Saving money is always a good thing. Some save by using coupons, others by cutting back on purchases, but on some necessary items cutting back is not an option. Unless a national brand product is on sale…at a great price…I almost always purchase store brands of products. In our home, purchasing generic laundry soap is a necessity. I cringe everytime I see that $15-20 price tag on the large bottles of Tide, Cheer, etc.

I have shared my laundry soap recipe here before, but today I am sharing someone else’s recipe. Many of you are familiar with the Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar Family with 18 beautiful children and their television series. While looking for a tator tot casserole recipe for My Hero, I came across Michelle Duggar’s recipe for laundry soap. Though it called for the same ingredients as the recipe I have been using, the amounts and directions were different. After giving her recipe a try this time, I believe that I prefer her method rather than mine. Check out her LAUNDRY SOAP RECIPE.

The Duggars also have a new book The Duggars: 20 and Counting!: Raising One of America’s Largest Families–How they Do It that answers questions that many of us have about their amazing family.

Michele’s original recipe calls for a Fels-Naptha Bar, but I used a bit over one bar of pink Zote Soap in my version, which gives it a nice pinkish shimmer. There is a  white Zote Laundry Soap  that I have found online, but not in my local store yet. You will notice in the photo that I have reused older detergent bottles, but some of the mixture is stored in a recycled juice jug. I just could not throw any of it out…so I stole My Hero’s water jug.

Guestimating the current cost of each of the containers, I figure we saved around $54 with making my own soap. Those boxes of borax and washing soda were purchased well over a year ago..so it almost feels as if this was all free. Not knowing how to figure the energy usage cost, we did not take that out of the total..but I do know that the supply cost is around $2. Not bad!

This has nothing to do with sustainability…or being homegrown….or homesteading…but it is something we love….BASKETBALL! You just have to see this shot for yourself……

♥

I found this entertaining and informative video, “Store Wars”, over at Mother Earth Soup via Path to Freedom. With characters Cuke Skywalker, Obi Wan Canolli, Darth Tater, and Chew Broccoli, the Free Range Studios video is a humorous look at organic vs. chemical grown foods.  I hope you will enjoy “May the Farm be With You” as much as I did.

Be sure to check out Mother Earth Soup and Free Range Studios.

I have always wanted to purchase a compost tumbler, but felt that they were a costly, frivolous purchase. Not being very mechanically minded, I could never figure out how to build my own either, but after visiting How-to Homestead I think this would be an easy enough project that I might be able to complete myself. Finding a large food grade barrel may be an issue, but I already have the remaining supplies.

Well, I finally did it…I purchased Backyard Self-Sufficiency by Jackie French.

From the back cover…

“Self-sufficient gardens are beautiful: a ramble of productivity, a profusion of smells and colour.  We’ve forgotten how beautiful edible plants can be: fat, red apples and trendrils of grapes; bountiful red-flowering perennial beans, and soft, feathery fennel; the wide, bright blooms of passionfruit, and the scent of orange blossom on a summer night.  It’s like a Garden of Eden in your own backyard!”

Though she lives in Australia and her garden advice is based on Australian seasons and soil, Jackie French offers many ideas and suggestions that will be useful in moving forward with the development of our own self-sufficiency here in small town America.

You may recognize Jackie as the author of Diary of a Wombat, a delightful children’s book with whimsical illustrations. Diary of a Wombat is an ALA Notable Children’s Book, Younger Reader Awards Winner. When I was teaching fulltime, I used Diary of a Wombatin lesson plans and Writer’s Workshop. It is a great book for classroom filled with diverse learners and is mentioned in other educational/teacher resource books.
Mostly thought, Diary of a Wombatis just fun to read whether by an adult or child.

Very interesting idea for “free” lighting. The narration is in Portuguese (i think), but there is closed captioning. This might work in the storage building in my backyard.

I first found this YouTube video over at Homegrown Evolution and was excited to share it with you.

Obama Administration to announce Katrina housing transition plans….

The Obama administration will announce plans today to virtually give away roughly 1,800 mobile homes to 3,400 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who are living in government-provided housing along the Gulf Coast, officials said.

Read the full story from the Washington Post HERE.

I do not know all the particulars, but weren’t the Greensburg FEMA trailer occupants forced to pay rent when they were trying to phase out FEMAville…something like $600 a month?  This just doesn’t seem right!

DD1 (we have to decide an alias for her soon) has moved back up here, from Texas, to attend summer school with Hais. This is the first time in many years that they have attended the same school at the same time. Both are taking 6 hours this first summer session and after the first day, both realize the huge challenge before them.

Life promises to become very interesting these next few weeks, as the stress of working…taking classes…and still wanting to be a kid…all mesh together in this short semester. I hope that all of you will be sending me good vibes and lots of positive thoughts to get us through these weeks.

DD1 and Hais on the first day of attending college together. The “grann-mobile” is in the background.

Well the last child will soon be on her way to making her own life.

Hais graduated on May 16th.

Today is the last day that my baby walks through her school’s doors as a student. Graduation is tomorrow. Family has already begun to arrive. The house isn’t ready, nor is the Hall for her reception following commencement…..but it somehow it doesn’t matter. I cannot believe I am going to let people see my house in the disarray it is in…but somehow it doesn’t matter.

I am not certain, but I think I may have my comments thingy fixed. I have no idea why or how the problem came about, nor I am certain how I fixed it, but I hope it stays fixed.

