A Quiet Simple Life | Sallie Borrink

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23

A Quiet Simple Life

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Digital Simplicity

Our Cozy Home No. 81


This was a strange week. It felt a bit like trying to slog through something. I’m not sure what. Fatigue? Fog of war? I’m not sure. But here we are on Friday.

First off, I wanted to share the full view of this artwork by William Adolphe Bouguereau. I’ve found a number of channels on Telegram that share beautiful traditional artwork, scenery, etc. This is one of the pieces of art I saved so I could use it in a post. The details are simply stunning.

We need to go out of our way these days to surround ourselves with that which is beautiful, true, good, and hopeful. Not as an excuse to try to pretend the real world around us isn’t happening, but to remind ourselves that there is far more to this world than the profane and ugly that is being systematically put upon us in order to demoralize us.

Attracting New Birds To Our Birdfeeders

This year we decided to switch things up a bit with our birdfeeding and try to attract some new birds. We purchased a feeder specifically for Baltimore Orioles. We always see them stop by in the spring, but they never stick around because we don’t put out what they like. We now have an orange feeder that holds half an orange and multiple little spots for grape jelly. They found it within literally 10 minutes of David getting it set up. Now they are around off and on all day.

We also put out a different mix in one of the feeders that seems to be attracting the Indigo Buntings. That is another bird we usually see briefly in the spring and then not again. They have been around almost every day this week so I’m hoping they will keep coming.

We were going to put away the box we have corn in (I wrote about making it in Highlights From My September Weekend), but we decided to keep filling it up and see if the deer will bring their fawns by. I’m praying they will. Caroline would be thrilled (and so would I).

Loving Linux

Speaking of that September post, I am still on Linux and still love it. No more of those horrific Windows updates. No more spyware. No more feeling completely out of control regarding what my computer is doing. I am so happy I switched to Linux. I highly recommend it. (If you haven’t read about the new Windows 11 update and what it does, make sure you research it before you allow it to update your system.)

In fact, I put together an area in the Forum called Switching To and Using Linux. I put quite a bit in there and try to remember to add more info as I think it might be helpful. (UPDATE: Now all moved to this post: Switching To Linux Mint From Windows – Mega Resource List)

Unit Studies In High School

Yesterday I had a conversation about homeschooling with a fellow homeschool mom. I was telling her that I really need to take a big step back and do some strategic and long-range planning for the next three years of homeschooling. Now that Caroline and I have worked through most of this year, I’m more convinced than ever that everything we do (writing, reading books, etc.) needs to count for more than one subject. As my friend mentioned about one of her children, it is a stamina issue. It’s not a laziness issue. With some 2e children, stamina and the ability to do sustained work over many hours is a big issue. In fact, it’s not an option to do super focused work for many hours each day.

In short, I’m going to have to explore more of a unit study approach for a lot of the next three years. I’m not sure what that is going to look like and there aren’t many people who have done this for high school and written about it in detail. I did a quick search and found Marcy at Ben and Me went through something similar during Ben’s first year of high school.

So that’s what I’m thinking about regarding homeschool. Caroline loves history. She will sit for hours doing crafts while watching one history documentary after another on her iPad. So however we do this, it will revolve around history. In fact, I had already decided that I was going to frame our four years of high school around history by going through all of history over four years rather than one year of world history, one year of US history, etc.

Now that I’ve seen what works for us and what doesn’t, I can put together a better and more concrete plan. The biggest issue is finding the uninterrupted time to really focus and think. I’m confident I can do this. It is very much what I specialized in during my undergraduate degree in elementary education. This is completely in my wheelhouse. The issue is time, time, time. It’s not possible to pull together a three year plan for all subjects mostly from scratch in a few afternoons. So this will be a big undertaking for me. It will be worth it in the end. If you did something like this for high school with any of your children, please leave a comment with any suggestions you have!

What are you doing in your home right now? I hope you’ll leave a comment and share. I’m sorry I did not respond to each comment last week. I read and enjoyed all of them and was thrilled so many people responded. ♥

Artist: William Adolphe Bouguereau

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I Switched From Windows 10 To Linux Mint


I have long been intrigued by Linux as an operating system, but it felt overwhelming to consider making the switch. Through a series of events which I believe God orchestrated, I took the plunge and switched from Windows 10 to Linux. I am SO HAPPY I did.

