← Simple Farmhouse Life
Simple Farmhouse Life
251. Finding motivation each day, budget home decor, minimalist baby prep, and more Q&A!
00:47:38
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Trading not available in all jurisdictions. Check local regulations before trading restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Do you ever feel in the morning like you just don't want to do what you need to do? Do you feel like you can't find the motivation to even get up and start? And I totally do. I was literally having those thoughts just this morning. Every day it's like, we've got a sink full of dishes from breakfast. We've got laundry to switch over. A lot of things on the to do list. Usually if I get up, put my hair back, put on an outfit, put the baby in the wrap. If they're young enough for that, then I just think, okay, what's the most important thing I can work on right now? What do I need to bring order to? My name is Lisa, mother of eight, and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Farmhouse on Boone. Join me as I share with you my love for creating a handmade home from scratch, cooking, and a little mom and entrepreneur life along the way. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Today I'm flying solo again. I'm going to be answering some of your questions. We've been doing this all year, every third episode. I'm just trying to catch up on some of the questions I get asked all the time. You can submit your questions over at Bit Ly capital S, capital F, capital L lowercase questions. I have some good ones today. I'm just going to go through as random as they are. Answer your questions. If you want to catch up on a lot of the other questions I've been answering throughout this year, you can just go over either to my YouTube channel for this podcast. So that's simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Just search that on YouTube. Of course, it's on all of the podcast players. So Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, all that stuff and like every third episode. And then in between those, some great interviews from guests. So if you have not listened to some of those, you can catch up from the year. Can't believe we're this far through the year. Obviously we always say that, but it's weird how we as humans never think that the time goes the right speed. Like, why does it feel weird? It just does. Okay, the first but very random question somebody was asking about our stove in our kitchen, how we found it, are we happy with it? So it is a 1949 caloric stove. So it's obviously very old. But my reasoning with getting it was that stoves haven't come a long way as far as technology goes. Like when I go to somebody's house, they have a brand new stove and oven. If it's a gas stove, essentially, they turn a knob and a flame comes out. So I figured what could be the difference with any kind of stove? Because no matter what, whether your stove's from 2024 or 1949, you're essentially working with just a flame, not super complicated technology. Now, as far as the stove portion of our oven stove range goes, I love it because it has that middle section between the four burners that I can rest dough on. It's always warm because there's two standing pilot lights. It's really convenient for a sourdough baker year round. I can accelerate how fast things rise if I want to make something quickly. Having that warm spot, which of course you could duplicate by getting a heating pad permanently set up in your kitchen or your pantry. But having it always there and a space that I can see and not forget about easily keep clean, is really, really nice. It's also a nice extra prep area. So if I were to get a different stove, thinking about that would be that'd be a hard thing to not have. And I don't know that there's many modern stoves that have something like that. So the stove is great because I have four burners. They all work fabulously. Now, the oven we've had a little bit of trouble with. So one, we did get a new thermostat installed whenever we had the stove restored by a his historic stove restoration guy. And it does work pretty well. I do feel like I have to turn my oven a little bit higher than the average stove. Just comparing notes with other people and other recipes. Mine needs to be flipped probably like 10 to 15 degrees higher to achieve the same results. So I'm almost never using 350 because it just doesn't cook near as fast. And then also, the hinge broke on one of the doors. So our doors, there's two oven doors. One side is actually just storage and then the other side is a pretty small oven. Now, I've learned to work with that because I can cook things directly on the bottom. So I'm able to do like three. As long as something is not too high, like a Dutch oven, I can do three things at once. Like in a Thanksgiving dinner scenario where you're doing a green bean casserole and a sweet potato casserole and a turkey. I can work with that. Now, it would be nice if I had double the oven space. No doubt I would want that if I could. But then ever since the hinge broke, I've been wedging a little piece of folded up paper in between the two doors to keep it shut tight. I did have our stove guy out, our oven guy out recently, and we are going to try to replace the hinge, but that's been pretty annoying. And then also, it's a very sooty stove. So we have black like everywhere in our kitchen all the way up to the ceiling, to the walls. We had to repaint everything recently because it just will not come off no matter what cleaner I use. Now, we have had it for five years. We've only repainted, I think twice. So it's not the end of the world. But I don't really like that. And I asked our stove guy how we could fix that. And so far we haven't been able to find a solution for it. So it's kind of messy. I probably wouldn't choose it again. Now I've considered. I had on Leslie Burris and she was telling me about her AGA stove and she goes on and on about it. So I've definitely considered something like that. There's pros and cons. Now, I've listened to a lot of YouTube videos about it and it seems like people who have them absolutely love them. So I would consider