Tag Archives: make-your-own

How To Be A Crunchy Gym Rat

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Okay, so it’s no secret that I adore the YMCA. I like to lift weights, need a place to run when there isn’t daylight or heat during my slotted running hours, and I have designs on taking a yoga class one of these days with a friend of mine.

I also take my children there for gymnastics, rock climbing lessons and swimming classes. In the past, we have also participated in Kid Fit, tae kwan do, dance lessons and water polo during other sessions at the Y.

In fact, since we began homeschooling, the YMCA has been a steady and important part of our weekly pattern.

This past summer, I went to a whole new level of crunchy. I started using beauty and hygiene products with the lowest possible ratings from the Environmental Working Group’s data base. This was similar to the transition we made away from convenience foods in the past. It seems crazy and impossible at first; it sounded suspiciously like everything was going to be more difficult and take more time. As it turned out, none of that is true, it simply took some adjusting. Here are some ways I have combined these two parts of my life:

I still wash my hair with baking soda and condition with a white vinegar rinse. I take the baking soda in a ziplock bag. When I get out of the pool (oh yeah – I’m taking swimming lessons now too. And wow it is going to take a long time to make a swimmer out of me, but hopefully my knees will thank me eventually.) I hop in the shower with my baggie and dribble just a bit of water into it. I use the paste to rub on my face like a mask – it has been amazing in terms of minimizing my pores and reducing my acne. Then I fill the bag half full of water. I seal it and shake it up, then pour over and scrub my hair. I bring the vinegar in an old, empty shampoo bottle which allows a great deal of control over how much I’m squirting over my head at one time.

I bring my ZUM goats-milk soap in a little old tupperware.

All the chlorine is doing new and interesting things with my skin, so I have found a lotion we like (Hugo Naturals) and slather it on before dressing.

I would love to experiment with using oils for moisturizer – does anyone hanging around here reading this have experience in this department? Angela? Delena? Maureen?

Crunchy gym rats also like a good breakfast, so I’ve been taking a banana along to eat on the way there. When I get home I have a little bowl of oatmeal made with coconut milk, which really powers me through a morning of homeschool.

Are you exercising right now? What great routines do you use to combine practical beauty and staying fit?

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My apologies…

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I realize I have been neglecting this space, and as such, neglecting you as well, dear reader.

We have been plagued this last six weeks with various illnesses (bronchitis for me, strep and regular old colds for the rest) that always come with autumn allergies and the evil sugar season (Halloween through New Years!).

But the real reason I’ve been posting less is because I’ve been cheating on this blog – my online time has been dedicated to instagram a little, but mostly to Pinterest. Have you discovered Pinterest?

It. Is. Killing. Me.

It is similar to falling in love. Like when I met My Farmer. I just cannot get enough. Every time we are together, I am completely unaware of time or space, so intensely am I focused on the present moment. When we are apart, I am thinking about the next time we can be together, and as much as possible of what I’m doing is focused on this relationship. I can’t sleep for thinking about it. When I wake up, it’s the first thing on my mind.

Here are the things I’ve been doing in real life, all of which came directly from my sordid affair with Pinterest:

I made a chocolate cake in which the main ingredient is beans. The children loved it.

I did my hair with 40′s flair and 60s style.

I created a refreshing, antioxidant-packed beverage.

I properly applied “smoky” eye makeup.

I cleaned my jewelry.

I hard boiled eggs in the oven. (I know. Mind blowing.)

I made a headband around little cowgirls hair with a braid of her hair. SWANK!

I baked healthy cookies that included fresh ginger and a banana.

I drank seventeen-ish new smoothie recipes.

I renewed my desire to be a hoarder because of all the crafty crap people make by up-cycling things. (Philosophical Crisis!)

I made five minute bread that actually took about an hour because I measured something wrong.

I transformed dried beans into something amazing and wonderful via that magical kitchen device they call a crock-pot.

I went to the grocery store and didn’t have room in my cart for all the things I wanted to use for Pinteresty ideas and recipes on top of what we actually needed.

I told a friend of mine it’s like having access to every issue of every magazine you ever loved for all time. Let me know if you are on Pinterest and I’m not following you – I’d love to! I’m sure there is something awesome you are doing that I should be trying!

Otherwise, if you need me I’ll be on Pinterest or in the kitchen.

