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Real Community Challenge: Week 1

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Anisa

We’re six days into the Real Community challenge.  How are you doing?  As a quick recap, the Real Community Challenge rules are:

  • Limit the social media sites that suck away time and energy.
  • Practice new, more constructive habits.
  • Do not allow media, TV or phones at the table.
  • Take a new step towards real community each week.

These first few days have been interesting.  I have done pretty well with what I set out to do.  I ate meals at the table with the kids, and we went for walks for all but three of the mornings.  One day was too rainy to go walking and the next day was too muddy.  This morning we didn’t walk because the maid came.  For some reason she usually comes on Mondays.  (We have no maid.  I am the maid.  But I was motivated to clean, so I didn’t want to interrupt the flow).

I’ve been able to somehow (miraculously!) get more done, now that I’m not checking Facebook.  I caught up on my emails.  I wrote a letter to a friend and mailed it.  I got more things unpacked.  I had dinner ready most of the nights by the time Rick was home.  I did an art project with the kids.

However, it has been tough for me.  I was really tempted to cheat and look at Facebook (through Rick’s account!) last night.  But I stayed strong and didn’t do it.  Rick is out of town, and the kids were in bed.  The house was quiet, I was caught up on emails, with nothing to do.

Instead, I decided to talk to a friend.  She texted me and then I asked her to call if she had time.  It was just enough distraction that the urge soon passed.

Over all, I’m enjoying it so far.  I am enjoying not wasting so much time and getting more done.  But I do feel still a bit disconnected.  SO here comes my next step to build real community. 

This week I will meet someone new.  I encourage you to do this too. 

Saturday I took the kids to the playground across the street from our house.  The playground is going to be renovated soon, and I accidentally showed up when a meeting about it was supposed to take place.  This might come as a surprise, but I’m not an overly social person.  I tend to avoid large crowds of people and it is my nature to go to the park when there is no one else there.

But I was there and suddenly lots of people were there.  I decided to pipe up and say that I hoped there would be benches in the shade for parents to watch their kids play.  As you can imagine, there were other moms there too.  I met two of them.  Coincidentally, one of the women was a friend of a reader of this blog who has just moved from Texas to Colorado… small world huh?

Meeting people is hard for me.  I tend to just spill my guts and show all my crazy within the first ten minutes of meeting someone.  I mean, I told both of these women that I was a blogger, that I moved from Colorado, I was a weird hippie and that I lived without a fridge for a year and a half.  Yeah.  They were both kind though, and they both emailed me within the day.  And I plan (hope) to get together with them.

So yay! I met someone new!  Two someones! But it was on Saturday, not this week.  Because I’m not asking you to do anything I’m not going to do, I’m still going to make sure I meet someone else this week too.

Why is meeting someone new important to real community?  Well, for me, the reasons are obvious, since I’m new in town.  But even if you have lived in your city your whole life, it’s important.  Others may have resources you never knew about.  For example, both of the women I met at the park invited me to be a part of various communities in the area (a real food yahoo group that does group buys, a home school group, a mom’s group, and resources for buying raw milk and fresh eggs).  Jackpot!

When I lived in Colorado, I was constantly finding new resources through new friends, even though I had lived there my whole life.  We need people to have community, and the more of them you know in real life, the stronger that community will be.

So that is the mini-challenge within the Real Community Challenge.  Meet someone new.

My goal now looks like this:

I will be blocking Facebook and limiting Pinterest.  Instead of checking them I will go for a walk in the mornings.  Media, TV and phones are not allowed at the table and will be shut off or silenced during meals.  I will continue eating meals at the table with my family. And this week, I will meet someone new.

A side note here… many people have expressed to me in private that they love the idea of this challenge and that they will be joining in one form or another.  Some of them don’t want to announce it.  That’s ok.  It’s also ok if you don’t want to get off of Facebook (or what have you) completely, but just want to manage the amount of time you spend on it better.  The point of this challenge is not to completely cut yourself off from social media (unless that’s what you want), but rather focus on REAL community, face-to-face relationships.  So go with what works for you. 

Tell me friends, how were the first few days?  And if you haven’t joined in yet, are you considering it?

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Categories: Community, Simple Living | Tags: , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Real Community Challenge

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Anisa

Last week I shared with you my recent angst over social media, and the idea of taking a break from it for the month of May.  Despite all the reasons I shared, taking a break from Facebook and other social media outlets is going to be a tough challenge for me.

