New Search Box to Try

Got a minute? I added a new search box to my blog for users to use. Try it out and let me know how you like it.

1. Did it help you?
2. Could you find what you were searching?
3. Did it have any problems?

As more people try it out, I will decide whether or not to keep it. Let know your opinions on it in the comments.

Thanks!

GET READY! NaNoWriMo Starts this Friday!

I am very excited about this week! Great things are happening over here. Tomorrow my kids come home and their dad is coming to visit for a week. I am getting my house organized and decluttered. AND

NaNoWriMo starts FRIDAY!

Each year I plan on doing NaNoWriMo. Some years I manage to actually do it. I won two years in the five that I attempted it. This year I plan to make my win/loss equal at 3 won, 3 lost. 

What is Nanowrimo?

Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Where you write 50,000 words in 30 days. This isn't the time to worry about punctuation, grammar, and spelling though. This is the time to just pound out your ideas and get them out on paper... er, computer. 

Want to sign up?

If you want to try out the craziness, you can check out their website here.

They also have an awesome facebook page that you can interact with other hermits... I mean, Nanowrimo-ers before, during, and in between Nanowrimos.

I'll post another post this week with some tools I use, some tips, and other helpful tips I find.

Get ready!

Will you Vote on a Grant on Chase Mission Main Street Grants?

Chase Mission Main Street Grants

Okay my blog readers, 

Rarely do I post anything that asks you to go vote for something... but as an aspiring writer, I saw this grant request and it tugged at my heart strings.

Won't you go vote for this grant, pretty please! With cherries on top? Or Liquor? I really like kahlua. Actually, kahlua and cherries sound delicious right now.

Sorry, back to the topic... Here is a note from the creator of this mission, copied and pasted from the facebook post.

This has been the most technologically screwed up voting system ever for this contest... about 1/4 of the time it goes to the front page instead of to the TTM page. If that happens to you, simply type TTM, LLC in the search box and it will find us! So sorry for the inconvenience on this! 

Chase Mission Main Street Grants: "Bite-sized portions of tasty fiction to whet a reading appetite. Our mission is to help launch writing careers and provide quality reading."

Okay, now run over there and vote! It's free and takes only a couple clicks of your time.

'via Blog this'

Reply to Food Stamps Challenge Comment

I had a reply to my Food Stamps Challenge post that I wanted to reply to but, it was written by Anonymous with no way of of me responding to the person directly. So I am responding in this post. The comment said:

My husband and I eat for approx $50 each week, and we are not on food stamps. We eat very well.We eat meat everyday.We don't have a garden or chickens.We don't go 'grocery shopping' we go hunting for bargains, specials,and reduced food. We don't plan our meals in advance, but instead base our meals on the food we are able to obtain, and fill in our grocery list with required ingredients.We substitute whenever possible.We make our bread in a bread machine for pennies.We make a lot of food from scratch. We buy a lot of whole chickens and have the first couple of meals as roast dinners, then a simmersauce and rice meal,sandwiches, and then finally we make a soup with the carcass (this last for days). A roast pork will do the same thing. Cheap steak/pork makes a great stew. Add dumplings.Buy fruit/vegs in season. The best thing you can have is a positive attitude. Don't see it as derivation, but as a first step to gather control of your life.

I'll respond to each part to make it easier to follow along.

My husband and I eat for approx $50 each week, and we are not on food stamps. We eat very well.We eat meat everyday.

Wow! I would love to see your menu to see if it is something that would work for someone with extreme allergies. I am very curious as to what you eat. If you would be okay sharing, I would love to see it.

 We don't have a garden or chickens.We don't go 'grocery shopping' we go hunting for bargains, specials, and reduced food.

 We don't have a garden or chickens either. We live in a small town and the grocery prices here are astronomical! I usually drive out of town to get better deals and make our money stretch further. The bargains here aren't really bargains at all. 

The biggest problem I have in shopping for sales is that we are allergic to so many foods. I can't pick the cheapest spaghetti sauce if it's going to send us into anaphylaxis or an angioedema attack. I have to buy specific brands. Other foods have to be gluten-free and gluten-free foods tend to be VERY expensive.

Once you start avoiding corn, wheat, peanuts, soy, and eggs, the food you can buy already processed is very limited and very pricey. Add in all our other allergens and you are left making a lot of things from scratch. That sounds like it would be cheaper, but most of our flours and other foods are "specialty" foods. Companies know that they can jack the price of those foods through the roof, and they do! 

