2018 December Prepping Updates

Started the new thread.

We had company for 2 weeks, it was nice. Some only intended to stay a week, but stayed longer due to circumstances, and we loved it.

Made a pile of flannel washcloths and doll blankets for one family member.

10 pints of hickory syrup made for gifting during the holidays.

Sewed 2 small gift baskets to give as gifts to service people. Filled them with goodies, the homemade hickory syrup, some candied nuts, and some crunchy mix.

I also made 6 microwave bowl cozies to sell in a different shop.

And finally, took a flip top travel soap container and made flannel boogie wipes that fit in it. I made 35 wipes, but only about 8 fit in the container. There are several mild, liquid solutions that can be made, I'll find one and put the instructions on the soap box bottom before I mail it off to the recipient.

We took a 'Family of Four' vacation! Our daughter is getting married in 6 months, and our son is home for a few months, in between his soccer seasons. It's our last chance to go away, just the 4 of us, before the wedding.

I made 1 on-line purchase that could be prep-related (2 if you count the Bath & Body Works candle sale  )

Got news that my dad took a bad fall, while we were away and broke his shoulder. He's 86, so this is not good. He lives 2 hours from me, so the next few weeks are going to be hard . I'll have to travel 2 hours to have extended stays with him to relive my brother. Not sure how I'm going to even begin to get Christmas 'done' around here, never mind keeping up with anything prep related (or this site, for a while). Other than a couple of on-line Christmas gifts, I've got NOTHING done, yet.

If I'm missing, for a while ... I'm on 'Dad Duty'. I'll take my laptop and probably get on at night.  

Ho-Ho-Hummmmm  

RM, hope all goes well with your Dad.

Yesterday was a nice day so I started all the generators, put a load on them and then topped them off with fuel.

Ordered some survival bars from ebay, on sale so I got them to keep in the vehicles along with our get home bags.

Picked up 1000 rounds of 5.56, on sale (269.00), didn't need them but couldn't pass up the deal.

Taking the grandson out of school early a couple days this week, last week of deer season and he has an extra doe tag. In our neck of the woods we believe in the recycle program when it comes to doe tags.

Ready Mom sorry to hear about your Dad. I hope he gets better soon

I hope your Dad gets better soon, RM. I'll keep him in my prayers.

Only thing I got done today was a massage. I needed it, too, twanged a muscle in my back two weeks ago and it's just now starting to feel better. The therapist really gave it a workout, and it feels even better, almost healed. She gave me some stretching exercises to prevent it from happening again.

Just got some new pics of the auction for tomorrow night and they have cast iron skillets....

Is there such a thing as having to much cast iron cookware ?

Got those emergency food bars, very wide temperature range on them, from -22F degrees to 149F degrees, also good until October 2023 (5 years).

Going over the daughters house to cut up the deer the son in law got yesterday, that makes 4 deer this year between me, grandson and son in law. I'm going to make some jerky and sausage out of some of it.

Going to an indoor flea market tomorrow afternoon, we've never been to this one before, hope to pick up a few items.

Scored on 18 bags of baby carrots today for .19 cents ea We get 2 pints per bag when we can them.... Going to love me some veggie soup pretty soon

With Christmas shopping eating into my budget I haven't done as much this month as usual. Got a good deal on pasta sauce for short to mid term preps (2-3 years) to fill in the space I had set aside on the shelves. And I did splurge on some more antibiotics for my fish - took advantage of some sales to get more Fish Mox and Fish Doxy to round out the medical supplies.

Today was grocery shopping and running errands day.

Also got some good news. I toasted an external hard-drive a year or so ago that had thousands of pictures on it dating back to 2006 when we started building the house. I didn't even care about that or the documents that were in the HD, though. I was heart-broken that the last pics we have of my MIL with the family were in that drive. Today, as a last-ditch effort, I took the HD into a computer dude in town. He smashed the case, took out the drive, and is in the process of downloading the works with Linux...Windows 10 wouldn't function with it. On Monday, I'm taking in a new HD, and will now have everything! I'm pretty happy right now.

Grocery shopping:

Restocked what we used.

Husband is restocking canned goods - Spam, fruits and veggies, some stews, etc. Since he's got a list of needs, not sure what all he got.

I've been sewing for Christmas - tote bags, fabric baskets and bowl cozies, and using fleece for other stuff - so far a neck gaiter that I will be copying for others. There's still more to do. Also made a long lace vest for my Mom.

I've also been ordering an assortment of prep stuff as Christmas presents for people in the know. Chargers, warm woolies, slippers, watch caps, and the like for other people.

Husband got a surplus dosimeter? Something to measure radiation. Not sure what it is, but he's happy.

After I twanged my back 2 weeks ago, therapist told me to get a large exercise ball and use it instead of a chair to sit upon when at the computer. She says the micro-movements of balancing on the ball will strengthen my core and help prevent future incidents. So I bought one today. I'll report on how it goes...

