Would I survive?

As the outside temperature warms up and as I read about people planning spring gardens; I am reminded of how spring used to be for me..... umm, about 35, 40, or 45 years ago.  Every spring, after about a week of above freezing temperatures, the utility company had what I called "field day" as a multitude of trucks rolled out to turn off utilities.  You could see the trucks going from house to house down streets turning off the utilities in the low income neighborhoods.  People's utilities would remain turned off until we managed to pay the high bill or cold weather arrived again.  People in low income neighborhoods know utilities are not a necessity; they are a luxury.  Since utilities today cost way more than they used to, I expect to see a field day in my neighborhood any time now.  The temperature has been above 50 for several days now.

I keep asking myself, would I survive through the summer if this happened to me today?  Could I survive a summer without utilities as I used to do?  Sure, I could probably get by for a couple of weeks as I did during the ice storm of 2009.

After the wind storm, not long after the ice storm, I did ok too.  Ladybug and I spent lots of time together by kerosene lamp light for three weeks that time.  She was too small to care about anything but warm milk, dry diapers, and plenty of cuddles.

I keep asking myself over and over again..... could I survive as I did back when I fully expected my utilities to be turned off for several months every year?  Could I survive if there were a major disaster here and things wouldn't get back to normal for several months?

Back then, I anticipated the spring event and started preparing for it in January.  I knew I had a couple of months to use up the food in the fridge and to wash then dry as many clothes as I could.  I would stock up on foods that could be cooked using my grill as a strange looking wood stove.  I would get out the cooler I made with triple insulation around it.  Back then there were lots of preparations I did in expectation of long months without utilities. 

Could I survive that way today?  Looking around my house today at first I didn't believe I could.  Too much of my life revolves around the use of electricity these days.  I have a freezer which I didn't have back then.  The freezer is full of food.  I could probably cook a lot of it during a temporary power outage because I have a gas stove.  But what if the gas was turned off too as it used to be done?  I no longer have a charcoal grill or a supply of wood branches to burn in it.  I don't own a pressure canner to can the meats in the freezer.  I'm saving for one but my change jar savings don't add up as quickly as they used to.  Even if I had the canner, my supply of canning jars is very limited.  I have 9 dozen pint jars and a meager supply of lids.

My income revolves around the use of electricity.  Without electricity a quilting machine won't sew.  Sure, I do have my much loved treadle machine.  I could use that for machine quilting if I needed to do it. 

I took a look at some of my non-electric kitchen appliances.  The food grinder is missing the wing nuts to hold it together.  My veggie slicer is ok though.  I still have my cast iron cookware which were and are very valuable for outdoor cooking.  I still have my percolator and some other non-electric kitchen items.

Back in those days I was much younger (of course) and physical labor wasn't an issue.  I could handle washing clothes by hand and carrying heavy loads of tree branches for fire with no trouble.  I'm not so strong these days.  Back then I walked long distances to find fallen branches and carry them home.  Today, I fear the roaming packs of neighborhood dogs so walking to find wood would be out of the question.  Back then I had a very small backyard garden to pick fresh veggies for daily meals.  Today, too many tree roots in the ground and too many overhead branches keeping out the sunlight, which prevent planting a garden.   

Am I a prepper or a survivalist?  Today's buzzwords define prepper and survivalist to refer to someone who believes there is an apocalypse about to happen.  Back when I knew for certain I would have to live a whole summer without utilities it felt like an apocalypse to me.   I thought of myself as a prepper because I got myself prepared for the event.  I thought of myself as a survivalist because I believed I would survive long hot days of summer without a fan or air conditioning while standing over a fire cooking our daily meals.

Could I survive a utility field day as I live right now?  At first I didn't think so but with only a few changes I'm sure I could.  It would take some thought on my part to remember what I used to do in preparation for utility field day but I know I could manage.   If I can find it, I still have my notebook of ideas I used back in those days. 

I would still need electricity to run my quilting machine.  Anybody know how to hook up a Gammill to a treadle?  I can live without a tv and hardly miss it but the internet I would miss a lot.  I like writing my blogs and visiting the blogs of others.   I have enough non-electric items that I could survive.  Finding those items is something else entirely.  Hmm..... maybe it's time I thought about locating these things and listing them on a "find it" list to put into my household manager notebook.  Now where did I put that notebook?  I know it's here someplace.

 

Mama made soap

Just for something different than talking about food so much; I thought today I would tell a story about my Grandmother that I called Mama. 

One of the things Grandma Mama did was make soap.  Actually, she made two kinds of soap.  One was a hard bar soap that made our skin very soft and another was a laundry soap.  Grandma Mama's laundry soap was nothing at all like the laundry soap I made myself about a year ago.  Her soap was a mushy brownish sort of stuff.  It was about the consistency of mayonnaise or pudding and didn't make bubbles at all.  It got the clothes very clean though. 

Washing was done by cooking boiling our clothes in a pot of water over an open fire, removing them to a tub of cooler water, and scrubbing on a wash board my Grandpa Papa had made.   There wasn't any electricity in our house back then.  When electricity was eventually run to the house Grandma Mama did get a wringer washing machine.  She thought it the best contraption ever made. 

Anyway, about the laundry soap Mama made.  She had a bucket sort of thing she used to make her lye.  I can't remember exactly the formula Mama used to make her soap but I do remember the way she made her lye...... sort of.    It's been a lot of years since I thought about this.

Papa had found a wedge shaped rock.  It was rough, not smooth.  Just something he found on the farm.   The rock was about 3 inches on the high side and about an inch on the low side and somewhere around two feet wide.  The rock looked sort of like this.

Into this rock Papa chiseled a groove in a somewhat round shape with another chiseled section going toward the short side of the rock wedge.  His circle was a lot rougher than my drawing.  The groove was about 1/4 inch deep.   The top of the rock looked sort of like this.

Behind the wash house was a makeshift bench table setting next to a rain barrel. The rock sat on this bench table with the edge of the rock just a bit beyond the edge of the bench.  On top of the rock sat a bottomless and topless wood bucket.  If I remember right, Mama's bucket was originally a cracker barrel cut in half and the bottom removed.   Hmm... it might have been a pickle barrel.  Anyway....

 The barrel bucket was just a  bit larger around than the groove Papa had carved into the rock.  Under the rock sat a small iron pot.   It all looked sort of like this. 

Inside the bottomless bucket Mama packed some straw about an inch or two deep.  On top of the straw she put a piece of muslin.  The muslin was just big enough to cover the bottom of the bucket and come up the sides a couple of inches.  On top of the muslin Mama put ashes from her cook stove.  She only used wood and corn cobs in the cookstove.  She filled the bucket up to about two or three inches from the top of the bucket.  I remember Mama would never use the coal ashes from the pot belly stove that heated the house.  I don't remember why though.  Maybe she didn't like the soap it made.

