Welcome to the Saturday morning edition of Simple Living This Week. I hope your week was pleasant and productive. Overall, we had a good week in our home.
This Week’s Artwork
Today’s piece is Grandfather Telling a Story by Daniel Ridgway Knight.
From Wikipedia (edited by me for brevity):
Daniel Ridgway Knight (1839 – 1924) was an American artist born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
Knight was a pupil at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under Gleyre, and later worked in the private studio of Meissonier. After 1872 he lived in France, having a house and studio at Poissy on the Seine.
He painted peasant women out of doors with great popular success. He earned his first major distinction in France at the Paris Salon in 1882 with his large oil on canvas Un Deuil. He would go on to be awarded the silver medal and Cross of the Legion of Honor, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889, and was made a Knight of the Royal Order of St. Michael of Bavaria, Munich, 1893, and receiving the gold medal of honor from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1893.[1]
He died in Paris. His son, Louis Aston Knight (1873–1948), was also known as a landscape painter.
I’ve used many of his works during this series of posts, but I didn’t start out citing the artist until I was well into the series. If you looked back through the posts, you would probably be able to pick out many or all of them. He has a very distinctive style.
Homeschooling
We’re on vacation this week so I didn’t do a lot. I did spend some time researching and praying about what we should do for the coming year.
While cleaning out my desk, I found the Downton Abbey page-a-day calendar pages I had kept. David bought me that kind of calendar for a couple of years. I saved the pages because there were many with interesting history background info. Now that Caroline and I have watched the series, I’m going to have us read through all the historical ones to add more depth to what we learned. I’ll scan all of the historical ones we read and keep a digital copy for our homeschool records.
Homemaking
We crossed off a number of projects around the house this week. David washed all the windows (inside and out) which makes everything better!
I washed all of our bedding (mattress enclosure, blankets, pillows, etc.). The last thing to do is the quilt and shams which will be washed today. Next week I’ll do Caroline’s.
I cleaned out my desk. It was already organized, but it was time to go through, weed out unnecessary things, and just generally tidy up.
This weekend I’m dehydrating frozen organic peas and carrots. I have a basic dehydrator very similar to this Ronco 5 tray. (Mine is much older!) I’ll store them in Mason jars.
I’m also using my Foodsaver vacuum sealer to store various peas, beans, rice, etc. in Mason jars (using the jar sealer attachments). I’ve found that this brand of vacuum food sealer bags works just as well as the name brand and it is significantly less expensive.
Next week is the week I hope to completely reorganize my kitchen. I find I need to do it every few years as Caroline gets older and our family life adjusts accordingly. One of our plans for the coming school year is for her to learn to make at least one new recipe a week so I want to organize things in a way that will work for us.
Work
I spent a few days redoing my posts for Sallie’s Rebuilding America. I’m very pleased with how they all turned out. Each episode is now labeled which makes it easy to go back and look for the big topics I discussed. As I discussed in Episode 33, we’ve covered a lot of ground since I started on March 1. If you’ve been listening to these as I’ve made them, you are months ahead of the rest of the country in terms of understanding what is going on.
I realized this weekend that my Forum recently passed 300,000 page views! When you think it is mostly just me sharing info with my relatively small group of readers (compared to other blogs and websites), I find that amazing. There are some topics in there that do very well with the search engines which is so interesting. I just started a new sub-forum today for Finding Pretty and Beautiful Women’s Clothing.
David and I are updating the A Quiet Simple Life Planner & Guidebook with the next set of calendars for the 2022-2023 school year. Hopefully the updated version will be available in the shop by Monday. If you’ve already purchased it, you will be able to download the updated version.
That’s it for today! I need some breakfast, but wanted to get this post up first thing. Since I couldn’t get back to sleep after the thunderstorm moved through, I just got up and started typing! I hope you’ll leave a comment and share what is going on in your home.
Sallie’s Rebuilding America • Episode 33
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Hi Sallie, Thought I would share today. I wish more people would contribute because I love reading everyone’s responses. I am always surprised when I discover so much in common with you and with many of your contributors. Like you, I am now the proud owner of a vacuum sealer for sealing dry food in bags as well as jars. I really enjoy Appalachian Homestead with Patara and RoseRed Homestead. I have vacuum sealed two five-pound bags of flour and watch bread-making videos to be prepared for bread shortages. I plan on dehydrating fruits and vegetables and many other dry grains and beans. I also want to thoroughly clean and reorganize my pantry/kitchen. I have peppers and cucumbers ripening but unfortunately, all my tomatoes are stuck at a green-only stage. Just wanted to share and keep in touch. Have a great week. I
Hi Melinda,
Thanks for sharing! I really enjoy reading everyone’s responses each week too even though sometimes it takes me a few days to respond. I know I’m biased, but I think anyone who regularly reads my blog and/or forum is a high-quality, thinking person so I’m not surprised when I read what people are doing and thinking about.
