Episode 130: Celebrating a Homestead Christmas

Because our cows are our beef makers, and then we, you know, also milk a couple of them, too. So, it’s just. It’s usually not that big of a deal, but this year. We got a new bull. He is purebred, Brown Swiss and we bred him to both of our milk cows. Now, the one who calved this week, she is a Belfair which is half dexter, half Jersey.

We love her milk. We think it’s amazing, and if we would have had a heifer out of those 2 we probably would have kept her for our future milk cow, because Bailey’s about 8 or 9, which I mean, you can still get a lot of good years out of an 8 or 9 year old cow like she’s super healthy and we don’t like push her production. Like, if she starts to slow down, we just say, Okay, you’re done. She’s usually only in milk for about 5 months, and that’s okay.

Why we would keep a heifer

But, we were really hoping to maybe keep one of her heifers. That was, we usually breed her to a…

If you heard that noise I don’t know what it was. It was like a paper just randomly fell out of the air.

Usually. Like, I said, we just. We don’t keep her calves. But this year we were hoping to maybe get to do that, but we’ll see how next year goes.

We’re really crossing our fingers for a heifer out of our 2 brown Swisses. We do need to get both of them tested for A2A2. I believe our bull is A2A2i can’t. I’m like, I’m a little off. It’s been a rough week.

But, our heifer, her dad, A2A2, and her mom was A2A1. And so, we’re really hoping that she’s A2A2 as well. But even if she’s not, she would have a purebred brown Swiss heifer.

If we can, you know, train her for a year, breed her and sell her as a bred heifer. That could be a really nice chunk of income. So, we don’t know that we would want to keep her. We were wanting to keep a Belfair as our family milk cow, so we’ll see how that goes.

A2A2 Explained Some

For those of you who think I am talking Greek right now, A2A2 is a milk casein that is a protein casein that they found most people are actually allergic to the A1 casein, not lactose intolerant. So, if you get milk, that is A2A2, a lot of people are more tolerant to it, and when it’s raw it also doesn’t have it also still has all the enzymes that helps your body break down the lactose sugar. That is another reason why people have issues with milk, so it just makes them a little bit more desirable.

Now, if you want a little bit more information on that, I do have a blog on my website. About raw milk, and it goes into all the science of that I can link that below.

I mean, I’m you know, totally honest. If I don’t write it down, it doesn’t happen.

And so that’s it’s just been really exciting. We haven’t started milking her yet. We always give her just a few days with the calf to let all the colostrum come out. We don’t want the colostrum, although then we realized that we have a heifer freshening soon. So, we’re actually hoping she probably still has a little colostrum. So, we’re going to milk her tomorrow and freeze that milk, plus, she’s really engorged. And so it’s just time we were going to try to get it done today. But by the time we got the stanchion ready and stuff. We weren’t expecting her to calve until sometime next month. I mean, I know. Last week we said we were on calf watch, but we still thought we had time. And so we had to kind of rush and get the stanchion ready today.

So that’s been our big excitement.

We also have done a lot with our pigs this week.

We have 2 going to butcher. We’re really excited. It’s a new butcher who does aged meat and then cures the bacons and stuff. So that’s going to be like all of our butchers smoke the bacons, but they do like a spray on flavoring.

Not very many do the long aging, and so the long aging, and then the like long cures. So, we’re excited to get to try that. And then we sold a couple of whole hogs.

We sat down and came up with a really good farm plan for the year. We try to do this every winter, just so that we have a plan for what we want to do going into the next year. We always know we want to have a lot of piglets in the spring or in like January through March, because that’s when we sell the largest majority of our 4-H pigs for kids to show, and people who are buying spring feeders to butcher in the fall.

And so we always know we want to do that. But it does give us a couple of month window where we aren’t selling a bunch of piglets. We aren’t raising out a bunch for meat, and we can kind of step back and decide what we want to do with our production the next year. This year was all about getting our retail site up and running, which is still not up and running. But you know how that goes sometimes. I have a guy who’s working on it for me.

