American Family Now has moved!

This site will no longer be updated. You can find us by clicking here, or visiting www.americanfamilynow.org. Posts written from June 2010 to April 2012 will remain available here indefinitely, but we would love for you to follow us on over to the new place where you will find additional resources, more recent family stories, and new ways to join a growing community. So hop on over here and click subscribe to start, or continue, receiving updates of new posts and join in the fun!

Almost There!

And thus ends my babymoon guest posts. Thank you so much to all those who shared their thoughts with us! I do hope you, our readers, found their stories thought-provoking, encouraging, and challenging. I know I have! If you missed out on any of them, here are quick links to their posts. You can also find them under “guest posts” in the Things We Do, Done, and Digg drop down list on the sidebar.

• Make Your Own Herbal Remedies ~ Nancy @ Nama’s Natural Remedies
• What is a catechism? ~ Chaz Reed
• How to create a backup plan for your family ~ Andrea @ Frugally Sustainable
• 4 important reasons to keep a pantry ~ Kim @ Homestead Acres
• Small space living, and lessons learned ~ Carolyn @ The Mobile Home Maker
• The freedom to make bad decisions ~ Ryan @ Total Survivalist Libertarian Rant Fest
• Why you should consider free-ranging your kids ~ Lenore @ Free Range Kids
• Banishing the stay-at-home blues ~ Sheila @ To Love, Honor, and Vacuum

Chickie is three weeks old tomorrow, and what a doll she is! I can’t wait to share about the last month and a half of our life, but at the same time I want to hold out a little longer because the space on this site for pictures is used up, and purchasing more doesn’t make sense when the new site will be open in just two weeks.

That’s right! The grand opening of our new website is scheduled for April 23^rd! On that date I will write a quick post here sharing the website link so you can find us. That will be the very last post on this blog.

Among the first posts at this new site, we will tell you (and show you!) all about our recent life on the homestead, including the recent addition to our family, our growing flock of hens, our more permanent solutions for grey water and humanure, the latest horseless carriage in our yard, and Papa’s greenhouse project, plus more!

It’s hard to believe that in less than one month we will have been living in our camper for a whole year. It has been a grand experience (one I intend to write more about this spring/summer), but we are ready to move forward and, as the previous paragraph suggested, take steps that will bring us yet closer to building a little off-grid cottage for our growing family.

With that said, please be patient with us for the next couple weeks while there are no new posts. The 23^rd will be a brand new start and I’m looking forward to sharing with you regularly again.

And a happy belated spring and Easter!

New website to open in April!

We announced earlier this year that Papa and I have decided to start our own website to replace this free blog, but I also told you that we had no idea what we were doing or when such a website would actually come into existence.

I am VERY pleased to tell you that our new website, by the same name, will be open to the public when I return from my babymoon. I’m comin’ back with a bang!

I don’t have a specific date for you because I don’t want to say for sure when I’ll be ready to start blogging again, but I do know it will be sometime late April. Until then I have surprises to keep you visiting here (you’ll find out about that on Friday), and when I’m ready I’ll return and tell you where you can find us!

I want to give a big thank you to all our readers, you have been such an encouragement to us and we are thrilled to be supporting a growing community of like-minded families.

Get ready!

The Big Change

Enough hinting, I’m ready to tell you AFN’s big news. I’m so excited! First, a little background.

 

Recently, some of our readers began coming forward and emailing us their personal stories. Let me tell you, I had no clue our little blog had become an influence on other families! I tell you this humbly, but it honestly shocked me when one woman said she and her husband bought 20 acres and a camper, in part because of the encouragement our story offered them!

Every reader here is so important to us. We really appreciate the small, but growing community we have found ourselves in, and hearing from you has inspired us to take this as far as we can.

What does this mean? Papa and I want to take the giant leap from basing American Family Now on a free blog to starting our own blog-style website! This would enable us to have more control over what our blog looks like, and what features and resources it has to offer you, our readers. There is but one little setback.

Neither of us are computer programmers or website designers, and when it comes to making a website of our own, we are in way over our heads. Believe me, we’ve tried other web pages in the past, and never got beyond a basic front page design.

With that said, Papa and I are always up for a challenge, so we have downloaded a program to help us, and expect to use WordPress hosting so we are familiar with the management aspect. I can’t give you a date when our new site will be open, but I wanted to let you in on our project for two reasons – so you can join in on our excitement, and so you can offer us ideas while we are in the development stage. Is there something missing from our blog that would make it more enjoyable or useful to you? Anything you would like to see more (or less) of? Here are a few ideas we’re working on.

• A page with how-to posts and videos to help you on your own homesteading journey
• A community page to help bring our readers together
• Sponsership and affiliate programs to support the website

We have even created a slogan, and a button you can share that express our family and our purpose for AFN, but you’ll just have to wait until the website is open to see them!

Papa and I have been tossing the website idea around for a while, but because of you we decided that 2012 is a good year to get started. If you have friends or family interested in a homesteading, off-grid journey, please share our blog with them. The bigger the community we build, the more helpful and supportive we can be for each other. Let’s do this!

getting back into the swing of things

Managing two blogs on just 2-3 hours of internet time on my laptop each week is not an easy task, but it is something I’ve grown accustomed to. I have a system of jotting down notes for a post, writing it out on paper, typing it up when the generator is running (my battery is shot), saving pictures on the desktop at the same time, and then finally taking the finished product to my WiFi spot all by my lonesome self each Friday (or Saturday) evening.

