Girl Scouts Update

I'll tell you what: 20 girls can really keep a woman busy.  Managing two Girl Scout troops has been a challenge.  Scratch that... Managing two Girl Scout troops in a meaningful manner has been challenging.

A recent study showed that being a Girl Scout is an indicator for future success.  That's a pretty big deal in my eyes.  It means that my job as a troop leader can really make a difference in the lives of the girls in my troops.

So, I will continue to try to make our meetings meaningful, fun, and successful.  My goals for this Spring and Summer are to introduce the girls to where their food comes from by helping plant and tend a garden and help with the backyard chickens.  I hope to take them to a goat dairy farm and a horse boarding farm.  I want them to see food as an important part of their lives.  I also hope to get them active and involved in a healthy lifestyle.

To that end, I took Evelyn and Soren to a breast cancer awareness event sponsored by Girl Scouts and the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  They had tons of crafty activities set up for the girls to do.  They had breast cancer BINGO, and we learned a few facts about breast cancer and living a healthy lifestyle.  My co-leader brought her kids along, too, and the girls had a great time together.

I hope that next time you see a Girl Scout you think about the women of our future.  Each little step they take now is just one step closer to these girls becoming the moms, lawyers, nurses, city council members, teachers, doctors, and soldiers of tomorrow.  What beautiful women they can become!  Little girls with big dreams! 

Let Me Check My Schedule

The Vescapades calendar is filling up quickly. Colby is coaching Evelyn's soccer team (games and practices on Saturdays). He is also coaching Brody's football team (practices on Wednesday; games on Sunday).  Spring concerts. Trips to the eye doctor. Tickets to arena football games and American Idiot.  Yoga. Play dates.  Birthdays.  Easter.  Girl Scouts.

Yikes.

Colby started work on the chicken coop. We still have to squeeze in some time to go pick up our chickens. A garden will need to be planned and planted.

All of these problems are good problems to have. They aren't even problems, really, just a juggling act. Lucky for me, I am a domestic jester and learned to juggle years ago. I can even squeeze in some coffee time with friends between yoga and housework.

Ah, the sweet, but busy, life.

DIY Hand Soap

We go through a lot of soap in the Vescapades house, soap and toilet paper. I can't make my own toilet paper (although we do live about 2 blocks from a corn field...Haha), but I can make my own hand soap. For about $3.50 I can make a gallon of hand soap using my favorite bars of Ayurvedic soap. It's so easy I can whip up a batch in the morning before school and pour it into bottles before bedtime (it has to set for 10-12 hours).

I followed the tutorial on this blog. A few notes about this soap: it has the consistency of snot. So, as you pour it into bottles you might need to squish it between your fingers to break up the soft "chunks" of soap. A funnel is a valuable tool at the bottle-filling stage. Also, you can grate the bar of soap by hand, but I use a food processor.

If you are trying to be funny, you can tell the kids when they ask what you are cooking that they are having soap for supper. Yum yum.

A Few More Favorite Things

There is always room on my blog to promote my favorite things.  I hope that by sharing them with you, you might find a new favorite for yourself!!

First of all, before I get started, HAPPY BIRTH DAY to little Bennett Hoss! He came into the world today welcomed by his brothers and sister and mom and dad...who just happen to be some of our best friends. We can't wait to show him some Vescapades love! You might remember the Hoss family from an earlier post where we shared our supper table with a bottle of whiskey and a box of bullets. God bless 'Merica! Seriously, though, wishing the Hoss family many happy days (and sleepless nights) with little Bennett.

That aside, my first favorite thing will quickly become a summer favorite around here: frozen Greek yogurt with honey and caramel. I like this product because the ingredient list is free of corn syrup. Also, if my 4th grader can easily read all the ingredients, then I trust that most of them can't be so bad. Have you tried to read some of these food labels? It's like reading a foreign language of chemicals or preservatives or whatever. It is also really tasty! And it just happens to come in these handy single-serving pints. Haha.



My next new favorite is a homemade lotion/salve that I found on this blog. It is really simple to make, pretty inexpensive, and smells lovely. Coconut oil is only $5.99 at Trader Joe's if you have one nearby. Most other stores charge $9-12 for the same thing. I order my beeswax pellets from Amazon, but I am sure you can find them in a store. I highly recommend using the doTerra essential oils. However, they are really expensive, and I use the NOW brand with great success. I hope to start my own doTerra essential oil collection soon. It will definitely take a little saving considering that some of the oils are $40. Yikes.



Babies, frozen yogurt, and all-purpose moisturizer? Sounds like I've got quite a few new favorites to enjoy!!

More Pinterest Adventures

I think it is my duty to try a whole bunch of Pinterest projects, review how they work, and then pass the info on to those of you who have actual lives. Ha.

Two rolls of toilet paper do, indeed, fit into an empty oats container just like Pinterest said. I just covered the oats container in a piece of card stock and voila!



