By admin, on May 15th, 2009%
I wanted to make at least two batches of this before I posted about it, but I have been making liquid handsoap at a fraction of the cost of purchasing handsoap with my weekly groceries.
You may or may not recognize this soap called Octagon, but it has been around for a long, long time. It is an all-purpose soap that, from all I have read, has lemon grass and olive oil in it. It is 85 cents a bar at my local Lowe’s Foods.
To Make Liquid Handsoap:
I grated one bar of Octagon soap (7 ounces) into a heavy pot. I then added 8 cups of water and placed the pot on a burner at medium heat – no more than that because I don’t want the stuff to boil hard and send a lot of fumes through the house. In fact, I don’t boil it at all. I keep it hot enough to melt the soap and so that you can see the steam coming off of it and I use a whisk to stir it just until all pieces of soap are completely dissolved into the water. This takes a few minutes. The first batch I made contained only the Octagon soap and water. In the second batch I put about 15 drops of lavender essential oil once the soap had dissolved. From that point I leave the soap mixture on medium heat for about 25 more minutes, sirring occasionally. I then remove the pot from heat and let it cool, continuing to stir occasionally. It will look like it’s going to separate, but keep stirring occasionally. Once it cools and is stirred again it turns into a thick liquid soap. At least that’s been my experience. I ladle the mixture, which can be a bit “stringy” through a funnel and into pump bottles. This batch will make roughly 60 or 65 ounces of soap. For 85 cents. And so far so good! The pump does not clog, the soap does not separate. One time I had to shake a pump bottle a bit because there seemed to be an air bubble, but other than that, no problem.
A note of caution: The reason I don’t let it boil is because of the fumes. I think soaps (especially containing lye) and perfumes can be very irritating. I also don’t stand over the pot constantly and breathe the fumes in, and I make sure I have plenty of ventilation. It seems to me that working with soaps would be quite irritating for anyone with asthma or respiratory issues, so proceed at your own discretion. 
By , on January 28th, 2009%
Maybe it’s just me, but is there anything more precious than a little girl in a dress with her hair put up, with soft little baby wisps hanging down around her neck?
Princess of the Universe had to read about Apollo and Daphne yesterday. (Yes, we did revisit Ovid and Greek Mythology, in hopes that the information is retained.) She then had to do one drawing to illustrate what happens in the story. Poor Daphne, turned into a laurel tree!
I can assure you that none of us are great artists here – at least not yet, but it was most delightful to see Miss Priss and Big Joe comparing notes on how they sketch trees.
Yours is better.
No, yours.
Yesterday really flew by. How do my days off do that? Between school work and appointments and getting supper ready, before I know it bedtime has rolled around.
But suppertime brought around a situation that I love.
Frugality. One of the things I love about planning menus for the week and following through with eveything is that it’s usually only one or two meals into the week before there are enough leftovers to make something like soup or a casserole and thus saving one of the planned meals for the next night.
Last night we had homemade vegetable soup with cabbage, crushed tomatoes, the leftover butter peas and pork tenderloin (finely cut up) and corn. We spiced it up with some thyme, Italian seasoning, ground pepper and sea salt. Then Princess of the Universe made little cornbread pancakes in the iron skillet to go with the soup.
Hubby says that cornbread pancakes are a poor man’s food, but we think they are a rich man’s food.
Actually, Miss Priss was quite domestic all day long. I figured there were visions of dollar bills floating around in her mind, and I was right. She washed the windows and mirrors in several rooms and then swept and mopped the kitchen floor.
At one point she came to me explaining that she had hurt her finger. “But, mommy,” she said, “there’s no need for you to cry. My cleaning service does accept tips.”
I gave her a dollar and two quarters.
We continued reading Hamlet yesterday, and finally the story is beginning to take form in our minds. It took a couple of scenes for things to make sense, but now we are getting into it.
