Quiverfull Family Blog

We all know the typical ways to obtain books on the cheap - garage sales, thrift stores, used bookstores, library sales, friends relatives etc. Some of us even know about the used homeschooling curriculum and books yahoo groups, available in many different flavours and varieties depending upon your learning philosophy preference. And some of us are becoming aware of the benefits of book trading websites.

There are benefits of a book trading website over the conventional methods of obtaining books at a reasonable price. You don’t have to leave home to conduct your search. If you are looking for a specific title, going from garage sale to garage sale, bookstore to bookstore, thriftstore to thriftstore is a very ineffective use of your time. With a book trading website you can establish a ‘wishlist’ that will notify you if a book you desire becomes available. You can also search online to see what titles are currently available.

The savings in fuel to drive around and find books, and your time is immense! You do still need to visit the post office with your books for trade, and pay for the postage, but I have found that I can often obtain books for $2 - $4 taking into account the postage costs that it took to obtain the ‘points’ (credits I can spend towards books in the system). While this isn’t as affordable as garage sale finds, let’s be honest - how often can we find the titles we REALLY want at a garage or library sale? And when the book is sent you don’t have to pay for the postage, the sender ships it to you for points, and the shipping is free for you!

I still feel that garage, library sales etc. still have their place (I love to keep my eye out for books of interest there), but we are rurally located, and rarely make it to a locale with used books for our perusal, so this is a perfect solution for us. We need to go to the post office weekly to pick up our mail, as our location doesn’t have postal delivery, so that is no additional expense for us.

You will need some books you would like to send away to others in exchange for points to get started. Some sites also accept magazines, cd’s, dvd’s etc. for trade. The more items you send out, the more credits you obtain in the system. Some systems also give credit for listing books, so if you list 10 books, and you are awarded 0.1 points for them, you can request a book for 1 point, neat hey!? Every system works differently though, so do investigate to find out more details!

I am currently only a member of BookMooch (books and magazines only), as they are open to international users, and I am in Canada - users however can choose to ship domestically, ask first, or internationally. They are also completely free, you only pay for your postage on outgoing books at the post office. You can find my inventory here, in caes I have any books that you would like me to send to you through BookMooch! I have received 332 books, given away 153, have 6 more books on the way, 2 I need to send out, and 1 in transit. That may seem like a lot of books, but when we came to Christ I heavily weeded our library, and choose new Christian reading materials. Some of the books I weeded we had to burn due to their openly pagan nature. Others were only questionable in moral/spiritual value - these went to BookMooch and the used bookstore. God bless BookMooch for allowing us to overhaul our library affordably!

Here is a listing of other websites, many country/media specific, some are complicated and charge a bit of money etc. so be discerning while browsing:

Bookins.com
Whatsonmybookshelf.com
Titletrader.com
Readitswapit.co.uk
Readersunited.com
Swapclub.co.nz
Boekenruilen.nl
Bookswapper.de
Swapthing.com
Swapsimple.com
Bookhopper.co.uk
Frugalreader.com
Paperbackswap.com
Swaptree.com

Have fun trading books!

Tags: Free Resources, Frugal Living by Quiver Mamma
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Well, by now you’ve probably already seen the picture of the re-usable cloth diaper wipes I made for our coming baby in the bloggy carnival giveaway below. Now YOU can learn how to make these super-duper simple wipes. All it takes is some fabric, a sewing machine of some sort, some thread, a pair of scissors, and YOU!

First for some background information. When I was pregnant with my first born I made a pile of cloth diaper wipes, 30 of them, out of white diaper flannel that I bought, I also made diaper doublers, fitted one size diapers, pee pads for lying baby on, breast pads etc. etc. but the diaper wipes were the easiest :).

For my second pregnancy for some reason….some of the wipes had gone missing. I think they are like socks that way, they just up and…leave! In any case we were living in a tiny little holiday trailer with a 3 year old and a newborn, so I bought some mail order, they were very very small, and weren’t really any nicer than the ones I had made before, but, we were desperate! They cost $0.75 each, and were tiny, maybe 4″ x 4″, but they did get the job done.

For this baby, I see that MANY of our wipes are missing, are some of them in strange storage tubs out in the shed that is too full for me to get my pregnant belly into? Yes, that is the shed with the snow drift in front of the door in a previous post, but DH has shovelled all the snow away :). So I knew, we would need MORE wipes! MORE MORE!

In any case, we were at Larry’s parents doing some work for a couple of weeks, and his Mom has a serger, I brought some fabric, and sewed 45 wipes in a single day, they take around 1 minute a piece when you get going, but with children there are always interruptions :).