And it should be ready any day. Now, I’m hoping to build a site where I can actually ship in time for Christmas. We’re down to that window. With that I have the product. I have the boxes, I have the shipping stuff. I have a whole shipping setup because I already do that with my books. I just need a website to ship pork. So, if anybody does hear this, and you’re like, I really want pork you can always message us at the Hanner Homestead on Facebook or Instagram, or you know, message me here. And we have the ability and the legality to ship pork. We just don’t have the website for people to go peruse and see what we have, and then make those orders.

So if that’s something you’re interested, we butcher everything USDA, we feed a non-GMO feed they’re raised on pasture. They’re happy hogs. And our meat is amazing because we raise a more like heritage, old line, but they’re still the large pigs like they can be shown. We raise Herefords, Berkshires, and Hampshires, but we don’t breed out of commercial lines. We breed out of old lines, so our pork is still marbled kind of like a beef steak.

Except, I know it’s a little different. But it’s more marbled where that’s been bred out of commercial lines because people wanted a leaner pork, which you know. Not that I’m saying that our pork is fatty. I’m saying that the marbling in there gives it so much flavor, and it is so moist like, if you know. Occasionally we won’t have pork chops, and there’s a recipe we want to try, or something, so I’ll go buy pork chops from the store, and they are so dry and like mealy. Where ours are moist and like have texture, and they’re just. It’s delicious. So, definitely hit us up. Our prices are very reasonable. I mean, of course, it’s our business. We’re in it for the profit, but I’m not comfortable charging some of the prices I’ve seen out there. We just want to raise real meat for real people.

Now, we came up with our plan on how we want to push the homestead business for the year.

I do offer some business coaching on that type of stuff. So, I mean, I feel like, I’m just kind of like. And I offer this. And I offer this. But we’re busy. We have a lot going on, and I do have a lot to offer, whether that’s product or knowledge. I’m happy to share my knowledge with you. I was a food safety specialist and a consultant, farm consultant, for years. I still do farm consulting over the winter. So always feel free and hit me up on those types of things.

Connecting with friends!

With this Homestead movement that’s happened, and everything that happened during the pandemic. And you know, political unrest that we’ve had in our country. We’ve kind of seen a redistribution of population. Meaning, instead of all of the population being in the larger cities, they’re starting to move back out into rural areas where you’ve seen the largest push into rural areas since the shift happened like in the 19 twenties when there were more people moving back into the cities than there were into the rural areas.

We were kind of part of that. We moved pre-pandemic. It was totally. And we actually, I mean. We moved 5 years before the pandemic from California to Oregon, and we lived in a very rural part of California.

We wanted to be closer to my husband’s dad.

And then, about a year before the pandemic, those of you have listened to our story. My husband was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease, and we wanted to be able to grow more of our own food to support his health.

And so we sold everything, moved to Idaho. And then the pandemic hit. About a year later and we’ve been able to heal his liver. You can listen to podcast from 2 weeks ago on how good food and a stubborn wife saved my life, and it was. I had my husband on.

But we with that we moved away from all of our friends and family.

And being a small town girl, I grew up with my best friend. Since we were 2 years old. We were inseparable like thick as thieves. We, you know, have those jokes, you know, we’re only still friends, because we know too much about each other, like all those good things. But I haven’t seen her in 2 years, and our kids haven’t seen each other. Oh, let’s see, Wade was a baby. So almost 7 years ago.

Wow! I didn’t realize it had been that long. It’s terrible because these kids, up until that point had been had, you know, grown up with each other. So, like grew up almost like siblings. We were so close, I mean, definitely cousins, and some of them, you know, they haven’t seen each other. I guess we was 2. Actually, yeah, it was right after his second birthday, because it was right before we moved up here. So, I guess it was 6 years ago. But still, that’s still a really long time.

So she is going to be here tomorrow, and she’s going to be here for a week, and I’m so excited she’s spending Thanksgiving with us. She’s bringing her kids.

And we just kind of get to like just spend time together. I’ve been working my butt off in the business so that I only have to work minimally while she’s here. The kids have been cleaning the house so that the kids can stay in the basement with them. The kids’ rooms are in the basement. We have a nice, finished basement and so they’re excited to get to have a big sleepover. And it’s just it’s going to be a really good time, like we are really, really stoked.

