I Finally Got to Visit My Sister in Maine: My Miracles Involving Money and More

Posted on August 18, 2024 by treeoflifemama

I found this new YouTube Channel (Single Mom on a Farm) and website (singlemomonafarm.com) that I am loving! They are both from Marcie Holladay. She is a single mom of 10 children who lives on a farm in rural Virginia. She is living the dream I’ve had for years. That’s the dream of being out in the country with lots of children, living a simple life of reading aloud, minimal screen time, and interacting with nature a lot. I haven’t given up on my dream but at this point it’s going to have to involve my grandchildren or adoptees as I’m facing an empty nest in 3 years and don’t live in the country anymore. I’d like to again. Over four years ago I lived out in the country in AZ. I had the potential of having it be a farm but I didn’t get that far. Now I’m back in Utah in the city and still dreaming about a farm. At least a mini-farm where I have a garden, fruit trees, and a cow. I know chickens should be in my future but I’ve always been scared of them.

My grandson with my sister’s chickens.

Anyway, some of the latest videos Marcie put out are these two videos below. The first is about money miracles. The second is about miracles that don’t involve money. So I’m sharing both with along with a list of my money miracles and a list of miracles that don’t involve money. I’d love to hear of any of your miracles in the comments below.

I just love how she ends the first video, with a testimony of a loving God who is our Father in Heaven. She testifies that God is real. He is a loving father. He cares about our finances and our groceries. “I know He whispers to each of us to share our money and spread it around,” she says in the video. She has seen people “pay it forward” to her like the guy who gave her $1200 for a new water heater (the money pictured at the top above), because he was paying it forward after someone gave him money when he needed it. Now he was in a position to share and he did because the Holy Spirit told him to help her. I just love that story so much because it shows how the Spirit works on strangers to help each other. I can’t remember if it’s in the first video or the second one, but she reminds us that we are children of God. Just like a good earthly father wants to give generously to his children, so does our Heavenly Father. That’s not to say that He gives us everything we ask for, because sometimes what we ask for isn’t what’s best for us. Just like a child sometimes asks for things that aren’t really for the best. Heavenly Father only ever gives us what is best for us in the long-term, for our overall joy.

In one of the videos, I can’t remember which, she likens our requests to a little two-year-old who tells people “At 2 o’clock you’re going to play with me right?” She says how can you resist that request (albeit, I might add, couched in a demand) when the child is good and compliant and you want to be with the child to play with him or her because it’s enjoyable? That is our Father is with us. When we are compliant and harmonious with good things He wants to give us more, as much as we can be wise with. He wants to bring us to His exalted level, as far as we are willing to go.

Here are some of my money miracles:

–Ever since my sister moved to Maine I have wanted to visit her. I have fantasized and dreamed about it for years, along with tacking on a trip to Boston and Concord MA to see the Little Woman home, Orchard House. Last spring, one of my sons drove out back East for a summer sales job and drove out of the way to see my sister in Maine. He got there in only 4 days! So that made me think I could do that. I started talking about that and found out my married daughter was interested in visiting too. The more I talked about it, the more she said she wanted to visit too, with her husband and two little boys. I worked out the distances and the stops for spending the night and put all the data on a spreadsheet. As I studied the data, I decided that I did not want to drive there in 4 days! I don’t have the energy of my 23 year old son to drive 10 plus hours a day and not fall asleep at the wheel, LOL. Besides, my husband wasn’t that interested in going, neither were my other children for various reasons, so it would just be my 14 year old son and me. The cost of gas made it cheaper to fly. So we were looking at paying for airfare and that would take some convincing of my husband to spend money on the luxury of spending money on a trip.

We went to the L.L. Bean flagship store in Freeport, Maine for the summer festival, full of drawings for prizes, food samples, music, and demos. My son-in-law won the boat and tote bag pictured above.

Then my married daughter offered to pay our way, with a bonus trip to New York City. She offered a trade: to pay our round-trip airfare if my 14 year old and I would babysit her children for a night and a day while she and her husband saw the sites and went to a Broadway play. Plus help entertain the kiddos on the rest of the trip, especially on the bus and plane. That sounded like a great deal to me!

I just got back from the trip a few days ago. It was so amazing! The photos on this post are from the trip. A dream come true! It was a trip of a lifetime! Except I don’t want it to be the only trip I take to Maine and New England. I plan on going back several times! The whole trip deserves several different blog posts because of all that happened. I hope to get those up by the end of the year, LOL.