About once or twice a day Mama would put a couple of dippers full of water on the ashes.  The dipper held about a cup or so of water.  Hmm.... a dipper is what we used to get a drink of water from a water bucket.  You may have seen in old western type movies how people drank from a dipper?  Anyway, the water trickled down through the ashes, through the fabric and straw, into the groove, and down to the iron pot below creating a lye water.  The fabric and straw was to keep the ashes from going into the pot along with the lye water. 

Mama saved her kitchen grease by straining it through a piece of muslin.  Mama's cooking grease was lard she made herself.  After she used the lard over and over again enough times it started to get really brown looking.  When Mama thought it really was too brown to use for cooking anymore she saved it to make laundry soap.  When Mama thought the lye water was just right she would mix her old cooking lard into the lye pot.  Mama would spend a very long time sitting and stirring the lye lard mixture with a wooden spoon. 

How Mama knew just when the lye was right or how much lard to add, or how long to stir it, is a mystery to me.  The memory is lost along with other childhood memories.  Maybe it will come back to me later.... maybe not.  Mama stored her laundry soap in a pottery type bowl in the wash house.   If I remember right, after making soap Mama refilled the bucket with new straw, muslin, and ashes to start the process again.  

I hope you've enjoyed the story about my Grandma Mama. 

 

Coupons

I watched a show last night on the learning channel (TLC) that brought back memories and at the same time left me really puzzled by the purchases.  It was a show called Extreme Couponing.  The coupon people on this show bought thousands of dollars worth of STUFF for very little money because of their coupons.  The main thing about using coupons in the show was that the store doubled the value of the coupons.  A 50 cent coupon would become a dollar.  A dollar coupon would become two dollars.  The people spent hours and hours gathering coupons, matching the coupons up to sale items, going through the store to fill up several carts, and then going through the register line.

Let me tell ya, I was one of those who could buy several hundred dollars worth of STUFF for mere pennies if I chose to do it.  I first started using coupons in the 60s when there were coupons and refunds (rebates) almost everywhere you looked and only a few people used them.  Back then the stores gave away stamps that we put into books and traded just like money for things like sheets, dishes, appliances, furniture, and just about anything.  The stamp stores had catalogs of stuff very similar to regular catalogs today. 

Back in those days there were coupons for meat, fresh fruits & veggies, milk & bread, and just about anything needed to eat healthy.  We didn't see convenience foods in the stores back then like we see them today either.  I rarely paid more than 10 cents on the dollar for anything I needed.  Often, after coming home with my goods I could mail off packaging parts and get refund checks sent to me for the items I paid only a few pennies for in the first place.  Sometimes I earned thirty or fourty dollars a week by going through other peoples trash for packages offering refunds.  Many times one package had several refunds that could be had by sending different parts.  A top for one refund, a bottom for another, a weight seal for another, and sometimes just for sending a receipt.

Heck, even the stuff I bought for pennies had free stuff inside.  There were bath towels, hand towels, and face cloths in laundry powder boxes.  Glasses and dishes came inside oatmeal and cereal boxes.   Jelly came in drinking glasses.  Free stuff was given away at gas stations too.  Fill up your tank and you got free silverware or other stuff plus they gave you stamps to put into your stamp books in the same transaction.  Gas was from 15 to 30 cents a gallon back then as well.  Oh to have those days again!  If you got the oil changed in your car you got a coin inside every can of oil.  The coins could be traded for stuff just like stamps.  

Did you know Depression Glass dishes were originally free give away items at gas stations?  They were.  I think the whole "give something free for a purchase" phase came from the original free dishes given away during the great depression.  Now those dishes are worth hundreds of dollars to a collector.  I could go on and on about the free stuff and refunds back then but I don't want to bore you any longer with my trip down memory lane.

Ok, back to the people featured on the show.  I don't know what part of the country those folks live in but what they did certainly can't be done here in Kentucky anymore.  My suspicion is that after the manufacturers see the show; those people won't be able to do their extreme shopping anymore either.  The people on the show really went way beyond what the coupons are intended to do.  One man bought 1,000 boxes of cereal which he got for a few pennies.  A Thousand boxes!  No way can one person eat that much cereal in a lifetime.  He bought 300 toothbrushes.  So how many times would he have to brush his teeth to use up all those toothbrushes?  He bought enough food stuff in one single shopping trip that it would last him 150 years or more if he lived that long.  He said he shops like that all the time.  His garage looked like walking into a mega store.

One woman said she was leaving her stockpile of groceries in her will.  Her kids would inherit it.  She bought 60 bottles of soda and almost 2 thousand dollars worth of other stuff for less than 10 dollars on her one shopping trip.  Now come on!  How many large bottles of soda can one family drink in 3 months?  That's how long it would be before the soda is on sale and coupons would come out again.  Ok, some people drink soda all day every day.  But, how long will 500 boxes of pasta and 300 jars of pasta sauce last for a family of 4?  I don't know about you but that would be way too many pasta meals for me before it gets too old to use. 

It's people, like the extreme couponers on the show, that mess the system up for the rest of us.  Back in the 80s there was a lady named Michelle Easter that went on tv and told of her extreme couponing too.  She started a magazine called Refunding Makes Cents that was filled with the latest refunds out all over the country.  People who subscribed to her magazine could trade refund forms with other people and double, triple, or quadruple the rebates they got from one package.  A package they got for free in the first place.  She messed it up for those of us who only took our fair share.  It was only a year or two later that the refund forms started disappearing because the magazine created so many extreme refunding people.  No manufacturer can continue to operate if every dollar they earn is given out in free items plus refunds too.  They would go bankrupt very quickly.

Not long ago I was challenged to live without my coupons.  I agreed to take the challenge but my neighbor continued to bring coupons to me.  I kept them even though I wasn't using them.  I have managed to live quite well without the coupons.  Well, right before my last shopping trip I decided to have a look at my coupons once more.  There are very few really good useful coupons anymore. 

Out of all those coupons, I came up with only these that were actually usable for my purchases.  The rest were for what I call junk items.  Junk items that most other people don't like either. 

After making out my shopping list and matching coupons to sale items..... I didn't use a single one of the coupons.  I found better bargains on items that didn't have coupons out.   For example the 40 cents off on yeast.  Even if it were doubled to 80 cents the store brand would still be a dollar cheaper than one with a coupon.   Stores here in my area stopped doubling and tripling coupons about two years ago.

If you find coupons that really are on products you use; then for heaven sake use some common sense when using them.  For example let's say you use one roll of toilet tissue per week. (Ok your family might use more but this is only an example, K?)   A year's supply would be 52 rolls or about 13 four roll packages.  If the coupon and sale is out every three months then you only need 3 packages to last until the next sale.  If you bought 4 packages every three months then at the end of the year you would have 16 extra rolls in your stock pile to help with any possible financial crisis.