The fabric I used was a gift, so it was free! YAY! You can use any sort of fabric you have on hand, old t-shirts with a few holes (just avoid those when cutting out wipes), free fabric from relatives - now that my family knows I sew from time to time they seem to like to give us their fabric they’ll not be needing, old sheets, or you can actually buy some too! At the fabric store there is always a discount section so make sure to look there. I basically had $0 cost on these, other than the basic tools needed that I already had, just 45 minutes of time for $33.75 savings, hmmm, good pay!

So, now that you have your fabric and tools assembled, let’s go! These are super simple instructions. I’m not what you call a real sewer or a seamstress, but I am trying to learn, so these are very very simple instructions! I have to apologize for the photos, I’m not a talented digital photographer :).

1. Cut up your fabric. I just folded up my fabric and cut squares out of it by sight. The first wipes I made I used a cardboard template I had cut out to the size I wanted and cut around it. This time I just hacked out squares of approximately 10″ x 5″. They are irregularly shaped because of this, but, they don’t need to all be the same! They are for wiping baby bums! Do you think baby will mind if they aren’t perfect? That’s why I say - ANYONE can make these!



2. Get ready to sew. If you have a serger, set it for a three thread overlock stitch that will ’seal up’ the outside edges of the fabric. Adjust tension as needed. Wow, did I ever have to adjust the tension. These wipes are just a single layer of flannel and are pretty thin, so do some experiments on scraps of the fabric you are working with to figure out what tension you’ll be needing to make the stitching fairly even, without bunching and scrunching. If you have a sewing machine, set it for a fairly small zig-zag stitch, and again experiment with the tension (not as tricky as with a serger!) to make sure the stitches are balanced.
3. Start sewing. Again, I used a serger, but if you have a sewing machine set for zig-zag, don’t worry about hemming, or folding over any edges, this is easy! Just go around the outside edge, close to the edge, you can round the corners off while you sew (sew in a curved line, and trim extra fabric later), or pivot on the corners for square wipes. They won’t unravel, no worries! Some of the serging that came undone on my first batch of wipes I just corrected by zigzagging the area, and it never came undone! You may want to stitch twice around the outside edge just to be secure that your wipes are structurally sound.If you are serging, just pick a corner to start at, and start heading around. Sadly, I don’t have any good tips for serging around corners, but a serger can go around a pretty tight curve, so don’t be afraid to pull your fabric around through the curve, sometimes my curves worked out, sometimes not (some fabric would fold over instead of getting cut cleanly away). With a serger, you can just round the edges, when you go around the curve the extra fabric will be cut off.

   Do you have tips for making it around the corner successfully every time? Please comment! Again, these are for baby, so no stress if they aren’t perfect! If you are sewing you do need to do the back stitch and forward stitch trick at the corner to secure your stitching before you take off down the side.

   

4. When you come all the way to the beginning of the wipe, just serge past the corner and leave the tail on, don’t worry about trimming the tail or anything right now.

   We are trying to sew fast because we have children underfoot, so just head on past the corner, serge a bit of a tail, and grab the next wipe. If you are sewing you will need to back-stitch and forward stitch to end your sewing when you come to the last corner of course. Then you can just pull out some thread, and start going on your next wipe, and just leave the old wipe to the back/side of your machine.

5. Start your next wipe, as in step 3. Your attached wipe will move around as you turn your new wipe that you are working on. Don’t worry, this shouldn’t be a problem or distraction (well, for me it wasn’t, I just wanted to go fast!). This time when we go past the last corner, it will cut off the attached wipe with the fabric cutter (see the above picture), see, you just saved yourself a couple of seconds ;). Put your finished wipes in a pile. Keep going with steps 3 - 5 until you are done with your pile of wipes. Now you have a finished pile of wipes!

   And here is an individual wipe - see it is a bit irregular, but again, it works for wiping up!

   Now you can get your little helper, mine is my 5 year old daughter, to trim off the threads for you, and voila, you are in wipey land!

Maybe some of the SAHM’s out there might want to get really good at this, and start a home based business sewing diaper wipes, customizable, out of a variety of fabric types, prints etc. Even when you do buy them, you can save SO much money over disposable wipes! Another issue with disposable wipes is the preservatives put in them. How long have they sat wet on the shelf in their bag through all types of weather conditions? What do they put in them so that they don’t mold? Hmmm, it likely isn’t healthy!

If you have found this article helpful please feel free to link to it on your blog! I hope it has been a blessing to some of you!