it for sure. Now, I don't know what kind of size specifications one needs for that. Our spot where our stove sits is pretty wide because it is a wider than, you know, standard stove and oven. So I probably, obviously the AGA is not in budget for most people, so it's not, you know, I would hope to find one on Facebook, Marketplace or something like that. But it does sound like a really cool option. The thing with me is having a YouTube channel, having a blog, trying to keep everything kind of photo ready in a cutesy kind of country way, which I also happen to love. This is not just for show. Those are things that I actually really appreciate in my own home. I mean, that's. That country style is always what I like. But of course it's more motivating for me because I really enjoy creating content for my blog. I do photography, I do YouTube videos. So I'm always going to lean for a more aesthetic stove, which is what drew me to the old one in the first place. I mean, you know, any stove that you get, even at Lowe's or Home Depot, is going to have the same functionality. I mean, I'm sure I could be corrected with certain stoves. I know Leslie Burris speaks very highly of that aga, but if I got something like that, it would be both for functionality but also for aesthetics. I think anybody probably that would be, you know what they're maybe thinking for that. I would consider doing another vintage stove. But I don't like some of the problems that we've had with ours. They are meant to last forever. But there, there's some maintenance that apparently we need to do on ours. Okay, so we're just gonna go totally random from stove to. Do you eat your placenta? Someone says, do you eat your placenta? Is this the number one reason for a home birth? So I actually have never been interested in that. I just have not really looked into it too much. It just was never of interest to me. So, no, that's not the reason to home birth, because I have never even done that. Okay. Hi, Lisa, I was wondering what you and your husband do or have for affordable health insurance for your family. Good affordable insurance can be cost if we're not getting it from our employer. So, yes, since Luke has quit his job six and a half or something like that over six years ago, we do this business full time. The podcast, the YouTube channel, the blog. We have been doing Samaritans. So it's not really a. An insurance plan. It's a Christian health sharing ministry. So basically every month I send my portion to someone and then if we ever have a need, they'll send it to us. So it was a lot more affordable. Now we do, of course, have 10 people in our family. But I will say that what it currently costs, I'll just say it. It's over $800 a month currently. So I think it's still a lot less expensive than like regular insurance. And of course I like the mission behind it a lot more. But it is, it's a little pricey, especially because we, I mean, I would keep it because if something catastrophic happened, we wouldn't want to have to be, you know, in debt for whatever that would be. But we definitely end up paying more than we claim. I mean, I guess that that's a good thing. That's a good thing. So we're going to stay with it. We will continue to be with Samaritans. This is an interesting one. Do you consider yourself a stay at home mom, work from home mom, working mom. I don't know why this matters, but also it kind of matters to me in a way because I, I have friends who also do the same kind of business that I do that consider themselves working moms. But then I've always considered myself a stay at home mom just because I rolled straight into this role from being a stay at home mom, not making any income into this role. And so I guess without having any kind of shift in my duties. So caring for my family is my number one priority, my number one thing that takes up my time doing this takes up a very small amount of my time. So I think because of that I've never really shifted into thinking of myself as a work from home mom. But in reality I am a work from home mom because I have a job at home, but I'm also a stay at home mom. So I don't know what you want to call it, but the reality of you can call it whatever you want or whatever I want, but the reality of it is that the bulk of my time is spent in stay at home mom duties and homeschool duties. But. But also I spend some time, most afternoons, at least four days a week, working on this business as well, which I think a lot of moms do. I have several stay at home moms or I consider them stay at home moms on my team, but really they must also work from home because they work on my team whenever they have time. Okay. So in a recent episode I talked about antibiotics because my daughter had to be on them. We've had probably a 10 year run without having to touch them. So it was sort of not something that we, we tried to do very often. So someone asked. Hi Lisa, thank you for addressing what you do when your kids get sick, like using garlic oil on ears. I wondered what you do specifically when your kids get strep throat. I have four boys and it Seemed like someone's getting strep throat at least once a year, and I was told it's very dangerous and only antibiotics get rid of it. Curious how you handle strep throat. So I actually got this question a lot. It seems like a lot of people struggle with strep throat. On the YouTube comment, several people said, how have you avoided antibiotics? What do you do about strep throat? So we personally haven't dealt with strep throat. I really hope that we don't, because that's a very difficult decision to make. I can tell you that someone in my sister's family struggled with strep throat for many years. And actually. Okay, I'll just say it was her husband. I know she's shared this before. I think we've even talked about on the podcast. So I just don't want you to think it's one of her kids. And he always, every year, took antibiotics every time he got strep throat. And she went a more natural route one year. And then ever since that year, he's never gotten it again. So I do know that you can get something very serious when you have strep throat. So if my kids were to