MONUMENTAL: In Search of America's National Treasure

Going to go see this with the family tonight, so important to us not to forget America's history and to make sure my children understand it!

MONUMENTAL: In Search of America's National Treasure

Survival Skills For Women

Have you ever wanted to learn survival skills?  Now there is a way to get completely immersed in learning the techniques and skills and its all for women!  Check this out!
Survival For Women:

Food Storage Made Easy..

I want to introduce you to a fabulous site I just found!  If you have ever wanted to get control of your food storage or to start your food storage then I highly recommend you come here.  This is Food Storage Made Easy and it really is that.  This site will tell you anything and everything about food storage, how to start, what you need, and how to use it.  There are even great recipes available that use your actual food storage items.  Take some time and check out their site, I promise you will find it incredible helpful.

Budgeting

So I have taken this month on as a time to budget!  I want to go over every aspect of my families budget just to see where we are at, what we can change and how we are doing.  I also want to be able to see if there is more room to save.  I decided to start and see what the national average is for my family, not because I care what everyone else spends, but I wanted to get an idea of where to start.  I Googled national average for food spending and it took me surprisingly enough to the IRS web site as they list the national standards of spending for food, clothing, household items, etc...  I usually would not even go to a site like this, but I was curious to see what it said, I almost died laughing, no kidding!  Now I really know why our country is in trouble, do they honestly think this is a true average?  See for yourself here and compare that to what you normally spend.
Now that I know what is not realistic I am doing some more research.  I think I am going to start with my food budget.  I have a family of 7 with 2 teenagers and I believe I average around $500.00 a month on food, but since I have not been keeping track the last little while I am going to do so starting now!  Also, I want to come up with a way to make dinner night easier and planned better.  I have been toying with the idea of creating a theme night.  Something along the lines of Monday night is pasta night, Tuesday night is Mexican night, etc..  I am hoping by doing this it will help with budgeting, with planning and with making dinner easier on everyone!  I also want to incorporate my garden when that is up and running this spring/summer.  I love being able to go out to the garden and pick my dinner for the evening or to incorporate it into my meals.  Nothing is better than fresh fruits and veggies and they are already paid for and certainly help in the self reliance category.  Any suggestions?  Please leave them as they might be a big help!  I will let you know what I come up with!

Heat

We have propane that we use in our home to heat with, also to heat our water.  This being our first year ever using propane we did not know what to expect.  On Christmas Eve we ran out of propane, we knew we were getting close but thought we could make it until the next delivery.  We had just put in 100 gallons in September and thought it would last us for a little while as we keep our temperatures down as well as our water heater on the lowest setting that we can handle.  Needless to say we put another 100 gallons in which cost around $300.00.  I thought for sure this would last us a couple of months, but low and behold 20 days after the delivery we were about out again!  I was shocked and so was hubby.  Where did it all go?  I started to look online to see if I could find out any info from others on what is normal as far as usage goes, I did find some information and it shocked me.  You see, propane was once pretty inexpensive to use for your home, around $.80 a gallon just a few years ago, but that all changed and the price started going up.

Well, we purchased 200 gallons this time which put us at 50% full, we had zero when the delivery guy came out but we were not completely out, thanks goodness!

We started to figure if we keep this up were going to be spending a lot of money on propane, especially through the winter, we had to figure out another way to do this, especially for heating purposes.

Our home came with a propane fireplace insert, completely propane though, we knew the chances of us using this with the price of propane were about zero.  So we took it out and sold the insert and the idea hit us to put a wood burning stove in its place.  As luck would have it some friends of ours had one they wanted to get rid of, it needed work and was a bit rusty but would make a great fire.  We got it from them and cleaned it up and painted it
.  In our state you have to pull a permit to do fireplaces or wood stoves, so we did that, got the permit and then found out that because our wood stove has no "tag" on it that we would be held to the largest setbacks from any wall.  We measured and there was no way we could fit the wood stove in the space we had and to conform to the setbacks.

The space that we have is not that big, so we researched other options and found that we did not have many.  We had already did a bit of work in the area that we want to put our new heat unit, we placed cement walls up, added tile on the floor and rerouted some electrical.We looked at the smallest wood burning stove you can get and still our area was not quite big enough.

My hubby called the inspector to tell him of our situation and he suggested to maybe look into a zero clearance fireplace insert.  We had never heard of those before but looked into them and found three things.  First you need zero clearance space because of the way they are made, you don't have to worry about walls catching fire, that was a big plus for us since we don't have any room anyway!  Second, they heat really well, and our very efficient as well as EPA approved, that translates into they don't use as much wood and still heat really well, another plus to us.  Finally, we found out they are a bit expensive, at least a lot more than our free stove that we had.  Your talking around $2-3k depending on how much stove pipe you need as well as how much work you need to do around the insert.  Yikes is all I could say!  But, I knew this will cut down on our propane needs which hopefully intern will cut down on our propane cost and in just a year or two the savings should have this insert paid for.  By the way the one we are looking at is called a Kozy Heat.  You can find out about them here.

