I am flying today back home, I will miss this country and the great friends I’ve made here!

I am so thankful for all the wonderful new places I’ve visited, new people I’ve met, and all this new culture I’ve been immersed into!

Those last 6 months were fabulous, and even though I am glad to go back to France, I will miss greatly the USA.

I hope I will be able to blog when I arrive and keep you in touch with this new chapter of my life which is about to begin. Keep me and my daughter in your prayers, to help us have a safe trip!

I hope that I will be back in the valley by next fall, until then I will be enjoying my country, my friends, my family, and my culture!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!

Have a great day

In this post I will share with you some of my tips to travel smooth with small kids.

Since my daughter was born, I traveled with her at least twice a year by airplane, plus lots of car and train. We ‘ve been flying from Spain to Switzerland, to France, to England. From France to the USA and now we will fly from Phoenix to Paris with a stop in Dallas.

So, if you are planning to travel with your little one soon, these advices can be useful for you and your sanity!!

First of all, accept that children are children, and they have their limits. If you are tired, nervous or/and excited, imagine how would be your kid!

My top 5 rules for kids are:

• Keep them fed
• Keep them comfortable
• Keep them entertained
• Keep them rested
• Keep them healthy

So, in order to keep up with the rules, here are a few tips for you:

- Prepare some snacks and drinks for your little ones. Choose healthy snacks, avoid chocolate or sugary stuff that can make your kid sick. You must have plenty of water or juice to keep them hydrated, avoid of course chemicals or sodas.

- Dress your child comfortable. Make sure your kid is not stressed by the outfit, especially the belt, the socks/shoes; and pay attention to the temperature, there are a lot of changes when you travel (airplane/outside/airport, car/outside/AC…) so don’t over dress your kid nor don’t forget an additional jacket or blanket.

- Prepare some stuff for your kids to do. Don’t expect them to stay during several hours amazed by an airplane, they will be used to it 5 minutes after being in the air! So, what I have for my 4 years old is some play cards, flashcards, and I found at Wallmart some great little books with tons of stickers and activities for 3 $ each.
If you have a stop (like I do in Dallas), (if you have time) bring your kid to the play area. Most airports have those now and it is a great relief for kids. They will feel better after some playing and ready for the second half of your trip.The best I have ever seen was in Basel (Switzerland).

- Then, it is important for kids to have some rest. You sure know when a kid needs sleep, he/she will be very difficult to manage. Take a small blanket and a little pillow plus of course your kids favorite plush toy, so you can improvise a little “bed” even in an airport, or train station etc…

- Don’t travel with sick kids! I know, sometimes you don’t have the choice, so if you do travel with a sick kid, please keep your medicine next to you, take a complete outfit (trousers, socks, underwear,…) in your hand bag just in case of “accident”, take a plastic or paper bag (just in case too!!), and make sure your kid is well hydrated and  follow even more the other rules!

- Last but not least, keep safety as a high priority! Don’t let your child unattended even for half a minute! If you have a nervous kid or you don’t feel confident enough to do that efficiently, then attach your child to yourself. It sounds rude but it works! You can use a small scarf or rope that would be attached to your belt and your kids belt, you can also find one of those kinda belts that are made for children when they begin to walk (do you know what I mean?) Maybe you will not look as pretty as you wanted but at least your kid will be safe next to you.
If you really don’t like this idea or don’t need it, you should make a “tag” in form of necklace (a little paper/cardboard with a rope) where you will write the name of the kid, and your cell number on it. Tell your kid that he/she has to keep it always under his/her neck and show it to a grownup if he/she gets lost.

I noticed something that always works with my daughter: when she is tired or doesn’t want to do something or go somewhere I make it a game; kinda Dora the explorer and then she gets excited and do whatever I ask her. Think that travel is great, it is an enormous mind opening adventure for little ones, so we should try to make that a positive experience for them. Make it fun!

Now I am going to pack my stuff, and make sure for the 100th time that nothing is missing, (you know this feeling of “I know I am forgetting something”) and I will hopefully be in my plane to Dallas on Tuesday morning, then in my other plane to Paris, then in a bus to the train station, then in a train to Dijon, and then in my mother’s car to her home……………………………………………………………… I love traveling! Am I weird??? lol

Have a blessed day!

It is a powerful text that makes you think. I hope you will enjoy it.

