…even though I only have boys in my life. 

I’m very okay with my lot in life because I think my four little boys (and their daddy) are THE BEST.  I wouldn’t trade in all of my sons’ frog catching, noise making, light saber fighting, tooting loudly at the table and laughing because it must have broken the world’s record for something tooty boyness for all the pink and lace in the world.  

But sometimes…it’s fun to hear about what it’s like to live with all girls.  My friend Tonya has four little girls…all very close in age to my boys.  We find it fun to compare notes on life.  When I heard her talking about the birthday party she was planning for her oldest daughter Bailey, I thought it sounded like SUCH a fun party, and I wanted to hear more.  So she agreed to write a guest post for me so that you could all enjoy hearing about this exciting event that I will never, ever be able to participate in with one of my sons: 

A Shopping Mall Scavenger Hunt Birthday Party

Here’s Tonya describing her fun party for Bailey:

Bailey wanted a birthday party that she could invite a lot of friends to.  I of course, waited till the very last minute to come up with an idea.  I have always wanted to try and do something at the mall and my sister-in-law had done a mall birthday party when her daughter was younger too.  She told me about a scavenger hunt that she did.  I also just googled scavenger hunts online and there happen to be a mall one online as well.  So I took what I learned from both sources and made one that worked for me.

First, we made the guest list.  Bailey had 15 friends that she wanted to invite.  For some people this would not be an issue but since we live an hour away from the mall, that meant that I would need to search for enough car space and I would need to allow for enough drive time both ways.  I really didn’t think I would have too much of a problem with the whole car space thing because I thought that it would be unlikely for all of the girls who were invited to be able to come.  (By the way, they all came.)  

 I made the invitations myself.  I just typed them up on the computer.  I used a cute font and color and printed them off.  I folded them in a trifold and sealed them with a sticker that I just had on hand.  The invitation explained that it would be a scavenger hunt, I would provide dinner and bring money in case we had time to shop.

I prepared a list of things to “hunt”.  I decided to do mostly pictures. Some of the things they had to take pictures of were the entire team wearing hats and posing in their best gangster look, entire team modeling formal attire, one team member kissing a manequin, entire team modeling sunglasses, purses, one team member posing in a window like a mannequin and entire team posing in childrens’ ride, to name a few.  I also gave each team $5 to buy an accessory from a store of their choice and they had to think about what the birthday girl would like (the item ended up being a gift for Bailey).

We left about 3pm on a Saturday.  We decorated three vehicles with paint for the windows.  It said stuff like, “Honk it is my birthday” and  “Honk it is Bailey’s 12th Birthday!”  I had snacks and water bottles in each of the cars since it would be an hour drive and we were going to do the scavenger hunt first.  The girls really talked non stop the whole way.  I had thought about some games we could do on the drive but it was not necessary.  Go figure!

When we got to the mall, I divided the girls up into three teams.   I did give a few rules like, don’t run, listen to a store associate if he asks you not to take pictures, make sure that all team members get turns in the photographs and if the entire team needs to be in the picture, then have someone else take the picture. I handed them their lists and a digital camera along with a $5 bill and off they went.  This is the part that was really fun and surprisingly, relaxing.  My husband Tim and I, along with two of my friends who were helping me with the party and driving, walked and shopped through the mall for the next hour while the girls were scavenging.  It was great.  We would run into them once in awhile and they appeared to be having a great time.

We met back at the food court.  I had them leave their cameras with me.  I gave each girl a five dollar bill to go and get their supper while I downloaded the pictures to my lap top.  As the girls ate, they watched a slide show of the “hunt”.  They went off for a bit to do some shopping and then we met back at the food court to eat big birthday cookies that I had made earlier that day (cookies the size of a pizza pan) and for the opening of the presents.  After a little more shopping (boy those girls could shop!), we left for home.

We were gone for a total of 5 hours (remember that is about 2 hours of driving time).  We had a wonderful time.  The guests went on and on about what a great time they had.  The parents have commented on how much their girls loved it too.  It was a huge success!

