During that time, we got pretty darn creative! I really suggest anyone who wants to spice things up in their kitchen, and their eating habits, try this for themselves! I really can’t remember how long we did this for, we’ve done it several times since, but it was at least a month that first time.

One of our favorite ‘recipes’ to come out of that time is homemade potato chips. Yesterday we found some pork ribs in the freezer, and thought homemade chips would go nicely with them!

They are SO easy! A little time consuming, yes. Simple, but to do it right, it can’t really be a rushed job. It can be a shared job if you have kids old enough to help though!

I’m going to show you just how easy it is to make your own chips at home! It’s really so simple I almost feel silly sharing but the last time I shared a simple potato recipe, Buttery Potatoes, it became one of the most visited blog posts on this entire blog! Now I realize people love potatoes, and people love simple!

First, wash some potatoes.

I know that some potatoes are better then others, but honestly, we buy what’s on sale, or  whatever we have on hand. We’ve never ‘disliked’ our potato chips, so I guess that means there’s no real need to be too choosy!

Either that, or we’re not just not very picky eaters!

Next, slice your potatoes nice and thin. We use my kitchenaid cheese grater, one side has a cheese slicer and I find it’s the perfect thickness. Shaylah and I took turns slicing all the potatoes. We did NOT use all the potatoes shown above. I must of thought we were making chips for an army! I think we ended up using about 6 potatoes for 6 of us, and even with that, we had left overs, which we ate later that night again…

I ate too many potato chips!

Look at that determination!

Once you’ve got your potatoes all nicely sliced up, rinse them well!

If you want to split up the steps, you can slice and rinse your potatoes earlier in the day, and then just leave them to soak until you are ready for them.

Now it’s time to get as much water off your potatoes as possible, and then fry them in the oil of your choice.
*If your potatoes are wet, they will cause the oil to bubble A LOT, so be careful and pat those potatoes dry before you put them in!

I personally always use a deep fryer, as I like having a lid I can close when needed. I know a lot of people use a pot/pan on the stove though, and that’s fine too! Whatever you’re accustomed too. Just be careful with kids around of course!

Fry your chips until done to your desired ‘goldeness’. Some of us like ours real crispy, other’s like them just barely crispy. You’ll find most often each batch will have a mix of both.

Sprinkle with a seasoning of your choice, if you desire!
For this batch, we used some homemade seasoning salt we were given by a friend at Christmas! It was really good!

Then we added plain old sea salt for the next batch.

These are Shaylah’s favorite snack to make! She wanted you to be able to get up close and personal with the chip, and asked me to snap this photo for you.

The very best homemade chips I’ve ever had are at Boston Pizza. They have a real snap to them that’s just delicious, a jalapeno flavour to them! I’d love to learn how to make something similar, with more flavour. They serve them with a ranch type of dressing which nicely cools the heat. My mouth is watering just thinking of them now! If anyone has any idea of how one could make a jalopeno flavouring to add to homemade chips, please, do tell!

If you choose to try making these yourself, let us know! Share what kinds of flavourings you like on your homemade potato chips too!

Or in the morning before the kids are up, and I’m doing my devotions in front of the fire. I get all melancholy, stare at the fire, and find I have a hard time writing in my prayer journal because I feel like I’m writing the same things over and over again. Asking God to just let our family be together again. I try really hard to fill the pages with prayers about other things, prayers for other people, yet I find myself still coming back, in the end, every single day to, “Please, just bring our family together again… and let us get on with it already.”

In reality, my days between my morning devotions and my bedtime are busy and that’s probably a good thing. Who wants to have too much time to mope and whine?! I sure don’t!

Since about the middle of December my kids have been sick. This is very rare for us. So far, I’ve been able to fight it off. I’ve spent most of that time though FEELING like I’m fighting. Never feeling 100%, but yet not really feeling SICK either. Just dragged out, tired, like the way you feel when you’re in your first trimester of pregnancy (and no, there’s no way I’m pregnant, if God’s going to provide us with a miracle, it won’t be that one!) I’ve been fighting with no energy, never feeling all that great, and just needing sleep a lot more then I normally would, yet not actually having the time to get even enough sleep. This has been making it even more difficult to stay on top of everything in the home.

