Today I want to discuss with you – TIME. We all have it, we all waste it, what do you do with it? It is productive most of the time or can you do better with your time management?
After reading a blog from The Simple Dollar, I found a couple of things that peaked my interest for this morning. Time Management stood out to me because I find myself constantly looking for something in the house, for that piece of paper I wrote on, for a book that was misplaced, for a recipe – I can’t remember which book it was in…you get the picture. Yeah as I get older, I can no longer keep every little tidbit of information in the back of my brain! 😀 So I use notebooks for many thoughts, ideas, tasks and notes in general. Notebooks this time of year cost like 10 cents – go get a dozen!!!
I have one labeled for each group I may belong to – Bella Vista Farm, Herbal Class, Ladies Homestead Gathering, the 23 Day group and then one for Mountain Rose Herbs – orders and such, Recipes, Ideas and now I will keep one in my purse – a tiny one. So when I leave to go to the store I can write a list inside it instead of forgetting the list on the table – uuggghhh. It is not often I do that but it inevitably results in a forgotten item which in turn results in a return trip to the store and wasted gas.
The best time management tip I can give is to make lists – make list of EVERYTHING that needs to get done for the week and then prioritize what needs to be done first and cross off as each task gets done. This makes me feel wonderful!!
Of course purging stuff in the house and reorganizing should help with the said lost items I am looking for. How many of you put a piece of paper in a book or somewhere – “for safe keeping” that you swear you will remember where you put it – hahaha! So in the challenge if you have not yet done the purging of unwanted and un-needed items, NOW is the time to do it! Go get a couple boxes worth of stuff to either sell or donate asap. You will feel incredibly lighter and more organized. I started to do it and have two bags/boxes in the garage – that is as far as I got. MUST finish- there is still the basement and the attic.
I really am organized for the most part – I keep a schedule of what I am doing for the week and most things get crossed off the list. Dinner is always on the table by 6:15pm, I am always up by 5:45-6am.
What is your schedule like for the day and where do you find you waste your time? What can you do better? What tips can you give others?
Earlier I mentioned The Simple Dollar – head on over there and read the following- it fits right into our challenge.
“If you have a garden and a library,
you have everything you need.” – Cicero
We are in the last few days of our 23 Day Frugal Living Challenge so by now I’ll bet you all can breathe a little easier after what you have been learning and hopefully practicing. Remember it is not about doing without, it is about enjoying and accepting what you DO have. 🙂 Enjoy the following post on “Living The Good Life, No Matter What The Checkbook Says”.
“There are so many families that are currently struggling daily to keep their heads above water…they have lost their jobs, they have lost their homes, and they’re earning much less than they are acustom to. Yet some of these same people are raising their children with deeply-rooted values, enjoying an intimate relationship with their spouse, and finding joy in all things – despite the difficulties they’re experiencing.
It proves that you can live on a tight tight budget, find happiness, and experience the good life all at the same time!
How to live the good life no matter what the checkbook says.
Living the good life has everything to do with quality over quantity and people over possessions. It has very little to do with how much money you have.
Given that assumption, here are a few suggestions to help us prioritize those things that truly matter – no matter what the checkbook says.
1. Develop your passions. Money and consumerism dampens our creativity and puts the fire out on our passions. When we learn to appreciate who we are, and what we have, our passions have the ability to reignite. You already possess everything you need to live the good life – it’s time you embrace who you are and what you love.
The whole world is at your fingertips! 🙂
2. Learn a new skill. Developing our passions may mean we have to learn a new skill — or refine old ones. But this doesn’t necessarily mean we need a formal higher education! That’s right…contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars obtaining a degree in order to live the good life. Read! Read everything you can get your hands on that talks about the things you are interested in. On top of reading, there are several excellent ways to learn a new skill that won’t cost you a penny: ***On this subject from AM – I have apprenticed or bartered for almost all of my skills including nail technician, riding instructor, herbalist, seed saver, chef, etc… Network with the Ladies Homestead Gathering for many opportunities to learn***
3. Invest in people. For most of my adult life, this has been my motto. If ever in doubt…invest in people. The people that matter don’t care about your money, they care about you and want you. Living the good life involves sharing it with others and when we prioritize and invest in people we always get a return on our investment.
