We've had a great and busy week so far!
1. Harvested asparagus and spinach from the garden. I used grass clippings to mulch many of my raised beds. We also planted bean seeds, milk thistle and pepper plants. 2. Made two decent loaves of sourdough bread. This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time, so I was verry happy to have success! 3. Spray painted a gray picture frame to a more esthetic black color. 4. Gave my husband a haircut. I know many of us are doing this while we're still in quarantine, but I have been doing this for years. I used a $2.00 set of clippers (found at a garage sale) along with an inexpensive pair of hair cutting scissors from Walmart. This equipment has paid for itself many times over. There are a lot of Youtube videos that show how to cut your own (or someone else's) hair. I was fortunate enough to know a retired stylist who showed me the basics. For a man's haircut, you generally cut the sides shorter and then blend the top in, which is often longer. This takes some practice if you are working with straight hair. My man has curly hair, which is more forgiving. Some men look good in a simple buzz cut done entirely with the clippers. I know several dads who cut all of their boys' hair this way. One dad gave all of them a mohawk (which, of course, they loved). Over the course of a year, DIY haircuts can save quite a bit of money. My husband used to pay $10.00 once or twice a year for a cheap (and ugly) haircut. I figured that I could give him just as ugly of a haircut for free! Now I've had more practice and my DIY haircuts look far better than the ones he used to get at Great Clips. As a bonus, we've saved over $100.00. 5. Put together a family preparedness plan. I got a notebook and worked through FEMA's Are You Ready workbook. I made a list of projects to work on and another list of things to buy. I also dedicated a page or two to each disaster situation applicable to us; for example, winter storms, thunderstorms, housefires, etc. I pretty much skimmed over the sections on earthquakes and floods, since those are rare in our area. Yesterday I reconsidered those things, however, after hearing about the flooding in Michigan. Entire towns are now underwater because several dams broke. It has been called a "once in every 500 years" event, but things like that can really happen, even today! Several news photos showed people evacuating on foot through knee-deep water. I can't even imagine. Disaster preparedness seems so overwhelming at first, and it's easy to get antsy knowing all of the bad things that could happen. It will take years for us to have preparedness supplies and plans in place for all of those things. Therefore, I've tried to start with the most likely situations first (like power outages) and then work my way up to things like a massive flood or nuclear bomb. I would love to be prepared for anything that could happen—even something like a volcano eruption, which has never happened where we live, but HAS happened where we travel. Something like a terrorist attack is highly unlikely in our rural town, but those too have happened many times before. I don't want to be a doomsdayer, but I do think it's wise to be prepared for many different situations. One last thing I've thought much about in the past several weeks is the potential for a more socialist government. Our state is one of the blue ones that has not handled the pandemic very well. There is growing civil unrest on top of economic troubles. As I predicted in my book, there are new shortages popping up as old ones (like toilet paper) seem to be fading. This week it seems like all of our local farms are sold out of beef until the fall. While this is not a big deal for me personally (our freezer is stocked with venison), it feels eerily similar to being in a poorer country. Even something as simple as getting a haircut has become a big deal here. Having DIY skills in that area means it is one less thing to worry about. Well, I guess this week was a little short on thrifty things and long on wind. But I did spend quite a bit of time thinking about preparedness, so I hope you don't mind the monologue. ~Prudence~
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About PrudenceI am a Christian homemaker who lives in the Midwest. I enjoy sewing, gardening, reading and thrifting. Archives
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