The other day I got an email from Sara Star over at Spirits Craft telling me that I’d been selected as a winner of the Domestic Witch Blog Award. I’m touched to have my writing so honored.

Today has been a difficult one. Last night I tried taking an L-tryptophan capsule to help with my ongoing insomnia and it worked too well, I’ve been exhausted all day and my stomach has also felt very off. So, of course, what do I do but come home and find myself in the middle of a whirlwind of projects before I can rest? But they were necessary, so I gritted my teeth and hurried through as best I could so that I could get to right here and right now, relaxing in bed with my feet elevated and a big bowl of rice dressed with garlic, Bragg’s, and butter (my palliative for every ailment) cooling so that I can eat.

When I picked my daughter up from summer camp today, her face wobbled when she saw me and she got teary. I asked what was wrong and she sobbed that they had been promised popsicles later that afternoon. She can’t take a popsicle on the bus, so I picked her up and carried her inside, thinking, thinking, thinking. Then I said, “I bet we can make a better popsicle at home.” Her tears stopped, then she looked at me, and said, “Really, mama?” Of course, now that I’ve made this suggestion, I must deliver on it if at all possible, so I started thinking of what we might have to make popsicles with at home. She was very specific that she wanted “fancy” popsicles, meaning she wanted something analogous to store-bought pops, not our usual juice or applesauce popsicles. I started digging through her snack cupboard and found a box of strawberry gelatin and a packet of unsweetened grape soft drink mix. I poured half of each packet into a big pyrex measure along with a half-cup of sugar and a cup of boiling water, stirred it until all of the powders dissolved, added a cup of cold water, then poured the liquid through a small funnel into our popsicle mold (it makes eight; if you have two molds, you could easily double this recipe for delighting many, many kids). They’re now chilling in the freezer, so she’ll have popsicles tomorrow and, given how good the solution smelled while I was mixing it up, I’m betting that they’ll be a winner with my daughter.

She also reminded me that we’d used up the last of the bread this morning, so I put the ingredients for a small loaf of honey oatmeal bread into the bread machine. I usually only use the machine for mixing dough while I’m busy with other things but since I’m not feeling 100% today, I decided to sacrifice quality for convenience this time. I’m having a craving for a loaf of jalapeno bread, something with a nice corn and pepper flavor that will make great, savory toast or grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato. I’m going to tinker with a recipe for cubano bread that I really enjoy, and maybe I’ll roast the peppers to bring out their sweetness and spice.

My lower back continues to bother me as well after straining it awhile ago, tonight I’m thinking of making a castor oil pack to break up any adhesions in the muscles. To make a castor oil pack, you wet a flannel cloth with enough castor oil to soak the cloth but not be a drippy mess, then you place it over the affected area, bind it with some plastic wrap or a strip of old sheet, then lay a heating pad or hot water bottle over the wrap and rest awhile. Once you remove the compress, wash the skin that was covered and do some gentle massage to further relax the area. The flannel can be saved in a container in the fridge and reused many times.

I should make some rice packs for myself, too, mine are about at the end of their useful lives. Using cotton or cotton flannel, sew a square, rectangle, or roll and fill it with rice or rice and herbs – lavender is really nice – then you can heat the packs in the microwave for 30-60 seconds and place them on sprains, strains, or aching tummies. Sometimes when it’s very cold out, I’ll warm them up and put them in bed so we can slip between pre-warmed sheets that feel so cozy.

In a few more minutes, my pick-me-up tea should be ready: kombu (a seaweed easily found in Asian groceries), adzuki beans, and a shiitake mushroom steeped together, tightly covered, for 30 minutes; then you drink the broth and, if you like, eat the kombu and the mushroom – the beans can be composted. I discovered the kombu and adzuki tea in a whole foods cookbook awhile back. The mushroom was my own addition and I think it really adds to the overall nutritional value of the brew. I’m not sure exactly why it works, but it always make me feel better when I’m under the weather. A bit of an acquired taste, though, sometimes I toss in a bit of ginger or tamari for flavor.

