Exchange
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Adjusting to a New Family Dynamic
This year marks another major adjustment to our family dynamic. Our Family Dynamic Up Until Now Up until the fall of 2024, our family (of five) has been largely together 24/7. In the late summer of 2019, we bought a second home in the mountains and migrated the bulk of our daily living to up there. Then, in March of 2020, when the world all around us turned upside down, we made our way back to our homestead. With each move, we stayed together, adjusting as necessary to either the environment around us or to the effects of what was going on in the world-at-large. Then, in the summer of…
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Little Free Libraries: Human Connection Venues
A few years ago, our daughter established, built and stocked a Little Free Library at the front edge of our property, because of her personal passion for reading & circulating hard copy books. Thankfully, we’ve had many different people donate books to the little green box perched at our Homestead Stand. I’ve personally enjoyed reading some of them and donated a few of my own. Look Inside! In an attempt to draw attention to this gem in our local neighborhood, I recently took a physical inventory of its contents and published a list to distribute to those who regularly visit us and to those who live nearby. Then, I blogged…
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Officially Licensed Wall Art Decor Decals
Ty has been working hard for the past month building two websites to house all of the officially licensed wall art decor we have had available for sale up until now on Amazon. The sites are WiggleWalls.com and WiggleWallsDecals.com. They are essentially the same, using the same shopping cart service — just different webhosts. While everything is not out there yet, Ty’s made significant progress thus far. Here are just a few of the sets we carry [click set image for more details]: Check the rest of them out. And if you see a particular set that interests you, please let us know. We’ll be happy to send you something of our choosing…
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Don’t Buy What the Stock Market Is Selling
Most people, I believe, are oblivious to how the stock market works. I know I was for most of my life, and I still am clueless about the nitty gritty of it. But, I now understand that the Stock Market is NOT reflective of our economy despite what we are being led to believe by the mainstream media. I imagine most people think (as I had for most of my life) that if the Stock Market is doing well, then our economy must be doing well. And if the Stock Market crashes, then that means our economy is toast. However, in recent years, I have come to learn that is…
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Attention, Time & Energy > Dollars
In my view, by-and-large we have been sold on the idea that our attention, time & energy are worth dollars, but that is simply not true. The Lies We Were Told We were taught to go to school and get a job so we can earn the money we need to get what we need & want in life. Because, after all, money is what makes the world go ’round, right? And what were we taught is money? Dollars. So, when we reached a certain age, we started trading a portion of our attention, time & energy for dollars. And then we spent more of our attention, time & energy…
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What Do YOU Need?
I’m growing weary of continually crying out to have my needs met, even though it’s not so much my needs that I’m looking to have filled — it’s more of my children’s needs. And really, it is also the needs of those around me that I’m seeking to help fill, but I don’t think people realize they need what I have to offer. Everybody seems to be getting their needs met elsewhere, or at least they think that’s what is happening. And for some, that is what is happening. But for many, I don’t think that’s the case. Unmet Needs I think people are lonely. And deep down they all…
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The Great Taking
Yesterday I came across a book that was published earlier this year called, The Great Taking by David Rogers Webb. (It’s available for free online as a .pdf. And there’s a documentary available to watch addressing some of what’s covered in the book.) I read it all in one sitting and found the information very enlightening. (I also appreciated learning more about the author’s backstory, found in the prologue of the book.) The opening paragraph of the first chapter states: What is this book about? It is about the taking of collateral, all of it,the end game of this globally synchronous debt accumulation supercycle. This is being executed by long-planned,…
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A Quiet Revolution
Let’s face it. [Keeping It Real] Most of us were raised in an environment where our housing, utilities, food, energy, transportation, healthcare & communications were all provided for us in exchange for money. Very few of us, I think, inherited our housing. (I didn’t.) We more than likely had to acquire it with money. And then we all have to keep paying money to keep it. While some have their own well water & septic systems, most rely on municipalities for these services in exchange for money. And most buy the majority of their food and pay for electricity and/or gas/oil to power & heat their homes. And this is…
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Creating a Domain in the Real World
In recent years the Powers-That-Shouldn’t-Be in this world have been shoving us all into the virtual realm, whether we like it or not. And frankly, I don’t like it. I was already quite a bit behind the times, technologically speaking –– as I’m typing this post on a hard-wired desktop computer hooked up to a printer/copier/fax machine that’s nearly two decades old. (And my wired landline telephone is stationed just around the corner, with another extension linked to an answering machine.) While I was on the cutting edge of web-design-from-scratch and the blogosphere nearly twenty years ago, I have failed miserably at keeping up with the latest & greatest of…
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Freedom Scorecard
I came across this snazzy little tool presented by Tag at LifeDoneFree, which he calls a UGS Calculator. (“UGS” stands for “UnGovernable Score”.) Basically, it’s a gauge to determine how free you are based on what you deem is needed to be free. For a while now, I’ve been trying to keep tabs on taking care of our First- Things-First needs, and thensome, to get as free as we can be. And I really like how Tag has put this spreadsheet together to help monitor one’s progress on achieving freedom in the many aspects of our lives.
