I watched this interview yesterday and thoroughly loved it! It’s about Meredith. As a child, she had a feminist mom who raised her to be independent. thinking that marriage and motherhood were not needed as a woman. She was intensely curious about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because all the high school students in her school who were members were kind and helpful and responsible. She started looking into the church and even dated a member. She also did a term paper about the Church and attended meetings of the Church. She probably would have joined the Church in high school but her mom forbade her to learn any more about it. So she stopped investigating it. She then went off to college thinking she would become a forensic pathologist. Instead she became an Episcopalian priest. She loved her job as a priest in a nursing home, encouraging old people M-F. But she knew something was missing, especially on Sunday. As a trained theologian, having a master’s from divinity school, she loved theology. When she read the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ, she knew that Joseph Smith could not have written the sublime truths in the Book of Mormon by himself. She knew this book comes from God. Long story short (you have to watch the video) she got baptized into the Church and now teaches gospel doctrine classes. Sadly, her husband passed away a year ago. She has a completely different life than she had in her younger adult years. Now she lives on a farm and has 4 children, and she homeschools most of them. This is such a beautiful story, please have a listen!
This interview is fascinating! I hope you watch it!
Hey, it’s Thursday! Instead of doing a #thriftythursday post about thrift store finds, like I’ve often done on Thursdays lately, I’m doing a #thrivingthursday post.
I got to go to the annual Weston A. Price Foundation Conference last week in Salt Lake City, Utah! The photo above shows one of the marvelously nourishing delicious dinners I got to enjoy while there. That’s roasted bison with divine gravy, salad with a dressing, roasted root veggies (hiding behind the bread), sourdough bread with raw milk butter, and kombucha. Then dessert was butterscotch budino topped with caramel sauce. Normally I eat keto but with such a gourmet, nutrient dense food opportunity, I indulged in a lot more carbs than I usually do.
This conference was a dream come true for sure! Sally Fallon Morrell, the founder of the WAPF, and Queen of Butter, was there. She gave four presentations: Nourishing Broth, Nourishing Diet Part 1 and Part 2, and Bringing Up Baby. She is known as the Queen of Butter, and I’ve been wanting her to come to Utah for since 2012, as shown by my blog over here. Sally is one of my heroes. I blogged about her as one of my Mothers for the Day in May over here. She is a great example of a woman who has followed the seasons of a woman’s life. She got a Stanford college education to prepare for a career, got married at some point, delayed a career outside of the home for a career of full-time motherhood, then as her children left the nest, she devoted her energy to outside the home. She founded and has led the Weston A. Price Foundation, spreading the truths of nourishing traditions (ancestral foods, farming, and the healing arts) for the past 25 years.
One of the slides from one of Sally’s presentations. She is for raw milk and does not recommend pasteurized milk. See realmilk.com for all about that.
A model WAPF meal, with meat, sourdough bread, butter (with not enough butter as sadly, the butter had run out. Sally says one should have enough butter on sourdough bread to leave teeth marks), a salad with dressing free of seed oils, a lacto-fermented veggie, sauerkraut, and a small portion of a dessert with a whole sweetener.
It was her teachings that led me, as a young mom, to quit being vegan/vegetarian. I learned about her from Diane Hopkins’ homeschooling newsletter. In one of her newsletters, Diane explained that she was no longer vegan. She said that her veganism caused her children tooth decay because she was vegan when she was pregnant with them, and then fed them a vegan diet when they were young children. She cited the Weston A. Price Foundation’s nutritional principles that include the importance of animal products. When she stopped being vegan, their teeth improved. My midwife also told me to stop being vegetarian, saying that women who keep having more and more babies as vegetarians have more sickly children the more children they have. I was severely anemic. She told me I needed to eat meat. So with those two witnesses, I started eating meat, in 2001. I believe that’s why my three younger children, who I had after this change, don’t have allergies like some of my older ones.
I also believe that’s why my youngest child has such a beautiful round head and great looks. He’s the baby in the header on the top of this website. He’s 16 years old now and such a cutie! All my children are great-looking, in my not so humble opinion, LOL, but he probably has the roundest head of all 7 of them, which as Sally teaches, is a sign of good maternal nutrition in pregnancy.
The boy on the left has a narrow face, a sign of poor nutrition, and the boy on the right has a round head, a sign of great nutrition.
I also gave up drinking soy milk, because of what Sally teaches, completely before I had him whereas with most of the others I drank it occasionally and fed a lot of it to my children. Someone I know was vegan the same time I was in our early mothering years. We both gave up veganism eventually. Even after giving up veganism, however, she continued feeding her family soy milk, even after her last pregnancy. Her baby with that pregnancy has a narrow face and tons of allergies. This is anecdotal and I know I have no way of proving these results as to whether or not diet determined them. Yet I believe it’s all connected to diet. So I’m grateful to Sally Fallon. She saved my health and my children’s health. So, dear children of mine, you can thank Sally that in my later mothering years you all got to eat meat, butter, and cheese, and no more tofu or fake milk! They were starving for meat snd cheese and would sneak them at family gatherings, until I fully embraced WAPF principles and started buying animal products and serving them.
Here are Sally Fallon Morrell and Tom Cowan MD, conferring before the conference starts.
I saw Sally within 5 minutes of walking into the event, on the second floor of the SLC Hyatt Regency Hotel. She was talking to Tom Cowan, MD, someone else I enjoy learning from. The photo above shows the two of them talking when I saw them, the Friday morning of the conference. They are co-authors, having written a handful of books together.
As an Amazon Associate, I receive a commission if you buy the above book through this link.
As an Amazon Associate, I receive a commission if you buy the above book through this link.
I also saw Holistic Hilda, shown above, the host of the WAPF podcast, called Wise Traditions. I’ve blogged about her here and have shared a bunch of her podcasts here. She is just as darling in person as she is on the podcast!
For the Saturday night banquet, to celebrate the 25th, Silver Anniversary of the WAPF, she dressed up in a silver sequined dress, a white cowgirl hat, and white cowgirl boots. We were all encouraged to wear something silver to help celebrate 25 years! I managed to rustle up a silver and pearl necklace I got years ago. Usually I wear gold.