Here's another example.  Let's say you use about one jar of pasta sauce and one box of spaghetti a month.  How many jars of pasta sauce and boxes of spaghetti would you need for a year?  (12)  The sale and coupon comes out every three months so how many do you need to purchase for a three month's supply? (3) How many extra to buy every three months for building your stockpile of emergency food?  (4) 

Ok, I do know there are people who keep up to 20 years worth of food and water in their stockpile.  That's a lot of money tied up in stockpiled foods that could be lost to a disaster.  I can't help but wonder how many of the people lost all their stockpiled food to flooding out west last year.  How many lost their stockpile of food in the fires that swept across an area a few months ago.  How many stockpiles are buried beneath the mud slides in California right now?  You understand what I'm saying?

So if you are going to use coupons and stockpile stuff..... at least buy and keep no more than you can reasonably use and no more than you can afford to loose due to a disaster.  Keep the money saved so you can replace what you need when you need it.  Use coupons wisely and buy only your fair share.

Ok let me sum this whole post up into four simple words that anyone can understand.

God doesn't like greedy!

In my opinion God does want us to have food stored away; but, only enough to last a little beyond a year's supply.  That's why he created the seasons.  In the spring food is planted and farm animals have babies.  During the summer everything grows and matures.  In the fall it's all harvested and preserved to last until the next fall season.  During the winter we start eating our stored up foods.  Spring arrives and it starts all over again. 

Even God's creatures know to store only about a year's worth of foods.  What would it look like if squirrels kept a 20 year supply of nuts in their tree house?   What would a ant hill look like if there were 20 years worth of  dead bugs saved in it?  How fat would a bear be if it stored up 20 years worth of fat for it's hibernation? 

I'm not putting down anybody's religion.  I'm just stating my own thoughts about what should be stored for the future.  If your religon teaches you to keep more that's ok.  We can agree to disagree.

Ok, blogger is acting up.  It must be telling me to stop type-talking and post already!

Too obsessed

The phone rings and I answer.

Daughter says..... Hi Mom, what'cha doing?

I say.... making garbage.

Daughter says.... Huh?

I say (with a little giggle).....  Sorting things that can be thrown away.

Maybe I'm being a little too fanatic about cleaning my house these days?

Maybe a little too obsessed with organizing and food preserving?

Maybe I'm a tad too worried about knowing where to find the things I need, when I need them?

Maybe I'm just a bit too much into doing frugal cooking again?

Please understand;  I've spent far too many years thinking of the quilting customers first.  Customers came before my own life and family.  This year, for the first time in a lot of years, I actually have time for cooking and cleaning instead of working 16 hour days right up until Christmas day while at the same time telling my friends and family..... I can't.  I actually have time to leisurely create a charity quilt or two.

I firmly believe the more organized my home is..... the better quilter and person I am.  The less time I spend with finding something.... the more time I have for using it.  Which is why I work so hard at trying to stay organized. 

My professional machine quilting career started out innocently enough.  I started my career in a time when very few people wanted their tops quilted by machine.  (1981)  Machine quilting had not gotten the recognition it has today as being a good thing. 

Gradually, over the years, machine quilting started getting accepted and I got better at it.  More customers came to me and my customer base grew every year.  I got busier and busier.  I started telling my friends and family I had to finish the quilts first when someone asked me to spend time with them.  One by one the customers became the focus of my life instead of what's really important. 

I neglected my health.  I stopped doing frugal things.  I forgot about my dreams.  Every year I focused more and more on being a fantastic machine quilter and let my life slip away from me. 

About three or four years ago I began to wake up to reality when my daughter said "Mom, quilting is your life."  It was then I realized not only had I not spent time with my kids for years; but, my grand kids and great grand kids were growing up and they don't know me.  Sure they know I'm Granny but they don't really know me.  

That's when I announced my semi-retirement from professional machine quilting.  I have only 4 customers now.   They bring me enough income I can afford to eat and keep the roof over my head.  I'm eating better without spending a lot.  My health improved immediately.  I'm clearing out a lot of clutter because I want a simpler life.  Not just physical house clutter but mind clutter as well.  I want a life that includes my kids, grand kids, great grand kids, and my real friends. 

To be continued....

Why show my clutter

Why am I willing to show how messy my house has become? 

Why let the world know I feel as if I'm becoming a hoarder?

Why open my house up to criticism of others when I could simply hide it behind closed doors and not show it on the internet?

Thank you Joan (How to be a housewife) for the comment you left me.  You got me thinking more about what I'm trying to explain on my blog.  I  guess I'm hoping to show other potential hoarders they are not alone.  I'm hoping to show other professional machine quilters what could happen if they let the quilting work consume their life the way I did.  Mostly it's the thing..... you are not alone.... that drives me. 

There seems to be a STUFF epidemic in America.  Ever since the end of WWII we've been told and convinced that buy, buy, buy is the way we should live.  No... that's not it.  Hmm.... We've been taught to buy cheap, buy cheap, spend, spend, spend, and make sure it's cheap enough to throw away so we can buy more.  We are a country of consumer driven economics and this leads to houses filled to the brim with STUFF.   Cheap stuff brought from other countries with people willing to work for slave wages in order to sell us cheap stuff to fill up our houses. 

When I was a child there were no mega malls or wally world stores.  Everything was made with quality and the maker was proud to sign their name on the product.  Stuff was made well enough and was just scarce enough to be cherished and handed down to the next generation with pride.   Knowing the next generation was glad to get the precious items.  A set of good china was loved and repaired when cracked or chipped.  A mother's wedding dress was packed away in tissue to be used by her daughter someday.  A bedroom set was made to last generation after generation.  Not replaced every year or two. 

These days we still want to hand things down to the next generation but the stuff we save is no longer quality...... it's junk.  We are listening to the advertisers who tell us that cheap plastic cups and tiny beenie babies are collector items.  Can anyone explain to me how cheap stuff, made by the billions, is collector items?   We've all been convinced that we must spend our money on this cheap crap that lasts only a short time then we need to buy it again, and again. 

Somewhere in time we stopped thinking about warranties as guarantees of quality.  Now days, a warranty is something to be sold to us instead of assuring us we are getting a good item.  When an item breaks we simply buy another one but we hang onto the old one just in case. 

The economy has lots of people scared too.  We hang onto STUFF from fear of the unknown.  We might need it someday.  For example; a few days ago the news was talking of higher prices on some things like flour, sugar, and cotton.  Well, as a quilter, a higher cost of cotton concerned me.  Fabric would cost more, thread would cost more, and batting would cost more.  My first reaction was that maybe I might need to order a large supply of batting to ride out the higher price.  Then I really thought about it.  I decided that the news should not be the reason for me to part with my money or have a stockpile of batting. 

