Monday Message

"Acquire and store a reserve of food and supplies that will sustain life. ... As long as I can remember, we have been taught to prepare for the future and to obtain a year's supply of necessities.  I would guess that the years of plenty have almost universally caused us to set aside this counsel.  I believe the time to disregard this counsel is over.  With events in the world today, it must be considered with all seriousness."  L. Tom Perry, "If Ye Are Prepared Ye Shall Not Fear," Ensign, Nov. 1995.

How to prepare takes thought and prayer and a family united works best. Make room for storage in your monthly budget. Let's say you can set aside fifty dollars for storage, keep it just for storage and use it only for that. Build a habit of it. This is my personal thought - don’t save it up but actively get it every month. It is much easier to pick up as you go along rather than go all at once and try to get it home and all in order. It's physically to hard to do and secondly, it is best to stagger it all as it won’t need to be replaced at once.

I still think getting it in once a month is way doable, don’t you?

Hopefully you have been following along with us on building storage in tight times. It really is best to be united in this. You saw we did food storage in place of gifts for Mother’s Day, our 43rd anniversary and Father’s Day. And the gift of the food will be very helpful as we continue on in tight times. We both have sacrificed now for later.

So if you are having hard times like us this is a great idea.

Two things I hate to do - first is having to shovel snow and second is picking raspberries and picking time is now. I pick, wash, freeze then in the fall when it cools down I make raspberry jam. Below is a picture of Raspberry Bread I make using the jam.

Get the recipe for Raspberry Bread HERE.

Remember, I hate picking them but I have this deal that if Heavenly Father sends food to us then no matter what I find a way to can it or dry it and vacuum seal it. That is what I do. My pots of spinach I harvested, dried it and filled a pint jar. I like to throw dried spinach in soups and stuff.

So whatever you can do, try to do it.

If you don’t know how to grind wheat, ask someone to show you. Same with canning and drying and so forth.

How are you coming along on your skills? My sister came to visit and we were able to help me work on one of the items on my "to-learn" list which was dying fiber. So I can spin the fleece into yarn and knit a double sock blank and knitted a tube to knit socks from it as well. What skills are you working on?

Sometimes you have no choice but to learn a skill. It has been a number of years since I mowed our nine-tenths of an acre yard. When I was younger I used a walking mower and it would take me two days all day to mow. Then came a rider mower, several about to die mowers, but in the last few years my husband mowed. Well he has a bulging disk in his back which means no mowing so I had to learn to use this mower. Yes, mowing is a skill. So I mow and I have fibromyalgia so I hurt bad for three days from mowing but it won’t further damage his back.

The more we can do for ourselves the better it will be. We help each other. I tease it takes us both now to make one person. Love grows when you work together.

http://www.cuttingbackkitchen.com/40-grocery-budget/ - this has helpful ideas

http://prettyprovidence.com/how-to-start-food-storage-on-a-budget/ - some ideas

https://www.mormonchannel.org/blog/post/how-to-begin-a-3-12-month-food-supply - ideas here too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYRUQ08dasU - how to freeze veggies

http://www.littlehouseliving.com/cooking-from-scratch.html - what do you think?

http://www.sixfiguresunder.com/hawaiian-haystacks/ - I love hay stacks

http://www.sixfiguresunder.com/creamy-tacos-casserole-frugal-dinner-recipe/ - cooking from scratch does not have to be hard and does not have to taste icky either. Once you find a recipe you like look at the ingredients and stock them in your storage.

http://www.sixfiguresunder.com/fast-frugal-taco-soup/ - great tip on freezing beans. I like to can dried beans for convenience.

http://www.simplerevisions.com/cooking-from-scratch-is-worth-it/ - I like this, it goes right along with how things don’t have to be the same as someone else. We do what is right for our family. I think that is why it is hard to have any one set of rules. We are all different. You may love a food that your friend does not like at all so do the best you can with what works for you. Be willing to try different recipes. You might find you love new ones but just keep moving along.

And with that I like this - http://www.simplerevisions.com/simple-living-from-chaos-to-zen/ I think there are times we crave how to slow things down.

In the first Tightwad Gazette Amy takes a lady through job income and expenses. The lady took the job to help with family finances but after she goes through and deducts expenses of working the job in the end the lady was paying a dollar or so an hour to take this job in the first place. Sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees. Also, we feel sometimes like we are not helping if we don’t have a job. Nay, I say! That is a wrong way to look at it because all we do is also a sacrifice and hard work and if you sat down and put it down on paper you might just find you are very valuable. 

Saving money is just as important as making money. Yes, there are hard times we go through. That is life and you are no less because you have hard times. You need to look at the big picture. So you want a special fancy house, car, computery gadget (that should really be a word)… so you want whatever, let us say fancy car. Picture yourself in twenty years, even ten years - that car will be old and out of date, rusting, etc. and you will feel bad you ever bought it new. 

I once bought the cutest little Noah’s ark set. It was $5.99 and I thought that was good. Well it cost me more in shipping than to buy it. I was not happy but I keep it out to remind me to look at the real costs of things.

We really don’t need things that we don’t NEED in the end. All the extra things we thought we needed will be in the dump or at a yard sale for very little. The bigger picture is what counts.

I one time went in a home of an older couple, I had never met them, can’t even remember why I was there. But what I do remember was that it was humbly furnished, the furniture was old and covered with bed spreads. It looked like it had never changed where the furniture was placed and the carpets were worn. It was then that I realized it was like the Velveteen Rabbit, it was loved and loved and the couple had grown old together there and loved each other there. 

The big picture is how we live our lives and the love we take with us and the love we leave behind, it's how we treat each other and help each other, nothing else matters. So live your life. Your Heavenly Father loves you. Be good to all and enjoy what you have. Whether we struggle one way or the other with money it will not matter.

Do the best that you can.