Tags: Family Home Business, Frugal Living, Sewing, This and That by Quiver Mamma
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Work at Home Business Idea for Homeschoolers #1, Condiment Making
Or Make Your Own Relish – Frugal Friday

This is a combination post! A bit of cooking, small family home business idea, saving money, and homesteading all in one! It is also a combination of authors, Larry originated the post idea and wrote much of it, I edited, filled in a few details and supplied the recipe.

Over the years our family has had many small home based business to earn extra money and allow us to stay at home, and I would like to share with other home schooling families some of our experiences.

The first home business idea I’d like to share is making food stuff at home and then selling it at farmer markets or other venues like that – local fairs, craft shows etc. Our families first experience with selling food items would be my wife Jennifer when she was a small girl and helped her mother to make and sell home baking, my sisters also did this as a way of earning their pocket money. My our experience started back in the late 1980’s when I had a few honey bees and sold honey at the local farmers market. I very much enjoyed keeping bees and selling the honey.

What I want to share in this post is the business opportunity to make and sell condiments (relish, jams, pickles etc.). While we were down visiting my family, my mother had bought some relish at the local farmers market and we all enjoyed it very much. My oldest daughter liked it very much but we found out that it had wheat flour in it and she has a very hard time with wheat. So I asked Jen to look on the Internet for a recipe to make our own, she found a recipe and we took a morning to make some, replacing the wheat with rice flour. It was a great hit, our first batch was so close to the relish my mother had bought that we knew we had something our whole family could enjoy.

Now the reason that I thought this would be a great home based business was when I sat down and crunched the numbers. The relish my mother bought was $7.50 for a one pint jar and the lady making it has a hard time keeping up with the demand. We had made 17 pints that morning following the recipe we got off the Internet and the ingredients cost about $30.00 not counting the jars. So 17 times $7.50 is $127.50 less the ingredients is $97.50 then you have to take out the cost of the jars at $.65 each times 17 giving you $16.35 for a net total of $81.15 - not bad for about 4 hours in the kitchen, that is $20.28/hour!

*This is also my Frugal Friday post! Making your own condiments saves a LOT of money over buying it at the store. Our family could not afford $7.50/jar of relish at likely 1 jar/week at the way our family eats it! Making your own brings the cost down to $2.00/jar (not counting the jars, which are re-usable), which is far more affordable! And there is a very high vegetable content in this relish, which is wonderful!*

Of course, you may need to take your fuel and marketing costs out as well ?. If you grow your own veggies you could half your ingredient costs, and then you could add other kinds of relish, pickles and jams. Depending upon the regulations in the part of the world where you live you may need to prepare the condiments in a commercial kitchen (either one in your home, or you can rent space in some locations) in order to sell at a farmers market. Here in Alberta that is the way food regulations are going, so you should check into the requirements in your state/province for small scale food processing. People love home made condiments and there is no end to the kinds you can make.

If you have teenage daughters this is a wonderful business idea for them! It is simple, fun, and profitable!

So here is the recipe for the relish we made (we did modify the recipe we found, so this is the revision) if all you do is try a batch for yourself you will I hope find it very enjoyable, just be careful who you give a jar to for they will want more. Jennifer’s grandparents just adore it, we shared some with them on our visit to the city yesterday, and they will be needing more on our next visit for certain!

Lady Rose Relish Recipe

This is the recipe that we will be using next time as a result of our learning experiences – the batch we made this time is slightly different, but we’d like it better with these changes.

Ingredients

4 cups of chopped, peeled cucumbers
4 cups chopped, peeled onions
2 heads celery, cut fine
3 sweet red peppers, cut fine
3 green peppers, cut fine
1 large cauliflower, cut fine
5 cups white vinegar
6 ¾ cups white sugar (we used organic which is ‘tan’ sugar)
¼ cup yellow mustard seeds
1 cup rice flour (you can also use wheat)
4 tbsp. dry mustard powder
2 tbsp. turmeric powder
¼ cup salt

Instructions

Wash, peel and trim all vegetables as needed. Either cut fine by hand, with a chopper, or in the food processor with the chopping blade (we used a food processor – the girls loved helping!) to get the above measures necessary for the recipe.

Place all ingredients in a non-reactive pot (we used stainless steel), stir well and let stand for 24 hours. Heat until the relish comes to a boil, stir regularly to prevent burning. Pour into scalded canning jars, leaving ½” headspace, and ensuring that the rim is wiped clean, place scalded seals and rings on jars, sealing until finger tight. Place jars in a boiling water canning bath for 10 minutes. Remove with tongs and place on counter undisturbed for 24 hours. Tighten any loose rings, and put any unsealed jars into the fridge for immediate consumption.

Mmmm, enjoy!