get it, I would definitely, probably be very nervous. I don't know. I would have to consider and weigh that out. There are times in life where you do just have to take the conventional route. So, for example, my daughter, what I shared last time was she got an infection from a wisdom tooth surgery. Now, is it all natural and healthy to remove wisdom teeth? I'm sure you could find lots of evidence and lots of people saying that you should not do that. There are other things you can do. But I also had this daughter with perfect teeth who does not need braces with wisdom teeth, about to knock all of those over. Whether that's true, I know this is one of those things where if I researched it deeply, I'd probably find some natural way for the teeth to up. I don't know. We decided to go conventional on that. She got an infection that's very serious, very happy. Antibiotics exist in that situation. So if we were to deal with strep throat, who knows? I might do antibiotics. I just really don't know because we haven't dealt with that. There have been a lot of times throughout motherhood, throughout pregnancy, where there's a difficult decision to be made. Like, one example for me would be with concussions. We've been to the hospital for concussions. We've done the imaging or whatever. I hated it. I did not want to do it, but also recommended by the nurses feeling like, what if he is bleeding in the brain? That would be catastrophic. And so whenever I have made those decisions to take a route that I know has other consequences and side effects, I usually just don't even think about it anymore. I make the decision and then it is what it is. If you know that both times that we've had to do that, the child did not have bleeding on the brain. But I still felt good about my decision because it's just not something I'm going to mess with. So if there's a real serious side effect, yeah, I might. Everybody has a different comfort level too for making those calls. But I do think there's a lot of fear based on recommendations that go around where you do things just in case that you can, if you know what you're looking for, you can wait and see and, and then eventually take that more mainstream route or maybe it'll resolve itself. But then there's some things that are very much emergencies and in that moment you might decide something that maybe wasn't necessary, but you still feel good about it because you just made the best decision with the information that you had. Okay, I know you are a chill, slash, go with the flow person, but also very busy. How do you stay motivated, energized and focused for your entrepreneur job? I think we're similar personalities, but I really struggle to have motivation during my work block because of the hundred other things I left behind and also come to it just so mentally tired. I admire your consistency and drive. Would love any tips for keeping a clear head as you push toward a goal. Do you process business goals with your husband or any other business friend? Hope this made sense. So I have been on a journey with this for many years and you are getting the 38 year old I've been in business for nine years person. That's who you are currently getting this information from. So if you'd have asked me this a decade ago, I would have said the exact same thing as you. I'm overwhelmed. I can't figure out what to work on. I have a million different ideas and then when I have a work block, my brain wants to go in this direction, that direction. I can't figure out what to work on. I would have said that exact same thing. And over the years I've been able to hone in on what moves the needle for me and what is just busy work. And I have such a small amount of time each day to work on something that when it's time. I really have to let perfection go. And I'm also at a point with my business where I know exactly what I need to do and there's no thinking work involved. Whereas when I first started my business, I had every question mark in the world. I had. What should I call my business? Should I focus on a blog? Should I focus on a YouTube channel? Should I start a podcast? Should I do Pinterest today instead of working on Google SEO today? Or should I post an Instagram photo? Such a limited amount of time and you can be going in a million different directions. And I remember what that was like so much and I had so much self doubt about which direction do I go and is this the right one? Am I wasting time when I could be doing this? You hate wasting time when you have so little of it. So it's hard because right now it's so I have my business built to a level where I know exactly what I need to do. There's no question mark and so I have a very small amount of time I got to knock it out and it's, it's so obvious what to work on. Whereas yeah, that earlier stage, I think it's. It's not really a lack of motivation and energy. It's more of a questioning what direction should I go now? What did I do about that? I went in wrong directions but I tried to just keep going. So I definitely wasted a lot of time. There was things that I worked on that probably didn't really help. Looking back now I think why did I waste my time on that? But I just kept taking those blocks of time that I had which in my earlier years when all of my kids were. I had four kids when I started my business and they were what, like seven, five, three and baby, something like that. I took the time I had, which was nap time because I still had a very set quiet time at that stage of my life. Bedtime, because we had a very early bedtime that's gone out the window now that I have teenagers and all of that and early mornings and I worked on something and I always just kept doing something and getting past the self doubt of is this something going to turn into anything? If you can somehow ignore that and just keep going and then pivot when it looks like it might be necessary to pivot, then you could get to a point where at least when you sit down to work you aren't questioning if you're even working on the right thing. Getting to that point is really good because I'm There now. And so it makes working really easy. It also helps when it's a something