In my quest to simplify my life and clear out the clutter I've come to realize there are a lot of quilters (or other people) who buy lots and lots of stuff only to become overwhelmed enough to throw away most of it and then immediately start buying more.  I don't want to live like that anymore.  I have enough!  In the past I've gotten by with very, very little.  I should be able to do it again.

I saw my Grandma Mama make do with very little but what she had was cherished and loved. Let's use quilts as an example.  She made quilts out of fabric scraps.  She even made them by machine.  What quilts she made were not finished in a couple of days so they were loved and cherished by all who got one.  These days quilts are made so fast and given away so often it's hard to cherish one quilt knowing another quilt can replace it in only a few days.  

Ok, I've gotten a little off topic, let me go back to why I'm showing the clutter in my house.  I feel as if there may be others struggling with the issue of having too much stuff like I am.  Maybe others are feeling as overwhelmed by the stuff as I've been.  Maybe if I tell my story there will be someone else who realizes they are not alone.   Would anyone else want to share their hoarding fears or stories? Write a post about your own fear or story and add it to the Mr. Linky.  (I hope I've done this right!)  Please link to the individual post and not your main blog.

Refrigeration without electricity

I talk about my Grandmother (Mama) all the time and the things she taught me.  One of the things we had on the farm was a cool house because we didn't have electricity.  There was a tiny stream running through a little channel in the center of the cool house.  We kept foods cold by placing them in the water in the channel.  The stream running through was cold so the foods stayed cold. 

When I was thinking of things to have just in case of an emergency during hot weather I thought about Mama's cool house.  Well, here in the city, it's not likely that I'll ever have a stream running across my back yard unless a water main breaks.  So I started thinking of an alternative for keeping foods cold and safe to eat even in the summer. 

I hear about black outs, or maybe it's brown outs, where electricity goes out because of overloads on the system.  So many new items are added in homes everyday which require electricity that a loss of power is a real possibility.  Especially in the summer when the demand is high to keep air conditioners running.  Our electric system is very old and is not designed for people to add and add and add more demands on it.  Homes that used to not have even one computer or tv now have several and so forth.  I'm doing what I can to use less while I can. 

I kept thinking what would I do about my refrigerated foods if the power went out again for several days and it was 100 degrees outside?  I've lost all my food one time too many.  I'm skittish about it even though I use my freezer a lot.  I kept thinking what if I had medications I needed to keep cold?  What would I do about having cold water to drink?  I was also remembering how I kept my daughter cool while sleeping during the summers when my utilities got cut off.  Then a tiny spark of a thought came to me.  Something I had read about in a magazine years ago.  I believe the magazine was Mother Earth News or something similar?  I can't remember exactly.  Anyway, I did some research and came up with a couple of ideas. 

Have you ever heard of a coolgardie safe?  If you haven't, this is what one looks like.  It works with evaporation of water to keep foods safe to eat in hot weather.  Water is kept in the top.  Burlap covers it with the ends of the burlap in the water at the top.  The water is wicked up by the burlap.  Eventually the whole burlap is wet.  The water starts to evaporate from the heat and air movement.  The evaporation draws the heat out from the inside of the safe so the inside stays cool.  There is a pan to hold water at the bottom too but this is to keep ants from getting to the food.  I guess those ants don't build ant bridges?  The coolguardie safe was invented in Australia in the 1800s. 





Ok, here's a modern version of the coolguardie safe.  This is called a pot in pot cooler.  I believe these are being given to people in Africa but I'm not sure.  It also works with evaporation.  Two large non-glazed pots are used.  There is sand between the two pots.  The sand part is filled with water to soak the sand.  The water from the sand wicks into the outside pot where it evaporates.  The evaporation draws the heat from inside the pot keeping the food inside cool.    The sand also acts as an insulation for the inside pot.  The top is to help keep it cool inside too. 



Can you guess what's been added onto my wish list?

Update November 6, 2010:  I completely forgot to put a link to the sites where I found these photos.  I can't remember exactly where I found the photo of the 1800s coolguardie safe.  If I remember right it was a museum site or antique site or something like that.  I'll post that link if I can find it again.

The pot n pot photo came from a really interesting site called Under the choko tree.  A site written by a couple in Australia who have tried to live simply for many years and now they are writing about it.  Linda and Nev Sweeney.  If you get a chance you should go visit their site.  In my wanderings around the internet I find some very intersting people living in Australia.  From quilters to homesteaders and everything in between. 

Making ground beef

Sometimes I find beef roast or steak at a price cheaper than the price of ground beef.  A very, very long time ago I had a hand crank grinder.  It was also one of the things I gave away in a fit of organizing.  I regret that decision as well.  

Now that I have a new Kitchen Aid with a grinder attachment I'm making my own ground beef again.  Yippie!  I'd still love to have a hand crank grinder again.  I may start watching the thrift stores to see if I can find one.

Ok, about making the ground beef..... I take a pack or two or three of discounted beef.  Whatever amount I want to use. 

I cut it into strips small enough to fit into the grinder attachment.  Partially freezing for about half an hour  helps the cutting be much easier to do.

I feed it through the grinder a piece at a time.

It comes out like this. 

Before I know it there's a whole bowl full of ground beef. 

Simply pack it away in freezer bags. 

Other options could be to cook it right away to be frozen and used in quick fix meals.  I could mix up a couple of meat loaves to freeze and be ready to cook.  There are lots of options about how to use ground beef once I have it. 

I had to laugh at my neighbor who came over when I was grinding the beef.  He asked what I was doing and I told him.  What?  You can do that?  How?  So I showed him how I made my own ground beef.  He didn't know people could make it themselves.  He thought only stores could make it.  Then I got really sad.  Far too many things have disappeared from the grocery shelves in favor of convenience.  Our younger generation doesn't know what real food is these days.  Their taste buds are trained to believe starchy fillers to be zapped in a microwave are the way foods are supposed to taste.  There are so many things I remember from only about 40 years ago that are no longer available in the stores.

There was a time when I could go to the butcher and get a pack of beef or pork fat to make my own lard for cooking.  Despite what we have been told by the media hype; lard is not a bad thing to cook with. Bits of meat in the fat became cracklings to flavor other dishes.  There was a time when all meat came with bones in it.  Bones were saved to make our own beef or chicken stock.  These days bones are removed from the meat before it's sold. 

There was a time when, as a young person, I learned to cut up a chicken into 10 or 12 pieces for a family meal.  Even the back, neck, gizzard, heart, and liver were eaten when we had chicken for Sunday dinner.  My father loved the back and neck.  I loved the gizzard and liver.  When was the last time you saw a pack of backs, necks, and gizzards sold in a store?  If you are a young person you may not have ever seen those chicken parts in the grocery. 

Sad, so sad.  What have we done to our younger generations?  Is it too late to reverse the damage?  I don't know but I'm sure going to do all I can and as much as I can to educate the younger generation about lost skills by posting them on my blogs.