Before I get too far into this, I want to tell you that I realize the irony of presenting this idea on my blog, since blogging is a form of social media.  But for me, the blog is neither a huge time sink, an addiction, or a source of fear or anxiety.  I can’t say the same for Facebook.

Today, I’m going to lay out the rules of the challenge.  Throughout the month I plan to share mini-challenges to help us all stay on track, as well as address the positives of social media, and how we can keep the good things without getting sucked into the negatives of social media. This is a work-in-progress for me, so I will probably be making the rules up as I go.

Also, it’s worth mentioning here that my personal social media addiction is with Facebook.  Yours might be too, or maybe it is Twitter, Reddit, You Tube, a certain news website, your RSS feed/Reader or certain blogs.  For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to say FB.  Just apply what I’m saying to the social media outlet of your choice.  Also, please note that the blog automatically posts to Facebook (if you are not participating in the challenge, I don’t want  you to think I’m cheating. ;) ).

I mentioned last week that I thought social media was a lazy community replacement.  So I’ve decided to call  this the Real Community Challenge.

Real Community Challenge 2013

First of all, we need to break the habit.  We need to stop visiting the websites that cause us to waste time or distract us from real life.  Even if it’s this one.  This can be tough.

For me I have a habit of sitting down with my morning coffee, checking my email and then checking FB.  I can waste a whole morning clicking through to different stories.  I plan to install some blocking software on my browser that will keep me from clicking through to FB for the entire month of May.  Since I use Firefox, I will be using LeechBlock.

Here is a really useful link that talks about blocking sites for different browsers, as well as more permanent ways of blocking sites.  Also, if you don’t know which sites are wasting the majority of your time, you can use a tracker (also linked in the page above) to discover what they are.

I’m also going to use LeechBlock to block Pinterest at certain times of the day.  Pinterest is an interesting form of social media.  I’m including it here because I tend to spend a lot of time on it, however I feel differently about Pinterest than other forms of social media.  I will talk more about this later this month.

Next, we’re going to make new habits.

Instead of checking my FB page first thing in the morning while my kids are eating breakfast, I am going to sit at the table with them to eat.  And then clean up breakfast together, get the kids dressed and go for a walk.  I want this to be the new habit.  I’m going to replace my old habit with my new habit.  I don’t care how long or short the walk is.  I need to get outside and see the sun and I am resolving to do this instead of waste time on the computer.

The first rule of the challenge is no phones or media devices at the table and no TV during meal times.

No checking email during dinner, no texting, and if your phone rings during a meal, let it go to voice mail.  You can call them back after dinner is over.  Shut off the TV while you eat.  Silence your phone.

This is my way of telling my family and others that I’m with, they are more important to me than whatever is happening online or in the outside world.  There is no reason to have your phone at the table, a date or dinner party unless you are a doctor or midwife on call, a first responder whose job requires your availability or something similar.  Stress at the office or a micro-managing boss doesn’t count.  This is a good boundary for everyone.

Finally, we are going to take steps to build real community.

Each week I’m going to add a new challenge to build community.  The first place I want to build real community is in my home at meal times.

Every night our family has dinner together, at the table.  We sit down together, eat, and then clear the table together.  If your family doesn’t do this, I urge you to start and to make it a habit.  Since we already do dinner, my first steps are going to be to have every meal together as a family.  At the table.

Instead of making the kids lunch and then doing my own thing while they eat, I’m going to sit down to eat with them, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you are not home all day with your kids, I encourage you to eat your meals at a table, not in your car, at a desk or on the couch, and to eat them with someone else.

If you are in an office, eat at a table in the lunch room instead of your desk.  Perhaps a coworker will join you (hey, look, community!).  If you go to a restaurant, go inside and sit down to eat, and try not to go alone.  If you are on the couch, chances are you are watching TV, disengaged from others around you and very likely to overeat.  I find that if I am sitting at a table, especially with someone else, I am much less apt to try to check my FB and more likely to talk to them.

This first meal-time step is simply a suggestion.  If you already eat all your meals at a table with other people, please feel free to make your first step something else.

So that’s the start of it, pretty simple I think.  Starting Wednesday, for the month of May:

  • I’m blocking the social media sites that suck away my time and energy.
  • I’m going to practice a new, more constructive habit.
  • I will not allow media, TV or phones at the table.
  • Each week I will take a new step towards real community.

So, will you join me?

If you are up for this challenge, please post what site(s) you will be blocking, what your new habit will be, your promise not to allow phones or media at the table, and what your first step towards real community will be.