So getting into fangirl mode with these three holistic celeb sightings was a fabulous way to kick off my conference experience! I introduced myself to Hilda and thanked her for her work. I held off on meeting Sally until the next day, when I found her not talking to anyone after one of her classes.
She was friendly and willing to talk to anyone who approached her. She autographed my Nourishing Traditions for Children cookbook!
As an Amazon Associate, I receive a commission if you buy the above book through this link.
So many interesting natural-health promoting products abounded at the conference. See the stickers above, and below is a T-shirt promoting crunchy mom values. I love it!
John Stockton, host of the Ultimate Assist podcast, and former NBA player of the Utah Jazz, interviewed Sally a week before the conference. You can listen to that here to get a one-hour summary of the Weston A. Price diet that the WAPF promotes.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn a commission if you buy the above book through this link.
He says that he and his family drink raw milk. He promised that and after the podcast interview ended, he was going to buy Sally’s Nourishing Traditions book. I’d forgotten that John is a crunchy guy. I do remember hearing that during the plandemic he refused to get the jab, so this makes sense.
Over 1200 people came to the conference! Here we are all in a ballroom of the Hyatt Regency in downtown SLC enjoying one of the gourmet dinners. People came from all but 3 of the fifty US states, and 12 other countries besides the USA.
The conference organizers had the consulting chef of WAPF, Yolanda Hawthorne, supervise the meals. She worked with the hotel chef and kitchen staff to prepare all the food served. Local natural food sources provided the food. So a huge thank you to Redmond Farms for Real Salt and Raw Milk, Green Goddess for the ferments, Han’s for the kombucha, What the Beat for kvass, Loncho’s Larder for lard, One Degree for sprouted oats and flour, hollow Tree Honey for honey, Utah Natural Meat, Leavity SLC sourdough bread, Sunnyside Up Meat, Pleasant Pastures grassfed butter, Old Home Place turkey, Amos Miller Organic Farm beef sausage, Pure Indian Foods Ghee, Northstar Bison, Amos Miller Organic Farm cream cheese, Gardens of Grace dates and almonds, Wild for Salmon smoked salmon, Midwest Mermaid Muse tea, Rich Nuts, Devin’s Good Gut Yogurt. Whew! It was all scrumptious! My first time eating liver pate, and it was good!
Here is the Friday dinner menu and the quantities of food the organizers obtained to create the fabulous meals. A huge thanks to Paul Frank for sourcing the food. This is the best food you could eat anywhere! Better than any high-end restaurant! So thank you again, Yolanda, Paul, the hotel chef and staff, and all the other WAPF people.
It was fabulous to see people I’ve only ever heard from before: Sally of course, Hilda, Sandrine Perez, of nourishingourchildren.org, Tom Cowan, Nina Teicholz, and Catherine Austin Fitts of solari.com, among others.
I learned so much from this conference! I’ll be sharing what I learned in the next few weeks.
Here are some of Tom’s books below.
Below is the cool sturdy bag that each participant received along with the conference program, and some of the free vendor samples I received. Each banquet attendee also got a glass with the WAPF 25 years anniversary logo. At the banquet we did a kombucha toast with the glass.
Here is Sally’s presentation which I was privileged to watch. It was split into two sessions, Part 1 and Part 2. I’ve heard her do it in YouTube more than once. I wanted to see her do it in person and see if she added new stuff and she did. I thoroughly enjoyed both parts.
You can get the slides for Sally’s presentations from her blog here. So much food for thought, pun intended!
My very favorite talk was by Dr. Samantha Bailey, a medical doctor from New Zealand. She talked about “Secrets of a Staged Pandemic” on Friday night. I remember hearing her in YouTube during the plandemic. She is shown in the photo below.
It was so amazing! Dr. Bailey and her husband, Dr. Mark Bailey, live on a small farm in NZ with their three sons. They look like teenagers! They’ve got to be each in their 40s though as the bios in the conference program say that they have each practiced medicine for 20 years. Both of them received the Mary Enig Integrity in Science Award from the WAPF at the Saturday night banquet. I just have to say, Dr. Sam looked so elegant in her evening gown that night. It was a stunning, sparkly orangeish, pinkish dress. The two Dr. Baileys are shown below with Sally after receiving the award at the banquet. It was a complete surprise to both of them.
Dr. Sam looks like a model or beauty pageant winner. I’d love to visit with her in person and ask her a ton of questions. They are some of the few medical doctors who have stood for truth about the jab of five years ago. I remember watching her first videos back then, but then life happened, I moved from AZ to UT, and I forgot I had discovered her. So this conference was a great reacquaintance with her. You can watch her video about virology below.
Both Dr. Baileys state that viruses are not what makes us sick. They say that no virus has ever been isolated, either in a lab or in nature. Because of these stances of not taking the jab and not promoting germ theory, Dr. Sam has endured a lot of persecution and trials.
It was a miracle that she and her husband were even able to get from NZ to SLC for this conference, after being invited by Sally to come speak. I’m grateful for their courage in sharing the truth about illness and health with all their work.
Dr. Tom Cowan, Dr. Mark Bailey, his wife, Dr. Sam Bailey, and Dr. Andy Kaufman are shown above, left to right. They all claim that no virus has ever been isolated. Each has a medical doctor degree, and each has been disappointed with they way mainstream medicine has gone. This was the first time that the four met in person. The Fantastic Four! They call themselves virus deniers. They did a Q & A panel to answer questions. I didn’t think of any questions to ask until later. If I had been thinking more I would have come up with a question to ask them in their session but alas I was not feeling super thinky, I was just taking things in, so I just watched other people ask questions.
This video above features Dr. Sam Bailey interviewing Sally. You can see Dr. Bailey’s YouTube channel here. She started it in 2020, and now has over 20 million views and over 350K subscribers. Wow!
Then Dr. Sam Bailey’s website is here. She and her husband have a substack for paying subscribers here.
Shepherd’s pie, sourdough bread slathered with butter, saurkraut, and and apple crumble!
I’m so thrilled that I could attend this year! I’ve been wanting to go for a long time, but this year, with it being in my home state of Utah, it was finally within my reach. I drove to it back and forth every day from home. I met up with my friend/third cousin KeeNan at the meals and swapped notes about the classes we attended. I got to meet a lot of new people. I even met someone who reads my blog! Shout out to Carrie S. of Kaysville UT! It was so wonderful! As I left the conference on the last day, my heart felt so happy and fulfilled. It was truly a magical experience!