Pioneer Day, Part #2

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We spent a lot of our time traveling in our covered wagon when we began our pioneer day. We are fortunate to have acres of virgin pasture behind our home, so besides opening and closing a couple of gates (and the fact that our animal had a motor) it felt pretty authentic. I, for one, had a wonderful time except that I did not enjoy tramping through tall grasses in my pioneer dress. Those weed seeds are not comfortable when stuck to ones stockings.

We stopped at the old water pump next to the pond, and (pretended to) fill a bucket for the animals.

As I try to do as much as possible in our homeschool (despite my tendency toward being a control freak) I let the children choose the route, the activities and the timeline of our journey. I did, however, make it very clear that if they ran out of gas they were on their own in hauling a gas can down to the pasture. (They watched the tank pretty carefully after that declaration.)

It was a perfect, beautiful morning.

We drove – I mean traveled – all over the place, changing our route to get around ravines, muddy patches, thorns.

I was so glad to have saved this costume my mom (an incredible seamstress – she made my wedding dress as well) made for me to wear during a play in high school. Little Cowgirl and I sewed the rest of our costumes, which is saying A LOT considering the fact that I don’t really sew (mostly because I don’t really know how).

Shooter and Farmer Boy were much less into their costumes – but I know they felt very ‘pioneer.’

After an hour and change months of traveling, we reached the perfect place to homestead. We unloaded our wagon, built a temporary shelter out of our canvas (ahem, sheet) cover, and got to work.

The young men took turns plowing the field,

and raking up hay to feed the lawnmower and stick horses animals over the winter.

Little Cowgirl got to work on gathering burning materials for the fire and cleaning potatoes for lunch.

We boiled potatoes from our garden, then added chunks of ham and cracked in a few eggs.

We ate in the grass and wiped our plates in buckets of water drawn from the sink in the utility room well.

Then, we harvested our REAL LIFE patch of sweet potatoes so we would have some root vegetables to get us through the winter. Cowgirl clipped the vines for us.

As an aside, this is the third year I have attempted to grow sweet potatoes and the first year I’ve had any success at all. I think this year makes up for the two years of failures.

If I were a county fair sort of person, that purple ribbon would be mine, em effers. That is all.

After the harvest, mommy was pretty much D.O.N.E. with pioneer day, so she took a long, hot shower and sat down at her macbook. (insert contented sigh) My young pioneers, however, had so much fun they decided to sleep outside without a modern tent. The littler one made it until she could hear the coyotes. The biggest one came in when it started to thunder at around 3:00 am.

But the next morning, they were back outside immediately. Everyone wished pioneer day could last forever.

This is still not the end, one more installment of homeschool pioneer days is yet to come!

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Pioneer Day, Part #1

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To close out our study of westward expansion, we had a pioneer day last week.

For those of you unfamiliar with my specialized educational vocabulary, that means we pretended to be pioneers all day long.

This wasn’t a part of our planned curriculum, it was an idea that evolved on its own during our history studies.

We talked about having a pioneer day many times during our first weeks of school. It came up often during some of our ‘extracurricular’ studies about what pioneers ate, how they traveled, what they did each day. The children kept saying it would be fun to try some of these things. Because we are used to the flexibility homeschooling gives us, we never really picked specific day once we hatched our plan, we just kept preparing a few things here and there and once we had everything we wanted ready we checked the weather forecast and dropped our finger on the most beautiful day of the week.

Little Cowgirl is helping cut the pieces for her pioneer sun bonnet.

We made a pioneer dress and sunbonnet for Little Cowgirl (here is the bonnet pattern we used), the boys spent a lot of time deciding whether they were going as pioneers, mountain men or indians. In the end, they chose to be pioneers, which worked out well because they built us an awesome covered wagon.

The afternoon before pioneer day they disappeared outside. When I stepped out to check on them, I found they’d built a frame onto one of the lawn mower trailers. They even attached some baling twine ‘reigns’ to the back of the mower seat.

We planned what foods we would be eating and gathered up supplies.

Our supplies included great-grandmother’s egg basket, corn stalks for burning in a fire pit, and old pans for cooking over the fire.

Each child has suggestions for how our day would work. The boys were very focused on the mechanics of the day; what we would bring, what our route would be, what work each person would do. Cowgirl spent lots of time thinking about the story-telling end of our game; who her character was and how each thing that happened was going to effect the plot of her imaginary day. She asked to be an orphan we found along our journey, explaining that her family had died of illness (she said small pox) and that all she had were two pots. The boys thought it would be great to pretend our pots had fallen out of the wagon during a river crossing.

