Vehicle Emergency Kit

Here's a little kit I put together a while back for my vehicle. And yes, it was in the suburban when I had the flat tire, so if it had happened somewhere where Incident Management Team was not available to fix my jack issue, I would not have died waiting for my sweet husband to come save me. I've had a partial kit thrown in and out in no particular container for some time, but figured I'd better get it organized so stuff wasn't floating around and I'd know what I had. So I swiped an Action Packer container sweet husband hadn't used in months (you know, the one from the food room) and packed it up. This also served to make some more space in my food room to put a couple buckets of oats . . . :)

This kit takes minimal space in the back of my suburban and could easily fit in a car trunk as well. Yeah, you'll have to pack your groceries around it, but it's worth it to have a little preparedness with you!

We only have the one vehicle. If you have more than one, make one for each one you drive, or be ready to swap your kit over to the car you're driving that day. Here's what's in my kit (most of it's in the picture):

Bottled Water
Flashlight (the shaky kind--I'm actually not a real fan of this flashlight, but had an extra so in the kit it went. I also have a LED light on my key ring.)
Batteries if you have the kind of flashlight that takes batteries
Light sticks

Food--I have hard candy, old MRE crackers, and my Homemade Survival bar bricks
A couple of cheapo rain ponchos

A couple of cheapo space blankets

Wet wipes
Toilet paper roll (anybody with kids has experienced this emergency)
Diapers/Feminine needs (okay, I don't have diapers in mine since my kids are thankfully past that stage, but I used to keep diapers in the car when we used them and a change of pants/clothes for the diaper wearer or potty trainer)
Basic first aid kit (can't tell you how many times we've needed a bandaid at a ball game or the park)
Blanket
Umbrella

Hand warmers

A cute little buddy burner like cub scouts make with the cardboard rolled up in the tuna fish can and then doused in wax (just had one of these laying around, so I tossed it in)

Fire starting stuff in an old cookie tin (matches and dryer lint firestarters)
Hand sanitizer

Long sleeves for everybody (light jacket or button up shirt)

A box to hold it all

Cash (coins and bills) or a prepaid visa card thingy (stashed discreetly)

Outside the box:

Jumper cables, tool kit, extra car fluids (oil, power steering fluid, wiper fluid, antifreeze, etc.)
Jack, tire iron (which I now have both of ;-)

That's about it. Seriously, we can't all drive around with Incident Management Team's truck of goodies (what a shame), but your car is naked without some gear in it! Plus, you'll feel better driving around knowing you won't be one of those people stranded for days who survived on chewing gum and restaurant mints until somebody happened to find them.

Don't stop now! Click comments and read on for more great ideas!

Memorial Day

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives." --John Adams

Thank you to all who fought to protect the freedoms my family enjoys. Thank you thank you thank you.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Doctor--Lessons Learned from Being Half Prepared

I was almost too embarassed to post what happened to me yesterday, but not quite, because it's actually kind of funny and there are some fantastic lessons to be learned which hopefully you will be able to learn from my experience and not your own. Let me give you a little background.

I had a back surgery 9 years ago to correct a herniated disk, and have felt fine until the last couple of months when my back has really been hurting in the same place as before, so I've been going back to my doctor to figure out what's wrong. No big deal, except to get to a back specialist (and I DID prefer the one that did the original surgery) I have to drive 2 1/2 hours one way part of which is on "the most dangerous stretch of highway in the state". I'm still in the middle of figuring out what is wrong with my back, so I had an MRI done a little over a week ago and had to go yesterday for the results.

More background: Before I got married, I did some work on my own car. I took an auto mechanics class in college. I owned my own socket set and combination end wrenches. I CAN change a tire and also a fuel filter and the oil if I have to, but haven't done much since I married my sweet husband, because hey, why should I if he's so good at it? And I drive an 89 Suburban we affectionately call the Beast.

Even more background: We pray every morning as a family, and yesterday morning my son prayed that I'd get to the doctor and back safely.

So yesterday I was on my way to the doctor's office alone in the Beast and had made it out of our desolate county, past the dangerous stretch of highway, and about 5 miles from my exit on the interstate when the Beast started shaking. Thinking it might be the road, and knowing my exit was coming up before too long, I moved from the center lane to the right lane and when I did, the shaking got worse. Now here's where about 50 things go through my head at the same time--I realize it is NOT the road, but rather something wrong with my vehicle. I look ahead and see an exit I can take, and I pray real hard that I will get off the road safe when BANG!!! I am jerked back half way into the center lane by a blown front driver's side tire and as I'm muscling the Beast back to the right side of the road I see one very wide piece of shoulder right about where I can get to it, and amazingly I was able to limp the vehicle to that spot and stop WAY off the road without losing control or hitting any of the 700 other cars on the interstate. Whew.

