Time Flies

When I started this blog I wasn't really sure what I wanted to write about. It started as a place to share recipes and tips, photos of our farm and critters, and then it turned into a diary of what I was teaching my oldest son as a tot. 

After our dog Duke passed away and then when I had my youngest son, things changed and I think I sort of fell into post-partum depression but I was never diagnosed. I just wrote it off as a symptom of hypothyroidism which I have been dealing with since after Jimmy was born. So I felt down in the dumps a lot and I stopped blogging except for a couple posts here and there. 

Well, now my oldest, Jimmy, is 5 and just started kindergarten yesterday! And not surprisingly, we have decided to homeschool. I was homeschooled for a couple years and loved it, my step mom homeschooled all 4 of her kids and it just seems natural to me. So far it has been great. We have really been homeschooling ever since we started with Tot School a few years ago. So Matthew, our youngest who is 3, will be doing tot school type activities while Jimmy does his work. 

I just cannot believe how quickly time flies! I have a KINDERGARTENER! Sheesh :-)

 

My sweet boys, they sure are blessings. I thank The Lord for them every day and pray I can teach them in His ways. 

I wonder if I still have any readers out there lol! But really, I want to keep updating so I have a journal of my boys lives. I missed documenting Matthew's first 3 years so I want to try to stay with it now. So hope to be back soon! 

My Natural Cold Remedies

I am mainly posting this so I can remember what I did next time I get a cold! Hopefully it will help someone else too. So sorry for all of the guesses as to amounts, I just throw things together! ;-)

I started feeling a cold creep up on me yesterday so I started drinking my go-to,

Cold Kicking Tea
Boil about a cup of water on the stove, then pour it over about a tablespoon of dried nettle leaves in a mug. Place a saucer over it and let it steep for about 20 minutes or so. In the meantime, boil some fresh grated ginger in water in a tea kettle. When the nettles are done steeping, strain the liquid into another mug. Add the juice from half a lemon and about 2 teaspoons of honey (or more or less to taste). When your ginger water has come to a boil, strain it into your mug to fill it up the rest of the way. I also sometimes add a teaspoon of Elderberry syrup. Stir it up and enjoy! I think it tastes a bit like hot lemonade. =)


I also read somewhere that garlic and onion sauteed with curry powder is a good remedy, so I tried it too. It was really yummy!

Garlic Onion Saute
Chop 1 medium onion and start frying it in some butter. Chop your garlic and add it in, along with about a tablespoon (I never measure so not sure how much I use!) of curry powder. While that is getting going, I dissolve a chicken bullion cube in about a half cup of HOT water, then add it to the saute. I cook it until the water simmers away and then its ready!


I have made this 3 times in the last 2 days now lol.  That along with many cups of tea, and I am already feeling better! I hope I can say bye-bye to my cold after today, tomorrow we will know! =)

Remembering...and Renewing

If you have been around my blog much at all, I am sure you know about our Aussies. Well, three years ago today, we lost our best furry friend, our beautiful Australian Shepherd, Duke. We were so devastated, he was a member of our family. Our home felt so empty and quiet without him and we immediately started looking for another Australian Shepherd, as we knew they were "our" breed and we would always have an Aussie. We knew Duke would never be replaced, but we needed to fill that void in our lives.

Well, we ended up with 2 new pups! Bo and Luke. Bo came first and was a bit crazy and a really great farm dog. He protected the barn and the barn cats and was so much fun. He climbed high up the stacked hay bales and was the fastest Aussie I have ever seen. He would have made a fantastic agility pup! Luke came to us a couple months after Bo, and he is a lot more laid back and more of a family dog, a bit more like Duke. A bit calmer than Duke too, I should say. Bo and Luke loved playing together and just had a ball. Then, sadly, in May of this year, we lost Bo. He just passed away out of nowhere. His third birthday would have been this week, July 26th.