I accept this award on behalf of all the fine teachers I’ve known over the years who’ve struggled to make their transactions with children honorable ones, men and women who are never complacent, always questioning, always wrestling to define and redefine endlessly what the word “education” should mean. A Teacher of the Year is not the best teacher around, those people are too quiet to be easily uncovered, but he is a standard-bearer, symbolic of these private people who spend their lives gladly in the service of children. This is their award as well as mine.

We live in a time of great school crisis. We rank at the bottom of 19 industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world’s narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn’t buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse — and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. In Manhattan 50% of all new marriages last less than five years. So something is wrong for sure.

This is a time of great school crisis and that crisis is interlinked with a greater social crisis in the general community. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent — nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name “community” hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my 25 years of teaching — that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aids and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard the institution is psychopathic, it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — sometimes with guns — by an estimated 80% of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

Now here is a curious idea to ponder. Senator Ted Kennedy’s office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98% and after it the figure never again reached above 91% where it stands in 1990. I hope that interests you.

Here is another curiosity to think about. The homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents, last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even 10 years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.

I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools anytime soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what’s rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” — that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

To a very great extent schools succeed in doing this, but in a national order increasingly disintegrated, in a national order in which only humanly successful people are independent, self-reliant, confident, and individualistic (because community life which protects the dependent and weak is dead and only networks remain), the products of schooling are, as I’ve said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.

The daily misery around us is, I think in large measure caused by the fact that — as Paul Goodman put it 30 years ago — we force children to grow up absurd. Any reform in schooling has to deal with its absurdities.

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety, indeed it cuts you off from your own part and future, scaling you to a continuous present much the same way television does.

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.

It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its “homework”.

“How will they learn to read?!” you say and my answer is “Remember the lessons of Massachusetts.” When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cell blocks they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them.

But keep in mind that in the United States almost nobody who reads, writes or does arithmetic gets much respect. We are a land of talkers, we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the most and so our children talk constantly, following the public models of television and school teachers. It is very difficult to teach the “basics” anymore because they really aren’t basic to the society we’ve made.

Two institutions at present control our children’s lives — television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, non-stopping abstraction. In centuries past the time of a child and adolescent would be occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of the community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to become a whole man or woman.

But here is the calculus of time the children I teach must deal with:

• Out of 168 hours in each week my children sleep 56. That leaves them 112 hours a week out of which to fashion a self.
• My children watch 55 hours of television a week according to recent reports. That leaves them 57 hours a week in which to grow up.
• My children attend school 30 hours a week, use about 6 hours getting ready, going and coming home, and spend an average of 7 hours a week in homework, a total of 45 hours.

During that time they are under constant surveillance, have no private time or private space, and are disciplined if they try to assert individuality in the use of time or space. That leaves 12 hours a week out of which to create a unique consciousness. Of course, my kids eat, and that takes some time–not much because they’ve lost the tradition of family dining, but if we allot 3 hours a week to evening meals we arrive at a net amount of private time for each child of 9 hours.

It’s not enough. It’s not enough, is it? The richer the kid, or course, the less television he watches but the rich kid’s time is just as narrowly proscribed by a somewhat broader catalogue of commercial entertainments and his inevitable assignment to a series of private lessons in areas seldom of his actual choice.

And these things are oddly enough just a more cosmetic way to create dependent human beings, unable to fill their own hours, unable to initiate lines of meaning to give substance and pleasure to their existence. It’s a national disease, this dependency, and aimlessness, and I think schooling and television and lessons — the entire Chautauqua idea — has a lot to do with it.

Think of the things that are killing us as a nation — narcotic drugs, brainless competition, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, alcohol, and the worst pornography of all — lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy, all of them are additions of dependent personalities and that is what our brand of schooling must inevitably produce.

I want to tell you what the effect is on children of taking all their time from them — time they need to grow up — and forcing them to spend it on abstractions. You need to hear this because no reform that doesn’t attack these specific pathologies will be anything more than a facade.