Most nights are spent up til after midnight, either working, or just because there’s not enough hours in a day to get it all done. I find I can’t get everything done early enough lately, but I also like to spend some time with the kids before they go to bed, and also have some down time of my own. This means I’ve been getting to sleep around 2-3 am most nights, or should I say, mornings?

This really isn’t such a great routine. I need to get out of it.

I shared about my breakdown a couple of weeks ago after the first of the year.
Well, one of the issues was trying to stay on top of this HOUSE, which is for sale, which people call or email me to want to VIEW, at any given moment! To say I detest living in a ‘show home’ would be putting it mildly. I am SO tired of having our home for sale! I want to just live my life, have my personal photos on the wall, and let my family be who they are!

My kids and I are NOT neat freaks. We’re not slobs either, but we ARE busy people, who spend a lot of their time being creative!

Did you know that most creativity brings about some mess with it?
And clutter?

BUT, I’ll be darned if having our home for sale is going to dampen my kids creativity and learning processes! These messes though, the continual messes, do kind of get a little over whelming when you’re also trying to sell your house!

For example, Elsa loves to make cakes and is learning how to use fondant. She’s been spending any extra money she’s earned (or received for her birthday & Christmas) on fondant and cake making/decorating supplies lately. When she works on a cake(s) she uses the entire dinning table. I’m not going to stop her either. However, we also need to eat at that table, and… making cakes and getting creative with all her fondant etc. can take her DAYS.

Shaylah, on the other hand, LOVES to draw, write, and read. At any moment you will find drawings, pencils, pencil crayons, markers, even crayons, pages of writing, and then books, just about anywhere and everywhere. I DO encourage her (OFTEN) to put all these drawings in her art folder, her writings in her binder, and to keep all her ‘tools’ put away, but again, Shaylah can spend days on projects!

Julia, well she also loves to read a lot, but her biggest messes are in the cabin/studio, along with MY biggest messes. We both LOVE fabric, and we both hate to waste anything, so all our fabric clippings, unless they are too small for ANYTHING (which means smaller then 2×2 inches around here), we save to be used for other things later on. Waste not, want not, right?

All those fabric scraps, then all the fluff (Oh the fluff!!!) from all our cutting… well, we could vacuum twice a day and still have fabric fluff floating around the studio. Especially the bamboo velour, our favorite fabric to work with of course. The fluff that comes off that fabric while you cut! It’s incredible. When I’m finished work, even my eyelashes are covered in fuzz. I don’t bother wearing mascara “to work” anymore. Fabric fuzz on top of mascara… it’s not so pretty.

Then there’s Joshua. I won’t go on to share about how the work shop looks right now. My son is into mechanics, and welding, and all kinds of other stuff… need I say more?

Alesia, well… she’s a typical 20 year old and into hair products, clothes, books, movies, clothes, hair products, make up, and make up (oh, did I repeat some of those?). She also loves to cook and bake. I really enjoy her cooking and baking, we all do, so I try REALLY hard not to complain about the mess… too often. She’s been able to cook a meal for a party of 12 or more since she was about 13 years old. I’m proud of her for that! I just wish cleaning came as naturally as the cooking… lol She works out of the home though about 30-36 hours a week, and helps with the business too, so I feel guilty asking her to clean too often. However, cleaning as she goes… well I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

During that time I had my ‘breakdown’, I realized something needed to be done around here. My older two kids KNOW what they need to do. I don’t feel I should have to “nag” them to get their work/cleaning done (I won’t say whether my theory on not nagging ‘adult children’ actually works…). But I knew I needed to figure out a new plan of attack with the younger three girls.

