purging once more because there are so many things, small things mostly now, that just do not fit in with our lifestyle and have no purpose.BUT, we need different things that have more importance.We have realize how wrong our choices have be ......

I enjoy finding romance in many things. setting the table with simple and pretty plates, french toast with a touch of vanilla and homemade strawberry syrup.In textiles...And romance in the garden.We enjoy having a touch of whimsical and whirley in our garden and yard and what we have found fascinating is that the wildlife enjoys it too. We moved our little gate made of plum tree wood to another area where we needed a gate and added this gate to our secret garden. Our garden door knob.This is one of our whimsy bird feeders we made several years ago from an old tin roofing tile and some copper we stripped from some leftover electrical wiring.We normally make most of our thing ......