4. Volunteer you time. Voluteering your time to help those who are less fortunate than you is a big piece to the ‘good life’ puzzle. I don’t care who you are, or how little you have, there’s always someone who has less. There’s always someone worse off. I use to think to myself, “I can’t wait until I’m out of debt ’cause then I can give more.” Then I realized I can give more now — I can give my time at the shelter, I can give my time to homeschooling my children, and I can give my time teaching my neighbor how to start a garden — and when I give my time, I feel fulfilled.
5. Enjoy nature. I think that a lot of people think that traveling, leisure, and vacationing have to be some big thing, like going to Europe or the Caribbean, but it really doesn’t have to be. You know what we do? We go out into nature — camp, hike, take a walk on the beach — you don’t have to go far in order to experience a different a different way of life. Growing up we hardly ever spent the night in a hotel, and I never even traveled internationally until high school (and that was only to Mexico). Nonetheless, I still feel like a well-traveled individual, primarily because of the love for nature that my Dad and Mom instilled into me.
6. Health is wealth. And prevention is key! Take care of your body, mind, and soul. Eat a healthy diet, reduce stress, and nurture your spirit. Nothing has the ability to destroy the good life — and our financial stability – like a chronic illness. And who’s to say, illness may come in spite of all the “right” things that we do. Yet, all things point to a better quality of life when we take care of ourselves. And as we’ve discussed before, eating simple, healthy, in-season foods doesn’t have to expensive and living frugally often leads to less stress.
7. Stay home. Stop shopping, stop running from hear to there, stop thinking that you have to take some extravagant vacation, all to experience the good life. Why don’t you stay home for a change. Enjoy the home that you work so hard to pay for. Cook from scratch at home…instead of eating out. Workout at home…instead of going to the gym. Relax at home…instead of going to some fancy hotel.
Our happiness and contentment in this life is dependent only on our ability to enjoy what we have. The good life is waiting…” Andrea B. – Frugally Sustainable
From AM – Also here are some helpful links for sites and books that are free or inexpensive for learning a new skill:
Free Courses – learn just about anything at Coursera!
Daily Goal: What small step can you take today that will lead you closer toward the good life?
Have a great day today!
Anne-Marie
*Affiliate links – I do post affiliate links on my page for your convenience and do receive a small commission if a purchase is made from the link at no cost to you. Thank you for visiting our affiliates. 🙂
Ok so we have enough definitions and examples, don’t ya think? Community to me is my family,
My cute family!Doggie communityChicken community – sharing the bounty!
my friends, my coworkers at the Farmer’s Market and of course, my Ladies Homestead gals.
Friends at Foxfire for the retreat
LHG at its finest. 🙂
Dinner with the ladies.
Megan teaching us about shiitakes
Everyone must get along on our farm.
No matter what you call your group, your peeps, you do things with and for each other and share or contribute to build relationships.
Without community, we are just one lonely soul thinking we can do it all by our self with no help from others. Sad but true for some. Community makes us stronger!
You frequently hear me talk about bartering at the market and with friends and know that I LOVE this. I would be so on board with a no money barter only society but I don’t think that is going to happen anytime soon, if so I am ready. 🙂
My market community – I had one loaf of bread left at the market this week and Hal from Foster-Brady Farm next door to me had some veggies left. I gave him the loaf and he shared with me a bunch of stuff!!! So sweet! He did not want to go home with it so I happily obliged. I got a bag – big bag of broccoli, three 8-ball squash and some kale and lettuce. Sharing equals happiness!!
I purchased the cabbage , beets and dog treats
While packing up, Gail had some flowers left so she gave me some lilies and echinacea.