Cross stitch quilts

MY OPINION..... others might have a different opinion.

I was told I was wrong about how cross stitched quilts are supposed to be made.... because the directions on the package say to do the stitching first.  My grandmother Bessie Jewell Hill (1888-1978) taught me to make cross stitched quilts when I was about 6 years old.  She might have been right about how they were made OR she might have been just teaching me in the only way she knew to do it.  Here's how I came up my idea on how cross stitched quilts should be made.

I thought that originally crossed stitched quilts were a way of teaching young children to both embroidery and quilt at the same time.  A sort of quilt sampler using cross stitching; which is the simplest embroidery.  We didn't use fancy floss, we used crochet thread, yarn, or butcher string.  I remember other young girls my age doing these quilts too.  We made them for our dolls.  I also remember doing cross stitched designs (chalk or pencil drawn) on family utility quilts.   Our quilt frame hung from the ceiling.  A grown up would draw a line design which we stitched.   Sometimes it was a fill in design and sometimes it was just lines.  We did quilting with decorative stitching for our special occasion quilts.  (like you see on crazy quilts) On our regular utility quilts we did simple running stitches and cross stitching more often than decorative.  All our quilts were done by first layering the quilt before stitching started. 

I can't remember a single quilt my grandmother made that was made from brand new fabrics.  My grandmother would have thought that way too frivolous.  She would be horrified at how much fabric is sold exclusively for quilts these days.  Even the backs of our quilts were made from old sheets or other scraps.  Hmm... sheets were made from thin unbleached muslin in our home.  When these sheets became so thin the rips and tears could no longer be repaired, these sheets became patched up quilt backings. 

I never learned to do the tiny, almost invisible, hand stitches you see on quilts today.  I was taught with thick threads, on utility quilts, which didn't give me much practice for tiny stitching.  If you look at the quilts from back during the turn of the century (1900) you will see very few quilts with perfect almost invisible stitching.  Or at least the ones I've been close enough to see.  I've not studied any museum quilts so I don't know about those.

Well, that's how I learned to do cross stitched quilts.  After thinking about it; I don't think there really is a right or wrong way.  We each make quilts in our own style.  From now on I won't say any cross stitched quilts are done wrong. 

Here's something to think about......

Have you ever read the directions for a quilt pattern in a magazine or book and found them to be all wrong?  Imagine someone 50 or 100 years from now trying to follow the directions of some magazine or book with the wrong directions.   Now imagine someone in the far future trying to follow a quilt pattern written wrong and without any pictures to go by either.  

Isn't that what we do today?  We try to make quilts designed back in the days when there were no written directions or pictures.  (50 or 100 years ago)  We make them in whatever way has been passed down to us or come up with our own directions.  Right?  So who is wrong... our ancestors or us?

The wife's ten commandments

HER TEN COMMANDMENTS

These are the new commandments ten;

which wives now create for married men

1.  Remember that I am thy wife; whom thou must cherish all thy life.

2.  Thou shalt not stay out late at night; when lodges, friends, or clubs invite.

3.  Thou shalt not smoke indoor our out; or chew tobacco round about.

4.  Thou shalt with prise receive my pies; nor pastry made by me dispise.

5.  My mother thou shalt strive to please; and let her live with us in ease.

6.  Remember 'tis thy duty clear; to dress me well throughout the year.

7.  Thou shalt not be a drinking man; but live on the prohibition plan.

8.  Thou shalt in manner mild and meek; give me thy wages every week.

9.  Thou shalt not flirt, but must allow; thy wife such freedom anyhow

10.  Thou shalt get up when the baby cries; and try the child to tranquilize.

These my commands from day to day; implicitly thou shalt obey! 

Corn cobs, firewood, and oats

When my grandparents got married, they moved into a one room log cabin home.  Yes, the genuine thing.  They later built another house just down the hill.  When my grandparents married, horses and wagons were the mode of transportation.  You have to realize that this was in the backwoods of Western Kentucky right around the turn of the century.  (1900, not our current century) 

When Papa (Grandpa) needed fuel to heat the house he went out to the woods and cut down some old trees or picked up coal laying around on the ground.  It was coal country after all.  During cold weather months, Mama (Grandma) was always up early to fire up the wood kitchen stove so she could cook biscuits, pancakes, bacon, eggs, and start a roast or stew for the day.  She would throw in a few corn cobs to get the fire going really fast and to heat up the kitchen.  There were tons more corncobs out in she shed; and every year, after the corn shelling, she had a new supply. 

When Papa and Mama went to town to sell eggs, butter, and cheese; which gave them enough money to buy coffee, sugar, flour, and a few other things they couldn't produce on their own land; the horses ran on hay, corn, and oats Papa grew himself. 

Today, we depend on electricity, gas, and oil as fuel.  It's too bad that coal, gas, and oil can't replace themselves like corncobs, firewood, and oats.

Let me ask you a question...... What would you do if your income disappeared today?  The reason it disappeared doesn't matter.  The question is.... what would you do?

Most of us have been raised bombarded with the idea to spend, spend, spend.  Our economy depends on it.  We hear it on the news almost everyday now.  Our economy and our government wants us to start spending again so this recession/depression can be over and people will go back to work.  They tell us that spending will create jobs.

We have been encouraged to consume as much as possible to make jobs for everyone.  Eat!  Drink! Drive your gas guzzle car! Buy a house you can't afford!  Buy everything you can with a piece of plastic that guarantees you are giving up your future paychecks to keep the economy going!  Buy disposable whenever possible! Consume! Consume!  A person is made to feel almost guilty if they aren't out spending money so the economy will survive.

I think those days have passed.  Our suppliers of energy can't go on doubling every decade.  The race to produce more oil has created disasters none of us could have imagined a  few years ago.  The news has had the oil spill in the gulf for weeks.  Yesterday I heard that China also has an oil leak off their shore.  Can we go on destroying our world this way?  Have we now entered a time of scarcity? 

So.... what would you do?  Suddenly you have no income.  How will you react?  I'm sure some will refuse to admit they have a problem and continue living as they did before by putting the cost of everything onto a piece of plastic. Some may have experienced a sudden loss of income before and know they must survive on government assistance until there is a new income.  While still others, those who live in impoverished areas, won't notice a big difference other than it's a new adventure in survival.

Ok, so you haven't lost your income just yet.  But in today's economy, can you be sure you won't?  No one can be sure.  Not even the owner of a business can be sure his/her income will continue.  It's better to prepare for it so it doesn't suddenly jump right up and slap you in the face.  Let me leave you with a few questions to ponder.

Can you make the changes necessary to live like your income won't be here tomorrow?

Can you stop thinking in terms of increasing your standard of living to keep up with the Jones'?

Can you tell yourself; "This is enough! I have enough gadgets and appliances."?

Can you tell yourself it's no longer true that "there's more where that came from" and live with less?

