Domestic Savvy

My little family has been plagued by this Hand Foot and Mouth Disease over the past month. Has anyone else suffered this horror show? It's a viral disease that is highly contagious and leads to blisters in your mouth, feet, hands and potentially other areas as I found out. First my ex husband's step daughter gets it from pre-school. He warns me that our daughter could catch it, but adults rarely get it (HAH). I even read it's something like 1 in 10 adults. I did some research on the signs and symptoms and when transmission usually occurs (during the beginning and prior to the fever is when one is most contagious, so basically before anyone even knows your sick). So my daughter doesn't get sick until a week later when she gets a fever which lasts about 24 hours. Then complains of a terrible sore throat.I bring her in to Urgent Care to rule out strep as her throat is all red. No strep, all viral, but they don't know it's hand foot and mouth yet. No one really does

Wow, 8 years later and I am stumbling here upon my old blog. So much has changed. I am no longer a stay at home mom for one although I wish I was. I have a at times stressful director roll at a large non-profit company and wishing I could find my way back to simpler living. I am divorced and living in a much smaller, but much more affordable home. If I could go back and give my younger self some advice it would have been to do the same and stop worrying about constantly renovating. It does nothing but cause debt, stress and hardly any turn around in a bad housing market. I think this blog is going to be a turn around from what it was and chronicle my way back to Domestic Savvy-ness. Over the years I went from the frugal coupon queen to dropping dollars like it's hot. With not much to show for it either. Who knows if I will ever be able to leave my current job, it's secure, flexible at times, I love all the people, I feel at home there and it provides for more money than I nee

It's been a long time since I last wrote, luckily I have very few readers to apologize to ;) So what's new... well the garden is looking great, I just discovered that butternut squash produce very beautiful large yellow flowers. The ducks are just about full size now and that is just in time for the start of my new hobby of furniture restoration. A friend introduced me the the most inspiring site for this; http://betterafter.blogspot.com/. This site showcases furniture, decorations, and rooms that have all been redone and brought back to life. Why do I love this so much? Because it's green, it's cost effective and it's domestically savy! *Photos to come of my "better after" items. My two cents about furniture restoration; Sprucing up something you already own, free furniture, cheap furniture from a yard sale is a great way to recycle and also keep you from buying an unsturdy piece of furniture from a large corporation store which will inevitably break. Thi

So far, so good with the new garden. With this weather I have had to water them daily. The only issue I have seen so far is that something is eating my lettuce. Once my ducks are bigger they will act as my natural pesticide, but for now I need an alernative. So I found this recipe on www.paystolivegreen.com : Oil Mixture 1 cup cooking oil ( i.e. canola or vegetable ) 1 tablespoon liquid dishwashing soap Use 2 ½ teaspoons of this mixture in 1 cup of water I planted several items that I researched ahead of time, but ended up not worrying so much about the specifics. I read something online that was great advice, it said to plant a few items and see how it goes. Replant the items that grew well next time and switch out the things that didn't go so well with something else. Expect that something won't grow as well as the others and it really alleviates a lot of the stress out of gardening.

Meet the newest additions to my home, Tina and Lucy Loo. Tina, the black one is an Indian Runner and the yellow one is a Pekin duck. The arrived this morning at the post office from a trip from Metzer Farms in California. Because of the fantastic weather we were able to let them roam around outside, and they showed their true foraging skills by eating worms, mosquitoes, ants and pretty much anything else they could find. I am very excited for the time when they are big enough to wander the yard by themselves to free my garden from pests, and limit the amount of mosquitoes that terrorize me on a daily basis. In a few months they will begin to produce eggs, but in the meantime they are providing me with great entertainment! Setup for ducklings is very inexpensive and easy. We used a plastic kiddy pool, but really any container will work as long as the sides are tall enough, even a box would work, a shallow water dish, a shallow food dish, water fowl food or chick food, and a 60-75 watt w