Life on the Road

I wanted to share with you the fruits of our labors – virtually, at least.

Here are the pickled eggs that Nick and I made as our very first canning project:

I’m not a pickle fan myself, so these aren’t the yummiest project I can imagine… But we can do it! We’ve taken that first big step out of uncertainty.

And in a timely manner, Amazon is having a big sale on Canning Supplies right now – up to 40% off!

I still don’t think I can justify the outlay for a pressure canner right now, but it sure is fun to “window shop”!

I was thrilled to find preview copies of the three new Homestead Blessings DVDs in my mailbox recently. These were like a fun new “season”.

The first three DVDs took place in a cozy indoor kitchen / workspace.

These are all set outdoors. You might expect Gardening to be in the garden, of course, but even Canning is set in a lovely outdoor “summer kitchen”.

Perhaps even more than the original trio of DVDs, these are very general topic overviews.

They would be great for someone to watch who thought, “Wow, canning? I think I might like to try it, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin…”

You get an overview of the equipment and processes involved, some fun tips and anecdotes, and a bonus “music video” of a song by the lovely West Ladies (a different one on each DVD). It’s really not enough of the nitty-gritty to go out and do the activity, in most cases.

The Art of Canning

One thing I wished, after watching, was that the recipe for the pickled eggs that they made in the video had been included in the .pdf recipe files.

I know you’ll probably want to go get a canning book to really get into it, but why not put a whole bunch of recipes on here?

Having already read Canning & Preserving for Dummies when I watched this, having received a gracious Freecycle gift of a water bath canner and supplies, and finding myself blessed with a surplus of eggs in the fridge, I decided that Nick and I would jump right in and try pickled eggs.

I popped the DVD into the computer to get the recipe… And ended up popping it back in the DVD player and having Nick watch that segment again and transcribe the recipe.

But aside from that…

I was nice to watch them actually go through the process with a couple of water bath canning projects (jam, as well as the pickled eggs), a pressure canner project (green beans), and then do a few other goodies, like sauerkraut.

Their simple, open style reinforced that canning is normal, and simple to do. It was very encouraging!

The Art of Gardening

Gardening was, perhaps, the weakest link in this chain.

The ladies showed off some of their garden, and talked a little about some topics like tools and container gardening. There was even a segment on composting, which was perhaps the highlight of the DVD.

They planted some green beans and some potatoes, and had some great specific techniques for each of those (potatoes that aren’t dirty?!).

Truly, it would be hard to make a DVD about gardening that was really “comprehensive” – there are an awful lot of variables for each person’s situation (climate, soil, space, etc., etc.). But while this had a few tidbits of really interesting information, overall it left me feeling (still) that gardening was a huge undertaking and I had no idea where to start, what to plant, etc.

On a side note, my very favorite tidbit of information from this DVD was Hannah’s dress. It looks like she took a pair of baggy overalls, split the legs apart, and sewed a triangle panel into the front and back to make a long, adorable overall dress. It is SO hard for me to find long enough skirts, but clearly I could find long enough overalls on the men’s rack… and this sounds more in line with my sewing skills than trying to make something like that from scratch!

The Art of Herbs

The “Herbs” DVD had the advantage of having no preconceived notions – I had no idea what about herbs they were going to talk about.

Vicki did a fairly comprehensive overview of herb gardening.

She walks us through her garden, showing the different herbs, and explaining what type of light and food each plant prefers. She also touches on the herb’s harvesting and uses.

They had several interesting herb uses and projects, as well – vinegar tonics, herb butter, herb teas (with some interesting twists!), and drying your herbs for later use.

* * * * * * * * * *

Whether or not you’ve watched the first three installments of Homestead Blessings, if you’re interested in learning these homekeeping arts, you should check these out!

Until August 10th (Monday), there’s a pre-order discount directly from Franklin Springs. After that, best bet is likely to be Amazon.com with Free Super Saver Shipping.

Not just in general!  I’m talking about the wonderful Homestead Blessings DVD series.

The good people at Frankling Springs Media sent along the set of the DVDs for us to watch and review – and they were a blessing, indeed.  We watched them snuggled up in bed as a family, and everyone enjoyed them as entertainment as well as education.

The hosts are The West Ladies - Vicki, and her daughters Jasmine, Hannah, and CeCe.