1. The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This defies the experience of thousands of years. A close study of what big people were up to was always the most exciting occupation of youth, but nobody wants to grow up these days and who can blame them? Toys are us.
2. The children I teach have almost no curiosity and what they do have is transitory; they cannot concentrate for very long, even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection between the bells ringing again and again to change classes and this phenomenon of evanescent attention?
3. The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they have a continuous present, the exact moment they are at is the boundary of their consciousness.
4. The children I teach are ahistorical, they have no sense of how past has predestined their own present, limiting their choices, shaping their values and lives.
5. The children I teach are cruel to each other, they lack compassion for misfortune, they laugh at weakness, they have contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.
6. The children I teach are uneasy with intimacy or candor. My guess is that they are like many adopted people I’ve known in this respect — they cannot deal with genuine intimacy because of a lifelong habit of preserving a secret inner self inside a larger outer personality made up of artificial bits and pieces of behavior borrowed from television or acquired to manipulate teachers. Because they are not who they represent themselves to be the disguise wears thin in the presence of intimacy so intimate relationships have to be avoided.
7. The children I teach are materialistic, following the lead of school teachers who materialistically “grade” everything — and television mentors who offer everything in the world for free.
8. The children I teach are dependent, passive, and timid in the presence of new challenges. This is frequently masked by surface bravado, or by anger or aggressiveness but underneath is a vacuum without fortitude.

I could name a few other conditions that school reform would have to tackle if our national decline is to be arrested, but by now you will have grasped my thesis, whether you agree with it or not. Either schools have caused these pathologies or television or both. It’s a simple matter [of] arithmetic, between schooling and television all the time the children have is eaten away. That’s what has destroyed the American family, it is no longer a factor in the education of its own children. Television and schooling, in those things the fault must lie.

What can be done? First we need a ferocious national debate that doesn’t quit, day after day, year after year. We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair, one or the other. If we can fix it, fine; if we cannot then the success of homeschooling shows a different road to take that has great promise. Pouring the money we now pour into family education might kill two birds with one stone, repairing families as it repairs children.

Genuine reform is possible but it shouldn’t cost anything. We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from the lofty command center made up of “experts”, a central elite of social engineers. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work. And it is a gross betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a noble experiment. the Russian attempt to create Plato’s republic in Eastern Europe has exploded before [our] eyes, our own attempt to impose the same sort of central orthodoxy using the schools as an instrument is also coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn’t work because it’s fundamental premises are mechanical, anti-human, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology — drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach.

It’s high time we looked backwards to regain an educational philosophy that works. One I like particularly well has been a favorite of the ruling classes of Europe for thousands of years. I use as much of it as I can manage in my own teaching, as much, that is, as I can get away with given the present institution of compulsory schooling. I think it works just as well for poor children as for rich ones.

At the core of this elite system of education is the belief that self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. Everywhere in this system, at every age, you will find arrangements to place the child alone in an unguided setting with a problem to solve. Sometimes the problem is fraught with great risks, such as the problem of galloping a horse or making it jump, but that, of course, is a problem successfully solved by thousands of elite children before the age of ten. Can you imagine anyone who had mastered such a challenge ever lacking confidence in his ability to do anything? Sometimes the problem is the problem of mastering solitude, as Thoreau did at Walden pond, or Einstein did in the Swiss customs house.

One of my former students, Roland Legiardi-Lura, though both his parents were dead and he had no inheritance, took a bicycle across the United States alone when he was hardly out of boyhood. Is it any wonder then that in manhood when he decided to make a film about Nicaragua, although he had no money and no prior experience with film-making, that it was an international award-winner — even though his regular work was as a carpenter.

Right now we are taking all the time from our children that they need to develop self-knowledge. That has to stop. We have to invent school experiences that give a lot of that time back, we need to trust children from a very early age with independent study, perhaps arranged in school but which takes place away from the institutional setting. We need to invent curriculum where each kid has a chance to develop private uniqueness and self-reliance.

A short time ago I took $70 and sent a 12-year-old girl from my class with her non-English speaking mother on a bus down the New Jersey coast to take the police chief of Sea Bright to lunch and apologize for polluting [his] beach with a discarded Gatorade bottle. In exchange for this public apology I had arranged with the police chief for the girl to have a one-day apprenticeship in a small town police procedures. A few days later two more of my 12-year-old kids traveled alone to West First Street from Harlem where they began an apprenticeship with a newspaper editor, next week three of my kids will find themselves in the middle of the Jersey swamps at 6 A.M. in the morning studying the mind of a trucking company president as he dispatches 18-wheelers to Dallas, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Are these “special” children in a “special” program? Well, in one sense, yes, but nobody knows about this program but myself and the kids. They’re just nice kids from Central Harlem, bright and alert, but so badly schooled when they came to me that most of them can’t add or subtract with any fluency. And not a single one knew the population of New York City or how far it is from New York to California.

