recent resources

I wanted to share some resources that have been rocking my world lately!

Phill and I are renewing our efforts to eliminate debt and spend judiciously, and a wonderful friend here has referred me to Money Saving Mom, which I feel is an answer to prayers. Really and truly.



I have found so many great ideas, coupons, recipes, and encouragement already from this site. The first time I looked at it, there was SO MUCH helpful information that I got a little overwhelmed and had to walk away. It's that chock-full of goodness. 

Next, this list! I like it so much that I not only Pinned it, but I've referred to it several times since. So many great, simple ideas.

Now, usually I'm not one to spend hours poring over makeup ideas or hairstyles (I feel intimidated), but this website, The Beauty Department, keeps it wonderfully simple. I've looked at lots of the posts, and so much of it seems straightforward and manageable! In fact, this morning I felt brave enough to try something from a post.

Last, this isn't a website or a resource, really. It's just a book I love, and a quote from that book. I re-read it a lot, because it strikes a chord with me and my mother-heart.
The Cry and the Covenant (by Morton Thompson) details the life of Ignaz Philipp Semmelweiss, an OB/GYN who discovered in the mid-1800's that washing hands would stop the spread of puerperal fever.
Before this particular passage, Ignaz's father has just told him, at the age of 16, that he can go to the university in Vienna--a huge deal, considering their family is relatively impoverished and their country steeped in political upheaval. His mother is so proud of him, so happy for him, and telling him that she always knew he would do something incredible with his life. She's explaining to Ignaz that his potential is why they're sacrificing for him to go to school. Ignaz is humbled by this, and this conversation with his mother is what follows:

[Ignaz] "Maybe for some people there just isn't anything."

[Mama] "Oh yes. For everybody there's something. Fathers are proud of a baby. But all mothers hope. They look at the baby and wonder and hope."

"Don't hope too much, little Mama. You're like all mothers. You see me as better than I am. If you really knew--"

"You think a mother is doting? Foolish?"

"Blind, thank God."

"No, darling. This thing they know. And maybe as a girl, and maybe after they live with a man and bear his children, they learn that somewhere in every man is in his own notion of himself as he thinks he can be and dreams of being. It's always the picture of a great man. It gets strong and clear when he finds out what he wants to do. And then if the mother has made her faith in him be part of himself, and a good wife takes up where the mother leaves off...."

"And then--?"

"Why, then he could be born in a stable. That's what a woman knows. That's what she knows when she looks at her baby--all women, Mary or Magdalen. That's what I know when I look at you."