Homemade Toys And Gifts

Homemade is big right now.
I can't imagine why. :)

Here are some ideas for homemade toys and gifts for children.


First, from TennZen, homemade marshmallow shooters.
These look really neat, we'll probably make a couple for our children.


Make Baby Stuff.com has several tutorials with patterns for sewing to woodworking and more.

Wooden toys:
Homemade Birdie Toy Tutorial

Wooden Puzzle Instructions

Doll Cradle Plans

Wooden Memory Tile Tutorial

Make Wooden Building Blocks

Sewn toys:
Doll Pattern & Instructions

Soft Blocks Sewing Tutorial

Felted Sweater Mouse Puppet

Waldorf Doll Instructions

Recycled toys:
Cardboard Playhouse Plans

Recycled Wallpaper Blocks

Even more toys:
Homemade Playdough

Kool-Aid Dyed Playsilks

Homemade Stickers


All Free Crafts has quite a few ideas for sewn, knitted and crocheted toys.

Teddy Wolf

Stuffed Hound Dog

Crocheted Frog

Amigurumi Bunny

Corker Knitting Spool


This next one is not a toy but a book on toy making for children, from Homeschool Freebie of the Day.

"Home-Made Toys for Girls And Boys" (available today only)


Finally, if you're like us and think children have too many toys, I have an idea for you.

You can buy plain canvas totebags, purses, and aprons from Hobby Lobby (or make your own, but last year I paid less than $2 for a pack of three).
Decorate with fabric paints; freehand, with stencils or rubber stamps.

I have also used acrylic craft paint in place of fabric paint, it just has to be heat-set with an iron before washing. Be sure it's dry (it takes about 24 hours), use low heat and don't put the iron directly on the fabric, copier paper works well.

You can also use this idea for your children to make "handprint" T-shirts, pot-holders, or aprons for their daddy or grandparents.
We made my husband a T-shirt one year with both our children's handprints on it and "We love our daddy" written in freehand.

Happy crafting. :)

Cooking Tip For Baked Potatoes

How did we ever bake potatoes without aluminum foil? Instead of foil, coat the potatoes with oil and salt. I use olive oil and kosher salt, if I have it, but any kind of oil or salt will do. Bake the potatoes on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees for about an hour.

New potatoes fixed like this and cooked with a roast or chicken are also delicious. If the potatoes are homegrown, we eat skin and all, so I add herbs to the salt and oil rub. I usually use the same herbs I season the meat with, plus paprika and extra garlic.

We think baked potatoes are a lot better fixed like this and a little oil and salt is less expensive than aluminum foil, so you save money, and you won't have trash left over when you're done.

Enjoy!

Thank You Lord For The Rain

Praise God, it finally rained! We have been in an extreme drought and our water tables are so low, springs are drying up and wells are going dry.

We get our water from a spring, yesterday we had 300 gallons left in our tanks. That's better than last year, by June we were completely dry.

In light of our water situation, we conserve it all we can and here are some of the ways we do.

We don't flush our toilet each time we use it.

I dump dish water outside.

We don't take a bath every day. When my husband was growing up, they had a weekly bath.

We wear our clothes more than once before washing.

We turn the water off while bathing and washing up until it's needed for rinsing.

We catch rain water from off the roof of our house and use it for watering our animals (and plants, if needed).

I put straw or mulch in my garden and around my herbs and flowers, it keeps the ground cool and moist and the plants didn't have to have any extra water this year.

We don't wash our vehicles.

Some of these things may sound a little extreme, but they're really not if you think about how people have lived in the past. We still have it better than they did and better than most people in the rest of the world, at least we don't have to walk five miles a day for water, not yet anyways.

I just checked our tank and it's filling up! As my husband says,"Ya gotta have faith". :)

Almost Free "Finding Financial Freedom" E-book

Do you want to get out of debt and save money?
For today only you can buy "Finding Financial Freedom" by Kelly Crawford, for $1.00! For more information and to purchase this e-book go here.
To learn more about Kelly, visit her at her blog, Generation Cedar.

Pear Preserves

There's a wonderful old-time canning recipe for pears on one of the blogs I follow, Blind Pig and the Acorn. It's her Granny's Pear Preserves recipe, complete with pictures. Looks yummy! Check it out here.

Now, to find some pears! :)

Free Downloads of Old Almanacs

I found some neat sites with old almanacs that have been scanned and made available to download, for free!

The National Library of Medicine of The National Institutes of Health has some old "patent medicine" almanacs, you can find them here.


A Victorian Passage has a scanned 1887 Agricultural Almanac available to download free, get it here.


The Internet Archive has a bunch of old Canadian almanacs:

Canadian almanac and directory (Volume 48, 1895)

Canadian almanac and directory (Volume 22, 1869)

Canadian almanac and directory (Volume 53, 1900)

Canadian almanac and directory (Volume 65, 1912)

The Canadian Almanac 1874

The Canadian Almanac and Directory 1850-1851

The Canadian Almanac and Directory 1897

Canadian Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge 1848

An International Harvester almanac:

IHC almanac and encyclopedia, 1911

A Scottish almanac:

Oliver and Boyd's Edinburgh almanac and national repository

A "Family Christian Almanac":

Family Christian Almanac

An old Home Insurance Company almanac:

The Home Almanac (Volume 1893)

An 1842 Boston almanac:

The Boston almanac for the year .. (Volume 1842)

An Illinois almanac:

Wakefield's western farmers' almanac and account book (Volume 1874)

Many more American almanacs:
Farmers' and country merchants' almanac and ready reference book

Chicago daily news national almanac for .. (Volume 1889)

Chicago daily news national almanac for .. (Volume 1920)

Notes on the calendar and the almanac

The American almanac and repository of useful knowledge for the year .. (Volume 7 (1836))

Tables of the moon : constructed for the use of the American ephemeris and nautical almanac

The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's almanac, and other papers

The New-England mercantile union business directory, six parts in one. Containing a new map of New-England, an almanac for 1849, a memorandum for every day in the year, and a business directory for New-England

The book of almanacs, with an index of reference, by which the almanac may be found for every year, whether in old style or new, from any epoch, ancient or modern, up to A. D. 2000. With means of finding the day of any new or full moon from B. C. 2000 to A. D. 2000

Rummage Sales/Giveaway in Townsend

Today and Friday
Big Valley resort's annual rummage sale continues today 9am-4pm and tomorrow 9am-12pm. Tomorrow is $1-a-bag day. Big Valley is located on the right, a little past the Back Porch restuarant, just as you enter Townsend on Lamar Alexander Parkway/321.