that's making money when it's not. It feels really weird taking time out of your day to like precious time that you don't have to work on something that is just hopefully going to turn into something for your family. That was hard. And I remember talking about that with my sister because she did the exact same thing as me. She started a business like this and then two years later her husband came home and pretty well took the whole entire thing over as his job. But I remember her saying, I'm working on that stupid thing in the afternoon. It just, she felt she didn't even want to admit it to other people in her life, like me, that it made sense to tell me about it. But she felt dumb even like, you know, like not meeting her friends at the park that day. And now she's, she's a full blown stay at home mom and she meets at the park all the time. But in those, you know, couple years that it took to, to turn that profit, she felt really weird working on it because it wasn't even making any money. It was just, it was kind of a waste of time. It wasn't obviously, but it feels like it. So I think I understand where you are and you very well, you know, probably have as much energy because I do feel like I have a lot of energy. People always ask me, aren't you tired? And I'm just not. It's a natural thing for me. Everybody in my family is like this, so energy isn't my problem. But overwhelm and questioning myself and not being sure which thing to walk toward. You know, people say put one foot in front of the other, but which door are you walking to or walking through? That part has always been a struggle for me and I probably appear very confident right now because it no longer is just because of where I currently am. Everything's working now. Should something switch, maybe some algorithm changes or some search engine, something changes and I have to decide which direction to go, then maybe I'll be in that same spot again. But right now the season of my business and motivation feels really easy because it's very straightforward. Somebody else though, did ask me how or do you ever. I can't find the question, but something along the lines of do you ever feel in the morning like you just don't want to, you know, do what you need to do? Do you feel like you can't find the motivation to even get up and start? And I totally Do. I was literally having those thoughts just this morning. Because every day it's like, okay, like, we've got, you know, a sink full of dishes from breakfast. We've got laundry to switch over. We have, you know, a lot of things on the to do list. I had some videos I wanted to make, but the baby's kind of feeling sick. He's sleeping right now. And so, you know, I was just sitting there nursing him, thinking, okay, I need to get up. And so that does happen to me sometimes. Usually if I get up, put my hair back, put on an outfit. I was still sitting in my pajamas when I was having these thoughts. Put the baby in the wrap. If they're young enough for that, or, you know, down for a nap, then I just think, okay, what's the most important thing I can work on right now? What do I need to bring order to? Normally for me, because I have a large family and I have older kids and I have my husband. We're all working together. So it doesn't feel near as much on me, like, that overwhelming feeling, like, okay, this whole place is destroyed right now, and I need to figure out how, like, where to even begin. I don't usually have those feelings as much anymore. But there are days where you wake up and you're just sitting there sipping coffee, and you're like, I just don't want to get up from this moment. I have those. I definitely have those. Yes. More than my sisters. It's funny because we talk about this, and one of my sisters, she just, like, she doesn't even drink coffee. She just wakes up and she just goes, I don't always feel like that, but I also love coffee, so I'll just want to sit there and linger at it. Have you ever tried frying sage leaves in butter? If not, I highly recommend I need to try that. Like, right now. I'm going to write that down because I'm making a summer in the kitchen video. That's what I'm working on this week, which is really nice because just throughout this week, just anything I'm kind of bringing in from the garden, I'm trying to show what summer looks like in the kitchen. We have so much sage. So noted. I will probably be putting that on my next YouTube video. How long does it take you to film a video on your main channel? I love the different shots you take around the kitchen garden. The closeups, the wide shots. I want to start a YouTube channel, too, with shots like this and do voiceovers, since that's the content I Enjoy. Do you take a tripod with you everywhere and set it up? Does it take a day or a week to get all your footage? Does Luke help? Would love to know your workflow. Okay, so it's funny talking about this almost feels kind of embarrassing in a way because removes, like, it makes you see the other side of it, which is not near as romantic as how the video is portrayed, which I've said before. I really enjoy making beautiful content that is. That is so much fun for me, like making a this is how you don't meal plan type of video, which I did a couple weeks ago, where I share, like, all these tips for how not to meal plan. Very practical. You're just seeing me go around the kitchen and just share some practical tips. But those videos my audience seems to really like because they're helpful, but they are not fun for me to make. Whereas the kind of video that you just described where maybe cutting flowers from this angle, then cutting flowers from this angle and then putting them in the vase, I find that so much fun to both create, to frame up the shot just right, to set my lighting, to adjust the temperature of the camera to edit together, and then like, oh, I'm gonna get this shot where this one flower goes in. So much fun for me to make. They are. They're the reason why I keep doing YouTube because they're fun for me to make. But, yes, I carry my tripod around with me. I don't usually have Luke help with it because usually Luke, he's working on outside stuff nonstop. So