I made a blog list LOL!!

http://bsnprogram.com/2010/top-50-blogs-to-help-you-live-healthy/

I am #22. TOO COOL!!

Could you do it?

Preparing - One Day at a Time

Follow our family of 10 children through a challenge to make "No trips to the grocery store for three months." What will we improvise, what are we glad we have on hand and what will we wish we had? How will we live without fresh milk?


This is an incredible blog. Crystal shows us that it can be done, but we must prepare. Follow her journey and try her recipes. I love this blog and look forward to learning more from this wonderful woman.

From seeds to starts!

I started with a mini green house ( I accidentally bought the tomato one. You can get smaller ones.), my seeds, and my handy dandy SFG book. This book has all kinds of great information about when to plant and when to start seedlings.

I decided to so cucumbers, beef steak tomatoes, broccoli, and later I added celery.

The green house comes with direction. Thank Goodness!! So I followed them to "pump up" the little planter guys. I did not use the whole tray just a few. Then I planted my seeds.

Next I made a little chart of what I planted. Make sure to add the date!

On the bottom of that same paper I made a very artistic drawing of my outside garden. LOL!! I put what I planted and again made sure to add the date.

As of yet nothing I have planted outside has sprouted. I did how ever find a mystery plant in my other box.

We are pretty sure it may be a bean from last year sad 3 beans from 6 bushes crop. I wish it better luck this year!

Here is my mini green house crop! So stinking cute!!!

Look at those skinny little broccoli plants and those cucumbers.

See those tiny little white flecks in the ones towards the front? Those are my 'mater plants. YEAH!!

No sign of the celery yet....

DIY Laundry Soap

I finally did it. I had all the stuff and so I made myself do it. I thought it would be really time consuming, but not so.

You will need:

1 five gallon bucket with lid

1 bar of Ivory, Fels Naptha or Zote soap

1 cup Borax

1 cup washing soda

Other tools:

old cheese grater only to be used for soap

a long spoon or paint stirer

sauce pan (comes clean)

First you will grate your bar of soap into your sauce pan.

Then you will fill the sauce pan with water. Heat to a light boil and stir constantly as the soap dissolves. ***DO NOT LEAVE UNATTENDED*** It can boil over quick. Or so I am told I never left it. When the soap is dissolved set aside.

Fill your bucket with 4 1/2 gallons of HOT tap water. As hot as you can get it. Add you soap soup, your borax and washing soda. Stir until well mixed.

Leave to cool for 24 hours. I finished making mine at about 8:30 PM and it was ready to go around 10 am the next day. I know that is not 24 hours but I needed clean cloths. :) It is supposed to look like this when it is done.

Then I stirred it up well and added it to my left over laundry soap bottle. Leave room to shake it up before you use it. You will need to shake it up before each use as it gells up.

I use 2 to 3 cap fulls for each extra large load I run. This come out to 1 to 1 1/2 cups.

You probably want to know cost, huh? Well I would say probably about $7 to start, with the average 5 gallon bucket full maybe costing $2 to make. Heck I pay around $2.99 for that little bottle of all and that last only two weeks.

50 pounds of Ground Beef

Our ward cooperates with a a co-op that allows us to get some killer deals on bulk purchases through out the year. Our first bulk buy this year was ground beef. 7% fat, no hormones, fresh, YUMMY ground beef for $2.30 a pound! I bought 50 pounds!!! I figure this may last our family of 6 for 3 months. You may think , "What the heck do you do with 50 pounds of ground beef?" Well lucky for you I like to take pictures. LOL!

This is what I started with. Ten 5 pound bags.

This is what I ended with!

Ten pounds were made in to meatloaf mixes (on the right).

Five pounds were made into meatballs. (bottom shelf)

The rest was split between raw (on the left) and pre-cooked (middle).

These are great for quick dinners. Pop in the micro wave for a defrost then cook on HI for about 2 mins. pour into what ever you are making. So fast and easy.

I love my food saver!

***Now I don NOT consider my freezer food storage. It is highly perishable in a power outage or natural disaster. I do not can meat at this time because: 1 I do not know how. and 2 Hubby is not so fond of it. We do store tuna and commercially canned chicken though.***