We are stumbling over some of the words, but have found ourselves amazed at the richness of the language and Shakespeare’s way with words. It’s a worthwhile project.
One last thing. I’ve entered into a pact with my FIAR girlfriends to get on the the exercise wagon again and do my Pilates at least three times a week. More on that later.
Lynn
By , on January 21st, 2009%
I have found that homemade applesauce is very easy and unbelievably quick to make. I love being frugal with our money and our food. Homemade applesauce has been a way to do this lately.
I have a dear friend who yearly brings me boxes of fruit for the holiday season. We appreciate it so very much. Sometimes it’s so much fruit that we cannot get through it all before some of the apples start to get a bit grainy.
I’ve come up with the perfect recipe for us to use about half a dozen apples at the time and have fresh, hot applesauce with some of our meals.
I peel about 6 medium to large apples and then slice pieces off, placing them into a heavy pot, discarding the core. I put enough water in the pot to cover only about 1/4 way up. Too much water will make runny, watery applesauce. :p
On medium-high heat, I bring the water to a boil and let the apples cook until soft and easy to chop up with a hand-held chopper. This really only takes about 15 minutes and then you can turn the heat off and let the apples sit for a few minutes to cool down a bit. I chop the apples up somewhat with the hand-held chopper, then add about 1/4 cup of sugar (maybe less, give or take), plenty of cinnamon (you can add to your taste), and a little bit of Smart Balance (a “butter” blend that we like, but this step is optional).
I then put the still-chunky applesauce into my blender and puree for a couple of seconds. From there it goes into a pretty jar for our meal and for storage in the fridge if it’s not all eaten. Rare.
Happy Cooking!
Lynn
By , on January 11th, 2009%
I’m just not willing to waste anything that’s good. If the prices of food were not enough to make me feel this way, knowing that there are people who go hungry certainly is.
We’ve stopped making pizza regularly since we are trying to eat less cheese, but I think very occasionally, with low-fat mozzarella, it’s probably okay, especially if we can knock each other away from the table in time to not eat five or six pieces each.
Yesterday we had some very good BBQ chicken. It was all white meat, so I knew it would be awesome on pizza. I had about a quart container of it left over–not enough to feed six of us as a main dish but enough to do something with. It was really, really good chopped up and put onto homemade pizza crusts with garlic-flavored tomato sauce and freshly minced garlic. Yum.
NOTE: This pizza can actually be even healthier. Sometimes I sautee spinach leaves in olive oil with fresh garlic, just long enough to wilt them good, and we add those too. Also, thinly sliced roma tomatoes are great!
For the dough I use a recipe from a packet of Fleischmann’s Active Dry Yeast. I double the recipe and get four thin pizzas from it. I checked out the Fleischmann website Breadworld, which is great, by the way, but I did not find this particular recipe, so I’ll share it here.
PIZZA DOUGH
- 1 envelope Fleischmann’s Active Dry Yeast
- 1 cup warm water (100-110 degrees F)
- 2-1/2 to 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil or vegetable oil (I use olive)
Soften yeast in warm water, in a mixing bowl. Add 2 cups flour, salt and oil. Stir in enough remaining flour to make a soft dough. Knead on lightly floured surface until smooth, about 4-6 minutes.
Place in greased bowl; cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 30-45 minutes. Punch dough down. Pat dough into a greased large pizza pan. Top with desired toppings. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until done.
The above recipe is calling for the dough to make just one thick pizza crust. I use the same recipe for two thin crusts, doubling the recipe to make four crusts. I roll them out and bake them on a flat pan with toppings of choice. It makes a FANTASTIC pizza crust. Being thin, it doesn’t need to bake as long as stated above.
For sauce on the crust, one 8-ounce can of Hunt’s tomato sauce flavored with basil or garlic, etc. will be enough sauce for two pizzas. This makes a really good pizza sauce that doesn’t compete too strongly with the toppings.
