End of year sale in our Etsy shop

Over the last year we put a lot of effort into growing our Etsy shop and it has paid off. We are so grateful to those of you who have supported us throughout the year and since we started our shop in February 2012. 

A year ago my husband began making creations to sell in our Etsy shop. Our goal was to grow our shop to be a primary source of income in our household. While our shop and wholesale orders are not yet our only source of income, we do make enough to pay our mortgage every month and for that we are truly grateful. 

Often when I am sitting at my sewing machine sewing cloth pads, I think about how this work we do from home pays our bills. Some months we have so many cloth pad orders we pay our mortgage just by the money we make from selling cloth pads of all things! 

A year ago we had a goal of having 100 listings in our Etsy shop. It was a struggle to reach that, but when we did we celebrated. Then we had some sales and we dropped below 100 listings. It seemed like such a challenge to try to keep our shop stocked with over 100 listings during the move to our new homestead.

Once we settled into our new home this fall and set up our new office and workshop, we got busy creating again. As I write this, we now have 206 listings in our Etsy shop! 

To celebrate a wonderful year of business, we decided to have an end of year sale. We are offering a coupon code "sale2013" for 13% off your purchase now through 12/31/13. 

Thank you again to all of you for your continued support and encouragement. We have several new big goals for our shop in the coming year that we'll be sharing soon. 

Happy New Year and blessings to you all! 

End of year sale! Use coupon code "sale2013" for 13% off your purchase now through 12/31/13. 

Click here to visit our Etsy shop.

Homestead Bloggers Holiday Recipes ebook Review

I just read through The Homestead Bloggers Holiday Recipes ebook My mouth is watering and I'm starving after reading through all these yummy recipes! If it weren't almost my bedtime I would probably be heading into the kitchen to try out a few of these delicious looking recipes.

For those of you who may not know me too well, I will just tell you now that I love to cook and I love to eat good food. I'm always searching for new real food recipes to try out to keep my family well fed and healthy.

The Homestead Bloggers Holiday Recipes ebook is filled with over 80 recipes ranging from salads to deserts, appetizers, side dishes, main courses, breads and even holiday drinks! The recipes are all written by bloggers who are part of the Homestead Bloggers Network, meaning they are all living some form of homesteading lifestyle. This typically involves cooking from scratch and raising your own veggies, chickens, goats or cows. It isn't too often I find a recipe book that lists ingredients such as "farm fresh eggs"!

How to Bake Off Grid in a Dutch Oven

Baking off grid in a dutch oven is a handy thing to know how to do in case you ever find yourself without an electric or gas powered oven or chose to live off-grid. Baking in a dutch oven is pretty easy once you know a few basic tips. We love to bake in our dutch ovens on camping trips, multi-day river float trips, at hunting camp, when it is too hot to bake inside in the summer, and sometimes just because we think it is fun!

Yes, we are that nerdy about our love for dutch oven cooking. We don't just dabble in dutch oven cooking, it has become a hobby for us. That being said, I will confess we have a collection of dutch ovens and get really excited when finding them second hand at yard sales. Currently our collection includes seven dutch ovens: one 14" cast iron dutch oven, three 12" cast iron dutch ovens, one 12" aluminum dutch oven and one 10" aluminum dutch oven, and one tiny six inch cast iron dutch oven.

Phew! That's a lot of dutch ovens. But we use them all. That big old 14" cast iron dutch oven I mentioned earlier is the star of the show when it comes to baking big stuff like a whole lemon roasted chicken or honey brined turkey breasts. Without our collection of dutch ovens, we wouldn't have been able to bake everything we did in our off-grid Thanksgiving meal.