Does that worry me? Of course, but I am confident that as they gain self-knowledge they’ll also become self-teachers — and only self-teaching has any lasting value.

We’ve got to give kids independent time right away because that is the key to self-knowledge, and we must re-involve them with the real world as fast as possible so that the independent time can be spent on something other than more abstraction. This is an emergency, it requires drastic action to correct — our children are dying like flies in schooling, good schooling or bad schooling, it’s all the same. Irrelevant.

What else does a restructured school system need? It needs to stop being a parasite on the working community. Of all the pages in the human ledger, only our tortured entry has warehoused children and asked nothing of them in service to the general good. For a while I think we need to make community service a required part of schooling. Besides the experience in acting unselfishly that will teach, it is the quickest way to give young children real responsibility in the mainstream of life.

For five years I ran a guerrilla program where I had every kid, rich and poor, smart and dipsy, give 320 hours a year of hard community service. Dozens of those kids came back to me years later, grown up, and told me that one experience of helping someone else changed their lives. It taught them to see in new ways, to rethink goals and values. It happened when they were 13, in my Lab School program — only made possible because my rich school district was in chaos. When “stability” returned the Lab was closed. It was too successful with a wildly mixed group of kids, at too small of a cost, to be allowed to continue. We made the expensive elite programs look bad.

There is no shortage of real problems in the city. Kids can be asked to help solve them in exchange for the respect and attention of the total adult world. Good for kids, good for all the rest of us. That’s curriculum that teaches Justice, one of the four cardinal virtues in every system of elite education. What’s sauce for the rich and powerful is surely sauce for the rest of us — what is more, the idea is absolutely free as are all other genuine reform ideas in education. Extra money and extra people put into this sick institution will only make it sicker.

Independent study, community service, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one day variety or longer — these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force the idea of “school” open — to include FAMILY as the main engine of education. The Swedes realized that in 1976 when they effectively abandoned the system of adopting unwanted children and instead spent national time and treasure on reinforcing the original family so that children born to Swedes were wanted. They didn’t succeed completely but they did succeed in reducing the number of unwanted Swedish children from 6000 in l976 to 15 in 1986. So it can be done. The Swedes just got tired of paying for the social wreckage caused by children not raised by their natural parents so they did something about it. We can, too.

FAMILY is the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents — and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 — we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. THE CURRICULUM OF FAMILY is at the heart of any good life, we’ve gotten away from that curriculum, time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life, to promote during school time confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds. That was my real purpose in sending the girl and her mother down the Jersey coast to meet the police chief. I have many ideas to make a family curriculum and my guess is that a lot of you will have many ideas, too, once you begin to think about it. Our greatest problem in getting the kind of grass-roots thinking going that could reform schooling is that we have large vested interests pre-emptying all the air time and profiting from schooling just exactly as it is despite rhetoric to the contrary. We have to demand that new voices and new ideas get a hearing, my ideas and yours. We’ve all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press — a decade long free-for-all debate is what is called for now, not any more “expert” opinions. Experts in education have never been right, their “solutions” are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization. Enough. Time for a return to Democracy, Individuality, and Family. I’ve said my piece. Thank you.

If you want to know more about who is John Taylor Gatto, you should visit his website HERE.

I recommend his books “Underground History of American Education” as well as the new “Weapons of Mass Instruction“, and also the documentary and interviews available.

Have a nice day!

This is my post number 100 ! I can’t believe how fast those last months are gone!

Well, some news, I will fly this next Tuesday to France and maybe I will not be able to blog often, I still don’t know if I will be connected.

I am so excited to go back home and see hubby! I can’t wait!…

Did you noticed the new page called “special series” up here? I am working on a new series about how to simplify your life step by step.

I am sure you will love this one, and I am preparing tons of useful info.

On another hand, I am part of a great project that I want to share with you!

My friend Dave has been suffering from the ravages of Diabetes for many years.  I know, first hand, all of the trouble this disease can cause.  In the last year alone he was in the hospital 4 separate times.