Can you cut down on conspicuous consumption and being so concerned with making a big impression?

Can you make a statement to manufacturers saying you no longer want to buy planned obsolescence, you want goods that will last?

If you adopt a simpler way of life, while preparing for a possible loss of income, you may embark on an adventure that enriches your life as well as those around you.  You might just realize that less is better.  You might realize the fewer possessions you have, the more time you have for neighborliness and friendliness. You might just discover your conscious feels better when it isn't trying to race to grasp so many worldly goods around you.  You may find that simpler living has fewer pressures.  You might just figure out a home a little less hot in the winter and a little less cold in the summer actually feels good.  You might find you will feel more relaxed, healthier, and not living so much for your "stuff" has it's own set of rewards. 

Think about the question again.  What would you do if your income disappeared today?  What would be your action plan to survive until you found another source of income? 

Remembering frugal days

I'm a naturally frugal person.  I drain the dish soap container then rinse the bottle by adding it to the next dish washing session so I don't waste anything. 

Now that I have a goal, I find that I'm remembering things I haven't done in years.  I'm amazed at all the money I spent because I was too busy quilting to be frugal OR because I felt it wasn't necessary anymore.  I mean really, I was earning money from quilting, why shouldn't I just pay for things instead of being so frugal?  I wish I knew then what I know now.

Don't get me wrong, I've always been frugal.  Just not as frugal as I could be because I didn't think I had to anymore.  For example:  I used to hang my wash on a clothes line in the back yard.  Then the trees got so big and the birds so plentiful that I started hanging the wash indoors.  Bird poop on clean clothes is not fun.  Then, I got a new dryer.  Wow!  I could put the clothes in the dryer and push a button in only a couple of seconds whereas hanging clothes on a line took several minutes.  I could get back to the quilting much faster using the dryer.  I was working so I could afford to pay the bill.

I should have realized I was working just to keep working.  Earning money to pay higher bills because I didn't have time to be frugal and work at the same time.  Ok, now that I know what happened I can change that.  I don't have nearly as many clothes to dry these days since it's only me now.   I'm gonna look for my old clothes drying rack.  It's here someplace.

Would you take the cash out of your wallet and put a match to it?  While watching the fireworks Sunday night that's what I kept thinking each time one of them would explode colors in the sky.  Someone had just lit a match to the money it cost to buy the fireworks.  Ok, I'm not an old foggie.  I realize fireworks are fun and I would buy a few.... but come on now.... three hours worth?  Not even the Thunder Over Louisville fireworks lasts three hours.  That was a lot of money going up in colored smoke.

I got my first harvest out of the small square foot garden.   It's not much but it's a start.  These got chopped and put into a pasta salad. 

My grandmother used to tell me stories about how it was during and after WW11 when there were shortages everywhere.  I was too little to remember the war.  People had victory gardens in all kinds of small spaces in the cities.  My grandparents lived on a farm so they didn't have a shortage of food.  Yet, she was very thrifty anyway. 

She would take me walking around the farm looking for wild foods.  In the early spring dandelions were our early salad greens.  The flowers were used to make dandelion wine to be used when we got winter colds.  Then later she looked for the polk salad greens.  She knew where the wild mushrooms grew and how to use a pitchfork to catch fish in the bottoms.  The bottoms were our fields at the bottom of the hills near the creek.  When spring rains caused the creek to flood, fish swam around happily in the fields.  As the floods started to go down, the fish would be caught in the rows of the field where we could catch them with a pitchfork.  We caught as many as we could and dried them to be used later.  We had to be careful to stay near the edge of the field or we would sink deep into the mud.

Grandma knew how to spot dew berries and blackberries growing wild so we could make cobbler or to can to use later.  She could point out wild lemon grass, onions, strawberries, and lots of other things that she dried for use in cooking.  Wild strawberry muffins in the winter were fantastic.  Grandma used cotton wood bark tea for digestive problems, Indian turnips for consumption, and dogwood branches as a toothbrush.  She gathered hickory nuts and walnuts.  She caught, dried, and smoked wild meat into jerky and ground her own cornmeal from her own corn.  Hmm... I think I remember it was popcorn she used, not the regular kind of corn, because she would go to the same corn grain box and get a handful to pop on winter days.

Kids today cringe at the thought of catching wild rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, turtles, or frogs to eat.  If it doesn't come in a plastic wrap it ain't food.  Hmm.... I seem to be rattling on and on today.  It's just nice to travel down memory lane once in awhile to remember the way we did things before the age of convenience.  Grandma would laugh at my meager first harvest but she would also be proud too.

Forgotten dreams revived

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There is simple pleasure in spending time tearing up little bits of paper with a grandchild. Nothing need be said.... it's the joy of simply being together that matters.

There is satisfaction in seeing fruit of the season sitting on a table ready for anyone who wants some. It will be even better when I again see vegetables that are taken right from my own back yard.

There is happiness in a bag of hot chocolate mix I put together myself instead of buying a box of already mixed stuff.





There is something satisfying about looking at an item that is ready for the trash truck and coming up with a useful purpose for it.

Or maybe the other way around. There's something I need? I come up with an alternative. Sure, I could have bought a plastic container that would last a long, long time. It wouldn't have as much meaning as one I make myself from something I have laying around.

People must think I'm crazy giving up my quilting income when the cost of absolutely everything keeps rising. Gas prices keep going up (I think) which means that food prices, clothing prices, and just about everything else is going to cost more because of transport costs. Electricity and gas are higher, water is higher, rent is higher..... and so is unemployment.

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It's simply not fair! The American dream of owning a home, having a decent paying job, and living comfortably depends on the price of gas. Or does it? Exactly what is America's obsession with so much stuff? We want cars, boats, tvs, and very big houses. Big houses mean much more room for all our accumulation of stuff. Run out of room for our stuff? Get a bigger house. Along with the bigger house comes bigger costs. Utility bills get higher to heat the extra space. Tax bills get higher to pay for the extra space. Cleaning and organizing time is longer for all the extra rooms. We must work more hours to pay for more which leaves no time for actually enjoying all our stuff.

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Instead of starting out with a small house everyone wants to start with the biggest house they can get. Even taking the chance of loosing their investment later because it's more than they can reasonably afford. I'm so thankful I had the good sense to buy a small house when I bought this one. I had a choice of other houses. The real estate man and the mortgage company said I could buy a much, much bigger house but I chose this one because it was small. I wanted a house that would still be mine if the economy got bad in the future. Wow, was I psychic or what? Truthfully, I was really worried I might have a major illness and couldn't work. What would I do then to keep a roof over our heads?

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I had such big plans when we moved out of a homeless shelter and into our own home again. That was 27 years ago and another story. 27 years??? Geeze, so much lost time! This house was perfect for the plans I made. I wanted to be as self sufficient as possible in a city environment. I wanted solar electric and solar hot water. I wanted a garden and lots of storage space for preserving my harvest. I drew up plans for everything. Heck, I even had plans on how to catch rain water to use.

