the DIY bandwagon has a new tag-along

Oh my goodness, I must blog.

I'm trying so many new things - things that are just exactly what I should be blogging about - and I haven't written about a one of 'em!

I'm going to have to recap...mostly just to make sure I remember everything. I feel I should announce it somehow - tada! - ...'though I really don't know what to call it. It's a change in thinking, plain and simple, but that doesn't sound dramatic or catchy.

We are trying to be more simple. More natural. More real. It's the "real" word that I think I like the most. When you throw words around like "natural" and "organic," people think a certain thing. Whatever that conjures in your head personally...I don't think we're that.

Of course I SAY "we" but I think, really, I started it for us. I think it must've started back with my love of farmhouses. I guess there might've been hints of it before then (we once had a wall border that we got somewhere that showed just a simple clothesline with about four garments on it...I loved that), but that's the biggest stepping off point in recent history. I love farmhouses, I love old things, I love things that would have gone in farmhouses, I love simplicity and worn wood and have grown to love glass jars and metal bowls... And so I have started surrounding myself with those things. I have started "decorating" - 'though really I aim for practical decoration, things you can use; I'm not in this for more clutter and things I just have to dust - in a farmhousey style. My kitchen shelves are open shelves (although that started out as necessity because we had no cabinets). I have paired down our dishes to only what we need for the number of people in our family. I hang the rolling pin, sifter/masher/thingy, and barbecue basket on the wall. My pots hang from a curtain rod on the wall. Now, all these things are due to a lack of cabinet space, but...isn't that why they hung on the walls in old farmhouses, too? They didn't have rows of kitchen cabinets to store things in, and they certainly didn't have more things than they needed.

So anyway, I love thinking about old farmhouses, and finding old things that look old but are useful (and inexpensive...farmhousey stuff wasn't about being pricey), and so have been happily surrounded by things from days gone by, a much more useful and simple and productive and no-nonsense time gone by. And that makes me think what else they might have done that was the right idea.

And all in all, I've just come to the conclusion been convicted by the fact that...if God didn't make it, do we really need it?

Things in our houses, things in our bodies, things on our bodies...God created us and HE takes care of us, so hasn't He provided all these things that we already need? How so completely off-track have we gotten by creating so many things in the name of beauty and convenience, when HE'S created it all already!

So yes, things like these are better for the environment, they're better for us physically, and they're cheaper...but for me, for right now, it boils down to just...I like doing these things because they are what God gave us to use. And you can't improve on that.

[tada!]

So...I've been researching. And it's fun! I research things like planting and chickens, make-it-yourself toothpaste and shampoo and laundry soap, I'm looking up clotheslines and coops and subsitutes for sugar.

I have already made my own laundry soap. Tonight I made my own toothpaste. I also have my DIY shampoo and rinse ready to go for the morning. I've bought agave nectar and extra honey to replace the gobs of sugar there are everywhere, and am steadily toward cooking and baking everything for myself that I can. To be sure I know where all the ingredients come from, yes. To be sure the food is healthy and real, yes. To make it the healthiest possible for us, yes.

But mostly because all the things that go into these things came from God's creation, they are His provision incarnate, and there's a closeness, and a gratitude, to be had there.

I can't wait to share all these things with you. Not everyone will have an excitement for these things like I do, but that's okay. Everyone has their niche, job, purpose, hobby. This is slowly quickly becoming mine. And I want to share them to encourage the people who ARE as excited, to encourage the people who are THINKING about trying out some of these, and because blogs are the very places I've found a lot of my most-helpful information, because it's first-hand "I tried this" knowledge.

I hope it helps. Stay tuned.