We’ve tried daily chore charts in the past, but honestly, they just don’t work for us.
Then I got to thinking about how things are done at a “job”. Take some fast food restaurants for example. If you go in the bathroom, often there will be a sheet on the back of the bathroom door that each employee needs to ‘sign’ to show that they cleaned the bathroom at a certain time each day. This way, the manager knows when, and what, has been done.

I realized this could work in a busy home too. Having a list for each ROOM, rather then a list for all the children on the fridge.

Their bedroom, the upstairs bathroom, and the hall, etc. are NOT near the fridge. Having a list with those chores, on the fridge, just makes no sense to me!

So this is what I did! I printed out some pages, just simple chore chart pages, and then sat down with all three girls at the table and we decided what needed to be done in each room, and who would do each task.Then we made squares so that they could put in a check mark as they finish each task! These lists are hanging in each room, or on the doors of each room, where ever is most appropriate.

It’s been going pretty well. I think there’s always a lot of confusion for children if they don’t know exactly what’s expected of them. Heck, the same can be said for adults too! If we start a job and the boss simply says, “Here’s the job, now go at it!” how are you going to know just what it is that is expected of you?!

Now the kids know exactly what’s expected, and exactly what THEY each need to do in each room of the house. It worked out that in each of the larger rooms, there’s about 6 jobs they need to cover so each one has 2 jobs. That made things simple because we wrote those jobs down, then I let them each pick which of the two jobs they liked best! They all like doing different things and each was satisfied with the tasks they have to do.

For the smaller ‘rooms’ of the house, they each choose one room. Julia is in charge of the downstairs bathroom, Shaylah the upstairs bathroom, and Elsa is in charge of the stairs/hallway.

What’s my job? To keep on top of the dishes, and the laundry and do the deep cleaning where needed. We all felt that if they did all the ‘little’ things like sweeping/vacuuming floors, etc. (we have a VERY small house, these are SMALL jobs) then I would take care of the biggest jobs.

And that’s how we’re trying to stay on top of things in our home!

How do YOU organize chores etc. in YOUR home? 

Monday- whine about missing hubby, then reprimand myself for whining
Tuesday- Brag about what awesome kids I have and then whine about them not having their dad around.
Wednesday- whine about hubby working so far away, then kick myself in the a$$ for being such a whiner
Thursday- whine about hubby being gone over 8 months last year, then kick myself in the a$$ again. Ouch, that’s starting to bruise now.
Friday- show appreciation for all the blessings I have in my life including a hard working hubby who’s living far away, without his family, so we can get our bills paid. I kicked myself in the a$$ hard enough the day before. :p
Saturday- whine about our house not selling. Then beat my head against a wall because I know EVERY ONE is SO SICK OF HEARING ABOUT IT! Including me!!!
Sunday- I’m too busy whining to God, to whine on the blog today.

Really! I don’t blog half the time because I’m too busy arguing with myself!

I actually do spend a LOT of time arguing with myself. A friend on facebook said I shouldn’t beat myself up so much, but really, don’t feel bad. I’m not beating myself up so much as I am reminding myself to choose another path for my thoughts, my attitude, each and every day!

Yesterday, I did something I haven’t done in quite a while. I spent some money, for no particular reason. What brought me to the point of being willing to spend some hard earned cash on something other then bills and food? This continual arguing with myself. This relationship between me, myself, and I, it’s getting too complicated.

I bought a package of these:

http://shop.lilblueboo.com/product/choose-joy-wristbands-pack-of-20-shipping-included

Now instead of arguing with myself, I’ll just keep repeating, “choose joy, choose joy!”

If you’ve read Ashley’s story of “choosing joy”, you’ll know why there’s no reason I can’t, and shouldn’t, do the same!

*gasp*

With this profound conclusion, I’ve begun accepting co-ops again, outside of those run by myself, on the facebook page. I just can’t do it all, and running co-ops is a lot of extra work! However, I keep having to say “no” every time someone asks if I will be hosting a co-op soon! So… after deliberating, arguing with myself, many times over, (yes, I talk to myself, quite often actually. Don’t you?), with, “Yes! let’s do it!” then “No! don’t!” I’ve settled on “Yes! Let’s have some co-ops, run by others, again!”

