Memorial Day

Spending the day getting ready for Memorial Day gathering this afternoon. Hopeing the rain holds off until then. Have to admit though that I am not the one actually getting things ready today. Recovering from a nasty allergic reaction. My Mom and sister are here helping until tomorrow.

I am excited about the new blog. I am hoping to post regular updates along with recipes and information on the areas we are working on here at home to decrease our impact on the environment. I am hoping to post pictures of our chickens, edible landscaping and garden in the next couple of days as I feel better.

I have several hobbies including hiking, cooking, gardening, crocheting and needle felting.

Looking forward to getting to know others who have similar interests and hopefully share ideas with each other.

My story

My husband and I have always been nature lovers and thought that we were pretty "green" compared to our friends in our upwardly mobile lifestyle. We both held good paying jobs, we recycled and tried to buy used things when possible. Then, our first daughter came. She had severe asthma and I ended up quitting my job when she was 3 because I was spending more time at home than at work because of how much she was sick. We canceled our cable TV and newspaper, did not go out to eat as often while I picked up some odd jobs that could be done around my husband's schedule. Within a couple years of our second daughters birth, we learned she had a terminal illness called mitochondrial disease. Our life was turned upside down. She became my new full time job. Medical bills were piling up and our finances quickly became unmanageble. We cut back on everything we could and found that we did not miss a lot of them. We began spending more time as a family.

I started reading books on how to decrease our costs. That is when I found the books Serve God, Save the Planet and Go Green, Save Green by the Sleeth family. I realized then that we were overconsumers of our earth's resouces and my actions affected other brothers and sisters in this world. It was time to go on a simplicity diet. The past year we have made some drastic changes at our house and still have a long way to go to get our carbon footprint more in line with the rest of the world. That is what this blog is about-our continuing journey to sustainable living.