Life on a little urban homestead in the making, with ideas for self-sufficiency, Permaculture, DIYing, organic gardening, food preservation, Chicken keeping, cookery, crafts, thrifting and more...

Feb 18, 2013

The "Ikea Effect", What To Eat Sheets, What's With The Weather?


My Ikea Effect Girls

The "Ikea Effect-
This morning I read Terry's post- The Ikea Effect, over at her blog. Excellent post! Interesting ideas and not a big surprise to me. It's the basic idea that when you invest some time and labor into something, it's of more value to you than something you didn't invest that in. Like setting up an Ikea furniture item. You could just buy something and bring it home, OR you could put it together yourself! "Hey, look what I did!" I found the original article Terry linked Ikea Effect-When Labor Leads to Love fascinating. It stated the idea that  adding an egg to a cake mix made it more "homemade". The buyers rejected the original cake mixes where you just added water as too "easy". Nothing invested. Bad Mommy. I thought of my little urban homestead and how much more I value what I grow and harvest than anything I could ever buy. That's MY blood, sweat and tears out there pal. The manure I dig in, my chickens I help keep safe, happy and healthy, the fruit trees I buy and we plant. All the blisters, sunburn, aches and pains. All those things are a PROCESS, it never ends. Trees die, get it removed, plant a new one. Needs change, adapt and thrive, or die (metaphorically speaking). It's easy to think "we're done" sometimes in life, but it really never does end. Or, you can choose that. We start off with little things, cultivate them, learn and try more. When I became a Master Gardner thru the University of Idaho extension years ago I never dreamed I'd be where I am now- growing more and more food each year, keeping chickens, canning, drying, and pantrying (is that a word?). You never know where your love of something will take you. I love nature so much, of course I'd  wind up being a Master Gardener. A homesteader on a little city lot? I never thought of it as an "official" urban homesteading thing until years later. Sometimes you just do things and later find out it's a trend :)  Hmmm...


                          

What To Eat Sheets-
I found this great little pads of sheets at Cost Plus, $6.00. Cute idea- a list for each day, where you'll eat, what to plan for each meal and/or snacks. Kind of a fun tool I'll try. When you work full time, it's easy to come home tired and go out too much, or not make something from scratch, FAST, because you planned ahead. I made some baking mix the other day, to keep on hand for biscuits, for instance. I can have them in the oven in under 10 minutes! Hot and fresh, and I added whole grain to the mix for a healthier mix.

Girls getting out of the cold wind into their sun room

What's With The Weather?-
The last couple of days were like spring! In the mid 50's, holy moly! I washed my rear windows, cleaned up the garage a bit, and today I went and vacuumed out my car and cleaned it up. It's forecast for snow off and on the next week- high's in the 30's/lows 20's. Just pick a season already!!! It's really blowing now and you can feel the temp drop. We still have a little snow in the shadows by the back fence, but the chickens have LOVED being outside, digging in the dirt again. Happy chickens, but now they're going into the sun room for a warm up break...





2 comments:

Candy C. said...

You sure DO appreciate things more when you have put some effort into them. I have found that I appreciate other people's efforts more too, now that I know what is involved in, say, growing a garden or raising animals.
Talking about the wacky weather, we were in the 70s Monday, Tuesday is supposed to be BIG winds and Wednesday, cold and snow (again). Jeez.
With the Baking Mix, don't forget about beer bread, a hot loaf of bread fresh from the oven in under an hour! ;)

Unknown said...

Yes, I love beer bread too! And the 1/2 WW pastry flour and 1/2 unbleached came out perfect for biscuits!

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