We’ve got two upcoming co-ops, both open now actually.

One that is closing on January 19th, (that’s coming soon!) on this site here: http://www.crunchy-cooperative.com
I’m quite sure some of those on our facebook page are already a part of the Crunchy Cooperative, and may not realize we have a co-op open there at this time. For that co-op, participants order directly from the co-op host, and I will be shipping the full order to her when it is complete. From there, she will ship to the participants!

The next co-op is being hosted on the hyenacart forums, closes on Feb. 7th and is being hosted by Becky, here: http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=156124

I’ve known Becky online a very long time, and she’s done co-ops for me in the past. We’re doing things a little differently. She’ll be rounding up the orders and answering questions, and then handing them over to me. I will be posting private listings with the co-op orders individually on my cart once I have received them all from her. From there, participants will be in direct contact with me about their orders and I will be shipping direct to participants.

But… the pièce de résistance? The information that’s most important of all, what you’re all really ‘DYEING’ to know…

THE COLORS! 

I’ve put up a gallery of the fabrics dyed for these co-ops, and you can find it here:
http://homesteademporium.smugmug.com/Business/Jan-2012-Co-op-Fabrics/

But of course I must share a few photos here!

Close ups.

Bright! Fun! An all time favorite of our customers. Deep deep pinks, golden yellows, some aqua, lime, and orange with some softer tints of pinks here and there.

Red, blue, yellow, and everything in between! A primary rainbow of color! Variety is the spice of life and there’s lots of variety here!

Grapes, blueberries, raspberries, boysenberries, even bumbleberry! You name the berry, I’m quite sure you’ll find the color is in this piece of fabric!

When the gemstone turquoise was first discovered, it was named Turquoise but was also called Pierre Turquoise. A natural turquoise gemstone is a gorgeous mix of aqua with hints of green and even bronze. Turquoise, one of my absolute favorite dye colors!

And there you have it. Four lovely shades, for two great co-ops. If you’re interested in purchasing our pads at a discount (20% off is the typical discount) then head on over to one of the above links and join in on the fun!

I kick myself in the behind and remind myself of ALL my blessings.
I also remind myself that there are others, who are fighting real battles. Not just battling self pitty, fighting REAL fights. And some of these people, are kicking themselves in the behind and not feeling sorry for their suffering, so how dare I?

Tonight, Ashley of http://www.lilblueboo.com/ shared a video on her blog. You can see it for yourself here: http://www.lilblueboo.com/2012/01/a-rite-of-passage-a-video.html

Ashley is fighting cancer. I’ve been following her blog for quite some time now. I can’t even remember how I first came across it, but I’m sure it had something to do with the creativity. I was simply following a fellow crafter, diy’er, a fellow mom.

I continue to follow now because I stand amazed, at the strength, and the joy, in the midst of fighting cancer.

Ashley shares on her blog tonight about shaving her head, she says, “ It’s just hair.”

But in reality, while watching her video, it’s so much much more then hair.

It’s her mother, being a role model, being a strength, for her daughter and her granddaughter.

It’s a friend, helping a friend.

It’s family, being there for family.

It’s a young girl, watching her mother be strong, be joyful.

It’s a husband, a father, loving his wife no matter what.

And it’s a woman. A woman, being herself.

A woman, being beautiful, and fighting.

It’s so much more then just hair.

With these give aways, all that was asked was that you agree to help cover the costs of shipping. Some where 2.00 shipping, others 1.50. If you’ve won one of the prizes, please email me at homesteademporium(AT)gmail.com (change the (AT) to @) with your paypal address, and the prize that you won, and I’ll send you an invoice and get your prizes on their way to you!!

