March 23, 2012

Picky Eaters: Avoiding the Dinnertime Dilemma By Raising Children With a Heart of Gratitude

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Written by Courtney, Contributing Writer Picky eaters, finicky eaters, stubborn, selective. The notion of children being picky about their food is common these days. I’ve noticed that it’s tossed around as “normal” and accepted, even justified by some. Pop psychology and modern day experts in child development cite is as appropriate. But is it? I have to ask if this trend is something new or if young children were always “predisposed” to be picky eaters. One hundred years ago, did children reject the food their [...]

Filed Under: Children, Good stewardship, Raising healthy eaters Tagged With: , , , , , , , 80 Comments
January 23, 2012

What I Would Feed my Family on a Monthly Budget of $250

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  *After you read this post, be sure to read the second post in this series, with thoughts on how I would improve upon this budget.* I had way too much fun writing this post. I hinted on Facebook last week that I was working on a post detailing what I would buy if I could only spend $250 a month for our family of 5 (we currently spend $450, although that does include some household goods/toiletries, which my $250 budget doesn't). My goal? To [...]

Filed Under: Frugality, Good stewardship, In the kitchen, Real, whole food Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 167 Comments
January 19, 2012

Yes, You Can Stop Using Credit Cards!

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Written by Kate Tietje, Contributing Writer In the new year, one of the major resolutions a lot of people make (after losing weight) is getting out of debt.  A lot of families are reeling from their Christmas expenses -- I think I've read the average family spends over $2000 on Christmas each year! Much of that goes onto credit cards.  When you think about taking several months to pay that off at 18% (or more) interest, that's a lot of extra money that you're spending just [...]

Filed Under: Budgeting, Frugality, Good stewardship Tagged With: , , , 54 Comments
January 18, 2012

Can Coupons Be Used Responsibly?

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Written by Courtney, Contributing Writer As mothers raising families in a tough economy, we are always looking for ways to save money and make our dollars stretch a little further. Since the beginning of time, mothers have learned to be wise stewards of the limited resources available to them. More recently, many have turned to coupons to help make the most of their family's hard earned dollars. Using coupons and taking advantage of sales and other promotions can be valuable tools to help us maximize [...]

Filed Under: Frugality, Good stewardship, Real, whole food Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 56 Comments
October 12, 2011

3 Tips That Will Truly Help You to Manage Your Grocery Budget Better

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Once upon a time, there was this girl who was very careful with her budget. So careful that her husband trusted her implicitly, and she carefully maintained her grocery budget with cash each month, so as not to overspend. She was so insistent that this method worked, she even wrote profusely on the topic. This worked well for several years. Then this girl discovered that upon returning home from an overseas trip, she was pregnant with her 4th child. Then two homestay students arrived, fatigue and nausea [...]

Filed Under: Budgeting, Frugality, Good stewardship, Menu Planning Tagged With: , , , , , , , 70 Comments
September 13, 2011

Backyard Chicken Challenges

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Written by Sharon Kaufman, Contributing Writer It's been about about 2 1/2 years since my husband and I - inexperienced as we are - first took on the hobby of keeping backyard chickens; and what a joy it's been. But we've most certainly seen our fair share of chicken woes also. It's just bound to happen that with 8-10 chickens, problems "crop up". I hope you can benefit from reading about the challenges we've dealt with over the past few years. Feather Picking and/or Cannibalism Certain chickens [...]

Filed Under: Homesteading, Sustainability Tagged With: , , , , 26 Comments
August 27, 2011

Dirty Water, Clean Water

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Updated: Thanks to my amazing readers rising to the challenge, we will be providing 4 families with clean, pure drinking water for a LIFETIME! How's that for exciting? :) Water. So critical, so taken for granted. We may talk about staying hydrated enough. Make sure that we are using a quality water filtration system to avoid various toxins and chemicals in our water. But what we take for granted is that we are among the privileged few in the world who can turn on a tap in [...]

Filed Under: Compassion Trip, Faith and encouragement, Good stewardship Tagged With: , , , , , 6 Comments
August 25, 2011

An Experiment: Just How Many Clothes Do Kids Need, Anyways?

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By many people's standards, I suppose my children don't have that many clothes. I certainly don't spend a lot of money buying clothes, and we sometimes have lean seasons where we run a bit low on boy's shorts or wish we had just a couple more girl's short sleeved shirts. The closet you see above is the hanging portion that contains our 3 children's shirts, sweaters, dresses and skirts (plus a few fancy dresses that hang above). What you see is basically what we have, [...]

Filed Under: Children, Frugality, Good stewardship, Living Simply Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 127 Comments