Preparedness Christmas

Preparedness Stocking Stuffer Swap

You all know Christmas is coming.  If your house is anything like mine, you’ve got stockings to fill, and usually Santa is a little more sparse on the grown-ups stockings.  Do you stuff your own? Use a sticky note to remind your Santa not to forget the stocking?  End up with stuff in there that you really don’t want or need?  Of course I’ve never had any of those happen, I’m just asking ;)

Anyway, this year, I thought I’d have a little stocking stuffer fun, so I am hosting a preparedness stocking stuffer swap over at my blog.  If you are interested in giving and receiving some fun preparedness/self reliance related stocking stuffers this year, please join in the fun.  Here’s the basics: I will assign each participant a new friend for whom they will prepare and ship a stocking full of prep related goodies. And another new friend will be shipping goodies to you.  How fun is that?  And if your Santa is really on the ball and already stuffs your stocking, you can just call it a preparedness gift exchange. :)

stockingswap Preparedness Stocking Stuffer Swap

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Country Living Mill Group Buy

country living millYou all know why you need a wheat grinder.  There’s only so much you can do with all the wheat in your long term storage if you can’t grind it into flour.  So just in time for the holidays we’ve got a special buy on the Country Living Grain Mill.  This is a hand crank grain mill that is built in the USA of industrial grade components and has a lifetime warranty.  It is relatively easy to crank as far as hand grain mills go.  My small kids can grind flour with it.  You can check out my full review, and see videos of the mill in action on my blog post here. (more…)

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Dry-pack Christmas

For Christmas this year, we decided to forgo gifts and add to our dry-pack food supply. With access to a dry-pack canner through the local unit of my Church, I decided the most cost effective and efficient route this time would be to buy in bulk and do the canning myself at home. I purchased all of the food and supplies from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Home Storage Center in Sandy.

We were able to get everything we wanted except wheat which they were out of until the first of the year. I will be going back in a few weeks to finish off that part of the order. I did learn exactly how much will fit in a 4Runner, although I had more than the traditional blind-spot to worry about on the drive home. For this round, I canned rice, sugar, pinto beans, black beans, white beans, potato flakes, dry milk, dried onions, apple slices, and both quick and regular oats. (more…)

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Making Preparedness a Family Activity

One of the best ways to prepare and to get your family on board with preparing for an emergency is to include them in your preparations. This may seem a daunting task, but as Phil801 has shown us with his eight children, it can be done. Just look at some of his How-To posts to see evidence of them helping out.

For some of us though, we may just be starting out, or we may not have our family on board with what may be for some a significant lifestyle change. Fortunately, the LDS church which has always urged preparedness from its members has had the foresight to put together a series of family friendly preparedness activities which are perfect for those families just starting out.

You can access the activity list and lesson plans here.

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Preparedness Christmas: Stocking Stuffer Ideas

This will be the first of a couple themed posts around having a “Preparedness Christmas”. With world and U.S. conditions being what they are, if you’re like me the last thing you can stomach right now is the idea of spending a bunch of money on silly toys and other frivolous items that will be either lost or destroyed (and somewhat unappreciated) within a week or so of Christmas. Christmas gift giving is a great time to think about sharing the security and comfort of being prepared with the rest of your family.

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