I’m actually, I’ve been sitting in my office for the last hour making her a welcome sign, for when she gets off the plane tomorrow. You’re going to have to follow my stories to see that in Instagram. But it’ll be worth it, I promise. She’s that friend. So you’re gonna have to definitely come and check that out.

Homestead Gift Ideas

But where we’re at now is we are coming into the holiday season, and that means buying for friends and family. And how many people in your life do you know that homestead and homeschool?

And with that it makes it a lot harder to find gifts, because a lot of the gifts that are more mainstream, like easy to find at Walmart and Amazon and advertise online, and things like that are not gifts that homesteaders and homeschoolers either want. Or allow their children to have, or even have a use. Would you just be wasting your money for on them

Because, they don’t use a lot of electronics, especially they don’t encourage electronic toys for children. They want toys that you know, spark, imagination or books or craft supplies. For the parents, you know, they’re trying to move away from using products that can, you know, put aluminum into our systems. And there’s just all sorts of things.

Its not tools, its homestead gift ideas!

And then, honestly, what homesteaders need are tools. They’re expensive a lot of times, we’re saving up for something, and don’t have. To be able to be saving up for something or dreaming about something, and then have somebody give it to us is such a blessing.

And you might find that, you know you’re thinking like, why would I buy them that that’s a tool? Like you don’t buy a woman a vacuum cleaner for her birthday, but in the homestead world, if you were to buy a woman a dehydrator for her birthday or for Christmas, I mean, she’s going to be beside herself excited.

She’s probably been planning for it. She’s probably been saving for it, buying recipe books, even if she already has a dehydrator, she can double her efforts, or she’s been arguing with the one that she has and is ready for a higher quality one like I had one of those round dehydrators for years where you had to stack all the circles on each other.

It was so cumbersome and so hard to use that I only used it for big projects. I have one now that opens kind of like an oven, and it has the slide in trays, and it is so easy to just.

You know, I’ll be like chopping herbs for dinner, and I have extras. But I know I’m not going to use them in any meals in the next couple of days, and I just walk over to the dehydrator, set them in, close it and start it up. Or it’s a little loud, and I have it near the kitchen, so I’ll put them all in there, and then before I go to bed at night, I start it, and in the morning, I have dried herbs. I just crumble them up and put them in the jar that I keep in the cabinet, and I use it so much more, and we have so much more food in our pantries now. And we’re wasting less.

Those types of gifts are huge for homestead families, and if you don’t know which ones they want. I guarantee you can call up any homesteader, you know, and be like, what are you working on? What do you wish you had? And they wouldn’t even think that you’re thinking of Christmas gifts because they know that they just rattle on about all the things that they want all the time, and you can use that information to provide really great gifts.

But for those who you know maybe don’t want to hint, or you’re trying to catch some sales or whatever’s going on. I have compiled an entire blog post for you guys. I do it almost every year, and it’s called the 12 Days of Homestead Christmas.

And you can find my last couple of years online; you can find a podcast I did 2 years ago on it, where I talked about my boys eating stress balls and exploding all over the back of the car. It’s good times, like really good times!

But I like to compile this list every year, and you know some of these things. You know I’m out there. I’m traveling. I’m at these conferences. I’m seeing all these great products. I’m meeting the people who design them. I’m using them myself and I can tell you which ones like my kids have enjoyed, which ones I’ve enjoyed. My husband has enjoyed.

I will admit I’m affiliated with some of them where I get a small commission. But some of them I’m not. And I just think that they’re really great products.

In the blog post. You’re going to be able to find links to everything. But I’m going to just talk about some today.

Some of them are going to be specifically about my products, and how you can use them as gifts and think outside the box with them. And some of them are going to be some of the products that I have been really excited about for different people.

