Me too me too! I finally figured out how to post pics :D See, you do learn something new every day! http://talloaks.wordpress.com/

Well, gosh. THAT is my ideal schedule. If I could only make that work, I think my life would be SO much easier. How do you manage to get up that early???

What an interesting thread! I've been pondering the exact same question lately.

Oooh, I saw an online flier for this last year and DH and I seriously considered it but couldn't afford it then. This year MIGHT be different--we'll have to see!

My two favorites: http://blog.earthlingshandbook.org/2007/12/03/honey-baked-lentils.aspx I make this with chunked up sweet potatoes and carrots in it, but you could also use pretty much any squash you want. ----------- Baked Oatmeal INGREDIENTS: 1/2 cup applesauce (or veggie oil) 3/4 cup sweetner of your choice (sugar, Splenda, whatever) 2 eggs 1 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon baking powder 3 cups regular oats 1/2 cup raisins 1-2 tablespoons brown sugar (I personally use the brown sugar splenda) 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon -------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIRECTIONS: Beat together applesauce and sweetener of choice. Mix in eggs, milk, salt, baking powder, oatmeal. Beat well then stir in raisins. Pour into a lightly grease pie pan. Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Refrigerate overnight. The next morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake in preheated oven until firm, about 35 minutes. Serve hot. For this one, I use maple syrup as the sweetener, so I use less. I also omit the topping and chop or grate green apples into the batter. It's not wet--it's almost like oatmeal pie, but it crumbles apart when you squash it a bit. We drizzle on milk (and maybe maple syrup) on top before eating. I often make a double batch and we eat it as breakfast, dinner, snacks, dessert, etc.! --------------- Oh, this too. It's from another board I frequent, and it's so yummy: 1 large potato for each person 1 - 2 onions 2 - 3 carrots (or other veggies) 4 oz sharp cheese of your choice salt and pepper scrub or peel potatos and veggies and chop into small pieces. Put in a frying pan with 1/2 in. of water and let simmer with a lid until tender. Empty into a bowl. Fry onion in pan until almost cooked, add potatos and carrots back into pan and fry until slightly browned. Add cheese and salt and pepper. Stir until cheese is melted and well mixed. ------------------ And here is a link to a thread on a frugal living board I like where people submitted "$2" meal ideas. There was some debate over whether or not they're TRULY $2 meals, LOL! But either way, it's a good source for inexpensive ideas, and most are whole foods-based (because it's that kind of site). HTH!

Our very favorites: http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/oatmealpancakes.htm We chop up green apples and add some cinnamon and nutmeg in the mix. Yum!

I've heard such great things about MOTH, but I know it's Christian-oriented. I am a Christian, but I don't really practice. Would the majority of the system be lost on me? Or could I benefit from the system itself overall? TIA!

Actually, the early bedtimes suggestion does make me think of one helpful thing. The time of day has to be right for me. I'm much more ready to play in the afternoon or evening. Once 10 p.m. passes, I'm too tired and just want to be left alone! Unfortunately, with DH working long days, by the time he eats dinner and relaxes a bit, we've crossed over into the "I'm too tired to even stand up" zone :( Might it help if you could plan some free time with your DH earlier in the day?

Yes, this is against eBay rules, and is a common marker for a scam. I'd be very wary. Often people who do stuff like this are paying with fraudulent accounts or will get the item and then put in a Paypal claim against you for their money back.

I have nothing to add because this is very much an issue here lately. I know my DH, while incredibly supportive of HSing, is certainly wondering how things would improve if I didn't have the added stresses (for example, when I had to spend last night and early this a.m. cleaning up frantically for our weekly playgroup, and he wanted to actually play). So I'm right there with ya!

Yes, I agree that now would be the time to allow yourself a little leeway. FWIW, I've taken meds for fevers during illnesses and I've not taken meds for fevers during illnesses (I think I had mastitis approximately 12 times while nursing DD5--no joke), and I've never noticed any difference in the length of time it's taken me to get better. IMO, you're OK with a little ibuprofen for comfort reasons here. Gentle (((HUGS))) to you. I hope you feel better soon!

Ha! I just thought the exact same thing. There's going to be a run on them now. I do think that the post office services are generally quite the bargain, really, and my own mail lady is terrific. But THAT is just not cool :eek:, and I don't blame you for avoiding the service at all!

LOL! A Christian CD, no less. I'm interested to see what the rest of the discussion looks like here. I'll be thinking more about the whole thing, for sure. And thanks, she'd bonked her nose :( She gets goofy when she's tired, and bedtime's rapidly approaching.