The last day of the conference involved a tour of some farms: Utah Natural Meat in West Jordan UT, Redmond Farms‘ real salt mine in Redmond UT, and Sunnyside Up Pastures Farm in Centerfield UT. I didn’t go on the tour but hope to arrange a tour on my own since I live within an easy day’s drive to all of these places. One of my Veggie Gal girlfriends arranged a tour of the Redmond Farms salt mine two years ago.
I’m excited to keep learning from all these resources and I hope you join me on the journey! You can watch the video that Kelly the Kitchen Kop did of the tour, below. I saw her at the conference and said “Hi, you’re Kelly the Kitchen Kop!” because I’m on her email newsletter list and recognized her. Then she said my name which surprised me. I thought, “What, she knows my name?! Does she remember me from some email questions I’ve sent her?” but now I realize, oh she was just reading my name badge, LOL. The wave of traffic moved on so I didn’t have time to talk to her more.
If you want to get all the recordings of the conference, you can go here.
Free talks of the previous years’ conference are over here as well, look on the right hand side.
Please check back on my blog in the next few weeks as I blog about the different presenters that I haven’t even mentioned yet. This is a whole universe of new things to learn!
I hope to go to next year’s conference, in Washington DC, October 16-18, 2026. Maybe I’ll see you there!
Happy learning and living! May we all thrive not just on Thursday, but every day! I invite you to join the WAPF for only $40 for a year membership to help you on your wellness journey.
Here’s what you get for $40:
Our quarterly journal: Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts
A members-only Facebook group
Our annual Shopping Guide
Our main dietary guidelines brochure and twelve informative trifold flyers
Timely email information and action alerts
Quarterly members-only zoom meeting on various topics with WAPF experts
Consult with Pete Kennedy on state laws, regulations and policies including food freedom legislation and issues regarding consumer access to raw milk, cottage foods and on-farm meat and poultry processing.
Credit for photos above and below showing images found in ashes of the Grand Blanc church fire: Deseret News YouTube Channel
Wow what an amazing last week I had! I got to attend the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) annual conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have so much to share about it! The food, the people, the weather, the learning, oh, it was all so nourishing and fabulous! I have blogged about WAPF and its founder, Sally Fallon Morrell, a lot through the years (see here) and I’ve always wanted to go to a WAPF Conference, so this was a dream come true! More on all of that later!
While in SLC for the conference, I attended sacrament meeting in downtown SLC with my longtime friend/third cousin KeeNan, who was also at the conference with me. The two sacrament meeting speakers, Brother and Sister S, were so fabulous! They shared how even though they both grew up in SLC, they decided they didn’t want to raise their family there. They intentionally moved to the East Coast so their children would grow up outside of the “Mormon” culture. Joe implied that because he didn’t discover Jesus until he was 28, even though he was raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and served a mission for the Church, finishing his mission at age 22, he wanted his children to come to Jesus earlier and not take Jesus for granted, which can easily happen when being raised in Utah Church culture.
While living on the East Coast, Brother S met a woman in his ward (congregation) who had unwavering faith in Christ, as a true Saint. She was from Ghana, and had emigrated on a green card to Connecticut. She worked as a home health aide 24/7 for an elderly man. On her meager salary of about $35K a year, almost 20 years ago, she supported 3 children on a mission and 3 in college. Once a month she was committed to going to the temple in Manhattan. She had to get someone to cover her for work, which cost her $350 each temple visit. One time she bore her testimony of Jesus in church. Her testimony was so full of the Holy Spirit that a little girl in the congregation asked, “Is that Jesus’ grandma?”
Brother S said that he wants all of us to develop faith like this woman. Then he likened her faith to this month’s Come Follow Christ study, which we are discussing this month in Sunday School classes, and as families in our homes.
This is such a painful, destructive time in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It involved the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society, a type of bank. It involved the Three Witnesses of The Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ, leaving the Church. (Two of them eventually came back to Church, and all of them never denied their witness/testimony of the Book of Mormon.) Joseph Smith ended up in prison during this painful time in Kirtland Ohio.
While in prison, Joseph felt that God had given up on him.
This story from Church history relates to the woman from Ghana and it relates to us. At one point, the woman from Ghana, before she emigrated to the United States, went back to Ghana. She had no money, her husband had just died. The only place she could find to live was in a friend’s barn, sharing 4 horse stalls with her 8 children. An apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ came to Ghana. This was the apostle who just last week became the president of the Church, President Oaks. He was then called Elder Oaks. He asked the local Church leadership who he could minister to, and they suggested this woman. Imagine how hard it would be to host an apostle of Jesus Christ in a barn, with your children running wild around in the hay! Elder Oaks asked her how he could help her. She replied “Please pray for me.” So right then and there, Elder Oaks knelt with her and prayed. Brother S added that her children were thinking, “Oh mom, ask him to buy us a house! He’s a rich American!” LOL!
Maybe, up until that visit, she felt abandoned by God. Maybe she felt that He was hidden from her. I like to think that with the visit of Elder Oaks she felt noticed by God, and some light broke forth, I don’t know. Anyway, she kept her trust in God and Christ, continued following Christ, and came to the U.S. She continued to live according to her covenants. Her life got better.
The Saints in the time of Kirtland, especially Joseph Smith probably felt that God had abandoned them. Joseph Smith eventually asked from prison, a dark, stinky uncomfortable place where he couldn’t even fully stand up, “Where art Thou God?”
Jared Halvorsen talks about when God seems and feels hidden from us in this video below.
“Where art Thou God?”
Many of us are asking the same thing right now with so much confusion and bad things happening in our world. Especially with the violent killing and burning that happened three weeks ago at a church in Michigan. He made the video the day after that September 28 attack.
This photographer tells the story, in the video, below, of walking through the charred remains of the burned down church in Michigan. What she found was amazing! Watch below.
I just love that story! I love that despite destruction, she found images that reflected Christ, His love, and Heavenly Father’s love. Those images did not burn up. I love that she found such a beautiful image of God’s hand, the hand of Jesus Christ, pierced for his crucifixion, a symbol of His atoning sacrifice for each of us.