For example, one 16 ounce bag of garbanzo bean flour here is $4 a bag. Compare that to a large 5 pound bag of wheat flour that is about $3. The wheat flour stretches very far and can make a ton of tortilla's while my little bag of garbanzo bean flour can't make a lot of tortillas at all. Maybe 30 tortillas, at most.

We also don't buy canned foods because they are too high in salt and we're on a lower sodium (oldest son) and low sodium diet (me). 

Plus, the salad dressing I buy, the ONLY one I can have, is $3.99 to $4.99 for an 8 ounce bottle. The price of one serving is easily 2 to 3 times more than other salad dressings.

These are just a few examples. It's just not as easy as some may think when it comes to shopping with food allergies. 

We don't plan our meals in advance, but instead base our meals on the food we are able to obtain, and fill in our grocery list with required ingredients.

We do something similar. Although we buy the chicken we can eat without getting sick all at one time each month. It just doesn't go on sale. Ever. But we do look at what we have and make meals with what we have in the pantry/ fridge/ deep freezer. We do plan an occasional "special" meal, like for birthdays, holidays, and family visits. But mostly we just make sure we have the basics and go from there.

We substitute whenever possible.

We substitute a lot of our foods because of our allergies. Eggs get substituted for flax meal or bananas; Cow milk is substituted with coconut milk (which is expensive!); wheat flour is substituted with rice flour, garbanzo bean flour, sorghum flour, arrowroot starch, or buckwheat flour (depending on the recipe).

We make our bread in a bread machine for pennies.

If we could eat wheat flour bread, I would be right there with you! But, we can't. So our bread is either homemade biscuit style or Franz Gluten-free bread. Unless we can use a tortilla, then I make homemade tortillas. 

We make a lot of food from scratch

I'd say that 99% of our food is made from scratch. We don't have much of a choice.

We buy a lot of whole chickens and have the first couple of meals as roast dinners, then a simmersauce and rice meal,sandwiches, and then finally we make a soup with the carcass (this last for days). 

We eat whole chicken too! A whole chicken, between the three of us, is a meal. There are no leftovers LOL. Since we can't eat the legs or wings, we pick those off for the cats. It works out quite well. Although I don't buy whole chicken often though. The whole chicken I have bought here freezes well. But once it is thawed, it REEKS! So I opt to buy the Costco sized bag of chicken tenderloin.

A roast pork will do the same thing. Cheap steak/pork makes a great stew. 

We don't do pork roast. I am allergic. I don't want to die. I also can't buy cheap meats as they are corn fed. I have to buy grass-fed beef which is considerably more expensive. Because of our live disease, any meat we eat needs to me as low fat as we can get. I usually buy ground beef at 4-6% fat content. That is quite pricey!

Add dumplings.

We can't have dumplings. I haven't found a good dumping recipe that doesn't have wheat. But I am open to suggestions!

Buy fruit/vegs in season

We do, but they are still very pricey. One apple here costs $2 by itself. On pear was $1.89 the other day. While I love fresh fruits and veggies, they are limited as they cost a lot.

The best thing you can have is a positive attitude. 

I do have a positive attitude when it comes to food. I actually love eating a lot of different foods. Having food allergies has taught me to enjoy a lot in life and has helped me be healthier than I have ever been in my entire life! Life, and food, is good to me.

Don't see it as derivation, but as a first step to gather control of your life.

Did you mean "deprivation"? I certainly don't see this as a deprivation and I don't quite understand what you mean by "a first step to gather control of your life." But it sounds good. 

I don't feel deprived. I do have more food income that isn't just food stamps, as food stamps is meant to be SUPPLEMENTAL, not your only food income. It's even part of the programs name, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (AKA SNAP). 

This was, after all, a challenge. This wasn't something I was planning on doing long term. I would end up with serious health issues if I did. I only did it for a week to see how it would be to live on that little amount, with all our allergies and, without leaving this small town/ big food prices area.

I limited myself a lot by doing that. Usually I can leave town. Usually I can buy food cheaper. But for that one week, my food prices were 2 to 3 times more than what they usually are. If I planned this again, I would plan on being able to leave town so I could eat better. The reason I chose to stay put for the week was because most people on food stamps can't leave because they can't afford it.

Please don't think I am being difficult. If you would like to try one week on my diet, I would be happy to share my allergy list with you so you can attempt it on $50 a week. I would be thrilled to see if someone can do it.

Your points are great for other people with your lifestyle. But they don't work for people with extreme allergies and celiac disease. I posted the comment in full so that hopefully someone else can use the information to help themselves.

