Monthly Archives: May 2011

I have done something new lately…listen to podcasts! I follow the blog Simple Mom and she just started doing podcasts so I listened to that one. And then I remembered that my friend mab used to like listening to them so I searched around for some that sounded interesting.

So far I have listened to part of the Big Boo Cast and a Rick Steves Travel podcast. The Big Boo Cast started off kinda slow so I haven’t finished listening to it yet. (If either Big Mama or Boo Mama find their way to my blog and read this: sorry! I really like y’alls blogs!!)

And well, Rick Steves, I love his shows. Like, used to watch them at 1pm on PBS every Sunday growing up after we ate after-church lunch. My Sundays used to be church, Hartz chicken, Rick Steves, nap. Good times. And now that we live back in the H-town viewing range of PBS I can still watch it at that time. But I digress.

Some other ones I have downloaded include: Joy the Baker, The Church at Brook Hills (David Platt’s church I think-he wrote Radical), FlyLady, NPR, and The Village Church (Matt Chandler’s church in DFW).

I have found in the past couple of days that I have been listening to podcasts, that they are nice to listen to during the day when it is just me and E around the house. Since she can’t talk back to me yet and all, it kinda limits my conversations. And so I feel like I am learning things but without having to pay enough attention to watch something like TV or read something like a blog.

Do any of you have any experience with podcasts? What would you recommend?

By the way, in case you don’t know, podcasts are free, and kind of like radio programs, that you listen to on your iphone/ipod/whatever.

A year or so after printing out the recipe and buying the ingredients, I finally made homemade deodorant!

I was so glad to see that several of my readers are interested in green things too. The verdict on the deodorant is that it was really easy to make.

HERE is the website that is the method I used. The three ingredients are baking soda, cornstarch, and coconut oil. You use 1/4 cup baking soda, 1/4 cup cornstarch and you mix in coconut oil (which is kinda the consistancy of country crock or lard) by the tablespoon until it is the right consistancy (I used 4). Then I put it in an empty deodorant dispenser.

I think I will have to keep it in the refrigerator because the coconut oil is kinda melty at room temperature. Minor inconvenience. Go to the kitchen to put on my deodorant is a new part of my morning routine I guess.

I had C do the smell check and he said I don’t stink. I can’t smell myself either. So I guess it works okay but the real test will be in the summer heat!

Let me know if you try this too!

I am not at all surprised that the top vote getter in what my readers want to read about was “the baby”. Story of my life. Everyone is interested in the cuteness. So everyone should bug my husband/IT guy to fix the photo posting capabilities of my website. It is broken.

Now the next biggest vote getter was “my everyday life”. Several blogs I read, Big Mama and Fiddledeedee come to mind, do this genre well. They write a post about what they did that weekend and even though it might only contain such exciting happenings as going to mexican food restaurants and arguing with a second grader over her wardrobe choices, it still manages to be funny, and thus the readers keep reading. Sometimes I have a hard time figuring out what in my day is worth relaying, but maybe I can work on more posts like this.

So, ya wanna know what I did today.

Well we woke up at 7. I don’t even set an alarm clock anymore, my alarm clock has blonde hair. (I had to pause mid sentence because my cat didn’t want me to type and was rubbing has face on my hands.) We ate breakfast and then she went down for a nap at 9. Thankfully the paci-fighting stage of last week seems to have passed and she went to sleep easily. And then she slept. for. two. hours. Awesome! I got to take a shower and then work on a project which I will write about later.

When she woke up, we ate lunch and then went on an adventure to a children’s consignment store that I heard about. We managed to get a few items and then came back home. It was a little past nap time then, so that nap was a bit harder and I ended up letting her cry a little while, but she fell asleep on her own after about 10 minutes. Yay!

Then I did some random stuff on the computer. Did you know you can enter the codes off your pampers products on the Pampers Gifts to Grow website and get stuff? I got some free prints from shutterfly.