Each DVD is a little less than an hour, jam-packed with information on a particular homesteading task.

One of the best things about these DVDs is that they make the topic very accessible to the novice.  If you think breadmaking, making soap, or do-it-yourself candles is an overwhelming task, these are for you!

With simplicity and warmth, the ladies walk you through the materials you need, setting up, and getting started.  In most cases I don’t think I would actually undertake the project without looking up some details online or in a book…  But their comprehensive overview makes me confident that I can do it.

Although they describe the specialized equipment some people use for the crafts, they also discuss (and typically use themselves) simple, re-purposed, or home-made tools.

Here are the three titles in the series:

Homestead Blessings: The Art of Bread Making is perhaps the one disc that is truly everything you need to know to get started.  All the steps are dscussed and explained, and there’s even a .pdf file of the recipes incuded! 

They go over basic bread, then move on to some fun meal and snack ideas, hamburger buns, corn bread and even cinnamon rolls!

Homestead Blessings: The Art of Candle Making was quite an eye opener.  The ladies walk you through the process of dipping candles to make tapers, making “glow lamps,” making adorable gift ideas, adding scents and natural decorations, re-using (recycling) candles, and more.

Candle making is probably not something that would have been on my list of homesteading skills to master right off the bat.  But after watching this I might be tempted to give it a try, for some softer light and homey honey-scent in the evenings.

Homestead Blessings: The Art of Soap Making.  Make my own soap?  You’ve got to be kidding!  Isn’t that an incredibly long process, with toxic chemicals involved?

Well…  Yes.  But you can do it!  And the West Ladies will hold your hand.

Everything from the basics of making your own soap from scratch on up.  Milled soap, adorable molded soap gifts, recycled soap balls, adding scent and color, and much more…

As sensitive as my kids’ skin is, it would really be nice to have soap that I knew was safe and pure.  How empowering!

One fun thing about the DVDs is that the ladies take turns hosting sections.  One will show how to make basic bread, then someone else takes over to make pizza sticks, and so on.  It’s neat to watch them working together as a family, and yet feel like you’re getting to know them each as individuals.

I can envision our life down the road where these skills will fit in even more perfectly…  In a self-sufficient little community called Contentment.

If you want to buy one, I’d suggest Amazon.com – linked by title, above – $19.99 each and eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping.  If you want the whole set (and why not?), head over to get a deal straight from Franklin Springs ($39.95 for all three).

Well, the waiting has begun…

One of my local La Leche League leaders is married to a computer repair guy, so I packed all my woes in a bag and took it to her at our last meeting to pass along.

My external USB backup drive died. Yeah, at the same time as the computer it was backing up. Nice, eh?

Anyhow, he disassembled it and managed to get 50 gigs of data, which he thinks is everything (and sounds about right to me). Whew!

Now he’s working on the laptop. (Meanwhile I’m working on the desktop that used to live in Nick’s room!)

One thing he recommended that I haven’t ever thought about is cleaning out your computer regularly with compressed air. Dust, hair, etc. naturally build up over time, whichcan cause heat retention and degraded performance.

I guess my house-cleaning routine needs a tech task update!

So every few month take the can of compressed air, and make little sweeping blasts across the keyboard, and all the air vent areas. Don’t blow too long or hard in one place, or you can damage the fans inside.

Anyhow, aside from a good physical cleaning, he’s also “cleaning” the content. He agreed with my scans that said there were no viruses or other badies present, but he did find some remnants of earlier infections. Apparently they had been caught and removed, but left some artifacts. Eeew!

When he’s done with all that, he will back off all my content and reinstall the operating system so I can start fresh.

It’s taking a while to get the work done, since I’m on the “go easy on my wallet” program.

If he goes onsite, or does a rush job for someone, he has to sit there and not earn any other income while staring at the computer waiting for – for instance – a program to load, or a scan to complete. So he has to bill for all that time.

If, on the other hand, he can work on my computer between other tasks, he can spend five minutes getting a scan started, then turn his attention (and billing!) to another job. MUCH nicer for me, and well worth the delay.

All the same, I miss having all my files, bookmarks, etc. readily accessible. At least I have pretty much everything either on my Mozy online backup, or on a couple of CDs I burned before handing over my computer…

drugstore.com is just not a good place to shop.  There are too many other people who do what they do, and do it better.

