Just wanted to share a few of my favorite books about simple living and frugality.
[...]edited by: Dana Hanley,
Homeschool Editor
Just wanted to share a few of my favorite books about simple living and frugality.
[...]Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I’ve got to go make the gravy, and the potatoes are almost done, but I just wanted to share a terrific story with you today. I don’t know how long this link will work, so check it out soon:
I thought of one more reason why I’m frugal. It’s because I see being frugal as a way of earning money without going to work.
For many years I homeschooled and raised kids and did not earn any money. But I viewed the money I saved by living frugally as being [...]
Lately I’ve been sharing some of the ways I try to be a frugal homemaker. Frugality is coming back in style now that the economy’s in bad shape again.
Yet I’ve heard criticism of frugality from some surprising sources, even from a few Christians who believe that being frugal ignores [...]
Ok, we’re at T-minus 6 days and counting. If you’re in charge of the family Thanksgiving dinner this year, give up those dreams of a Martha Stewart holiday feast and accept that your sanity depends on A Simple Homeschool Thanksgiving, ok?Â
[...]Homemade Baking Mix
I was raised on Bisquick baking mix. My mom was sick a lot, so when my dad came home and found four hungry little kids waiting for dinner, he’d whip up a batch of pancakes made from Bisquick.
I never knew you could use Bisquick for anything besides pancakes [...]
Just had to share this cool new book with you! I’ve been sewing since I was a kid, so I don’t need a basic how-to-sew book. But the projects in this book, as easy as can be, are also so cute that I just couldn’t resist. [...]
It’s Saturday, a good day to run errands, catch up on things, and make a little time for the Carnival of Homeschooling. This week’s edition has some really interesting posts: don’t miss it!
[...]Homemade Laundry Detergent
I’d been meaning to make my own laundry detergent for ages. Now that I’ve done it and seen how easy it is, I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner.
Recipes for liquid laundry detergent are floating all over the Internet. Here’s the one I used. I bought [...]
Prepaid Cell Phones
I’m not big on cell phones. I like being unreachable when I’m out and about. (Even when I’m in the middle of something at home, I’ve been known to ignore the landline when it rings unless it’s one of my kids.) But I like having a phone when [...]
Why do some people hate homeschooling?
Why did the student take the algebra teacher up on his suggestion to eat the fly he had just killed?
Who’s the latest homeschooled teen to get national attention?
How can you have “A Simple Homeschool Thanksgiving?”
The answers to these and other questions can be found in [...]
Hot Chocolate Mixes
Living here in chilly Wisconsin, we love our hot chocolate. I usually buy big boxes of hot chocolate mix at Sam’s Club, but decided to try to save a few dollars by making my own. Since I have a food processor, this isn’t hard to do.
There are many hot [...]
R2D2, aka DAK
Frugality, one of my favorite topics, continues to increase in popularity as the economy negatively affects more and more families.Some people apparently take frugal tips pretty seriously; note a couple of cranky commenters at this post. Two thought the blogger’s tips were [...]
Lately I think about whether I should go back into the workforce.
After all, I’ve got only one child (age 16) still at home during the day now, and a husband who’s also at home. If my husband homeschooled our son, I could get a job.
However, according to this article, [...]
This month’s issue of Money Matters magazine (page eight) has an inspiring story for all teens. If I were still doing Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers with my daughter, I’d add it to her assignments for the week.
It’s the true story of a young newlywed couple who has been [...]
There are some facts about colleges that deans of higher education would prefer that you not know.
In addition to the fact that half of all college students drop out before graduation, there’s the reality that most of the high-growth jobs of the future do not require a college degree.
This [...]
If the name “Jaycee Dugard” sounds familiar to you, it’s because it was all over the news a while back when Jaycee was found and rescued 18 years after being kidnapped when she was 11 years old.
Her kidnapper, a convicted sex offender, held her hostage all those years and also fathered [...]
It’s become an expectation in our society that most everyone, homeschooled or not, literate or not, will attend college. Whether a young person’s bent leans toward book-learning or engine-rebuilding doesn’t seem to [...]
What’s a mother’s golden rule?
Which time-honored school subject may be on the way out?
What did the school nurse do to the child with special needs?
You’ll find the answer to these and other questions in the October issue of “The Imperfect Homeschooler” newsletter, now available here. Get your free [...]
President Obama recommends shorter summer vacations for U.S. schoolchildren so they can attend school for more days than they do already, because he believes that they’re at a disadvantage compared to students in other countries.
His Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, says more school hours will “even the playing field” when [...]
I met Bobbi Bandy nearly 15 years ago, after she and her family joined our church. We got to know each other through a weekly women’s Bible study class, where I was wowed by her knowledge of Scripture and her love of it. The fact that she [...]
While many women of the past century shifted their focus from home and family to career, this woman was very busy….nurturing 11 children, 150 grandchildren, more than 1,000 great-grandchildren and even a few hundred great-great-grands…..over 1,400 in all. And she knew every one of them personally.
As if that wasn’t [...]
Dear Bloggy Friends/Commenters,
Our recent move put me way behind on responding to comments at this blog and making comments at yours.
Now that we’re back on an even keel again around here, I’d love to say that I’ll do a better job of keeping up with the blogosphere. However, I need [...]
We visited our hometown over the weekend and noticed that a couple of businesses we always shopped at have closed down. I looked them up online when I got home and found that they went out of business because of the bad economy.
One store owner, who ran a wonderful Christian [...]
