After connecting our hose to the spigot this spring, I was frustrated when I noticed more water was coming out at the spigot than the end of the hose.
YouTube to the rescue!
I did a search for leak at hose and spigot connection and this short and sweet video came up. All I needed was a gasket and some plumbers tape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ3Jfk4OHEE&feature=share
This literally took less than a minute and there is no leak whatsoever! And I am not who you would call “Mrs. Fix-it!”
If you’re reading this, maybe you’ve been homeschooling for awhile. You chose homeschool as a lifestyle. Or maybe homeschool chose you because we are in the midst of a world pandemic and your child’s school has closed.
Either way, I hope this list serves you well. This is a no-frills list of supplies you will want to stock up on to make life easier.
I took the time to find the lowest price for each of these on Amazon and included links for them below. I hope that this will save time for some mamas out there.
We watched this video for “science” this morning and then wished we didn’t. Gum used to be made from gum from trees but now it is made of synthetic rubber and plastic! We did more research after the video and learned that nowadays gum is not biodegradable.😷
Did you know most chewing gum contains plastic?
This is why mom always said, “Don’t swallow your gum!” I do not want my kids chewing on plastic and definitely don’t want them potentially swallowing it. Kids say they don’t but we know different. 🤦🏼♀️
Then we discovered Glee gum. It contains no plastics, is sugar free and contains no aspartame (associated with Alzheimer’s). Looks like a good one and I’m pretty sure I have seen it at our local pharmacy. Sorry and you’re welcome. We can’t unlearn this stuff.
DIY Thieves.
Last week, I did the unthinkable. I ran out of Thieves. 😭 And this is NOT the time to be without the king of immune system support oils!
Obviously I ordered more, but until it gets here, I had to get creative. I realized that not only do I have all of the ingredients to make my own Thieves, I realized that Young Living is giving most of these to their customers this month as promos for hitting different spending targets. They are giving us the gift of health!
How accurate this is, I’m not for sure, but all four recipes that I was able to find online generally had this ratio:
2 drops rosemary
3 drops eucalyptus
4 drops cinnamon bark
7 drops lemon
8 drops clove
I kept this ratio but multiplied each number times 5 and placed in an empty dropper bottle to make a synergy or mixture. I did not add any carrier oils. This way, I can simply add 4-6 drops of the mixture to our diffuser. And it almost smells just like our wonderful Thieves!
Notice I said “almost.” Rest assured when my bottle of Thieves arrives I will be going back to it. I’m no Gary Young over here! But if you’re ever in a pinch, this is good to know about.
I won’t be wasting this concoction. My family really likes it so it is going to be the “Thieves” for our kitchen diffuser.
Raise your hand if you have Thieves or something similar in your wellness cabinet!
What is your relationship with food? Do you eat to nourish your body? To bring you joy? To comfort you? To satisfy your hunger? If you’re like most people, you probably answered “yes” to all of the above. Me too!
However, as I’ve gotten older and cared more about my health and feeling good, over time I can honestly say I have shifted to eating more for these two reasons: to satisfy hunger and to nourish my body.
I think part of the reason we struggle as a culture with our food relationship, is that during phases of our life, we have placed too much focus on the other two reasons: we reach for food to bring us joy and to comfort us.
The greatest shift can happen for you when you stop (and this is the magic sentence, hence the boldface) stop choosing the foods you eat for the taste factor and choose them for how you know they will make you feel.
Those who are around me for much time at all are surprised at how easily I can say “no thanks” to a big bowl of ice cream or to donuts. It’s because I’ve learned I’m lactose intolerant and I’ve spent many a day doubled over in a ball on my bed, with the sharpest imaginable pain in my gut due to eating dairy. Same can be said for gluten. I have slowly evolved to the place where I care more able how I will feel for the rest of the day than a few brief moments of “yummy.”
When I have weak moments and give in to either my own cravings or into peer pressure of what those around me would prefer to eat, I always regret it. Physically, and sometimes also emotionally. Our physical health as you know impacts our emotional health, and vice versa. So before I choose what I want to put in my body, I try to always ask: is this the best thing I could be eating right now? Am I eating it because it is yummy? Is that the only reason? How will I feel after I eat this?