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I got caught up in the race to keep up with the Jones' and none of it ever got finished. Hmm... that's not the only reason nothing ever got finished. A lot had to do with muscle power. I had the ideas but not the muscle strength to make it happen. I could never find a handyman who believed as I did. I wasn't looking for romance.... I still grieved my husband who had passed away. I wanted a simple friend who believed in the same dream. I would share my skills of canning or sewing in exchange for his muscle power to dig and construct things.

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My dream has just taken a lot longer to get started than I originally planned. A few months ago I gave up my quilting income so I can finally start doing the things I wanted to do so many years ago. It's time for me to get back to the things that really matter in my life. There are lots and lots of people who share the same vision.

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To simplify and enjoy life again.

Is it ok for me to panic?

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I'm still working on this quilt. Did I say lots of stitch in the ditch? Yup, there is.



I had several people stop by yesterday too. I got the "ok to finish" on the three necktie quilts. I gave away a couple of my rug frames and they were picked up. The rest of the quilting books were picked up by three separate people. My baby came home too. Doesn't she look pretty?

She has new wiring and a complete going over. I got a new cording foot too. This repair guy is fantastic. Very reasonably priced as well.

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I took a little trip down memory lane on my blogs. I went back and read some of the oldest posts. It's very interesting to go back and see all the things going on and all the changes I've made in my life while blogging. I've always kept a journal and sometimes I read those, but the blogs have pictures. A captured moment in time. I can see the struggles with organizing and all the dust bunnies I've dealt with.

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A few weeks ago I was forced to remove some of the oldest posts because I had gotten up to the limit of 500 posts. Well, I'm almost up to 500 again. Time to remove some of the oldest again. It's a lot easier to remove posts on this blog than it is on the other one. On this blog I don't mind printing the posts out and putting them into a binder. It's the other blog that I don't like deleting information that could be useful to someone searching for information.

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While traveling down blogging memory lane it suddenly popped into my mind.... my daughter and grand daughter will be moving in here in only a couple of weeks. PANIC! Lots of things must be done in the next couple of weeks. I've got to get myself moving a little faster to get things ready. I took a walk through the house making notes of things I must get done. It won't be easy continuing to quilt, creating winter crafts to save energy, and moving stuff all at the same time... but nothing to do but to do it. Somehow it will all get done. Oh gosh, Thanksgiving is this month too. Now it's time for a real panic attack. I best get started right away.

Thank you to everyone who responded to my question on the other blog.

**My concern would be turning into the obnoxious business owner like I see people turn out to be with this job. They go from being really sweet to being too busy to do anything else and you are now "in the way". Loosing my friends/family to this {business} scares me as well.**

Oh my goodness! How well this person described me. I just had to type talk about it. As a professional machine quilter that had become the obnoxious business owner of course. (smile)

Going from a sweet person to an extremely "to busy" person happens so gradually that we don't even realize it until it's too late. It's because we are nice sweet people that we get ourselves into a situation requiring us to become obnoxious and rude. What do I mean? Well, a nice person has great difficulty saying NO to a customer. We say yes because we are nice and want our customers to be happy. We commit ourselves to get quilts done on deadlines. Deadlines mean we must stay at the machine to be on time. We will commit to doing 3 quilts when the customer has only scheduled one, because we are nice people. We hate to make a customer unhappy by telling them we can't do more than the one quilt.

We are such nice people that we become victims of "sad" stories and requests. We say yes to the customers because this is our income. Without it we must do without the things an income buys. We have a fear of getting a bad reputation among toppers. At the same time.... we will start saying no to our family and the friends who are not customers. We believe they "will understand" our need to earn our income. The more we say yes to our customers the more we have to say no to everyone else. It's so gradual! One sad story, one extra quilt request, one deadline, one illness that puts us behind schedule, one at a time, over a long period of time.

Each time we say yes to extra work or quicker deadlines; some customers then begin to believe it's ok to do it again... and again... and again. Not only that but they also tell other people about how nice and accommodating we are; so the other people also bring us special requests and sad stories. We say yes to them too.... because we are nice. In my case, I found myself doing two and three quilts in one day by working 16 or 18 hour days and using very quick to do designs instead of what the quilt really needed.

As professional quilters we start to find ways to cut corners on our "away from the machine time". In my case I cut corners on everything that keeps a person healthy in addition to saying "no I can't" to family and friends. As a result, I started getting sick over and over again. Putting my work even farther behind schedule. Requiring me to find even more ways to stop "living" and just keep quilting. Before I knew it, I realized my grand kids are grown and having kids too. Hmm.... when did he grow up? I thought he was still in elementary school. Now he's made me a great grandma again. (I have more than one great grandchild.)

Then comes the machine quilter's "burn out" phase. When the quilting ideas seem to elude us. We know how to quilt. We have done really great designs all this time. But, we stand and stare at the quilt on the machine without any idea of how to quilt it. Stand and stare time is not acceptable for a professional machine quilter. If the machine is not moving, it's not earning income.

Suddenly, I woke up one morning and realized I didn't like myself anymore! I had become the type of machine quilter I had feared becoming most. The one too busy to be nice. I started thinking back on all the times I had been rude to others. I thought of all the times people had invited me to lunch or to visit their quilt groups or go on retreats and I had said "no I can't". I thought of all the times my kids and grand kids had asked me to spend time with them but I said "no I can't". I thought of all the charity quilts I used to make but now say "I can't" to myself. I thought of all the times beginning machine quilters had asked me to help them learn to use their machine. At first I would say yes I will help you but later have to back out of it because I had deadlines to meet. NO, I didn't like myself at all! I was no longer the sweet, healthy, helpful, charitable, grandmother person I remembered. I said to someone, can't remember who, that I was a much happier person when I didn't have any customers and was broke all the time. Hmm... it might have been in a blog post.


I knew it was time for me to retire. So I could be the person I remember as me. True, I'm a whole lot older. Is this what they mean by "older and wiser"? In my case, yes. Now that I'm officially retired, I plan to first spend time with my sons and their families. I miss the closeness we had and the joy of just being around them. I have new great grands that need a quilt made just for them. I will eventually get around to showing others that I'm still the sweet person I was years ago. I have a lot of rudeness to make up for.


I best get into the studio and do some work today. Only a few more to go before the chains that hold me to the machine break and I can transform into the person I remember.

Nine to go

The last few days I've stayed off the computer (except to post) and working steady on this quilt. I had talked with the owner last Saturday and she wanted to pick it up Thursday. It's the only day she can come. Could I have it done by then? I told her yes I could have it ready. I had one on the machine I needed to finish first and then I'd start on hers.

