Anti-Procrastination: Reaching Out

I am always trying to think of unique ways to reach out to our neighbors.  We never seem to be outside at the same time, which means that if we're going to talk to them and befriend them, it has to be a purposeful effort.

I have thought many times about baking something and taking it over to them, but I was afraid they might not want to eat it.  (You know how it is – you don't particularly want to eat something that came from a kitchen you've never seen either.  You don't know how clean it is in there, or whether the person licked the spoon and then kept stirring with it.)

I couldn't think of any other way to get over there and let them know that I cared about them, though.  I finally thought, “Who cares if they don't eat it?  I have to do something to show them I care about them and ultimately to show them the love of Christ.”

So I headed to the kitchen and baked up some pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.  The kids and I wrapped them up and walked to both of the neighbor's houses to hand deliver them.

One neighbor told me that his wife doesn't like pumpkin.  The other neighbor told me that everybody had gone to the beach for the week and might not get back in time to eat them before they went bad.

But you know what?  That really didn't bother me.  I wasn't worried about the muffins.  I just wanted them to know I care about them.

What can you do to reach others with the love of Christ?  This is one thing in which I believe we all procrastinate.  The devil wants to make sure we will always have some kind of excuse.

Stop procrastinating.  Get to baking, write a note, or just plain get over to your neighbor's house and say “Is there anything you need?  I'll be happy to help you with something or let you borrow something you need.”

Jesus is coming soon, and I don't want to be ashamed when He asks me why my neighbors never knew about Him.

If you’re just joining the Anti-Procrastination challenge, be sure to subscribe to email updates or follow me on Facebook so you won’t miss a thing!

Time, Money, Health (Part 3)

If you missed it, you can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

I'll spare you the lengthy details, but a couple years after our marriage, I discovered the world of coupons.  I'm not talking about getting a dollar off something we normally bought.  I'm talking about checking out with a whole cart full of groceries and having them owe me money at the end.  I was good at it, and it was fun.

At that point we didn't have any strict budget for groceries other than to buy only what we needed and not to spend any more money than absolutely necessary.  Before I started using coupons we basically spent the same amount every month because I would buy the same things for the same prices.  Sometimes we'd spend less if I'd managed to find meat or produce marked down because of an impending expiration date.

When I started couponing so heavily, we still didn't have a strict grocery budget.  I would just buy whatever was free or close to free with coupons and fill in the gaps with meat and vegetables.

Our pantry was filled to the brim.  My husband had to build extra shelves – twice.  We had boxes and boxes of cereal, shelves loaded with canned vegetables and soups, boxed potatoes, baking mixes, condiments – you name it and I had it.  And I had paid almost nothing for it.

I tried to be careful.  I tried to buy only the “healthiest” stuff.  We ate cereal for breakfast, but I tried to get the kinds with less sugar.  We ate granola bars for snacks as opposed to cookies.  When I got Hamburger Helper meals for free, I would get them only for the purpose of using the pasta, and I would throw away the packages of chemicalized sauces.

Occasionally the temptation to enjoy convenience crept in, and I would allow myself to bring home cookies, chips, and soda when I got them free.  But we still tried to keep the “junk food” to a minimum and only use it as a special treat.

But the fact of the matter is that processed food is…well…processed.  It doesn't matter how many claims on the box say that it's healthy or all-natural.  If it comes in a box or a can, 90% of the time it contains ingredients that were not meant for human consumption.  At best, it doesn't contain any real nutrition.  Even if harmful ingredients are not added to the food, the process by which it must be preserved and packaged to withstand a long shelf life at the store renders it nearly void of any nutrients.

Our trend of consuming free-with-coupons food continued for about 3 years.  Cooking was easy because I always had a pantry full of food from which to choose.  I could open a few boxes and cans, stir them together, and have a meal ready very quickly.  But shopping was another story.  I grew tired of having to resist the temptation to get the free cookies and chips.  I grew tired of not really knowing what my food was made out of, but eating it anyway because it was helping our grocery budget.

One week I brought home 40 (!) boxes of Pop-tarts, not because we intended to eat them, but because they had paid me to buy them, and I was using the overage to get other things for which there are no coupons like milk, meat, and vegetables.

I should have immediately gotten rid of them, but I stuck them in the pantry to deal with them later.  (You know all about my propensity to do that if you've been reading here for any length of time!)

Eventually we opened some of them up when we were hungry and needed something in a hurry.

A couple months later I went into the pantry to find that all 40 boxes of the Pop-tarts were GONE!  In a couple months time, we had eaten 40 boxes of Pop-tarts.  I was disgusted.

I knew something had to change…

I’ll be sharing the next step in our journey in the next post in this series.  Be sure to subscribe to email updates or follow me on Facebook so you won’t miss it!

Thanksgiving will be here before you know it! One of my favorite ways to decorate for the different seasons is to use printable wall art. It doesn't cost much of anything in terms of money or time, yet it adds an instant seasonal update. I especially like using Scripture verses to keep God's Word as the main focus in our home. I purposely created this printable with a white border around it. There were 2 reasons for that: #1. It looks classy, but I didn't have a frame with a mat, so I just created the mat right on the printable. #2. My printer doesn't print all the way to the edge of the paper, so it works better when my printables are white at the edges. Hopefully you'll find that to be helpful to you too! Get the entire wall trio free when you subscribe to email updates! Just enter your email in the form right below this post. Please note: This freebie will only be available through November 9th, so be sure to get it while you can! [wp_eStore_free_download_squeeze_form id=2]

The Picture I Can’t Believe I’m Posting

The other night when my husband came home from his job at the cabinet shop his face was black.  “I've been glazing today,” he told me.