I don't see how it could help a cough, really, with the exception of numbing your throat a bit, maybe. You'll probably not care so much about the cough afterward though! One of my favorite episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond touches on this issue. The older brother is reminiscing about warm, comforting times with his mom when she used to give them a drink of a sweet colored liquid that, as an adult, he thought was a placebo, when his father tells him it was actually rum. :D

Thank you Kari :o I'll have to give it some more thought, I guess. I never really thought too much about it, I guess, because I grew up in the age when everything was copied--cassette to cassette, radio to cassette, CD to cassette, and now CD to CD. To play devil's advocate though, couldn't you say the same about the book/curriculum resale market? For every resource sold on the sale and swap board here (and on eBay and Half.com), that's a resource the copyright owner doesn't get paid for. Oops, crying toddler...

I was mentioning in public to a friend a few days ago that I had made a copy of an audiobook from the library because my DD loved it so much, and she looked a little nervous and said I shouldn't say things like that out loud if I wanted to keep doing it (mostly jokingly, of course). But it got me thinking--pretty much everyone I know who has the capability and knowledge to do so copies CDs from friends, their own, library versions etc. Does everybody do this, or am I am a member of a particularly unethical crowd? I'm not selling copies or anything, just making personal copies so I can return my DD's favorites to the library. WDYT?

This is what I use when I have a bunch of stained items to treat (I copied and pasted from a post of mine on another board). For me, it's worked on everything but rust stains, yellow sand stains, set-in coffee, and set-in chocolate: It's actually from the Tightwad Gazette, so it's not quite a secret, but most people haven't heard it It works on most "natural" stains--mud, food, poop, spit up, body oil (my DH is one greasy guy) etc. It has NOT worked, for me at least, on mildew, rust, or set-in coffee. And it doesn't work for every single stain, of course, but I've saved many kids' items this way. 1 C of Cascade powder dishwasher detergent (the plain, regular kind) 1 C of Clorox 2 liquid color-safe bleach 5 gallons of the hottest possible water you can get from your water heater--when I posted this on the F&F forum, someone once said she used this treatment, and to boost it she'd add a portion of boiling water from the stove. Mix this all together, then mix in the clothes and let them soak overnight, or longer. I stir them periodically too, because they tend to float up to the top, and I push them back down and in so no stains get stuck up top. I also make sure I use a container I can close--I tried this once in a open container and the heat dissipated too quickly. You can also do half batches, or quarter batches, or whatever, as long as you can keep it hot enough. I've done half batches, but I imagine anything smaller might cool pretty quickly, and the heat is what does part of the work. You must use the actual brand-name products--off brands don't work, I've tried. I've soaked cranberry and bright pink items together with white stuff many times and never had a transfer problem (I think the color-safe bleach helps prevent it), but I did soak some place mats that had black in them, the whole batch went gray. I wasn't able to re-whiten a few of the items either, so use caution when you're mixing colors. It's only been a problem once for me, but still, you never know just when it WILL turn out to be a problem!

This was my parents' experience with it, in NJ. To my knowledge, it has not (20 years later) invaded either neighbor's lawn. It is the last to green up and the first to brown out for the season, but it is good, strong grass. They don't regret the decision at all. I think they did buy it from an ad, though the PP has a very good point about being sure that it's right for your zone.

Dude. I TOTALLY thought you were serious there for a minute. :eek::D

Uh, YUM!

Thanks everyone. I do really want to like using a program, but I highly suspect that I wouldn't actually use it. I could run Parallels on my Mac, I suppose, but I need more memory, and I'm afraid of overloading the thing as it is. Ugh. So I went ahead and just made myself a table in Word and did a few weeks of lesson plans there. I stuck everything in little boxes, and was even able to paste in links to URLs I wanted to use with particular lessons. It was time consuming, but probably not more so than writing them out (and I could copy and paste where necessary). I guess I'll see how that goes and move on from there. Your responses are much appreciated!

Oh, you could also do the water thawing method. I use that frequently (a little too frequently, ahem!), and most things thaw pretty quickly.

I admit it, we don't compost. (Please don't throw rotten tomatoes at me--they'll just go in the garbage can anyway!) My only experience with composting involved, um, worms or maggots of some kind, when I was a kid? And I just can't deal with that. I'm not particularly girly-girl or anything...I just can't do worms of any kind. I don't think I could sleep at night knowing a bin of worms was nearby. Even my DH won't go that far, and not much bothers him. So, are there alternatives? Are there alternatives to a big smelly bin in our yard? I've heard of kitchen bin composting, or something like that. What are the options? Thank you again, garbage gurus :o

Here too. Plus, I don't think my DH would go for throwing the garbage right in the bins. As it is, I'm constantly picking out the recyclables he throws in the garbage. (Insert head-popping smiley here) So here's another question then. What would be better--biodegradable bags or recycled plastic bags? From what I've read, the biodegradable bags, once buried in the landfill, don't actually biodegrade. If I was using recycled plastic bags, I'd at least be creating a market for a waste product that isn't going anywhere anytime soon (and paying a lot less per bag, as it turns out).

In our house, sweet potatoes ARE a meal. Seriously. I love them. Do you have eggs to go with the ham? Makings for pancakes or pizza? Those are my emergency meals.