Joseph Smith had his vision of living peacefully and prosperously in Kirtland OH. Then the safety society collapsed, some of his closest friends turned against him, and he was put in prison. I love that despite the destruction and loss, he found comfort in his prison eventually. The Lord Jesus Christ replied to him, which is now Doctrine and Covenants Section 121, including these words:
“7 My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;
8 And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.
9 Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands.
10 Thou art not yet as Job; thy friends do not contend against thee, neither charge thee with transgression, as they did Job.
11 And they who do charge thee with transgression, their hope shall be blasted, and their prospects shall melt away as the hoar frost melteth before the burning rays of the rising sun;”
It often feels impossible to find God in loss and destruction. The story of the woman from Ghana, the story of Joseph, and the story of the Michigan photographer show us that sometimes we can see God’s hand, despite the loss and destruction. Sometimes God’s hand isn’t apparent. We might have to go looking, even digging, in the ashes, but God’s hand is there. I’ve had my own trials, like all of you probably have too, and I too have found God’s hand in the trials.
It finally feels like fall, y’all, instead of hotumn, LOL.
Above and below are some photos I took on my walk today. So beautiful! I feel like I’m Anne of Green Gables with her statement, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers!”
Whereas for all of September and the first half of October, almost every day we’ve had 70-90 degrees days, it’s now 50-60 degrees through the day. When I wake up in the morning, it’s chilly enough that I don’t want to wear my capris any more. Especially when I have to drive my son to his morning classes that are outside of the home for part of our homeschooling routine.
I’m really excited that I anticipated this cold time coming up and found some brand-new-with-tag Pioneer Woman jeans on ebay to buy, to replace two pairs of old jeans from last year that are either too worn out, or ahem, too small. This new PW pair of jeans is so comfy and cute! As much as I love thrifting, I just didn’t want to go to the thrift store and be tempted to buy more stuff on top of jeans that I need. I decided I’d just get some on ebay and not buy anything else and I’d probably end up saving money than if I went thrifting and bought more than $20 worth of stuff. Now I’ll never know what I missed :-).
I love that the jeans just slip on so easily and fit like a glove, since they are pull-on, slightly stretchy denim, with no zipper. Only Ree Drummond could make a pair of pull-on pants feel fashionable and not like something a toddler would wear. So perfect! They will work along with some of my other old pants, which used to be baggy on me, while I get more strict on keto, to fit back into the old pairs :-).
They are so cute!!! Only $20 on ebay, free shipping!
OK, on to the purpose of this post: decorating your home for fall easily and cheaply. I got all my fall decorations up last week! If you are looking for how to decorate your home for autumn easily and inexpensively read on! It is #thriftingthursday after all.
Here’s what you need for this project/what you can use:
-autumn-colored leaf garlands from Hobby Lobby, Walmart, amazon, or thrift store
-twinkle lights from amazon or elsewhere
-any kind of free or inexpensive printable banner you can find online, like here and here. I’m not super big into Halloween so I use Thanksgiving-themed banners for my fall decorating
-fall picture books with themes of harvest (like The Oxcart Man), apples, pumpkins, Columbus Day, Halloween, heroes, for Heroween, and Thanksgiving. If you have few or zero fall picture books, never fear! You can find them online using addall.com for used/thrift store prices, or of course new online. Go here to learn about using addall.com. I have collected mine through the years thrifting at thrift stores and used library sales.
-wax paper lanterns (just collect some fall leaves, then sandwich them in-between wax paper using an iron on low with thin fabric in-between the iron and the iron. Then form a cylindrical tube and tape the edges. You can put a small battery-operated tea light candle inside for a lantern effect.)
-any small type of fall decorations from Dollar Tree or other stores. I think that’s where the quirky turkey in one of my photos came from years ago
-paint-safe Scotch tape for places where you can see the tape, and green frog paint-safe tape, where you won’t be able to see it
So go ahead an assemble all those things. Then decorate your shelves, doorways, and windows with the garlands and banner. Use the paint-safe tape for attaching the garlands and banners.
If you have ledges, like I do above my windows, and doorways, you can put the picture books on those. My ledges have grooves that the book fits into to help prevent them from slipping. I discovered last summer, for Independence Day, that I could put my seasonal and holiday picture books on my ledges for decorating! Yay!!!
What an amazing discovery for my homeschooling mama, picture-book loving and collecting heart!!!! Here’s what my front room looked like last year before I made this life-changing discovery, without the books on the ledges.
Then here are my ledges this year. They are so purty!
Dangerous Journey is a child’s version of Pilgrim’s Progress. The March sisters act out Pilgrim’s Progress in The Little Women book. I always think of Little Women as a Thanksgiving and Christmas movie. The theme song of the 1994 movie gives off Thanksgiving vibes, the story starts on Christmas Day, the author Lousia May Alcott has a November birthday, all on top of the pilgrim journey played out in the story. (You have to read the book to get that, sadly, it’s not given in the movies very much or at all.) It’s such a great movie (the 1994 version) any time of year, but especially for Thanksgiving weekend.
If you don’t have ledges, use bookshelves, hutches, or coffee tables for the books. Display the books by putting them on top of the shelf or table with the pages slightly fanned out so they can stand up on their own.
If you have more than one or two books to put on top of the shelf or table, put the rest in a pile with the spines out, or put them in baskets if space is limited so the books don’t look cluttered. Baskets do wonders for organizing and adding beauty at the same time!
That’s it! Enjoy! Feel free to share any photos of your fall decorations in the comments below. I’d also love to hear if you have any fall picture book suggestions I don’t have pictured in this post.
Credit for All Photos of Conference Speakers and Images from it above and below: churchofjesuschrist.org
It’s time to play Fun Facts October 2025 General Conference! If you don’t know what that is, that is the semi-annual conference for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is a time when we get to hear people called by God to lead the members of the Church, as well as anyone else. They testify of Jesus Christ and preach to us about how to be better disciples of Jesus Christ. This is held and livestreamed every six months, the first weekend of every April and October. So we just had a conference over a week ago. It’s like the Sabbath Day on steroids, spread out over two days. I aim to make it a time of feasting spiritually and physically. More thoughts about that are here.
