The Zabriskies

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Fun in the Sun!

Here are some fun pictures of the good times we've been having this summer. (Yay for no school!)

~ Park Fun ~

Katie Gerke from Vancouver came down for a visit, so we all had a fun day playing like little kids in the park! Thought you'd enjoy the pictures!

This guy was flying around in the sky while we were there. Ellis got a good shot of him. (man down!... lol)

Locked in a childhood memory.

They were on the teeter-totter.

Surprise!

Look at those cutie-heads!

They all looked so much like the end of a CES fireside that I couldn't resist telling them to wave!

Don't fall Ellis!

Sliding down the big slide that was only about twice as long as Grant's body.

Granto HAD to get an awesome flying pic! (He is a super hero afterall)

Hannah and Katie doing their routine.

A picture of Grant and Bri kissing?!

Scandalous!

This hearkens back to a photo Grant took of us three girls before he and I started dating.

This one looks like the cover for a Jane Austin movie to me.

Waka waka!

For some reason (unbenounced to me) everyone seems to think this picture captures my personality perfectly. lol

And now its all just a memory. (If you look closely at this picture, something about the exposure makes us look like ghosts.)

~ Temple Trip ~

This was a nice getaway to the Provo Temple( I love it, even though it looks like a wedding cake)

So debonair, no?

There were WAY too many pictures of ME! :D

The mountains here are just breathtaking.

So is my handsome returned missionary!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Grant and I have been discussing and praying about ways to lower our budget, so we can start saving up a financial reserve and storing food. The answer came in an inspired email from my mother-in-law. It was just a suggestion to check out someone's blog that I had been putting off till I had the time. What I found out when I read it was there are TONS of ways that we can save and be more self-reliant. The blog is written by a sweet lady who lives in Australia and writes to encourage people to be more green, save money, be self-reliant, and value homemaking. She is an excellent writer. It is an inspirational blog.

So I took dear Rhonda-Jean's advice and dared to knit my own cloths, make my own bread and yogurt, and make my own house-hold cleaners... including laundry soap.It has been quite the adventure. I snooped around our local grocers looking for ingredients I had never heard of. I mean... how many of you know what Bicarb soda is? really...

After a few hours of mispronouncing the name to store clerks and looking up and down the cleaning aisle (sure I had missed it) I found out that Bicarb Soda is Sodium Bicarbonate, known in AMERICA as Baking Soda! :D I laughed so hard at my foolishness. Of course the most common ingredient in so many of these cleaners was Baking Soda! I had heard of using Baking Soda to clean and deodorize before!

When I bought the BIG pot I would need to make my ten liters of laundry liquid, the store clerk asked if I was going to make spaghetti. I laughed and said, "Nope! I'm making laundry detergent!" I got the strangest look.

Turns out that just like making healthy bread is cheaper than buying healthy bread because the amount of each ingredient you use costs much less, making your own laundry detergent is MUCH cheaper than buying even the store brands. Plus it doesn't have some of the unnecessary chemicals (ones added just to make bubbles) and such.

At the Harold B. Lee Library, I found a wonderful book written by a chemist about what the ingredients in common brands of household chemicals do and why they use them. I couldn't put it down. It's entitled The Complete Guide to Household Chemicals by Robert J. Palma, Sr., Ph. D. with Mark Espenscheid. I strongly recommend it to those of you interested in simplifying your budget and understanding the preservatives and additives in household chemicals, foods, and such. It even covers what is in your cars and why.

Anyhow, here are the pictures from my fun experience.

This is all I needed to make my laundry detergent.

I graded up that little bar of laundry soap and heated it in some water on the stove till is was all melted. Then added the other ingredients.

After it was all mixed together, I poured it into a bucket and added a bunch of water and then let it set up. This is the ten liter bucket while it was cooling. The whole process took about 25 mins.

Here are all the ingredients I needed to make common household cleaners.

And the final products. :D

For these recipes and more check out Rhonda's post about making your own green cleaners.
For most inspirational writing and other ideas on how to be frugal and live simply click here.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Visit to Vancouver

We had a whirlwind visit home last month. We went up so Grant could record his speaking lines onto the With Mine Own Hand cd so it could be distributed to seminary teachers this coming year... just in time for Book of Mormon! We were only there for a few days, but we had tons of fun with our families! Here are some of the highlights (actually they're just what I happened to take pictures of when I remembered I had my camera with me - lol)...

This is Grant jumping on the trampoline with the kids (sorry its not a wonderful pic. It was nighttime). Grant spent a large part of our time there entertaining the younger three with tricks and games on the trampoline. He's going to be a great dad!

Everyone kept arguing over who got Grant's full attention next. It was pretty fun to see how much they all love him! I couldn't have picked someone who fit better into my family. While he was busy teaching Traci about photoshop, playing videogames with the boys, helping dad sand the ceiling, and playing on the trampoline, I enjoyed time visiting and cooking with my mom and sisters! It was so perfect!

My sister Kristi and I.

Me, Kristi, and Traci.

This is a picture I snapped while we were all sitting around visiting. It's a good thing Grant likes cuddling becuase he sure married into a family of cuddlers!