I have been reading a lot, lately, about simple living .... one lady brought up the question, "What does Simple Living mean to you?". Well I've been pondering this and pondering it and I think I may have a bit of an idea now.
Years ago, before Josh was GF, I did the majority of our baking from scratch - it really wasn't an uncommon sight to see homemade bread in the breadbox and homemade cookies in the cookie jar ..... however, I have found, since Josh was put on a GF diet, I don't do near the baking that I used to. This isn't his fault, either, being GF was not something that he (or any of us) would have chosen for him. I just know that when I make a batch of regular cookies, I need to make a batch of GF ones as well - and a lot of the time, I just don't have the energy to make that many different batches in one day. As I type this and read, at the same time, I realize how silly that is .... the regular cookies I make make about 5 dozen cookies - sooooooo, theoretically, I could make one batch one day and a GF batch the next day.
Josh makes his own GF bread, so really, there isn't anything hindering me from making a batch of regular bread for us (I know your nodding your head, Hon, lol) - this is even easier now that we have a new bread machine for Josh (the one we bought at Value Village, almost, 5 years ago (for $20) finally died yesterday). The bread that I used to make, made at least 6 loaves - that's if I didn't make any buns or cinnamon buns with the dough. I know that everyone in our household would be much happier with homemade bread, rather than having to buy bread all the time. For the most part, I'm home everyday (except on the weekends), so really, there is no excuse for me not to be doing this (seriously, Hon - quite nodding your head, lol) ..... plus, I need to teach Charlotte how to make bread, as well. ˚Ü˚
Simple living - to me, means living with less "stuff" .... I mean, really, do I seriously need 3 can openers in that drawer over there??????? Simple living - for us, as a family, also means that we need to all be on board with getting rid of certain things (OMGoodness - why are there soooooo many flippers in this drawer??????????). It isn't just in the kitchen that we need to downsize, practically, every room in our house could use an overhaul - they really don't make trailers with enough storage space ..... or maybe they do and we just try and store more than the required limit in it, lol.
Simple living - to me, also means simpler gift giving ..... really thinking about the person you are giving a gift to and making it for them, instead of rushing down to Wal-Mart and buying the first thing you see, justifying it with "I ran out of time and this was the best I could do". For the past two years, we have made Christmas presents for each other ..... it has been wonderful to see the creativity in our children grow in these two years. This year we are planning on making gifts again, and while we still do buy the kids some things .... I'd really like to see less of that happening in the coming years (certain things will need to be bought - like the items we have bought them every Christmas since they were born - I cannot reproduce those). We know one family (that actually just lives in the neighbouring town from us) only give homemade gifts (even when their kids go to birthday parties) and they request homemade gifts from friends and family members that come for birthday parties ..... I think that is a really neat idea. Last year, we started a Christmas Wish List on a chalkboard (thank you so much, Pam, for that chalkboard) .... on this board, we list anything that we would like for Christmas (we can also use this list for birthday presents, as well) - it doesn't matter if it is something that we've seen in the stores, we put it on the list. For example, one time, Josh put "weapons" on his list .... Charlotte made him a wooden shield and Don made him a wooden war hammer.
Recently, I have started spinning some wool into working yarn for myself ..... this was something that I've wanted to do for quite some time and my brother helped me out with this - he gave me numerous bags of wool (both in batts and in pencil roving) and I am now getting lots of experience with spinning, plying and setting the twist of the wool. Now, granted, there are some things that I do need to buy for my spinning wheel - mainly because I'm not sure that my Husband can make the things that I need for it (namely a larger flyer and bigger bobbins). He has, though, made me an adjustable Niddy Noddy and a WPI device - both are extremely useful in my new hobby. Is it easier to just run down to the local Fields or Wal-Mart or Micheal's and buy the yarn already in balls - you bet it is .... but, I think the projects that I spin the wool for will mean a bit more to me, knowing how much work, actually, went into creating it.
So, care to share????? What does Simple Living mean to you?
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