My daughter is going away for a week to visit her grandparents before school starts. While she’s gone, I’m planning to split my time between work, projects, and relaxation, probably with plenty of spa treatments thrown in. One of my projects will be making a schultute (literally, school horn) for her first day of first grade. It’s a German tradition. You make a big cone out of posterboard and tissue paper, fill it with their school supplies and some treats or small gifts, then, when class starts on their first day, they get to open them, then display them on the classroom wall for the rest of the year. I think it’s a very sweet tradition and one that my daughter is very excited about. She wants me to make her a red schultute with sharks on it, so I need red posterboard, a bunch of shark stickers or gray paper to make cut-out sharks, then some tissue paper. I have all of her school supplies for next year, so I just need to come up with some treats, preferably homemade.

But, for tonight, I’m going to take it easy in the hopes of feeling much better tomorrow.

Since I was already working from home today, I looked at the morning forecast and, after consulting with my daughter, decided that it would be nice if she stayed home from her summer program today, both so I could spend time with her and to have a break from the heat. We got to have a leisurely breakfast of whole-grain toast with peanut butter, fresh fruit, and herbal tea before I started my workday. She watched some educational children’s programming on public broadcasting but after a little over an hour, started clamoring for my attention. I handed her a pile of felt, fabric scraps, and a fabric marker, then told her to design some clothes and accessories for her favorite dolls. She set to work and spent most of the day engrossed in designing purses, backpacks, aprons, guitars, and more. She’s very artistic and I like to encourage not only her particular talent for drawing, but her ability to entertain herself. I think it also helps her not to think as a constant consumer when she actively can create her own playthings (with some help from Mom). Tonight I sewed the backpack she designed and, while I sewed the body together and the straps, she sewed on the small, decorative pocket herself while I coached her. It was only the second time she’s sewn with a running stitch but she did a really good job. I think that basic hand sewing skills are so vital, even if you only ever use them to do minor repairs.

I worked all day with a break for lunch, leftover whole grain pilaf with black beans, roasted peppers, and corn topped with a dollop of yogurt, and a short walk around the cul-de-sac with child and dog. It was too hot to go far, none of us like this kind of intense heat. Once we were back, I juiced some apples with beets and the last carrots for a quick refresher before tackling the take-home work again. I ended up having to work late to finish it all, so we had a quick dinner of quesadillas with fresh, chopped tomatoes and finely diced onion with a plate of cut fresh vegetables on the side. It was good and left us with plenty of time to get out to the garden.

We planted more basil because I really want a basil plant to bring indoors for the winter. They rarely produce enough for pesto but it is so nice to have a few fresh leaves to shred and sprinkle over pasta or soup. We also planted a bowl with red oakleaf lettuce for cut-and-come-again baby greens and a few more chives sprinkled between for companion planting. I planted two of the four broccoli plants that I plan on over-wintering.

The chamomile I was trying to start for an indoor plant seemingly got burned to a crisp today even though I’d been watering it evenly and moved it into the shade of a larger planter this morning. I’ll keep at it for a bit longer to see if anything survived, but I may just have to wait until spring to have a lovely window box full of German chamomile. It’s my daughter’s favorite herbal tea and I definitely want enough of it to harvest for tea and medicinal purposes. Several years ago I was introduced to an herbal syrup made from boiling down organic apple juice and chamomile or mint; it was fantastic diluted with water or sparkling water over ice. I would love to make and bottle my own versions. I bet rosemary or lavender syrup would be excellent as well.

I have more fall and winter seeds on the way. I’ve set aside a large pot for seeding with easter egg radishes and thumbelina carrots. I know that I can do successive seedings of the radishes all the way through to severe winter weather, perhaps a double crop of the carrots as well. I think my daughter will like the carrots, they’re natural small globes, also called French market carrots.

The compost that we’re getting from the worm bin is just of such excellent quality. Black and rich. I need to figure out a way to sift it, though, to remove larger particulates and the worms. Honestly, I’m thinking of just buying a child’s beach toy with a sifter bottom and using that. It seems like my least expensive and time-consuming option. I need another brick of coconut fiber or peat to help retard clumping in the compost because it can be really dense and holds a lot of moisture. I also need to keep my eyes open for more downed branches from the maple trees to use as leaf mulch in my layered containers.

I have a large jar of honey that is starting to crystallize. My plan is to pour off the honey that is still liquid, then scoop out the crystallized honey into a saucepan with some strong chopped onion and garlic to make cough syrup. Too bad I don’t have a source for coltsfoot, which is also good for coughs. Maybe I can find some slippery elm, echinacea, and goldenseal to add to it, though, to make it a more broad-spectrum syrup. I need to restock our supply of elderberry syrup, too, it was so helpful during last winter’s flu season.