I took a deep breath and thought, "where's my spare tire?" Hmmmm. Well it's obviously not in the front, so I got out and walked around to the back and voila--there it was in the back all covered with a piece of carpet and I remembered having to pack things around it every time we go camping--duh. Now, how do I get it out?

About this time, a sweet young mother had stopped and came to see if I was okay, so I used her cel phone (I'm a holdout here and don't have my own) to call my husband and ask him where the jack is because it is not with the tire. A Samoan looking guy also stopped and I'm thinking maybe he can get the spare tire out--I am on the way to see a back doctor after all.

He had a 6 ton jack which was still new in the box and he was so excited to get it out and use it, but my Beast has been "jacked up" and had extra large tires put on it, and his jack wouldn't reach any place on the axle or frame, much less be able to lift it high enough to put the spare tire on. I found my jack under the front hood (weird, I know) but it was just as short as his and was also missing a part to be able to raise and lower it.

He kept telling me how lucky I was, and then said, "You must have said your prayers." Well, yes. Actually I did. And so did my family.

Now in all my rummaging around finding the tire and jack, I was unable to locate a tire iron to loosen the lug nuts. And here I start laughing at myself. I WRITE FOR TWO PREPAREDNESS BLOGS and I don't have a tire iron or a jack that will lift my vehicle!!!

As I'm standing there shaking my head at the irony of my situation, the Highway Patrolman arrived. He had been called out to an "accident" which must have been how bad it looked to the other drivers, but it turned out it was only my flat tire. He had a tire iron that would work, but no jack, so he called in the Incident Management Team who arrived shortly with their truck full of goodies. They had a hydraulic jack, an impact wrench with sockets to get the lug nuts off in a hurry, a big hammer to bend the metal part of the fender back out that had been banged up by the blown tire AND an air compressor to fill my spare tire so I didn't have to drive to a gas station and top it off. I want their truck.

I arrived at my doctor appointment a half hour late, but alive and well, and after waiting another hour and a half got to see the doctor for a whole 3 minutes. I won't be needing surgery again and he referred me to his partner who specializes in non surgical back treatments. Seriously? Could we not have done that over the phone???

After the appointment I went looking for a tire since my spare was not the same size as my other tires and I knew I had a 2 1/2 hour drive home. Turns out that tires for 16 1/2 inch rims are hard to come by these days but the BigO guy called around until he found one at a competitor's store used but like new. Got it installed, hit the store for a couple other things, and headed home.

Total cost for a 3 minute appointment with a back specialist including copay, gas, new tire: $203.45, 11 1/2 hours, and at least 5 years off my life for that experience on the interstate.

And here's my new tire on the scraped up rim:

Here's what I did right:

I prayed.
I got as far off the road as I could.
I had a spare tire with air in it.
I had the knowledge and ability to change my tire myself if I had a jack and a tire iron.

Here's what I learned (some of these I already knew, they just got pounded in again yesterday):

When a tire blows, your vehicle pulls really hard in the direction of the blown tire.
Never assume you have a jack and a tire iron in your vehicle.
Just because you have a jack doesn't mean it will work.
Know where your spare tire, jack, and tire iron are (and how to use them).
A full size spare is better than a donut spare (unfortunately mine was somewhere in between).
There are some very good people out there willing to do a lot to help others.
A cell phone is sometimes a good thing.
Prayer is always a good thing.

Your assignment is to go to your vehicle (take your husband or someone with you if you need to), find your spare tire and make sure it has air in it. Find your jack and make sure it will lift your vehicle. Find out where to put it on your vehicle. Find your tire iron and figure out how to use it. Heck, for extra credit you could take your tire off and put it back on.

And next time you're buying tires, hunt down a used rim the same size as the ones on your vehicle and have the tire guys mount your best old tire on it. You now have a full size spare instead of a ridiculous donut spare.

Hope you learned as much as I did . . . :)

The Chicks Plot Their Escape . . . And So Do We

I feel like I've been slacking a bit on posting lately, but to be honest with you, I don't know how any of you have time to read my posts anyway! Spring is in full force here with the garden, yard work, Tball, school programs, field trips, someone needs a lunch packed, someone else needs clothes washed for tomorrow, and they all want to eat 3 times a day on top of it all (imagine that!). But seriously, I have at least 3 posts drafted and two in my head and on my camera, and one more requested, so it's just getting them written that is causing the trouble! ;-) Whew, enough about me, now on to your regularly scheduled reading.