Have it Sweet Give Away (please email me your full address, along with your choices, and the company will send your prize direct to you) http://homesteademporium.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/have-it-sweet-give-away/:

Life, with Elsa, is always, anything, but boring!

Elsa is my least photographed child.

But when I can get her to co-operate, we get some of the very best photos!

She could care less what you think of her big “poofy” hair…

and won’t do anything with it (brush/comb) it unless you tell her to. Even at this age.

Yet if I try to snap a photo, she’ll yell, “My hair isn’t done!” just to get out of having her photo taken!

She’s as unique in personality, as she is in looks!

She wants to be a great baker, like “Buddy” from Cake Boss one day.
Says she’ll open up her own shop too.

Time will tell what all Elsa will do, but I have no doubt that with her determination, and her family’s support, she will succeed.

Happy  Birthday Elsa! 

*If you’re new to the blog and you’d like to read about the ‘adventure’ of Elsa’s birth and the great Ice Storm, you can find those previous posts here:

Part 1: http://homesteademporium.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/the-waiting-game-in-pregnancy-and-in-life/

Part 2: http://homesteademporium.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/the-waiting-game-in-pregnancy-and-in-life-continued/ 

We would decide upon everything together, but my husband has always been the one to sit down and crunch the numbers on paper, keep tally of everything, and whenever I needed to know what was going on with the bills etc. I’d simply ask.

However, when my husband moved away for work back in July, I needed to step in and take over paying the bills and making sure everything was as it should be.

Wow…

Who knew it was such an undertaking!?

It’s especially tasking because about half our income is through the business. I don’t even know how he kept on top of everything when we were BOTH self employed.

With a lot of prayer perhaps?

Trying to keep on top of everything, when you don’t know what half your income is even going to be, and whether or not it will even be enough to cover it all, has been quite the experience.

However, I can say it’s been quite the LEARNING experience. And, as with 99.9% of things in life, I do love to learn, and I’m almost always up for a challenge!

This week, after handling the bills for the past 6 months (plus the early part of the year, but I won’t bother counting that, we’ll say it was my ‘training’ period) I do believe I may just finally have it down pat! I finally feel on top of it all!

*This is when it will probably all change right? Sell a house perhaps? I promise, I won’t mind reworking a new budget one bit if that happens!

I haven’t exactly figured out everything, but I have been able to ORGANIZE it all, so that I really feel like I’m on TOP OF all the bills getting paid!

Don’t get me wrong, we always pay our bills, but paying your bills in a confident manner, and paying your bills in a harried feeling of frenzy, are two very different things. Sure, the end result is the same, paid bills, but the stress level of the one paying those bills isn’t exactly at the same level! I MUCH prefer skipping past the feeling of frenzy, thankyouverymuch!

For the past years, I’ve been in charge of the business budget, but a lot of that “can” be done on an “as needed” basis. If I’ve got an influx of cash (for example, a large wholesale order) I simply use the extra funds to purchase things I know I’ll need in the next few weeks or months. Bamboo velour, snaps, dyes, fleece, windpro, polymailers, bags, etc.. The business takes care of itself pretty well, and always has. It’s the personal INCOME part of the business that’s trickier. If you’ve ever run your own small business, you know that YOU always get paid last. At least in MY world, that’s the way it goes.

THAT’s the part that’s a little more difficult to “nail in” for the house and home budget. 

But now, with my newly organized budget and paperwork in place, I feel much more confident!

*not my budget, free stock photo.

What did I change? Basically I began six months ago, simply working from a page that my husband had printed out with all our bills each month, and the dates they needed to be paid. They were all in point form, and the totals were approximate estimates as to how much each bill would be. However, when he created this list for me, we had no clue what his final bottom line would be for his pay each month, so that was not figured in yet. The income portion of the budget is obviously as important as the outgoing, so this, along with my income never being ‘fixed’, made things pretty difficult to manage.

