A year has gone by.  Many things have transpired in my life and in my family's lives.  My Dad, who will be 87 this year, bought his first house.  My mom passed away 12 years ago and they never owned their own home.  He and my sister are sharing this new space.  One of my granddaughters is now driving a car and working part time.  (Where did the time go?  How did she grow up so fast?)  This is the first summer that I have not had ALL of the grandkids full time.  Two of them (brothers) stayed home by themselves.  One grandson was gone for a couple of weeks to his other grandparent's house in another state.  My granddaughter spent her time between working and going to different youth activities and conferences for church.  This year, she went to her normal Bible camp about 2 1/2 hours away, she went to Missouri for a youth function and to Oklahoma for a youth conference.  She has had a busy summer!  Hubby, who will be 65 in a few months, is back on the road working out of state (he's a plumber), working on a new school.  According to him, this job could take 1-2 years as it is more than just one school.  He comes home on the weekends.  So, during the week, it's one grandson and I rattling around in the house by ourselves. 

Our pool was not used as much as it has been in the past since the grandkids are growing up and they are not here like they used to be.  I still put in a garden but we had so much rain at the beginning of the season that a lot of my seeds and plants died out due to flooding.  Still, I did manage to can several pints of beans, shred a bunch of zucchini for the dehydrator, and canned several heads of cabbage.  Tomatoes are just starting to ripen.  The garden is PACKED FULL of really aggressive weeds this year.  It has been impossible to get rid of them.  They remind me of sin in our lives - how if we don't root them out early when they are small, they get a stronghold and are virtually indestructible.  They take over everything and choke off that which is good and destroys it.  They start out tiny and insignificant but very quickly, you realize you let it go too long and then you have a fight on your hands!   Now, I have to figure out how to get rid of them once the garden is finished for the season.  Like sin, if you get them early, you don't have to backtrack and try to fix all the problems.

As for myself, I still LONG to live in the mountains on a homestead, live off the grid, and be self-sufficient.  It's never going to happen, but it's still my dream.  It's been a weird season of life for me as well.  Grandkids are growing up and not needing me every day - which makes me sad.  Yet there is a part of me longing to do things for me for a change.  I would like to get back to my quilting and reading.  I'd like to have close friends and do things with them, but physically, there are barriers.  I long for peace and quiet - a restful solitude - but when I am alone, I kind of hate it because I don't have the chaos of the grandkids.  I know.  I'm weird.  At the same time, the world, in such terrible chaos, causes me to not want to plan too far ahead, if at all.  It makes me realize the importance of family and eternal things instead of the temporary.  Once, I would have wanted all the material things this world could offer, but I no longer care.  Perhaps God is helping me to let go - to hold on to things lightly because He has a far better plan.
  

Boy oh boy, I have neglected my blog!  Way too busy with grandkids, canning, dehydrating, and building a pantry.  Am I obsessed? Probably, but of course, lack of funds keeps a person from going "all out". 

I admire some of the preppers out there that seem to have everything together and enough food to feed the military.  Prepping is not what people think - preparing for the end of the world.  That's what television likes to portray in order to get viewers.  Prepping is more about building an emergency supply of food and personal needs in case of disaster.  That disaster could come in many forms - loss of a job, illness, weather disasters like tornados and hurricanes, etc.  I remember not that long ago, my husband lost his job.  He was without another one for two weeks.  One week, in my house, is like DISASTER!  About a year later, he lost his current job.  He was unemployed for three months!  There have been times when my grown children and spouses were without employment or were struggling due to some circumstance.  Thanks to my minor prepping, I was able to help out in the food department.  None of us starved.  As for us, we ended up cashing in my husband's 401K in order to keep the roof over our heads (and we don't live in a big fancy house either), and pay the utility bills.  But we had food!  Our pantry has definitely been depleted a few times.  I can remember back when our kids were younger and money was very tight.  We literally had nothing to eat except through the help of my mom and dad and my sister.  So for me, prepping is crucial.  By doing a little bit when I can, it helps to build a small storage for not only my family, but anyone else in the family who may need it.  I don't spend money on clothes, shoes, purses, etc.  When I have a little money, I buy food.  When items are on sale, I will buy several.  I garden, and the produce from it gets dehydrated and stored, or canned.  I don't have a big garden.  I wish I did.  Physically though for me, even a small one is almost too much work (arthritis and getting older!)

