Monday Message

Actively work on getting your storage in! 

(LDS Church Handbook 2, Section 6.1.1)
“Church members are responsible for their own spiritual and temporal well-being.....To help care for themselves and their families, members should build a three-month supply of food that is part of their normal diet. Where local laws and circumstances permit, they should gradually build a longer-term supply of basic foods that will sustain life. They should also store drinking water in case the water supply becomes polluted or disrupted."

(Keith B. McMullin, April 2007)
“A cardinal principle of the gospel is to prepare for the day of scarcity. Work, industry, frugality are part of the royal order of life. Remember these words from Paul: "If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”

How are you come at building your storage and working on your skills??

http://www.easysewingforbeginners.com/3-ways-hem-pants-like-pro/ - how to hem pants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ude4DLSJ5qs&feature=em-uploademail - how to read a knitting chart

http://tipnut.com/frugal-kitchen/ - frugal kitchen tips. Very useful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cGW8rG1Q4E&feature=youtu.be - meal plan. In summer it is easy to forget to do it but our budget needs us to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRhbBbGoIdQ - looks pretty easy

https://www.nationalsewingcircle.com/video/how-to-gather-fabric-when-sewing-007511/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=A6199&vsoid=A6199 - watch the free video. I have seen this done with the tiny ribbon that you can use over and over again.

Here is what I have done so far learning on my skill of dying yarn and working on a sock with that hank of yarn you saw on the drying rack in last week’s Monday Message.  I have made socks before but not totally doing them continental style knitting.

Here I am winding that skein of yarn from the yarn swift on the right to the ball winder on the left before I can knit.

 Here I am now able to knit from the newly made yarn cake - yep, cake with no calories! :p  See how pretty this yarn I dyed with my sister is working up.  

I am using continental style knitting and I love it much better. It doesn’t hurt as much as English throwing with my right hand. It's a skill I had been working on for a long time before podcasts - easy to say I love learning!

Just a plug for sewing skills... I am always trying to improve my sewing skills and the sock and yarn is sitting on the small reversible project bag I made a of couple years ago.

So keep plugging away on learning your skills. If an old bird like me can learn, you can too.

I am not saying you have to pick the same skills as me, you can if that is what you want but try choosing skills that can best serve your family. Make a list then number the list as to what would be most helpful. Put a number one on it, this will help you know what you will want to learn first in building skills. You can learn one at a time or as many as you wish at a time. 

I seem to have many going at one time and also skills I want to sharpen. If I get stuck on one I can move to another till I figure the first one out and go back to it. This is me, you might want to do one thing at a time and that is great too. Just be working toward learning skills. Sometimes it is pushing yourself to learn something you do not like.  

Our daughter doesn’t like to sew but she pushed on knowing it was a skill that was needed. She has sewn needed clothing items and now feels she might actually like sewing.

Share with others your successes to inspire others. That is why I share mine with you.

Since you all are on this journey with us I'll tell you how we are doing living in hard times...

We pay our tithing and feel this is the best blessing we get.

Skill - I have that rider mowing down to 45 min for the 9/10ths of an acre. I have three days of pain to deal with but I knit during that and work on the Monday Message.

I was gifted t-shirts for both my husband and myself, plus a winter coat for me and my husband was given a coat just before last winter so that is tended and a real blessing.

Living tight and using Sam’s Club is not the same when you aren’t tight and shop there. So with us being tight, here are the only items I go for - yeast, 25 pound bag of flour, rice, beans, baking nuts, dry cranberries, cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese (both five pounds). We don’t get all at once, only when we need it.  

If I can get two other items it would be bacon pieces in a bag which I can spread into many meals. The other is a big package of little smokies which I break into smaller amounts. We have them with pancakes, French toast, waffles, baked beans and other meals. 

That is it for our tight-time items. The rest run higher than Aldi’s. I go in with blinders and don’t look at anything else this store has to offer. And I see how fast I can get in and out.

This month has been a bit plagued with car repair and getting tires.
My husband is battling a bulging disk in his back and fell on his hip, the blessing is that while it hurts at least nothing broke.

Blessed with a good friend who helped my husband get two pictures he painted to the fairground - we can’t thank Nat enough!

We were blessed by other friends who gave him two canvases for him to use.

Many blessings! We have had my sister and her husband give us their computer when they upgraded, plus I got a hug :)

Another friend and her daughter brought us a pint or so of blueberries when they went picking. I froze them to use in many things.

We got two free zucchini from our little market, mine aren’t yet being fruitful. And a good friend gave us canning jars so that too is a blessing.

We could not list them all but we feel blessed.

So that is the journey you are going along on with us.

Though we feel this year has been very hard on us, we still feel very blessed. So that is the update about us. It would be a lot harder if we did not follow the warning to have storage and sacrifice to get it. So on that note, I encourage you all to be actively getting yours in. Be actively learning skills.

Do the best you can!