I will be blocking Facebook and Pinterest.  Instead of checking them I will go for a walk in the mornings.  Media, TV and phones are not allowed at the table and will be shut off or silenced during meals.  This week I will start eating all meals at the table with my family.

Categories: Community, Simple Living | Tags: , , , , , | 3 Comments

Tips for Using Your Push Mower

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Anisa

I realize that in some parts of the country, there is still snow on the ground.  Down here in central Texas, though, I just finished mowing the lawn for the second time.  Whew!  I’m grateful that our backyard here is modest, since even this “mild” spring weather is hot to me.

Here are some tips in case you are new to using a push-reel mower and finding it difficult.

Push mower

1. Clean the yard first.  Our power mower could chop up sticks, but twigs will get caught in the reel of the push mower, bringing you to a stop and you’ll have to reverse the blades to get it out before you continue mowing.  Frequent starts and stops require a lot more energy than maintaining momentum.  A few minutes spent looking for sticks and rocks and small kids’ toys, anything that might get caught in the mower’s blades, and removing them from the grass before you get started is time well spent.

2.  Set your blades higher.  Longer grass uses less water, and higher blades will promote that, taking just a little off the top.  If you cut the grass shorter, it might need more passes of the mower, which can double (or more) the time you spend mowing.

3.  Mow more often.  While longer grass is good for water conservation, let it get too long and you’ll have trouble getting the push mower through it at all.  This is especially true of thick lawns or lawns with hills.  Our new lawn has a bit of a rise in one area and that grass is harder to mow.  If we were to “let it go” it would be very difficult to cut with the push mower.

4.  Use a trimmer for the edges.  I’ve had a  hard time getting the push mower to do a good job cutting the grass at the edges of the lawn where it meets with the fence or the patio.  Instead of struggling over those areas over and over, I just mow as close as I can and then clean up the edges with the trimmer.

5.  Mow in sections.  Our front yard here is about the same size as it was in Colorado, but the grass here is thick and harder to get the mower through.  It makes the job tough for me in the heat (I know!  Wimpy Colorado girl in Texas!).  Instead of sweating my way through the whole job at once, I break it into two or three more manageable chunks.  The mower is lightweight so it’s no big deal to walk it back to the backyard while I take a break, get a drink or water my garlic.  Then after I’m refreshed, I take on the next section of lawn.  I can still get the job done, both front and back yards, in under an hour including the breaks.

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Categories: Sustainability, Simple Living, Top 5 | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Thrifty Thursday: DIY Swiffer Cloths

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Anisa

We have hard flooring throughout our house here.  Tile in the kitchen and bath and wood floors everywhere else.  There is a great tool for keeping those floors clean, most of you know it; the Swiffer.  But those Swiffer cloths get expensive.

My solution: mirco-fiber towels.  I have a couple of micro-fiber towels that will fit perfectly onto the head of my Swiffer.

And when I need to spot clean something with a mop?  I just get the cloth wet, wring it out and poof! – a Swiffer wet mop.

Micro Fiber Cloth

Go forth and attack your dust bunnies!

Categories: DIY, Thrift | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments

Plugging In

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Anisa

During a long talk with Rick at the beginning of November, during which I was feeling quite overwhelmed with projects and homeschooling and life in general, I decided to go ahead and normalize our kitchen again.  We plugged the fridge back in.

We unplugged the fridge in May of 2011. It was supposed to be a month-long experiment.  We left it unplugged for a year and a half.  So, I guess in that way, it was a total success.  We had a great system down, and we pretty much forgot what life with a refrigerator was like.

I liked it, being weird and different and extreme.  But also, Rick and I were getting to the point where we craved a little normalcy and simplicity in our lives in general.  The fridge was a sort of symbol for me of this crazy, hippie extreme life that I wanted to have.  And, Rick, being super supportive, has come along for the ride, and for the most part, we have that life.

We grow our food or buy from local farms, we have chickens and bees.  I never buy cereal or use paper plates or paper towels.  I’ve made our own laundry soap and dishwasher detergent.  We’ve cloth diapered (3 kids), etc.  You get the point.

IMG_6868

But sometimes being weird can wear on you.  It was wearing on us both (not the fridge, but you know… everything).

One of my good friends talks about how tough it can be to live in two worlds.  You know the two… one in which all your friends only buy gluten-free, sustainably harvested, BPA-free, GMO-free, soy-free, local, handmade, hand loomed, home-grown, vegetarian fed, and free range.  And the other world: the on sale, easy clean-up, big box, double coupon, plastic, convenient, drive-thru, battery operated, disposable one.