Homestead Education Gift Ideas

So to just go over mine for a minute, because, of course, I love my products. My curriculums! The homestead science curriculums, you know a lot of people don’t think of curriculum as a gift. But in some cases, there’s parents that have been saving up for it, you know. Again, I wish I didn’t have to charge what I had to charge. But call my printer and talk to them.

But you can take my products. And there’s moms that want them that they’ve been saving up for them. There are kids that I meet so many teens at homestead conferences and homeschool conferences.

These kids! They aren’t your normal kids.

They would rather learn about how to homestead than play a video game. And so, if you have a kid in your life that loves homesteading, loves animals, loves farming. You know my Introduction to Homestead Science is equivalent to Introduction to Agriculture, almost at a college level. So, but it’s presented in a way that the average homesteader, the average family can understand it more rather than learning about large-scale, commercial agriculture. They’re learning about small-scale agriculture, how to sell and barter within their community, how to source supplies that you’re not having to go through like big suppliers. You’re going to your local feed store. That type of thing, and I mean I have adults buy my Introduction to Homestead Science textbook all the time, and honestly, some of them love the workbook, too, because they like to go through the steps.

So don’t take curriculum off the table. It’s actually a pretty cool gift. My kids have gotten very excited about curriculums that they were interested in. That maybe we couldn’t afford at the start of the school year. Like really cool sciences and stuff that we then give to them at Christmas, and they are very excited to receive them. So, depending on the child, that is still an amazing gift.

I have my new book, Raising Self-Sufficient Kids. I just have a copy right here for those of you who are watching. And it’s An Honest Mom’s Guide to Intentional Parenting.

Moms love parenting books. And if you have a mom friend or a family member, or whatever that they just moved onto a homestead with their kids, or even if they didn’t, because this book is not specific to farming. But it talks about creating peace in your home and doing that with the goal of a self-sufficient child. Which is children who can care for themselves and care for others beyond their own needs.

And it’s a really good book. It’s funny. It talks about our life experience. We’re a blended family. So, there’s a lot of tips on how to blend families, how to deal with neurodivergent kids, homeschooled kids, public school kids like, it’s just a really good across the board book. And it really has. You reflect on yourself as a parent. So, you can get this both on my website or on Amazon. You can also get it as a Kindle book so you can download it.

I don’t have that on my site as of yet, and I don’t have it as audio yet, but I’m hoping to in the spring.

The next 1. 0h, my gosh, like, how can I not mention the Homestead Trivia? I have original Homestead Trivia, and the kids Homestead Trivia will be in my hand next week, and I will be shipping it out. You can order it as a discounted bundle.

It’s such a fun family game. You can sit around together and play it. You can have it, as you know, like, when you’re on car trips and, the kids are bored when you’re waiting at a restaurant.

The kids version has 72 picture cards, both for just identification, but also so that your non-readers or emerging readers, can not only like answer questions, but they can also ask the questions and feel like they’re a part of the game.

So that is a really awesome gift to get in your hands. It’s educational. You can use state funding for educational materials on it.

So, that’s a really fun one to have. And for those of you who you know your family is researching, homesteading all the time to be able to sit down and have, like a little competition with it, plus learn some stuff like why not? But anyways, I mean they’re 20 bucks a deck, or you can get them for 35 for a bundle, and they’ll be a little cheaper with my black Friday sale.

And I think as long as you order them up to a week before Christmas I can get them to you.

By Christmas I have to double check the post office like ship by dates, but I think it’s up to a week before Christmas. I can get them under your Christmas tree.

I also have so other curriculums and how to guides the a lot of people are really excited, for. So, there’s my…

Sorry if you’re watching the Youtube. And it looks like I’m crying. I’m not. I’m choking on my drink.

So I have my survival basics. It’s a Mini course. It’s 15 lessons with videos, a supply list. Then it teaches kids how to do like outdoor survival stuff in a really hands-on way without it being over the top, where you have to like, order a bunch of crazy stuff or put them in dangerous situations.

I have tips on how to take it further. I have tips on how to make it more of a unit study. We taught it in our Co-OP. It was a lot of fun. It’s designed where it could work perfectly in a co-OP. It’s also great for family style learning, or, if you have that, like, you know, kind of rambunctious like, you know. 8 to 10 year, old boy.