So what did I do with all that broccoli?
We ate some that night then today I cut it all up and put the florets in ziplocs and now what to do with all those stems???? I just can’t see throwing them out, maybe soup.
PS The color came out weird in the stalks pic, they are all green!!! Hahaha…
The fall and winter were kind of dreary here and I don’t just mean weather dreary…life dreary if you know what I mean. Nobody really likes to complain, nobody wants to hear complaints but life can’t always be PERFECT! Stuff happens for a reason, I get that. There are times where you just feel like all is lost and you are in a deep, dark hole with no hand in site to pull you out. What keeps you from feeling that – FAITH, yep FAITH, without it, no matter what religion you are, no matter who you pray to, faith keeps you from falling deeper in that hole. You know somewhere there is a light peeking through with a hand to pull you out.
That is exactly what happened here. Then it snowballed into lots of cool things, lots!!!!
New jobs, improved health, exciting opportunities, new growth and the list goes on. My coolest thing happened like this:
I was invited by my awesome friend Cyndi to attend a class, taught by Patricia Howell of Botanologos School last month, a class that I was unable to pay for due to circumstances beyond my control. Someone or a few someones anonymously donated the funds for me to attend the class. Oh my goodness, I was sooooo excited since I LOVE all of Patricia’s classes.
I arrived early so that I could help set up and chat for a bit. I asked Patricia if she was excited to be starting her annual Herb Certification Program the following week and she asked if I would ever be taking the course. My response, ” The only way I could attend the course was to have a miracle or to win the lottery.” It was the exact words that I said. What happened next was totally an unforeseen miracle or I had just won the darn lottery. Patricia mentioned that she did not have her assistant this year and would like to know if I would be her assistant in the program……Ahhhhhhhh, I almost fainted, I was dumbfounded…next week…holy moly…ok let me talk to my hubby.
Long story short, hubby said yes! How cool is THAT?!?! My second weekend of classes is coming up in beautiful North Carolina, one weekend a month. WOW!
In turn I am giving back to community where possible. One of the ladies in our Ladies Homestead Gathering won a free class from me and I recently donated my time to the herb walk below –
This past weekend I set up our farm booth at the Gwinnett Environmental & Heritage Center and met some amazing folks that wanted to learn about herbal medicine and wildcrafting plants. There were 35+ people on my herb walk, crazy!
Some beautiful plants on our walk…
Trillium!Rue anemone
Blood root- Sanguinaria canadensis
Thank you to God, my family, my dear friends and to people I don’t even know that were involved in all the goodness!!!
Christmas is a magical time of year that brings memories of family and traditions and food and celebrations! It’s a time for gathering and sharing things we hold dear. It’s a time of renewing time-honored traditions and maybe finding a few new ones too. In honor of this Christmas season, we want to give you an opportunity to share your favorite holiday recipes (real food recipes only please), crafts, gift ideas, and traditions with Wildcrafting Wednesday readers. Who knows, you might even find a new favorite yourself. 🙂
Featured Posts from Our Last Blog Hop
Each week, we get some incredible posts submitted by amazing bloggers. The following posts are our featured posts as determined by our readers.
Thank you to every one of our bloggers who linked up and to all of our readers for helping us pick our featured posts!
Guidelines for Participation:
1. Please link up your blog post using the Linky widget below. If you are posting a recipe, only real food recipes are permitted please. This means no processed, packaged, or refined food ingredients!
2. Please link the URL of your actual blog post and not your blogs home page. That allows future readers who find this post and go to your link to be able to find what they’re looking for.
