November Homestead Favorites

Please note that this blog post is a transcript of The Girly Homesteader Podcast, click the link below to listen on your favorite podcast player:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the girly homesteader podcast. On today's episode I am talking about my favorites from the month of November. I feel like I say this every single month but I am amazed that we are at the week of Thanksgiving right now. So Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the United States who listen, I know that I am super excited for November. Thanksgiving and yeah, let's get into all my favorites for the month.

warm actually my garlic sprouted and I'm pissed off about it. I'll talk about that more next week. But yeah, the beginning of the month started off super warm. And then the past like two weeks have been absolutely frigid like temperatures that we normally don't deal with here until like January or February. So it's been really really weird. It has gotten me more in the mood though of Christmas which is nice but we still have Thanksgiving coming this week. I this is not one of my favorites for the month but I do want to let you know what we are making for Thanksgiving. I know that this episode is going to be releasing the day before so it's probably a little bit late to make any changes but if you happen to be on the hunt for a recipe or some sort of a ditch that isn't warm because I know that our Thanksgiving celebrations have been space is at a premium and so I always try to bring things that don't have to stay warm. Also, I think it's nice to have something nice crisp and refreshing when you have all of the rest of the you know warm heavy dishes that traditionally come with thanksgiving. So if you need a kind of last minute impromptu recipe, this is a salad that I will be making but it's pretty seasonal. So the main two ingredients are honey crisp apples. And then the other one is daikon radish. And so we have grown some radishes and some of the ones that my husband has grown actually as a food plot for deer they have gotten huge but they are still really really good. So what I'm gonna be doing is I'm going to use my mandolin to make some beautiful thin slices of the honey crisp apples and also these daikon radishes and that will become the base of the salad. It'll kind of be like a small slash a salad kind of a deal. The other ingredients I'm going to be adding are red onions, parsley, pomegranate seeds, pumpkin seeds, and potentially some blue cheese. I know that some people don't really like blue cheese so I might leave that as like a topper if you want to add on later, but then the dressing is going to be super simple just olive oil, apple cider vinegar and some of the honey from Arby's. So I think it sounds delicious. I think it sounds nice and crisp and refreshing. And thankfully, it's something that you can pull together really, really quick. So that's just a shout out for Thanksgiving. I have six things that I want to talk about today. In terms of my favorites here on the homestead I have two things that are related to beauty and I'll get into those first. So the first thing that I want to talk about was given to me as a gift by one of my clients, my clients when I we talked about everything and we were talking about hair and so I have been using pros shampoo and conditioner for about two months now. And I have to say I am blown away by the quality of the product. So I have heard about pros for a while. The premise here with pros is that is that it is a non toxic clean beauty brand. And it specifically focuses on here and what they do is they make custom shampoo and conditioner. So basically you take a quiz online you had to choose your fragrance if you want to fragrance and then they just sent you your customized shampoo and conditioner. And so one of my clients do you have been using it for about a year or so. And I had noticed that her hair just looks so much better. It would look thicker and fuller. And so we were talking about it and then one day she just gifted me my first bottle of shampoo and conditioner. And so as I said I've been using this for about two months now. And what blows me away the most about the shampoo and conditioner is the amount that I have to use. So I have a lot of hair. My hair is fine but I do have a decent amount of it and it is also long. It is about bra strap length. And so I have a lot of hair and I have always had to use so much conditioner and decent amount of shampoo. But with this Crow's shampoo and conditioner at least a blend that they made for me. I have to use literally one pump of shampoo and only one pump of conditioner and that is all my hair. needs. And to me that is absolutely amazing because I will go through conditioner so fast. And I mean pros. It's not like it's cheap, but the quality of it completely makes up for the quantity because the bottles they really aren't that big and like I said they are expensive but I have barely made a dent in my bottles. And it's been two months. To me this is huge, like absolutely huge. Just in the amount of product that I have to use. It's the same thing that goes for beauty beauty counter products. When you invest in higher quality products, you don't have to use as much and they last you a lot longer and that's exactly what has proven to be true. With pros. I am generally pretty low maintenance with my hair. I don't talk about it much just because I am hands off I will wash and condition I'll put some hair oil in my hair, blow dried a little bit at the roots and then call it good pros has been