To top the party off, I used my Windows Movie Maker to make a video of the pictures I had put on my computer.  I used some of Bailey’s favorite songs in it and at the end I put a “Thank you for coming to my party” page.  I put the movie on DVDs and made envelopes out of cardstock so that Bailey could give those to her friends for thank you notes.
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Thanks Tonya, for letting me live vicariously through you just this once!   Doesn’t that party sound like so much fun? 

The amount of money it took to feed the girls dinner did add up (fifteen girls, Bailey?)  :)  But aside from that, I thought that the scavenger hunt at the mall was a great idea for an inexpensive birthday party that included a lot of kids.  And that’s why I wanted to share it for Frugal Friday. 

Now, if you’d like to read about the kind of birthday parties we get to have with our family you can read about them here and here.  They include absolutely nothing about shopping, or accessories, or cute invitations with sticker seals.  They do however include things about toots and stink.  Read them at your own risk…

Last weekend I asked what your favorite places to shop are…and so many of you talked about how you get great deals and great stuff at Goodwill stores and other second hand stores.  I have SO not had that kind of experience. 

I rarely go to second hand stores because I feel like I have to pick through tons and tons of clothes to even find one piece of clothing that I might consider trying on…and then it rarely fits well. 

And sometimes the prices at second hand stores don’t really impress me very much.  I’d rather go to a store with a great clearance sale and buy a brand new article of clothing if I’m going to pay the same price for something used.

And, well…it seems that these second hand stores, at least the ones I’ve been in…well…they are sporting this unpleasant…kind of a stale…just sort of subtle yet prominent…okay…I’ll just say it.  They stink.  They smell bad.  

So, what am I missing here?  Some of you seem to have the gift of second hand clothing shopping.  I’ve seen you and your cute, trendy outfits…that you got for a great deal at the Goodwill store with the tags still on and all of that. 

Help me out.  (Keep in mind that we receive so many hand-me-downs for the boys that I practically never have to buy them anything.  This is mostly in regard to adult clothes.) Do you like to shop at second hand stores?  What have you found to be successful ways of finding great clothes and great deals there?   
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Read more Frugal Friday tips here.

Okay, we’ve covered the basics of canning…freezing corn…freezing green beans…canning and freezing peaches…making and canning applesauce…

Now lets talk about tomatoes!

Last year, I planted 40…yes FORTY tomato plants.  On purpose.  Because I’m crazy.

I ended up having SO MANY tomatoes, that by the end of the summer, I had canned almost two years worth of tomato sauce, tomato juice and tomato soup.  And, I still had tomatoes!  I was begging people to please come pick my tomatoes and take them far, far away from my house. 

While canning that many tomatoes was a wonderful thing…I still hadn’t fully recovered from it when it came time to plant tomatoes this year.  Therefore, I only planted 20 tomato plants this spring.  *cough*

The good thing is…I never have to buy any tomato juice, sauce or soup.  Ever.  And the home-canned stuff is SO GOOD!!!

Here’s the way I make tomato juice and tomato sauce…

First, you start with bunches and bunches of pretty tomatoes, like these.  You can take the skins off and the seeds out if you want to…I pretty much just WASH them.  I leave the skin on and and the seeds in…mostly because I’m just too lazy to do otherwise.  My family doesn’t know the difference, and you can’t really even tell that the seeds and skin are still there.  At all. 

Next, I cut the tomatoes into fourths and put them into my blender.

The tomatoes are then blended up until they are liquid. 
(Mmm, tomato smoothie anyone?)

After I blend up my tomatoes, they go into a big pot.  Obviously this pot was not quite big enough!  Filling your pot this full will just about guarantee that your pot will boil over and spill all over your stovetop creating a cooked on tomato mess.  (Picture of the boiled over mess not available…because I scooped some out before it boiled over, thank you very much.)