3. Please place a link back to this edition of the blog hop in your post. That way your readers can benefit from all the ideas too. This also helps out the other participants who are hoping to get more traffic to their blogs. If you’re new to blogging here’s what you do: Copy the URL of Wildcrafting Wednesday from your browser address bar. Then edit your post by adding something like, “This post was shared on Wildcrafting Wednesday” at the end of your post. Then highlight “Wildcrafting Wednesday”, click the “link” button on your blogging tool bar, and paste the URL into that line. That’s it! 🙂
4. Please only link posts that fit the blog hop description. Old and archived posts are welcome as long as you post a link back as described above. Please don’t link to giveaways or promotions for affiliates or sponsors. That keeps our links valuable in the future since a link to a giveaway three months old isn’t going to be worth browsing in three months time, but a link to an herbal tip will be.
5. Family friendly posts only.
6. Please leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you! 😀
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I had to make some plantain oil yesterday for a big herbal class at our Ladies Homestead Gathering this so I thought I would post it here for you all!!
Shared on Wildcrafting Wednesday!
Were ya just thinking “Plantain infused oil, plantains? Aren’t they bananas?” Not those kind of plantains, the plant outside in everyone’s yard, kinda plantain.
ok this is a pitiful plant pic but I already chopped up all the pretty ones. 😀
Plantain(Plantago major, Plantago lanceolata)
grows pretty much everywhere except a desert. It is one of those weeds that grow in the sidewalk cracks, on the edge of the yard where you don’t mow, also where you mow cause it comes back all year long. Poor little plantain, you are often misunderstood. 😦
This is one powerful little plant! I got stung by a few yellow jackets and by the time I got out of my woods, my arm had a 2-3 big welts. I reached down in the garden, because my best patch is there, grabbed a few leaves chewed them up and pressed them onto the welts with a couple band aids to hold it down. Two hours later I pulled off the band aids and Voila! Could barely tell where the stings were. Fantastic huh?
Here is what else plantain is good for –
helps stop bleeding, bug bites and stings, snake bites(do this THEN get to the ER), wrinkles, rashes, blood purifier(alterative – cleans blood especially good for blood poisoning), emergency food, wound healer, anti-inflammatory, splinter remover and MORE! Here is a cool article from Herbal Legacy.
YES the best use is fresh, masticated leaves but we cannot always have that option , so we make an infused oil to be used as is or in salves. I needed a bunch for the class and I collected close to a gallon of leaves. In my yard, I only have the narrow leaf(lance0lata) but I must plant some of the larger leaf(major)!!!
Next I checked all the leaves for any debris or bugs. Best to pick the day after a rain. I cut the leaves up in small pieces to make for a better infusion and added them to my large crock pot.
Pour a good oil, I used regular olive oil, over the leaves until it covers by about 1 inch. For the amount of leaves I used 6 – 17oz bottles. I bought them at Aldi’s where it was less expensive than the giant bottles at Walmart. 🙂 Oh, and save those jars for refilling later!
Notice how yellow the oil is, then look at the pic at the end!
Stick a thermometer in the oil, do not cover and cook on low for 1 hour, at first. Keep temp between 100-140. At the end of the second hour, you may notice the temp creeping up, turn down to warm for another 1-2 hours. Let cool slightly because you will be straining this and don’t want to burn your little hands!
all color has come out of leaves into oil.
When cool, find another bowl or pot and line a strainer or colander with good cheese cloth. Pour oil mixture through into the strainer and then squeeze the cheese cloth with the leaves to get more out. discard the leaves.
At this point you can let the oil sit for the sediment to get to the bottom and then pour off into bottles or do it now and then when you use your oil, be careful not to use the last bit at the bottom of the jar. The reason being, it may contain some water from the plant and we do not want out oil to spoil. Refrigerate this oil for up to a year.
Look at the rich, green color!!!
If you wish to make a salve now, here is the way I do it –
For every one cup of finished oil, add 1/4 cup beeswax. Heat over low on the stove until beeswax melts then remove to a cooling rack. Add essential oils if using – about 10-12 drops for this amount. More or less depending on your purpose. If using tea tree EO, use the lesser amount. I prefer lavender or my new favorite – palmarosa! It’s a florally- rosy-intoxicating kind of smell. Pour into containers, let cool, then close up tightly and label.