with our little farm slash homestead, it's only seven acres, but there's just always something to work on. Like right now, we had a problem in the cottage, and. And so he had to go rip out some drywall in there. We had to put. There's just. There's a list a mile long that you won't find entertaining and, you know, useful. If you have a home, you know all about it. So a lot of times it's easier for me just to take a tripod around and just move it around. So I adjust. I have a high quality zoom lens on a Canon 80D. I have a nicer camera that I use for blog photography, but for my vlogs, I just use a Canon 80D. I used to set up two and kind of have, like, two angles. Now I just move my tripod around. I have a high quality zoom lens, so that makes it to where I can, you know, zoom in really easily. And lately we've started incorporating drone shots. Those are all done by Luke. And Luke has been starting more and more to film when he's doing things too, so that I can piece in some of those clips. But really it does not matter necessarily what kind of camera you have. It's trying to set a scene and create a story. So while you're inside cooking, then throwing in a clip of what it might look outside while you're inside cooking, I'm probably not getting that shot at that same time I'm not cooking, then running outside and getting some outside shots, I'm going to cook and get all of that footage and then sometime in that week maybe get a bunch of outside footage that I can show what the outside would be looking like while I'm inside cooking. And I really try to create like a story, like maybe it's a rainy day and so I get a lot of rain footage so that when I'm cooking I'll then cut to where there's rain outside. But those weren't necessarily done at the same time, those shots. You asked how long it takes to film. It depends on the video. So if I'm doing like this week, I'm doing summer in the kitchen. Throughout a week's time I will collect footage just, you know, maybe, maybe I'll film lunch this day or dinner this day or breakfast this day. And then I will sit down and edit those all together. Now sometimes if it's a video where I'm collecting footage all throughout the week, I will edit throughout the week as well. So maybe tonight I'll clip together, you know, a couple days and then maybe a couple nights from now when my kids are at awanas with Luke and I stay home with the little kids, I'll sit down and clip together a couple nights so they kind of come together over a week's time every once in a while or sometimes I'll do one day where just today I'm filming everything and then I'll use the rest of the week to kind of clip that together and catch up from all of that footage and create this little story and all that kind of stuff. So it depends on what type of video it is. I will say that it's, I want to say it's easier to make like just a all day film kind of video. It's easier because you get it over with, but it's harder because you feel like you need to record everything that day. Whereas like the one that's throughout the week, it's less of an ask on each day. It's like, okay, I'll film a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, and I'll kind of clip it together as I go. Whereas it makes for a really hard one day when you're trying to film like everything you do from sun up to sundown, but then it's over with and then you can spend the rest of the week just kind of putting it together. Like, it's really more fun in my mind to edit because that's where things really come together. That's where you can create sort of these beautiful shots and transitions and decide what you're going to say there and what kind of text. To me, it's all very creative and very fun, but getting the footage is the hard work. That's the part where it's actually like, that's the hard work. And we were talking earlier about businesses and knowing what to work on and self doubt. I usually come up with the ideas for the videos. I'll sit down and just think through like the next four videos, what I'm going to call them, what they're going to roughly be about. I'll start piecing in what each video is going to feature later. But I have to just move forward and not self doubt because sometimes I want to. Like when I get to the week where I'm supposed to actually film that video, I think, ah, is this really a good idea? Is anybody really gonna be interested in this? And then I'm just like, I'm just doing it. I already made the plan. This is what I'm doing this week. I don't have any time to second guess this. And so I have times where I think this is gonna turn out so bad. This video is so dumb. And sometimes they turn out way better than I think and sometimes they do turn out bad. Like, I don't like how they turn out, but by, by having the goal of putting out a video once a week, it makes it to where you just have to keep marching forward. Like, I know that's what I got to do. And so. But good idea, bad idea, we're going for it. All right. Hi, Lisa from Australia. I'm not sure if this has been covered on the podcast or channel before, but I would love to hear about some of the projects slash purchases that you have made for your home that you have felt made the biggest impact on the quality and comfort of your home. For example, we recently had professionally installed shears and curtains in our home. And although a splurge and it has made such a difference, but equally adding thrifted lamp to my kitchen has Given me just as much joy puttering around in the softer light. I'd love to hear your take on this topic. Anything you've added or changed that made you think, I wish we had done this sooner or has become one of your staple creature comforts. Okay, so it was funny because as I was reading that question, lamps literally popped into my brain because like you said, I have found such great lamps at three thrift shops, antique shops, even recently. Like a couple weeks ago, there was a local estate sale and I got a floor lamp that is just added so much to our living room, I think it was like two bucks. So it's not necessarily the amount of money. However, there are certain things that you just almost cannot find high quality