Next, I boil my tomatoes, uncovered, stirring occasionally.  After a while it begins to look like this.  Once that bubbly froth is just about all gone from the top (about an hour and a half or so after beginning the boiling process), you have made tomato juice, and you’re able to go ahead with the hot water bath process of canning tomato juice. 

But, if you want tomato sauce, continue to let it boil for another hour or so.  You’ll know your tomato sauce is done “saucing” when most of the watery liquid has evaporated.  If you continue to cook it at this point, you will have tomato paste…which is fine…if you want tomato paste.

Can your tomato sauce following the hot water bath instructions here.

Then, you will have tomato juice for yummy veggie soups and such…and tomato sauce for sloppy joes, pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, enchilada sauce…and whatever else you use tomato sauce for.  (If you want to, you can add your herbs and spices into the sauce while your making it so that you’ve got your spaghetti and pizza sauce already put together in your jars!)

AND, if you’ve got other veggies laying around, like yellow squash or zucchini…throw those in while you’re blending up your tomatoes…and add them to your sauce before you cook it down.  No one will ever know!

I have a wonderful recipe for tomato soup that I’ll be sure to share soon! 
Yumm-eeee!
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You’ll find more Frugal Friday tips here.

One of the best “Fall smells” I can think of is applesauce cooking on the stove.   It is SO YUMMY!!!

Here’s a step by step of the easiest way I’ve found to make applesauce.  (But be sure to read Canning 101 first if you’re unfamiliar with the basic steps of canning safely!)

I slice my apples like this, then peel each slice. 
I find this to be much easier than peeling the whole apple first and then slicing it. 

As I slice and peel, I put my apples into a big pot.  At the bottom of my pot is 5 cups of water and 3 teaspoons of ascorbic acid (powdered vitamin C).

As I continue to add apples, I stir them into the water/ascorbic acid frequently so that the apples are all coated with the mixture and are much less likely to turn brown.

Once I have my pot 3/4 full of apples, I put it on the stove…

and bring it to a boil, then simmer it (uncovered)
for about 30 minutes or until the apples are tender.

Then, I spoon the tender apples with some of the liquid into my blender
and blend it all up until it is smooth.

Isn’t it pretty!!!  Next, I pour the applesauce
into sterilized jars with a wide mouth funnel.

I hot water bath my jars for about 25 minutes.

And like always, after I pull them out of the hot water, I set them on my counter for several hours (or days) so that I can admire them and feel happy about my applesauce.  Ahh…..beautiful!
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Read more Frugal Friday tips here.

Here’s the promised graham cracker recipe!  These crackers are crunchy-crispy…and taste SO GOOD!  Oh, I hope you love them like we do!

Okay, and if you love the Honey Graham Cracker recipe, you’ll LOVE the fact that you can also make CHOCOLATE Graham Crackers!!!  Just add 1/3 cup cocoa to the recipe.  YUM!!!!

Whole Wheat Honey Graham Crackers 

2 ¼ cups whole wheat flour
½ cup rapadura (dehydrated cane sugar juice)
1 t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
½ t. salt
¼ t. cinnamon
4 T. honey
¼ c. water
1 t. vanilla
1 stick butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
2. Melt stick of butter in a pan on the stove.  Set aside.
3. In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. 
4. Add the liquids: honey, water, vanilla and melted butter.
5. Stir well until a nice ball of dough is formed. 
6. Cut two pieces of Parchment paper the size of the cookie sheet.
7. Lay one piece of parchment paper on the cookie sheet.
8. Place the ball of dough on the parchment paper.
9. Lay the other piece of parchment paper on top of the ball of dough.  Squish dough down a little with your fist.
10. Use the rolling pin to roll the dough between the pieces of parchment paper.  Roll until the dough covers the whole cookie sheet.

Malachi is finishing up the rolling for Mama!

11. Remove the top piece of parchment paper.  Cut rolled dough into 2 inch squares, or cut shapes with cookie cutters, being sure to separate the shapes from the surrounding dough a little.

