Simplifying has been a long process for us; and for me as the mom, in particular. This society we live in has so many gadgets and items, supposedly designed to streamline our time, but I often wonder what exactly they really do. Seems to me, that some of the “quick” fixes, really just complicate it all.

For instance.

Birthdays.

Obviously, we do have a boatload of people living here, and so we have a party any given day of the week, but we really strive to stop, celebrate and honor the birthday person – because they are treasures to us!!

We do the breakfast in bed, with their favorite treats. We decorate the eating area of the kitchen with streamers and balloons and their chair with a special sign we made just for them……Dw and I take the birthday person to lunch alone. {They love, love, love that.} Then at night they get to pick what we have for dinner as a family. Dessert is their choice as well. Most often they choose the ice cream cake we make. Sometimes they choose the pie I shared with picture and recipe here.

The thing about the ice cream cake. It’s easy to make. It’s waaaay cheaper then store bought. If I had to do a store bought I would have to drive to the Baskin Robbins or Coldstone, get everyone out, hike us all in, hmmm and haaah, gasp at the price, haul everyone back to the car, drive to the bank, haul everyone into the bank, wait our turn, see the loan officer about re-mortgaging the house, and then drive back to the ice cream shoppe, haul everyone back in {dragging the money from the bank in a giant wagon} and pick out the ice cream cake and go home. Okay, slight exaggeration, but really….those ice cream cakes are supposed to ease our loads….but do they really?

Instead we have a Family Recipe for Hot Fudge sauce. It’s yummy {ask Bill & Lynsay from China, they’ve had it!}. The recipe makes a good size batch. There is almost always some in the fridge. All I have to do is ask the birthday boy/girl what flavor ice cream they want. When I am grocery shopping prior to their birthday I make sure I have the ice cream. We most often buy Breyer’s because it’s as close to natural as we can get….with milk, cream, sugar, eggs…{I really hate buying anything if I don’t know how to pronounce the ingredients listed}.
It is made with a graham cracker crust or cookie crust {their choice}…and yes, we make the crust from scratch too.

Anyway, we have fun making the ice cream cake together…..it freezes well…it makes a boatload…and I just use the hot fudge that is in the fridge from whatever batch we last made. To me it is simple to make something like this for birthdays rather than stop and buy something that half the time tastes like preservatives and chemicals and costs an arm and a leg. blahk

As far as parties for birthdays…I am wracking my brain, but Emma is about to turn 17….and I think she has had 3 kid parties. One was her surprise 16th when we were living in the rental last year. Graham has had one or two. Liberty same. Isaiah had one, but it was really just adult friends coming to celebrate with us.

We have found with our kids. at least, that kid parties are highly over-rated. Over the years we have seen some of the kids that came complain about the games, complain about the food and in general have lousey attitudes. Surprisingly, our kids have pretty much decided it’s just way more fun celebrating with our family than having a kid party. Besides, our kids do not need more toys. They have some “toys” and really, it’s good. I have seen parents spend a boatload of money to “rent” a place for a party….that’s just so complicated to me and just not where we want to spend our money. We would rather keep it simple.

When we have had kid parties, they are in our home, often include a pinata or treasure hunt, games, cake and ice cream and sometimes a light lunch.

Many of you have written and asked about our meals, so here goes:

Take it.

OR

Leave it.

With millions of people starving around the world, we began when the oldest were babies to instill thankfulness and gratefulness. So we have some basic thoughts on meals:

1. If you show up in the kitchen and say something like: “Oh no! That again?” Then your dinner plate is put away and we see you in the morning for breakfast, where you will be served the same dinner you missed the previous night. Surprisingly {or not} there are no complaints about dinner. I have seen many kids who control meal time with their ungrateful, complaining attitudes. Shame on mom and dad. Millions of people are starving around the world and here we are complaining! They know this rule well and there are no second chances.

2. You will eat the vegetables. Period. Or you will head for bed, immediately and find those same vegetables on your plate for breakfast. Again, this is not a place where we see complaints. We are firm believers that “live” food is the best for you and although we do not eat only “live” food, what we serve, we all will eat.