Thank you so much for replying to the blog. I am really excited about seeing your menu plan. If you don't mind, I can post it so others con use it for ideas of what to make on a lower food budget. I would love to get some ideas for us as well. So please, feel free to email me with it. If you don't mind. I won't use your name on the blog if you don't want me to.

Fall is in the Air! The Leaves are Turning Colors! OH YES!

I am so excited! Fall is finally in the air and the leaves are turning beautiful colors. I was outside with the girls and Nikky, playing in the leaves and I took some fun pictures to share with everyone.

Here is a brightly colored tree on my street. I took this one to show the kids when they get home from their trip, just in case all the leaves have fallen.

Here it is next to all the other colorful trees. Isn't it BEAUTIFUL!?

Nikky and the kids racked the leaves into a big pile so we could fill bags our landlords bought. Of course, you can't just fill the bags without...

JUMPING in them first! WOOHOO!

Nikky crawled into the leaf pile too and they had a leave attack! It was so much fun!

Here is an awesome picture of Nikky! Love the hair, girl! Love the hair!

And then the kids buried her in leaves MWAHAHAHAHA!

But popped out long enough for smooches on the cheek! Awwww, they are adorable!

I managed to get this wonderful picture of all three of them in the leaf pile.

OMG! Where did they go?

Of course, I had to get in on the fun too! I ended up being leaf attacked by GIRLS!

And dogpiled. They totally dogpiled me... and tickled me!

I made it out alive, if not a little leafy LOL

Then we got to the part we actually raked the leaves for... filling the bags! Linny wanted to fill them all by herself! she did a great job!

The sun was starting to set by then and I got this awesome picture of the evening sky!

And finally... we have pumpkin bags for decoration! 

Aren't they cute!

I'm a Writer! Not a Beautician!

First, before I start, in my defense, I am not a beautician! I am a writer, a blogger, an author... see a pattern emerging? I can describe things and explain things in ways you never imagined. But ask me to style hair and you might end up with something like this...

Because the extent of my hair expertise as a mom with boys is, take clippers, add attachment, turn on clippers, run through hair.

That being said, my friend asked me to try to give her a pixie cut. I googled how to do a pixie cut, speed-read through the directions, and I was set!

Here is her before picture so you can see how lovely her hair is :)

It's a little blurry, but you can see her beautiful locks falling gently onto her shoulders and flowing calmly, framing her face like a well made picture frame. SEE! Writer!

Now before I show you the after picture, let me defend myself by saying, she knew better! I have done her hair before. This is the fourth time and the first three weren't that wonderful!

Let's see, the first time I dyed her hair and well, it wasn't very nice looking when I got done. We'll leave it at that.

The next time, I bleached her hair. I am not sure how to bleach hair so I followed the directions (for the most part) and wrapped it like it said (or close to it) and waited the allotted amount of time (give or take a 1/2 hour). She ended up with some bleached spots, some orange spots, and a few red spots here and there sprinkled throughout her hair. She went to a salon to get it fixed correctly.

The last time I did her hair, I was giving her a perm. If ever you need a perm, I am NOT the person you should ask. NEVER ask a person with A.D.D. to come perm your hair when you have an interesting TV show on. I followed the directions (kind of) and then started timing. 30 minutes, three hours... they both have a 3 in them, right? Then I had her wash her hair out. I laugh maniacally when I say that, because, LITERALLY, she washed her hair out. As in, it fell out in clumps. To this day she still has a bald spot from my A.D.D. perm timer.

And STILL, she asked me to give her a pixie cut. So with all my hair cutting knowledge, that goes something like this: Hold scissors in one hand, hold hair in other hand, start cutting until it looks like the picture... I started cutting the cutest pixie cut ever!

Although her hair didn't turn out like what I was picturing in my head. Instead, this is her after photo...

I am off to make her some hats now. I think I owe her that much. Hey, it's hair... it'll grow out! Right? Right?

I am fat and okay with that!

I was browsing the web looking for an idea to blog about that fits with “home, health, happiness, family, friendship, and fun”, when I found The Nearsighted Owl.

Her post that made me stop and smile has a picture of her naked, holding a drawing that makes it look like she is holding her chest cavity open. On the picture it says:

THERE IS NOT A THIN PERSON TRAPPED INSIDE OF ME!

I gave her a round of applause in my head. BRAVO you brave fat chick! I love it!

I love it because I have always been fat. People try to lecture me on how to lose weight, how to get thin, how to eat less and exercise more, and on and on…

1) I know how to lose weight, thankyouverymuch.