Tags: Family Home Business, Frugal Living, Homesteading, Recipes by Quiver Mamma
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Some of you may have noticed by now…I am a resource junkie! And I love free audio downloads that are available on the internet, for Christian homeschoolers! It’s just fabulous! Now, we have super slow dial up so it takes us forever to download them, but it is so often worth the wait! I just found out about Frugal Friday’s, so I think this qualifies, much cheaper than paying to attend homeschooling workshops!

Mom to Mom Radio Show - From Cindy Rushton, over two years of free downloadable recordings to help you in your high calling as a wife and mother! Often homeschooling focused and always inspirational.

Trivium Pursuit - All of these recordings are great, covering the Teaching the Trivium style of Christian homeschooling, teaching classical languages etc., and the psalm singing ones are very helpful in comitting scripture to memory. I love the Bluedorn’s!

Homeschool Audio - I haven’t listened to any of these personally yet, but they look worth a listen

You Need a Story - I haven’t had any updates from this site for awhile, but it’s worth signing up just for the great reading of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Christian Audio - This is a company that sells downloadable audio books, but they also have a free downloadable book each month. Not always good for homeschoolers, but you decide! Sometimes they are - Christian classics, history, even a focus on the family recording once. I actually need to borrow a high speed connection for these files, they are huge! Then I just burn them to mp3.

Homeschool Radio Shows - A free, vintage radio show that you can download each week! We have really enjoyed some of these programs, and it’s a blessing to have them available for free. Head back every week for updates.

Charity Tape Ministries - Free downloadable mp3 sermons and studies on a variety of topics. Our family has been truly blessed by this ministry, and DH had the chance to hear some of the brothers speak at the mens meeting here in Alberta. Yes - they do cover homeschooling, discipling your children, biblical family roles etc! Awesome biblical teachings.

Bold Christian Living - Jonathan Lindvall offers free mp3 downloads on a variety of topics related to Christ centred living - homeschooling, missions, discipline, betrothal, the role of fathers etc. His recordings have truly blessed us, we so appreciate his focus on keeping Christ at the center of your homeschool.

Do you know of any free sites with homeschooling audio downloads? Let me know in the comments so we can share the love!

Tags: Free Resources, Frugal Living, Homeschooling by Quiver Mamma
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We used to do our own laundry detergent using a very informal technique of throw in some washing soda, some borax and a bit of castille soap. We ordered the washing soda and borax in 50 lb. bags from our local ‘environmental’ store, Earth’s General Store in Edmonton, had to wait for awhile, but got some BIG bags that lasted forever….well most of it is gone now. Recently I came across this recipe for Homemade Laundry Detergent from Tawra at Living on a Dime, and she gave me permission to post it here :).

Homemade Laundry Detergent

I have discovered that people either love or hate this soap. Try it and see what you think.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

1/3 bar Fels Naptha Laundry Soap, grated
6 cups water
1/2 cup washing soda
1/2 cup borax

Heat 6 cups water and soap in a large pan until dissolved. Stir in washing soda and Borax. Mix and heat until dissolved. Boil 15 minutes. Remove from heat. (It will have the consistency of honey.*) In a 3 or 5 gallon bucket, add 1 quart of hot water, then add the soap mixture. Mix. Add enough cold water to make a 2 gallon mixture. Mix until well blended. Let sit 24 hours. The soap will gel*. Use 1/2 cup for each load.

Makes 2 gallons. (Approximately $ .40 per gallon)

*If the detergent doesn’t gel or reach honey consistency it will still work.

Notes:

Stir before each use as this soap does separate. Detergent can be stored in a liquid detergent bottle. Just shake it up each time you use it.

This detergent will not suds up in the washer, but it is still getting your clothes clean.

If you have extra hard water the soap may not clean as well. Add 1/2 cup borax or washing soda to the load and that may help.

If you do not like this laundry soap, you can still use the Fels Naptha bar for spot cleaning and to rub on stains. The Borax and Washing Soda are great to add to your regular detergent for extra cleaning.

Again, thanks to Tawra at Living on a Dime for all of her great frugal living tips!

So, I was intrigued at the time and made a mental note for future reference, but then…I saw what my friend Camille had on her blog, and I just had to share it with everyone! She has made an excellent photo tutorial on how to make this same homemade laundry soap from scratch! You should go and check it out! I think you’ll find you’re as inspired as I am…now I just need to find this ‘Fels Naptha’ soap they all speak of! I think I’ll make mine in milk jugs! Always readily available :).

