Let the Mutiny Begin!

Yeah, except I think my family might be staging a mutiny against me and my crazy idea.

I introduced the concept of "7 an experimental mutiny against excess"  by Jen Hatmaker tonight.  If you read my previous blog post then you know I am pretty much obsessed with this idea right now.

I explained to my family how Jen chose 7 foods and ate them for a whole month.  Nothing else.  And how that was not what we were going to do.  I tweaked it.  Everything that is already in our cupboards/pantry/freezer/fridge is fair game.  And we will decide together on 7 foods that we will buy at the store weekly to supplement what we already have.

"Chicken nuggets!"

"Fried rice!"

"Hot dogs!"

"Desserts ~ lots of them!"  (this from my husband who is addicted to sugar like crack cocaine.)

Hold the phone, people!  Our 7 foods need to be at least semi-nutritious!  After some debate (and one child nearly crying over the thought of no strawberries for a month) we chose our 7:

milk

eggs

cheese (only one kind at a time)

chicken

apples

cauliflower

broccoli

My pantry is full of things like quinoa, lentils, rice, couscous, black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, and black eyed-peas.

I have baking staples like bread flour, whole wheat flour, regular flour, cake flour, brown sugar, raw sugar, and rolled oats.

I've got dried herbs and spices.  Condiments galore in the fridge.  Three kinds of oil (coconut, canola, and olive).

There is candy.  This is something I rarely buy but we always seem to have in abundance.  I blame my mom.

The freezer has vegetable purees, applesauce, icing (!), tomatoes, peaches, and enough butter to last until kingdom come.

Seriously, we could survive for a whole month without buying anything from the store.

I will be absolutely delighted if at the end of our 30 days the pantry, cupboards, freezer, and fridge were empty.

But we are already encountering stumbling blocks and we haven't reached our start date (March 1).  "But what about my birthday?" says my going-to-be-10-years-old daughter.

Yeah, I've thought of that.  And my birthday.  And offspring #3's birthday.  And my dad's birthday.  And our vacay to Atlanta.  What do we do with those?

We're getting pizza for my dad's birthday.  That will be day 2 of our experiment.  Hopefully nobody dies on the first day, they will be sorely disappointed to miss real pizza from a pizza shop.

My sister is taking me to Shady Maple on my birthday.  I won't apologize for that.

I've decided that I don't want my children to remember their 10th and 7th birthdays as being ruined by their mother's desire to eat everything in our house before we buy more food.  Cheeseburgers, chips, and cakes will rule the day on March 16, their combined birthday party.

And there will be joy in the land again.

I'm undecided about our road trip.  I'm sure we will eat out some.  I want to make road trip food.  I'm gonna do my best to make do with what is in our house already.  Wish me luck.

So, month one is already full of loop holes.  Justification is so easy.

Please check up on me and ask how it's going!  Keep me on the straight and narrow.  And pray for my family.  They may hate me til this is over.

Ain't NOBODY need More Stuff

It's a phrase I'm fond of saying.  Especially around Christmas and March and June.  Those are the times of year people with wonderful intentions and giving hearts ask me the most dreaded of questions:  "What would (insert child's name) like as a gift?"

And I want to scream "NOTHING!!  THEY DON'T WANT ANYTHING!!  THEY DON'T APPRECIATE THE THINGS THEY HAVE NOW!!!"

Now, the above statement is not totally true.  My kids do want anything.  I was going to type "something" but then realized "anything" is more accurate.  I have one child in particular who will see some bright shiny gizmo and say " I want that!"  to which I reply "Do you know what it is?"  And the answer is "No, but I want it."

Seriously?  Did these people really come out of my body?  Why are they so different from me?!

Except they aren't.  It's just that the stuff they want is cheap junk.  And the things I want are...expensive junk.

I have this sign hanging in our kitchen:

Jesus says something along the same lines, just not as flowery.  Cut and dry for people like me: "Watch out!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."

If I want my children to not follow the greedy American culture of more, MORE, MORE, I better be paving the way.

Enter this book:

Sorry about the sideways, again.  Maybe some day technology and I will be friends, but not today.

After my last blog post, a friend recommended this book to me and then was so kind as to borrow it from her church library and drop it off at my house.  Wow!

After reading the first page I wanted to cancel the rest of my life so I could stay in my chair and read.  Seriously, Jen Hatmaker is one amazing author.  Hilarious (like I'm seriously laughing out loud.  My 3 year old keeps asking me what's so funny) and deep.  I'm in love with her.  If Ann Voskamp and Jen Hatmaker had a baby, I'd want to be that child.

Anyway, if you turned your head sideways to read my picture then you know the title of this book is "7: an experimental mutiny against excess".  I love those words.  

"Mutiny" especially.  

