Simple Living This Week No. 49

Happy December! I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend. We still have not had our meal. Caroline is slowly picking up steam, but she has had one of those two week colds that doesn’t want to go completely away and has been dragging her down. I think she’s finally turned the corner and seems to be fairly close to normal. Thankfully David and I did not catch it. Maybe it was one of the many colds I got as a teacher and passed on to David so we were already immune? In any case, we’re slowly getting back to “normal” since the holiday and the cold have disrupted the flow of everything around here. We were in a really good rhythm this fall and then it all kind of blew up in November.

Christmas Planning

I was able to get a start on my Christmas shopping over the weekend. I am making a point of buying and ordering as much as I can from anyplace other than Amazon. I’m not sure how much local shopping I will be able to do, but I’m utilizing sites to support small business and solo business people as much as possible. I can’t say much more since members of my family sometimes look at my website, but that’s what’s happening on our end.

We still send out Christmas cards, a short letter, and a photo. I need to start doing those things. We take very few photos now so it’s harder to find a good one. I might have to take one specifically for the card.

Reading

Yesterday I ordered Social Justice Goes to Church by Jon Harris. I’ve shared his videos before in the forum and thought this would be a good reference book to have on hand. I’m looking forward to reading it when it arrives. The previous link goes directly to his site where I ordered a copy. This is the book on Amazon.

I’ve been watching a lot of video and doing online research lately (as evidenced in this video I made that I truly encourage you to watch) so I’ve been doing less book reading. I’m not sure how much book reading I’ll get in this month with all the Christmas extras, but I want to reach my goal of 20 books this year so I meet at least a few of my 2020 goals. Looking at My Reading Tickler List, I should make it with a little effort. I admit I’ve read lots of fluff books this year, but I needed something to combat the realities of 2020.

Homemaking

This week I would like to clean out quite a few things from the basement that need to be sold. Caroline still has so much stuff (toys and such) and we need to start peeling back the layers and removing some of it. Now is a good time to do that since she has a lot of nice things that would make excellent Christmas presents for someone shopping for gently used or like new items.

I’ve been working on reorganizing my homemaking and work three-ring binder and calendar. We’re in the process of updating A Quiet Simple Life Planner & Guidebook so it has the full calendars for next year. If David has time, I would like to put in new designs for the monthly calendars. That should be available in the next few days so if you’ve purchased it in the past, you’ll be able to download a new copy.

Home Business

David and I have been working almost all year to finish updating all my products. We finally finished the copywork this weekend and I’m so pleased. We completely changed it and it’s so much better. I like scrolling through the pages with the products to see how nice they look. We can see the end in sight!

I’ve been removing some content from my website as I realized that it detracts from Christ. There were some topics I decided I didn’t want here any longer and so I’ve been removing them. I’ll write about it in a post, but that’s something I’ve been doing behind the scenes that people probably wouldn’t even notice. I’m not completely done, but getting there.

In the ongoing Teachers Pay Teachers politically correct/antiracist censorship saga, they are now flagging history resources that ask students to express an opinion about events that might make people feel uncomfortable. A couple of sellers have been going back and forth with the powers that be because they have had resources taken down that do things like ask a student whether or not Columbus Day should continue to be a federal holiday given how he treated the native population. There was an article in Education Week that addressed it from one perspective (Teachers Pay Teachers Has a New Anti-Racist Initiative. But There’s Still Racist Content on the Site). The best part is one of the thoughtful comments. I’m not sure how that much sense got past the leftist editors.

As I noted in the TPT forum, there are 211,597 products that come up when you search “Christian” on TPT. I can’t imagine the purging that will begin there when they discover products that have terms such as sin and salvation in them. Products about missionaries? Saints? Those will be dead on arrival as well as well as many other things. It’s so sad to see such deliberate moves away from critical thinking and interacting thoughtfully with difficult subjects to straight up indoctrination so things don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. That’s not education.

We need to be praying for our country for so many reasons.

What is going on in your life this week? I hope you’ll leave a comment!