I called last night to tell her I had it finished and that I would be home today. No doctor appointments. She tells me she can't come until next Tuesday or Wednesday. As a professional quilter, I get this a lot. Rush, rush, rush to accommodate a customer.... the customer changes their plans without telling me. This is how some of the stress of quilting for others happens.

Oh well.... it's one more to cross off the waiting list countdown.

The pictures are already cracking and peeling away from the fabric. I found out that the customer's son made this quilt for his wife for their first anniversary next month. It's his first quilt. Not bad for a beginner. The saying across the top says.... God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you. Awwww..... that's nice.

I put a feather around the border.

Flowers around the words and curly ribbons on the sashing.

Flowers on the corners of the blocks around the photos.

Another look at the flowers.

Larger flowers on the blocks without photos. I did large open flowers so they would not be quilted too tight. The photos are not quilted and I wanted the blocks to have fairly even density.

This is the flower block from the back. I think this is a Pam Clarke flower design. Could be a Diana Phillips one though.

A look at the corner flowers and the ribbons from the back.

This is the photo blocks from the back. It leaves a gap in the quilting when there are photos on quilt tops.

One more photo from the back. Can you see how these make it look as if I didn't finish the quilting? I'll be glad when the photos on quilt fad goes away.

In my haste to make a post then get back to quilting, I failed to explain how my daughter can save money by moving home. Right now she pays 800 a month rent. To me, that's a house payment. It was far more than she could afford so I've been helping her. Sometimes a mother has to let the kids learn from their mistakes. Her lease is up in October and she can hardly wait. She tells me constantly that she should have listened to me instead of baby's daddy about the apartment.

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She pays 100 a month for utilities. Mine were 260 but are being reduced to 170 due to the insulation work I had done. Baby's daddy pays day care, cell phones, and cable bills. This amounts to a little over 1100 a month. Both buy groceries.

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My mortgage payment is 400 a month. If she gives me 200 on the mortgage and 100 on the utilities she still comes out with quite a bit to save for a house each month. She should also be getting an end of year bonus, a raise, a tax rebate, and a small settlement on the accident. The one when she was hit by a drunk driver. Baby's daddy will continue to pay the day care. He's moving back with his parents. She will start paying her own cell phone bill. I already have cable. We both know how to bargain shop for things and how to make meals from almost nothing. She has no debts at all although she is still in college.

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She has already researched houses. She knows how much she can afford and how much she wants to put down on it. On her salary, an 800 a month mortgage payment is not going to happen. She will go with a smaller, cheaper house and a larger down payment. She came up with the plan all on her own. I'm so proud! When explaining her plan to me she said...... see Mom, I really was listening to what you taught me when I was growing up. I can do it the same way we did it before. I'm so proud!

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How long she stays here is up to her. I'm always glad to have my kids near me for whatever reason. About the only time we don't get along together is when she has PMS. Oooo is she really cranky! I stay out of her way. If things don't go exactly as she planned we can work it out.

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Now here is when I need to tell you about how it was I came to have this house. It's sad for me to tell it but is important to know in order to understand why my daughter will succeed with her plan. When my daughter was about three, one of my sons was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He fought a brave battle for almost a year. He died at age 14.

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Near the end of his battle, I couldn't be with my son at the hospital and working at the same time. So I gave up my house by quit claim deed and my daughter and I moved into a homeless shelter. The older boys lived elsewhere. In a shelter I didn't have to think about paying rent or buying groceries. I had the freedom to be with my son.

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After my son's death, I started plans to buy another house. This one. When I first saw it you could barely tell it was a house. It had been abandoned and was nearly falling down. I contacted a construction company and worked out a deal. If they would buy this house from the city and fix it up... I would buy it. I knew it was in a bad neighborhood but it was what I knew I could afford. I asked them to give me one year to get enough for the down payment and closing costs. Each month I would show them how much I had in my savings and they would show me what they were doing to the house. If I failed to get the money I needed then the house could still be sold.

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I don't think they believed me at first but slowly saw my determination. Each morning my daughter and I would get into my raggedy car and start traveling through alleys, behind schools, and behind stores collecting aluminum cans. Soon we expanded to going into a new subdivision being built and picking up small pieces of copper wire the construction crews threw on the ground. The same construction company I had contacted was building several of those houses in the suburbs. Each evening we would take what we had found to the recycling center to sell and then a trip to the bank to put it into our savings.

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How I taught my daughter to pick up every can and every piece of wire she found was to tell her it was worth a nickle. At four years old, a nickle is a whole lot of money. All those nickles would buy us a house with her own room.... complete with princess furniture. It worked like a charm.

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Soon the construction crews and those who lived along our alley route started noticing her picking up aluminum cans and copper wire. Some got mad and ran us off but others asked us questions. I think she won the hearts of the construction men when she told them she was picking up nickles for her new house. Her brother, the angel, was helping to build it. They started putting cans and pieces of wire in a cardboard box with her name on it. I had to tell her it was her name. I could see the men peeking around the corners as she ran to get her box of nickles. Sometimes there would be a hand full of change or a small toy in there too. She would squeal with delight. Mommie look! Mommie look!

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Four months after my son's death I managed to get a part time job. At six months after, we moved into the projects from the shelter and I started getting food stamps too. We continued to travel our route as often as we could and put it into our savings. It grew a few dollars at a time.

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At 11 months after, I saw that my house was nearing completion. I almost had enough in my savings so appointments were made with bank, inspector, closing lawyer, etc. My loan was approved. I think the construction company told the bank about what I had done. Otherwise, I'm not sure I could have gotten approved for the loan. My salary was too low.

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One year and 6 days after my first contact with the construction company we moved into our new home. Secretly I had gone to Sears and bought a canopy bed and dresser with all the princess stuff to go with it. Ruffle curtains, bedspread.... the whole bit. I had it all set up in her room before we started moving our things out of the project apartment. You should have seen the look on her face when she saw her room for the first time. Priceless!

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I've never been anything but poor (low income). My whole life has been one of making do with what I have or can scrounge together. Hmm.... maybe that's why I love quilting and cardboard furniture so much. Odd bits and pieces to make something really nice. Growing up, I spent time with whatever relative or orphanage I was sent to live and learning with each new adventure. I'm in no way sad about my life at all. It's what makes me who I am. I'm an expert at making do and living with very little. A skill I can teach to those who are newly poor in today's economy. I think maybe my life of living poor was in God's plans all along. I mean really, someone had to be the one who lived and learned in order to teach others. Am I right??

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I may get frustrated at times and moan or groan; but, there is always a way.... providing a person is willing to work hard and accept lower standards. Boulders in my path don't bother me for long. I can't miss what I've never had. After moving into this house we stopped traveling our route. I never saw the construction guys again but they knew if I stopped going that I had finally gotten our house. I think of them every now and then and say a prayer of thanks.

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So you see my daughter does know what it is to set a goal and work toward it one small step at a time. Did I tell you how proud I am that she learned?

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