If you want to order the Palmarosa essential oil visit here! My FAVE place to order my herb supplies!!!
Enjoy your day today!
Anne-Marie
Affiliate disclaimer – I do post a few affiliate links that pay me a small commission, at no cost to you the consumer and this helps me keep blogging and teaching. 🙂
A couple weeks ago, we had our 3rd Annual Ladies Homestead Retreat up at Foxfire Museum in Mountain City, Georgia.
I look forward to this trip ALL YEAR LONG – seriously it is amazing! Our group of ladies in GA belong to the National Ladies Homestead Gathering, just went National this year and how exciting is THAT?! I have a link to the group on my side bar but here it is if you want to take a look:
We arrived on Friday afternoon, decorated for all the ladies and settled in to chat with friends at our Italian Feast of Chicken Cacciatore, Pasta with Shiitake Mushrooms and Mascarpone, Salad with Lemon Garlic Dressing and Pizzelle cookies. This group loves to eat and loves to cook!
Saturday morning we got up for a yoga class(well a couple of us did 🙂 ) then had a delicious breakfast Frittata before getting ready for our class with Ila Hatter. Ila is an incredible wildcrafter, healer, storyteller – just fantastic person that took time out of her schedule to come visit with us for a few hours. Boy, did we have a great time, walking and learning about the Appalachian plants and hearing wonderful stories from Ila and her hubby, Jerry. Both of them are of Cherokee descent so they teach what they have learned through generations of healers. Ila even showed us how to make a cup or container from a tulip poplar leaf – how cool is that? Visit Ila at http://www.wildcrafting.com
sorry pic was not too clear but here is one I made when I got home –
Andrea and Julie 🙂
American Ginseng
Dee and Ila making Jewelweed Lotion
Say Sassafrass!!!!
That wasn’t all we did all weekend!!!
Herb and tree ID walk, Foxfire Tour, LOTS of eating, Chatting, Knitting, Crocheting, Game Playing, LOTS of Laughing, Sausage Making, Enjoying a couple glasses of wine, EATING, Small Chapel Time, Note Taking and a little bit of sleep time. 🙂
Kelly R., Rebecca and me playing WildCraft!
After talking about not liking scary movies at all, after getting a scraped knee and then picking the scraped knee card, Kelly then picks the SCARED card. Ok too weird….I was sore from doing the “Mr. Shut Up And Train” workout all week and then…I pick the sore muscle card. GAME OVER….like I said tooooooooo weird, you can’t see my face but that is how I reacted to the card. HaHaHa!
I so hope you enjoyed my retelling of an amazing trip!
Have I said I love bartering? Yep!!!! Ok so here are the goods for the last Ladies homestead Swap and Market Swaps –
Tons of okra!!!! A butternut squash, cayenne peppers, green tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, pineapple sage(drying) and arugula seeds, all for breads 😀
This was truly the BEST score! TONS of lip balm tubes, tiny salve containers and cool spray bottles – traded for breads. I am so excited!!!
Did not get a picture of my market trade but I got a bunch of tomatoes and zucchini for cinnamon bread and she gave me two bouquets of fresh flowers! Definitely a perk at the end of the evening when you are packing up everything.
Every so often I get a call from Pilar at Rancho Alegre Farm, http://ranchoalegrefarm.com/ in Dacula asking me to help out with an upcoming field trip. Well this past Wednesday I went on over to work the petting zoo! Awesome thing about homesteading and staying home…you get to work whenever the opportunity arises. Never a dull moment!
Pilar is part of our Ladies Homestead Gathering and farm life is her full time job, especially Agri Tourism, which means lots of school field trips. But her place is set up perfectly for all the streams of buses and cars pulling in, plenty of parking, picnic tables and pavillions and clean bathrooms. Well I could have a car load or two come out, that is it! On the farm, there are chickens, horses, dairy cows, dairy goats, pigs, horses, mini donkeys, sheep, rabbits, gardens, worms, hay rides, playgrounds, oh my, you name it! Even “Honey Boo Boo” was there in the fall filming one of her shows.. How cool is that? If you ever want to see the show, I believe it was the Thanksgiving Special.