Another busy day drawing to an end, but I feel so good about the things we’re doing right now that it gives me energy. The gardening, the projects, the cooking, the healthier mostly whole foods diet. I feel good. I feel positive about the much bigger steps ahead. Those steps back to the land.

This morning I started the major project of revamping my container garden. It fell into terrible disrepair after my ruptured cornea and some personal troubles. Until recently I just didn’t care about my usually vibrant deck and now that I’m feeling better, I miss having that space full of useful plant life. My strawberries, green onions, and parsley survived my rampant neglect, but everything else went the way of the dodo but this does give me the opportunity to correct some mistakes I made the first time around and hopefully to revamp my containers for more efficiency. I would love to create a tiered box system along the back wall so that I could do a miniature version of crop rotation for optimal plant health and productivity. I’d also like to re-dedicate some of my half-barrels to naturally dwarfed fruit plants.

I need to reread my book about lasagne gardening for some inspiration. All I did today was mulch the strawberries and parsley with dead leaves that had blown onto the deck and the remains of the plants that died in the heat, then emptied some of the smaller, unproductive pots into a double-layered garbage bag. It started getting warmer out after about an hour, so we stopped there and maybe I’ll go back out after dinner to start refreshing the dirt with worm castings and “tea”. Sieving out the worms is going to be a project since I don’t have any screen to fashion a sifter

I finally finished the pillowcase dress a few days ago (pictures below); I think it turned out really well and I’d like to make a few more.
[caption id="attachment_295" align="aligncenter" width="215" caption="Hand-sewn pillowcase dress"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_296" align="aligncenter" width="289" caption="Hand-embroidered hem of pillowcase dress"][/caption]

Today I made homemade pesto, hard-boiled eggs, and rice pilaf. I have a lovely head of cabbage that I’m trying to find culinary inspiration for. I wish I had a fermenting crock, some homemade sauerkraut would be so good. Maybe a stir-fry or some coleslaw with an interesting twist.

All of this despite a serious bout of the lazies making me want to kick back and do very little.

After going through my daughter’s clothing while cleaning her room, I realized that we were giving over half of it to the thrift stores because she has grown so much over the summer. I plan to do some more sewing for her but the need for pants and shirts was truly more than I could sew since I’m still learning machine sewing. Then I remembered that I had a coupon for Value Village that gave me $50 off of a $100 purchase. That’s a deal, especially considering that I can usually buy at least three times as much children’s clothing at a thrift store than I can at a chain department store for the same amount of money. Today was no exception, I was able to buy several pairs of pants, tops, and an insulated vest for her – every piece of it from high quality labels. Now all she needs are school supplies, a winter coat, and maybe a pair of gym shoes to be school-ready.

I was also able to buy a few lightweight tops and a skirt for myself, two large pieces of fabric (one a light flannel perfect for lining winter clothes or patch quilting, the other a medium-weight stretch knit for pajamas, shirts, or sports wear), and some books for my daughter and I. And we got all of that for $60. I wonder how much non-thrifty parents spend on their children’s school wardrobes each year. I really have no idea because it’s so rare for me to buy something that isn’t secondhand or on sale. I tend to shop ahead, too, buying clothes out of season and a bit larger than she currently wears so that she can grow into them in the right season. About the only things I buy new for her are socks, underwear, shoes, and coats – but even those I tend to buy on sale whenever possible. I try not to pay full retail price for anything if I can help it.

Still working away at the pillowcase dress. I might cheat and use strips of fusible bonding material to attach the hem decoration instead of stitching so that she can wear it sooner than not. The weather is quite hot here and I know she’d be comfortable in her cool, cotton pillowcase dress. I just need to finish the second bias tape ribbon tie.

I also had a chance to stop at a fabric store to pick up some machine thread for future projects. I had a 20% off an entire purchase coupon (I’m willing to sign up for newsletters if they yield such bargains) so I was able to save $13.00 on six large spools of thread, more tailor’s pencils (including a pencil that marks on dark fabrics, a decorative iron-on for a blank t-shirt my daughter has, a remnant of polar fleece that is large enough to make a hat, vest, and scarf, maybe even some mittens for my daughter, and an ironing mat since I have yet to figure out where I could hang an ironing board around here without it being in the way.