You can pretty much just hand it to him and let him go figure stuff out and learn. So that’s a really fun one to do. It comes both digitally and printed.

I have my homestead business guides, Homesteaders guide to relocating. That’s always a fun one. If you have a family member that you’re like, come on, move to where I’m at. It’s I think it’s $20 for the digital version, you know, and some people are like digital stuff for Christmas. One of my best Christmas gifts that my husband got me. He did it like right on the spot, which was kind of funny.

But he put like a card in my stocking that said, check your email.

And then he was like sitting there messing with his phone. And, I pull it out. And right then I got an email that was like thank you for your purchase. And it was a digital download to one of my favorite homesteaders where there was a planner, and you know how to learn to can, and all that type of stuff. He got it for me several years ago. And I knew a lot of that stuff, but I was kind of new to the Homestead realm of it versus the agriculture realm. And I had been studying her stuff for a really long time, and I wanted her planner really bad, and she was doing like a Christmas bundle type thing. And, so he actually bought it for me on Christmas morning. So like I got the thank you for your purchase. And I got all of her digital downloads, and I was so excited.

It’s a really good idea. Maybe I should do a bundle, but I don’t think I’m going to this year, but next year I have some really fun ideas where those bundles would be they would work. But yeah, I mean, you can buy it and print out the email. You know the receipt, and then they can, you know, log in and get it? Or you can just email it to them.

Digital downloads are great presence in this day and age. You could buy it digitally and print it out and bind it sometimes. That’s a little cheaper for people who already have binders. And then I do have them all as print copies as well.

But you know how to start a homestead business. I mean, how many mom friends? Or you know, Dad, friends, do you have that are like man, If I could just make the homestead make a little more money I wouldn’t have to work as many hours, or I could start homeschooling the kids, or you know, insert whatever here. This that could really help them, and even that $20 to download it. They may not want to be spending that type of money because they’re trying to save up for the supplies they need or something. So, those types of gifts are. They can be life changing. So don’t write those off. I also offer coaching, and if you buy my coaching package you get that how to start a homestead business for free.

So all great options there, as far as what I have on my website now to talk about some of the other things that we love around the house.

More homestead gift ideas

I put Redmond’s Real Salt on this list. We use that constantly. We use it for canning. We use it for curing. We use it for regular seasoning. We have the popcorn salt. We have the electrolytes. They have garlic salt and smoked seasonings. Those are all great options for gifts for men and women. You know, like, get the smoked salt set for like a guy who’s really into smoking and stuff like smoking meats. Super great gifts there.

Anything that they can use on the homestead clothing wise. And I you know, I mean, if you’re going to buy your kids a jacket, anyways. Why don’t you buy them a work jacket that they can use? So we love Bernie apparel. We’ve been using their stuff for a couple of years now they have overalls for the kids, jackets for the kids. I have a nice vest. My daughter has a jacket she loves, they have beanies and all sorts of stuff, and they’re really reasonably priced.

I might be saying it wrong. It might be burn apparel or Bernie apparel. I don’t know BERN, E.

Again, you can find links to all this stuff in the blog that I will link.

So yeah, heated gloves. Muck boots for kids. For stockings, I always like to put those hand warmer things that you like, pop them or whatever. And then they’re they get warm. The kids love those in the wintertime because they put them in their pockets when they go up to feed and just keeps them warm, and it’s just a little extra bonus. I think at the feed store I’ll buy them by the box, and it’s like 20 bucks or 29 bucks or something like that, and they get enough that I can put a good 10 or so in each kid’s stocking. So, that’s a nice little treat that they can get.

Women’s Homestead Gift Ideas

Something my daughter and I love doing together is making candles. Regular candles like beeswax candles and butter candles.

You can buy all the supplies for beeswax candles like on Amazon, or you know other places. You can get the jars. You can get the wicks with the little bases on them, the wax, you know. When we do the do them, we you can put a little of that mica powder in them to color them. We use essential oils because we don’t. We can’t have the fragrances in our house because of my husband’s liver.

