Earth Day

Earth Day in 2 Days!

It will be Earth Day on April 22, 2011.  I love God's wonderful creation, Earth, and I try to take care of it as best I can.  I recycle, reduce, and reuse.  I buy our family's clothes at the thrift store.  I recycle my newspapers.  I get my magazines via internet to save some trees.That's why I started to make soap in the first place.  I try to go as natural as I can by making my own cleaning products, laundry detergent, bar soap, toothpaste, etc.  Our family rarely eats processed foods.  We eat healthy, from scratch meals every day, and I grind my own grains to make our homemade bread.  We are putting in a new garden this year since we had to tear out our old one last year.  My kids are GREAT gardeners.  They learned from my wonderful friend who is a master gardener.  Good thing, since I've never been great at gardening.  That's the thing.  Just because you may not be good at something, doesn't mean you can't do it anyway.  For example, my purse was breaking and falling apart so my daughter sewed me a new one out of scrap materials.  She's just learning to sew but she did a wonderful job and I will treasure my drawstring bag (I mean purse) made out of jean material and scrap pink flowered material forever.  So go ahead, next time you need to throw something away, think about who else could use it or how you could recycle it.  Grow a garden, even if it only consists of herbs or just 1 zucchini plant.  Start small and expand later.  Re-think everything you buy to see if you can make it yourself. Take care of our wonderful earth a little bit at a time.

Black Bean Burgers on a Grass-Fed Beef Ranch?

Yesterday I went to my Ranch Mom friend's ranch to visit with her family and our mutual friend, Air Force Wife (and kids).  On my way I called to ask if I could bring anything for lunch and Ranch Mom suggested hamburger buns since we were eating black bean burgers for lunch.  I asked how many, and Ranch Mom said, "well, there will be 14 kids and 5 adults".  14 kids!!!!!  Wow!  Then I realized that 7 of them were mine.  :)  Good thing we were meeting at the ranch and not in my house.  I only have 1 acre of land for the little monsters, a.k.a. beautiful children, to play on.

Well, we all had a GREAT time.  Ranch Mom, Air Force Wife, and Soap Lady (me) didn't just sit around eating bon-bons and watching t.v. while the little ones ran around outside getting muddy shoes from stepping in the creek.  Oh no, that wouldn't be productive enough for us home schooling moms.  Well, not to let a quiet house go to waste, we made papaya shrimp salad, black bean burgers, homemade sauerkraut and homemade cortido.  Of course, while peeling and chopping what I thought was a papaya, I was informed that it was a mango.  Ooops!  So, we ate a tasty snack of mango as well.  Ranch Dad gave us a bit of a hard time for having black bean burgers on a grass-fed beef ranch, but it was all in good fun.

Unfortunately, the time for the Soap Lady (me) & her kids to go came too quickly.  Ranch Mom & Air Force Wife were planning on making homemade ketchup later in the day, but I would have to miss out.  As I was gathering up the kiddos, Ranch Dad hooked up the horse & cart and gave the kids a pleasant ride among the beautiful hills surrounding the ranch, before I had to rush home to make sure dinner was ready for my wonderful family!