Another catalyst that helped me make the shift, was learning that the “food on the aisles” are loaded with preservatives and some of those include additives that make you crave more of that food. Some of you reading this may feel betrayed by the food industry and angry to learn this – I know I did. These are the packaged foods: boxed, canned, frozen. A good rule of thumb: if you can’t pronounce the ingredients, don’t eat it.
This is why I suggest to folks to shop the perimeter of the grocery store: meats, seafood, dairy (we do lactose free), fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts. The good stuff, the healthy stuff, is always on the perimeter, not in the aisles (this is generally true, though there are some good foods to find in the aisles.) You need to eat real food.
What I wasn’t expecting, is that once I cut out the junk food, I stopped craving it. Now I pretty much crave real fresh food. Then I read a quote that pretty much summarizes this idea: “what you eat you crave more of. ”
So if you eat junk, you crave more junk. When you eat real food, you crave that. The hard part is making the shift. When I cut out junk food, it wasn’t easy. It helped that I was pregnant, and my primary goal in life was to provide the healthiest possible environment for my baby to inhabit. I had a greater motivation and something outside myself that helped me have the willpower to make the change.
It also helped that my mom had been diagnosed with Alzheimers and my research to help her benefited my whole outlook. It was then that I learned about the terrible effects of artificial sweeteners.
And later still, when my oldest child was diagnosed with migraine headaches, my research to help her led me to my knowledge of food coloring and sugar. Both of these are migraine triggers and I would recommend cutting these two out to anyone who suffers from them. Even further research of food coloring led me to how it effects those with ADD, and I learned sugar consumption lowers the immune system.
I realize these aren’t popular schools of thought and may even be unwanted because they don’t line up with how you would like to eat, but if you are aware, I promise your outlook on how you eat with shift and YOU WILL FEEL BETTER.
And in the face of a worldwide pandemic, as we are right now, you need to be reaching for every possible advantage that you can to increase your wellness and immune system so that you are resistant. Eat for your health, friends. You are what you eat.
I know we are like so many who have mourned (or are mourning) the loss of our spring break plans. We had so many fun adventures planned! But instead of being sad, we got creative and found ways to make the most of our time.
I felt like the girls deserved a week off – no school work. If it was going to be their spring break, quarantine or not, I was determined to make it the most fun I possibly could for them.
Have you ever made your own crayons? I was looking for some fun homeschool activities to do with my kiddos and stumbled on a recipe for making your own crayons and someone suggested scenting them.
I am personally allergic to artificial fragrance and we don’t use it in our home, but I do have and love essential oils!
Here is what you will need for this project:
Here are the steps:
1. Preheat oven to 250. If crayons are not already peeled and broken into small pieces you will need to do that.
2. Decide if you want each crayon to be a different color or if you want rainbow crayons. Either way, you may want to divide your broken crayon pieces up into piles by color.
3. Place a liner in each section of the muffin pan. We sprayed lightly with cooking spray so the liner would come off easily. Then add crayons. I recommend placing the pan on a foil lined cookie sheet.
4. Place the pan in the oven and leave in for 15 about minutes.
5. Pull out and add two drops of desired essential oil to each crayon, then return to oven for another 15 minutes. My daughter felt it was important to color code the oil with the crayon color (pictured below).
6. She was eager to use her new crayons so we placed in the freezer for a half hour after we removed from the oven.
If you appreciate nostalgic stories I thought I would also share my first experience making my own crayon. I was about seven or eight: I remember being bored as a kid and taking my old pieces of crayon, and wondering if I could melt them to make a new one like the multicolored ones I had seen at church. I was little so I wasn’t allowed to use the stove or oven, but I could use the sun’s heat. I had an idea. But I would need a container. It just so happened that it was Pillsbury cinnamon roll day at my house, and so I asked my mom to save the cup the icing comes in. That cup would be perfect for my crayon experiment. It was summer, so it was hot enough I thought. I put my broken crayons, paper peeled off, in the icing container, and set it out in a sunny spot. I came back out several hours later, and just as I expected I had lovely melted rainbow wax. I brought it inside and let it cool off and was so proud of that crayon.