If I finish the dress tomorrow, I may spend some time cutting pieces for the capri pants and tank top pattern I have for my daughter. I forgot to buy lining fabric at the craft store because I was a bit bedraggled from heat and hunger or I’d start in on the vest and shorts set she’s in love with. I’ve never tried making a lined garment before; I think it will be an interesting challenge. I hope to keep improving my sewing skills because my daughter is eager to learn as well and I would love to teach her and learn more with her. She and I need to work at our knitting skills some more, too, we’re at about the same level there still.

Tomorrow is about cooking and laundry. But tonight is about snuggling, sewing, and watching movies with a bowl of air-popped popcorn together.

Last year I found a big bag of laundered and folded linens sitting next to a dumpster, so I brought them home and they turned out to be clean and in nice condition; however they’re a lot of mismatched pieces that I’m most likely going to repurpose. Currently I’m turning a pink pillowcase into a dress for my daughter. Tonight I cut the top opening and armholes, now I’m hemming them by hand because I don’t have machine thread in a color that matches well enough. I’m going to use red bias tape to make ribbon ties at the shoulders and I might attach more bias tape at the sides to make a back tie. I have a scrap of red cotton with tan polka dot. I might use it to make appliques in the shape of hearts or strawberries. I haven’t decided yet. I could also embroider a simple floral motif along the hem, though that would take a bit more time.

Hand sewing can be tiring but it has a soothing rhythm to it and I find it easy to make small adjustments as I go if I notice that the fabric is shifting as I work. I do need to pick up some more machine thread in some basic colors. I currently only have black and white, but I could use some blue, pink, red, and purple to match the fabrics I have on hand. I need to get another storage bin big enough to hold my odds and ends, too, so I can clear off my workspace for cutting and piecing.

My daughter is on a camping trip and working on her dress is helping with how much I’m missing her while she’s gone. Every stitch another little bit of love for her. I hope I can finish it before she gets home and surprise her with it. I’ll post pictures once it’s done.

Today I took a bag full of compost worms to my daughter’s school. They already have a compost pile but they wanted a worm bin as well for the kids to study and my worm bin is full to overflowing with red worms so I was happy to get rid of some. I’m going to help them maintain them because apparently they’ve had problems with past attempts at keeping the worms alive, though I’m not sure why. I can’t seem to slow mine down let alone kill them off.

I’m very pleased with all of the steps that her school takes to be eco-friendly. I think that it really teaches the kids quite a bit when they see sustainable practices put into action rather than just hearing or reading about them.

My daughter’s bedroom has been the victim of many generous gifts. I was after her to pick it up when I went in and realized that the poor girl was really and truly out of space. Our home is small and as an only child and the youngest grandchild, she gets a lot of presents but only has one small room to put them in. So we decided that we would make a family project of going through her room section by section to figure out what she wanted to keep and what she wanted to give to a thrift store. So far we have removed several boxes of clothes, books, and toys from her room with more still to go.

I like doing this with her because I believe it teaches her that the quantity of possessions is less important than the quality. It’s also a chance to give her practice making choices for herself and affirming her confidence by respecting those choices.

And she wants a “big girl room”, a reading chair and lamp, a nightstand, and a rug of her choosing. She’s also talked about a desk, though she does have a small table and chairs that I think will suffice for now.

It’s been fun, too, an opportunity to talk about the things we like, the things we value, art project ideas, and more. Keeping those lines of communication open with her is so important and I appreciate the time doing housework together provides us, the teamwork – all vital components of household harmony.

Cleaning with her is inspiring me to take another pass at my own bedroom and storage space in an effort to unclutter our lives so that we can concentrate on the things that are truly important to us.

I deeply love freebies. It’s a great way to try new products or stock up a tiny bit on products you love; they almost always send you some coupons along with the samples; and, if you’re a survivalist like I am, they provide you with useful products in convenient packaging to outfit your first aid kit, your home storage, and your bug-out bag. I frequently get free samples of over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, homeopathic remedies, food, gum, beverage mixes, tea bags, and dog food. Sometimes even free t-shirts (I don’t usually care what they say since I reconstruct them or strip them for making rugs).

My favorite freebies sites are Thunderfap, Frugal, Freebies, and Deals, and the freebies section on about.com. Between the three of them you can load yourself down with goodies.