We rose with the sun to put on our attire, load our wagon and head off onto the great trail of history.

We adopted a girl who had been orphaned on her journey west, and were so thankful she had some pots.

We ate cold johnny cakes for breakfast and I followed the wagon as the boys steered it back into the pastures behind our house. We sang patriotic songs and hymns while we traveled and we talked about the months of journeying we had done to reach this point.

Our single-wagon train.

Stay tuned…more details (read as: pictures) from our pioneer day adventure still to come.

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Notebooking: Our First Try

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Here is a video in which I talk for FAR too long about our first round of notebooking this year ever. I guess you should get a beverage of your choice first because it is seriously longer than I’d intended, but I just love to talk. Sorry about that. Also, I have no idea why the sound gets off-time, but I could see it happening AS I was making the video and have no time idea how to fix it. It catches back up at the end. SO irritating and unprofessional (like me in real life!).

Notebooking: our first try from Closeenoughblog on Vimeo.

The links I talked about in the video are here:

How to make a notebook, the tutorial

The Notebooking Fairy

I didn’t mention (but also like) Notebooking Pages. I did purchase a package deal that included an ebook from the Notebooking Fairy and a basic membership. It may not be as useful with out the membership, and I’m certainly not going to say you need either one in order to notebook (though it only cost me $10).

Do you think notebooking is something your family would have fun with?

What Works Wednesday

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I’m linking up again today with Heather over at Upside Down Homeschooling for What Works Wednesday.

Here is the most recent household tip that has really been working for me: A new laundry soap recipe!

A couple of years ago, I started making my own laundry soap. It was kind of a process, though not difficult, and I blogged about it. I was really happy with it for a while, but then my whites started looking really dingy and all my laundry was holding onto an odd sour smell. I didn’t update because I was looking for something else. Then it was just sad when I didn’t find anything that worked for me. So I was back to store laundry soap and I really didn’t want to blog about that. Even more sad.

Enter my friend Maria discussing crunchy hair with me and voila, She gave me a new laundry soap recipe. She found it somewhere on the internet and it is ALL OVER out there, but she gave it to me with out a site credit, so I’m just taking the lazy way and crediting her for it.

Easy Liquid Laundry Soap

Boil 4 cups water (I use a large glass measuring cup and put it in the microwave).
Stir in
– 3 TBSP Borox
– 3 TBSP Washing Soda
– 2 TBSP dishwashing liquid (the kind you put in the sink, NOT the kind you put in the dishwasher)

Let sit until cool. Pour into a gallon jug and fill remaining space with cold water, allowing suds to run out over the top.

Use about 1/2 cup for a very large or very dirty load.

We have very dirty loads OFTEN at our house

Although they are typically from farming, not running.

I have been using this homemade laundry detergent for months now and I am so pleased. All the clothing smells wonderful and it is at least as clean as when I was using the expensive ‘environmentally friendly’ store soap. I love how easy and quick it is to mix a batch and Little Cowgirl loves helping to do so.

Now, if only there were something I could mix up to fold and put away the clean clothes. Let me know if you have a recipe for that!

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Put on a happy face

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My friend Marla, who writes with me at Growing Your Homeschool, is so creative with food for her toddler.

Even though my children are older, they still enjoy fun, silly or interesting food presentations.

Here is the clown-face breakfast I made last week:

Hard boiled egg whites, blueberries, cashews.

I’m a late-comer to the idea that food presentation really does matter. I’m also not terribly talented at it. Decorating and artsy stuff is not really my forte. I’m better at talking, singing, explaining, encouraging…you get the picture (noise-related areas are where I excel). However, I’ve discovered that any little bit of effort counts. Fresh fruit is wonderful.

Arranged (even poorly) on a fun tray is better.

Personally, I’ve found that crystal filled with very good wine or a hand-crampingly cold bottle of citrusy wheat bear placed at the top of my place setting makes everything present well. What do you do at your house to make good food more attractive?

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It’s barbecue time!

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The only thing I love more than being invited to a barbecue is eating the food at said function.

We’ve been to several this summer and I’m in a rut with what I am bringing to share; a good kind of rut! I wanted to share my recipe, keep in mind none of this is exact. I copied off of my brother-in-law for this.