Then we watched the last Oprah ever. Now I grew up watching Oprah. But sometimes she can be a bit murky on where she stands spiritually and I didn’t always love that and I just haven’t watched it with any regularity since college. But I had to watch these last three shows. Today’s was interesting, not at all what I thought. Just her talking. But her last words were “to God be the glory” so I liked that.

Then C came home and I made dinner. Scalloped Potato and Ham Bake, via E-mealz. I didn’t really like it but C did and it wasn’t too hard to make. It had greek yogurt in it, so maybe that was the problem.  Then we played with E, gave her a bath, and put her to bed. Goodnight everybody!

Do you want to use healthy products, good for you and good for the environment? Do you ever wonder if our modern epidemic of cancer and other diseases is related to the products we use daily? So many of the things we put on or in our bodies daily are made of chemicals. If I can’t pronounce it, or have the slightest clue what it is, why am I okay putting it on my body?

I think about these things but haven’t really done much about them. I bought an organic deodorant once, but I didn’t feel like it worked. I have visited the website that rates products based on what is in them. But it is too hard to read to figure out what brands to buy. I bought stuff to make homemade deodorant once but didn’t make it. I have also read blogs about the Oil-Cleansing Method for your face and going “No ‘Poo” which means using baking soda for shampoo.

It is all very intriguing to me. Many of these methods say that you have to give it a 2 week trial period before you give up. Meaning you might look/feel/smell pretty funky as you wait for your body to adjust to the difference.

For example, the idea is that shampoo strips our hair of natural oils, thereby making our hair follicles produce more oil to make up for it, thereby making our hair get oily quickly, which therefore makes us use shampoo more often. Same with facial cleansing products that harshly strip all oil off our skins, making our skin overcompensate by producing too much oil. And with the deodorant, store-bought anti-antiperspirants contain aluminum which is not good for us.  Here are links to sites which talk about the oil-cleansing method (and here), no ‘poo (and here), and deodorant (and here).

So go read these and tell me what you think. Have any of you tried these methods? Does anyone want to try these methods? Do you think I have lost my ever-loving mind? (My husband might think I have….) We could all try together and compare notes about how it is going!

I would like to blog more often so I need your help, faithful readers, in deciding what to blog about. Please select your top two or three blog topics!

 Loading ...

Psalm 12  is titled “The Faithful Have Vanished”.

I feel like some people thing that about today’s times. A lot of times it seems that older people especially think this.

Verses 1 and 2 say, “Save, O LORD, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.”

So do you think times are worse these days? It seems David thought this, which is kinda funny to think of. If times were getting worse then, then how awful must they be now. So maybe it is just a matter of perspective?

Comment and tell me what you think. Is it worse now?

For you mommies out there, do you have an Amazon Mom Account?

If not, you should! It gives you free amazon prime shipping for a while and also you can get some great deals on diapers and wipes. I will never buy diapers or wipes at a store again. I ordered a box of 228 size 2 Pampers Baby Dry diapers for $28.24 which meant they were 13 cents a diaper! Good luck finding that price at a store! And they appeared at my door, meaning I did not have to wrestle a giant box in the cart or to my car. And….I got a box of 720 Pampers Soft Care Sensitive Wipes for $12.94 which was about 1.7 cents a wipe. You can’t really beat those prices, even at Sams.

Now, I don’t think the prices stay the same, so you might check around several times to see what the best price is. Like right now, those wipes are $14.84 which is still 2 cents a wipe so pretty good. And the diapers I bought aren’t currently available, so you just have to look around.

Basically having an Amazon Mom account gets you 15% off the listed Amazon price. Doing the “subscribe and save” feature saves you another 15%. So that is where you get the best deal. And then after your order ships, you can go in and cancel the subscription if you don’t want to order more. If you do want to keep it as a subscription, you can choose to have it sent every 1, 2, 3, or 6 months.  Registering for an account is easy, HERE is the link to find out more info!