OK, so that’s about Conference. Now let’s talk about the Fun Facts game. This is a mass-marketed tabletop game that I love. You can read my review of it here. I love it because it generates conversation, laughs, and smiles as people connect over random topics as they answer questions. Every answer is a number. It’s not so much a trivia game, as it is a co-operative game to see if you as a team can figure things out to arrange your number answers in order. If you need the rules go here. After reading the rules, you can probably come up with your own DIY game using paper and pens or mini-white boards and dry erase markers, as well as a stack of question cards.
I like to provide customized Fun Facts questions related to General Conference talks. You can read my questions for October 2024 GC here, and April 2025 GC here.
Image Credit: boardgamegeek.com
Here are the questions for October 2025’s General Conference.
-Elder Gary E. Stevenson talked about two men involved in a conflict who made peace and are now good friends. One is a Muslim imam, and the other is a Christian pastor. They live in Nigeria, Africa, where they have established an interfaith mediation center. On a scale of 1-100, how much do you desire to visit Africa? If you already live in Africa, on a scale of 1-100, how much do you desire to continue living there?
-Sister Tracy Y. Browning spoke about the power of songs in the Children’s Songbook used in Primary. On a scale of 1-100, how confident are you in being able to sing the first verse of any song in the Songbook, without looking at the words?
-Elder Kelly R. Johnson talked about how when he was a child, his family used a cherry tree shaker to harvest cherries. On a scale of 1-100, how much do you like to eat cherry pie?
-Elder Jeremy R. Jaggi wore a lavender tie. How many items of lavender clothing do you own?
-Elder Jeremy R. Jaggi spoke of touring Hill Air Face Base in Layton Utah USA. How many United States Air Force Bases can you name off the top of your head?
Image Credit: amazon.com
-Elder Jaggi spoke of reading aloud to his children the Chronicles of Narnia series of books by C.S. Lewis. How many books by C.S. Lewis have you read?
-Elder Jaggi told the story that President Russell M. Nelson told in am October 2022 General Conference talk who toured a temple open house and noticed an altar in the temple. How many temple open houses have you attended in your life?
Credit for photo of sealing room in Rome Italy Temple from ldsdaily.com
-Elder Kevin Brown wore an orange and yellow floral tie. How many articles of orange clothing do you own?
-Elder Brown said that he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in his native Jamaica. He said that Jamaica to him is as the Sacred Grove is to Joseph Smith. He then shared the exact address of the home he was living in when he gained a witness from the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon is true. How many addresses of places where you have lived can you recall?
Image Credit: brittanica.com
-Elder Gerritt Gong told a story of learning to make fortune cookies as a young adult, and that he learned that fortune cookies aren’t authentically Chinese. On a scale of 1-100, how much do you desire to learn to make fortune cookies from scratch?
-Elder Gong said that every Sabbath Day, our church holds worship services in how many nations? (195)
-Elder Gong said that our Sunday meetings our held in how many languages? (125)
-Elder Michael Cziesla said that when he left his native Europe to serve a mission in Ogden Utah USA, he discovered green jello and funeral potatoes as popular foods in Utah. On a scale of 1-100, how much you do enjoy eating green jello? How much do you enjoy eating funeral potatoes?
-Elder Quentin L. Cook quoted Charles Dickens by saying that today is “the best of times and the worst of times” just as the setting in A Tale of Two Cities. How many books by Dickens have you read?
Image Credit: amazon.com
-Elder Cook said that in the past 36 months, nearly how many people have joined the Church? (900,000)
-Elder Cook said that this amount of 900,000 members exceeds what the Church’s population was during what anniversary year of the Church? (110)
-Elder Cook said the membership of the Church in Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, and Latin America grew by what percent? (20)
-Elder Cook said that the membership of the Church in North America increased by what percentage? (17)
-What year did Elder Cook say that Elder Holland, Elder Uchtdorf, and he, Elder Cook, were born, which was the year the Church celebrated its 110th anniversary? (1940)
-Elder James E. Evanson told a story of two service missionaries who met a woman in a park, who eventually got baptized. How many different parks have you visited so far this year?
-Elder Dale G. Renlund wore a pink and purple paisley tie. How many paisley clothing items do you own? How many pink clothing items do you own?
-Elder Renlund’s talk was “Taking On the Name of Jesus Christ.” He spoke of a professorship created by the University of Utah Medical School named after President Nelson, who was a heart surgeon and professor at the U of U. Dr. Robert Selzman is the first person to receive the professorship. Dr. Selzman realized that he wanted to be a kinder surgeon, as President Nelson was, in the operating room. Elder Renlund likened the way that Dr. Selzman took on the RMN (Russell M. Nelson) ethos as a doctor to the way we take upon ourselves the name of Christ when we get baptized. How many parallels did Elder Renlund make between these two pathways? (5) (What are these five parallels? Go here to read and find out!)
-Sister Sister Andrea Muñoz Spannaus spoke about prophets of God. She wore a purple dress. How many articles of purple clothing do you own?
-Sister Spannaus shared the story from the Bible about a woman who invited Elisha, a prophet, to come eat bread in her home. How many times this past year have you invited someone into your home to “break bread,” aka share food?
-Elder Ozani Farias wore a yellow tie. How many articles of yellow clothing do you own?
-Elder Ozani gave a talk titled “The Book of Mormon—an Immeasurable Treasure on Our Journey.” He gave several facts related to The Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
-How old was Joseph Smith when he translated The Book of Mormon? (23)
-What year did Joseph Smith finish translating The Book of Mormon (1829)
-What year was The Book of Mormon published (1830)
-How many days did it take Joseph Smith to translate The Book of Mormon? (less than 75)
-How many missionaries are serving around the world bearing witness that The Book of Mormon is true and that it testifies of Jesus Christ? (over 80,000)
-In how many countries are the missionaries serving? (more than 150 countries)
How many temples did President Oaks say that President Nelson announced, as of April 2025? (200)
-How many years did he say that it has been since the Proclamation on the Family to the World was announced by President Hinckley? (30 years)
-How old was President Oaks when he got the news that his father had died? (7) The news caused him to run to his bedroom and cry his heart out. Then his grandfather rushed to his side and told him that he would be his father. President Oaks said that grandparents can fill in the gap for parents. How many grandparents did you have living when you were a child, or have living now as you are a child?