I finally got to see Orchard House in person! We got there before anybody else at 9:15 AM after driving a little over two hours! I felt like crying! It was soooo amazing! This is the home where Louisa May Alcott wrote the book Little Women. She did not live here as a little girl. She moved here in her 20s. It was at the desk in her bedroom on the second floor that she wrote the book Little Women, from May to July 1868. We also went to see her gravesite at a cemetery nearby since the home didn’t open until 10 AM. You can read all my Little Women blog posts here.

-We’ve had some difficult financial times off and on through the years. When it has spanned a Christmastime, we’ve received money and gift cards on our doorstep so we could buy presents. One time I was feeling blue a few weeks before Christmas, wondering how we would buy gifts. Then a few minutes later a dear friend who lives out of state called up asking how we were doing moneywise and offered to send some gifts. I was so grateful that she was in tune with the Holy Spirit. We also even got a big package of gifts for our children once when we were doing OK financially.

Such an unpretentious gravesite for such a famous woman! She was the J.K. Rowling of her day!

-Somehow someone knew I wanted a magnetic message board for my kitchen decades ago and gave one anonymously to me for Christmas one year.

-With one of my husband’s unemployment stints, it started the week of Thanksgiving. Yeah, it’s not fun to be told the day before Thanksgiving that your husband lost his job. Anyway, because of lessons learned, we were prepared this time around! We had a three month supply of money saved up according to Dave Ramsey’s teachings. So we had a cushion to live on and savings for Christmas gifts too. We didn’t really need it, but someone in our church congregation anonymously gave us an envelope full of cash for Christmas. We decided to use that cash to buy a lifetime membership to Qube, a digital cash envelope system that can work as an app on my phone. You can learn about it here. So I was able get a Christmas gift that keeps on giving to keep us on track with our budget.

My grandsons and niece frolicking on the grass on the grounds of Orchard House. I’m sure Louisa May was looking down from heaven smiling, thinking of her two nephews, Freddy and John, and her niece Lulu, who played in the same yard over one hundred years ago.

-When my oldest son was about 8 he hit a baseball into the neighbors’ window and broke it. We offered money to the neighbor to fix the window. He countered our offer with something else. He suggested that we fast and pray for him to make more money than he usually makes at his commission-based sales job to pay for the window. So we did that and he said that month he made a lot more money than he usually made.

-Once when my husband was unemployed, over 20 years ago when we lived in Provo UT as a young family, he got a job offer in Missouri. I really wanted him to say “yes” but he prayed about it and felt he should say “no.” He had been underemployed working jobs that didn’t use his J.D. degree for over a year. I was so desperate for a bigger paycheck. Then two days later his mom called and said she had been praying about where he should look for a job. She gave him a list of where to look. He called these places. Turned out one of them was hiring and he was able to interview the next morning. Then he got the job offer that afternoon! This was the Friday after the Tuesday when he said “no” to the previous job offer.

On the beach! One of the many, many beautiful beaches in Maine.

-My husband commuted to that job I just mentioned over an hour each way for 18 months while we saved money to buy a home closer to the job. During all that time we continued to live in my inlaws’ basement. It was a not fun time for me to have four children, being pregnant with a fifth, in a basement apartment with a tiny kitchen that had no windows, and no dishwasher. I really wanted my own home! I could barely squeeze my blossoming belly between the table and the countertop in the kitchen as I walked into that kitchen numerous times a day to do kitchen duty. My husband had a contract that paid about 3/4 of what we decided we could live on. Every month we fasted that he would make the money with non-contract work to make up the difference. We were blessed to get more money that way so we did eventually buy our own home after living there 18 months. At that point he could now walk to work in 5 minutes!

-When just my oldest child was out of nest in college and the rest of my older children all lived at home, we were up to our eyeballs in debt because of a bad financial decision. I started listening to Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover on audio. Because of this audiobook, I really really wanted to get out of a car payment on our minivan. We were paying $350 every month for this car. I listened to this book in the spring as I drove a teenage son to ballroom dance practice every week, 20 minutes from home one way. Every trip as I listened I silently expressed the lament that if only we could not have that car payment we would have $350 a month more in the budget. Well God heard this lament! The next fall, my teenage daughter was driving the same son to a meeting, and she got in a car wreck. Fortunately no one was hurt. The insurance money we got from the car accident was enough to pay what we owed on the damaged car, and buy a new-to-us used car to replace it. Problem solved! We no longer had a car payment! We haven’t had one since then as we have stuck to Dave’s teaching of only paying cash for a car. Which leads me to our next money miracle.

My daughter and sister walking along a beach in Maine.

