Juli

and Little Women for me too

I had two main favorites

 

Where the Wild Things Are (for the pictures)

 

Green Eggs and Ham (for the words)

 

 

 

I had also read a complete set of encyclopedia, each volume cover to cover, by the time I was 10

 

I know this is an older thread but here's ours

 

 

Thanksgiving

 

 

Roasted Herbed Turkey

Sage Dressing

Mashed Potatoes

Peppered Corn

Ginger Cinnamon Cranberries

Butter Rolls

 

 

Rustic Apple Pie

Chocolate Cake w/ Butter Cream Frosting

 

Coke

Spiced Iced Tea

 

~*~

 

Almost everything made from scratch

 

I was just getting ready to post this very thing on my blog.

 

...

 

Every summer I try to pick up nice baskets or tins at yard sales and then fill them with homemade things.

 

Sometimes I paint the tins on the outsides, I just rough up the outside with a little sandpaper and clear coat it before and after. Never paint the inside if it's meant for food

 

And then fill them with things I make myself. Candies, breads, cookies, teas, bath salts or scrubs, soaps, candles, little handmade pillows, sachets, little purses and bags, handmade napkins, little painted things, juju dolls, handmade jewelry, hairsticks, handmade incense, prayer beads, handmade painted bookmarks, sun dangles, muffins, little cakes, painted blocks, herbed things, like salves and balms, butters, vinegars, oils, herbed honey, herbed sugars ....

 

I'm a single work at home Mom and I homeschool and homestead so actual money is very hard to come by. In the summer I try to find sheets and materials at yard sales or the like to use for sewing. Old basket and tins to turn into gifts, candles and soaps to melt down and remake, lovely bottles to fill with the oils and vinegars, little jars and so on and so on.

 

If the people have a pet they really love I add little handmade simple cat toys or pet beds

 

Whatever I can and have the time for. Sometimes throughout the year, if I'm making cat toys or little purses, I make an extra one or two to put back for gifts later. That helps a lot as well.

 

We do this as well, tho I usually make little folded newspaper cups because we use all the cartons for selling our eggs.

as for Non-$$$ Prepping, I've convinced myself that doing dishes is prepping (which it is so all the dishes are clean just in case) and that way I can make myslef do dishes *~* one of the very few things in my life that I have to do and don't like at all.

I also wanted to remember to add (and forgot) that I've grown millet for our hens before and it worked very well. I didn't try it last summer but plan to again this summer. I didn't have much room and it didn't last to long but it did help

 

I grew around a 10ft by 10 ft patch of millet and gave it very little care and it grew wonderfully. I planted it fairly dense many seeds close together. I did have some problem with the smaller birds eating it but I had planned to give them some anyway.

 

At the time I had around 15 hens and a duck and I turned them out in the millet pen when there was a lot of snow on the ground. It lasted them about 2 months.

 

Millet is really just edible grass seeds and humans can eat it as well.

We've always made a profit from our hens. We have more this year then ever before (30 laying hens) and altho we do buy feed they free range and eat very little. In just the eggs we eat there's a profit, I bake a lot and free range eggs at the stor were almost 4.00 a dozen last i checked. plus we sell eggs at 2.00 a dozen and sell out each time.

 

I buy chops (cracked corn) and non-medicated egg pellets (mainly for the ducks) and mix it.

 

I run egg ads on places like craigelist and local yahoo sale groups and deliver them to the city once a month. The egg sales pay for all the feed and the gas for the trip. All the eggs we eat are a bonus and we eat a lot and feed them to the cats and dogs and poultry as well.

 

If you feed some of the egg shells back to the hens they'll never need shell from the feedstore.