Here’s a shot of the chocolate graham crackers
cut into squares and ready to bake.

Malachi is using little cookie cutters to make “animal crackers”!

12. Bake in oven for 18 minutes.
13. Turn oven off, but leave crackers in the oven to get crisp.
14. Remove from oven after 30 minutes to one hour.  Break graham crackers apart.
15. Store in a air tight container.

Here’s a plate of the Chocolate Graham Crackers. 
(Got milk?)

My kids get SO EXCITED when I make these!  They are a GREAT snack to have on hand!  Try them and see what you think! 
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Visit Biblical Womanhood for more Frugal Friday tips.

After all this talk about how you should eat real food and stay away from not-real food…many of you are asking WHERE I get all of my real food and how I find it to be affordable.  I decided my Frugal Friday post for this week would offer some suggestions about great real food sources!

Now of course, I only live in one place.  So, I don’t know all of the real food sources you might have in your community, and every community offers different things.  I’ll just tell you what I do…and hopefully it will at least give you some ideas!

1.  I grow as much produce as I can and preserve it for the winter.  (Check out this post about putting up corn and this post for putting up green beans…then stay tuned for more posts about putting up more produce.  It IS that time of year when I always have a very achy back from freezing and canning foods for hours.  Ah, but I love it!)

2.  There are many things that I can’t grow myself that others around me are growing…and they are happy for me to take their extra produce off of their hands.  So might I suggest to you:  Mooching is a great way to gain access to awesome, often organic produce. MOOCH as much as you can.  Woohoo for mooching.   (P.S.  Is that the right way to spell mooch?) 

3.  What I can’t grow or mooch…I try to find at our local Farmer’s Market.  Often if I buy in bulk from some of the venders, they offer me a discount.  LOCAL PRODUCE IS THE BEST!!  Supporting local farmers is a great thing to do!  Go load up at your Farmer’s Market!!

Okay….that was mostly all about produce.  Now, on to my resources for other real foods:

4.  Health Food Coops.  There are several out there.  My favorite by far is Azure Standard.  If you’ve hung out here much you’ve heard me talk about them over and over.  They don’t service every U.S. state, but they are expanding all the time.  They have great customer service and great prices on great foods.  They even have organic produce for VERY reasonable prices.  Go to their website and check them out.  Give them a call and see if there’s a coop near you.  If not…talk to them about starting one.  That’s what I did.    They make things very simple.  I love Azure Standard!  (Really, they should be paying me to say all these things…)

Here’s a picture of my Azure Standard order this month. 
Check out that gallon jar of raw honey!!

I also am a part of a Frontier Coop, which my friend organizes.  I order a few times a year from them, mostly spices, vanilla, shampoo and dishwashing stuff.  (Soon I’ll post more about the soaps and cleaners we use and where I get them all.)

5.  Local Farmers.  Oh how I love them.  These people work HARD so that I can have fresh free range eggs and chickens, grass fed organic raw milk, grass fed organic hormone free beef and lamb…all for very reasonable prices.  I found most of these farmers pretty much by just asking around.  But, there’s a great website called Local Harvest which may help you find what local farmers in your area have to offer.  Even if the farmers you find through their site don’t have exactly what you’re looking for, they might be a good resource to finding other farmers. 

6.  Local grocery stores.  I don’t have any cool stores like Whole Foods within 90 miles of me (bummer)…but I do find a few organic foods I need at our regular grocery stores and of course at Walmart.  And, a couple of years ago I called one of our grocery stores and talked to the produce guy who happily ordered cases of organic produce for me.  He even gave the produce to me for a price less than what he would have charged if he would have shelved the items for normal sale.  My friends and I then divided up the cases and ordered as often as we needed to.   It never hurts to ask!

Okay, that pretty much sums up my sources for the food we eat.  Here’s a link to a post about our food budget and break down of what we spent where.

Anybody else have a great suggestion about resources for real food?!