-Two Decembers ago, just two days before my mother-in-law’s funeral, I was sitting in my car minding my own business stopped at a red light, on my way to get groceries. Then a random stranger crashed into the rear of my minivan. Even though this was a total inconvenience, it was a huge blessing! This wrecked car was a different car than the replacement car I just mentioned. This car had a lot of problems, including the liftgate being broken, which is a major hassle when loading and unloading the car. We had to prop it up and open with a snow shovel we kept in the back of the car. I did not get hurt, but the car was totaled. We were able to get enough insurance money to replace it with the same kind of car (which I love-the best car ever-the Toyota Sienna) which had no problems with the liftgate, as well as heated seats! Yay! Once again because of God’s providence, another car problem solved! You can read more about that here, where I blogged about a few more little miracles.

-I’ve had a lot of miracles involving finding just the right clothing articles and other resources while out going to thrift stores. You can read those here.

-At the end of last December my husband got a job with much better pay, shorter commute, shorter work day, and every other Friday off. I blogged about it over here. I am still pinching myself about this job to see if this is true. It’s just such a better deal for us. It all happened so seamlessly. He was so sick of the previous job, working long hours in downtown SLC. He already had an interview for the new job lined up before he lost the previous job. Then he got the job offer right after he lost the old job. It just worked out so perfectly. We’ve had stretches of unemployment for months, even over a year, so this was just a dream transition, right out of a fairy tale storybook.

OK, some of my other miracles that don’t involve money:

-When I was in college at BYU, I decided I wanted to encourage my soon-to-be husband to date me. I told my roommate I would like to date him and we concocted a plan to ask out his apartment full of roommates to go out with our apartment of girls. So that’s how I got a date with him. Then I decided I wanted another date. Our student church congregation, called a ward, sponsored a Cinderella Ball. The plan was that all the girls would each put a shoe on a table when we had ward prayer on Sunday night. Then the guys would each pick a shoe, match it to the owner and take that girl on a date to the ball. I put my shoe on the table, walked away, and watched from afar. Along came my husband. He picked up one shoe, then another, then another. I sent out vibes telling him telepathically to put those shoes down. Finally he picked up mine! So we did go to the Cinderella Ball and had a lovely time together, including a moonlit walk after the ball, stopping at the playground of a school to swing on the swings and chat. Which leads me to the next miracle…

My sister has the most gorgeous hydrangea flowers in her yard!

-After that date, I wanted to encourage him more. He was recovering from a heart-wrenching break-up, half-heartedly dating another girl. In fact, he had told his roommates that for the next girl he dated he wanted her to be someone who chased him. Little did I know! So I was sitting in my apartment living room after the above-mentioned date, wishing I could go out on another date with him. Then, I “heard” these words in my head, “If you will walk up to campus, to the Wilkinson Center (student union center), you will see him.” It wasn’t an audible voice, it was more like I just sensed the words in my head. So I obeyed the words. Just as I was approaching the stairs, past the cafeteria, who should come bounding through the doorway to the stairs, but my future husband? Of course I didn’t know at the time I would someday marry him. We talked, we walked, and he asked me out on another date. The rest is our history, 30 plus years and 7 children. Yesterday we celebrated 33 years of marriage!

-With each of my last 3 children, I really wanted each one to be born on a Sunday. I had had two on a Thursday, one on Tuesday, and one on a Monday. So around 37 weeks I started praying that each of those babies would be born on Sunday. Each one was. I was so grateful!

-When one of my family members was struggling with living harmoniously with God, I prayed that this person would have some humbling experiences. After two years of experiences this person was completely humbled and back on the path of living a Godly life. This person gave me not one but two birthday gifts last time I had a birthday. It is so much easier to be with this person now. We have had many meaningful conversations since then. I am soooo grateful for this. It was reading the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ that brought about the change in this person. That makes sense, since President Russell M. Nelson says that the Book of Mormon testifies of Jesus Christ more than any other book. (See the talk here.)

My son and his cousin, boys in blue on the beach with the blue water and the blue sky!

Miracles can and do happen in this modern day and time!

I conclude with this scripture from the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ which testifies of miracles from Jesus. This is Moroni chapter 7 verses 27-33:

27 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased because Christ hath ascended into heaven, and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of men?

28 For he hath answered the ends of the law, and he claimeth all those who have faith in him; and they who have faith in him will cleave unto every good thing; wherefore he advocateth the cause of the children of men; and he dwelleth eternally in the heavens.

29 And because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men.

30 For behold, they are subject unto him, to minister according to the word of his command, showing themselves unto them of strong faith and a firm mind in every form of godliness.

31 And the office of their ministry is to call men unto repentance, and to fulfil and to do the work of the covenants of the Father, which he hath made unto the children of men, to prepare the way among the children of men, by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord, that they may bear testimony of him.

