To all the lovely ladies in the Nashville, Tennessee area who are reading Simple Gifts. Our family will be out your way this spring for a nice visit, and to do a write-up for this magazine.
If your church or ladies group would like to have me come and speak while we’re there, just send me an email.
It’s here! It’s here! We had some pre-press problems, changed the cover, and waited… But now it’s finally here! (jumping up and down like a child on her birthday)
I’m so pleased with it. I loooove the Jane Austen font inside.
The Home Management Book really was always meant to be much more than just a calendar. It will help you organize your life by creating a personal agenda, using worksheets and instructions that I created to help me balance everything I do. I know that it will help you, too.
The whole system is based upon our Benedictine way of life. It flows from a family-centered approach to the Rule of St. Benedict.
In addition to the colour-coded week-at-a-glance calendar and the monthly block calendar with notables, you have the menu-planning pages, which are also dated and colour-coded to the Liturgical season, and even include important feasts and political holidays. Down the right-hand side is your shopping list. Those pages are followed by a Pantry Checklist (reproducible) and a ledger book.
I’ve included a section of reproducible home school helps:
There is an address book with quotes from various authors about letter-writing:
There is a section for keeping track of all those special people in your life who need prayers, and another for recording special events like births, sacraments, and deaths. You’ll find lists of fun holidays through the year, traditional anniversary gifts, a floriography, and wish list forms.
The “Care and Keeping” section will help you to record important medical and insurance information and includes reproducible food journal and fertility chart.
There’s a sewing plan to help you plan out an entire wardrobe, supplies checklist, size charts and project and swap records.
And a resources section complete with home-made cleaning recipes and home remedy recipes:
Finis
Over at the Simple Gifts Email List. We’d love to have you, so come along and join us for a cup of tea!
Check out this website - especially the info in the sidebar. Too late for a Christmas bear this year, but something to plan ahead for!
Shamelessly snitching Tesco’s tagline here. Because it’s true. Especially in the last few months - and going forward into the forseeable future. I think that frugality is always needed - by families of all sizes. And one of the best ways to be frugal is to barter. It’s a shame that barter is not as widely known or used as it once was. I really think that it may hold the key to economic sustainability. Call me crazy - many people have.
Perhaps it it the Benedictine in me. Our family strives for self-sufficiency and have always operated on the principle that we do for ourselves, and wherever possible make more to sell or trade with others who have a product or service we need. To that end, I have created the Simple Gifts ™ Barter Network. Our first regional barter network (for New England) is up and running. My hope is that it will grow, much like Freecycle ™ has grown to keep cast-offs out of landfills. If you are interested in forming a regional Simple Gifts ™ Barter Network, email me at nissa(at)gadboisfamily(dot)com.
I hope that this will be a blessing to families everywhere.
The Simple Gifts Home Management Book 2008. Here are some sample pages in case you were wondering what’s inside:
Block Calendar and Notables Pages - October 2007
and
Printed and bound copies are available for $79.95, CD editions are available for just $29.95. If you wish to purchase the CD edition, I also have handsome recycled 3-ring binders available. They’re great for decorating with your own artwork or scraps and are available for $8.95 each.
Is ready to order! Nearly 400 pages, it contains everything that you need to keep your household running smoothly including:
- Block Calendar with facing “Notables” pages (exclusive to Simple Gifts!), colour-coded for the Liturgical Calendar and featuring important feast days and Saint’s Days
- Week-at-a-glance pages colour-coded for the Liturgical Year and featuring important Feast and Saint’s Days
- Birthday/Anniversary Register
- Address Book
- Medical Information
- Dated Menu Planning pages with shopping list, colour-coded and featuring important Feast days and Saint’s days
- Prayer Intentions Log
- Ledger Pages (for keeping track of your accounts)
- Homeschool transcript pages
- Reproducibles
- References and resources galore, including home remedy recipes and cleaning tips, checklists, and shopping resources.
The Simple Gifts Home Management Book is an indispensable resource for your home. It is printed on high quality paper and coil-bound to lie flat. Order your copy in the shop today!
The Simple Gifts Home Management Book is also available on CD for you to download, print, and punch individual sections - so that you can build your own custom book and keep it in a 3 ring binder.
I am very pleased to announce that I will be joining the wonderful women of CatholicMom with a new monthly column entitled “Simply Speaking”.
And speaking of speaking, I will also be joining a marvelous group of Catholic women speakers. I am honored to be counted in their number.
If you would like to book me to speak at your parish, women’s group, or conference, please see the topics below, and then email me. I’d be thrilled at the chance to meet you!
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Presentations include:
Keep it Simple, Sister!: Creating a Life of Simplicity
The Family Cloister: Benedictine Spirituality in the Home
Christ, the Fulcrum: Balance in a Family-Centered Home
Angels Among Us: Seeing Christ in the World
Ordinary Time: A Natural Approach to Catholic Homeschooling
Fearful and Wonderful: A Natural, God-Designed Approach to Improving Your Family’s Health
Moments of Grace: Finding Joy Among the Chaos, Dirt, and Noise.
I’m sending this to remind you that I will be on air tomorrow at 2PM Eastern. The topic of tomorrow’s programme is “Keeping Christ in Christmas”. You can join the discussion by clicking the programme guide on the weblog and logging in.
You can get details on the programme, bookmark the programme by subscribing to its feed, and share the programme by placing a programme guide in your own blog sidebar (you can even customise the colour scheme!). There is a call-in number on that page, if you would like to speak to me live on the show.
Simple Gifts LIVE Podcast
Tuesday, 4 December
2 PM EST
Please join me, and spread the word!
The shopping cart has been fixed now. If you tried to place an order and couldn’t check out, please do try again. Brian had to fix a small bit of code that was preventing it all from working properly. Isn’t it amazing that a letter or space out of place can gum up the whole works?
Now that everything seems to be functioning properly, I’ll begin adding more things!