My Linux journey started when someone shared on Telegram that a man named Jeffrey Peterson was starting up a Linux channel on Telegram. The goal was to help people break free from from Microsoft and Apple tyranny. I have long despised the way Windows controls my computer so I was more than ready. I did not want to spend one penny more on their products so moving to a free, open source option sounded fantastic in multiple ways. I was one of the first few hundred people to join the channel that has swelled to tens of thousands. A chat group was also created (JP’s Technology Chat) as well as a forum. (Jeff is also a Christian with a wonderful story of faith.)

After observing the massive conversation threads going on in the chat group and learning about Linux simply by reading and watching various recommended videos, David and I decided to purchase an inexpensive HP laptop for taking our first steps into Linux. I did not want to tie up my main computer that I use daily and we knew there was a chance that it would take longer to get it done than we anticipated. That was a smart move. If we had had an older extra computer that would have worked just as well, but we always get rid of computers when we’re done with them. MANY people in the Telegram group have dragged old computers out of the back of the closet and made them like new with Linux.

I wrote about the first part of my journey in Highlights From My September Weekend. At that point, I was trying out Linux Mint Cinnamon and that is what I chose to keep. There are so many distros (distributions) to choose from. Some look more like Windows and others like Mac. There are distros that work well with older computers that need something very lightweight. Almost anything you could want, you can find. I chose Mint because from all I read it sounded like it made the switch from Windows to Linux very easy. It definitely does. I love it.

After I was sure I wanted to make the switch, we partitioned my main computer to be half Windows and half Linux while we set up the new Linux system. Because I have an internal server program (WAMP on Windows, LAMPP on Linux) for my 2,000+ unpublished archived blog posts, it took a bit more work to get things switched over to only Linux. Once that was taken care of, David removed the partition which removed Windows from my life hopefully FOREVER.

I love that everything on my computer is what I choose to put there. My computer is not filled with programs I don’t want and can’t delete. It’s not loaded up on junk that tracks me. I make of it what I want. It’s so much fun to find free Linux programs and add them to my computer. Two of my favorites so far are Calibre (e-book management) and Joplin (like Evernote). I’ll write more about those in separate posts.

For now, I just wanted to share that I made the complete jump to Linux. I hope to write more posts about this to encourage as many of you as possible to consider doing the same thing. If you use your computer basically for email and surfing, there is no reason why you can’t move to Linux. The only things we have found tricky in our situation is that David is heavily dependent on the Adobe Creative Suite for our business (graphic design and websites) and Caroline is heavily “dependent” on Roblox. Neither one will run on Linux which is really frustrating. For now, he will have to keep his Mac and she will stay in a Windows environment. If we could, we would switch both of them to Linux in a heartbeat. Otherwise, there is a Linux program for almost anything you are using in a Windows environment.

I strongly encourage you to break free from big tech tyranny as much as you can.

Follow-up post: Switching To Linux Mint From Windows – Mega Resource List

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Highlights From My September Weekend


This was a full and interesting mid-September weekend for our family. I plan on writing posts about most of these topics, but thought I would share some highlights in the meantime.

As I said to David, you just never know where life with me is going to take you! LOL!

First up was purchasing a very basic, inexpensive HP laptop in order to install and learn Linux. This is my next step toward ridding myself of Big Tech. I chose to start with Linux Mint for reasons I’ll explain in a post. David helped me and we used a YouTube video to follow. It’s not nearly as difficult as it sounds. One part is a bit tricky and that’s where he helped me. I’m loving the Telegram group I’m in about ditching Big Tech and moving to Linux. It is incredibly supportive. (I shared about it in Finding Better News and Information Sources.)

First picture is the installation. Success!

This is with my new desktop picture.

In my spare time, I’ll keep learning how to use the operating system. My goal is to completely ditch Windows and be free of them and the cost within the next month or two. Having a second laptop makes it possible for me to play with Linux as much as possible and not worry about messing up my main computer I use every day. If I successfully switch to Linux, this small investment will pay for itself many times over in the future.

Preview hint: If you have old computers and laptops around your home, you may want to hang on to them. With the growing computer chip shortage, you have something valuable. Many people in the group are taking older computers and installing Linux.

Second, David and Caroline built a ground feeder for the squirrels, chipmunks, birds, etc. I’ve mentioned in the forum that Caroline and I enjoy checking out a particular webcam in Akron, Ohio. David received a supply of drywall for redoing a wall of the garage. It came on a pallet. So he took apart the pallet and used the wood to make the feeder like the one on the webcam.