This time, we decided we would not just jump in right away and get another Aussie. We would wait for the right one to come to us. Well, at the end of May, I heard that there had been a litter of puppies born just 3 days earlier. And they were the puppies of one of Duke's sisters! Well, I of course wanted one, but Jim couldn't be convinced. So I put it off and just prayed for a pup each time I received new photos of the litter. To make a long story short, things ended up working out and we brought home our new little bundle just in time for the anniversary of Duke's passing! And on top of that, guess when the new pup's birthday is? John Wayne's birthday, May 26th. Why is that significant? Well, our sweet Duke was named after John Wayne, "The Duke"! =) And, it was exactly 2 months before Bo's birthday. I know, I think about things WAAAY too much lol! But I thought that was pretty cool! I didn't even know when John Wayne's birthday was until I stumbled upon it, I was looking up significant events of that date, trying to come up with possible names for the puppy. Who is still not officially named by the way, but I think we are going with Blue Steel (the John Wayne movie of course!) in part of his name....we wanted to call him Blue, but that sounds too similar to Luke, and we don't want to confuse our pups! So we will see, I kind of like "Jake" so that could be what we call him. ;-)

Alright, so I suppose you want to see this special new pup? Well, ok! Here he is!

Chewing on his little hedgy toy:

And sitting pretty in my flower bed:

Is that not just the cutest little Aussie pup?? Yeah, he is! He follows in the paw prints of 2 awesome Aussies, but I don't think he will have a problem living up to them. I just love this breed, they are so unique and special, each and every little quirk! They are each so very smart and have their own personalities. I can't wait to see what this fellow has in store for us! I pray he and Luke will enjoy many happy years with our family!

So Long Bo

I have some sad news. Our red merle Aussie, Bo, passed away unexpectedly last Saturday, May 5th. I feel bad that I have waited this long to post about him!

Jim was so upset, he had really bonded with him after Duke died almost 3 years ago. I have really been slacking on photo taking lately so I don't even have any recent photos of him. =(

He was a really good farm dog. He kept the racoons and other critters out of the barn and was a good watch dog. He was also really, REALLY fast and loved chasing his buoy toy (we had an old boat that we sold and it got left behind so it became a dog toy). He LOVED to climb and he would climb up the straw and hay bales in the barn, all the way up to the top of the stalls they are stored in (maybe someday we will have a hay loft...).

He was Jim's buddy and a good listener. He had this super intense stare and would just look at you with penetrating eyes. We are so sad to lose him and all his unique quirks. He would have been 3 in July so he was still just a baby.

We don't have any idea how he died. Jim played with him that morning, we went to run some errands for a few hours, and when we got back he had passed. So very strange.

Rest in peace silly Bo Dog, and have fun playing with Duke over the Rainbow Bridge. May we one day see you again!

Skincare Routine Update

I am such a horrible blogger lol! Ok, so my last post was about my new skincare routine using the Oil Cleansing Method (OCM). Well, it was going pretty well, I loved how my skin felt. It was soft and smooth, and the refreshed feeling was awesome. But then a problem developed, which from what I have read, is quite common. I started breaking out on one side of my face. So WEIRD! I have never had bad acne, just a zit or 2 here and there. Well, this was zits all over my right jaw up to my mouth and some on my cheek. NOT COOL!! I then tried looking up other ways to clean my face (I did not try changing the type of oil I was using because I really didn't want to spend any more money).

I tried honey but it didn't really help. I used apple cider vinegar and water as a toner after washing and it sort of helped, but the zits just came right back. I found that you can use baking soda and water to wash, pretty similar to the No Poo method for your hair. You mix some baking soda with water (I think I did about 1 tsp BS in 1 cup water), scrub it on your face with a washcloth, splash the rest on your face and let it sit for 20 seconds or so then rinse. Then follow with the apple cider vinegar diluted with a little water on a cotton ball as a toner to balance your skins ph. Well, that seemed to help, but the zits remained or disappeared and came back.

Then I just stopped washing my face. I just rinse it with water in the shower. If I am wearing makeup (very rare these days) I use the baking soda wash to help get the makeup off. And guess what? My acne is pretty much gone! So I guess I was over-washing my skin. Fine with me! Hopefully this keeps up. And yeah, it has been a battle since my post in January, took me this long to (hopefully) figure it out! We will see how the next few weeks go.