I feel mutinous a lot.  So I'm not even past the cover and I want to memorize the whole book.

To try to sum it up (I'm terrible at summing things up, by the way) Jen basically took 7 areas of her life and mutinied against the excess that Americans take for granted as our right.  One mutiny each month.  And she recorded her real, honest, raw feelings. 

That's another thing I love and am striving for in my life:  real, honest, raw.  My friend Melissa recently started a blog and wrote a wonderful post about real, honest, and raw.  Her bravery is inspiring!

Back to 7 and mutiny.  I'm going to bully talk my family into taking the plunge and fight the excess in our lives.  I will probably do some twists on what Jen did during her experiment but I am excited to begin.  And I'm sure it will make for some hilarious and thought provoking blog posts.

Stay tuned.

Crazy Wardrobe Idea

So, in my last blog post you voted on what my next post should be about.  Many of you were interested in #4: a crazy wardrobe idea that I'm not sure I have the guts to do.

All your votes = me having the guts

It's an idea that I've vocalized more than once.

"If money were not an issue, it would be so fun to get rid of everything in my wardrobe and buy anything that I wanted."

Now, before you start thinking I won the lottery or am somehow independently wealthy (neither of which are true) let me say I am not getting rid of all my clothes and going on a major shopping spree.

Sigh.

But what if I ruthlessly went thru my closet and discarded everything that didn't fit right or I don't like for some reason?  And what if I documented it?  And what if I learn something surprising?

Well, I did.  All of the above.  Join me in my closet and thought process.

Welcome to my closet.  This is the "before" shot.

After I took this photo I just stood there for a minute, thinking. 

Am I really going to do this?!

What if I have nothing left?

Should I set an amount I am willing to spend to rebuild my wardrobe?

Then, without really answering the questions, I dove in.

After the first pass, my reject pile wasn't all that big.  So I figured I wasn't being totally honest with myself.  My fear of having nothing to wear was trumping my desire to have only clothes that I feel good in.

Wow, does that sound shallow?  

I didn't think cleaning out my closet would produce soul-searching thoughts.

Please don't misunderstand me.  I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to look nice.  I believe God created us with a bent toward beautiful.  But how much stock do we put in it?  Do I spend as much time in the morning with Jesus as I spend on getting ready to go out?  What makes me more beautiful, the clothes and jewelry I am wearing or my heart that is changing to be more like God?

Oh. my.

Hold that thought, back to the closet.  The second and third passes thru were more cut-throat.  And just for fun, I made three piles.

There's the "oh my goodness, what was I thinking when I bought that?!" pile:

sorry about the sideways.

The "I don't have anything to wear with this" pile:

And lastly, the "I don't like the way this fits and/or I don't like the way I look in it" pile:

My friends would use the word "confident" to describe me.  And I would mostly agree.  But the height of that last pile tells this truth: I am not always the confident person I appear to be.  Remember that the next time you look at someone and think "I wish I could have it all together like her."  Everyone has their pile.  Mine just looks different than yours.

The "after" picture:

I thought I would take stock at the end and make a list of the things I needed to buy to complete my now de-pleted wardrobe.  I noticed I had quite a few of these things:  cardigans, dresses, and boots.  Enough dresses in fact that I could go out every day of the week and not wear the same one twice.  How many girls in the world are that blessed?

It dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, there is nothing else I needed.

Yeah, but...

NO "yeah, but"s.

So what started out as one crazy wardrobe idea has now evolved into a different crazy wardrobe idea.  What if I choose to be content with what's in my closet right now?

Care to join me?

Random Swirlings

Ah, my poor neglected blog :(   

And my poor swirling brain.  I have several blogs in rough draft form inside my skull.  Let's face it, if they don't make it into the blogosphere soon, there is good chance they will be lost in the gray matter forever.  

F.O.R.E.V.E.R

But tonight is not the night for them.  Instead, a list of what I'd like to blog about in the near future.  Oh!  Idea.  Leave a comment on which one you'd be most interested in reading.  Saves me the trouble on deciding which one to write first.

1.  Snow and why I love it so much.  This has been the best winter ever.  (If you'd like to send me hate mail my address is:  105 Carriage Way, East Earl.  Dad, I'll look for your's first.)

2.  My 2 word theme for 2014

3.  What I'm gonna do about March

4.  Crazy wardrobe idea that I'm not sure I have the guts to do.

5.  How I'm tired of 'pinning' things and never doing any projects

6.  Letters in my Bible

Whew!  Feels good to have a list.  I love them.  Are you a list maker?  Sometimes I add things I've already done onto my list just so I can cross them out.  Raise your hand, I know you are out there, kindred spirit!

I'm at a loss on how to end this post.  Maybe just, goodbye?

Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite?

Have a good night?

Fade out...