Another frugal laundry find that came through my inbox the other day is a ready to go detergent that is quite economical and you need very little of, so if you aren’t up to making your own, you might want to check out this Norwex Detergent over at the Urban Homemaker. It seems a bit pricey up front, but it does anywhere from 80 - 400 loads for $24.00 depending on the type of washing machine you have, that is either $0.30 or $0.06/load, so worth checking out if you’d rather by detergent. If you do decide to purchase, can you mention that Jennifer Bogart referred you? Marilyn gives referal bonuses - and I have my eye on her mattress cleaner - this stuff looks amazing! It actually goes down into your bed and is made out of a special bacteria that gobble up all the gooblies in your mattress! I spray ours down every once in a while with tea tree oil, but that only sits on top!

Okay, I’ll admit it….neat cleaning products make me excited!

Tags: Frugal Living by Quiver Mamma
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I just received this article in my inbox (and yes, I have permission to post it!), and I have really been thinking about it for the past couple of days. In the past we have for periods of time been a no-leftovers family, as DH felt it was not nutritious and bad for our health, and was rather religious about eating properly (according to Ayurvedic principles) at the time - this is before we were saved! But in the recent past I have been slowly adding some leftovers to our diet. In any case, I discussed this article with DH, and we both feel it is important to be stewards of the blessings that God has given us, including all of our food. I think you might be surprised with the statistics shared in this article! I am now being more vigilant about making sure we eat up what we already have, instead of just discarding it.

I really appreciate the work that Tawra and her mother Jill are doing to help families save money and pay down their debts, in small practical ways like these!

Save on Groceries Before You Leave Home
By Jill Cooper
Living on a Dime

One of the easiest ways to save money on your grocery bill starts before you even leave the house. It’s no extra work, you don’t have to deprive yourself of anything and you don’t have to clip any coupons. What is it? Stop wasting food.

On average most families throw away 50% of the food they buy. If you have trouble believing that then watch your family’s eating habits for the next few days. How many times did your child eat only half of his lunch or dinner or drink only half of his glass of milk or juice? How much food gets thrown away when you wash dishes? How many fruits and vegetables have rotted and been tossed? How much meat have you thrown away because it is freezer burned? And what about those leftovers in the fridge or the cartons of sour milk?

If this is you, do you realize if you spend $400 a month on groceries you are literally throwing $200 of it into the trash? What would you think if someone you knew took two $100 bills and threw them away?!? That would make dumpster divers out of the most genteel among us.

Better planning keeps you from throwing away so much food, saving you money!

Here are some ideas on how to help you to stop the waste:

1. Only fill a child’s (or adult’s) glass half full if they normally don’t drink it all. You can always give them more when that is gone. If they do have left over milk or juice at the end of the meal put it in the fridge for them to finish at another time.

2. When you get ready to cook a piece of meat like a roast or chicken, plan ahead. For example, when I take a roast out to thaw I don’t think, “Ok, we’ll have roast and mashed potatoes tonight.” But I think “I will have roast and mashed potatoes tonight, Bar-B-Q beef tomorrow and beef and noodles the next night.” That way you won’t find yourself three days later gazing guiltily at that dying leftover roast thinking, “I really should do something with this but what?” and then end up throwing it out a week later.

3. Check your fridge the night before you go to the grocery store. That way you can plan your menus and choose what to buy based on the leftovers you have.

4. If all else fails, make one night a week as leftover night. That’s when you set out all your odds and ends of leftovers for everyone to polish off. This is especially good if you do it the night before you buy groceries because this leaves your fridge empty for the new things you are buying tomorrow.

Jill Cooper and Tawra Kellam are frugal living experts and the editors of Living on a Dime . As a single mother of two, Jill Cooper started her own business without any capital and paid off $35,000 debt in 5 years on $1,000 a month income. Tawra and her husband paid off $20,000 debt in 5 years on $22,000 a year income.

Tags: Frugal Living by Quiver Mamma
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This offer is good until Friday, March 21st, so you’ll need to act first if you’d like to take advantage of it!

Tawra at Living on a Dime is offering a great deal this week on ALL of her money-saving e-books. They are worth $119 in total, and she has them on sale for ONLY $17.00! Normally she sells a package of 11 e-books for $45.00, so this is a great deal, you get 13 of her e-books, AND she is throwing in extra goodies too! $32.00 worth of bonus e-books, AND a couple of St. Patrick’s Day resources (we don’t celebrate today, but you might be able to use them!).

She has SO very many great money saving tips and tricks, that you may save the cost of the package in the first week, just from implementing SOME of these ideas.

I know many of us QF and homeschooling moms are living on a single income, that can be slim at times, so we need all the money saving techniques we can get, particularly when raising a large brood for the Lord! Head on over there, and take a look!

Tags: Frugal Living by Quiver Mamma
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