Hana's Suitcase

I was going to write about this in my book blog, but I haven't actually read it, so I decided to blog about it here.

In school, Peirce started reading Hannah's Suitcase, a holocaust story. He has talked about it endlessly. He was really taken by the whole story.  He didn't get to finish the story in school because of the floods. He had actually borrowed a video from the public library for his class to watch. They only watched the first few minutes if it, so today he and I watched the video together. Wow. I can see why he was so taken by it. It is an amazing story.

The story was uncovered by a Japanese woman who worked in a museum. They wanted to teach Japanese children about the holocaust and so they asked some holocaust museums if they could have some artifacts they sent a suitcase that had belonged to young girl who was killed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Through a series of events this woman was able to uncover the story of Hana, the owner of the suitcase. This story made me feel very emotional. I'm continually amazed and saddened by what humans will do to each other. We can be so good, and so terrible. We really must never forget.

Steal of a deal!

I have been wanting some new chairs for my living room. What I really want I can't quite afford. So I stop by second hand stores, I check out kijiji, but kept not having any luck. Today I totally lucked out! Someone posted these on free cycle! It was so fun to go pick them up. They came from a BEAUTIFUL house in Mount Royal. The arms have been clawed by a cat, so my plan is to recover them. They are really heavy chairs, and look to be really good quality. And the price sure was right!!

Food Storage Day!

I love the Airdrie Provident Living Co-op. Today we got big bags of wheat, split green peas, and soy beans. I love filling up our food storage room! I guess I will have to get searching for things to make with split green peas besides just ham soup.

The lady who was there handing out the purchases when I picked up the soy beans asked what I do with them. I told her my husband can't eat any milk products so I make soy milk. She said her husband can't either and she had looked that up on the internet but it looked way too complicated. I told her I don't do it in any complicated way at all. I bought a soy milk machine and it works lickety split! Honestly, I think it's my most loved small appliance in the kitchen. I think it saves us hundreds of dollars every year.

More on Bread

I have a friend who was doing some figuring today. She calculated that it costs her about 30 cents to make a loaf of bread, and 50 cents to make a dozen buns.

My family can eat two loaves a week (that's probably a conservative estimate because there are days they eat a loaf a day - but I try to discourage that!)

In the grocery store, I've found the bread I prefer to buy is around $2.50 a loaf.

$0.60 X 52 weeks = $31.20 a year

$5.00 X 52 weeks = $260 a year

So, making bread saves us around $250 a year! And my guess is that that is a conservative estimate. $250 goes a long ways to a Christmas that is a lot more fun! I should put the money in a jar every time I make bread and use it at Christmas.

Comforted!

This past year or so has been an interesting one for us. We've felt the brunt of the market issues. The interesting thing for me was that although last year was not a good year for us income-wise, we probably have a better food storage after it all than we ever have! How does that work?!

Tonight I noticed an article that got me thinking about this. It was a CBC article that said that wheat is going up.

I joined a co-op this year where we buy things in bulk at a (hopefully) reduced rate. It's been a great experience. A few months ago the guy who sends out the emails said he was worried about the grain crop this year with all the rain we'd had and wondered if it wouldn't be a good idea to order flour before his prediction of higher prices came into play. It made sense to me - so we ordered 40 kg of flour to add to what we already have.

And now the article. It said there's a wheat shortage in Russia that will push up the prices of bread in Canada - by perhaps 20% over the next two months.

There is comfort in being prepared!

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without

I have a new mission in life - that is to incur NO debt! (Well, okay...that's not the whole story....it's to pay off the debt we have and NOT accumulate anymore)


It's not easy. Things seems to happen all the time that seem to justify pulling out the credit card. Today was a great example. Our washing machine died this week. It was a slow death, and we knew it was coming. We would love to buy a beautiful new, perhaps front loading machine. But alas, I don't have an extra grand to do it right now. So I decided to get on kijiji and find a used one. I found one that was free! The couple giving it away bought a house that they're renovating. All the appliances are being replaced. She said that they were probably all 30 years old. So we took the washer and dryer. It's definitely a relic! It works like a charm though. I don't know why they don't build things now like they used to. Appliances used to last for generations. Not anymore. I'm thrilled with this old beauty. And when we're finished with it we'll probably be able to donate it to a museum! You can tell this came from a totally different era just by the dials on it. One of the buttons is for saving the suds, and one is for draining the suds. ...You can save suds?? Totally different thinking!