After posting about how I put up corn for winter, many of you asked about green beans.  I just happen to be in the middle of crazy green bean season.  So…here you go!!

After picking our beans, I usually get my boys on “bean snapping duty” right away.  (They never complain about this job.  I think it’s because they are given permission to “break things”….what do you think?)  They snap off the ends and put the green beans into a colander.  As soon as the colander is full I wash the beans to try to get as much “garden” (my nice way of saying bugs and dirt) off.

It is my understanding that in order to maintain as much green bean nutrition as possible, it is best to only snap the ends off the bean…not to snap the bean into pieces.  It makes sense that if you snap the green bean into three pieces, when you cook the bean, more of the nutrients will be washed away in the water.  But if it’s a whole bean…more of the nutrients stay inside the bean.  (And you can have “My green bean is longer than your green bean” competitions while you eat dinner.)

After washing the green beans, I then put them into a pot of boiling water.  This blanching process stops their aging process.  (No, you can not blanche people in order to stop their aging process.)

After about two minutes in the boiling water, the green beans are a brighter green…and they go back into the colander where they are given a cold, cold shower.  This process stops the cooking process that the blanching part started.

After the green beans are cooled from the cold water shower, I then spread them out onto a dry towel.  I use another towel to pat over the top of them to help dry them off more.  If your beans are too wet when you put them into a freezer bag, you’ll have ice form around your beans.  (You don’t want ice to form around your beans.)

And then, I put my beans into a gallon freezer bag and label it.  And into the freezer it goes. I know some people prefer to can their green beans.  I don’t can them for two reasons:

1.  Freezing them maintains more of the green bean’s nutrition.
2.  I’m incredibly afraid of my pressure cooker.  (When I got my mom’s pressure cooker, it didn’t have a manual with it.  I have no idea how to use it properly.)  I do not need to cause an explosion in my kitchen.

So there you go!  As I begin to can and freeze my tomatoes and fruit for the winter, I’ll be sure to show you those processes too!  (Yeah, because those don’t require a pressure cooker, just a hot water bath…and I’m not so afraid of those.)

More Frugal Fridays here.

My question for you this week is coupled with Frugal Friday…because it has to do with money…MOOLA…the green stuff!

And kids.

Our oldest son, Asa age 11), has been able to earn money this summer working with us in two of our family businesses.  He works a little at our shaved ice trailer, and he helps Matt mow the lawn at the storage units that we own.  Asa’s been loving the responsibility…and his growing savings account!

He’s been learning more about money management, giving and saving…and it’s been great for him. 

We’d love to come up with more great ideas for our other kids (ages 8 and 6) to earn a little money too.  (We figure maybe the three year old doesn’t need an income yet.)  It’s not too big a deal…but it’s kind of fun for them to learn how to work hard and see some returns for their labor.  (The tooth fairy just can only come every so often, you know?)

So, I’m curious…

What are some of the ways you earned money as a kid?  What do your kids do to earn a little money?  What are your opinions about paying your kids to work around your own house?  What do you think about giving kids allowance?

I am just oh, so curious…

Please sing along with me:

(Sung to the tune of Oh Where oh Where has my Little Dog Gone?)

Oh where, oh where is the UPS man?
Oh where, oh where can he be?!
With the big box of books for our new school year…
Oh where, oh where can he be?

Thank you, you have so much musical talent.  That was lovely.

That’s our theme song right now.  We can’t help it.  Every year right after I place our big curriculum order, we start listening for the UPS truck.  Like obssessed people.   Because we LOVE it when our books come in!!  It’s almost better than Christmas!

So, let me tell you just a bit about our order (because while I’m waiting for the UPS man, I have to at least talk about my books)…

We order most of our school books through Rainbow Resource…because they have excellent prices for just about everything you could possibly ever need for school, ever.  Plus they offer free shipping for any order over $150.  I also order books through Amazon if I can find them cheaper there.  (That’s my Frugal Friday tip, by the way…using Rainbow Resource and Amazon for great book prices!) 