32 And by so doing, the Lord God prepareth the way that the residue of men may have faith in Christ, that the Holy Ghost may have place in their hearts, according to the power thereof; and after this manner bringeth to pass the Father, the covenants which he hath made unto the children of men.

33 And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me.

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8/2/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Book of the Week: Families Lost and Found

Posted on August 2, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Image Credit: amazon.com

I finished this book this week. It is so good! It is a compilation of stories about people making family history discoveries with heavenly help. Each chapter is written by a different person. The stories are all so varied and interesting.

Here is the summary from the back cover:

“One man is led to his family records by the otherworldly sound of a trumpet in a dusky graveyard. Another researcher, without maps or knowledge, miraculously finds records saved from a World War II bombing. A family, after losing work to a computer crash, discovers a disk containing the lost information, though no one in the house had made a copy of it. Others, in the quiet of the night, receive answers in their dreams. These are just a few of the many examples of the heavenly help that dedicated genealogical researchers have received. Miracles associated with family history work happen too often to be tossed off as mere coincidence or luck. You will receive strength to pursue your own research as you read these true accounts from people who have been assisted in their work to bring their families together from beyond the veil. In no human effort has there been more generous cooperation from the spirit world than in family history research. Families Lost and Found, compiled by popular authors Lee Nelson and Marilyn Brown, is a witness to a work that is more important than many people may realize. These narratives provide a testimony that we are not alone, especially as we search to find our lost families.”

If you want to hear about some family history miracles and get inspiration to do your own family history research, then read this book!

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Jana Duggar’s New Tiny House Plus 12 Tips on Organizing a Tiny Place

Posted on August 1, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Photo Credit above and below: Jana Duggar’s YouTube channel.

Just two weeks ago Jana Duggar shared a new video of her tiny house. It’s so cute! I love the way she has organized and decorated it. Watch below.

Watching this video really resonated with me because I just moved into a tiny house, something I never thought I would do after having seven children. It’s been a bit of struggle to settle in as this home doesn’t even have a coat or broom closet! The plus side however is that it has two kitchens! It’s been fun to create beauty and order out of the chaos of moving and dejunking.

I won’t go into the details as to why we moved into such small quarters. Anyway, here are are my tips for organizing and decorating a tiny house. Jana shows many of these tips in the video,

  1. Dejunk. Get rid of a lot of stuff. Get some books or watch dejunking videos on YouTube if you need help with this. With the rest of your stuff you keep always store whenever possible at the point that is closest as possible to where you use the thing.
  2. Use shelves. I especially like IKEA Kallax shelves and IKEA’s Billy Bookcase. You can often find these used in your local used furniture for sale Facebook groups and classified ads. Recently I found a 4×2 Kallax while thrifting for only $20. It looks like Jana has some Kallax shelves in her living room.
  3. Get stand-alone cabinets if you need more storage space in the kitchen like Jana shows in the video. I found a really cute one for my kitchen for only $30. I didn’t like the paper on the back of it so I covered it with cute black and white rose contact paper from the Dollar Tree. Always measure first so you know if it will fit your space and your stuff.
  4. Use bins or baskets to store random stuff on shelves that can’t look at all even slightly uniform like books can with their spines facing out. See the bins and baskets on Jana’s shelves above. IKEA has bins and baskets that fit all the Kallax shelves that I’m enjoying. I also like to scout out random baskets at my local thrift stores for my non-Kallax shelves. I have been blessed to find some that exactly fit the shelves I have. So I have two baskets on my kitchen cabinet to hold random food my two young single adult sons brought with them when they moved back in and three baskets on top of my bookshelves in my family room to hold DVDs. Those DVDs would look OK if stored like books but I ran out of shelf space. The Dollar Tree has lots of different sizes of plastic baskets if that doesn’t offend your naturally crunchy mom aesthetic sense.
  5. Use cardboard boxes covered with pretty contact paper if you can’t find or can’t afford the right size of bins or baskets. When I was really poor in my days of all my 7 children living at home I covered boxes with recycled white copy paper and used pretty black labels like these with white chalkboard marker to give my pantry a uniform look.
  6. Get hooks. Magnetized hooks on the fridge and any other metallic surface are great for things like car keys. I like using the side of the fridge that faces a wall to hide unsightly things that can hang like the fly swatter and sink snake. Command hooks are great for pictures, wall hangings, and even heavy things like brooms and mops.
  7. Get over-the-door-holders for the inside of cupboard doors to hold things like herbal tea bags, ziploc bags, food wrap, plastic lids, in the kitchen, and curling irons in the bathroom.
  8. Get over the door laundry hampers to clear up bedroom floor space. I have these pretty ones from amazon and love them.
  9. Get over the door hooks from Dollar Tree for to hang stuff like bras, night clothes, bags, and umbrellas.
  10. Get shoe organizers that hang from a closet rod to clear up closet floor space.
  11. Get custom organizers for things like garden tools. If you have something that takes up a lot of space, chances are there is an organizer to corral the mess.
  12. Keep a box of stuff to donate. Anytime you go by the thrift store drop it off. Because even though you may have just dejunked, more junk is always coming in. It’s a constant battle.

