Once again, we are going to try the route of a real estate agent in regard to selling our home.

I’m a little more motivated this time as we actually have the ability to buy 16 acres. Generally, I view the whole house selling thing as a huge inconvenience. But, with the $8000 rebate promise good until April, maybe we actually have a decent stab at selling the house.

Just when I had gotten comfortable and figured we’d be here forever!

So, we are going to patch some walls and slap on some more paint. How many times have I painted some of the rooms in this house? 10? 12? I’ve forgotten all the various colors we’ve had over the years. I like our current color scheme, so I’m not changing any of the main rooms. The T.V. room is going a sand color, though.

The office has to remain whatever color it is behind the shelves, corkboard, file cabinets, storage cabinets, and papers attached to the wall. Fortunately you can’t see much of the wall in the office.

Sorting…Tossing…Rearranging…Spring Cleaning in February….(sigh)….

Well, once again my kiddos are disappointed by the weather predictions. Sadly, we live just far enough south that we don’t get snow when the northern part of the county does. So, it snows near my niece, in Slater/Marietta, but not so much here in Fork Shoals. We got a smidge of sleet last night, and we actually saw snowflakes for about 20 minutes tonight. That hardly qualifies for getting out the sled. Ah well…there’s always February. Oh wait – we often have daffodils in bloom by the 14th, so that plan may not work out so well either.

If you live in an area that gets lots of snow, we’d love to hear from you! I grew up in Illinois, so I’m familiar with shoveling daily snowfall accumulations and chipping ice off the windshield every time I wanted to drive anywhere, but these are just stories to my children. My husband grew up in Wisconsin, but again, no reality for the younger ones.

So post your stories! Tell us how deep the snow gets and how long the icicles get and how thick the ice gets – we’d love to hear from you!

Check this out: http://www.funfoodadventures.com/estes.htm

For a donation of $39 you receive over $300 in ebook materials!!!

What do you get?
Convention Audio Package from Value’s Diven Family
Three titles from Kap & Pen: Eating Better Than Beans and Cabbage, Father’s Birthday & the Great Chicago Fire, and How to Have a Successful Treasure Hunt
World of Animals Storybuilder by Kim Kautzer
Ballistic Homeschooling by Melanie Young
Mother Encouragement Packet from Teach Magazine
Baby Steps to Better Health and Learning for the Littles by Sheri Graham
Short and Sweet A Collection of Short Stories from Christian Perspective
Lapbook e-book of your choice from A Journey Through Learning
Redeeming the Time Journal & Choose Ye This Day from Me & My House Ministries
Fifty Stories Retold from Yesterday’s Classics
Supermom’s Simple Guide to Healthier Eating for Beginners and Beyong by Erica Johns
We Three Kings of Orient Are Copywork e-book by Jennifer Bogart
$10.00 Gift Card from Hands & Hearts Homeschool, Inc.
The Bread by Hand e-book by Kimberly Eddy
Listening Lunch: The How and Why of Audio for Homeschoolers by Kathy Grubb
E-books: What do I do with them all? By Michelle Geffkin
This Book is Being Read By: Bookmarks by Elisabeth Geffkin
Artful Advent: Celebrate the Season with Art by Michelle Geffkin
How Flat is Your Homeschool World? by Phyllis Wheeler
Fox Kids Recipes, Overcoming Obstacles While Homeschooling, and Seeing God even through the Stitches by Tami Fox
History & Holidays: Tips, Tricks, and Projects e-book by Maggie Hogan

THAT’S $330 worth of ebooks!!!

Then, The Old Schoolhouse is offering a great subscription deal ~ you get ALL the above PLUS the TOS special for a $57 donation.

BUT IT GETS BETTER YET! These are donation suggestions ~ If you donate MORE than the $39 for the first deal, they have an additional thank you gift worth $150!!! AND You get entered into a drawing to win almost $900 worth of goodies that will be mailed to the winners!!!! INCREDIBLE!

Why are they doing all this? Here it is in a nutshell. Jim and Kate Estes and their children are a homeschooling, self-publishing Christian family. One of their children has had extraordinary physical needs, spending weeks at a time in the hospital. He’s only three but has already had over a dozen operations. Their family is a testimony of God’s grace through great trials. Jim believes firmly in living debt-free. His job was downsized many months back and he has been unable to find employment. They had a retirement fund, etc., but now all of that has been used. He has a business opportunity that would meet the needs of his families financial needs and give them the flexibility they require due to Noah’s extended hospital stays. But, he needs start-up money to do it. Kate came to the self-pulishing community to ask how to have an inventory liquidation sale. They were simply going to sell all they had in their self-publishing business to try and raise the finances for this new opportunity. However, MANY of us in the CSP loop offered instead to donate our products to them for use in a huge fire sale. This allows them to stay in the self-publishing business while at the same time earning enough to start the new business, keep up with medical expenses, and be able to stay living in their family home. All those of us who donated are receiving a blessing by helping this family and we are getting our business names out there. It’s great for us and great for them!

I really, really want to encourage all of you to consider going to the web site I posted and check it out. You will never find a package like this offered for this price again. Such tremendous resources for homeschoolers!

TWO QUESTIONS

I would love to write some ebooks and unit studies on topics that homeschoolers are particularly interested in. SO - Do you have any suggestions? Please feel free to post a comment and let me know what topics you would like to see offered.