-President Oaks assured us that people can repent in the spirit world after they die. What section in the Doctrine and Covenants tells us this revealed truth? (138) (verses 57-59)
That’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed Conference, and if you missed it, or want to watch again, go here to watch.
Last summer I read this amazing book by a homeschooling mom, Sarah Janisse Brown. It’s the book below.
Book Cover Image Credit: amazon.com
Her story is amazing! I’ll have to do a review of it another time, it’s too much to cover here. If you are a homeschool mom, you will love reading it. It’s one of those books that feels like you are enjoying a cozy mug of herbal tea with a cinnamon roll, while you lounge on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. It’s just such a lovely testament of the power of what one woman can do as a Christian wife and mother.
Sarah has 10 biological children and 5 adopted. She was homeschooled herself, which led her to homeschool her own children. While figuring out how to help her daughter with dyslexia, she created a fun way of homeschooling called funschooling.
Here is how to implement funschooling in your home, step by step, with a video explanation below.
Watch her video below to learn more.
Go here to see if funschooling is a good fit for you.
If you go here you can get an ebook from Sarah, for $10, full of homemaking tips, healthy recipes, family bonding ideas. I enjoy it!
Here is a fun article she wrote for a newspaper about chocolate. Then below is a video she did years ago, with her veteran mom advice about life with toddlers.
Her daughter with dyslexia grew up to be a lovely young lady who created a musical about the life of Jesus Christ, called His Story.
It’s Wellness Wednesday! It’s also the last day of Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days! A few months ago I blogged about the Maria Principle. That’s the truth from the life of Maria Von Trapp of Sound of Music fame. That is the truth that when you have the right material for work or play, life is so much better. So here are some things for work or play that you will make crunchy mom life more enjoyable.
I have a Pioneer Woman Air Fryer that my children gave me for my birthday over 5 years ago. I love mine! It makes it so easy to cook up meat and reheat meat! Just 12 minutes at 400 degrees cooks up to four raw hamburger patties, or 5-6 strips of bacon. If I had to buy an air fryer again, I would buy this one shown above. I love that it has a window to see the food inside. You can do the following six functions with an air fryer: air fry, bake, broil, dehydrate, roast, and reheat. I trust the Instant Pot brand after seeing how well my Instant Pot works so if I didn’t already have an air fryer, I would jump on this deal.
The rest of this list does not include photos because my laptop is being super slow about uploading photos to share so I’m mostly just putting links. Note that none of these links are affiliate, I receive no compensation if you buy the item through the link.
I have had an immersion blender for years. When you are making soups and want to make sure the soup base is uniformly smooth, an immersion blender is the way to go. This one looks super sturdy with a 1000 W copper motor.
These are so fun! Erin Bates Paine recommends Magnetiles as one of her 5 favorite ways to entertain children without a screen. Go here to learn about that. A basic set of Picasso tiles, a knock-off of Magnetiles, is linked above for $34.99, which consists of 100 pieces. Other magnetic toys on sale are a regular 32-piece Magnetiles brand here for $34.99, Race Car Picasso Tiles for $69.99 are here, and lots more sets are here.
This is one of the best kitchen appliances for a mom ever. It is a pressure cooker that allows you to cook things faster than a crockpot. You can put food in it then forget it, like a crockpot, but it cooks so much faster than a crockpot. Just make sure you always have at least 1 c of liquid when you cook your food in it, otherwise you will burn the food. So, yes, you can have a meaty meal ready in less than an hour without tending to it after you put the food in. My favorite use for it is to put in seasoned chicken thighs or legs, and they cook in less than an hour. Then I throw them in my oven to broil on low for 10-15 minutes to crisp up, and I have perfect crispy and juicy chicken. An Instant Pot can cook rice, cook eggs, make yogurt, cook potatoes, even bake bread or custards. The 6-quart version is on sale for $59.99, 45% off.
Now let’s talk about some fun family board games on sale. These are to help you and your family have less time on screens and more family bonding time, with conversation and laughter. Playing games can lower your stress hormones, increase oxytocin, and gives you fun without eating. The ones below are definitely classics!
Happy Friday everyone! I’m hoping to start a new series where every Friday I share something that starts with “F.” Let’s see… I could do fun, faithful, frugal, fabulous, fantastic, funschooling, fashionable, or funny. This is going to be fantabulous!
Today I’m sharing something to do with fun AND faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Since the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is this weekend, I’m sharing how to make fun activity packets to keep children quiet and adults awake during the streaming of the 5 sessions.
For this project you will need:
-plastic page protectors, if you want the pages to be reusable
-activity pages from LDS Church magazines (if you don’t have physical copies of the magazines, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered, see below)
-3 ring binders or clipboards to hold the pages
-dry erase markers
If you have a pile of Church magazines, just search them to find the Funstuff pages in the Friend magazine, or the Fun Stop pages in the For Strength of Youth magazine. Tear them out, put them in the plastic protecter pages, and bind them in a binder or a clipboard. Have them ready for the weekend with some dry erase markers and you are ready to go!
If you don’t have physical copies of the magazine, then go to the Church website and go to the search bar in the upper right.
-type in “fun stop” in the search bar and you will get a page like this, as shown below, or something similar.
Print out the pages you want, cover them with plastic page protectors, add the markers, and have fun with them this weekend.
Here are some other ways to find activity pages from the Church website:
It’s #thriftythursday! Today I’m sharing what I got for my thrifting trips during September 2025. I did weekly trips to find a flowy white skirt, which I’ve ben looking for all summer. I haven’t found one yet and now it’s fall. Sigh. Fall is not really a time to wear a white skirt. Along the way of not finding a skirt, instead, I’ve find all this other fun stuff, mostly clothes and books, and a few other little things. (Over here is what I found in May, June and July, and here is August’s.) I’m just about to the point of giving up on finding one at a thrift store and just buying one on amazon or ebay for between $15-$30.