We choose our books based on what Sonlight Curriculum recommends.  They are very literature based…so we get to read many, many wonderful books together to learn more about the Bible, History and Science.

Here’s what we’ll be reading for History (we’re focussing more on World History this year) and Geography:

A Child’s History of the World
The Story of the World:  Ancient Times
The Story of the World:  Middle Ages
Time Traveller
People of the World
Ships, Sailors and the Sea
100 Gateway Cities

For Science we’ll be learning about electricity and magnetism…and about how things are made.  The boys are especially excited about this.

Usborne Elecricity and Magnetism
Usborne How Things Work
Usborne Book of the Microscope
Light and Color
Diary of an Early American Boy

For Bible lessons, along with simply reading from the Bible, we’ll read through Egermier’s Bible Story Book…work on memorizing verses and work on godly character training.

For Math, the younger boys use Miquon…and we LOVE it.  It’s kind of a backward way of learning math, and it doesn’t work for everyone, but our boys have done well with it.

This year for Asa, we bit the bullet (what a weird figure of speech…I would never put a bullet in my mouth and bite it).  Anyway, Teaching Textbooks was recommended to me and after checking into it, I thought it looked great.  So, that is what Asa will be doing for math.  Thankfully, all of the other boys will eventually use it too…so that makes me feel better about biting…that bullet.

For Reading, each of the boys have a list of books to read either on their own, or to a parent. 

Elias:

Bob Books (great set of bunches of little readers)
The Fire Cat
The Bravest Dog Ever
Greg’s Microscope
A Big Ball of String
Little Bear
The Cat in the Hat

Justus:

The Sword in the Tree
The House on Walenska Street
Jake Drake:  Bully Buster
Keep the Lights Burning Abbie
The Littles
Long Way to a New Land
Lon Way Westward
Viking Adventure
Third Grade Detectives (series)
Along came a Dog
Frindle
Mustang:  Spirit of the West
Shadrach
The Whipping Boy

Asa:

Adam of the Road
Archimedes and the Door of Science
The Bedwins Gazelle
The Bronze Bow
Catherine Called Birdy
Luther:  Biography of a Reformer
Detectives in Togas
Mystery of the Roman Ransom
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Samarai’s Tale

Matt and I will also read the following books to the boys altogether:

Island of the Blue Dolphins
Little Britches
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Diary of a Worm
Johnny Tremain
Calico Bush
Justin morgan Had a Horse
Sign of the Beaver
Toliver’s Secret
Mr. Popper’s Penguins
Mountain Born
Homer Price
Cheaper by the Dozen
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Wow…looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.  Except it doesn’t feel like work…it feels like READING!  And if we don’t get them all read this school year, we’ll carry them over to the next.  (And by the way…I didn’t have to order ALL of these books this year.  We have quite a few of them already.  Otherwise I would TOTALLY be over-budget!)

Coming up in Homeschool Hubbub:  I’ll share more about what we do for Language Arts, what our schedule looks like…and after the UPS man brings our books…I’ll show you pictures of the excitement!!

Oh where, oh where is the UPS man…..

Hold on just a second!

Before you read this post…you must sign this waiver:

I, ______________ , understand that Laura will be showing us pictures of her very own hair cutting procedure, such as it is.  Some should not try this at home…or in anyone else’s home…or in any other location that is not a home.  I recognize that Laura is slightly crazy and that if I cut my own hair I will also be considered slightly crazy.  I acknowledge that if I do cut my own hair after reading this post, and I am not happy with the results…Laura @ HeavenlyHomemakers is in no way responsible and should therefore not receive pitiful emails from me.  Furthermore, the following post shall reveal several embarrassing pictures of Laura, and I hitherto promise to only laugh a little bit and shall refrain from rolling upon the floor and receiving a side ache with the hilarity of the pictures. 

