Getting intimate with money: Learn how to work with your strengths
Having an amazing relationship with money so you're able to create the life you want isn't all about lighting abundance candles and reciting some affirmations you found on Pinterest. It's not about muttering some generic magic spell or prayer. The relationship between...
My favorite money relationship exercise!
When I'm working with my coaching clients on their money relationship, one of the first things I ask them is to do an exercise that determines how they really feel about money. Because money is so ingrained in everything we do and intertwined in our emotions,...
How we’re doing more charity donations than ever, without giving money
Okay: embarrassing fact about me: when I used to picture people "supporting charities" I thought the only real way to do it was to write big, fat checks. I attended an event once where the speaker was taking up money. I'd brought some with me planning to spend it,...
Making Raised Garden Beds from Pallets
This fall, Ian came home with a stack of pallets from work, with the idea that we’d turn them into raised beds. Ian has been working lots on making sure we have plenty of wood to heat to heat the house, so I decided to take this project off from his list and make it...
Setting Up Garden Beds in Fall and Winter for Spring planting
Last year, our garden was a side project that took a back seat to caring for myself while I grew Abbie, and took care of her after she was born in the beginning of August. We wanted to make a homemade pantry, and made lots of progress towards that, but this year we're...
Canning Venison
When Ians friend at work told us he had an extra deer, we said we’d love to take it off his hands. I know it’s perfectly fine to freeze deer meat, but the process of canning isn’t that much more work than freezing it. It takes a...
Review of ChipDrop.com – free arborist woodchips!
I love writing about services that we use and love, so when I heard about ChipDrop I started doing what I normally do: I drafted a blog post with how we got started with our new venture. If you've read any of my previous articles about how we grow our own food, you'll...
4 Stages of Training Young Kids to Do Chores
One of the things we intentionally do in our house is we encourage each child to be as independent as is age-appropriately possible. Basically, I have four steps when I'm teaching the kids to do new jobs, which are: Watch me do it Help me do it Do it while...
Can you build a business when you can’t afford a website?
One of the questions I get most often these days in my inbox is, "Do I have to have a website to have a business? I can't afford one." The short answer is: you should probably have a website, but there are things you can do to significantly shorten the time it takes...
Easy-to-Implement Ways We’ve Automated Our Finances
One of the things I’ve learned is that in order to do well financially, sometimes I need to get out of my own way. When I set a priority, I need to automate it so I can’t sabotage myself out of success. Direct deposit When we set up Ian’s direct deposit when he...
7 Prompts to help you clear dysfunctional recurring patterns
I think it's pretty common for people to feel stuck where they are. They have the same old thing that keeps happening over and over, and can't understand why. One of the things I've learned through experience and observation is that the things that keep coming up for...
How we make preserving days more efficient during harvest season
I wanted to share some quick tips that I used to make my baking days simpler and easier during the harvest season. When you have lots of zucchini to use up and not a lot of energy, anything to make the mammoth task of using up your summer produce can quickly end in...
How we’re planning to preserve our garden harvest in 2020
Last year, our garden was...sad. But, as I like to remind myself, my main project was growing and giving birth to Abigail. My goal was to have lots of tomatoes canned, enough for the whole year, and I did pretty well considering the lack of energy I had. This coming...
What We’re Growing in our 2020 Garden
This year, we're expanding dramatically! Last summer my main project was growing and loving baby Abbie, who was born at the beginning of August. Honestly, I was too hot, enormous, and uncomfortable to do much gardening, and we were woefully unprepared for the...
Homeschooling older children during leap weeks with baby
As a homeschool mom with three kids, I try to make sure that we don’t turn school into horrible drudgery for the kids. Part of what I try to be mindful of is that life is all about ebb and flow, and it’s okay if one week with school work doesn’t look like another...
Tips for Surviving Leap Weeks with Babies
I remember my mom telling me before Autumn was born that sometimes babies just get fussy and regress a bit, usually right before a growth spurt. One of the things I didn’t know was that there was a way to predict those spurts, and I’m so thankful that for Abigail at...
The Easy Journaling Trick to Help You Maintain New Habits
Making new habits can be hard. Really hard. It's something I've been working on actively recently - replacing old habits with new ones. Habitual eating is one of the big ones I work hard against in the evenings. What started off as one page in my planner has evolved...
Thriving When You’re A Minimalist Living with a Non-Minimalist
I like things, but very selectively. I have moved 5 times in the past 5 years and every time I swear that I'll have less stuff than the time before. Somehow, I always manage to reduct the chaos in some areas, even if it increases in others. I understand that living...
Habits to Help You Stop Compulsive Spending
I really love to shop. The fact that I always spent more, no matter how much more we made, was always a problem, until I started to really figure out how much it was hurting me. The funny thing is, I have a lot of frugal habits that allowed me to save a lot of money...
What to Do When Your Freezer Gets Left Open
We discovered this morning that when someone went downstairs to get bread for dinner out of the freezer, the door didn't seal completely. Thankfully we keep our freezer very cold, so somethings in the back were still frozen solid, and only about half the stuff in the...