Then maybe I’ll reduce my thrifting trips in October? Do I dare propose that? Once I get my skirt, I only have one thing left to thrift for that I really “need,” which is a lid for a pot that I’ve had since I got married or close to then, and somehow it’s gone missing in from the past move or two. Unless I decide I want to keep thrifting to find books and little games and stuff for Christmas gifts. It would be nice to get my Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving, and to find all my giftable things in super nice condition at thrift stores would be amazing.
OK, I’ll talk about the stuff at the very top at the very end of this post. The picture below shows my first September thrift haul.
I just love that tangerine colored top! And the shoes! Both pairs look brand new! Each pair was $6 from the Provo Deseret Industries (DI).
I have been wanting some super comfy casual white shoes that are good for standing and walking in for hours. These are perfect! They are Soft Science brand and still had the price tag, showing that they retail for $74.99. What a great deal!!!!
Some might say they look like nurse/Grandma/dowdy shoes but I don’t care. I think they look great and will go with a lot of my outfits. The clean soles show that they have never been worn outside. They were so pristine that I didn’t wear them for a few weeks after buying them, it just seemed like I should keep them virgin for a time after buying them, LOL. I finally tried them out this past week and loved wearing them!
The pink shoes look brand new as well. They replaced a pair of pink loafers I got about two years ago, which turned out to scuff easily and are uncomfortable. I gave them to Savers after replacing them with the pink ones above. I’m being better about giving away items equal to what I bring in.
Then here are some books above I got from the Provo DI the second week of September. A DK edition of the classic book Heidi!!! I don’t love the art work in the Table Talk book but it has fun ideas about making dinner a bonding family time, which I’m all about. Then the Hebrews for Dummies book to add to my Dummies collection!
Above is what I got when I went to the Provo DI the third week of September. The boots I got to replace the beige boots I got a while ago that are similar but now scuffed up a lot on one of the toes. Then two card decks (Hold to the Rod and the Dad Trivia) to add to our tabletime/culture time card decks. I might save them for Christmas stockings for my husband and me. We’ll see. Then I found a Grandpa Beck card game to play with my grandchildren when they visit, Nuts About Mutts. Then some interesting books.
I got fascinated by Mount Vernon when I toured it as part of a trip with my homeschooling co-op in May 2019, what I call my National Treasure Tour. I just love the fact that Mt. Vernon is not owned by the government but a private association started by a group of ladies.
Notice the price tag on the back cover. It probably came from the Mt. Vernon museum shop, which I visited 6 years ago. I wonder if that price is from over 30 years ago? That price seems low for a brand new book in a gift shop these days!
I’m a sucker for Christmas stories. I do have a lot of anthologies of Christmas stories for adults and children already, so over the past year I’ve been passing up most of them that I see when thrifting. This one though looked great and unusual enough for me to get. See the front cover above and below.
I also had this mini-haul below on another visit the third week. A basket for $1, and the book and the card game for $1.50 each. I love that the basket fabric was so clean. I didn’t have to take it out and wash it like I have with other fabric-lined baskets I’ve bought. I collect Professor Noggins’ Card Games, so I got the one below to add to my collection. So far I have: Art History, Medieval Times, Countries of the World, USA Geography, American Revolutionary War, American History, U.S War Between the States, Science, and Wildlife. I rotate through these for our mealtime games and occasionally use these conversation starters to help with dinnertime fun and bonding.
If you look close you can see a name written in ballpoint pen on the bottom of the card game. I assume that’s the previous owner’s name. So thank you Trish for donating the game to DI so I could pick it up a lot cheaper than on amazon, LOL. Then I got the math book to help me inspire my last remaining homeschooling child (age 16) to enjoy math, especially in the Pyramid Project class that he’s in, which I am mentoring.
Then here’s my last haul, below, the best one of the month. This is the one I did with my married daughter and two grandsons in tow. It had been a long time since I went thrifting with her. It was a quick trip! We met at the Springville DI, and she only stayed for about 15 minutes and then left, and I stayed longer. It was such a great haul for both of us. I was so happy to find the stuff below. I went looking for some fallish looking tops that would look fall with some orange or yellow in them but not be dark/drab/too brown or thick or heavy because it’s still hot outside. I also wanted them to be longer and cover my tummy and bum, as I have, ahem, gained a bit of weight as I’ve let up on being strict keto. It’s time for me to reign it in! These are all perfect to wear until I lose some weight and feel OK wearing my smaller tops that end at the waist. Plus I found two skirts to go with them! I love how the peach skirt goes with two of the tops and the black one goes with all three! This black skirt is a bit different than the one I got in the summer because it is a bit shorter, with knife pleats, so it looks sassier. My daughter said the middle top looks like a nurse’s scrub, which maybe it is, but I still love it and will wear it anyway. I might add some elastic to the sleeves to add cute puckers to the bottom edge of the sleeves.
Now for the books in the photo. My son is into drumming. I figured he probably would already know all the stuff in the drumming book but he could use it in case he wants to teach drumming. Then The King’s Equal is by Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, which I love so I figured it would be just as good. It appears to be a parable about marriage and gender roles. I can always give it away if I don’t like it, it was only $1.50. Then the Suzuki piano book 1 is to help my last child or any grandchild want to learn piano with Suzuki YouTube music and this book.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings I got because the whole family has read it but me. They’ve always read a public library copy. I finally decided it was time to get our own copy. It’s one of those books where I know it would be good for me to read it too to be culturally literate. I’ve tried and just can’t get into it. It was only $1.50. I just have a hard time enjoying fantasy. Narnia and Holly Claus are as fantastical as I get.
Then here’s the story behind the picture book, Prayer for a Child. I mentioned it in my post last Sunday and am copying it and pasting it below, in case you didn’t read that.
About a week ago, I read aloud the book Prayer for a Child by Rachel Field and illustrated by Elizabeth Orton Jones as part of our Morning Basket time for homeschooling. The book has a page in it with an illustration of children from all around the world, representing different races. I saw it and thought, this image is just so lovely. I wish I could turn this page into a framed piece of art for my wall, but I don’t want to take this page out of the book. I wish I could have another copy.
Here’s the image of children around the world that I want to frame from the book Prayer for a Child and hang on my wall.