We have been sooo busy here getting ready for Hais’ graduation next week. My baby is on her way to being on her own soon.

Thanks to Mrs. M over at Freaky Frugalite for letting me know that there is a problem with leaving comments on my posts. I noticed this a couple of times when I was trying to leave comments on others’ blogs, but was unaware of the same difficulty here at my place.

Being totally and completely technologically “dumb”, I do not know where to begin to find out where the difficulty hides. If anyone has any suggestions, I would certainly be very happy to hear them. In the meantime, I will continue searching for an answer.

Posting on my blogs has been very sporatic lately, however I occasionally surf around to other blogs in an attempt to keep up with everyone. Today I came across the cutest blogger “award” over at I am Harriet…actually it is not an award at all…just a gesture to let your blogger friends know you are a fan.

Harriet has proclaimed April as “Tell ’em You’re a Fan Month”   with this cute li’l widget to share.

There are so many blogs that I just love…I want to send the love out to everyone….but I am starting with:

(in no certain order)

CindyDianne

Hot Belly Mama

Wisdom of the Trowel

Brazos Cowgirl

The Zahn Zone

Freaky Frugalite

Homesteading Housewife

Prairie Dreams

Peak Oil Hausfrau

…and of course back to HARRIET also!

The guidelines are very simple…

For April:

Tell your favorite blog sites that you’re a fan.

        1. Leave a comment or an email for your favorite blogger telling them that you are a fan of the site.

2. Feel free to snag the image  to present to your blog friend or post on your sitewhen it is awarded to you.

3. When you receive more than one fan, put the number of fans you have received under the image.

4. The more fans you receive=the better!

HAVE FUN!

Concern over tornadoes is just a way of life in our area. I found this online article about a unprecedented upcoming Tornado chasing effort in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska and the Texas panhandle. $10mil is the expected budget for such a huge endeavor.

The chase will run between May 10 and June 13th of this year….and we have a huge week long camping trip planned at Meade State Park right in the middle of it. The way my luck has been runnin’ maybe we ought to take out some extra insurance.

 BIGGEST TORNADO CHASING EFFORT EVER PLANNED

Though I was not directly affected by the Greensburg tornado, I realize that my family will never be the same since that weekend. I never returned to work (well except for one day) after that night. Our flooded basement was nothing in comparison with the devastation seen by those in Greensburg that night.  I remember sitting in front of the television and the internet while listening to the radio…worried about my daughter who traveled on her way to a State Forensics Meet, through Greensburg,  less than 45 minutes prior to the tornado swallowing the town. All night we visited on the cell phone, worried about the other storms in their path. Upon her return two days later, the little van carrying a frightened team dodged tornadoes and large hail off an on for 4 hours.

When I lived in Texas, I loved thunderstorms. I enjoyed the thunder and lightening. Don’t get me wrong, Texas has its share of tornadoes…but it seems that here in Kansas EVERY thunderstorm brings a tornado somewhere. An exaggeration? Yes…but it does feel as though I cannot enjoy thunder without worrying about tornadoes.

So $10 million does sound like a lot of money…but if I were on the voting committee to approve the funds…..I would ask to vote YES….TWICE!

Money has never flowed freely for us, so I am always looking for ways to cut back on costs.  With my DIY projects, DH often tells me “your time is worth more than that”, but my thought is that if what you are doing is not keeping you from making money, then your time is NOT worth “more than that”.  My theory is that if you have to have something done…AND…you don’t have the $$ to pay for it, then DIY is your only choice.

If you are making something yourself (that has to be purchased)…say…like…ummmm….graduation announcements? If  the end result is half the cost of the Josten’s school announcements….that is a good thing right? (disclaimer: don’t tell anyone…but…. sometimes my ideas end up costing more money than what would have originally been spent. Shhhhh! ) For instance... those aforementioned Josten’s announcements run approximately $1.50 each. I think having the “official” announcement chosen by certain members of the senior class is important, but not necessarily important enough to send to everyone on our grad list. Last year, some family members had photo memory announcements designed that ended up costing about $1 each.

After looking at a few of those announcements, I thought…goodness! I can design these…AND I have a reasonably priced printing source that could make my announcements half of even that cost. Well Prom was the past weekend, which means it is time to begin working on those announcements. So far, I have spent four solid days of designing and I STILL don’t have an end product with which I am satisfied. After looking at several designs online, my designs are not quite up to par. My ideas are good I think, but my software is failing me.

So this is where I whisper to you, again, that my ideas sometimes cost me more than if I had just gone ahead and purchased someone else’s work. I have been looking at an upgrade to my software for quite some time now, but just could not rationalize spending the money.  In this lifetime, I will never be able to afford Adobe, Dreamweaver, Expressions II, etc. Print Shop is more inline with my budget. I wanted to upgrade to the Print Shop Pro Publisher 23, which would be the third version I have purchased over the years, but I still was having a bit of a time letting go of the cash. Yesterday, after 5 hours of non-stop mistakes and redoes of one announcment, what did I find in my email inbox but a nice 33% discount on thePSPP! In my exhaustion, my willpower was weak and out came the plastic and just like that my new version is on its way.

The way I calculate it, that makes those announcements closer to that $1 each mark now… depending on how many we actually purchase. So there you go….save pennies…spend dollars.