Saturday
Church of the Cove is having a clothing giveaway from 9am-1pm. They are located on Wears Valley Rd., approximately one mile from the traffic light in Townsend, on the right.

Wednesday October 8-Saturday October 11
Hearts and Hands is having their annual rummage sale at the River Rat across from the Heritage Center on Hwy. 73 (about a mile past the traffic light). The sale will run 9am-5pm all four days.
If you would like to donate items to the sale, drop them off 9am-5pm Saturday, October 4, Monday, October 6, or Tuesday, October 7.

Ongoing
The Townsend Alumni Rummage Room is open every Wednesday 11am-2pm. This is located in Townsend City Hall on Tiger Dr. (across from Townsend Elementary School).

Homemaking Tip- Butter Wrappers

My grandmother used to save her butter wrappers and use them to grease her baking pans. Just stick them in a plastic bag and store in the fridge. You'd be surprised at the amount of butter that remains on a wrapper!

Some Thoughts on Breakfast

We don't have cold cereal in our house. I used to buy it, but after eating two bowls of it, my children would be hungry again in an hour! I make oatmeal or grits, most of the time, and I'm talking about the kind you cook, not instant.
For oatmeal, we usually eat it with honey or brown sugar and cinnamon. My mom used to make it with cheese, sprouts and (if I remember correctly) sunflower seeds!
We usually eat grits with cheese, and my son and I like them with just butter. My grandmother used to eat her grits with jelly in them.

Other Breakfast Ideas

We have a flock of chickens so we eat a lot of eggs (when they're laying good). I usually boil a half dozen a day. My husband takes a couple in his lunch and the rest get eaten either at breakfast (with fruit and cream-cheese toast), or for a snack in the afternoon. Boiled eggs are also great for a snack on the go.
We love pancakes at our house but I don't like serving them with fake syrup. Real maple syrup is expensive so I buy it on sale and use it sparingly. We also eat pancakes with honey, jelly or applesauce on them, all delicious and much cheaper than maple syrup. Homemade fruit syrup is also good. I froze a lot of berries this year and I'm going to try my hand at making some blueberry syrup. As for the pancakes themselves, I never use a mix, made-from-scratch always tastes so much better. I usually use this whole wheat/buttermilk recipe:

Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes

Sift together dry ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

Combine wet ingredients:

4 Tbsp. honey or molasses

2 eggs

4 cups buttermilk

4 Tbsp. melted butter

Mix dry and wet ingredients together quickly, do not over-beat.

Drop by spoonfuls on lightly greased, hot griddle. Flip pancakes when edges turn brown and bubbles are popped. Cook on other side till golden brown.

This recipe usually makes about 20 pancakes (depending on the size) and feeds my family of four.

Enjoy!

Wild Medicine for Poison Ivy

We have poison ivy all over the place up here, you can't do anything outside without getting in some of it. My husband is highly allergic to it (he used to have to get a shot after exposure) and the rest of us have varying degrees of tolerance, I used to not have a reaction at all! We've bought many things to ease the symptoms of poison ivy but the best thing, we've found, is a plant that grows all over these mountains. It's called Jewelweed.

Another name for it is Wild Touch-Me-Not (the ripe seed pods explode when you touch them). The plant has yellow or orange flowers, very juicy, watery stems and grows to a height of 5 feet.
We usually crush the stems and rub them over our exposed skin after we've gotten in poison ivy, you can also rub it on before exposure for added protection (I just never think of it before!). If you can get this on your skin quick enough , you won't get any blisters at all!
Needless to say, my husband doesn't have to get shots anymore. :)

Grocery Tip

Buy butter in blocks instead of quarters, they're usually cheaper by about 50 cents a pound.

Frugal Homemaking Tip

If you have bath towels that are starting to get ragged, don't throw them away! You can use them to make washcloths or dishrags.
This would make a good sewing project for children.

Ways to save money

Cut off the cable TV, check out tapes and DVDs from the library. I have no idea what's on television anymore, we haven't watched it for 7 years.
Get rid of your clothes dryer and put up a clothesline. I haven't had a dryer for 26 years.
Pack a lunch instead of eating out.
Get rid of your air conditioner, people used to do without it. We don't have one.
Grow a garden, in pots if you have to. I've grown herbs, carrots, garlic, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in pots.
Switch from high-speed internet to dial-up.
Sell all but one car and learn how to work on it.
Don't buy new clothes. Do your shopping at flea markets, yard sales and second-hand stores. I buy all my family's clothes at Foothills Flea Market for five to ten cents a piece.
Learn to sew, use some of that used clothing for material.
Learn to cook!

Money Saving E-book Sale

Crystal Paine over at Money Saving Mom has extended her Summer Blowout Sale, this week only you can get $100 worth of e-books and audios for $8.97!
http://www.biblicalwomanhood.com/supermarket.htm

Be sure and check out her blog at
http://www.moneysavingmom.com/
for some giveaways and great ways to save on your groceries.