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.

my alter ego

Do you know what "alter ego" means? I didn't. I still kinda don't. I mean, I had the general idea, but I wondered - is it the version of yourself that you'd most like to become? Like your dream self? Or is it the version of you that is most opposite from who you are? (In my case, this would be an extremely outgoing goth people-person. I know that seems to be a contradiction, but trust me, that would be my opposite.)

I finally looked it up and it said "the other self." Well, thank you, that's most helpful.

NOT.

Well, due to a chance meeting with a pretty little kitty outside my door tonight, I've decide who my alter ego is. It is the me that I think I'd like to be, the person that I will begin praying to become, the person I wonder what it would be like to work toward becoming.

Let it be said: I am not a cat person.

I mean it. I don't understand them. They're snobby and expect to be served and hide from people and I just can't read them and their litter boxes smell awful. They look all cute and then they'll swing around and nab ya. (I know: I've had the rabies series to prove it.) I love dogs. I get dogs. I get along very well with dogs.

But this kitty... It was like almost 11pm! I was just headed to the convenience store to buy tortilla chips for Hubby. Isn't it just like God to give us divine messages in the most mundane things?? (My last experience like that was while deep-scrubbing the bathroom. In God's defense - not that He needs it - it was a task that required much prayer and praise music.)

It was a pretty little white and orange kitty. Often when we exit our house late at night, we'll hear rustling in the leaves over by the trees, and we wait a second to make sure that the skunk/possum/giant squirrel has a chance to move on before we freak it half to death and turn it evil. But as I heard the rustling this time and paused, I glanced over and saw a lighter colored figure, and then the glow of two little cat's eyes. So I did what I, not a cat person, always does when running into a cat unexpectedly.

I said, "oh, hi, kitty!" and mowwwed at it. (For not being a cat person, I do a pretty good "moww.")

And this kitty came over to me, and looked at me, and stood with me, and I scratched the kitty, and it's hesitancy lasted about 3 and a half seconds, and then it purrrrrrred at me, and wagged incessantly at me, and arched at me as I scratched its back, and it followed me to my car.

I told it that it would make the doggies yell. I told it I had a dog and it wouldn't work out. I told it we couldn't be together, even though I was 5% worried (hoping?) it might try to get in my car with me. It almost seemed like it wanted to play (where, admittedly, my rabies vaccine experience kicks in and I decide I shouldn't find out; I don't really know how to initiate play with cats, or where their too-far point is).

But as I drove to the convenience store and back, I revisited the idea with God about who I'd love to be, and began to investigate the idea to see if it's someone that might look like me.

And I decided it didn't. Not now, at least. But the now is practice. I have a bunch of kids, one of which is a psycho teenage daughter. That's got to be training for something.

So I decided this new woman would look something like this:

She would lose all her icky body weight so she can easily move around her several-acre plot of land, but she would still be soft enough to give good hugs. She would be the keeper of the Orphan House - her home, where any animal or baby or child in need of love and a warm bed would find its rest. She would own a good comfy pair of cowgirl boots and a good pair of tall rainboots. She would read her Bible like it's her very breath. She would hang Bible verses around her house to remind her and those around her from whence their strength comes. She would gather her passle of girls on her bed and they'd read (and watch) Jane Austen and Anne Shirley and learn about beauty and chivalry and romance, and she'd work outside with her passle of boys, fixing trim and building lean-tos for said creatures who ambled through their lives. She'd homeschool so that she could be around to be needed, and people would show up on her doorstep - a long front porch attached to a rambling farmhouse - and say "got room for one more?" and she'd never have to say no.

I'm praying for that woman. I hope to meet her someday.

just gotta say

Well sometimes my life just don't make sense at all
When the mountains look so big and my faith just seems so small

So hold me, Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

And I wake up in the night and feel the dark
It's so hot inside my soul, I swear there must be blisters on my heart

So hold me, Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

Surrender don't come natural to me
I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want
Than to take what You give that I need
And I've beat my head against so many walls
Now I'm falling down, I'm falling on my knees

And this Salvation Army band is playing this hymn
And Your grace rings out so deep, it makes my resistance seem so thin

So hold me, Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

I'm singin' hold me, Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

(God bless you, Rich Mullins. "Hold Me, Jesus")