without spending a lot of money. Now, my caveat before this, and I wish I could, I take on sponsors for my YouTube channel for my podcast. It makes it worth my time to spend the countless hours it takes, as I just kind of described how the videos work, to take on sponsors. And I love the products from the sponsors I've had on this channel and on my main channel. But as always, if it's something that you can't fit into your budget, you can live without these things that I might say. We were talking about this the other day. My sisters and I know you guys are probably. Why do you always talk to your sisters? That's just who I talk to. And she was my. One of my sisters. We were just sharing like our early years of marriage and the kind of things we did to avoid going into debt. Things that you might think are just necessary things. And, you know, things like curtains came up because curtains are really expensive. And you just mentioned curtains. And I have a curtain behind me right now if you're watching on YouTube that is fully lined. I got it from two pages. Curtains. I love it. I have them in this whole room. It feels I can create blackout, which is nice because this room is so full of light that on those summer mornings, even if you want to sleep in, if for some reason the kids let you do that, you can't. So I just invested in these in the last year. This is our first summer where we actually have blackout in our bedroom. Now I still have to get one over the door so it's not fully blackout, but it's way darker. They are beautiful. They're very heavy and drapey because I live in an old Victorian and anytime I did something light and airy, it just didn't suit the ornate trim and the details in this home. And they are Wonderful. But if, you know, if it's something that is not in the budget, I also recommend not getting it and focusing more on things like lamps that you can find really inexpensively. Another thing that personally has made a big difference in my own home, but again, not super affordable. Depending on, you know, if you're shopping a lot of estate sales. I did find a rug at that estate sale that it made it into my sister's home. Beautiful wool rug. So they can be found for a budget. But I have rugs in my home that are not budget friendly. They're not. But they did make such a difference. They add pattern and they add coziness to these old wood floors that maybe otherwise wouldn't have. Now, in our old house, I didn't have the budget for that. And so we just didn't like. We just had inexpensive rugs. But I will say that as far as, like, creature comforts, move the needle on home stuff. Quality rugs have made a huge difference, and I highly recommend that. Trying to think of some other things. You mentioned drapes. You mentioned rugs. One thing I've noticed in my home, and this depends on your style. So if you're creating more of a minimalist home, this wouldn't work for you. But if you have an older home, I find that the more I add, the better it looks. Not things like on the floor and surface clutter, not stuff like that. But the more art I add to the walls, the more rugs and pillows and text and blankets draped here and furniture in a corner where you thought, oh, there was not enough room for furniture there. The more I add, even from thrifted antique sources, the better this house looks. And it took me a long time to figure that out. My last house, I did very minimal, and it really suited the style of the house. It had lower ceilings. It was a Craftsman home. So it had a more minimal, not showy aesthetic. Like a Victorian in its time would have had more ornate details, so it felt right. And then when I got here, my home just felt so bare and ugly, and I needed. I needed to add poster beds and lots of texture, lots of art, lots of rugs and decor. And so I think it depends on your home style. But, yeah, I find that the more I add, that kind of fills in the style that I'm going for. Really does help. Um, unfortunately, because I feel like sometimes I want to be more minimal, but this old Victorian house just does not look good dressed that way. Okay, two questions. What do you do for diapers for your littles Cloth diapers or a certain brand of disposables. I know so many disposables can have a lot of chemicals and obviously aren't the best for the environment. Just curious what your thoughts are on that. Also, how do you introduce salads to your babies? Like, do you get purees from the store, make your own purees or baby lead weaning? So again, this is a spectrum. So if you're talking to a decade ago me, I would say I have only ever done cloth. I have four kids. I have never bought a diaper in my entire life. I do cloth. Even if we're traveling, I find a laundromat. I am a cloth purist through and through. I've never bought a disposable. Okay, that's what I would have said 10 years ago. And that was true. I, I truly, maybe by like the third or fourth, I might have bought a, bought a diaper here and there. But with my oldest daughter, I kid you not, I never purchase a disposable even one time for her entire diaper journey. But it's just not a priority for me. Maybe it should be. Maybe, you know, that, that, that makes me environmentally irresponsible. I'm sure it does. But anymore I just buy the cheapest diapers. So I, I shop Walmart, I get Parents Choice, and that is what I currently do. Again, I, I've become so much less of a perfectionist over the years about everything for, for better or for worse. And cloth diapers is one place that I've definitely not worried very much about as far as solids. And also, I do want to say they're not that hard. Like, honestly, why don't I do cloth diapers? They're not that hard. They're really not. It's just, I guess I just got out of the habit. That's so many things. Like you're in the habit of something. If you're doing cloth diapers, you're probably thinking, why is it that hard? And honestly, when I was doing them, I kind of felt the same way. Like, why is it that hard? It's really not. So I should probably do it, but I just don't. As far as solids, Victor is one year old and so he is very much on solids at this point. He still nurses quite a bit as