We primarily drink water. Sodas are a huge treat, probably served about once a month or two. It is cheaper not to drink soda, besides it is so much better for us. We do occasionally have juices, but they also are a treat. Milk is with cereal for breakfast. Glasses of milk sometimes during the day. We are preparing to get goats and we will be drinking goat milk before long, Lord willing. We used to have someone who shared their goat milk with us when we pastored in Virginia. We would make goat milk ice cream and it was yummy. I hope to make cheeses, as well as ice cream!

We do not eat much meat. In fact a few years ago someone said they were going to share steaks with us and our kids said, “What’s a steak?” {haha} We prefer beans for our protein and eat lots of them, as well as cheese. We do eat chicken some. If we eat beef, some would probably consider our portions more of a flavoring I suppose. For instance, I make a huge pot of homemade spaghetti and use about one and a half pounds of meat. The pot lasts us for about 3 meals….so really that 1-1/2 lbs of meat goes a long way. I put tons of grated zuchinni and onions and even sometimes things like cooked oatmeal even goes in….it is yummy! This, I’m sure helps us cut our grocery bills.

Instead of lots of cleaning products I pretty much use bleach and baking soda and vinegar. The bleach for cleaning toilets {a pinch in a toilet bowl helps to scrub it up great.} Baking soda is abrasive and not harsh. Baking soda cleans sinks and tubs. We mop with vinegar and water. I do like Murphy Oil soap and on occasion buy that. I used to love the smell so much as a kid that I wanted to drink it {I know, what a weirdo}. So sometimes we clean wood cabinets with Murphy’s and I still love the smell. We clean windows with vinegar and water. It works great and the windows looks wonderful and again, no harsh chemicals. Having auto-immune disorders I found that strong chemical cleaner smells really bug me so I minimize our products to basically these three.

Baking soda, bleach, and vinegar are three of the least expensive things you can buy in the grocery store. Using these basic products to clean saves money and utilizes natural products.

It was kind of weird to me to write about what cleaning products we use and what we eat….it is merely our journey to Simplicity….if you rent the Hyatt for your kid’s birthdays – go for it {In fact invite us cause it sounds like fun!} These are just a few of the ways we cut costs at our Place Called Simplicity to have more to give away and keep life simple…

Who Can Post A Link?

If you want to link up I am asking that you become a “friend” if you aren’t already {by ‘friend’ I mean you are following along at A Place Called Simplicity and your little picture is under the “follower” portion on the sidebar.} If you have not been a friend before, then today would be a great day to join in with all the friends here. If you wonder why I require you to be a “friend” {aka follower}….well I dunno…I guess cause if someone just wants to link a Striving for Simplicity post, but they don’t want to call themselves a friend, then it can almost just feel like they are merely “using” our family blog {cause no doubt you will have many people visit your blog who never have before just by linking up}. Just imagine this: You have planned and worked hard and are having a party for your friends and random people happen to be driving down the street and see a bunch of people walking up to your home and decide they want to just come too and walk in to your house, eat your food and leave and don’t say anything to you….and you never saw them before in your life!! Hope that makes sense – at least I’m sure it does to all of my friends.

You Must Link Up With a Permalink…

Post the permalink from your blog below. A permalink is the URL to a specific blog post. In other words, each blog post has an address and the permalink is the street number and the avenue. For example, my blog address is http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/

But the permalink to this post is:

http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/2010/06/striving-for-simplicity-things-i-do-to.html

To post a permalink, I simply published the post, then went right back and opened my blog, clicked on the post title “Striving for Simplicity” and waited for that page to load, immediately the address for just this post popped up in the address bar. I then copied the address in the address bar. I then went back into the post by editing it and pasting in the address to the post. Also, on your blog you must link back here to this blog and that your post is part of Striving for Simplicity at A Place Called Simplicity…….

Lastly….

If you do not use a permalink, I will be forced to delete your link, and I really don’t want to do that. But often people read this post days and weeks and sometimes even months after the fact. If they want to read your link and you have merely linked to your blog, then they have no clue where your Striving For Simplicity post is. So please be certain to use a permalink when adding your link….Thank you for understanding!