In order to help others avoid the problems caused by Diabetes he and his team (which I am part of) have developed a web site that approaches the problem from the patient’s point of view. Their mission is to ease the discomforts of people with diabetes and help them avoid the consequences.

We all know someone who has diabetes!

Diabetes can and usually does cause some or all of the following trouble:

• · Blindness

• · Foot and Leg pain – even amputations

• · Kidney Disease

• · Heart Disease and Strokes

• · Stomach Nerve Damage

• · Autonomic Nervous System Damage

• · And More…. As if the above weren’t enough

If diabetes is detected and controlled, the ravages of the disease can be diminished or even avoided all together.

If you have this horrible and very difficult disease PLEASE visit MY OWN DIABETES. If you know someone who is struggling with a diet and with diabetes please send him/her an invitation to the website.
This website is recent but very effective and the more members the more we can help each other through support, the forum, etc…

I will be in charge of the translation and launching of the french and spanish version. A good opportunity for me to bring some income while still staying at home to serve my family and the Lord!

This is a link which can change your life or the life of a loved one, so spread the word!

And you would also be supporting our family through these tough times!

I also wanted to thank you, all my readers, I truly appreciate your kind comments and knowing that my words here are not useless! I could have not reach the 100 post without you! Thank you and I hope you will stay here with me and read the next 100!!

Have a great day!

This is the 6th and last part of this series about Natural Healing.

In this entry, I will write about natural old home remedies, those you can do with ingredients you may have in your kitchen.

Like this one for cough relieve I blog about some time ago: HERE.

Home remedies and natural cures or medicines made at home from natural ingredients such as fruits, vegetables, herbs are catching a lot of attention due to its very nature of cure: simple, no side effects, no chemicals, inexpensive, plus the pleasure of being able to cure yourself!.

Read on for how all this is useful and how people are using these home made methods in their day to day lives to stay fit and healthy.

How much do you value your health? Can you put a price tag on your own health or on that of your loved ones?
Obviously not, if anything, your health or that of your family is invaluable.
Long gone are the days when drugs manufactured in laboratories were popular, when expensive chemical or synthetic drugs were deemed to be the best for our bodies.
Apart from the forbidding cost, the side effects that the body has to deal with cannot be ignored. This realization has dawned and people today are going back to natural remedies that humankind has been using for thousands of years. For natural home remedies, the kitchen is a great place to start.
It has almost all the medicines you would possible need at least, to deal with common ailments.
All this at no or negligible cost, purity, without side effects and dollops of TLC (tender, loving care)!

Sounds too good to be true? Well, it is just a little awareness and understanding that you need to make the best out of it.

You can read more on this great website: Home remedies for you.

I also found a very interesting article and lots of recipes over at The natural remedies encyclopedia.

You can read lots of thematic free ebooks, browsing by disease/illness, if you want to go to visit Best natural cures health guide. This website is very well done and the article easy to browse and read.

I have a great book that I bought in Spain called “Remedios naturales para los ninos” (natural remedies for children). I got it when I was pregnant and it has been a huge help for my daughter’s health, even though she was not sick very often.

I don’t have any similar book in English to recommend you by personal experience but if you have a look at this Amazon’s page, you can read all the reviews and take the one you prefer. I really recommend to have some good books at home, it is always helpful.

Think about thrift stores like Goodwill or Saver, you can often find great deals especially on this kind of books!

Do you have any recommendation you would like to share? Do you use natural remedies at home or more “conventional” medicine?

Well, I hope you liked this post and this series about natural healing.

There is a new page called Special Series that will compile all the series made on the blog, so if you missed a part of this one, you can find the link by visiting THIS PAGE.

And as always, if you like it, leave a comment! You know how much I appreciate those!

Have a great day!

Happy Easter to all of you!!

I hope you are having a great time in this glorious day of celebration.

I sure did! We went to church this morning, and then we had a nice lunch with friends and I just went home a few minutes ago.

Well, I want to share a story the pastor told me.

Once upon a cross…….

