Merry Christmas Giveaway Challenge - Let's have a Freecycle Christmas

Let's all have a Freecycle Christmas.  Are you familiar with Freecycle.org?  I want to encourage everyone to join their local Freecycle.  It is a group where you can re-home your castoffs.  Join Freecycle.org and give away some things you don't need to help others have a better Christmas.  Challenge all your friends to do the same.  Tis the season for miracles...let's make one happen.

www.freecycle.org

Basic Beginning List for Preparedness

I found this list at a website called Preparedness Nuggets.  There is a lot of useful information there.  http://www.justpeace.org/nuggetsindex.htm

What I like most about her list is the advice to pray is no. 1.  That is spiritual preparedness.

STARTERS' LIST FOR PREPAREDNESS 
Maybe this little list will help put things in order. I realize this is very simplistic but to start maybe that's best.
Think in large categories.
1) Pray about everything before, during and after you do it.
2) Water - a source. Possibly storage. May be necessary to invest is a filter.
3) Warmth - depends on your location. Wood, propane, solar.
4) Food - simple, sound nutrition, multi vitamins. Wheat, rice, beans, pasta, bullion, dried milk, powdered drink mix, powdered tomato, powdered cheese, dehydrated veggies, oil, honey, sugar, molasses, salt and other spices etc.
5) equipment - grain grinder, Dutch oven, wind up short wave radio, oil lamps,flash lights and batteries, big tubs for washing bodies and clothes.
6) fuel - your choice - wood, propane, coal, solar, oil for lamps
7) proper clothes
8) spend time learning some basic living skills -- baking bread, gardening, cooking with fire, etc.
9) build a little library of info books.

Financial Preparedness - Saving Money on Groceries

Using coupons and promotions will stretch our money farther and enable us to be better prepared.  Here is a list of promotions  and coupons Kelloggs currently has.  I hope you will search it and take from it what you can use.

http://www2.kelloggs.com/Promotion/AllPromotions.aspx
http://www2.kelloggs.com/Product/KelloggCoupon.aspx?id=1992

Youtube Videos on Preparedness

I have been given permission to use these videos in my joint preparedness lesson on Sunday.  I hope you will watch them.  They remind us of the warnings of the prophets and the importance of being prepared.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTVECvTYpN0
http://www.youtube.com/user/davidkat99#p/a/u/2/RplBQGogYEk

Things I am Thankful For

I love to read Kellene Bishop's blog, http://www.preparednesspro.com/blog/.  I won some mylar bags and an oxygen absorber from Kellene's blog site today.  Her blogs are insightful and she seems to have her fingers on the pulse of what is going on in the world today.  Preparedness Pro is a great site and one of my permanent reads.

Her post for today is about being thankful.  It reminded me of the things I am thankful for.  If I listed all the things I am thankful for, today's blog could turn into a long one.  Let me just list a few of the things I am thankful for.  I am thankful for my family.

For my husband, Jamie, who shares my passion for being prepared.  Who loves me and cares for me despite myself.  For my children who have always brought me as much joy as they have pain.  LOL.  For my father who gives me strength and has always been there for me.  For my mother, my best friend, who passed away in March.  I miss you and love you mom.  I will see you again some day.  For my brother and sister and their families and my mother-in-law, brother-in-law and sisters-in-law.  You guys keep me on my toes.  For my mother's huge family who is a constant fount of love and support.  Love to you all.

I am thankful for the many blessing that my Father in Heaven has given me and I hope He blesses you all during this Thanksgiving season.

Frugality and Blog Posts

I could spend hours entering contests on blogs.  Since I have never done it before, I don't know if it is a total waste of my time or not.  Perhaps not the best spent time.  But entering a contest is always fun.  I once won a year's supply of Dr. Pepper from their website.  I don't even remember what I did to win it.

So, in the spirit of fun, let me tell you about a new blog I found that I like, Frugal Living and Having Fun.  They are currently sponsoring a contest to win $25 in Marcal Tissue products.

Part of the contest is to tell everyone why I like Marcal Tissue, but I can't.  A couple of months ago, I received a coupon for a free pack of Marcal Tissue.  I searched my local stores and was unable to find any.  :(

So, have a little fun today and visit Frugal Living and Having Fun.  The button is on the right of my blog.

Joy in the journey~MJ

Rising Cost of Food

I have lived in my town since 1992.  An Aldi grocery store was built just across the street from us and I remember when canned veggies were .25 each.  After that, the price went up .04 to .29 a can.

Back in the fall of last year, I woke up early one Saturday morning and my Yahoo homepage was screaming about food shortages.  My husband and I were working and living temporarily out of state and my Aldi grocery was 5-6 hours away.  We were living in a camper with no means of extra storage, so I demanded to take a trip home to visit family and Aldi.

Back home, we went to Aldi and loaded the back of my truck with canned veggies.  Carrots, corn, peas, green beans, and mixed veggies, not to mention some canned pinto beans.  It was a little over $300, but my mind was put to ease knowing we had this stockpile of canned foods.  All purchased at Aldi for low price of .39 a can and safely stored in my home.  I left my food storage and my home and traveled back to work.

Fast forward to June 2009, when I was laid off from work, my husband having been laid off the month before.  We came back home and begin happily living off our food storage.  Today, we noted that we had run out of corn and we wanted to restock a flat or two of some other veggies, so we loaded up and headed to our trusty cheap Aldi grocery.

To my dismay, Aldi has raised the price of their basic canned veggies to .49 a can.  No longer will we be able to get cheap veggies!  Now that I was noticing, I checked at Sav-A-Lot and there it was-veggies .49 a can.  At Wal-Mart (the low price leader you know) the cheapest was .88 a can.  They did have the name brand on sale for .50 a can.  Certainly not the low price leader in all things!  Don't be fooled!

Anyway, the point in all this rambling is that it is past time to get prepared.  Food prices are beginning to soar.  Have you googled photos of famine lately.  It is horrifying!  Get prepared now!  Buy a flat of veggies extra each time you go to the store.  Pick up an extra peanut butter.  Don't wait any longer.

My prayers are with you and our country.

Adventures in Self Reliance

I guess tonight is my night for finding the food stuff.   Adventures in Self Reliance is giving away a fabulous Foodsaver, just in time for Christmas. 

Adventures in Self Reliance is also giving away a water bladder that you use in your bathtub for emergency water.  It is called the WaterBOB.

Just follow this link and join in the fun.  http://selfrelianceadventures.blogspot.com/

Food Storage Analyzer on Emergency Essentials

Emergency Essentials or www.beprepared.com, has an new food storage analyzer that is relatively simple to use.  You add the ages and sexes of the members of your family.  It calculates the calories you need each day.  Then a spreadsheet comes up where you record the amount of various basic foods, such as oats, wheat, etc.  You can also add items from the grocery store.

I was pleased to find out that just in oats, pasta, wheat and flour, I have enough food on hand for 123 days for my family of four.  It also explained the nutritional content, including carbs, of the food on hand and what percentage of the daily allowance.  It was simple to use and gave me a general working knowledge of how much food storage I actually have.  It's a great tool.

Best yet, Emergency Essentials is allowing you to use the analyzer absolutely free and they give you a $10 gift certificate for blogging about it.  For an additional $10 gift certificate, all you need to do is add their button to your blog.

Be sure to visit them and check out their black Friday sales.  www.beprepared.com

Welcome to the Prepared Household

This blog is for those who want to become better prepared...for almost anything.