Want more organizing tips from the Duggars? Watch Jessa’s video below.

Want to see what else Jana has been up to? See videos about renovating the Duggars’ playroom and putting in a swimming pool below. I just love how handy she is with tools and her vision of creating beauty and fun for herself and her family. Go Jana!

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July 2024 Things That Made Me Smile

Posted on July 31, 2024 by treeoflifemama

I hope to start a blogging tradition for myself where I share about random things that made me smile that month, on the last day of the month or beginning of the new month, regarding the previous month. So that’s what I’m doing today except I’m adding in something from last spring that totally deserves mention.

The first is that we gave my son an electric guitar for his 23rd birthday. He taught himself to play an acoustic guitar and asked for an electric one. I’m grateful that my brother-in-law who is a professional guitarist suggested we look at a pawn shop for one. I sent my husband to scout one out. He ended up finding this one above. Way less expensive than getting one brand new! So this afore-mentioned son, my 14-year-old son, and I had a hilarious jam session that day when we celebrated. I was on piano, older son on guitar, and younger son on drums. I hope to have many more times like this. I blogged about that more here, at the end of the post. It’s so wonderful to have children at home who like to make music with me as a trio. Some of my older children play the piano but they left home right as they were getting good so I haven’t had this opportunity until now that this older son is back.

My neighbor’s deck makes me smile! I just love this and want my own!

Then another neighbor let me and my girlfriend Shauna come pick from her blackberry patch. She was super nice and gave us the first pickings of the season. What made it extra special was that her home is where my favorite BYU professor of all time used to live, for decades. He is probably the one who planted these very blackberry plants. So cool! For some reason, I just still can’t get over how amazing it is that such luscious things as berries and peaches grow and are free. I may be keto but I’m not of Dr. Boz’s opinion that all fruit is evil and should be avoided the rest of my life. I do enjoy it ever so often. These blackberries are so amazing. Perfect balance of tartness and sweetness. It just feels like I’m in a paradise when I can get food from nature for free.

Of course, Shauna had a connection with my neighbor. See my neighbor above being so surprised. Shauna has some kind of connection with everyone, like one of my brothers and one of my husband’s brothers met her before I even did. Turns out that she knows my neighbor’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law! Of course!

Cousins! My nephew is going on a mission to share with people about Jesus. We got to hear him speak in church last Sunday and then go to his home afterwards for a gathering. I just love seeing cousins enjoying wholesome recreation together.

New replacement Instant Pot outside part. So last spring one of my homeschooling friends said she was giving away the outside part of an Instant Pot. She didn’t have the inner pot. It was a match made in heaven for me, because I had a perfect inner pot, but the outside part was damaged. My son tripped on a rock, when he walked off the sidewalk at the church where we had a homeschool party, carrying the Instant Pot on the right. It was dark and he dropped the old Instant Pot, causing it to bend. I just hate it when dumb random things like this happen that damage things I use everyday. I didn’t want to have to buy a new one, and I hated that to make the thing level I had to prop it up with an upside down measuring cup. Problem solved! God came to my rescue, inspiring my friend to offer it to her homeschooling friends. Hooray!

Grand Canyon hike for my 14-year-old son with his church group of other young men. This is him with his backpack on. I’m so thrilled that he did the 30 miles in 3 days. Some day I want to do that! (Not anytime soon LOL!)

For the Strength of Youth Conference at BYU-Provo. Here’s the same son shown above walking to check in. He got to to go to the Grand Canyon last week and now FSY this week. When I was young I always wanted to go to a youth conference at BYU but never did. It just wasn’t on my parents’ radar and I never felt like I could ask because it was so expensive. They were called Especially for Youth (EFY), but now are called FSY. He got to go last year and so did his sister. I’m so happy he got to go again this year. At first it was going to be at Snow College. I’m super happy that a spot opened up for one of he Provo ones so I could transfer his enrollment. Now I don’t have to drive to Ephraim twice in one week. Whew!

