We’re kind of philosophical about the house. We love our house, but it’s just a house and if the Lord needs us elsewhere, well, we’re not going to argue with Him. That never gets anyone anywhere. And it’s not like anyone has died or lost a limb or become blind or deaf. Not that those are impossible to overcome, just that it’s easier to move than it is to adjust to never hearing or seeing again, easier to move than learning to use just one hand or one leg. It’s just a house, a material object and those can easily be replaced. People, arms, legs, ears and eyes aren’t so easy to replace. Our home really is where our heart is, not where our house is. Hearts are eternal, houses are temporal.

I’m not sure what the Lord has planned for us, but I’m interested to see where He leads us and how he provides for us during this challenging time.

Homemade GFCF Hamburger Magic Mixes (aka hamburger helper)

There are 3 of them:  Hearty Beef & Gravy, Italian Style & Stroganoff. They are all 3 easy to prepare and provide 4 hearty servings (not 3 skimpy servings like regular hamburger helper). You prepare the mixes in your own kitchen and they they can be cooked as your leisure. My kids LOVE these, and Fred likes them too. I think they taste good, but even better they are very quick and easy when you’d rather do anything but cook. If anyone makes them, let me know what you think.

Frugal Fat Loss.

You’ll also see PDF files of all the informtion and some new menu planner helps for planning a healthy diet. There are dietary exchange lists, similar to the ones used by Diabetics, food plans including a variety of calorie, protien and carbohydrate combinations and bonus plans for petite frame women and those who are metabolically challenged.

As always, this information is provided for free with Christian love and kindness. Enjoy!

Making the Best of It!

Moving from a fat-filled, sugar-laden stupor to a leaner, healthy lifestyle. 

For epub and mobi versions go here.

Please comment on this article here. Any tips along these lines you’d like to share are also welcome. I really wanted to get this article finished and published before I worked on the rest of my site. Making the Best of It! is like the premise that I want to base my site on. With it published it’s easier for me to maintain my focus on the goals I’m trying to accomplish. Hope you enjoy it, and even if you don’t, please let me know.

I considered redoing my website on a blog the way so many of them are now. It would have allowed for comments on each recipe, but then I looked into the cost of these packages and it’s beyond me. So in the interest of saving money I’m keeping my basic format of  a single recipe per page and easy naviagtion via a recipe index (or several, as the case may be).

I am interested in input in what you would like to see in a budget cooking website and any old-favorites you’d like to see again. Also, any doll enthusiasts, I’m always happy to hear from you too.  I’ll have time over the summer to do more work, and I plan to take advantage of that to remake things into a cohesive whole.

Fred’s back, which was terribly injured earlier this year, is much better, he has been back to work for several months, but his back will eventually give out again, and when it does we’ll be retiring. Perhaps sooner than later. At that time, I’ll have more time to devote to all of my favorite interet projects. Until that time though, I have to maintain the  projects and relationships that I have in real life. For the time being, that takes all of my skills, all of my energy and all of time. If there was more of me to go around, I would devote more here, but there isn’t, so I have to adapt as best I can.

I have many thanks and much appreciation for all of the people who have been so kind and faithful over the years and hope to spend more time with you all when my schedule changes and my kids grow up. Until then, there are many, many quality sites online that can provide information on a variety of subjects, that for the time being, I cannot.

Hugs & Love all around

Maggie

So anyway, we kept Kia for those days and had a lovely time. It’s pleasant having Fred home for the most part, except I do want to smack him around a little bit now and then, only I don’t do that of course. I just think about it from time to time. and then I remind myself how worried I was while he was gone and so I feel better.

My oldest son, the Asperger’s one, has had wheat this week and even with his digestive aids he’s having a hard time and being mean to everyone and yelling a lot and fussing about things that seem inconsequential to me. He is having an episode I guess. I will have to make sure his grandparents don’t give him any wheat this weekend, or he won’t be tolerable. As it is, I am hiding from him so he can’t find me and fuss at me. He’s 17, has the social skills of an 11 year old and is terribly angry at me for reasons I don’t comprehend. Sigh. The meaner he is the more I fantasize about smaking around his father. How’s that for messed up reasoning.

Oh well. This winter has had more stress than normal for me and doesn’t seem like it’s going to lighten up any time soon. On I plod. Heavenly Father grant me the gift of grace. Amen.

