Trying to be Healthier

I'm trying something new today. I just put all the stuff in the pot for chicken stock. It now has to simmer for several hours, but the house already smells all warm and homey. I've never made my own stock before, but since we've started raising our own chickens, I feel like I should use them all up. It's partly the time and money investment, I suppose. It's also partly in our efforts to eat healthier. I've pretty much always just used bouillon cubes when I have had recipes that call for stock. But in the effort to help our family eat healthier, I've been trying to use less processed foods, and I guess those are as processed as you can get. Chicken broth isn't square!

So far, having our own chickens hasn't saved us a bit of money. We have fed them for seven months and have probably had about 2 dozen eggs off them and two chicken dinners. But we like knowing that we are eating healthy foods that have been ethically raised. My daughter loves going and collecting eggs. Actually we all do, but considering we only get two a day, it's whoever manages to visit the coop at the right time and most often, it's her!

We're doing a few other things to try to eat healthier. We planted some fruits trees at the end of last year. We've got a bunch of strawberry, blackberry and raspberry bushes ordered for the spring. My husband has been poring over the vegetable gardening books so we can make a second (and hopefully more productive) attempt at a garden this year. We need to cut WAY back on fast food--that's a big thing we have fallen under the convenience of. We don't buy soda for the house anymore. I've been trying to make more things from scratch and rely less on premade/prepackaged things.

So what have you done or do you plan to do to make your family healthier this year? I love reading about what other people are doing because it just gives me more ideas.

Swapping Fun

I somehow stumbled across Swap-bot in my wanderings. I thought it looked fun, especially the craft related swaps. But I found that lots of swaps are restricted for people with plenty of good feedback from completed swaps already. So it sort of means you have to start with smaller swaps and work up to larger ones when you have the ratings to back you up.

My first swap is taking place right now. I signed up for a fast turnaround swap where you have two people you are to send 4 cards to and in return, you will receive 4 cards from two other people signed up in the swap. I have actually already received my cards from the people who sent to me. I'm sending my cards out tomorrow because I didn't get a chance to finish up my little gift bags for the cards until this afternoon. The first set that showed up for me included 4 cards made from pretty handmade paper and a pretty writing pen. The second set had four square cards of pretty papers and colorful envelopes plus two sweet little thank you cards and a little note from the sender. I'm sending out two sets of four different cards enclosed in little fabric gift bags that I whipped up with little felt birdies on the front. I considered doing two different fabrics for the bags, but wound up using the same because both people listed red as one of their favorite colors.

I'm looking forward to a fat quarters fabric swap around the end of the month. And in between, I also have a bookmark swap that I signed up for. And then maybe once I have a few ratings under my belt, I'd like to start signing up for some of the more crafting related swaps. Some of the popular swaps over there seem to be Dotee dolls. They are simple little dolls that you can hang up and most also have some kind of tail. They are really decorations, not toys. I see a great potential for them as sewing room decorations! You can see a bunch of them in the Dotee Dolls Flickr group.

Wordless Wednesday #3

"I'm not coming out--it's snowing!"

Make Something Monday #4

I finally talked my husband into making me something with stained glass! I picked out a simple looking picture and told him I'd like something like that. I figured he could whip it out fairly quickly and I was right. Once he was done, I slapped a little paint on it and gave her a face and some embellishments. She's going to be hanging in my sewing room window along with as many more as I can talk him into making!

A Favor...If You Have a Moment

As I mentioned earlier, I created my little bunny as part of a Flower challenge on Etsy. The challenge is now open for votes on this website: http://newmonthlychallenge.blogspot.com/. There aren't very many participants this month, but if you have a moment, I'd really appreciate if you would vote for my little bunny!

Thanks so much!

First Post of the Year

Should I spend my first post of the year complaining? Yes, I think I will...

I've got two sick kids for the new year (not to mention myself.) Finn only has a "fluffy" nose, and it doesn't seem to be slowing him down. Holly, on the other hand, seemed to wake up with the same thing Finn had, but she's either got something else or is just taking it much worse. She's been throwing up so much I feel like I'm getting buried in laundry. I even feel like I cheated today and popped her into disposable diapers since I didn't feel like keeping up with laundry on the diapers, too. She had me up for an hour in the night just holding her in the living room and trying to get her to sleep. I had a feeling she might be sick during the night, so I had lined the bed with a blanket so I didn't have to do sheets during the night. Turned out to be a good precaution. We took her to the doctor's this morning and she had a fever of 102.7. She felt cooler than she had during the night, but I hadn't taken her temp during the night. They did a strep test which came back clear and they wanted a urine test to see if she had a UTI, but we never managed to collect any urine. They stuck this funky thing in her diaper which closed up and didn't catch anything. They sent us home after we were there 2.5 hours. But we were supposed to bring back pee. Since the plastic catch thingy didn't work, I thought I'd just hold her on my lap without a diaper and catch some in the little sample cup they gave us. But it took so long, I wasn't paying attention and only wound up with a wet lap. I put in a call to the doctor's office to tell them I wasn't having any luck getting it, but I only got voice-mail and nobody called back until after the office was closed. They suggested I put some cotton balls in her diaper and wring them out into the cup. But since an antibiotic had already been called into the pharmacy, I wondered what the point of taking a urine sample in Monday would be, but she said to go ahead and do it. Frustrating...

Anyhow, at the moment, Holly is actually playing on the floor for the first time all day, I think. She had some baby Motrin and pretty good nap and wasn't so screamy when she woke up. Thank goodness. Out of my three kids, this girl has been the fussy one anyhow-even on a good day. Catch her when she is sick and she makes people want to remain childless! She actually tried to pry the nurse's fingers off this little instrument they wanted to measure her pulse with screaming madly all the while. They wound up giving up. She's only ten months old, where does this temper come from?

Okay, that's off my chest. I do have something less whiney. It's something I have been wanting for a while--we bought two rabbit cages the other night. I don't want to offend or gross anyone out, but these are going to be meat rabbits (ie. their offspring will be gracing our dinner table.) My hubby had this three-step plan for getting rabbits. First was that we had to taste rabbit and make sure we liked it. Fair enough--who wants to bother raising them if we won't eat them? So I found a place to order some rabbit meat online and had it shipped to us. We barbecued it and everyone in the family liked it. Step two was that he said we needed to get a rabbit and make sure we could go through with the deed. That's sort of where the plan hung up because I didn't actually know anyone with meat rabbits and I had this mental block about buying a rabbit from the store to do. But then, a couple weeks back, we sent our first roosters to freezer camp. My hubby had promised to dispatch if I would butcher. Let's just say it didn't go off quite as planned, and my husband wound up promising to build whatever else I wanted around here for animals. And I guess he was serious because when we saw some cages the other night that were a good price, he said to get them and I didn't even have to ask. We still need a couple more cages and to set up a spot to put them, but it's a start and now we can work on step three--getting rabbits!

Good grief...this post seems to have taken on book-like proportions. Well, if you managed to slog through this all, thanks for reading!

Wordless Wednesday #2

Chocolate Gravy A Hit!

*Visit The Post-It Place for the recipe*