So I arrived at 9:00am on Wednesday and met up with the others to get our stations ready for all of the children, something like 150 kids. Chopped up carrots for all the little critters so the children could have fun feeding them. The buses arrived at 10:00am and proceeded to the meeting place, which is HUGE , by the way, and Pilar greeted the classes and talked for a bit about the farm. She then showed the kids a short demo on making cheese from one of her goat’s milk. The kids thought that was pretty amazing! Each of us got our first group and made our way to our stations. I explained the rules to my group quickly as they anxiously awaited to enter the petting area!!! These classes were the most well behaved, polite 3rd graders. 🙂 Kids got their carrots and off they went!
I showed some of the children exactly how to feed the cow because they were alittle intimidated and the poor little cow kept trying to reach the carrot with her long black tongue only to feel it fall to the ground! After I showed the kids, they happily fed the young calf her snacks.
Some of the children tried to feed the young chickens a carrot but instead I showed them how to pet the babies, much more fun. 🙂
Ok my absolute favorite moment of the day….just look at this pic with the two lambs sound asleep on their mama!!!
Ten minutes go by pretty darn quick, the class had to change to their next activity so off to milk a goat! After about an hour or so, six classes in all, we were finished. The classes ran off for bathroom breaks and lunch while we all cleaned up. I helped Lana and Anna put away the goats and the donkey, clean up our stations and bring all the signs back to the house. Sandra was in the house with homemade goat cheese and lemonade for all of us, yay!!!
Oh my, what a good snack we had. The goat cheese had, I think rosemary and garlic and the lemonade had lemon balm and mint, totally yummmmmm….. Just ask the rest of the gang, Anna, Lana, Zach, Pam, Lauren and Debbie. Who says work can’t be fun? Wish I could work the two field trips next week but, sigh, already have a full schedule.
Hope you have enjoyed todays post, have a fabulous day,
For those of you that have been following me, you know I love to barter instead of paying for things!!! At our Ladies Homestead Gatherings, we have had food swaps, medicinal swap and seed swap. Well we started something new this month and did an all out anything goes swap and boy let me tell you, it was fantastic!
Many of the ladies bake, can, garden, gather, plant, create etc… and sometimes find that they may have too many things that they created and may not have a place to sell them or even want to go through the trouble of selling them. So, what to do? Swap stuff, of course! The only rules were, 1. Be Fair and 2. Have Fun. 🙂
I make bread so that was the logical item to trade plus a few other goodies. I brought Rosemary Garlic bread, Carrot Pineapple bread, Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin, Candied Figs, Elderberry Syrup, Chickweed Salve and some Honey Coco Coco lip balm. The ladies lined up all their wares for all to see and we went back and forth seeing what we wanted and make a deal if that person would accept our trade. Did I say this was so much fun? Yep it was! At first people were kind of shy but after a couple minutes and after the first trade, things were getting passed around like we were on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. 🙂
Here are some of the things people brought –
Breads
Ground Beef
Fig Jams
Pecans
Jellies
Veggies
Plants
Seeds
Magazines
Books
Pottery
Hangers
Canning Jars
Homemade Vanilla
Homemade Salves
Cookies
Condiments – mustards, relishes
Leeks sets
Planting buckets etc……
Ok so this is what I got for my trades:
4 Herb Companion mags, 12 canning jars, 2 cool pieces of pottery, a violet plant, anise hyssop plant, rue plant, vanilla, spicy mustard, strawberry lemonade concentrate, tomato relish, watermelon pickles and collards(not pictured)
I was incredibly tickled to pieces with my trades!!!!Have any of you done this before? I really would love to know!
From now on, this will be a regular activity at our monthly meetings.
Bella Vista Farm 