Fun new thrifting treasures! A little puzzle book for me and games for my grandchildren for my upcoming summer vacation to the East Coast. I’m so excited for this trip! I finally get to see my sister and her family who live in Maine. Plus a sister-in-law who lives in New York City. I’ve always wanted the Jane Austen for Dummies book. I checked it out from the library once and never finished it. Now I own it forever and it was only $2! The tiny Jane Austen book is a lined journal with cute illustrations, completely blank, for only 75 cents! The Paw Patrol stuff is for my little grandson so I can use them with him on our trip. He loves Paw Patrol. Then I found more goodies for the trip below. A little Magna Doodle tablet, Swish Jr. card game, Spot It card game, a Disney memory match card game, and a puzzle book for the 14 year old and me. These will keep us all entertained while taking the plane, subway, and bus on our trip.

The Rodeo! The last time I went to a rode was 1980. This was only my second one. My about to turn 20 year old asked for this for his birthday, for us to go as a family. He said it was the best birthday present ever. We did it early because some of us will be gone to Maine when his actual birthday happens. It was so fun to get in touch with my inner cowgirl. I am so impressed by the athleticism of the these rodeo players. My favorite event was these young ladies riding the horses standing up, going through hoops of fire. So phenomenal!

There’s more stuff. See the books below that I finished reading. Plus other things like my 35 year high school reunion where I found out one of my classmates lives just two blocks from me, LEMI Pyramid Project training, and Sunday dinner with my brother who lives far away and was visiting. Blessings abound!

I found this thrifting. Only $1.50! A delightful read of inspirational and providential family history discoveries. I read a chapter a night right before falling asleep. So soothing and yummy.
I read this book for my sisters’ book club. I liked it. It’s definitely a fuzzy feel good book for when you are in the mood for sentimentality and a little sorrow.
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Tree of Life Mama’s Product of the Week: the Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker

Posted on July 30, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Photo Credits Above and Below: amazon.com

Summer will be over soon as July turns to August and then September. If you don’t already have the product above, I implore you to get it before the summer is over. It will make your summer that much better, I promise you! Who doesn’t like ice cream? It’s the perfect way to cool off. If you have lactose intolerance, you can make dairy-free ice cream with almond or coconut milk. If you are vegan, you can make the same or just use fruit juice for sorbets. If you are sugar-free/low-carb/keto, you can make sugar-free ice cream with allulose or another alternative. If you just plain like to eat without any restrictions, you can make good old-fashioned ice cream with all the animal fat and all the sugar you want. Ice cream is the perfect treat for a hot summer’s day. It’s so easy and fun to make your own with this machine. I love to make ice cream for Independence Day, Pioneer Day, and Sunday summer dinners. Yum!

You keep the inner cylinder in a freezer so it’s cold and ready to pop into the machine when it’s time to make your recipe. The machine turns the cylinder around and around with the dasher inside, mixing the ice cream. After about 30 minutes, the mixing is done and you can either eat the dessert right then or transfer it all to another container and freeze the ice cream to a firmer texture. I love that the cord has a pocket underneath to fit into so it’s not dangling all around, one of my pet peeves. I also love that it comes in red! You can also get plain boring silver. It’s over here on amazon.com. I receive no compensation for promoting this, I just love it so I’m spreading the word. I got ours 8 years ago this coming August for our wedding anniversary and it’s still going strong.

The only two problems I see with this machine are:

  1. The churning process is loud. After 30 minutes I’m ready to turn it off for a break.
  2. I just wish it made more. The one pictured above is 2 quarts. If you have a big family, like more than 8 people, and they have big appetites, you may want to get two machines. How fun to make two different flavors at once!

So I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. It is the perfect gift for an anniversary, wedding, or older person’s birthday. Kids can easily learn how to make the ice cream using it and garner lots of compliments.

Want some recipes? Go here and scroll all the way to the end to get to the recipes. I’m excited to try blackberry ice cream for our next Sunday family dinner. Here are even more: My Mint Chocolate Ice Cream is here, Pumpkin Ice Cream is here, Lemon is here, and my new favorite Pistachio is here.

Want to know how you can make it, then transport it, keeping it cold, for a picnic? Go here. How fun to have homemade ice cream ready to scoop after a hike or playing in the park.

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07/29/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Recipe of the Week: Pistachio Ice Cream

Posted on July 29, 2024 by treeoflifemama

My life has shifted with having two young adult sons moving back home recently. Suddenly I have more hands to help fix food and I am asking more people to choose menu items and fix them. So now each of the four children has a dinner night to fix dinner, my husband does Saturday, and I’m on Sundays. That just leaves Friday where we have our standard popcorn and smoothie for a quick supper amidst busy Friday night activities. (As a ketovore, I abstain from the popcorn and smoothie. I usually abstain from eating at every dinner but still sit with them. I ask questions using my conversation starter questions, trivia, and quiz cards that I have mostly collected while thrifting to spark conversation. It takes my mind off of not eating and allows us to connect over the meal.)

