Simply Speaking

i have been doing alot of thinking since we moved into this new house. it's been almost a month now, it's hard to believe. the fact that this house is brand spankin' new has caused me to have to plan for myself how we can best use this house for our family. yes, you can always plan that but i'm the type that would see the old hooks in the wall or the indents on the floor from the previous owners furniture and say "hey, that means this should go here and this is used for this." if somebody else has tried it and done it, i usually go with it. this house has none of that. it was a blank slate. nobody had decided where extra hooks needed to be in the bathroom, or planned out the basement, etc, etc, etc. so it has caused me to grow, and to plan. dreaming? yeah, i can do that. i'm a big dreamer in my head. do i usually do what i dream? rarely. i hardly ever even tell anybody else about these dreams. it's not that i'm lazy. ok, sometimes i am, but not usually. i just don't plan...at all...and am rather haphazard when it comes down to it. it drives me crazy. yes, i know, if you fail to plan you plan to fail. check and check. i got it. i just have some sort of deficiency. i can make lists out the wazoo, wherever that is located, but making those lists into a workable plan is just not a God given characteristic of mine. so anyway, i have begun to make a plan. it's not full. it's not completely executed, but it's a small step. i have decided we will best use this home God gave us by living simply. and now everybody is saying, "you built this up that much for one gigantic, 'well duh moment?'" um yes, i did. and frankly, the impetus of all of this was one little furry rodent. you see. we had not lived here a week when we found that our cat had killed a mouse and left it in the living room over night and around the same time i also found a nibble out of our loaf of bread in the pantry. we had mice at our old house and i had a pretty violent track record with them. i won't go into it all but let's just say you can kill about anything with a 64 oz. bottle of juice and some muscle. anywho, when the mouse discovery was made we went to cosco the next day and got the largest box of plastic food containers you ever did see. when we were packing stuff away in them later that night i got particularly bothered about trying to store boxed cakes mixes and the like. then the thought occurred to me, we don't need these things. if there is one thing mama taught me to do, it is bake. i don't take much credit for my cooking but i do believe my baking is quite good. so, i have decided our life will be easier without convenience. wow, the oxymoron. i will be gradually, and as quickly as i can...(anybody want a cake from a box mix?)...moving to strictly staples baking. i'm rather excited. the same goes for anything else i can find in there that i think i can make with my own little hands. this epiphany even includes bbq sauce my friends. i've got ketchup, brown sugar and vinegar so i'm set. i don't have it together enough to rule out store bought bread, but i am going to try my hand at making cheese.
in accord with this little step of mine i am also starting an online forum called "simple pursuits." there will be sections for 'cooking, grocery shopping and meal planning,' 'sewing, refashioning and mending,' and 'gardening' just to name a few. i'll post more details here in the near future when it is up and running.