Now that we know his aprox. income every two weeks, I decided to make up a new budget sheet with exact figures (where ever possible!) and rather then working off ONE sheet for forever, printing out a new budget sheet for each and every month with a line for “available balance” next to each bill, and each paycheque. A lot like keeping a chequebook, only more detailed. That old sheet had a LOT of scribbles and notes all over it! It was making me feel as jumbled as it looked!

Since we don’t know exact amounts for my income each week, I still can’t budget down to the last penny until some day in the future when we can get AHEAD, but for now, I feel much better about things. And with that, I can breathe a huge sigh of relief!

The next thing I tackled was the organization of our home! With the help of the kids, of course!

Breakdown, meltdown, whatever you’d like to call it, doesn’t really matter.

The end result is, I needed 48 hours of “mental health break” to come to grips with our reality at the moment.

We received some bad news the other day about our property assessments (which we are fighting) that just about knocked my husband and I flat on our a$$e$.

TOTALLY unexpected, and we were TOTALLY unprepared for it. We expected our assessments to go up, not down, and certainly not DRASTICALLY down by tens of thousands of dollars.

If you’re not trying to sell your home so that your family, which has been split apart for six months now, can be together again under one roof, you might LIKE the idea of your tax assessment going down by tens of thousands of dollars! It means lower tax payments!

However, when you’re about at your wits end with trying to sell your place, when you’ve already hit rock bottom in lowering your house price to try and get it sold AS SOON AS POSSIBLE before you loose that teeny tiny thread of sanity you still have left between all the gray hairs you’ve now acquired…

Well, when your property assessment drops by tens of thousands of dollars in THAT situation, that teeny tiny thread of sanity begins to stretch REAL thin.

And that’s what happened here this week. I’d say that thread of sanity pretty much snapped.

However, after a 48 hour break, some words with the tax assessment office explaining why they had better get their butts over here to take a look at ALL THE FARKING IMPROVEMENTS WE’VE SPENT THOUSANDS ON (thousands that broke us, I might add, silly people we can be, daring to think it would help SELL our home…) before deciding our property has decreased in value by tens of thousands…
and after spending some time with my children, getting our minds, our home, and lives back on track, I feel a little better.

Not quite to the point I feel I can carry on with all this much longer, but at least to the point that I can carry on today.

And today is good enough for now. I’ll worry about tomorrow, when I wake up in the morning.

*Gulp*

Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem, since usually, my husband would be here and HE would drive. However, since Graydon (dh) has been gone 8 out of 12 months this year, and our life has been anything but usual this year, it’s either I drive, or we simply don’t go.

Finally, I decided that enough is enough, I’m just going to get over myself, and make that drive! So I did! And guess what? We quite obviously survived.

In fact, we not only survived, we ENJOYED it!

The drive was lovely, the weather was wonderful, and since it was New Years Day, and a Sunday, it was the PERFECT day for someone like me, with silly fears, to drive to a city 2 hours away! The roads were clear, there wasn’t much traffic, and we were not rushed at all.

I actually LOVE driving. In my ‘angst’ about other drivers though (some are pretty crazy around here, most likely, everywhere) I forget just how MUCH I love driving.

After we spent some time with my sister, her husband, and my other sister’s two children (and a girlfriend) who were also visiting, we started to head back home. Then we drove by the Gorge. Suddenly, I turned the car around, and went right back to the Gorge.

The Gorge is a place I’ve always thought was very pretty. When my husband and I first met, he was in the Navy in Esquimalt. We had driven by the Gorge MANY times and since moving to the Island 12 years ago, I had always planned to stop by there some time with the kids, but just never seemed to get around to it any time we were in the area.

I wasn’t going to put it off any longer. I turned the car around and found a parking spot. We got out and walked along the boardwalk and snapped some photos of the view, and the wildlife.

Then on our way home, we made two more stops at viewing areas along the Malahat and gazed, and snapped some more photos.

I realized again how much I love driving. Not just for driving’s sake, but for the places driving can take me. When not in too much of a hurry, there’s just so much to see, so much to do.

So much Life to Live Right, Now!