For the last few days of this past week, I babysat my grandson who lives in TX (the one who was born 18 months ago, right before the solar eclipse in April 2024). His parents have been in town for a few days to go to the Faith Matters Restore Conference. I agreed to babysit the little guy for Thursday night, all day Friday and all day Saturday while they attended the conference. So I thought of stuff to do with a little toddler in tow. My first idea, after playing with some toys with him, reading to him, and taking him on a walk, was to go thrifting! I texted my married daughter and asked her if she wanted to go thrifting with me. She said yes so we met at the Springville Deseret Industries (DI). Guess what I found? The above book in a board book edition! It’s big and so beautiful! Only $1.50! So now I can break apart the other book and frame that page, plus any others I want to! When we got back from our thrifting jaunt, the first thing I did was read aloud my new Prayer for a Child board book to him. It’s such a gorgeous book, published in 1941. and winner of the Caldecott Medal, for its beautiful illustrations. When I read this book, I picture my mom a as a little girl because this book was written when she was turning 2 that year. I’m recalling a photo of her at that age, where and she looked like the little girl, with blond hair and soft eyes. I just love the glowing, comfy, warm, cozy adoring family life it depicts. It features a prayer worth repeating today, in the midst of all that’s going on, one I hope will resound in the home of every family during this pivotal, divisive time of earth’s history.
Then here are the books I got by trading with books at some Little Free Libraries. My homeschooling son has some classes where I drop him off and then I go on brisk walks while I pass the time while I wait to pick him up instead of going home. I’m much more motivated to go on these walks when I know I can trade out some books. Sometimes you just have to do things to bribe yourself to do habits that are so good for you but boring right? Listening to a podcast or YouTube video and checking out all the Little Free Libraries helps the medicine go down for sure.
The brown book hidden under the Ben Franklin book is like this one below, just a different edition, in a plain brown cover. I can’t wait to read it this winter for some hygge time.
What I passed up: a bunch of tops that were pretty and floral but too big, a bunch of books, including Christmas picture books, because I have so many, a magazine holder/stand with three baskets, and a bunch of games that looked interesting and fun. I have so many games that I’m holding off and not getting more unless they are truly compelling. Thrifting is fun but it can be easy to go overboard and get more than my home can hold so I’m being good at restraining myself.
Want some more thrifting fun?
Go here to see my top things I’ve thrifted for homeschooling.
I blogged a bit ago saying that with I wanted to share a few picture books about learning and school, now that the 2025-2026 school year is in full swing.
Today’s book is a beautiful collection of portraits and one-page biographies of men and women scientists. Besides all of these people being scientists, they all share the common bond of having faith in God. This book shows each scientist’s path in different school settings and the kindling of their love of science, which blossomed into significant contributions to the fields of science and/or math.
Here is a summary of the book below, copied and pasted, from amazon.com:
“Help children discover how science and faith CAN coexist in this profound, inspirational picture book biography about 28 scientists who’ve also professed their faith in God.
“Can faith in God and belief in science be compatible? Might science even deepen our wonder at God’s works?Absolutely!
“From medieval physician and Jewish theologian Maimonides (1135-1204) to American immunologist Kizzmekia Shanta Corbett (born 1986), readers will meet thirty-one brilliant men and women from different countries, backgrounds, time periods, and scientific disciplines who all share one thing in common: an unshakeable faith in God.
“You may already know about scientists like Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), the monk-scientist who discovered the hidden world of genetics, and Katherine Johnson (1918-2020), the African-American mathematician finally made famous in the movie Hidden Figures
“And there are some you likely never heard of like American astronomer Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) who discovered a comet in 1847, and Iranian theoretical physicist Mehdi Golshani (born 1939).
“Others include Bienvenido Nebres (born 1940), a Filipino scientist, mathematician and Jesuit priest, and Mary Higby Schweitzer (born 1955), an American paleontologist who found evidence that a T-Rex specimen was a pregnant female.
“Scientists of Faith reveals that faith in God isn’t just compatible with science―it can be a scientist’s most powerful force in the journey of discovery.”
That’s such a great truth! Let’s shout it from the rooftops!
I absolutely love this book! It’s so refreshing to learn about scientists who believe in God. I never heard about that in public school so this book is an absolute treasure to me.
Each two-page spread has a beautiful portrait of a scientist, done by illustrator William Luong, on the left-hand page with a biography of the scientist on the right hand page. The book starts with Galileo and ends with Karin Oberg. Besides all the scientists I have already mentioned, the other scientists in the book are:
-Robert Boyle
-Sir Isaac Newton
-George Washington Carver
-Dorothy Garrod
-Henry Eyring (father of Elder Henry B. Eyring, one of the apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The elder Eyring was a professor of chemistry at Princeton and then the U. of U. The first science building at BYU is named after his uncle, Carl Eyring, another scientist. I took a lot of classes there when I was a student at BYU. The building has a fabulous Foucault pendulum hanging in the foyer, btw. If you are ever in Provo, go check it out!)
-Dame Kathleen Lonsdale
-Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri
-Abdus Salam
-Mendi Golshani
-Dame Joeclyn Bell Burnell
-Georgia Mae Dunston
-Peter Dodson
-Aaron Ciechanover
-William D. Phillips
-Francis S. Collins
-Donna Strickland
-Rosalind Picard
-Katharine Hayhoe
-Jennifer Wiseman
-Suchitra Sebastian
-Omololu Fagunwa
Wow! So many names of people from all over the world for us to learn about! It’s just amazing that this book brings to light so many women and non-American scientists. Some of them are Christian, some are Muslim, and some are Jewish. They are all believers in science and God. This book is something rare for sure. It is perfect for use in a homeschooling Morning Basket. So I encourage you to get his book, either from your public library (use interlibrary loan if your library doesn’t have it, that) or from amazon, and enjoy it soon. My library didn’t have it so I requested it through interlibrary loan. Now that I’ve looked at it and read about half of it, I love it enough to buy it. I also love that it has a quote from each scientist with some aspect of faith in God, as well as an open-ended discussion on almost every other page. I’ll be using it in my LEMI Pyramid Project class this year to tell these stories to the youth.
I love the Bible scripture mentioned in the publisher’s note at the very beginning of the book: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.” -Psalm 111:2. These people show how a curiosity, belief in God, and reverence for God’s creations can be a part of a scientist’s journey.
Tree of Life Mothering 