___________________________ (Your signature here)
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Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way…we shall commence with the showing of the pictures and explanation of the hair cut.

I have no idea why I’m feeling brave enough to show you this.  Oh, yes…I know why.  Because last week I mentioned that I cut all of my boys hair and my husband’s hair and my own hair…and MANY of you wanted to know more about how I do my own….since it’s on my own head.

I thought about writing this explanation for how I cut my own hair: “Beats me.”  Because really…I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.  But then I figured surely I could give a little bit of a better explanation than that.

I started doing this about seven years ago when my first two boys were little bitty and I was pregnant with our third.   Getting out of the house for a hair appointment was very hard…or maybe I was just too lazy to make it work.  Either way…I just figured I could try doing it myself and that if I totally messed it up…then I could make it a priority to find someone to stay with the kids while I went in to have it fixed.

And so it’s been for seven years.  Hey, where else can you have a hair cut at 10:00 at night in your pajamas? 

So, I’ve been needing to trim my hair for several weeks…and your response from last week’s post made me jump into gear and finally get it done.

Remember…I told you that really, I don’t know what I’m doing.  I just play with it and have fun with it and see what I come up with.  Obviously I don’t have too big of an obsession with having great hair, or this wouldn’t work for me.  But, I figure as long as it is sorta decent and easy to fix…I’m okay.

But here’s the thing.  In my excitement to cut my hair and show you pictures I got a bit carried away.  Perhaps we could say that I gave myself a summer hair cut this time.  Truly, I did have a lot of dead ends that needed to be taken off.  But, um…I don’t think my hair has ever been this short.  <ehem>  I don’t really like it this short…but hey, it’ll grow back, right?

Anyway…here are a few shots that I had Asa (bless his heart) take of me while I was cutting my hair a few days ago.

Here, I had brushed it all forward in preparation for the cut.  Asa says to me, “Really Mom?  You want me to take THIS picture for your blog?  With you looking like that?”  I don’t know what his point was.  I mean, I think it’s one of the best pictures I’ve ever seen of myself.

I usually start with the bottom layers and then move “up”.  So, I use a big clip to hold up the top part of my hair.  In order to cut the back of my hair, I just pull it forward at my neck.  It mostly, sorta works so that I can see what I’m doing.  Again, Asa says, “Okay, a picture with your hair all up in that clip like that, with that weird piece all fuzzy at the top?”  (And he shrugs and takes the picture…then takes another one closer up so that you can really see the piece of fuzzy at the top…see below.)

After you’ve admired the fuzzy piece a while, you might notice that it looks like I’m chopping off a huge chunk of hair right at the top.  I wasn’t though.  I was actually just barely clipping it to kind of get a tapered look around my face.  If only I was ambidextrous, that part would be much easier.

I keep a trash can on top of the sink as I clip, in hopes of catching at least some of the hair in it while I cut.  As you can see…I had a bit of cleaning up to do when I was finished.  And I won’t even show you what the floor looked like.

Now, I will show you my finished hair cut.  But seriously…I am NOT very photogenic and I was trying to take pictures of myself because no one else was available (except Malachi, and that wasn’t working either).  So, I’m sorry if you take one look at this picture and gasp at my bug-eyedness and lack of make-up.  And at how much hair I chopped off.  Yikes!

Yeah, after about 56 shots, that’s the best one I could come up with.  I TOLD you I wasn’t very photogenic.  (Which means…if this is the one I posted…you should have seen the 55 that I DIDN’T post.)

Anyway…I cut it shorter than I meant to, but it’ll grow back and be just about right in about a month and a half. 

And there you have it.  A bit about how I cut my own hair.  If you do decide to try this at home…remember that you signed the waiver.  Don’t forget the waiver.  I’m sure you’ll do great and I’m sure your “after picture” will be tons better than mine…but just in case you are not entirely pleased with your new “do”…I am not to be held responsible.  (Although I would love to see your “after picture”.) 

Perhaps you’ll find some less crazy frugal ideas here?