No cost except keeping it filled!

Third, I made white pine needle tea for the shikimic acid. Our family is unvaccinated and concerned about the shedding of spike proteins. Shikimic acid helps remove the spike proteins from your body.

A relative has a large supply of white pine needles and has used this successfully. The results in this person’s case were remarkable and overwhelming real. We were able to get the white pine needles from this relative via the mail.

Lastly, I pulled everything together for our homeschooling this year. We’ve started slowly. Really slowly. But this week should be when we are hopefully fully ramped up. I’ll write a post about what we are doing and the curriculum we are using. I had an epiphany a few weeks ago that made it clear how to proceed so I was very thankful the Lord made me realize the best way of going about this.

I realized I need to take careful notes during this four year process because I think at the end of the four years I will have a helpful guide or book to write. Our high school experience is going to be very different from the “norm” due to Caroline’s unique learning needs. If I don’t write it all down, I won’t remember half of what I’m thinking about by the time we get to June let alone three more years after that.

So that’s my weekend! What did you do this weekend? ♥

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A Year After Deleting Facebook, I Continue the Social Media Purge and Delete Twitter


I passed my one year anniversary of leaving Facebook a few weeks ago after having thought about it for quite some time. I proved to myself that I don’t need it. I’ve had a few moments when I’ve wondered if I should go back, especially after I had been off it for so long. I do miss interacting with some online friends and extended family that I never interact with now. I sometimes wonder if I’ve done the right thing for my website and work.

One thing that surprised me is how often I did not use David’s account to look things up. Before I quit, I added him to several EoE and health-related groups so I could still get in and access information. I thought I would do so fairly regularly. In reality, I might have done it once? Maybe? What I did notice about not being on Facebook is how much less I thought about my health because I didn’t see information about it all the time. That was a good thing.

There is one Christian discussion group I like to look at every few months, but I think I looked at it twice via his account. I just don’t care enough to make the effort.

But, overall, I have many issues with Facebook, including their censoring activities and data harvesting. Combining that all together makes it easy to continue to stay off.

Deleting Twitter in My Social Media Purge

This morning I deactivated my Twitter account. The only thing I really used it for was following Spartan sports and current events. I decided it wasn’t worth it. Almost no one interacts with my homeschooling-related tweets and the one person who actually does also comments here on my site fairly regularly.

I had been thinking about deleting Twitter off and on, but I was convinced when I thought through the numbers this morning.

  • If I spend 10 minutes a day dinking around on Twitter, that’s 3,650 minutes a year.
  • That is almost SIXTY-ONE HOURS in ONE YEAR.
  • That’s two and a half wasted 24 hour days every year.
  • That’s the equivalent of almost eight eight-hour work days.
  • Multiply that out by my billable hourly rate if I converted that to work time and it’s astonishing.

And that’s if I limit it to ten minutes a day.

Doing nothing but wasting time on something that brings zero real value to my life. There’s no conversation there. Tweeting brings virtually no traffic to my website. It is basically an utter waste of time other than the cute animal videos Caroline likes from one account I followed.

It’s not worth it for that.

Twitter is Not Remotely Like Real Life

If you missed the report that came out from Pew Research regarding Twitter users, it is eye-opening. If there is any social media that is not reflective of our culture, it is Twitter.

Don’t miss this key fact: 10% of the Twitter users send 80% of the tweets. If you want to know more about that 10%, read the Pew summary I linked to. It’s quite interesting to read about the demographic and views of who is driving the Twitter conversation which in turn impacts the culture in multiple ways.

(Let’s just say that after reading the Pew report, I know why Twitter is a poor fit for my posts and site.)

(And I haven’t mentioned the unethical free speech deplatforming Twitter is engaged in against people.)

Reading for Those Thinking of Quitting Social Media

I’ve found some good posts lately regarding social media and related topics. If you are contemplating making a change in this area of your life, you might find these interesting. I know from the recent reader survey that about a quarter of my readers already avoid social media so you are among friends here if you do!

First, a couple of mine if you haven’t read them (in addition to the Facebook ones I linked to in the first paragraph).

Some thoughts by others:

Where are you with social media? How are you dealing with it to create a quiet, simple life?

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