2) I don’t want to be “thin”. I want to be HEALTHY.

3) If I eat any less than I do, my body would kick into starvation mode!

4) I do exercise. Just because I am not jogging a marathon, or hiking up the sides of mountains, or lifting weights, or bench-pressing baby elephants, doesn’t mean that my exercise is less significant than yours.

I am fat. I always have been. I probably always will be. But, more importantly, I am happy with myself as I am. If you have an issue with my weight, that is your problem, not mine.

You can’t tell me you would love me if I weighed less, wore dress size [insert your desired number here], or anything else like that.

You all can love me at 300 pounds or not at all. It doesn’t matter to me. Why? Because I am not looking for outward approval. I am not living my life with the intent of getting every one else’s approval. I am happy with the skin I am in. You don’t have to live in my body. I DO! And that is all that matters to me.

Seeing this fat chick so proud of being who she is, made me feel even better about myself.

I don’t want to be some skinny girl that shoots into orbit in a stiff wind. I want to be myself. Extra weight and all. If I lose the weight, well, it’s not because I am trying. I was over that years ago!

Dotchi… happily 212 pounds and still eating cinnamon toast for breakfast.

No, you don’t understand (The Food Stamp Challenge) | justperry

I read this and nodded through all of it. You are right, they don't understand. This blogger summed up exactly what I have thought and haven't been able to put into words.

No, you don’t understand (The Food Stamp Challenge) | justperry:

'via Blog this'

Working from Home... Any more ideas out there?

Between my back injury and my allergies, I have found it impossible to find a job where I can work outside of my home. I am a work at home mom instead. 

While I love working at home and having my own schedule, I find that it's either feast or famine when it comes to income. Either I have enough income and I am doing pretty okay or I have absolutely NONE for the month. This last month was the latter. 

I am selling homemade items on Etsy, selling things on eBay, writing this blog and starting another one, and working on a book that I hope to publish soon.

I can't really think of anything else I can do from home. So I am turning to my readers to see what you do. 

Do you work at home? What do you do? If you don't work at home, what would you do if you had the chance to start working at home?

Another Food Stamps Challenge to Watch

My friend, Michy, is also doing the Food Stamps (SNAP) challenge! Only she is a lot braver than I am and she is doing the whole month of October. 

She allowing herself to a little more per day because Food Stamps (SNAP) is supposed to be SUPPLEMENTAL, not the only food budget you have. The name even states that. 

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. (I hope I have that right)

She isn't allergic to half the planet so her challenge will probably be easier for her and her family (I hope). But, since she has issues with GMO foods and foods containing high fructose corn syrup, none of the foods she prepares during the challenge will be GMO and HFCS free.

So far, the dishes she made today look awesome! I won't lie... I am a little jealous.

I will be following this all month long! I can't wait to see her dishes. The ones today looked AWESOME! I may have to alter a recipe or two to try them (because of allergies)

Food Stamps Challenge: Food Intake

After the Food Stamps Challenge, I sat down and input everything I ate into Sparkpeople’s food tracker to see how I did nutritionally. Here are my results.

Note: the "goals" for each one was set by my dietitian.

Calorie Deficient! Not once during the whole week did I get even close to hitting my low mark for calories. On my highest calorie day I was still 736 calories short of what my dietitian wants me to have.

Sodium was okay by this report but I didn’t add in the extra salt I added to my cabbage soup because I was craving it so badly! Even still, there were two days I didn’t get the recommended range of sodium. Three of those days, I had much more than I care to have on a personal level. I am finally able to lower my dose of Clonidine (for blood pressure and anxiety).

Carbohydrates were okay. If I were on a low carb diet, I would have loved this week. Three days I didn't reach my low mark of 50.

Fat was deficient. Only once did I reach above my low mark for fat intake.

Vitamin D was non-existent. Which may explain my tiredness all week. Nowhere in there did I get any Vitamin D at all. Although, this is a problem for me anyway. I have to take supplements for Vitamin D. But poor people can’t afford the vitamins they need. If I was working on feeding myself only on Food Stamps, I would have some serious health issues.

Fiber was deficient. My fiber intake for the week was lacking also. Not once did I hit the low range that my dietitian wants me to meet.

Food Stamps Challenge Thoughts

All in all, Michy was right! I was not getting enough nutrients for the week. Not enough calories, fat, vitamin D or Fiber.

Luckily, I do not survive each month on this kind of diet each month. Starting October 7th, I will be doing a week of what I really eat. I am still recovering from my Food Stamp Challenge.