well. And I just do baby led weaning. So whenever they can consume something that we're eating, for my kids, that's usually around eight months. Some of my sister's kids, they have a really strong gag reflex and they don't eat solids till they're closer to one. I give them just whatever we're eating. So, you know, cheese, like little, little bits of cheese. That's one thing that's really good for us to give Victor. We get raw cheese from Azure. And so I feel really good about that. I just give him little tiny cubes. He'll eat scrambled eggs. He will eat little bits of sourdough waffle, ground beef, just literally anything we're eating now. Today for lunch, we did roast on tacos, not ground beef. He can't really chew that. Obviously he has teeth, but not enough to chew that. So I gave him just shredded cheese. We had shredded cheese on the side for the tacos and I gave him that. I used to feed him some guacamole because we made guacamole today. But he now has decided that he hates guacamole. So all he ate for lunch was shredded cheese. Then he nursed and then I don't know. For dinner we're having meatloaf. So that's a really good thing to feed a baby because it's nice and soft and he'll like that. So I don't worry too much about it. Whenever I had my first daughter, I took this all way more seriously. And I made all her baby food. I froze it in ice cube trays and brought it with me. I'd bring oatmeal with us whenever it was bedtime, thinking she had to have oatmeal before bed. And turns out you can just kind of give them what you're having and it's okay too. But when it's your first baby, I don't know. For me, it was very fun to do that, to care for her in that way, to launder her cloth diapers, to craft her own baby food with some, maybe some sweet potato and some fresh BlackBerry we picked at the orchard. I found that all very fun. So if you're really enjoying that, that's such a motherly instinct to enjoy and have at it, you know, what is your current self care routine or go tos for self care. When I think of self care, I always think that probably you're talking about skincare. I don't know. So obviously I talk about Tubes and Company all the time. Love Tubes and Company. Full face of Tubes and Company makeup on right now. But then as far as skincare, I also love Tubes and Company. I use their charcoal cleansing bar, their sea buckthorn cleansing oil, and then I really love their glow serum. Ran out of that. My Friend Elizabeth from Purely Parsons is just sitting right here. She sent me this little facial serum. Love it, love it. It has argan oil. It has. Oh, blue tansy. It's blue and it smells wonderful. Helichrysum frankincense. So it's very good for anti aging. So what I do is I do my double cleanse with the sea buckthorn and the charcoal bar. Then I spritz with a toner or a tonic. And then I just rub this into my face. So this is on my nightstand. And now that Victor's not sleeping in our room anymore, Luke and I will sit here at night and watch a show after all the kids are in bed and are on our tv. And I'll just take this and just rub it in. Just try to kind of like massage it in everywhere. I'm taking my trying to take my skincare routine a little bit more seriously. I did buy one of those red light masks and it's been sitting under the bed for like six months now unopened. So apparently I'm not going to be able to incorporate that into my routine anytime soon. I don't know. It's just that one extra step of plugging something in and sitting there looking like a dork with the thing. I just. I cannot. One of these days, maybe. Maybe I'll do it one of these days. But if you are interested, purely Parsons. Purely parsons.com if you are looking for a great serum, I'll leave the link to Purely Parsons down in the show notes. How do you store seasonal things and or baby stuff while you don't have a baby? Our storage room is a disaster. And I feel like all I ever do is throw things into tubs only to be lost forever. So I feel the same way. You know, I've been a mom for. Well, I've been like 16 years ago. I was pregnant with my first and I totally saved everything. I've not been the best organized person. So I have not been good about labeling things. I think that really helps. I know people who take very seriously their labeling efforts. They're able to find the things that they want when they want them. That is not me. So I have found the same thing as you. And so I grappled with that for a lot of years and I still tried and tried to get better about it. But I'm at the point in life now where I end up just getting rid of things. So I buy very small amounts of the things that we need for a baby, wear them out like very small amounts of Clothing for each size to the point where when they're done with them, they're pretty much trash anyways. Now if they're not, I'll usually pass them over to my sister because she, for the last five years, has had a son, right. A year after I have had my son. We've done this like five times now. Where in. She has a son, I have a son. She has a son, I have a son, she has a son, I have a son, like, a lot of times. And so I'll usually hand it to her or I'll give it to a friend of mine. One example would be the mamaroo swing. I have rebought that thing, like five times because I never can keep it good enough in between kids. I have it in my basement right now. I passed it to a friend, and then she passed it back to me. But sometime, probably before I have another child, I'll probably get rid of it again. And then what I end up doing is I rebuy them on Facebook marketplace. So you end up not really out any money, especially if you sell on Facebook marketplace and then repurchase on Facebook Marketplace. If it goes into my basement, which. Which it did because I wasn't ready to, like, deal with it. I didn't want to get rid of it, but also I didn't want to sell it yet. I didn't have any more give it to. I'll probably end up having a friend or maybe a sister to give it to, but if it goes to my basement, it kind of goes there to die. And so I majorly, about a year ago, decluttered things in my basement to the point where I'm just keeping things that I know for sure I'll use. Like, I