With my last order, I had two major complaints, which rounds and rounds of email with their Customer Service reps have proven to be things they do not wish to resolve in any meaningful fashion.

1. Their “Free Shipping” offer is pretty bogus.

If my order qualifies for free shipping (because I spent at least $50, etc.), but something is on back-order, you can’t just charge me shipping on those!

It’s YOUR fault you don’t have them, not mine!  

Or at a minimum, there should be an option for me to select “remove these from my order and proceed,” or ”ship my order in two (or more) separate shipments at possible additional cost,” or “hold the rest of my order and ship it all at once, and free”!  (Hmmmm, that’s pretty much the Amazon.com model, isn’t it?)

They didn’t charge me a full shipping charge, just a “nominal” $1.99 that was listed as a “Backorder Fee.”  Bah!

When I protested, this was their response:

Thank you for shopping at drugstore.com. This e-mail confirms that we have issued a credit to your drugstore.com account in the amount of $1.99.

To use this credit, simply shop at drugstore.com and place your order. The credit amount will automatically be deducted from your order total. If the order total is less than the credit amount, a credit will remain on your account. This credit is good toward any non-prescription item in the store, but does not cover shipping charges or taxes.

They credited my “drugstore.com account”?!

When I am distressed with their store and don’t want to shop there, rather than ACTUALLY giving me my money back, they give me some kind of credit which I have to spend MORE MONEY to use?!

You MUST be joking…

2. Poor inventory / order fulfillment policies, and poorer Customer Service commitment.

I saw these and liked the idea of using them for our whole family of five to create their own dishes:

They come in six colors, and at every other place I can find them, you order them indivdually by color.  On drugstore.com, it says ”colors may vary.”

That stinks, but I decided I’d deal with it because it was a good price, and it made my order eligible for Free Shipping (or so I thought!  See above).

When it arrived, they had sent four different colors, and one duplicate.  I can’t think of a more rotten combination!  (And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that the two colors we didn’t receive were probably the two we would have liked best).

My packing slip says at the bottom that the items were “proudly picked by Mary.”  Really?  A real person did that?  Mary chose that color scheme for me personlly?  She didn’t pause to think that I might prefer all one color, or all different colors? 

drugstore.com has a, ahem, rather limited return policy.  Unless the item is “defective,” or the return is due to “their error,” they will charge me a $4.99 “return shipping fee”! 

Theoretically, I suppose I could also pay to ship the package out-of-pocket, but their whole system is geared around automatically generating this return label, which is postage-paid, which causes them to assess this fee.

No, in this case it’s not “DEFECTIVE” or an “ERROR,” since and their cop out of refusing to allow color selection covers that.  But I still feel wronged.

At the end of the day…

It’s just plain lousy customer service to tell me that YOU picked out something that I am DISSATISFIED with, but I cannot return or exchange it (in any practical sense).

 If that’s your policy, that’s your policy. But I’m not going to keep shopping somewhere that treats their customers that way. 

Where the heck are they?!

Boy, that sounds odd, doesn’t it? 

What I really mean is, “What happened to the website www.thethingsiwant.com?”

Over the last… goodness, it must be three years or more now…  I have invested a fair bit of time in creating and maintaining these online “wish lists.”  I had one for each member of the family, one for family “communal” wishes, and a private “shopping list” with links to things I wanted to remember.

It’s been a great way for friends and family scattered all over the place to know what to buy the kids for their birthdays, etc.  And of course adding things as I ran across them over the course of time was easy on this end, too.

And then it vanished.

I noticed that the link in my toolbar that I click to bring up the “add this to your list” popup wasn’t working one day, but wrote it off as a bug.  When it continued to fail, I tried going to the website to see if there was anything there about fixing the glitch…  And there was nothing.

nothing

So first of all, I’m sad and frustrated about losing the lists.  Now I need to try to think of “what to get them for their upcoming birthdays” all over again – and quickly!

And second, what do I do with them?  Single-site lists like Amazon’s are great for a lot of things, but don’t have enough flexibility for this. 

Does anyone use any of the other similar (and FREE) services out there?