 

(“I want to be a ballerina!”)

This system has made scheduling posts on a weekly basis essential, because one, I dislike typing posts and managing the blogs on Papa’s phone (our daily internet access), and two, having the ability to access the internet with my laptop more frequently is not practical for our family.

While being off-grid is a joy, it also poses its challenges, and this would be one of them. Since moving off-grid we have had many interesting topics to write about, but in the process, it has become more challenging to write about the day-to-day stuff. So much is happening every week that it is hard to squish it all together in my weekly posts with all the other things we do.

So, four paragraphs later, I want to recap the last three weeks for you as best I can, to give you an idea of what life on our little homestead has been like recently.

 

(“let me take a picture of you!”)

At the same time Papa was replacing frozen pipes (which we’ll be sharing a video on soon) and toilet, I was coming down with a very strange virus that left me all but immobile for the week between Christmas and New Years. Thanks to Papa and my mom I was only alone with the kids for three days, but by the end of it I was so anxious to be feeling normal again, able to be there for my kids and take care of our home.

The first week of January, Papa and Pal both came down with the bug, and while it didn’t hit them quite as hard, I was back in my prime and able to help them feel more comfortable. There is nothing like being stuck to the couch for a week to make you thankful for daily duties to give you satisfaction in life!

That same week, the kids and I worked on homeschool projects, did some extra cleaning around the home, and otherwise enjoyed quality time together after the busy (but lovely) holiday visits to family.

 

(playing a homemade tamborine)

This week I had another prenatal, followed by a play date with my sister-in-law and her four month old daughter. I had also scheduled an additional two play dates, which I don’t normally do all at once, but the snow/sleet storm we had kept us home. Instead of being out and about almost every afternoon we’ve been working on our January rhythm; making muffins, musical instruments, reading books, and playing in the snow.

Every day we begin leisurely around 8:00 or 8:30am (Papa leaves for work at 6:30am), eat breakfast and do our Bible study at the table. The kids then play independently a bit while I help individual ones get dressed and drink my coffee, we settle down to a half hour or so of “school” activities, usually followed by more play and straightening up together. Lunch, quick clean up, and outdoor time for the older two while Pal naps. Craft projects, reading together, dishes to wash, and more independent play make up the afternoon. Papa arrives around 4:30pm, supper at 5:00pm, visiting until 6:00pm and kids’ bedtime follows. Papa and I work on joint or individual projects, sometimes watch TV, and shut off the lights anywhere between 10:30 and 11:30pm.

Our days are rarely quiet, usually busy, but they have a rhythm which I have learned to recognize and appreciate.

As a side note, with Christmas gift-making over, Papa and I are now working on a really exciting project in the evenings which I can’t wait to share with you! There have been some really neat things going on behind the scene here at American Family Now and we are brewing up something super big in response, which I hinted at a couple weeks ago and I can hardly wait to tell you about in full! Let’s just say, we have some courageous and awesome readers, and because of you, American Family Now will soon be changing in a big and cool way! Stay tuned for full disclosure!

my bad

I totally brainfarted tonight, as we say around here. I had a few posts ready to go for this week, and then totally forgot tonight was my WiFi night until just now, instead starting a Christmas present for Girlie. By the time I realized my mistake, I had about one hour of a window, which is not enough to upload posts with pictures. So, I apologize, but you will just have to wait until next Friday to read my posts!

In the meantime, happy gift making!

Mama

a few changes

A whole week without posts, I can’t imagine how you have managed without updates from our family! (I do hope you hear the sarcasm) Even with the week off, I was in doubt for a few days whether I would have enough time to accomplish my short-term goals for blog development before the time I told you I would be back. Despite the craziness of the past couple weeks I have still managed to make a few changes and breakdown my goals into easy steps which I can take over the course of the next few weeks while still posting updates.

a friend comes to visit

 Updates to AFN this week include adding mentions of our newest baby and house updates on the Who We Are page and Q&A. The Store page has been updated with our current Sale on comfrey salves in prep for the release of our new remedies this fall.

 I also removed comment moderation, which means new visitors will be able to share a comment and not have to wait until I approve it to see their comment on the page. Spam will hopefully be caught by the WordPress program, but if not I will delete it as soon as it is spotted. The last of the noticeable changes is the option in the side column to add AFN to your RSS feed, which some blog readers prefer over email subscription. We want this blog to be convenient for our family, friends, and new visitors to enjoy.

 I can’t wait to put all my ideas in action, but it may take some time. Keep checking back to see what’s new. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already, and share your thoughts – we love comments!

Taking a week off

The library has become a regular source of learning and entertainment, but I am only just beginning to recognize the benefits it offers me.

Last week I borrowed a book just for me, Blogging for Business by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulas. I now have a ton of ideas I want to try out to develop my blogs, American Family Now and Birth a Miracle Services. I want to make them even more useful, enjoyable, and easy to use, for current readers and new ones, and experiment in additional ways to support our family through these blogs.

If you have been following AFN for a while, you know my internet access is limited, and I have about 2.5 hours a week set aside for me to visit our local WiFi spot and post updates. This leaves me with zero time for blog development, or marketing development of my book, Inspired Birth. So I have decided to take off the week of September 4^th to give me a chance to try some new ideas. Long story short, you won’t see any posts here until September 9^th. In the meantime you can check out our old posts by looking through our categories, or using the search box.

Have a great week, see you soon!