Lynn
By , on January 2nd, 2009%
Old windows and drafts. If you live in an old house, you know what I’m talking about. And if you have to install window AC units, AND because they are so heavy you’ve quit taking them in and out as the seasons change, you really know what I’m talking about.
pretty rolled-up baby blanket sits on space between sashes
As you can see, the sash on this window is up for the window AC unit. The gap between the two window sashes lets in cold air. My hubby (bless his heart) would take the most raggedy towel he could find, roll it up and cram it into that space. You can actually see one of his towels in this picture. You won’t be able to make out how raggedy it is, but you will notice how it sags down into the space.
Well it dawned on me at the thrift store one day, as I was going through the infant bin, that heavy baby blankets are just about the perfect size to roll up and lay snuggly onto this draft-creating space.
For 1.39, I picked a really pretty, heavy baby blanket in creamy whites and pale lavenders. It’s perfect, as you can see above. I realize you can sew cute draft stoppers yourself, but I don’t have the time, and I don’t think I can make one for 1.39 anyway.
Staying inexpensively pretty (and warm) in 2009.
Lynn
By Lynn, on October 8th, 2008%
I am striving these days for Order, Contentment, and Peace
Order
I have said before that I can handle a little clutter. Well, I can, but it has to be clutter that’s in order. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have much storage space in my old home, but I do enjoy crafting and homeschooling and bookshelves crammed to bursting with good books. I have grown accustomed to having stuff, in order.
Even as I was cleaning the house last night, my 17-year-old son said, “A clean house is just easier to live in.” He’s right. I want my children to learn and use the phrase: a place for everything and everything in its place.
- These days I am striving to keep the kitchen table clean so it’s ready for school lessons any time at all, unless of course we are eating.
- It’s my goal to do just one load of laundry a day and enjoy putting it away fresh from the dryer. Life is so much easier when everything’s not covered in either clean or dirty clothes waiting to be dealt with.
- I am also trying very hard to have meals planned and cooked in time for supper. And frugal ones at that.
Contentment
Oh, contentment. This is easier some days than others.
Where do I start? With my laundry room maybe? When I see pictures of rooms like this China Red Laundry Room, well you can be sure that I am very capable of getting myself into a great big emotional uproar over all that I don’t have. I am also very good at sucking my husband and my children into it. But does my 10-year-old Princess of the Universe care if I have a china red laundry room? No. She has the good sense to care more about our relationship than my laundry room design. Oh, it’s okay if she knows that I would like to have one, but what she should really know is that I am so grateful to have the means to buy her and her brothers clothes at all. And the water to keep them clean. And a washing machine. It’s a fact that in some places women still wash clothes in the river. So what if I have a 1950s medicine cabinet over my washing machine? So what if this laundry room doubles as a bathroom and my dryer is on the other side of the house? So what.
“It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.” Proverbs 21:19
A little pearl of wisdom I picked up during 21 years of marriage:
“Being content is much easier if a home is kept in order. Keeping a home in order leaves one much less time to sit around feeling discontented.”
Fancy? No. Clean? Yes.
Peace
Truly, this one is hard on some days and if you listen to the news it will only get harder. Banks closing. Groceries and gas getting more expensive every day. Insurance woes for many people. Job loss. Pay cuts. The list goes on.
The fact is that many, many people have lived and died on this earth before I was even born, including my ancestors. They struggled through hard and changing times, they clothed children, and ate beans and potatoes when they had to. Sometimes they were hungry.
I try to take in enough news to not be completely ignorant. I find that tuning into the news on my van radio while running errands is sufficient for me. In my home — my haven — the news rarely enters in other than an occasional discussion with my husband or a structured school lesson. Oh, and we are not lacking in information. The media is everywhere. You can’t even go into our local Wal-Mart without seeing a large flat-screen TV near the check-out stand, blaring the news. I cannot tell you how much news coverage you need to indulge in. I am just sharing what works for me, and that is not getting eyeball deep into some type of media.