So that’s a really fun one to do together. We make lip balms, hand creams so like, if you have, like mother-daughter, family, members, or friends, that’s a really great gift to get them to have something to do together.

Another one that I love is my Instapot Dutch oven. It’s about a hundred bucks, and it is an actual Dutch oven. But then it has, like an Instapot-style base. That’s almost like a crock pot and you can put that Dutch oven in there and do whatever setting like you can sauté in it. You can braise. You can slow cook, but it cooks more evenly because it’s a Dutch oven, but then you can also, like, take it out and put it in the oven. If you need to.

It frees up stove space. I have 2 of them, so I can do like soup in one bread in the other. I love my instapot Dutch ovens like I got 2 for Christmas, like 3 or 4 years ago, and how these not have not taken off more I don’t know. It’s like I never see them in stores. I never hear people talking about them, but I live for mine like it is amazing.

You know, sometimes like little things like tea towels and stuff like that, just to help out in the kitchen, because,I almost use my tea towels. Oh, my gosh! I use them for everything like cleaning, cooking, drying my hands, wrapping up bread. I mean, it doesn’t matter, and they end up getting yucky, and I like you know, I have to throw them out sooner than I would some other things, so, you know, like a big pack of tea towels, especially some cute ones, would be like a great gift for any woman.

Teen Homestead Gift Ideas

Let’s see here, you know, like I said, for the kids, all those work clothes like my kids have beanies with headlamps and they’re rechargeable. So you know, these short days they can go out and do their farm chores and have a beanie with a headlamp on it and keep their hands free.

My daughter, at Yellowstone this year found. So, there’s this book called Braiding Sweetgrass. It’s like a 600 page book, and it’s in indigenous knowledge on plants. And my daughter’s been interested in it. But she has dyslexia, like reading a 600 page book is not an option for her.

And while we were in Yellowstone she found braiding Sweetgrass for the young adult, and she got it and has loved it. So that’s been a really like cool one for her.

Incubators are a good gift, like chicken incubators. Kids can learn from them, you know, by hatching eggs. They can start little mini businesses.

I mean, I don’t know a kid who wouldn’t love an incubator, and I mean you can get decent small ones for 40 or 50 bucks. You can get decent medium sized ones where they could actually start a small business or something for a hundred, 200. I mean they’re not totally outrageous. I mean, they’re definitely a there’s a price tag with it. But it’s not completely insane.

Another book to consider this season is Hillbilly Elegy, which is the memoir written by our new President elect or Vice President-elect, JD. Vance. And it’s a real interesting picture into life in the eighties, early nineties, especially in cities, those who face poverty, those who have really rural roots.

It’s a little crass in some places. But I it’s done very much in a way that’s showing how  a whole generation kind of grew up in a way. And I think it’s an important one to read. I think our teens will get a lot out of it. I also have friends who write a literature curriculum that has a lot of sociology built into it, and they have done an entire curriculum on the book Hillbilly Elegy. Like you read it, and as you work through it, you do projects and research extra things. All of their curriculums are like that. They have, like they have so many curriculums that align so beautifully with my curriculum.

I’ll link them in here as in my blog post as well. But if you use my code, homesteadeducation at Prairie and Pine Curriculum, you can get 10% off. So that’s a great little bonus there.

So oh, targets! Targets are a good one for teen boys like whether they have a Bb Gun, a pellet gun,or a rifle, something that they can just go out, practice their skill, and burn off some energy. Those are great gifts.

For kids.

So I have. My boys have found these farm toys at the feed store. And I felt like all farm toys are pretty expensive, and we kept buying them, and they would just like break them, or the dogs would chew them up, and I just felt like I was throwing away money. But I would rather my kids, you know, play imagination with farm toys then some of the other things that are out there.

And we ended up finding these toys recently they are, What is the name of them, Little Buster’s toys.

And they’re metal. They’re very well made, and they look just like real things like there’s squeeze chutes that work. There’s trucks and trailers and panels, and I mean there’s like a pig show ring and a feedlot and barns and all those things to like play real farm. And they’re good quality. And they have animals that match that are they’re still. The animals are still plastic, but they’re a real heavy plastic, and we haven’t lost any to dogs.