So the next thing to do is get our permit changed from a wood stove to a fireplace insert and to get one ordered, once we have it it should take a day or two to get it installed and working, then we can worry and play with the mantel and surround.  The only big draw back for me in doing this is that you can't cook on them or boil water, I was really hoping to be able to do that, at least it would be nice to have that option if our power ever went out or we ran out of propane again.  But at least will have the heat and I love the idea of sitting in front of the fireplace with the wood popping and being nice and toasty warm!

As for our wood stove, we are hoping to be able to use it somewhere else, maybe when we get our nice big barn/workshop someday or maybe in the garage, will have to see.  For right now it sits out back and we fire it up when were BBQ on the grill or doing some projects outside and need the extra warmth.

I will post more as we get into the project and show you how its turning out! 

Stay tuned!

Beef Jerky

Part of being self sufficient is learning how to make your own food.  My family was lucky enough this year to get in on a special deer hunt.  There was an area a few hours from us that had a lot of fire this last summer and it pretty well burned up everything that was green.  The Fish and Game figured that 2-3,000 deer would starve to death this winter because of a lack of food.  So they did a special deer draw and my hubby and older boys lucked out  and all drew deer tags.  They went up one day and each came back with a deer that we processed and made all sorts of stuff out of(deerburger, steaks, stew meat, etc..).  One thing my hubby wanted to try was to make jerky, so he got on line and researched how to make it yourself.  We bought the seasoning and got the meat out, mixed the season with it, wrapped it up and then let it sit overnight in the fridge. This is what it looks like the next day. 

Next you take your meat and roll it out till it about 1/4" thick, it does not have to be pretty, just go for the correct thickness. I used wax paper to roll it out on and also on top of it while I was rolling the meat.  You then take that and use a pizza cutter or a knife to cut it into strips about 1 1/2". It should look something like this.

Put the strips on a cookie sheet, they can be close together!  Use a spatula to lift the meat onto the cookie sheets, it makes it much easier.

Next you put these in the oven at 250* for 2-3 hours. I did a few cookie sheets at the same time.

When the timer goes off, you want to check for moisture, there should not be much either on the meat or on the cookie sheet.

Let your jerky sit out overnight to finish drying. The next day, place it in baggies or an air tight container. This must be eaten soon(1-2 weeks) as it wont last as long as the jerky you buy in the stores. Its also a good idea to keep it in the fridge.  You can tell if its going bad because it will start getting white little spots on the jerky.

Play around with the seasonings as there are many different varieties. We have tried some that we really like and some that we will never try again, so just experiment with them and see what you like!

You can also do this on a food dehydrator, just follow the instructions for drying times.

Prepardness Deals Coming Soon!

There are some great emergency perpardness deals coming on MarkDown.com.  If you are not familiar with how this site works let me explain.  There is a deal of the day and it usually has about 80 hours that it is up on the site but it can also sell out, which ever comes first is when the deal ends.

The past couple of items have all been preardness deals and this next week is no exception.  Yesterday they had those great reusable canning lids, they sold out twice in one day and within just a few hours!  Starting on Monday and through almost the rest of the month they will have the following:

Monday, January 16th-Thursday, January 19th:  MyPatriotSupply -  3 bottles of Potassium Iodate and a $20 voucher to MyPatriotSupply.com
No one believed the Titanic would sink. No one thought it was even possible. A nuclear explosion is a possibility. Protect yourself from harmful radiation with Potassium Iodate. This Markdown also includes a $20 voucher to MyPatriotSupply.com!

Thursday, January 19th-Monday January 23rd: Freeze Dry Guy - Food rations, fire starter, water filter and more!

You'll love the emergency preparedness options offered by this Freeze Dry Guy Markdown. From an 84 Serving Entrée and Breakfast "Bug Out" Hardy size Food Kit to a Sparkie fire starter and a 50 gallon water filter, Freeze Dry Guy will keep you safe. Freeze Dry Guy will provide the necessities you need to quench your thirst, keep you warm and feed your family.

Monday, January 23rd: Berkey Water Bottle – 2 Berkey Water Bottles including a built in filtration system

You likely already have a water bottle, but can your bottle filter dirty water, chemicals and other materials out of your drinking water? With Berkey Water Bottles – you’ll always have clean water. Whether you’re heading out to hike in unchartered territory or want to be prepared in case of an emergency – Berkey Water Bottles will deliver clean, fresh water – 100% of the time.

You will have to hurry on these things those and they may go quickly.  Just go to http://www.markdown.com/
and register.  Remember it was not raining when Noah built the ark, so prepare now!