**Did you know there was such a thing as National Crayon Day? It is March 31, the day I am writing this. Mark your calendar for next year and this may be the perfect activity for celebrating it. 😊
We’ve really liked doing scavenger hunts during this stay home time, and one of our favorites has been the Photo Scavenger Hunt.
We had so many laughs, so many do-overs and it forced us to be silly. Best scavenger hunt we’ve done! Here is the hunt list from Craftaholics Anonymous (thank you!) and I also included some of our pics for you to enjoy.
I have been posting pics of my kids flying kites for several springs now and have had other parents ask me for tips. “What am I doing wrong?” they will say. “Our kite just won’t fly.”
Secret #1: Cheap kites are the best. They are the lightest which makes them great flyers. My father-in-law is a whiz with kites so we’ve had nicer ones and they really are hard for little kids to get started. When we started getting the cheap Barbie or Elsa or Buzz Lightyear kites, we had way fewer tears and the kids could do it themselves.
Secret #2: Get the kites while you can. You don’t see kites year round. They tend to be available late February and all of March. When you see them it may still be cold outside and flying one may be furthest from your mind, but if you wait til late spring and for a windy day, you may not find these. We get ours at Walmart.
Secret #3: Kite flying can be done anytime of year! We tend to think of March- the windy month. But here in Tennessee, the day before any good rain shower tends to be windy. So watch your wind forecast and if you see rain, the day before tends to be windy!
Based on what I have read, kites will fly well between 8-24 mph, and even as a light of a breeze as 5-12 mph. If you can feel the breeze on your face, you can probably fly a kite. Personally we like our kites to really fly and put on a show, so I look for anywhere between 11-18 mph as our ideal. Less than that isn’t quite enough to get it up and keep it going, and more than that can be too much. I’ve circled the wind speed on the graphic below.
Required school closures and quarantine have evoked fear and panic in some, but to me it is an opportunity to experience life at a slower pace. There is a part of me (and probably you too) that has yearned for to be free from rushing around and schedules.
I have often told my children stories about what life was like when their dad and I were their age. We had time to run and play and be creative, to really be kids. A silver lining of this quarantine has definitely been the chance for them to sample what that’s like.
When our schools first made the decision to close, we eased into this, not really understanding how serious it was for us to stay home. Right or wrong, the first few days we kept hair and doctor appointments, and took the girls to the grocery with us. The talk of toilet paper shortage became real for our family when we were down to two rolls and my husband was unable to find any at our stores here. I drove to the next town over and chuckled at my own excitement when I scored a big pack of t.p. and paper towels.
Score!!!
We found out schools would be closed for one week, then we would have spring break. We wondered if we would go back to school after spring break, so we continued with school work: writing assignments, projects, ixl and checking Google Classroom. So many educational sites offered free access which has been wonderful. We had a homeschool experience. My girls took to homeschooling right away. They wanted time to read books, write, and do some online work, but loved the freedom to pursue their own interests, have choices, and to be able to move and talk throughout the day. We did math on white boards, and made a leprechaun trap for St. Patrick’s Day.
I thought about what school would look like as a teacher and wondered what resources students and parents would need that I could provide. We were asked to pick up personal items from our classroom. When I went in I felt sad looking at the empty desks wondering when I would see students in them again. We all worried about students on free-reduced lunch who received FUEL (a bag of food given weekly by schools). We wondered how they would be fed and were proud of how our district and school responded to meet the need.
P.E. class has looked like going on walks. Getting outdoors has been a challenge some days due to cooler temps or rain, but when we were able it was wonderful. Going for daily walks bring joy. One day we walked a trail by the creek and the rain poured. We all got soaked but the girls didn’t seem to mind. Being outside is really important for all of us during this time. We need the fresh air, and Vitamin D.
Creativity and board games have served us all really well. The girls made dresses out of paper towels for their Barbies, we did watercolor and all kinds of art work. Lots of games played: checkers, Guess Who and Connect Four have been favorites.
I have so much gratitude for the time we have and want to get it right. I want to love on these kiddos, make sure they feel safe and help them enjoy these days as much as possible.
Essentially Better Living 