Author: Dominique Francon

I haven’t posted anything in a long while, and I have so many feelings swirling around in my head right now that, well, here I am. First off, as a mother of four very young children, my heart breaks for

And by “wanting it all”, I don’t mean material goods.  We don’t even have cable, and I’m not about to buy my kids an XBox or anything like that.  I am a worrier, and I grew up uninvolved with my

Ellis has accused me (on multiple occasions) of not only NOT having a green thumb, but actually having a black thumb.  He says that I can kill any plant, given just a short amount of time.  I’d like to say

With now 6 family members to officially feed on a daily basis (I say officially, because the nearly-2-year-old now eats as much as our bigger kids), we’ve started to go through a lot of bread in the last year.  It

As young urban professionals with blossoming careers, Ellis and I both worked full time (and then some).  I cut back to part-time after our first was born (and second, and third, and fourth), but Ellis was still expected to be

I never canned anything in my life until 2 years ago.  A local friend that lives in a 100-year-old farmhouse has a huge, old apricot tree and offered us some.  That apricot jam has been one of my favorite things

Ellis and I have always lived beneath our means, but that wasn’t saying much when we lived in the city and both worked at lucrative jobs.  Now that we live in the boonies and our income is only a fraction