Apron Thrift Girl

revamping ATG

Every new year comes fresh ideas, new goals, welcomed changes and New Year's resolutions. Feeling inspired by an IM with my sweet and creative friend Sandy last night, I've decided that I'm ready to make some changes here and I need your help. I would like to know what kind of posts that you are most interested in seeing here at Apron Thrift Girl (aka ATG). I do tend to meander through different subjects, the most obvious are:

• Thrifting
• Gluten Free
• Frugality
• Eco-friendly/Green living
• Waldorf Education
• Self-sufficiency
• Crafting

Is there something that you would like to see more of? Are you tired of seeing posts about thrifted finds? What makes you want to comment? What makes you avoid commenting?  What get's you excited? What kind of photos inspire you? Do you like long posts? Short posts? What makes you want to come back again?

These are my personal goals for ATG this year:

• Each week write a post Monday-Friday
• Try to write shorter posts (often they can take me 2-3 hours for a single post)
• Have a larger variety of subjects
• increase readership numbers
• Increase comments to around 30 comments per post
• Offer paid sponsor ads that fit into the personality of ATG

I find that writing goals helps me visualize what I am really striving for.  And the more I visualize, the more I can create in my life. Since I work at home I don't have a boss giving me objectives for the year. I kind of have to make them myself. I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts to my questions above.

I'll leave you with a healing recipe. We all fell sick just in time for Christmas this year and have been serving garlic lemonade practically every day to help our immune system. I make mine based on Aviva Romm's recipe from this book. 

I place a few garlic cloves in a teapot and add boiling water. I let it sit for 30 minutes.

I add fresh lemon juice. While Cerys was home sick yesterday, she spent an hour juicing our supply of fresh lemons from our tree.

Add a few spoonfuls of honey. This kind is my favorite because of the delicious layer of cappings on the top. It is the rawest honey I've yet to find.

Voilà, some yummy immune boosting lemonade to help your body heal quickly.

tea

I'm not much of a drinker. It's not that I am not thirsty I just don't tend to crave liquid drinks. I'm actually one of those weird people that doesn't even like the taste of water. I have to force myself to fill up a glass and get it down my throat. I'm not sure if I just require more flavor or if I have an aversion to water. Every time I open up a health magazine telling me to drink 8 - 8oz glasses of water a day I inwardly cringe and move on to another article and pretend that I hadn't just read that.

When I moved to England with Dave I think it shocked his family. Well there is the fact that I'm the first outsider (non-English) to his family for at least 400 years or so, but there also is the fact that when I'm offered tea I tend to say "no thanks". That just stops them in their tracks. They look at me with a puzzled expression while searching for someone else in the room to echo their sentiments.

After a couple months I finally learned that it was inappropriate to turn them down for tea. I started saying yes even though I didn't really want anything. They would start smiling again and rush to the kitchen to boil the kettle and make a nice strong pot of English tea. By the time I moved from the UK four years later I finally started to enjoy the taste of tea as long as I could douse it in milk and add lots of sugar. I learned that if anything is wrong with you, a cup of tea can make it better. Whether it is psychological or not it seemed to work. I left the country with a better appreciation for the beverage that sweetened my palate and left a nice comfortable warmth in my belly.

Someone in Virgina and I feel so silly that I can't remember her name or even who she was made me this incredible herbal tea when I was pregnant with Keiran. I drank as much as I was allowed and I swear it really strengthened me for his birth. Besides all the healthy bits though it is a delicious refreshing tea that is perfect warm or over ice.

I buy the herbs in bulk from Frontier Co-Op at wholesale prices. (if you do a large wholesale order of $200 the shipping is free)  I mix them together using this recipe.

I actually don't really follow a recipe, I just throw it in a large mixing bowl until it feels and smells right. I give this tea in vintage canning jars for the teacher's Christmas gifts or end of the school year presents. Red Raspberry leaf tea can be really healthy. There are some cautions to check out if you are pregnant or nursing. If I remember correctly I drank one cup a day in the first trimester, 2 cups a day in the 2nd or something like that. For those not pregnant this tea is considered a female toner. Sounds a little stuffy but it just makes all your girlie parts happy.

To make a pot of tea I take 1/4 cup of the tea mixture and I place it in a brewing basket that I bought at a car boot sale.

The basket isn't too cute and I'm sure that there are lots of nicer ones made of pottery or metal but this one keeps all the tiny herb leaves and petals in the strainer. The tea has very few leafy bits at the bottom which is how I prefer my tea.

I add boiling water and leave the tea to soak up the goodness of the herbs for 10 minutes. When I return, I take out the basket, pour a hot cup of tea and add just a dash of agave or some raw honey. (age 1 and up for kids)

A lovely cup of tea to curl up with on the couch under a patchwork quilt with a corgi at your feet and a good magazine on your lap. Maybe, just maybe I am ready for fall to arrive.