What can I do?

As the days speed by, I find myself wondering what I can do ... for myself, my family, the world.  It's been theory up until now.  I recycle.  What else?  What do I do now that is leading my family to a better way of life?

1. I recycle.  Which I've said.  I try to reuse and I have more than enough reusable shopping bags (despite the fact that I forget them a lot).  But, I need to do more.

2. I make our own soap.  I haven't bought hand, body, shower, etc soap in over a year and a half.  I would like to reopen my Etsy shop next year, but we'll see about that.

3.  I make our own laundry detergent.  I also haven't bought store laundry soap in the same amount of time.

Goals:
By this time next year I am hoping that we have had our fill, or are still having our fill, of veggies and fruit from our garden.  By the following year, I am hoping that we are spending almost nothing on produce from the store.

Almost immediately, we will have our composter up and running so that we are greatly reducing the amount of garbage we are sending to a landfill, while also providing all of the great dirt we will need for our garden.

Chickens.  Still debating on how and what we'll be doing with chickens.  I need to research more to see if this will be a viable option for us to cut back with.  Will having our own eggs be financially advantageous or not?  Will we be able to barter/sell the surplus, if any?

I'm also hoping to learn about bartering over this next year.  I'd like to really be able to reduce the amount of money that we spend on things that people around us have a surplus of.

I think it will be interesting to look back next year to see how far we've come!

Crafty updates

Well, I'm really good at coming up with ideas.  I'm not so good at actually going through with those ideas.  The faerie houses took hold of us and we've had a lot of fun!  I'll be honest in that I did most of this first batch, however, I wanted to get some experience before Monkey had questions I couldn't answer.  The first is a decent size, maybe 8-10 inches square.  We cut a door and added in a window.  We also carved in some other decorations and Monkey helped with that before baking.  Still waiting to make a roof and paint, but for now it's fun to see! 

 I was expecting them to come out of the oven hard, but after an hour and a half, they were tough, but not hard.  Over the last few days they have hardened more, though.

Monkey wanted to take a picture too!  This was all pre-baking.

After baking, I used four clay "sticks" to glue the walls together.  Adding a roof will hopefully add in some stability!

 Monkey's carving contribution, unfortunately it doesn't show up too well.

We also made many small little houses and mushrooms.  We painted three to give to a few friends the other night.  I wish I could do all that photoshop magic so the colors were better, but, c'est la vie!  This one went to a good friend of ours ... Monkey, of course, picked the colors!

I have also been thinking a lot about how we can not only save money, but eat better and more naturally.  There are three things I don't think I will ever go to the store for again: Laundry soap, 

Faerie Homes

There are a lot of things we are looking forward to in this new adventure.  What has my attention tonight is providing homes for all of the little faeries who are sure to inhabit such a lovely place!  This will be such a fun project for our family and friends to connect us tightly to nature.

Clay, recycled boxes, stones, twigs, leaves and flowers are a few of the things we'll use. I'm looking at ideas tonight and we'll get started tomorrow.  I'm really hoping that over the next couple of months all of our friends and family here will help us so that we'll have a part of them with us in Parks.  I don't know if it's obvious or if I've mentioned it before, but are so blessed!  We have patiently waited for the beautiful friends we now have.  It makes me sad to leave, but also so happy to know that they are in our lives, whether we live here or somewhere else!

I've stumbled upon not only many images, but also some cool websites on creating a faerie house.  What I'd love to find is a website that includes not only creating a faerie home, but also some of the natural correspondences.  This is so exciting!

Who doesn't love Faerie??? :)

Fun websites:
Fairy Houses
Fairy Woodland

Country Living Around the Corner

We have found a house!  2.5 acres and massive inside, we are so very excited!  It's a unique house and will fit us perfectly.  We will have room to have lots of guests and fit them all comfortably.  We will also have room for gardens and eventually horses and chickens ... fresh eggs and beautiful rides in the Kaibab Forest.  We will even get to cut our own Christmas Tree!!

Even though we've lived in two houses together before as well as own a home in Texas, this is feeling like a brand new beginning and it feels like this is our first house.  Can't wait to share more about our country life ... from our gorgeous living room!