Homestead time.

Finally am not in limbo an able to share my life again. For a good long while I had to be very mum about things because we were trying to get moves in place and ready on our time frame rather than due to the choices of others.

We are now the happy owners of over 20 acres in North East Washington State. We are within spitting distance of the canadian border. We have pasture and timber. We are withing a few hunderd yards of a large lake. We have a pond. The house is smaller and one story making things much easier on me. We are finally able to really homestead. Grow and raise and make and be. I get to put my knowledge to use. I get to improve my health. I get to get back to writing. My girls are in schools with only 400 kids. The nearest town where they go to school has a population of 3000. It's awesome. So look forward to some posts on my new chapter. I plan to explore so much. Making my own soaps and body products due to my chem sensitivity, growing a garden, canning it all, hunting more, shooting more. Very excited.

Beautiful You.

Lately a lot of media has been about how the media impacts women. Which honestly does not help much. Either we are being shown horrible standards of beauty that are just not realistic or we are being told that they are lies by being shown more unrealistic images as examples of what's unrealistic. It's very rare to actually have an ad campaign that has healthy images or behavior. 

I have spent all my life hating my body. I could fill a book with things that bug me. As I grew up I never heard that I was beautiful.  I never heard that I was amazing. I was told to lose weight, to exercise,  to be active. I know my dad never meant it to be hurtful. He genuinely saw it as constructive criticism.  To a girl though and mixed with the bombardment of media it was enough to build a woman full of self hate.

My husband took that woman though and he built her up. He taught me that I was worth something inside and out. That I have beauty. He taught me I am amazing. To the point where I actually get taken by surprise sometimes when I look in a mirror. The beautiful woman I feel like now gets surprised by the disheveled hair or the stain on my shirt from cooking dinner. I double take when I notice that annoying pimple or flour on my hip. I no longer feel frumpy even if most days I'm in cotton pants and a tank.

I've realized mirrors are a huge enemy. They can suck confidence faster than almost anything. So my advice to you is this: surround yourself only with people who lift you, toss out the mirrors, and give media the finger. Be beautiful you. Because you are amazing.

Come to the Dark Angel side!

I have recently had the privilege to become great online friends with Hot Sauce, the female half of Dark Angel Medical. She and her awesome guy have taken a pretty awesome idea and made something that I think all of us in the survival and/or prepper (whatever you want to call yourself, hehe) community can really benefit from. They make emergency trauma kits. But that honestly is a simplified statement. I am not an expert at all. I am just a major fan. This is directly taken from their about us page:

We are a veteran-owned business with a combined total of over 20 years of medical training and work in both the military and civilian healthcare fields, Pre-hospital care, flight medicine and intra-hospital work with concentration in emergency and critical care medicine as well as competitive shooting.

We are very proud to offer the D.A.R.K. (Direct Action Response Kit), what we believe is, a superior product to the standard IFAK (Individual First Aid Kit)a.k.a. BOK (Blowout Kit). The components have been carefully chosen based on personal, hands-on experience and the feedback from “boots on the ground” in our current theaters of operation.

We want to give every person who deploys these kits the ability to survive a life-threatening situation.

The thing that I really love is the facebook linked to their website. On it Doc runs trauma scenarios and then leads the discussion in how to handle those issues. For those of us with only basic training it helps and has inspired me to want to renew my training. My last cert was when Bug was little. She is now 11. Add that to the fact I want to get my RO cert and renewing my CPR and basic trauma certs would be a darn good thing. I know that once I build a good bag for my truck a DARK is going in it. So check them and their product out!! You won't regret it!

I can sew!!!

My mom just came for her first visit in ages. (Hard to have visitors when the guest room still have live-in family!) She brought belated Christmas and birthday presents. For me she brought a sewing machine. I can not tell you how amazing this is. I have been wanting one for ages. I know it is high on every list but really we never had room before and then it always seemed like we had other things to buy and then family moved in and finances got tight. My husbands older sister was here as well and she is a sewing guru and we found this great pattern for pillow case dresses. (My mom had mentioned them) We opened that box and made that gorgeous thing sing. I love it!!!! What do you think?

First day of school!

My sweet Bug and the teenagers started school today. Niece is a junior and may even try to graduate early. She hasn't really decided. Nephew is in 8th grade. Last year of middle school. Some days he seems so much older and others so young but that is often the case with boys his age on the cusp of manhood. Bug is entering 4th grade. She is now in the upper echelon of school. Those years feel sweet and I want her to enjoy and savor them. The picture is her being silly. I am so proud of her and the young lady she is. All of them are pretty great.

Poor Monkey was pretty sad to see all the kids leave today. She wanted to follow Nephew out the door and cried when we dropped Bug off. Being back to hanging out with just me is not her favorite thing. I am a little sad too. They finally seem to get that this is their home and so all of them have been really great lately.

Well here is hoping the year is great and we can have lots of good grades and happy days.