This was a young pastor who one day saw a little boy holding a bird cage. There was 3 little birds in the cage. The pastor asked the boy where he got the birds and the little boy said:

- “I just found them in a nest in my garden.
- What will you do with them?
- Well, I will have fun with them, you know, I will poke them, see if they are going to fight, I will scare them a little bit to make fun from them…
- And then, once you are done, what will you do with them?
- oh, I have a cat you know!
- How much do you want for them? ” said the pastor
- “Why would you buy them, they can’t even fly nor they sing good!?
- You just tell me how much do you want for them.
- Right, 10 $.
- done! “

The pastor took the 10 $ he had in his pocket and gave them to the boy, who run away and leave the birds behind.
The pastor took the birdcage and went to a nice park where were lots of trees, he opened the door of the cage and set the birds free.

Now, imagine that this is a conversation between God and Satan. God says to Satan:

- “Hey, what will you do with all those humans you took?
- Well, I will have fun, you know, I will hurt them, poke them and then watch how they hurt and kill each other. I will make them invent weapons and guns, and ways to inflict pain to others…
- How much do you want for them? says God
- Are you kidding? They don’t even like you, if you would go there you know what they would do to you, don’t you? Why would you like to buy them?
- You just tell me your price.
And Satan says: ” I want your tears, I want your blood, I want your life.“
And God says: ” DONE! ”

He paid the price to allow us to be free, to open to us the doors of Heaven. He paid the highest price for us, for me, for you!

Jesus our Lord died in the cross to set us free! And on the third day He arose from the dead!

Yes, He is risen! He is risen in deed!

Thank you Lord for paying the price, thank you for bidding for me and pay the highest price so I could be free.

Happy Easter to you all!

blessings

]]> http://momelo.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/he-is-risen/feed/ 0 momelo 358027-cage resurrec http://momelo.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/how-to-be-prepared-for-tough-times/ http://momelo.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/how-to-be-prepared-for-tough-times/#comments Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:18:20 +0000 momelo http://momelo.wordpress.com/?p=753 ]]> After my post about voluntary simplicity yesterday, I was feeling inspired, especially by the comments and mails I received, so I wrote this post. I hope you will like it!

Yep, you know that, tough times are coming, and some people think it could be very bad very soon.

How do you think your life would be affected? What could you do to minimize this effect?

Do you believe in a “back to basics” living?

Are you prepared for it?!

Well, today I will give you some advice about how to prepare yourself and your family to keep or even improve your quality of life through tough times!

1. Be as self sufficient as you can.
2. This can be achieved by building a full pantry, especially basics like flour, oil, cereals, water, sugar, honey, and lots of canned vegetables and fruits. Dry milk can be useful too.
3. You can also fill up your freezer with some basics like butter, meat, and homemade prepared meals, etc…
4. If you have a garden, plant food! Fruit trees, veggies, etc…
5. If you have some place and are allowed to do it, take some chickens, you will have fresh eggs each morning and maybe some day you could even sell them to those neighbors who didn’t read this post!
6. Find a farm near by (if possible) to buy your milk, it can always be useful to know people who grows cows.
7. Begin right now to live without the comfort. For example, avoid the dryer when you can use the sun and wind to do the job; knead your dough by hand vs processor/mixer; broom when you can vs always use the vacuum; wash the dishes by hand half of the time vs always use the dishwasher; and so on…
8. Learn some homemaking basics like canning, bread making, cooking, organizing etc…
9. Learn to entertain yourself and your family for free. It is very important! If you can’t get rid of your TV, then try to leave it off at least one day a week, and plan a “family night” with games, conversation, music, whatever you are up to!
10. Try to exercise,  maybe some day you will not be able to get your car to go somewhere, you will need to walk; or maybe you will have to do the laundry by hand,etc… So, better get prepared by doing some exercising, walking, and other outdoors activities.
11. I can’t sew nor knit, but that’s something I definitely have to learn! And buy some fabric and materials to do whatever I may need some day.
12. There is a huge amount of resources and info on the web, but maybe you will not be able to consult them when you will need them the most. My advice is to print all the interesting stuff and build a nice notebook that may be lifesaving some day!
13. Build a nice, complete first aid kit, and some basic medicine/remedies. You never know!
14. Limit the products you need for your personal and house hygiene/beauty. Prefer one soap/shower gel that fits all the family needs better than one specific for each person, the same with shampoo, moisturizer, etc… In your home, buy or do yourself one multipurpose cleaner, that could be used to clean floors, counter tops, kitchen, bathroom, and even laundry! Replace your softener by white vinegar and essential oil, and, of course, avoid disposable wipes and other “swiffer” stuff; prefer the old fashioned way: soap, warm water, and some exercise!
15. Enjoy the simple treasures of life! Be happy and positive with all what you already have, smile, and transmit your joy to your family.
16. Trust the Lord to provide for your needs.