For Sundays I love to serve homemade ice cream after our dinner. I especially love it when the grandsons are here. To see them happily dig into my ice cream gives me so much joy! We’ve been having fun trying out different flavors. I recently found this book below while thrifting. I’m excited to learn from the experts Ben and Jerry so I can up my ice-cream making game. (As a ketovore I usually abstain from eating it and eat my homemade Greek yogurt with stevia instead. But soon I will be making blackberries using berries I got from my neighbor’s patch ice cream and won’t abstain from that!)

Image Credit: thriftbooks.com

One of my adult sons picked pistachio ice cream recently when I asked him what flavor he wanted. It turned out super yummy. I confess I had a small portion even though I am usually keto. Next time I might make a keto version for me using allulose. This homemade version is not as pretty as store bought with the bright green color, but it tastes better and isn’t full of the artificial colors and flavors, not to mention antifreeze, which is in all commercial ice cream, according to Sarah Pope of the healthyhomeeconomist.com. Next time I make this maybe I’ll try adding a little bit of pureed spinach to make it green, like I learned how Serene and Pearl, of Trim Healthy Mama fame, do for their sugar-free key lime pie. I tried that with avocado too, for a Mint Chocolate Ice Cream, you can get the recipe here.

OK enough of my chitchat, here is the recipe:

-4 cups cream or any combination of raw milk and cream, the more cream you use, the creamier it will be

-1 c maple syrup, or 1 1/4 c if you want a bit sweeter

-1/4 tsp sea salt

-1 tsp vanilla

-1/4 c to 1 c crushed pistachio nuts depending on how nutty you want it

Mix everything together at the beginning except the nuts. Taste test to make sure it’s sweet enough for you. Freeze and stir according to the ice cream maker’s directions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, check out the alternatives here. Add the nuts towards the end. After it’s mixed and frozen, serve if you enjoy the soft-serve texture. If you don’t eat it right away and want a harder texture, put ice cream into a clean empty container and freeze longer in your kitchen freezer. Enjoy! I love the combination of saltiness, crunch and fattiness of the nuts with the sweetness of the maple syrup and the fattiness of the cream. Pure bliss!

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Turning a Testimony from a Seed to a Tree: Experiment Upon the Word

Posted on July 29, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Image Credit: Unshaken YouTube Channel

I have always loved, loved, loved Alma 32 from the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. That’s because it describes the most important experiment anyone could ever do. That’s the “experiment upon the word.” That means planting the word of God, the scriptures, into one’s heart, praying about it, asking God if it’s true, then acting on it. I just love Alma’s metaphor because it pairs perfectly with Lehi’s vision of the Tree of Life. The seed is the word, and when planted in receptive soil, it grows into a testimony tree, whose fruit is the love of God. The fruit is such an apt symbol because what makes fruit is that it has seeds. It’s just so splendid that fruit represents love, because what else do we want to propagate more with seeds, than love?

Brother Jared Halverson has so many insights into Alma 32 and this experiment in the videos below. One of my favorites is where he says that when people say “The Church isn’t true,” he asks if they have been true to the Church. He points out that it wouldn’t be smart to say “The gym isn’t true,” if someone hasn’t been going to the gym. The gym works for the person if the person works out at it. The Church works for people if they work at it.

I love the acronym he gives to help us remember how this “experiment upon the word” will unfold:

S= Swell

E= Expand

E=Enlighten

D=Delicious

It’s just so beautiful to experience this process and have in the end something so delicious from Jesus: a knowledge of Him, a love of Him, and an increased sense of love from Him. He always loves us, unconditionally, but it is easier to FEEL His love when one has a testimony of Him. The seed, the word of God, grows in your heart to become like a portable tree, growing deep inside you, that gives you everything symbolically that a tree gives: nourishment, shelter, shade, and beauty. I love that Jared connects the knowledge that comes from a testimony with a desire to go forth and do good.

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7/27/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Date Night Movie of the Week: To Dance With the White Dog

Posted on July 27, 2024 by treeoflifemama

My date night movie of the week is To Dance With the White Dog. It is a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie from 1993. You can watch it free on YouTube.

Gradually, I am adding more and more movies to my “married romance movies” list. This is the latest addition. In the movie, Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn play Cora and Sam Peek, an elderly couple who have just celebrated 50 years of marriage. You can tell they are so in love with each other. It’s a tender movie that is clean and yet not cheesy. I’m not going to say much more about it, except to say that it’s a bit mystical. If you can’t handle mysticism because that just isn’t plausible for you, then don’t watch. If you can, then go watch it with your husband. It’s especially grand if you are in the mood for some subtle romance and themes of long-lasting marriage, growing old, maintaining independence when growing old, dogs, and extended family dynamics. Then this will fit the bill quite nicely. Knowing that Ms. Tandy and Mr. Cronyn were married in real life for over 50 years makes the movie even that much sweeter and more beautiful! You can watch the making of the movie below, and even read the book the movie is based on. My favorite quote from the movie: “There are no endings, just new discoveries.”