It hasn’t gone into effect yet (that comes on Feb. 10th), but some of the Etsy vendors have posted some CPSIA-compliance pricing already, just to give you an idea what’s in store. 

See the CPSIA Etsy listings, then you can look in my earlier CPSIA post for ways to take action!

Okay, that probably sounds REALLY weird to a lot of you, right?

I usually do my taxes in January, though. 

• Self-employment leaves me totally in control of everything related to that documentation.
• Good record-keeping means I know how much (little!) interest I earned from my savings.
• Kids and credits means I always get money back.
• Before the big April 15 rush, my return gets processed in days.

Why wait?!

Well this year, I’m waiting on people to send us paperwork.

Wolf worked at Knaus Berry Farm, so I’m waiting for a W-2 from them.  Oh yeah, and another one from one of Wolf’s summer jobs doing stage production.

After all the illness and stress we went through this year, I’m not 100% sure about all my records, either. 

You know what I mean, right? 

The checking account is balanced, but if I missed one month’s $0.03 interest in the savings account, I really doubt I would have missed it…  And I’m pretty sure one of the credit card statements didn’t get reconciled over the summer, even though the bill got paid (since we don’t carry balances, it’s almost too easy to just pay it without reconciling if you’re stressing!). 

So I’m waiting on the banks, my Student Loan holder, and other such folks to send me statements, too.

Which they’re supposed to provide by February 1, right?  Riiii-iiight…

This is one of those things that is really stressful for me: 

There’s a big important job to be done, and I’m responsible for it.  It’s hanging over my head.

But I can’t do it, because of someone else.

Grrrrr!

Have you seen Chore Wars?

What a fun way to make completing household tasks into a dungeon adventure game!  Each family member (or office-mate, or ?) makes a character in your party, and you define the chores and values that apply…

I can’t wait to see how this works out – Nick was really excited about signing up and putting in the “adventures” he’s already completed today, so I’m hopeful.

Here’s Me:

I’ve got the kids signed up, too:

Wolf has to sign himself up when he gets home tonight.

I got just plain worn out with Nick sometime after his third birthday.  As a single mom, having just come through a divorce from his dad, I was exhausted all the time.  He was having nothing to do with potty training, and it was exasperating, so I gave him the choice to wean or potty train, so that I could have a little respite. 

Much to my surprise, he chose to wean.  His stubbornness knew no bounds…  Still doesn’t, come to think of it.

Ten years later, I started the family thing all over again. 

Jewel still nursed at 3 1/2, and meanwhile I am happily breastfeeding her 10 month-old brother.

I would estimate that Jewel didn’t get any significant portion of her nurtition from “real food” until she was at least two, and the baby doesn’t eat at all yet.  No rush with these two, as life is more tolerable this time around. 

Breastfeeding is a hot topic for us.  In addition to all the well-documented scientific proofs of how much better it is, we believe that it is part of God’s plan for women aned families, and carries a lot of benefits that haven’t ever been studied or quanitified.

So Jewel was left in charge of her own weaning timetable.  Of course as she grew older the nursing requests came less and less often.  For a while it was only at bedtime and in the morning.  Then Papa took over bedtime, and it was only mornings…  But it was also there when she was sick, or fell and got hurt, or …

On Saturday, January 3, we’d had a busy day of running around.  Jewel had gotten cold, and was wearing a hooded sweatshirt of Nick’s.  We called her a Jawa… then had to explain that to her, and realized that we need to watch Star Wars!  But I digress.

As we were getting ready for bed, Jewel announced that she was a weaned Jawa.  Nobody was quite sure whether that was part of the Jawa game, or if she meant it – and even so if she would keep meaning it.  She’s said that once or twice before, but it never lasted past bedtime…

The next morning, Jewel took a pretty serious fall.  While observing her for a possible concussion, I nursed her.  But (when things calmed down) we continued talking about her weaning announcement.

Since then she has asked to nurse several times.  Each time I have responded with, “Oh, really, I thought you were weaned?”

The subject changes, and we go on about our business.  I would still nurse her if she asked again in that dialogue, but she hasn’t.

A week and a half later, at her age, I think we’re probably safe saying it:

Jewel is Weaned.

Time to throw a party!  Much more significant as a coming-of-age milestone than 12, 13, or 16, if you ask me…

Any ideas what we should do?