I mean, take a kid’s birthday party.  Imagine hosting 25 people but using nothing disposable.  No paper plates or plastic forks or crêpe paper streamers.  Or if you do use plastic cups you feel guilty, even for the biodegradable ones.  The guilt.

So I decided to let go.  Not of everything.  Sometimes I use a paper towel or 100% recycled paper plate.  The fridge was something simple that could go back to normal, not be so weird.

You wouldn’t believe how novel it felt.  Having a freezer inside the house, having room for anything in the fridge.  We hosted Thanksgiving dinner this year.  I let the turkey thaw in the fridge, and there was room for other things.  It was amazing!   (By the way, we also hosted T-day without a fridge, it’s totally doable).

This doesn’t mean I’m going all conventional, back to disposable everything.  But it does mean I’m giving myself more grace.  I don’t need to be perfect or extreme.  I just need to keep trying.

Categories: Simple Living, Unplugging the Fridge | Tags: , , , , | 10 Comments

Bathroom Redo or How I Made Peace with Pink Tile

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Anisa

Over the last few years, we’ve slowly updated things in our old, dated bathroom.  A new light fixture here, a sink faucet there, new door pulls on the vanity.  That sort of thing.  We never were ready to shell out significant dough to redo the bathroom.  But over the last few weeks, we’ve managed to give the place a fairly major facelift for under $700.

It started off the way most of our projects do; with a “really easy” change.  I wanted to change out the old tub faucet and handles from who knows when (the 40′s maybe?) to some that were NOT corroded, actually turned and had a diverter that didn’t leak.  And, I wanted to replace the towel bar with a rack of five hooks (since we have five people that use the bathroom).  Two really easy things, right?

Except it took TEN trips to various hardware stores to find some handles that fit our tub.  No joke.

Only the faucet/diverter and the handles themselves are new.  The plate is original(?) and could not be replaced.  We just cleaned as much corrosion off of it as possible and searched and searched and went on an epic quest until we found handles that fit.

But the shiny new chrome made the recessed soap dish look so bad.  And, well, the painted tub from some prior refinishing job has been peeling for almost nine years now.  So…. we finally broke open the piggy bank and dove in.

We literally had to rip out the soap dish.

And when we did, we were unsurprised (but discouraged) to find wet wall board.

So after two days of drying it out, Rick cut away what couldn’t be saved and patched the hole.  And I re-tiled and re-grouted with tiles we found in the crawl space that matched (thank the good Lord for that find!).

It looks bad, but it was only nine tiles.  I was also replacing some loose and missing grout.  What do you think of all that pink tile?

While the grout dried, we started in with the paint.  Rick sanded the window frame and sill and I gave it a few new coats of paint.

It’s no secret that pink tile was never a dream choice of mine.  So when we moved in, I painted the bathroom blue to match my blue towels and held onto the hope that one day, we’d replace the tile.

Here is the original wall color under my old towel bar  (look pink grout lines on the floor too!).

And here is the old storage for the other various bathroom items:

And this is the new version:

All those containers were just sitting around the house.  Yay for free!

I finally wised up and realized we were not going to be replacing that pink tile anytime in the near future.  Besides, it is cheaper to buy new towels.   So we painted this sandy-cream color and installed my hooks.

And got a nice fluffy, girly rug to match my pink grout lines.

Don’t worry, I have a solid tan one that I can swap out.  I do have two little boys after all.

So, what about the horrid peeling tub?  You just know that baby was originally pink, right.

Well, here is the before in all its pink and white glory:

And here it is now:

I can’t even believe the difference.  It’s so amazing.

But it’s not even my favorite part.

Here is the only before picture I could find showing how the pink tile extends out of the tub/shower area to behind the toilet and sink all along the wall.  In it, you can also notice, just barely there, at Rick’s elbow, the old faucet handle.  And some random piece of hardware screwed into the shower wall, half-way up.  And, of course, blue paint and towels.

Here is the after shot.

With the new paint job, the girly bird-motif hand towels, and my planned chocolate brown bath towels, my bathroom actually looks good in pink.

I truly can’t decide which I’m more pleased with; the paint/towel/tile combo or the shiny new tub finish.  But either way, I’m one happy camper.

Oh, did I mention this is our only bathroom?

Yeah.  It was about time.