Our cute little chickies aren't so little anymore. They are growing like the weeds in the garden. No wait, even faster than the weeds in the garden--I'm actually keeping up on those pretty well. We spent most of today making slow progress on a yard area for them and planning on building a coop. Some friends have offered to loan us their coop, it just won't be big enough when they're grown up so we'll be making our own at some point anyway.

So they are still in the chick box which is quickly becoming too small. Every morning I go in to change food and water (and usually a couple more times during the day--I'm working on a better food/water system as soon as we get them out of the little box!). And these crazy chickies have filled their feeder with straw (there's perfectly good food under the straw) and they all stare at me until I open the lid. As soon as the lid is open, one or more of them try to fly out of the box (see the wing on the right side of the picture?) Now, this takes some wrangling, as I still have one hand on the lid and now need to push chicks back into the box with the other hand!

It works best if I can bring a little helper with me! Fortunately for us, they haven't figured out they could just fly up and over the edge yet--they just fly up to the edge and stop there long enough to get pushed back in.Crazy birds! They're loving the worm and bug deliveries from the kids also! Hopefully some time this week we'll be able to get the outside coop/run finished and they can get out and get some exercise . . . and my husband can have his tool box back! :)

No Catch Up Post Yet, But . . .

Crazy busy here, but I'm tossing up a quick post with a link to one great survivalist site. Amazing amount of information on it and if you have more time than I do, you can spend some over at MD Creekmore's site. :)

"Recommended site: The Survivalist Blog - Live better, live Cheaper and survive when things get tough."

Survival Seeds--9 years Later

Check out my post at Utah Preppers for some important information for anybody storing Survival Seeds. Mine were sealed in a can with an oxygen absorber and kept relatively cool and definitely dry throughout their storage. They are 9 years old, and I'm planting them this year and have a few results already. Read the report here.

Or if you want the short version: don't store your seeds too long--a few will grow and a bunch of others won't. :) If you're planning on harvesting your own seed, get a reference book on it and start practicing now.

Making Chocolate Soap

My mom found a recipe for chocolate soap, so I thought I'd give it a try with a few friends, because, be honest with me ladies, who wouldn't want to bathe in chocolate??? So here it is--chocolate soap:

40 oz olive oil
24 ox coconut oil
1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
4 TB cocoa powder
8 oz lye
4 cups water

The process is the same for all soaps, this one just happens to be chocolate, so you could also use the plain ol' soap recipe here if you don't like chocolate or want to try a regular soap:

16 oz coconut oil
16 oz olive oil
32 oz lard
24 oz water
9 oz lye

Both of these recipes will fill a 9x13 pan--that's a lot of soap. You can cut them down as desired.

Step 1: measure your water in a glass bowl:Step 2: Put on your protective gear and measure your lye separately. Lye is horribly caustic--get your rubber gloves, apron, and eye protection on! I'm using my postal scale to measure the ounces, and I got my lye online from The Lye Guy.

Step 3: Open a window or take the whole operation outside, and add the lye to the water while stirring. Seriously bad cough hack ick fumes here. Maybe a mask of some sort would be helpful. When you add the lye to the water, the mixture gets really hot. Don't be holding it on your lap!

Step 4: Let the lye water sit and cool down while you melt your oils in a double boiler. Big pot inside a bigger pan with water in the pan and the oils in the pot:

Heat your oils until they all melt. What you are trying to do is get the lye water to cool down to 110 degrees at the same time the oils hit 110 degrees. Not an easy task!

See? I got it too hot, so I had to put cold water and ice in my bottom pan to cool my oils down quick.

Step 5: When the oils and the lye water are both 110 degrees give or take a degree, add the lye water to the oils while stirring with your stir stick (used to mix milkshakes) or spoon if you're real ambitious. DON'T turn the stir stick on yet!

Step 6: When the oils and lye water are combined, do a little pulsing with the button on the stir stick, gradually increasing to holding the button down all the time while stirring the stuff in the pot.

If you use a spoon, just keep mixing. It will take an hour or more to get to the next step. The stir stick gets it done in about 20 minutes.

Step 6: Mix until your soap reaches "trace". This is when it's kind of thick like pudding, and it leaves a "scar" when it's dripped across the top of itself. Like this:

Trace is when you add any extras like essential oils for fragrance, oatmeal, flower petals, etc. We just added the cocoa powder. You could add some orange essential oil here and have Pim's soap, or peppermint EO and have peppermint patty soap. Might try one of those next time :) Mix it all in.