have to have a child that will use it, not a someday child. I have to be pregnant or having a son right below the sun. I'm saving the clothes for. It can't be a maybe if I have a little girl or if I have a little boy kind of thing. If it's not something that I will use six months from now, when the seasons change over, it's going. And so that's kind of been. I've been very ruthless with that because one, I found that clothing is very easy to come by. People have garage sales these days. You know, it's just. It's very easy to come by. I also don't have a very good storage space. We have an old basement. I've given most of it to pantry space where we store food. And so there's just a really small spot. And so I can't be very diligent with how I organize it. Don't trust that I would be if we did. And so for me, if I have less, I actually have more, because when I need it, I can find it. Whereas when I have a ton of stuff, even the good stuff I saved, I'm not really using. So I have definitely just leaned more into the decluttering aspect of it. Do you heat your home exclusively with your wood stove? And how do you handle little ones with a hot surface? We have decided to add a safety gate since our kids play in the same main room. But I don't know how we'll need to use it. Okay. Seems like it isn't a problem with your kids. So in this home, we have had three toddlers. Daniel. Yeah, three toddlers since we've lived here. And I was just thinking about this the other day because it is currently still very warm. We are not using the wood stove yet, but Victor's favorite place on earth is the wood stove drawer. Underneath there's a little door where you pull out a drawer to, you know, do the ashes and all that. He loves it. He crawls over to it, opens it. It's his favorite place to play, which is not good. So what I am going to do or what the plan is and what we've done for past babies is we put a baby gate in the kitchen. So I spend most of my day in the kitchen, and I always just trap the baby in with me. And so we'll put a gate there. We won't put a gate specifically around the wood stove. It's just where it is. In our house, that wouldn't work at all. But since Victor either spends most Spends his day either in the kitchen with me or in his bed sleeping, that's what we'll do. The other kids are no problem. Once they're. I would say, like, I don't even know if it was. It wasn't a problem last year for Theo. So last year, Theo was 2. New 2. This year, when the wood stove goes on, he'll be three, obviously. And it wasn't a problem last year. It's really just a problem when they're one. Anybody over two, we've had zero issue with. They know it's hot, and so they don't touch it. But the baby, obviously, you know, they. They can't know. They don't. They don't have any awareness of that. And I'm not willing for him to burn himself. Once to learn. And also, I've found with kids, people throw that out like, well, let them touch it once, they'll never do it again. Yes, they do. Kids don't learn that fast. If I've had one year olds where when they get hurt, they just go right back to the thing, like, next day. They don't. They don't notice. So we will 100% be protecting Victor. We will not be just letting him get near it. What we'll have to do is just, you know, if we're in the living room, he could technically crawl to it, but it's not in our living room. And so we'll just have to watch him close so he doesn't go that way. But when he's in the kitchen, we'll just have that gate, which is really annoying because we haven't had the gate there for, I guess, a couple years now, since Theo was one. And it's annoying to have a gate in the kitchen because we're in and out. Everybody's in and out. You have to open and close it. But it'll make our lives really easier. Also, your question on do we heat exclusively with wood? We do not. We also have a gas furnace, and we. We use it. We could heat the whole house with wood, but we're not super diligent to feed the wood stove all day every day, which is what we require on those really cold days. It definitely helps with the utilities, but it's not 100% the way we heat our house. All right, I will take one more. I had a lot of questions about controversial things that I try to avoid. Oh, my goodness. I never know how much I should mention. I try to share what I can and let you guys, you know, just go from there. Okay, we'll start. We'll end with a very fun one. Actually, there's two. I'll answer just right in a row here. What is your favorite season of the year and why? It's summer. I love summer. It's. It just feels so free. I don't have to wear shoes. The kids don't have to wear shoes. You can just walk outside. Everything's beautiful out there. In the winter, this place is so ugly. It's. It's just. It's magical transformation. I love. Just yesterday we went over to my parents. They have the best swimming hole in their creek. Like, it's. It's like a swimming pool size, but yet it's a creek and it has a jump off. It's just beautiful. That's, you know, we ride on a side by side over there. I have flowers in my garden. There's herbs galore, abundant. And so all of that is why I love summer. With that being said, I love fall. I think fall. There's just this feeling about fall that everybody gets. Like this little special feeling. I hate that. Then it's winter. But last year I felt like I actually kind of enjoyed winter and it felt very fast and I there was certain parts of it that were really fun. So definitely summer. But I'll try to love winter as well. Okay, the last one. How often do your kids help with chores? So they help with chores. Chores every single day. They help with cleaning, cooking, farm chores, laundry, all the things. And that is just so darn helpful. So for those of you who only have little kids, just know that when you have help and it's not all on you, it's just so much easier. All right, as always, thank you so much for listening. If you to submit your questions, you can do that. The link will be down in the show notes or the description box below. And I look forward to seeing you in the next episode of the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Sam.