I had never heard of RoseRed Homestead so I looked her up!
I would like to try making fruit leather. I know it’s not difficult, but it’s one of those things I’ve just never taken the time to do. Caroline likes the ones from Trader Joe’s and I know we could make some just as good at home.
Have a good week!
Sallie
Hi Sallie. Hope the weather is better where you live. Here in New York we are under a heat wave. The temperatures are in the mid to high 90s. The air conditioners are doing over time. We do not put the air conditioners on at the same time. We are trying to conserve as much electricity as possible. Marion has asthma so she needs the air conditioners. This weather is dangerous to asthmatics. We received a large order of groceries last Wednesday. We only order about every month and a half and they last till the next time. We have no car and the nearest store is quite a ways away, so we need delivery. We cleaned the one bedroom and threw out a lot of clutter we did not need. Sallie,have a good week. God Bless.
Joan,Marion and Marilyn
Hi Marilyn,
It’s good to hear from you and I hope you are all well. Heat and humidity are no joke. I know how hard humidity is on people with asthma and other issues related to breathing.
Are you in NYC itself? I’ve always wondered roughly where you are in NY, but never asked. There’s no pressure to share, but I am genuinely curious. (If you did tell me in the past and I forgot, I apologize.)
Have a good week!
Sallie
I live in the borough of Queens.
Marilyn
I had to look up the boroughs again on a map to remember where they all are relative to each other. (I’ve never been to NYC.) Now I can see in my mind where you are! Thank you!
Hi, Sallie! I have been doing some decluttering and tidying, and just ridiculous amounts of laundry. Our oldest is beginning to look for part-time employment, which brought back a lot of memories of me and my husband having difficulty in finding jobs as college graduates.
A family from church is making big changes to their diet, and they gave us a lot of food that they can no longer eat. I hadn’t thought of freezing tomatoes whole in plastic bags and then making sauce out of them later, but I guess it works.
I was able to fix a xylophone piano toy by taking it apart and pulling a dust bunny out of it. The hard part was finding a phillips screwdriver of the right size and length–had to borrow one from a child.
Hi Peggy,
I know how much laundry I do for just three people so I can imagine how much you do with a larger family! I think I’ve read that before about tomatoes, but have never done it. I know you can do that with strawberries to make jam and such later.
Hopefully the job search goes well. When I graduated from college there was literally 1,000 applications for each teaching job. It was insane. If you didn’t know somebody, you didn’t stand a chance.
Have a good week!
Sallie
Happy Sunday Sallie,
I appreciate your blog, it helps me remember that so many Americans are aware of the times we are living in. Your blog also affirms the path forward.
I have been busy in the garden which is just starting to produce. I just finished processing bananas, pineapples and apples sliced and dipped in lemon water to keep them bright while drying.
Like some of your readers, I sealed some flour with the sealing machine and like you, I found the bargain brand of bags work very well.
We have chickens and ducks (wonderful for baking bread, etc.). I have tried water glassing the excess eggs. We will wait six months and see if it is viable for preserving eggs.
Getting ready to switch from Windows to Linux thanks to your encouragement.
Keep up the Simple Life blog and your Rebuilding America news. You are appreciated.
Hi Bonny,
Good to hear from you! Which Linux distro did you decide on? I hope the switch goes well. There are lots of places to get help with any hiccups. I love being on Linux and would never go back.
There are many Americans who are awake to what is going on. We just need to keep waking up more. I do believe significantly more are awake than were on January 20, 2021, and the number keeps growing every day. It’s been a painful process, but necessary.
Have a good week!
Sallie
Hi Sallie!
I have been in the process of organizing and figuring out what I need for food and water storage. Discovered a new hint for making minute rice online instead of buying it! Much cheaper! Working on cycling through my water and refiling containers and organizing and figuring out products needed to build up my sources among those canning and dehydrating. In addition, cooking and hygiene resources as well. Things are slowly coming along!
On another side of things, looking for work and working on other income streams for the long road ahead. Thinking and sorting through items to sell. Trying in all ways to get my house in order.
Thanks for these good reminders and posts!