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Relationship (Part 2)

Today is traditionally the day when men are supposed to show their love and affection for their women by buying flowers, chocolates and cards, then there is the obligatory dinner, if you have more money to spend, maybe a splurging on a bit of bling for your woman…  All month, the world has been filled with red hearts and cherubim flying around shooting heart shaped arrows, all the commercials on the TV and radio has been trying to make men feel guilty if they do not do the traditional things that are supposed to be done by today to make the woman in their life feel complete.

BLAH I say! I had a discussion with PB today about this very subject, I don’t understand why some women feel so giddy when their man spends half a C note or more on a dozen roses and a box of chocolates, in a week the flowers will be turning brown, the chocolate will be on its way to adding inches where they aren’t wanted, then you have to toss the refuse in the trash. I say, if you are going to spend money like this, why not spend it on something that is really useful?…

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Baking without Eggs

Since I live so far from town, it’s a 40+ mile round trip to go to the nearest town that only has one grocery store, it’s 80+ miles round trip to go to the next closest town that has 2 grocery stores, and we don’t have our own chickens, yet! I sometimes find that I am short an egg or two when I want to make something that requires eggs. It’s just not worth it to drive to town just to pick up a carton of eggs. I ran across this article with lots of good info about how to substitute other things for eggs, and the good thing is these are things you probably already have in your pantry. :)…

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Thermal mass rocket heaters

rocket-mass-heater-warm
With it still being winter time, and with many mega-blizzards going on though out the USA, there will always be a need for alternative ways of keeping warm and cooking. Rocket stoves and rocket mass heaters neatly fit the bill here, what is really great about them is they don’t use up loads and loads of wood, in fact you can burn twigs in them quite nicely. Since I first wrote about rocket stoves, there have been many experiments and improvements made by industrious tinkerers, and fortunately for us, these tinkerers also have cameras and are putting up videos of their progress.…

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Off-Grid lighting

Whether you live off-grid or in a regular home, you need light. With the right number and position of windows, you can get along just fine during the day, but once the sun goes down, you start needing some sort of lighting. Fortunately today there are lots of options for those of us who live off-grid.…

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Elderberry Extract: Nature’s “Tamiflu”

Flu season is in full swing, everywhere I look I see advertisements for flu shots, something I personally would not take, I can’t speak for anyone else, everyone has to make their own decision, hopefully an informed decision. At the very least, I would say to read the information packet that comes with the flu shot BEFORE taking it, read the warnings, read what they put in it, read the effectiveness of it.  Or you could take nature’s flu remedy.…

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How to save money on food

Saving money, everyone talks about it, everyone wants to do it, but it’s hard to do. With most of us on tight budgets, it’s more important than ever to save every penny you can.

The main reason saving money seems hard to do is it usually means having to give up something that you would normally want to buy or do. My hubby and I live off-grid, we budget ourselves tightly, that includes food, but we still eat very well, the trick is to find ways of saving that doesn’t hurt so much. Here are some of the ways I save money. Let’s focus on food, something we all have to have to survive.…

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Cooking freeze dried style

Lots of things are going on today, the one getting the most news coverage is the president of the US being sworn in today, I read recently that the inauguration ball was going to be scaled down in respect of the bad economy and unemployment numbers being high, then today I read that it’s going to cost over 300 million… THAT’S CUTTING BACK? So, in light of this, today I’ll write about something really important, cooking and eating! A few weeks ago, we were snowed in, fortunately we had enough provisions to get us through.…

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Eating healthier foods-making healthier choices

Staying healthy (to me) means eating more foods that are healthy than the unhealthy ones. Staying healthier means I can live a longer more fulfilling life and can stay independent, living off-grid for a longer period of time. I for one try to eat a larger balance of healthy foods vs unhealthy ones, I try to tip the scales toward the healthy ones and away from the unhealthy ones. We literally are what we eat, your body has to get everything it needs from what you consume, if you are consuming a great deal of incomplete nutrition, then your body will eventually begin to fail, you will notice more aches and pains, and you will not bounce back as quickly from colds and viruses.…

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Keeping healthy in winter

Staying healthy, especially during the winter is one of the things I actively work on. I believe one of the reasons so many more get sick during the cold months is because we tend to stay indoors more and have less fresh air coming in because it’s too cold to raise windows. We cram ourselves inside the house, inside stores and are around more people. The more people you are around, the more likely you are to be exposed to someone who is sick. I am not exposed to very many people as a rule, just because of the way I live in a low population area. The main exposure I have is going to church and being a caretaker for a friend, it means I sometimes have to take her to doctor appointments, I do my best not to go into the doctor offices, clinics or hospitals, but sometimes I have to. So I work hard to keep my exposure to a minimum and to keep my immune system in tip top shape.…

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Dogs and kids…

…know how to have fun when it snows! When I was a kid, I loved snow days, I lived in central Texas so we didn’t get snow every winter, and when we did, it was usually only a few inches and it would only last a few days, as soon as the sun came back out, it was gone. I remember having to use several of my neighbor’s yards to have enough snow to make a snowman.…

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Be the Hero, Not the Victim

This pairs well with my “Prepping on a budget” series, this is about the “what if” scenarios, it’s something all of us should do more often, not just once and then forget about it. Going to the store and purchasing a few bags of beans and rice to put up is a good thing, but don’t let that be the main thing or (gasp) the only thing you do to prepare for potentially hard times. And remember, hard times don’t have to be on a global or regional scale to affect you, it can be something as simple as losing your job, having your hours cut, getting hurt, having an unexpected bill… It’s important to be proactive about your situation, and the more you plan ahead, the better off you will be in the event of something unexpected happening.…

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