We all only have today. That is one great equalizer. No one has the promise of tomorrow. So I’ll do what I can with what I have, today. That helps me to have peace and it gives me a lot to do in the 24 hours that I’ve been blessed with today. There are many ways in which I can be frugal, use wisely what I have, and work on bringing order to my home so that we all may have more contentment here.
Happy Wednesday,
Lynn
By Lynn, on October 5th, 2008%
We were presented again today with the opportunity to save some money in the food department. You won’t hear me complaining about that!
Yesterday Hubby offered his help to a local organization he’s involved with. It was a bunch of hard-working men. One of the men prepared lunch for them all — meatball sub sandwiches with plenty of mozarella cheese and venison salami. Somehow hubby was chosen to bring home the leftovers: a large bag of cheese and a ziplock bag full of a hearty tomato-based sauce. (Maybe they know he has four children.)
At any rate, Joseph commented that it looked like a great start to pizza. He was so right. This afternoon I made enough pizza dough to make four large pizzas. Oh they were good!
While the pizzas cooked, I took little strolls outside.
You may be sick of seeing my Clara Curtis mums, but they draw in so many little flying creatures! It’s like my own little science museum.
It’s amazing how much the garden path has changed through the seasons.
 
Just look at March compared to October!
The mums most definitely mark the end of the gardening season here in my little flower garden. Oh I still get out and do things, and there will be things blooming, even a few things that bloom through winter, but for the most part the constant procession of blooms is coming to an end.
Just a couple more pictures of nothing but flowers, and some of them wild (North Carolina natives). I just love it in the flower garden this time of year.
The roses have been especially pretty lately. I’m reminded that I need to do something with the few rosehips I have outside.
I added another picture to the sidebar. It’s the walkway between beds 3 & 4. As always, it’s a large picture. You can see it here.
Lynn
By Lynn, on October 4th, 2008%
My thinking is rambling and jumbled and it would be hard to put into words all the things in my mind. Sometimes I wonder if it’s an overabundance of words. Sometimes I wonder if I am running out of words. Anyway, I’ll start with a little thought about not wasting anything in these days of higher costs for just about everything.
I am out of my greens and whey, a health drink I like to drink every morning with milk. I was going to go shopping today and buy a new canister full, but then I remembered two large bags of fruit in my freezer that do not seem to be getting eaten. How can I let them get covered in freezer burn while I am out wasting gas and buying more greens and whey? For however many days it takes, I’ll be having a milk and fruit smoothie for breakfast. I think it would do my children good too.
I am not sure you can even make out the borders of my veggie garden anymore. There’s a raspberry taking over in one corner and maybe 17,000 garlic chive plants throwing out more seeds even as I write. It’s a good useful spot, though, so I am getting it cleaned up for a fall planting of greens and lettuces. With any luck I’ll have some things for part of October and November anyway. We also need to trim some trees as it’s getting pretty shady around the garden again.
I have let some of the green beans get way too large and stringy, but I think shelled they may do fine. If not, maybe I can save them dried for seeds for next year.
Butterflies always make me rush in for the camera. A butterfly is one of the most beautiful things in all of creation. Watching butterflies is free. Talking about them and drawing them makes for a free school lesson.
I love the white spots on this one’s body.
Fluffy and her growing-up kitten Oreo climbing in a tree this morning. Would you be interested to know that I woke up this morning to the pitter-patter sound of little feet on our tin roof? Oreo had climbed into a tree, jumped onto the roof and then could not get down. Do you know who had to take a ladder out and coax her down?
Uh, I call that last shot Mum-me. Who would not want a yard full of these Clara Curtis mums?
There won’t be many more of these this year. We’ve been having cooler nights lately.
My son John was out mowing the yard and found this. He knows how I love plants and creatures so he brought it to me. He’s so sweet. I labeled this picture “grasshopper” at first, but I think it’s a katydid.