2. Fred has 3 herniated discs in his back. He has been at the hospital since Tuesday evening. He will come home today. I have missed him and will happy to get him home. He won’t be able to go back to work for a while so we’re getting all the disability and workman’s comp stuff figured out so we can still make ends meet.

3. The boys are at my folk’s house and are happy to be out of the house. I am doing all the snow shoveling myself and remembering when I was a teenager and had to do it all the time when I lived in Minnesota. I kind of like to shovel snow.

4. I have a new granddaughter named Kia (rhymes with PIE-uh). She is now almost 9 months old and I have been watching her during the day which is a wonderful thing for me to do and makes me very happy. Fred and I have decided that grandchildren make us feel successful and wealthy;  like we’ve done well in the world. Kia has curly red hair and she is beautiful.  Her mom, Carla, lives not too far away and works as a private nurse so I get Kia every week day and we have the most fun playing with girl toys and singing silly girl songs and terrorizing her teenage uncles. It’s a good life.

5. I have been sewing. A new light blue jumper for me and a new light brown jumper for Kia. It’s a little big for her, but she is growing like a weed. I will make some more for Kia too. I find it very fulfilling to make jumpers for her and she looks so pretty in them. I will share pictures soon. I have lots of pictures to share and hope to do so eventually. My intentions are always good but my work ethic is slow.

6. I still intend to blog on headcovering eventually. It’s just a matter of the discipline to do it.

It’s starts out with 2 sheets of foam board that are 20 by 30-inches.  I had never heard of foam board before . A  relative was talking about it and how it was sturdy and easy to cut with an X-acto knife. Then I was at Walmart looking for printer paper and saw the foam board there with the poster boards and thought “Well this is nifty stuff.” So I bought two pieces without much knowledge of how to use it.

Then I got home and remembered this doll house from the 70′s that was owned by The Sunshine Family Dolls. It was 4 rooms with a removable roof. It’s pictured here on an ebay listing.

Another lady who had a similar idea for a 1:12 scale doll house posted her pictures here.

This is how it’s done.

1. Buy 2 sheets of foamboard. 2o” by 30″ each. Measure halfway up the 30″ side. Draw a line bisecting it. Cut on that line giving you 2 pieces  that are 20″ by 15″ each. Do this for both sheets of foam board so you have 4 pieces that are all the same size. Below is a picture of one large foamboard that has been cut into 2 pieces. The doll is a Darice Craft doll, the same size as Barbie.

I couldn’t find our X-acto knife set so I used a bread knife with a serrated knife to saw my foam board in half. It worked very nicely.

2.  Lay two pieces next to each other, about 1/2-inch apart. Keeping the gap, lay a piece of duct tape over the boards. Add 2 more pieces of duct tape too, so there are 3 pieces making the “hinge”. Flip the thing over and make the other side of the duct tape hinge. After hinging the first two pieces, do the same thing to the next two.

Now you have 2 pieces of foamboard, hinged together with duct tape. They open and close sort of like a book.

3. Lay the hinged boards out flat. Measure halfway the hinge, or 7-1/2 inches. Cut the hinge up to this point. I used a large serrated edge bread knife and sawed back and forth to cut the tape. Scissors just wouldn’t work.

4.  Fit the two together by shoving one down over the other with the openings in the hinges meeting an slipping together.

5. Decorate with contact paper, fabric scraps etc. I’ll do that in the next installment. This is just the beginning, the building of the skeleton, so to speak. Each section of the “X” will be a different room. I want to make a kitchen, bedroom, living room and I’m not sure what to make the 3rd room, maybe a bathroom, maybe something else.

If you prefer soemthing more sophisticated that takes more time (and more cash) but is really cute looking then take a look at these pictures and patterns from Morrisey Dolls (scroll halfway down to see pics).

Foam board is definitely a fun thing to play with. I hope to play with it some more when I furnish the house. I’m not sure how clear I made this, so please ask questions as needed. I’ll be happy to answer.

Eventually I will sell some stuff for more modern dolls but I have to do this first and see how the process works. It’s nerve wracking, but then I remember God’s in charge, so the rest doesn’t really matter so much. the sweet security we find in Him, absolutely priceless.

On a similar topic Anna over at Veiled Glory has opened up her own etsy shop selling her homemade snoods. They are really pretty snoods and very easy to wear. She wears them all the time and they always look nice.

She’s having a free snood giveaway and the deadline is Monday, so get over there and sign up!