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7/26/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Video of the Week: Mollie Kaye on the Cure for Loneliness: Dressing Up and Going Out

Posted on July 26, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Photo Credit: TEDx Talks YouTube Channel

My video of the week is all about the power of dressing up, going out, and talking to people. In this video, you will hear how one woman, Mollie Kay, found the cure for her loneliness. I love all of her vintage outfits. You can see many more here. I love them all! She has been dressing up and going out every Tuesday since COVID to do her own challenge of “Turned Out Tuesdays.”

I encourage you to read all the comments on this video in YouTube, go here. I just love reading from so many people about how they apply the principle of doing something active on their own to cure loneliness. We don’t have to wait for people to come to us. Even if we don’t go out, we can feel better by dressing up. One woman says that her mom was dying of cancer but dressed every day like the Queen of England was coming for tea. We don’t have to dress up either. Another person in the comments says that he or she takes a little dog everywhere and connects with people that way.

If you don’t feel like dressing up or just don’t have the energy/time/money to find stuff to dress up in, just go out, for a walk or on a bike. Be the first to say hello and see how many people you can connect with. If you want an easy way to dress up, start with what Mollie calls “The Hello Zone.” That’s the collarbone and up, which you can dress up with a pin, jewelry, or hat. Oh my, I would love to start dressing like this, I have long loved the 40s and 50s styles. I’m excited to talk with my married daughter more about how to find these vintage clothes when thrifting.

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07/25/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Chapter Book of the Week: A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streater Aldrich

Posted on July 25, 2024 by treeoflifemama

In honor of Pioneer Day yesterday, a state holiday in Utah, I’m blogging about the pioneer life. (You can see my previous blogs about Pioneer Day here. It’s so cool that once we got to actually be at a real pioneer place, Cove Fort, on Pioneer Day years ago when all my children lived at home.) We had a great celebration last night at my brother’s house with my parents, 3 out of my 4 siblings, and most of their descendants. I was so pleased to hear that my grandson won the watermelon eating contest for his age group at the This is the Place State Park. I love that place! We’ve been a few times and even had a Hilton family reunion there. I want to go there every year on Pioneer Day but don’t so I’m glad my daughter and her little family got to be there with her in-laws.

Today I’m sharing this book, A Lantern in Her Hand, by Bess Streater Aldrich for my mama book of the week. This isn’t a true story, but it’s worth reading! It’s historical fiction. I love that it shows the devotion of a mother who gives up her own comfort to support her husband in his dream of living the pioneer life on the frontier of Nebraska.

Here’s what goodreads.com says about it:

“Perfect for fans of Little House on the Prairie: In the late 1800s, married couple Abbie and Will live as pioneers on the American frontier. Together they face the Nebraska plains, determined to build a house and a life for themselves…

“The classic story of Abbie and Will Deal—pioneers who left everything behind for a new life on America’s frontier.

“Abbie Mackenzie dreamed of becoming a fine lady like her aristocratic grandmother, devoting herself to music and art. But at eighteen Abbie found a different dream, turning away from the promise of a comfortable life as a doctor’s wife to marry handsome, quiet Will Deal. Together, they eagerly accepted the challenge of homesteading in Nebraska territory, where the prairies stretched as far as the eye could see, and only the strongest survived for long.

“For over 90 years, people have cherished Abbie’s story—an inspiring story of struggle against unexpected perils, of love, of the land she helped nurture, and the family she raised.”

We read this book in my homeschool group for the moms’ class last year and then discussed it. It was such a pleasure to read it. It’s as much about the pioneering spirit as it is about the heart of a wife and mother and the beauty of how much she sacrifices for her husband and children. I almost cried when it was over, just because I was sad that I couldn’t read it any more. Goodreads.com, however, says it’s part of a series, so I can’t wait to read the next one, Song of Years, although the cast of characters involved in the synopsis of the second book looks completely different. I remember my sister telling me about this book years ago. I’m sad that I took so long to read it, I was really missing out. Reading it helps me to continue to hold onto my dreams through the trials. If you are a fan of mothering and pioneering, you will love this book! It’s probably at your local public library, as well as in everand.com so you can read it today. (Go here to learn more about everand.com, it’s the most fabulous resource for every bibliophile.)

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