Another idea I saw on Pinterest that struck my fancy is framing family recipes. I have a few hand-written recipes from Colby's grandmother, including one for the world's best peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (modified by me to use butter instead of margarine). I found some cute frames on sale, used some scrapbook paper as a background, and had my handy hubby pound a few nails for me. He hates it when I pound nails; he has little faith in my ability do the job right. Frankly, he's right, so he is the official picture hanger of the house.



My next Pinterest project? I'm not sure. Stay tuned for more Pinterest adventures!

Cat in a Box

The kittens have a new favorite box.  When they were small they could hide from the kids by squeezing under a chair or table or couch.  Since they are fat grown, they had trouble finding a place of refuge. Now, they have their box, and all is right with the world.



The kittens turn one year old on March 22, so they will officially not be kittens anymore. Hey, they survived their first 10 months in the Vescapades house. That's a pretty great achievement.

I Think It's Working

Influenza A invaded our home, knocking Brody and Soren out for two days.  Colby was hit the hardest; he missed four days of work.  Luckily, his new employer has a culture of putting the employee first, so they were really great about giving him the time off.  Evelyn, Dade, and I avoided the sickness, and I have two theories as to why:

Theory 1: Dade and Evelyn generally avoid direct contact with their brothers and sisters. They are affectionate with me but no so much with the other members of our family. In fact, I'm pretty sure even though Evie and Soren share a bedroom (or maybe because they share a room), they try to stay apart as much as possible.

Theory 2: I have constant contact with everyone in the family, including lots of kisses with those infected with the virus. Soren drinks out of my cup all.the.time without telling me. So, why didn't I get sick? I didn't get a flu shot, that's for sure. Me+needle = hell to the no. What I do is yoga. What I do is eat a balanced diet. What I do is use essential oils and supplements to help keep my body strong. I think that this time at least it helped me avoid getting sick. I swear that since I started doing yoga, I get sick measurably less than I did before. If I do get sick, the illness is less intense. Maybe I just got lucky, who knows? I work at a gym (one of the germiest places you'll visit), and I manage to avoid most of the plagues going around.

So, next flu season if you choose not to get a flu shot, I have two suggestions to help you avoid getting sick: do yoga or avoid as many people as possible. Words to live by.

Healthy Body Challenge Update

Having committed myself to changing what types of things I put on my body as well as in my body, I have been trying lots of homemade cleaning products.  After a few months, I have pretty much figured out what I like and what I miss.

Here's what chemical-laden products I think I'll miss:
fabric softener (the natural stuff just isn't the same)
hair conditioner (I actually couldn't give it up...I just bought some sulfate free stuff)
hair dye (seriously, I want to color my hair so badly!!!)
perfume (Chanel #5, once you are all gone I will miss you terribly)

Here are some all-natural replacements I LOVE:
hand sanitizer (aloe vera gel, witch hazel, and lavender oil...that's it!)
Shampoo, body wash, hand soap (Castile soap is great!)
Glass cleaner (water, vinegar, alcohol, and corn starch)
"Clorox wipes"...I love my natural version so much I am sharing the recipe!
Eucalyptus oil in the toilet before going #2 (no smell, I swear!)

As promised, here's the recipe for the all natural disinfectant wipes:

So, the photo is sideways, but you can still read the recipe. I like to put the recipe for my cleaners right on the container. It's a great way to save time. Open up the container, and on the inside are old t-shirts cut up into washcloth-sized scraps. If you have some old, light-colored t-shirts laying around, here's a chance to use them. You can toss the used cloths right into a load of laundry.



Tea tree oil and vinegar have become my new best friends. They kill all kinds of germs and viruses and even fungus, and they don't wreak havoc on your skin. The kids don't really like the smell, but they are used to the artificial smell from chemical cleansers. I happen to like the smell, but I appreciate the health benefits more than the scent.

My next voyage into a healthier body is a 6-pack abs challenge I found on Pinterest. It involves doing an increasingly difficult number of push ups, sit ups, and planks each day in March. I'll let you know how that 6-pack is coming along.

Adventures in Old School Cooking

So, one day as I was scanning through a library book of recipes from the 1950s and 1960s, I came across this gem involving canned pineapple and Jello. I was amazed at all the Jello recipes! I think they figured out a way to put Jello in everything...they even had a ham glaze!

Anyway, the recipe was simple enough: choose a flavor of Jello (I had lime on hand), mix the package with only the one cup of boiling water, and then dump it into a drained can of pineapple rings. Easy peasy. Put it in the fridge until it's Jello-ified.



Once it was solid, we took it out of the fridge and set the can in some warm water. Here's a good tip: to get the Jello mold to slide right out of the can, open the BOTTOM end of the pineapple can...it is wider!!



Once you have it out of the can, you cut cut the Jello into slices. That's it!



I felt just like a 1950s housewife serving my Jello dish to my family. Unfortunately, they were not impressed. Actually, none of them liked it. I ended up eating the whole thing. Oh well.