Step 7: Line your pan or molds with wax paper, parchment paper, or a light coating of spray oil to help the soap get out when it's time to come out. I've also been told if you use a flexible mold, you can put your soap in the freezer and it will pop out of the mold easier. We're sharing this batch of soap, so everybody brought a bread pan to put her portion of the soap in.

Step 8: Pour the soap into the molds, then wrap in a towel to keep it warm and let it sit for 24-48 hours.

The regular soap was hard enough to come out in 24 hours, but this chocolate one was still pretty soft since it had a higher proportion of liquid oil to start with, so I let it sit about 48 hours before taking it out. Strange thing, as this soap hardened it turned from a milk chocolate color to a dark chocolate color. Still looks yummy :)

Step 9: Cut the soap into useable size pieces, then put it somewhere where you won't be bugging it every day and let it cure for 4-6 weeks. The regular soap we made was ready in 4 weeks, this one might take longer since it's so soft still. Don't leave it sitting on your table or anywhere that's high traffic in your house, or your son might come take a taste (just a little lick, mom) and realize it's not really chocolate after all. :-)

Delicious!

Happy Mother's Day! A Song for Moms

Here's a Mother's Day treat for all you moms out there! (I never sound like this by the way. Really. Just don't ask my kids to verify that.)

Planting and Transplanting Seedlings

Approximately 4 weeks ago I started some seedlings for my vegetable garden. (That's how far behind I am--I'm just now putting it on here!) Gardening is not really my forte. I am a lover of the greenhouse and their perfect little plants, and have always been a bit intimidated at starting my own, so I never have until this year when I wanted to try out some heirloom seeds and in order to do that, I had to actually plant the seeds instead of run to the greenhouse and buy little plants. So I sent my husband to the store to get seed starting stuff and he came home with this: Jiffy seed starting kit. Super easy. Funny little hockey puck looking disks that you add water to and they expand into little dirt balls that you can plant seeds in. I had my kids help plant the seeds, which goes against my wanting-to-know-that-everything-was-done-exactly-like-I-wanted-it-to-be nature, but was good for them and we got the planting done super quick that way also. We had 2 different tomato varieties, 2 onion varieties, and 4 pepper varieties (really, I don't like peppers all that much, but I had ordered a seed pack that had all these peppers in it, so I'm planting them and then I'll use them in salsa or just dehydrate them at the end of the season--and my son learned that you don't plant hot pepper seeds and then lick your fingers!). Some of the seeds were packed for this year and some were from an old "survival seed" can that was packed for 2000 (yeah, that's 9 years ago). We colored flat toothpicks with markers and made a key that I put in my notebook so we'd know what dirt balls had what seeds in them.
Then I followed the directions that came with the Jiffy kits. I put them in a warm place out of direct sunlight with the lid on mostly until they sprouted, then had the lid cracked but still on for a while until the plants got taller, then took the lid off completely. I've put them in a window that gets morning sun now, and they've spent time outside also. Here are the little tomato plants at about 3 weeks old. These are actually the 9 year old ones. They've done pretty well. The 9 year old onions and peppers have not done well.The tomatoes have done so well, that they needed to be transplanted to bigger pots, and being the cheap frugal gal that I am, I opted for these FREE pots out of newspaper that the gals at Food Storage Made Easy demonstrated so well. My cup was not so easy to work with as theirs, but still turned out some fine cheap newspaper pots to put my little tomatoes in. And yeah, I buried them as deep as I could in the new pots. Apparently they will grow roots along the buried stem and be stronger, healthier, happier big tomato plants. (If you look real close, you can read small town USA news on my pot.)

I'm keeping them indoors for a couple more weeks until I'm sure it won't freeze again since I don't want to risk having them DIE after all the work I've put into them! Then I'd have to go to the greenhouse and buy tomato plants and not be able to play around with collecting the seeds this fall. That would be a bummer.

I also got a very cool book in the mail yesterday on growing and harvesting non-hybrid seeds called Seed to Seed. It is fantastically in depth--I got to spend some time with it today while in the doctor's waiting room. It covers every plant you could possibly want to grow in your garden (3/4 of them I've never even heard of) and how to plant, grow, and harvest seed from each of them. Pictures included, along with loads of information. Definitely recommended.

Dehydrating Onions

Sorry for the trouble, but this post has moved to our new blog location.  Go straight to Dehydrating Onions! Thanks!