My boys, they’ve played with them for days. They have whole like farm setups, and they are, you know. I’ve heard them talking about breeding schedules like all sorts of stuff like it, you know, like they’re taking it pretty far, and they’re 4 and 7. I will admit there’s a bit of a price tag on them. But if I’m going to pay $50 for a setup that’s going to break, fall apart whatever in a week, or pay 75 for a setup that they’ve had for almost a year. Now, yeah, I’m going to stick with that. And I’m adding more this year, because that is like it’s been amazing.

Another one that it’s going to sound really silly. But I bought these plain wooden blocks. And some paints because we were going to do a project. We actually ended up never doing the project. And we’ve used the paint for other stuff. But those wooden blocks have become, my boys’ like favorite toy. They build things out of them, they build things and break them. They use them as hay bales in their farm, like they do so much with these blocks. It is ridiculous. I do have them linked on the Youtube or on the blog. But holy jeepers like. I never thought that they would get that much play out of such a simple item, and they probably play with those like, more than any other item collectively. And I think I paid 20 bucks for them, I mean, and they’re wood, you know, like how much more simple can you get? If you have the more artsy kids like, go ahead and add the paints too like I did, and we just never got to that project.

Whole Family Homestead Gift Ideas

So, when you’re considering a whole family to buy for homestead family gifts can be really cool like there’s some really fun ones out there.

One, I always suggest, is, consider going to like a homestead or a homeschool conference. The homeschool ones are a little more inspirational. Where the conferences a little, the homestead ones are a little more educational. But there are so many out there like I mean pretty much. There’s 1 in every region, and it’s such a great way to bond as a family. Some of them are pretty reasonable on price, some of them are pricier, but they offer more.

I have a list on my website of all the ones I’ll be attending this year.

Most of them, at least, I’m still working out some contracts with a few, so I haven’t put them on there yet, but it’ll still give you an idea of ones that are nearby.

Let’s see here.

Oh, I mentioned, you know, like little house on the prairie book set, but it doesn’t have to be that book set, but something that we have done as a family lately is at night. I’ll read a chapter or 2 out of whatever series we’re reading at the time.

We’ve been doing it for about a year now. We have seasons like, we’ve been really busy lately, so we haven’t been reading as much but we’ll read a chapter or two and even my husband enjoys doing it. Like, he’ll get a fire call, and he’s like, Wait, don’t start the chapter till I get back. And it’s just it’s a really nice family time together. Usually, I do the reading. I don’t try to make the kids do it, because this is supposed to be their wind down time. And I don’t, you know, especially like my daughter, who has dyslexia, even though she’s 16. It’s still hard for her to just read storybooks sometimes, especially when she’s on the spot. And I don’t want it to be that type of experience. I want it to just be getting to hear a story with Mom.

Another one is something like, you know, like an ice cream machine or a popcorn machine. It’s something that you can all get in there together, make something and then enjoy it. And that can be really fun. And like you can get those nostalgic popcorn machines for, like 150 bucks, they’re like a cart. You get the special popcorn to go in it. It’s like it’s a good time. My husband just got one recently, and the kids have an absolute blast with it.

So, I really hope that I helped you with your list that you have some really fun ideas to get items. Get gifts for Christmas for birthdays, like, you know, just for the whole year. Ideas like, I said, you can get links to all of these, plus more, because I call it my 12 days of Christmas. There are 12 items listed for men, women, teens, kids, and whole families. So that’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That’s 60 different gift ideas that you can peruse to help with your shopping list this year, and for the rest of the year.

If you have any questions, please feel free, feel free and reach out. I’d be happy to tell you how my kids felt about any of these items. I will have a little bit of a blurb with each of them on the website.

You know how we use some of the products. If some of these don’t work for you. But you want more ideas, I’d be happy to give you some additional ones.

But I hope everybody has a happy holiday. I hope they have a great Thanksgiving.

And be sure and check out my black Friday sales.

Keep growing!