Recently, I became interested in meals in a jar.  This is where you make a meal up and store it in a mason jar or mylar bag for future use.  Very handy when your schedules keep you on the run.  Stored "meals" must be made up of dehydrated or freeze dried food.  You can purchase dehydrated and freeze dried food from multiple sources.  If you have a dehydrator, you can dehydrate produce (veggies and fruit) and use those in your meals.  I always watch for when one of grocery stores carry frozen veggies for $1.00 a pound.  When they do, I stock up.  I usually by 10 bags each of corn, green beans, peas, mixed veggies.  Then I dehydrate them. Stored properly with oxygen absorbers, vacuum seal bags, and mylar bags, things you dehydrate will last 30 years, as long as you keep them away from moisture, light, and air.

Another thing for me is the GMO (genetically modified organisms) food.  Nearly everything you purchase in the store is GMO.  This stuff is POISON!    Meats and poultry have been tampered with as well.  Fish is unsafe to eat because of the mercury levels in the fish.  Organic is the best and really the only way to go.  However, I also realize that organic is expensive.  But then so are medical bills.  So, which do you choose?  For me, I would love it to be organic, but a gallon of organic milk is twice the cost of regular milk (and even milk has been tampered with).  So, I try to steer clear of what I can, and pray over the rest, asking God to sanctify it.

Would you like to have a pantry you can go to?  Start out a little at a time.  That's what I did.  When you buy a couple cans of corn at the store, buy an extra one or two.  Do whatever you can when you can and you will be surprised how quickly your pantry will build.  A little is better than nothing.  If you want to purchase dehydrated or freeze dried foods, there are several different web sites for this.  My personal favorite is Honeyville.  I buy my oxygen absorbers and mylar bags from Amazon.  Go to rummage sales and look for canning jars.  You can even use empty glass mayonnaise jars for storing dehydrated foods or meals in jars.  You cannot use those for canning though.  For canning, you must have a Ball or Kerr mason jar.

Enough of my ranting today.  I will try to get better about blogging and putting up pics as I go.  Hope this gives you some ideas!

Wow, Am I Behind!

I just looked at my blog.  To say I am behind is an understatment.  So many things have happened that there is no way that I can begin to even list them.  At the same time, I need to ask myself, "how do I want to go forward with this blog?"  Do I want to work on quilts since that is part of my blog name?  Do I want to work on issues of emergency preparedness, canning, gardening?  Well, since the title does have the word "scrapbag" in it, it means that since I am a quilter, my blogs should reflect a "scrapbag" of information.  I have been doing that all along.  However, I am going to start adding a bit more interest so I hope you follow me on this journey.  Welcome aboard!  (New posts will soon follow).