Creamy, Dreamy Guacamole

6 avacado, split, seed removed, sliced
1/3 cup (or so) plain yogurt
1/4 cup mayo of your choice (we use safflower oil mayo right now)
juice of 2 limes (I like it really limey)

Blend together with whatever method you choose (fork, blender, mixer – I used a stick blender).

Chop up two luscious tomatoes, throw in some spices and salt, stir it all together.

I'm in love with it on these blue chips.

Adjust your wet ingredients based on how creamy you like your guac. I have also drizzled in some olive oil and that’s wonderful as well. It’s delicious as a dip or on top of a burger, and while there is no guarantee children will like it, I did have two that were at least willing to try!

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Crunchy Product Reviews

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Last week I talked about my summer project of replacing toxic cosmetic products in my home. I thought I’d give you an occasional update and review some of the products or ideas that we have been trying.

I know you are all dying to know how the baking soda hair wash went. I washed my hair using this method a week ago and kept track of my thoughts for you. My concerns were as follows:

1) Sticks
2) Ants
3) Brillo

To translate – I was concerned that my hair would be snarly and dry, that my scalp would itch and that my hair would look like #3. I have VERY strait hair, but it can also be pretty course.

I was surprised on all three counts. First of all, it was a pleasant sensation to scrub with the baking soda and water paste. When I rinsed with the vinegar (I just used regular old white vinegar) it was a bubbly party on my scalp. It felt so…gentle. I was expecting to feel more like I was scouring with Comet (it makes your mouth turn green…). When I got out of the shower the made-for-wet-hair brush literally slid through my hair. Once it dried, my hair looked like this:

I felt that the vinegar brought out lots of the reds in my hair.

Styling was simple and I used no products at all. My hair was very cooperative. And mostly it felt very, very clean. This was not a clean feeling I’ve had with my hair and scalp before. It was generally quite nice. My style (five minutes spent with a curling iron or strait iron, depending on my mood) held up great. My hair felt soft, but in a different way. It also felt much lighter. I was at two different functions the next day and two close friends of mine complimented my hair – I asked them to feel it and they were both shocked and all “NO WAY” when I told them I had crunchified it.

I thought I would have static or frizz issues, but that never happened either. I will say, however, that I live in Kansas and it’s super-windy here, so snarls can be a problem. I did find that my hair tangled easier and more often, so I was taking a brush to it more frequently.

This is certainly something I will be doing again. At this point I don’t think I will do it every time I wash my hair because I am trying out other products for the kids to use as well, but washing with baking soda and rinsing with vinegar is going to become a regular part of my routine. Did anybody else try this? What were your results? If you haven’t, do you think you might?

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Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble…

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Several years ago, the Environmental Working Group came out with a list of cosmetic products, including toothpaste, sunscreen, makeup, shampoo, soap, lotion and nail polish. It is a full-disclosure database about what is inside these products. I’ve been avoiding it for years, though I did replace our toothpaste, soap and shampoo after reading about some of the initial information.

This summer I would like to experiment some more with finding safe and healthy alternatives to cosmetic products. I’ll keep you posted as I work on finding healthier options for my family and my planet. I would also love to find ways around the lazy approach I’ve taken thus far – which is a single-step plan involving purchasing very expensive alternatives. I grew up on a farm in the 1980s, so it goes without saying that spending more than $7 for a small bottle of shampoo is something that I feel I need to take to the confessional. (Please absolve me, mom!)

I think this issue is on the mind of my friends as well. My darling Tarah, of spoon hooker fame, sent me this link not long ago about making your own body wash.

Yesterday one of my internet friends (one of the two people I can’t wait to meet in real life but am also kind of afraid that we will cause some sort of nuclear reaction with our fantasticalness – not a word but it says what I mean – in the same place at the same time) posted a link to this method of hair washing.

My foodie mentor and homeschool guru Maureen wrote a great post about making deodorant at home.

I told my baking-soda hair washing friend yesterday that I’m extra-vain, especially for a crunchy gal. So I’m going to be pretty picky. And the idea of giving up my quick-dry, one-swipe nail polish kinda makes me want to cry. But the idea of giving myself cancer makes me feel much worse – let’s not even talk about the fact that my daughter loves to have her nails painted. I’ve been having problems with makeup for years now…I can’t wear eyeshadow at all in the last month because of the constant reaction it causes. It’s time to make some more informed and aggressive changes around here. The first step begins with evaluating the items I am using on the EWG website.

So how about it? Would you be interested in sharing some of this journey with me?

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