ALSO – I would greatly appreciate comments on the cost of ebooks. Prices vary wildly from one website to another. I’ve seen 100+ page ebooks for $2 and I’ve seen 14-page ebooks for $11. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason. What price range do YOU consider an amount you would be willing to spend for an e-book or an e-unit study?

Thanks! I look forward to hearing your input!

Anyone know if this is true? We were at an expo show yesterday and a waterless cookware demonstrator said making gravy with cornstarch was healthier than using flour. I never have used flour (unless desperate!) because my mom taught me how to make lump-free gravy using cornstarch. I can’t really make a decent gravy with flour. I use cornstarch for making LOTS of stuff thicker – I just love the consistency it gives. You can thicken puddings, gravies, sauces, and syrups with cornstarch. It’s one of my favorite kitchen pantry items.

But – as much as I love cornstarch, I’ve always assumed starch is starch, so I never thought of it as being healthier than flour. I would love to know if this is true or not!

Also – if any of you have any favorite recipes using cornstarch, I’d be happy to post them on here!

So glad for the great response to our latest freebie. And the sales that have come from it! I’m very anxious to post reviews about it, so if you ordered the entire set, please feel free to email me and let me know what you think of it!

“Be not weary in well doing!” – Keep at it, folks! I’m so thankful we can homeschool in this country, attend the church of our choice, worship freely, and be an encouragement one to another.

We are still learning our way around the website! Yesterday we learned that we cannot do group accept commands because it affects Paypal transactions, so each freebie order must be individually accepted.

Then we learned that we are on some ATT black lists. How that happened, we have no idea. So – perhaps you ordered the freebie and did not receive it? If so, please email me directly and we will send you one via email.

We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work through these ever-changing problems.

We’ve given away almost 1,000 freebies this weekend, so we are very happy about that! Thanks to all who have requested the free spelling test pages. We hope you enjoy them!

I don’t know if you have trouble getting soap scum off your shower or not, but Soft Scrub has a sprayable bottle of miracle cleaner! Now, it might not work as well for some as it did for us, but I have to tell you about this. We have a shower stall in our master bathroom that is 20+ years old. It was getting yellowish and it didn’t matter how much I bleached and scrubbed, it just never really looked clean.

My daughter has a cleaning business and she brought home some spray Soft Scrub, and she sprayed down the shower stall. A little while later, my husband started scrubbing it down with one of those new flexible scrub brushes. I cannot tell you the difference! It looks brand new! It looks better than when we bought the house 20 years ago. I just had to blog about it because it’s an incredible product!

Received today:

Your Social Security

Just in case some of you didn’t know this. It’s easy to check out, if you don’t believe it.

Be sure and show it to your kids. They need a little history lesson on what’s what and it doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat or Republican. Facts are Facts!!!

Our Social Security

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised:

1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary,

No longer Voluntary

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program,

Now 7.65%

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year,

No longer tax deductible

4.) That the money the participants put into the independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and,

Under Johnson the money was moved to The General Fund and Spent

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.

Under Clinton & Gore up to 85% of your Social Security can be taxed

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a social scurity check every month — and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of
the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘put away’ — you may be interested in the following:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the general fund so that Congress could spend it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and Senate.

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?

A: That’s right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The
Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!

Then, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is uninformed citizens believe it!

If enough people see this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe changes will evolve. Maybe not, some Democrats are awfully sure of what isn’t so.

AND CONGRESS GIVES THEMSELVES 100% RETIREMENT FOR ONLY SERVING ONE TERM!!!

—-A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.—–Thomas Jefferson

Hope you all had a wonderful day! I know we did!!

We made homemade cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes and a ham and took that to my nieces house. There was green bean casserole, homemade mashed potatoes, incredibly good stuffing, croissant rolls, turkey, gravy, cookies, pies, and fudge ~ whew! About 23 nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, boyfriends, and sister-in-law. Then my other niece that lived next door came over for a while to announce that her son and wife had their first baby at about 2:30 in the afternoon!! All are doing well. It’s my 6th great-great nephew! My first great-great niece is due in 5 weeks. Lots of babies being born in this family ~

Then we came back to my house and my oldest daughter and her hubby and kids came to visit for a while. One of my nieces came over with their family and then two of her grown daughters and families came over to visit. We ate homemade bon-bons and played games. It was really nice! I love seeing family.

We are planning on doing some 4 generation photos soon! Two of my nieces have grandchildren, so that’s how I get to be a great-great aunt. I’d like to take a photo with myself, Marlee & Ginger, their children and their children. I think that would be cool. If the Lord tarries, theoretically I could still be here in 20 years to have a 5-generation photo taken! My oldest great-great nephew (Tony) is 5 already! I would be 66 when he’s 25. I think this is so cool … if I’m around when Tony has a son, he would be my great-great-great nephew. If I live to be 90, and Tony’s son has a son, he would be my great-great-great-great nephew! Isn’t that unreal? AND if Marlee and all those greats in-between are still living when I’m 90, we could have a 6-generation photograph! I’m guessing there aren’t toooooo many of those floating around the photo world. That’s the type of thing that happens when there’s a 16 year gap between a brother and sister and their kids just keep producing more and more children! You end up with tons of nieces and nephews and greats! ha ha ha

Well, I have places to go today so must be off!