After bemoaning the potential emptiness of my daughter’s Easter basket earlier, I hopped onto Thunderfap and found a bunch of things to put in my daughter’s basket: stickers, temporary tattoos, perfume samples, lotion, a Snoopy bobblehead, bookmarks, snacks, coloring books, and more. And it should all be here before Easter! No postage to pay, all absolutely free. Love that.

Because sweepstakes and freebies increase your online junk mail, you may want to set up a free account that you use just for such things and you’ll probably want to use a form tool like Google’s AutoFill feature to save you time. But I spent an hour today applying for freebies and I’m getting a bunch of brand name products to try in the next few weeks, from fabric trim to energy drinks and free coffee. Plus, I get to look forward to something besides bills in my mail. Sometimes they even give you an option to forward freebies to your friends and family so you can surprise someone with a little treat, too, though I only do that if someone gives me permission first.

But if you have a little free time, it’s an easy way to stock your cache and even provide some pleasant little luxuries.

One of the things that first got me into preparedness is my insatiable curiosity about how to do things and how things work.  I love knowing how to make things from the ground up and am constantly adding to and improving my skill sets.  I strive to pass this hunger for knowledge along to my daughter and thus far she seems to share my passion for DIY living.  We craft and cook together, we garden together, we explore the world together.

After observational skills, I find the ability to do creative and critical thinking to be the most vital everyday internal skills you can develop.  The ability to see the possibilities of something or a situation.  One of the ways I work on this with my daughter is by doing art projects with her.  She loves clothes and has a unique sense of style, so lately we’ve been feeding her passion for fashion and my passion for teaching and learning by doing papercrafts together.  I have some stencils shaped like a dress, shoes, and a purse, so I let her use scraps of wrapping paper or art paper from the dollar store with the stencils to make paper clothing items, then we glue them to construction paper or scrap cardboard and decorate them with more paper, foil wrappers, beads, thread, fabric scraps, paint, pens, stickers and random found items.  At first she only stuck with what she recognized as art supplies but now she looks at bottle caps, product packaging, and household items and sees their potential for art, which is exactly what I wanted her to learn, that ability to see beyond something’s intended purpose and utilize it in new and interesting ways.

I encourage her to draw clothing ideas that she has and I then render some of them in crochet for her.  She loves it, knowing that her creations were made a reality, and I hope to expand into sewing her creations as well.  I also help her design and sew doll clothing from fabric scraps and old socks.  It’s been so much fun and it’s helped me introduce her to measuring and very basic geometry.

As for my own self-education, I recently completed an online course on medical coding through Oregon State University’s distance education program.  It was a wonderful and fairly affordable educational experience and I’m planning to take a few more of their courses to increase my skill set on the job.  I would strongly urge anyone with any interest in learning, especially in this economic climate, to consider taking advantage of the educational opportunities for working adults offered by community colleges, state universities, libraries, and community centers.  There are also many websites such as Wikibooks or ASL University that offer free educational materials or lessons online. There are resources for seemingly any topic of interest. OSU even offers online personal enrichment courses such as natural healing and survivalism alongside its career enhancement options. Fun!

And, truly, you never know when something random that you learned will come in very, very handy so I would encourage you to always be actively learning things, large and small. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and it’s a great example for children when they see the adults around them actively pursuing knowledge.

My daughter has extremely dry, sensitive skin that can break out in itchy patches, especially during cold, dry winter weather. This winter has been exceptionally bad. I’ve been slathering her with a hypoallergenic lotion and hydrocortisone cream on the most affected places morning and night, but the help from them is minimal at best.

I believe that what we take into our bodies is a powerful part of healing our bodies naturally, so I’ve started researching natural remedies for her because the treatments for skin conditions by western medicine can be harsh and/or ineffective from the reading I’ve done. Today I consulted with someone at a health food store about the best homeopathic remedy for her and, after the clerk and I flipped through some references together, comparing notes, she recommended 30c homeopathic sulfur to help with the current flare-up, but said that for long-term relief, I probably needed to increase the Omega-3 oils in my daughter’s diet so that her skin could lubricate and heal from the inside out. Thus was I introduced to the world of flavored fish oil gummies for children. What will they think of next? Tonight is our first night of treatment, should this fail after a week, then we’ll go see a naturopath or physician.

I’m also encouraging her to shower more often than she takes baths except for the occasional colloidal oatmeal bath and then I don’t let her soak for long, much to her dismay. Tonight I need to do some more reading in some of my herbal and nutritional references to see what else might help her skin heal and stay healed.