Categories: DIY | Tags: , , | 11 Comments

Bee Birthday and Easy Mason Jar Drink Lids (with Tutorial)

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Anisa

This weekend we celebrated Cora’s first birthday.  I ordered cupcakes from a wonderful, local, all- organic bakery that makes a to-die-for flavor called “Bee-titude.”  It’s a lavender cupcake with honey-lemon butter cream frosting, and it was the inspiration for Cora’s party theme: honey bee.  The party colors were yellow and lavender, and it turns out that this was a really fun theme to put together.

I also made a few discoveries for decorating this party that eased the green-guilt that sometimes comes along with me decorating.  I found spools of colored tulle at the craft store that I can easily roll up and reuse for another occasion instead of the crêpe paper streamers I usually use.  And I bought two yards of inexpensive broadcloth for the table-cloth that would match the party theme.

I used various glass plates and jars to decorate and filled a vase with lavender and chamomile flowers.

I have a gorgeous bee skep-shaped drink dispenser that my mom bought me for Christmas last year and I filled it with honey-lavender lemonade.  I was surprised that the lavender flowers turned the lemonade pink!

And I used my canning jars as glasses.  Pints for the adults with ribbons and tags to write names on, and half-pints with lids for the kids.  And here was my eureka moment.  Ball jelly jars are durable and their lids don’t leak.  And I used a HOLE-PUNCH to make them into drink lids.

Here’s how:

First I traced old jar lids onto patterned paper and then cut out the circles.

I used double-sided tape to stick the paper to the top of the lid.

Then I used a regular old hole-punch to punch holes in the tops of the lids.  This was surprisingly easy.  I did it with one hand and minimal effort.  The punch still worked great on about twenty paper tags after punching six lids.

I used a cheapy plastic straws with about an inch cut off the end to make the kids’ tumblers complete.

Not a single jar got broken between six, three- to seven-year-olds.  They even took them outside.  I wrote each kiddo’s name on the top of their jar, so there were no mix-ups.  It was really easy and completely free, since I had all these supplies lying around the house.  Henry even helped cut out the circles.

I plan to just swap out the paper circles and straws for the next party.

Categories: Cora, DIY, Simple Living, Thrift | Tags: , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Five Last-Minute Mother’s Day Gift Ideas

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Anisa

As we all know, time flies and I’m sure for some,  Mother’s Day has crept up on us this year.  Since we are down to the wire (Mom’s Day is THIS SUNDAY), here is my wishlist of readily available gift ideas that would make any Lazy Homesteader, this one in particular, pretty happy!

  1. Pressure canner such as the Presto 23 quart Deluxe Pressure Canner that is available at the local hardware store.  Yep, Ace at University Hills has one in stock for $119, Rick.  So does the Ace at Cherry Hills Marketplace.   Plus, I have a $5 off coupon in the Chinook book.  ;)   Then I could can up all that broth instead of freezing it; it’d be ready to use in a snap.
  2. Gift card to the local garden center.  Plus watching the kids while I go shop there.  I can use it to buy the frivolous plants you never want me to get when we’re planting out the veggie beds.  And if you do the laundry or the dishes while I’m gone, you might get some sort of husband of the year award.
  3. A gardening/homesteading/foodie/self-sufficiency book.  I have a few titles on my list… A Householder’s Guide to the Universe by Harriet Fasenfest, Kristen Kimball’s The Dirty Life, anything Sharon Astyk has written (her latest, Making Home, is available for pre-order), Coyne and Knutzen’s Making It, one or all of Jennifer McLagan’s books: Bones, Fat, or Odd Bits, Rosalind Creasy’s Edible Landscaping, the new Free-Range Chicken Gardens by Bloom and Baldwin, or The Non-Toxic Avenger by Deanna Duke.
  4. Rubber boots.  Okay, so I just bought a pair for myself, but I figured that I’m not the only gardener/homestead type who wants a pair of these.  I love them.  They will run in the $20-35 dollar range.  I was lucky and got these on sale for $18.  Note to my hubby: This does not get you off the hook for Sunday.  :)
  5. New pruners.  Good, sharp ones that will last.  Something in the $30 plus dollar range that can cut through 1″ thick branches.  At this point, I feel like I’ve outgrown the $9.99-special pruners.  They just don’t hold up to the rigors we put them through.  Think of them as an investment.  FELCO is notoriously good, and you can even buy replacement parts.  Hey, show me the order confirmation number and all will be forgiven if they arrive late. ;)

Of course, spending time with the man and the kids is the best part of the day for us moms (as long as there is no laundry and no dishes involved).  And I especially love it when my man cooks for the family.

What is on your Mother’s Day wishlist?

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Categories: Top 5, Urban Homesteading | Tags: , , , , , | 9 Comments

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