When we choose to take control of our children’s education by homeschooling them, our choice says a lot about us. Many people complain about things but never act; we homeschooling parents actually do something when it comes to making sure our children are educated the way we want them to [...]
Last week I wrote about indoctrination in the public schools. Here’s another example, but one from the past: a man shares a vivid example of how the public school personnel of 40 years ago “coerced me into sharing private family information — that my father smoked — in [...]
If you’ve read my last book or visited my website, you know that I’m a huge fan of keeping extra food, household supplies, and medicine in the house. (I call my stored supplies my stashes, and I think they’re invaluable to busy homeschooling moms.)
But once we decided to [...]
If you doubt John Taylor Gatto’s assertion that public schools are all about indoctrination, not education, here’s something for you to consider.
The U.S. Census Bureau has announced a plan to educate schoolchildren on the benefits of the U.S. Census, and why they should nag their parents to answer [...]
Cardamom Publishers has reopened today after being closed for a week while we moved our business to Janesville, WI. Our books are in stock and we’re now shipping orders again. If you ordered a book in the last week to ten days, it will go out today.
Our new address is:
Cardamom [...]
We’ve spent the past week packing and now unpacking, and the result is that we’re eating lots of fast food and prepared meals from the grocery store.
This is not how we usually live. I’m frugal and prefer home cooking (i.e. meals made from scratch), so I’m accustomed to cooking all [...]
This photo totally shocked me when I first saw it, because we’ve crossed this drawbridge many, many times. It’s in the town we just moved from three days ago, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
I stumbled onto an article about this at a British newspaper website, of all places. [...]
It’s good to be back online, even though I have no business doing so since I’m surrounded by boxes and chaos everywhere I look. But sometimes you just have to take a little [...]
Close-Up of Tops of School Buses in a Parking Lot, Brooklyn, New York
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So here we are. The last weeks of summer already! The months sped past, and now there’s a chill [...]
We’re in the midst of moving household and businesses beginning tomorrow. For that reason, Cardamom Publishers will be closed tomorrow and all of next week. Whether you order directly from us online or via snail-mail, your order will not ship until Monday, August 24, 2009.
If you’re in a hurry, you [...]
The scent of sunblock no longer gives me a thrill. My pots of flowers look overgrown and a bit dehydrated. The weatherman’s announcement of another day in the high 80s makes me cranky instead of happy, as it did back in May. Yep, slowly but surely, summer is on its [...]
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Today my husband and I celebrate 30 years of marriageÂ
I don’t know where that time went, or how we got old enough to be married 30 years, because when I look at him, he still looks like my boyfriend. But numbers don’t lie.
For me, it’s [...]
By now I imagine you’ve amassed quite a pile of books and curriculum as you get ready for another great year of homeschooling. There’s nothing like the sight of all those new materials to get the enthusiasm going.
But the books that look so inviting in August are often less loved [...]
A thirteen-year-old girl decides she wants to be homeschooled so that she has more time to learn about gardening, and farming in general. Her future plans include learning about heirloom seeds. Read her story in her own words. (I found it in the latest issue of Mother Earth [...]
A Mother and Her Baby Boy Take a Nap Together
When I was a child, I spent a lot of summer days at my grandmother’s house. One of her unbreakable rules was that everyone [...]
So you’ve been hanging out at the pool or beach with the kids, making meals that don’t heat up the house, enjoying the nice weather and just plain appreciating the fact that it’s summer.
Me too.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with taking a few minutes to tiptoe over to this [...]
With the renaissance of homeschooling in the early 1980s came a trickle, and then a flood, of books and magazines about homeschooling.
These were eagerly read by homeschooling parents wanting to know how others were teaching their children, because there weren’t many homeschoolers around to talk with.
Today, reading about how other [...]
Were any of your children so eager to enter the world that they couldn’t wait until you made it to the hospital?
My cousin Candice (a homeschool mom, btw) has four daughters. Her youngest, Ania, arrived while Candice and her husband were en route to the hospital. Ania was born in [...]
Little kids love summer. Big kids love summer. But what about teens?
My kids looked forward to every summer until they became teens, and then everything changed. Suddenly, running through the sprinkler just didn’t thrill them anymore.
I was used [...]
We have a couple of medical issues in our family lately, plus we’re having trouble finding a house (we’re supposed to be moving in a month!) So please pray for us, if you feel led to do so. (Thanks!)
In the meantime, I’m looking for smiles wherever I can find them. [...]
How’s it going with your non-homeschooling friends? Do they get what you’re doing? Do they think you’re crazy? Or are they just drifting away……?
A dear friend of mine and I lost our friendship over homeschooling. It wasn’t that she was mad at me for choosing to homeschool, and I doubt [...]
I call this photo “Optimism.” You see, I haven’t made a quilt in a few years, but a friend of mine just became a grandma, and I want to make a baby quilt for her adorable new granddaughter.
So I picked out the fabrics one week, pre-washed and [...]
One of the best things about summer is that it reminds us that educating our children is not just up to us.
You’ll see this when you watch your child at the beach. I get to do this a lot because we’re blessed to have a beach a few blocks from [...]
This week our local paper published an article about the increase in truancy rates among students of all ages in the local schools.
What interested me the most is that the rate of truancy increases as children get older, so that by the time they reach 12th grade, well over [...]
Being a homeschool mom means being on a schedule; there’s just no way around it. The many activities available to each of our children (music, sports, co-op, church, etc.) must be organized somehow, and we’re the ones responsible for that job.
It’s easy to stay in that groove during the summer. [...]
Some chefs like to play with food. The results are pretty cute!
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