I hate it when he has to work in the finishing room, breathing all that stuff and even getting it all over his face.

Before I knew what he was doing, he disappeared into the bathroom and came out a few minutes later with a clay mask on.

“This feels so good.  Now I understand why women do this!” he said.

He left it on for about 15 minutes, then went and washed it off.  When he was finished, he was all excited about how wonderful his face felt.  I mean, all excited.  He went on and on about how it felt like an entire layer of his skin had been removed, how his skin felt so soft and clean, etc.  Now, my husband is quite a manly man (if you don't know what he looks like, you can see how rugged he looks in the pictures of our frosted glass door).  Believe me, it was quite unusual for him to be excited about something like a clay mask.

I felt his face, and he was right!  It was so smooth!  I was like, “Give me the clay!  I want to wash my face!”

Being the kind soul that he is, he decided he would give me a mini spa treatment and do my face for me.

And now, here is the picture I can't believe I'm posting:

Yes, it felt good.  Really, really good.  There was not a trace of oil or dirt on my skin, but it was not dry either.  It was perfect.  Absolutely perfect.  If you know me, I'm not a prissy girl.  So if a manly man and a not-at-all-prissy girl are raving over a clay mask, you know it's got to be pretty amazing!

Seriously, I know some of you must be thinking, “What is her problem?  She's a little strange.”   This is just not the type of thing I normally talk about.  But when I discover something that's great, I like to tell people about it, even at the risk of being thought of as strange.  (See how much I care about you? :))

So what exactly was this mask we were wearing?

It was a paste made with Bentonite Clay and water.  There are tons of different uses for bentonite clay, so if you decide you want to get some to clean your face, you will get a huge bang for your buck because you'll be able to use it for all kinds of other stuff too!

I just used some of the Redmond Clay from Vitacost.   (If you sign up for an account through my referral link, they'll email you a coupon for $10 off your first order – woohoo!)

Curious about all those other uses for bentonite clay I was talking about?  Do a little bit of reading here, and you'll see why it's such a good thing to keep on hand!

Have you ever used bentonite clay?  What do you use it for?

Anti-Procrastination: Using What You Have

This dirty little platter sat at the indoor yard sale for a good long while. I know that because I saw it there on several different occasions. It always caught my eye, but I always passed it up because I was trying to not to spend money needlessly, and I didn't know what in the world I would use it for.

One day I was there and I had a number of things that I was planning on purchasing.  I saw this poor, lonely platter still sitting there, unclaimed.  Since nothing is priced, whoever is running the store at the time will often just throw in any odds and ends that you have for free.  I knew this was my chance to snatch it up, and sure enough, they ended up throwing it in for free.

I still didn't know what I was going to do with it, so I just stuck it up in the attic.

Last Saturday I was at another thrift store and I kept seeing all sorts of pretty things that I knew I could find some use for, but I couldn't bring myself to spend any money and bring more stuff into the house until I was using all the stuff I already had stuck up in the attic.  (That platter was not the only thing I had shoved up there for future use.)

I passed up on all the things I found Saturday and determined that I was going to use all the beautiful things I already had.

I got down the platter, scrubbed it up, made a little printable, and stuck it on with glue dots.  I was going to put clear contact paper over top of it, but I thought it ended up looking fine without it, so I just left it off.  Plus, that way it will be a whole lot easier to switch out the printable if I want to use it during different seasons.

What do you have that you're not using?  It's time to pull out those treasures and put them to good use!

If you're just joining the Anti-Procrastination challenge, be sure to subscribe to email updates or follow me on Facebook so you won’t miss a thing!

Time, Money, Health (Part 2)

If you missed Part 1 of this series, you can catch up on it here.

This is the beginning of the story of our family's journey to healthy living.

Healthy living is just that – a journey.  Sometimes the steps taken are very small.  Sometimes there are giant leaps.  But it's a journey, and the goal is to always be moving forward.  There are always new things to learn, new things to try, new steps to take.

The Beginning

The beginning of our journey started when my husband and I got married 6 1/2 years ago.  We were now the ones in charge of deciding what to eat (and we were the ones who paid for it!)

We both came from families who mostly ate food that didn't come from packages –  meat, vegetables, milk, eggs, etc.  I was the kid who got jealous when all the other kids had those cute little packages of chips, packaged brownies, and Hi-C drinks in their lunches, while I munched on a banana and sipped a thermos of water.  Mom didn't fix Hamburger Helper or Progresso soup for supper; she fixed spaghetti or meat and potatoes.

I felt like I was coming into my role as a homemaker with a healthier standard of eating than most Americans.  I would stay away from those middle aisles where all the packaged food was and mainly shop for meat and vegetables.

I also made a weekly stop by a couple of grocery salvage stores (stores where they sell expired or damaged goods for a deep discount) and pick up canned vegetables and bottled salad dressings to go with those healthy salads I was serving.  (If I'd only know then what I know now!)

Things were going smoothly – I had a nice repertoire of healthy meals to cook, and thanks to stores like ALDI and the salvage stores, our budget was staying fairly low.

Then I had a revelation.  I discovered a whole new world of saving money.  Instead of paying prices for our food that were only reasonable, I figured out how to pay even less money and come home with more food than ever before!

I'll be sharing the next step in our journey in the next post in this series.  Be sure to subscribe to email updates or follow me on Facebook so you won't miss it!