Cinnamon wrote:

Also got some good news. I toasted an external hard-drive a year or so ago that had thousands of pictures on it dating back to 2006 when we started building the house. I didn't even care about that or the documents that were in the HD, though. I was heart-broken that the last pics we have of my MIL with the family were in that drive. Today, as a last-ditch effort, I took the HD into a computer dude in town. He smashed the case, took out the drive, and is in the process of downloading the works with Linux...Windows 10 wouldn't function with it. On Monday, I'm taking in a new HD, and will now have everything! I'm pretty happy right now.

Cinn .. I back up my backed up backup! I have THREE! I had a dead harddrive with photos on it, too! Lost some photos in that death. So, now, I back them up. Then I back that up, in case it fails, so that I still have a copy. Then ... just because I'm terrified to loose my photos ... I back it up again! It's a pain to transfer everything to three drives. But I feel SO MUCH better. -k

RM/Cin, I'm not smart when it comes to computers and how they operate but can't you just back up your stuff and then copy it to a thumb drive. I don't back up anything, I just copy it to a thumb drive and also print a hard copy of it. I have nothing on my computer, just the thumb drives, 2 of them. One is kept handy and the other is kept in the gun safe.




Made and smoked a mess of venison jerky and about 6 pounds of sausage. Had the grandson and son in law help, so they know how to make it once I'm gone. They said it's a lot of work but in the end it is worth it. Filled the tractors up with gas and diesel since it's been pretty nice outside.

Cut up a couple of trees they were down since spring and hauled them down for firewood. I should just sell it since I already have about 4 or 5 years worth already stacked.

The hard drive WAS the backup from 3 computers ago - it is external to the computer.

Each time I get a new computer, I get a new backup. I have another external drive for this computer.

We also now put stuff on 3 different thumb drives, one in the home safe, one in the safe deposit box, and one stashed in the LTS.

Today - I got a check for stuff sold at the consignment shop, so that was nice. Also sent off some Christmas presents to distant people, so that's taken care of.

Still sewing more gifts and slowly decreasing my stash.

ReadyMom wrote:

Cinnamon wrote:

Also got some good news. I toasted an external hard-drive a year or so ago that had thousands of pictures on it dating back to 2006 when we started building the house. I didn't even care about that or the documents that were in the HD, though. I was heart-broken that the last pics we have of my MIL with the family were in that drive. Today, as a last-ditch effort, I took the HD into a computer dude in town. He smashed the case, took out the drive, and is in the process of downloading the works with Linux...Windows 10 wouldn't function with it. On Monday, I'm taking in a new HD, and will now have everything! I'm pretty happy right now.

Cinn .. I back up my backed up backup! I have THREE! I had a dead harddrive with photos on it, too! Lost some photos in that death. So, now, I back them up. Then I back that up, in case it fails, so that I still have a copy. Then ... just because I'm terrified to loose my photos ... I back it up again! It's a pain to transfer everything to three drives. But I feel SO MUCH better. -k

Having multiple backups is a great idea, as long as one of them is at another location. Otherwise if you have a fire or theft chances are high that all backups on premises will be lost. Had a co-worker who lost everything in a fire including his backup drive. And when I worked at a computer dealership a few customers came in looking for new gear and lamenting how when their computer was stolen that the backup drives were grabbed at the same time.

I've got two backups of each machine at my home and one in the cloud. I really should put one in our safety deposit box, but as with everything I've got to make time to do that...maybe after Christmas.

Hit the Amish store today.

Stocked up on...

Dehydrated banana chips
Xylitol
50 lbs. Pinto beans

Grocery shopping on Friday.

Restocked what we used.
Bought extra flour to use - we made rolls everyone loved for Christmas, so I will make loaves with the same recipe and freeze until needed.

Husband sealed up the 50 lbs. of pinto beans and showed one of the kids the whole operation, and the LTS. Kid is a city prepper, so limited on what can be done. They also went through kid's car kit that I made up years ago. A little brag - Husband was pretty impressed with it - he didn't realize I'd done it back in the day and he said he had no need to add anything, I'd covered it all. YAY, me!

We fired up the wood stove again yesterday, the temps hit the teens. No snow or ice, but it is cold out there!

We are feeding a feral male cat that has started coming around. He's made peace with our cats, although they're all wary of each other, and will yowl at meal times if they think one of them isn't getting fed. We settle the fight with food for all.

Husband picked up some venison by accident, someone mentioned they had too much and he volunteered to take it off their hands. He got around 40 pounds of ground venison.

I made a neck gaiter out of fleece for a nephew and the kid saw it before leaving. I sewed another one up and sent it home with the kid. LOL I'll probably make a few more - they come in handy and aren't long like the scarves one has to wrap.