A Few Thoughts:
- Willful waste brings woeful want.
- The more you learn to live without, the more you’ll have to live with. Frank A. Clark
- If the knitter is weary the baby will have no new bonnet. Irish proverb.
- He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster. Proverbs 18:9
I want to accomplish things that don’t just fade away when the sun goes down. I want to do things that will be useful to my family in days to come.
Lynn
By Lynn, on August 14th, 2008%
As keeper of my home, I feel it’s my place to create beautiful healthy meals for my family. Falling down on this job is not pretty when it comes to feeding a growing family. They resort to all manner of snacking and grazing.
In the quiet of this morning, I sat down with a cup of green tea and planned out menus for the next seven days. I do my shopping on Thursdays since Friday marks the beginning of my work week. It helps to have groceries in the house before I sit down at my desk on Friday mornings.
Menu planning, as you know, also saves lots of money in the way of cutting out impulse buys in the grocery store.
Thursday: Tacos with all the fixin’s, Black beans & Cold iced tea
Friday: London Broil in the crock pot, Wild rice, Butter beans, Greens
Saturday: Eating at a get-together with friends, just prepare a salad for that
Sunday: Lunch: BLT sandwiches & Chips with a dessert called Sad Pudding; Supper: Chile N Cheese Breakfast Casserole and Grits
Monday: Pintos in small crock pot, BBQ chicken in large crockpot, Cornbread
Tuesday: Salmon patties with lemon pepper seasoning, Corn on the cob, Black eyed peas
Wedneday: Beans & franks, Slaw
So off I go and will have the chance to visit a fun place today. Hopefully will bring back pictures. 
Lynn
By Lynn, on July 19th, 2008%
Even if I had money to burn, I think I’d be at the thrift store. Yes, there are some things that, of course, I buy new. Don’t we all. But I have no pride that gets in the way of my snapping up a 50-dollar skirt that’s sitting in a thrift store with the tags still on it simply because someone couldn’t or didn’t use it. It helps me live within my means.
Silk skirt of the palest, iciest blue, with a sweet little trim around the hem. Tag still hanging on it. I paid $3.00.
A Few Quotes About Money:
- It is easier to make money than to keep it. Yiddish proverb
- The buck stopped before it got here.
- By the time a man has money to burn, the fire has gone out.
- A good reputation is more valuable than money. Horace
- Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce? Emerson
- The darkest hour of any man’s life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it. Horace Greeley
- Money is a good servant but a bad master.
- A fool may make money, but it needs a wise man to spend it.
- Money can’t buy everything–poverty, for example.
Even at the thift store, spend wisely.
Lynn
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About Lynn
I am the mother of four delightful children: a 23-year-old son, a 20-year-old son, a 17-year-old son, and a bright and bubbly 13-year-old daughter. I share an apartment home with my 17-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter. My little home on the internet is called Rose Cottage because of my love for gardening, roses, and all things romantic and Victorian. Welcome.
I'm a North Carolina girl and I love sharing North Carolina links and information. I do medical transcription from home. My hobbies include making sweet little dolls from clay who are named and have their own stories to tell. I also make old-fashioned brooches. These are for sale in my Etsy shop.
For 13 years continuously, I homeschooled some or all of our four children, but the time came that our homeschool had to be closed. It was the end of a beautiful chapter in my life. I will always be a strong supporter of homeschooling and I will continue to review books and maintain my homeschool website, The Healthy Homeschool. The Players
Lil Ol' Me
Son Daniel, 23
Son, Big Joe, 20
Son, John, 17
Daughter, Michaela, 13
Annie Fatso Beagle
My Symphony
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
William Henry Channing
1810-1884
What You Do Sow a thought, reap an action.
Sow an action, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.
Contact Me 
I would  for you to leave a comment, but you can also e-mail me at lynn AT thehealthyhomeschool.com
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