Emergency Preparedness

I am a firm believer in emergency preparedness - whether it be storms, power outages, or civil unrest and inflation. I never used to be until I happened on a you tube video one day. I watched every video by this lady and went to her web site as well. I was hooked. My dad bought me a dehydrator and I love it. It's not one of those you just buy in the store. A GOOD dehydrator will have a fan on the back side of the unit. Most dehydrators in the store may or may not have a fan and if they do, they are in the bottom of the unit where only the bottom couple of trays get the benefit. Mine also has a temperature control and timer. My problem is having enough money to dehydrate as much food as I would like. In these very uncertain and precarious times that we are living in, I know how important it is to have as much stored up in a pantry as you can get for your family, and then even more to help out other members of your family who are not living with you. Not only do we need to dehydrate food, but also build a pantry which pretty much stores everything you use on a daily basis or during the year. This includes soaps, deodorant, garbage bags, toilet paper, etc. etc. And the list goes on and on and on. There are many good videos on you tube about emergency preparedness. There are also some very good blogs out there. The LDS-ers are famous for food storage and preparedness and have an excellent web site that can be accessed for information on how much to store in your pantry. I don't know about anyone else, but I really don't have much room for a lot of storage. So that does create a problem. I know most places recommend that you have enough for at least 3 - 6 months. Perhaps because if there is hyper-inflation, hopefully it won't last beyond the 6 months. Personally, I think it would be better to have a year's supply of everything. Most of us live from pay check to pay check so this is difficult to accomplish, but even if, whenever you go to the grocery store, you pick up a couple extras of this or that and put it in storage, eventually, that pantry will build up (as long as you don't use anything from it right away). The goal is to build a big enough pantry that you eat and use items from the pantry and whatever you use, you replace so that you don't run short of an item. I wish our grocery stores here where I live, would offer double coupons. That is a great way to save money. Unfortunately, my state doesn't have any stores that do. This week, I purchased 4 cases of bottled water to put into storage. Now, if my family would just stay out of it. I cleaned and rearranged my pantry this morning and it was quite pitiful in comparison to what it used to be. I am constantly trying to work on it, but there are 4 of us in the house (3 of which are adults) and things go pretty quickly. And, when one of you loses their job, it makes it even harder. Still, if I hadn't been working on my pantry, it would have been much more difficult. At least I have plenty of corn still canned!

Reflections

Continuing on with the book I am reading, "Amish Peace" has really given me time for reflection as I read. It is an excellent book and will really make you stop and think about things as you read about the Amish way of life and how they view life in general. As I was sitting in the car waiting for my granddaughter to get out of school, several thoughts crossed my mind in regard to the world we live in today. Take for instance, letter writing vs email. I don't know about anyone else, but my hand cramps when I have to write for any length of time. So email is definitely easier because my fingers flying across the keyboard can keep up a lot faster with my thoughts. However, the downside to email is that it is no longer personal. When we write or receive a letter, we know that someone had to sit down and TAKE THE TIME to compose their thoughts and write them down on paper. I loved seeing my grandmother's handwriting on a letter she had written to me. She is gone now and I wish I had saved all those letters and cherished them. I could have gone back and re-read them and been able to see her face and picture her sitting in her chair, lovingly writing her thoughts to me. But I was too young to realize the preciousness of those letters. How about texting on a cell phone? Texting is great if you want to send someone a quick note when you or they cannot take a phone call. The down side is that not only are far too many accidents happening that are claiming lives from people texting while they are driving, we are losing touch with our friends and family. We don't need to hear their voices anymore. We have text messaging! How sad that we have succumbed to being satisfied to read a bunch of letters on a phone instead of listening to a voice. One day, that person may no longer be with you and you will never get to hear them again. Take the time, to TALK - not text. TV/Movies - we feel like we need to be continually entertained. What happened to family time? It's no wonder that our youth are roaming the streets or the internet, searching for someone who will pay attention to them. No one talks to each other anymore. We are all too busy. We fill our lives with busyness. Families don't sit at the table and enjoy a meal together or each other's company. Evenings are filled with sports, activities, and work. Kids (if they are at home) are barracaded in their rooms away from their families, either on the computer, listening to IPODS, or playing video games. There is no interaction between family members. Parents are over-worked, worn down from trying to make a living just so they can keep buying the next new thing that comes on the market. Not only do we not have time for our families, but where is time for God? Like our families, He has been placed on the back burner of our lives until we NEED Him to show up to help us or provide something we need (and in some cases, want). No time to spend with our children and families or friends. No time to spend fellowshiping with the Lord. We have all these time saving gadgets in our homes and garages, yet we have no more time. In fact, we have less. And with all those gadgets, we have lost the REAL joy of doing some of our tasks by hand because we are in too big of a hurry to get the job done. We don't know how to relax and enjoy the moment, the task, our family, our friends, or our Lord. We are a needy generation.