Living a different kind of life...

2009-03-25T21:28:00.010-05:00

Kim and I have talked about creating a blog where we can post information on some of our personal lifestyle projects. Three years ago, I chose to leave a fantastically good paying job to recapture my creativity and pursue a personal dream. Along the way, I met Kim and we discovered quickly that we work well together. We both have similar dreams and aspirations for our lives and together we are choosing to live at a deliberately different pace from the world around us and slow down enough to savor some of the things that make us feel alive.

From taking the time to calm our lives and our minds in order to hear the still small voice of God to taking up challenges to learn how to love our neighbor as we do ourselves, we are finding the joy in living slower. But this isn't easy in our day and age-- where everything races around us. With our nation's economy in a tailspin and the personal greed inherent in our nation's consumerism, we have begun to heed an inward call to live a life within our means. At the moment, we don't have much money, so we are making due with less.

With many Americans out of work or working for less money, we are not in this boat alone. We have become accustom to a certain lifestyle-- which was provided to us under better economic circumstances-- and now many of us are forced to make hard choices, cutting out unnecessary expenses and finding ways to make our dollar stretch a little further. I used to fear this, but I have been learning that the challenge of learning how to live deliberately can be a blast. It may be because I am a hands-on person naturally, but I am loving some of our new experiences.

For me, it was beginning with a budget-- something I have yet to master. Learning how to control my money is something that I used to do in a round-a-bout way, but I have learned that putting it all down on paper is more effective. One of the most difficult things I have done, was to budget for food. Kim and I collectively kicked this off with a personal challenge. Kim had had heard that the the average person on food stamps is given around $25 per week per person and we wanted to see if that was something that was even feasible, the journey has been a great one, something we expect to be blogging about.

Some of our best experiences have developed from where our expensive tastes in things have bumped headlong into our budget. At first it was bread. We love delicious artisan breads, but at a cost of $4 or more a loaf it is very difficult to afford. Our first approach was to hit clearance racks at our Walmart Neighborhood Market for bread that was that was about to hit its expiration date-- that saved us nearly 50%, but even that was an expensive habit. So we are learning to bake it. After a bulk purchase of yeast at Sam's Club and a 25 lb. bag of bread flour we were off to baking our own artisan bread... a successful money-saving and enjoyable endeavor, something we will also be blogging about.

Our two latest major endeavors have been to put in a vegetable garden and roast our own coffee. We will be posting about our experiences and challenges with these, something I hope others can enjoy and get some help from. Both Kim and I have personal projects to, from car repairs to making talc-free powders. Together we hope to make Goats in the 'Hood a place where enjoyable and useful information resides. I hope, now that you have found us, you will sit down and stay a while. Read some posts and feel free to comment.