My other great deal was in our spare bedroom. One of the student's we had stay with us previously was a bit of a stinker. He broke the blind over the window so we needed new window treatments, and he also melted wax all over the cloth that covered the bedside table. I found a curtain rod on freecycle that worked perfectly, and then last night someone posted these curtains! They were way to big for the window so I cut them down and hemmed them. There was enough left over that I could make a new cover for the bedside table that matches!! YAHOO!

Looks like I really should iron them. I'll do that later!

I have enough fabric left that I could make some throw pillows and maybe a quilt with this fabric as the accent. Looks like I should find something for the walls too. It's pretty boring in that room.

All things in time I guess!

Total Savings:

Curtain Rod about $40 at Sears

IKEA Curtains about $60 (found the exact ones on their website!)

Top Loading Washing Machine, about $500

Throw Pillows: $15??

New duvet cover: $50 (that'd probably be a steal of a deal too)

Ladies and gentlemen, that is $665!! All for free. No smokin' credit card either. PHEW!

I think it's a miracle that we could even do this for no cost. We are so blessed!

Couch

Anyone want a couch and loveseat??

Look at the new one I got on freecycle!! It's a beauty. Both ends recline too. I'm in love.

If ye are prepared.....

Today on the news I heard a story about an impending sugar shortage. Apparently the price of sugar may be going up as a result. It felt great to know that I have a good supply of sugar in my food storage and that any fluctuations in sugar prices really won't affect me.

Besides, the reading I've been doing lately about healthy living and weight loss tells me that sugar is the enemy.

Life is a little boring without it though!

Peaches!

I was going through pictures on my camera and realized I hadn't posted about my peach canning day! September has been terribly terribly busy. I kept putting off canning my peaches. One afternoon I realized if I didn't do them that day I might never find the time - so in one afternoon I got to work and did 100 pounds of peaches! I worked feverishly all afternoon and into the evening and got them all done. It's so wonderful to fill my shelves with new canned peaches.

I also made a little peach crisp. I put in apples, peaches and a few blueberries. So good!!


If anyone wants to get me a new canner for Christmas present I'd be thrilled! I would like one that is a little taller. This one covers my peach jars...but just barely and it ends up meaning a lot of water boiling over and making a mess. A taller one would be so wonderful!

Deal of the Week

We went to the Superstore Warehouse on Barlow and 32nd. Got 3 kg of summer sausage for $9.99 and 3 kg of pepperoni for $9.00! I sliced it up nice and thin with my meat slicer and put it in baggies in the freezer so that a baggie would be good for about a day's worth of sandwiches for everyone in the family.

I was in Superstore the other day and saw they had 2 kg of the same kind of sausage for $18.99. SO! If I'd bought that sameamount in the Superstore store itself I would have had to spend $56.97. Instead I spent $18.00

....and I haven't even started to try to figure out how much it would have cost if I had bought the little packages of sandwich meat individually to add up to 6 kg of sandwich meat.

Food Storage

I worked today on organizing our food storage room. That always dominoes into the rest of the basement since things seem to get shoved into that room and forgotten. I was a little dismayed when I showed Allen how much I'd accomplished. I worked on it for so long - but this is really the best part of it....these two shelves. LOL

I've never really had a testimony of the #10 cans from the church cannery - but I decided to try my faith this year and start using them. I've decided they're pretty good! They are easy to organize and store on our shelves.


These shelves are the best. We bought them when we first got married and they were a big trial of our marriage! The instructions claimed they snapped together easily....whatever! They take forever to put up - but once they're up they're very stable and they're also very deep - which has proved to be really nice for food storage. I think we need some more though. We'll have to use a different variety though as we don't have room for another big unit like this one...but if I can accomplish my monthly canning goal we'll need some shelves......narrower ones. We do have another set of shelves to the right of the ones in this picture....but we more. I'd like to squeeze in two more. We'll see how that goes!

The thing I've learned this year as our Stake has worked on preaching the 'Provident Pantry' approach is that my food storage room seems to be an on-going organizational task because we're always using things and moving things around as we add things. Apparently this is the way it is supposed to be though....so I'll persevere!

Oh - and don't those peaches look beautiful! I ended up with 59 jars. Loving that!!!