Don’t panic! As always, you can do it little by little, with baby steps, and soon you will be able to survive this nasty economy, and even kinda like it!!

For more info, I encourage you to “google” simple living, homesteading, homemaking, and voluntary simplicity. You will be blessed by all the interesting stuff around there to learn from!

If you have more tips to prepare for the worst scenario, or simply become frugal, leave your comment!

Do you know this song? It has been translated to english as “If you go away” though the accurate translation would be “don’t leave me”.  Anyway, please listen to that song and tell me that you are not moved!! even if you don’t understand the lyrics, it is a powerful song.

Jacques Brel wrote it in 1959 and it is still one of the most emotional, touching song in the world. I love it!!

And here are the lyrics in French:

Ne me quitte pas

Ne me quitte pas
Il faut oublier
Tout peut s’oublier
Qui s’enfuit déjà
Oublier le temps
Des malentendus
Et le temps perdu
A savoir comment
Oublier ces heures
Qui tuaient parfois
A coups de pourquoi
Le coeur du bonheur

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Moi je t’offrirai
Des perles de pluie
Venues de pays
Ou il ne pleut pas
Je creuserai la terre
Jusqu’après ma mort
Pour couvrir ton corps
D’or et de lumière
Je ferai un domaine
Ou l’amour sera roi
Ou l’amour sera loi
Ou tu seras reine

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Je t’inventerai
Des mots insensés
Que tu comprendras
Je te parlerai
De ces amants-là
Qui ont vu deux fois
Leurs coeurs s’embraser
Je te raconterai
L’histoire de ce roi
Mort de n’avoir pas
Pu te rencontrer

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

On a vu souvent
Rejaillir le feu
De l’ancien volcan
Qu’on croyait trop vieux
Il est para¡t-il
Des terres brulées
Donnant plus de blé
Qu’un meilleur avril
Et quand vient le soir
Pour qu’un ciel flamboie
Le rouge et le noir
Ne s’épousent-ils pas

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Ne me quitte pas
Je ne vais plus pleurer
Je ne vais plus parler
Je me cacherai là
A te regarder
Danser et sourire
Et à t’écouter
Chanter et puis rire
Laisse-moi devenir
L’ombre de ton ombre
L’ombre de ta main
L’ombre de ton chien

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Have you ever heard about it? Maybe you do practice it already, or you would like some more info about it.

Well, I hope this post will be helpful anyway, and will help you understand and know better this movement.

‘Normal’ is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car, and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it. Ellen Goodman.

What is voluntary simplicity?

Simple living (voluntary simplicity) is a lifestyle characterized by minimizing the ‘more-is-better’ pursuit of wealth and consumption. Adherents may choose simple living for a variety of personal reasons, such as spirituality, health, increase in ‘quality time’ for family and friends, stress reduction, personal taste or frugality.

Others cite socio-political goals aligned with the anti-consumerist movement, including conservation, social justice and sustainable development.

According to Duane Elgin, “we can describe voluntary simplicity as a manner of living that is outwardly more simple and inwardly more rich, a way of being in which our most authentic and alive self is brought into direct and conscious contact with living.“

Simple living as a concept is distinguished from those living in forced poverty, as it is a voluntary lifestyle choice.

Voluntary simplicity means doing/having/living more with less–more time, meaning, joy, satisfaction, relationships, community; less money, material possessions, stress, competition, isolation. It doesn’t mean depriving yourself; it doesn’t mean buying “cheap” and always pinching pennies; it doesn’t mean poverty. It does mean wanting what you have, and finding joy in having less; and recovering the connection with other people and with the Earth that alone makes life really worthwhile.

Voluntary simplicity is a growing movement of people who have realized that happiness and fulfillment do not lie in having more money, or new and bigger things, but rather in the time with loved ones and connection with community. They are questioning the consumer society’s insistence that possessions, especially of the newest design and color, are the means of fulfillment, or that any material possession can possibly be “to die for.”

How to apply this to your life?

Yeah, you might think that all this sounds very nice but how could you apply it in your daily stressed/busy life? Well, there are a lot of things that you can do to go forward simplicity, you know, baby steps, that everybody can do.

Here are some advices of what you can do to improve your quality of life right now:

• each time you are about to buy something, ask yourself:

- Could I do this item myself cheaper/healthier/greener ?
- Do I really need this item? Will my life be affected if I don’t buy it?
- Could I find this item second hand/used/cheaper, or without packaging?

• try to buy food and groceries locally, at your farmers market for example.

• do not buy more decor items for holidays, try to decorate with the stuff you already have or some items you can do yourself frugally.

• do not feel obliged to buy presents for Valentine’s day/Christmas/Easter etc… You can do crafts/cards/homemade goodies, that will be even more appreciated than an impersonal store bought present.

• Avoid all kind of prepared meals, if you are not a great cook, learn! Good food is about experience, you have to try, and fail, until you can do it right.

• If you have a garden, try to plant some veggies.

• Are you an expecting mom?

- Don’t buy anything!! I know it is so tempting to go shopping for the new baby but you will receive lots of gifts, and you really do not need as much stuff as you think. Babies need their mom, almost nothing else.
- Inform yourself about the wonderful benefits of breastfeeding your child, you will be blessed!
- Consider using cloth diapers, you can find them by internet, in some stores, or even do them yourself!
- Teach your child to entertain himself! A baby does not need tons of colorful plastic toys to be happy and stimulated; in fact, I strongly encourage you to limit the collection of toys to a small amount and ban all battery-operated/plastic toys.
- Prefer neutral clothes for your baby, better than all pink or all blue, so you can keep them and reuse them for another baby.

• If you are like me a book lover, then you may prefer to go to your local library to borrow books better than buying pricey books.
• With your kids, prefer activities that are not related to a shopping/buying activity. For example, you may prefer going to visit a farm or to a natural park (almost free), better than to the theater which usually includes buying candies, popcorn, etc…  Teach your child that fun is not related to money.
• In general, always try to buy second hand/used items. Think about garage sales, thrift stores, craig’s lists etc. although the best to do is to limit your shopping. Simplicity is not only think “Can I have this cheaper?”, it is more a “Can I live without it?” kind of thinking!

Well, I hope you liked this entry and maybe you are feeling like applying some of my advices!

If you are looking for some more info about choosing voluntary simplicity, you would like to have a look at those websites I found for you:

- THE SIMPLE LIVING NETWORK

- GREAT RIVER EARTH INSTITUTE

- THE SIMPLICITY RESOURCE GUIDE

You can find also some great blogs in my blogroll, on the right side of this site.

In this week before Easter, this is my contribution to stay focused on the important things, and free ourselves from the secular consumerist way of life…

I wish you all a great, happy, and cross-centered Easter!

And if you want to see what people are hooked on this week, check it out on HOOKED ON HOUSES

I just have 2 weeks left here in the states til I fly home to see my dear hubby!! I am getting excited!

How are you? What have you been up to this week end? Well, today I want to share with you a great stuff I discovered when I was in France. It is very popular there, cardboard furniture!

Have you ever heard about it?  It is great, love it! You can reuse old boxes from groceries (especially those big ones like from Costco) to make furniture with them!

How cool is that?!

This kind of furniture is very solid, easy to do, frugal, ecologic, and I love it especially for kids! You know how expensive kids furniture are, with this method you can make some fun, kids friendly light furniture for about pennies. It is also a great homeschool project for older kids, it is a great way to teach them geometry and maths, as well as art and crafts!

So, if you are intrigued and want to know more, here are a few links I found to help you make your first cardboard furniture!!

The best site I found has a great step-by-step how-to, to help you understand how it works and guide you through your first project. This great website is INSTRUCTABLES: How to design your own cardboard furniture.

In this website, you will find free downloadable patterns to make some kids furniture, great for a simple homeschooling project : FOLDSCHOOL. I love the rocker!

To show you a more modern, design, aspect of the cardboard furniture, check out this website: LEO KEMPF. He uses the technique of laminated to do very modern furniture.

You can find a pattern to do an easy chair HERE.

If you are a little bit overwhelmed but still would like to try this out, then you have to visit CARDBOARDESIGN, they are amazing! You can buy the design you want, they will send you all the materials necessary and the instructions to assembly. Not very frugal, but it is worth have a look at their design just for inspiration!

I hope you liked this post and maybe will give it a try! Have a great day!