able to work into and complements that same style of haircare that I have but it has made my hair so much smoother without really weighing it down. But actually like the very beginning I thought that it was waiting to hear down but that's because I was using too much conditioner. As soon as I dropped back from using two pumps of conditioner to one pump only. My hair now feels light but also smooth and not frizzy. And yes the weather right now because it is cold and dry that is more conducive to less busy years. So it could be tied to the weather. But my hair is so much smoother and it feels so much shinier because of the pros, the pros products, they do make dry shampoo and they make your own hair masks and all those things. I haven't dabbled with those yet. So I'm going to use what I have currently until I try new stuff. But as of right now I am a customer for life. I have never been this blown away by shampoo and conditioner. I am gonna put a link to them in the show notes it will be a referral link so that means you will get a discount if you use that link. So yeah, that's the first of the girly kind of things that I want to talk about. And the second one is a sunscreen. As you know I am super obsessed. With sunscreen. And sunscreen is definitely the hardest thing to perfect in your routine. I have talked about lots and lots of sunscreens on this podcast and I talked about do skin by Beautycounter which is a tinted SPF 20 tinted moisturizer. I've also talked about all good brand sunscreen they have my first ever favorite sunscreen I've ever had. I have a tinted and non tinted version of the SPF 30. But think about that one specifically is that during winter time, it's just not protective enough for my skin. Do skin by Beautycounter. It is protective but gosh with this freakishly cold weather that we've had like dipping down into the teens overnight and like maybe high 20s during the daytime. That alone is not enough for me. That I think is a great SPF tinted moisturizer for just you know, most times of the year. Right now during winter I need a little bit of extra help. And so once I had Instagram I was scrolling and I saw a sunscreen that was new to me by Supergoop I honestly don't know how long it's been out. I don't think it's a super new product, but it is their cloud nine Sun balm. And so I have experimented with sunscreen sticks on the sunscreen like bone type products before but I've never found one that really felt comfortable being applied. They were almost a little bit too sticky and they didn't look really good on my skin after a few hours. You can just tell that they were kind of they weren't meant to be used on her face I guess you can say just because it didn't last the longest. And so I saw a video of his cloudnine son bomb being applied and it just looked so creamy and so beautiful. So I ordered it and I have to tell you this sunscreen is fantastic. Now I do have to say though I am not using it on its own. I am mixing it with my due skin shade number four and that's because I just prefer to have a tinted sunscreen. I just do now if you wanted to try to use the sun balm on its own, you could use like a tinted powder or something over it. But for me what I found works best is just to have a tinted sunscreen right off the bat I think that was a lot more natural. So what I'm doing is I'm adding about equal parts I would say of this sun balm with your skin and the sunburn The nice thing about it too is I use SPF 40. So by combining the SPF 40 and the SPF 20 or the do skin by Beautycounter I am probably getting approximately 30 SPF 30 MSA and of course this is not scientific or anything but generally when you're mixing sunscreens, as long as you are mixing sunscreens cannot use the same type of ingredients, meaning chemical versus physical both both of these sunscreens I'm talking about are physical sunscreens. As long as you mix the same type of ingredients you will be okay so I got to be honest here. The do skin with the sun balm mixed together honestly it feels like a tinted facial oil that also has SPF and I love it and I think it looks so so natural to so if I was you and you like the concept of a tinted sunscreen, I would advise getting a straight and do scan that is a little bit darker than you need because yes as with physical sunscreens are if they're not tinted, they are going to be a little bit of a white cast. So shade number four is just slightly dark for me. So if I add that, plus the sun balm which is a little bit white to name, I can add both of those together and I get the perfect shade. So again, it feels just like a super luxurious, thick facial oil once it's applied. I think it sinks in it's so well and the combination is just awesome. And again, no I haven't tried it on its own. I really have no intentions. To just because that's not my preferred way to apply sunscreen I just I like that tend to just makes it so much easier and it's one less step that I have to do in the morning. So you know about me, I am big into skincare and makeup so if I can produce a step that is the big big perk. So when I get back from the break, I have four more things to talk about. Some of them have to do with the kitchen. Some of them have to do with the guardian. And then there's also just some stuff in here. This was made my life a little bit more fun. So the podcast is brought. All you do is you take a toilet paper tube or a paper towel roll. You can cut it into sections that are, I don't know two, three inches long. And then you just stuffed them full of lint. And that's it and then you use them to light fires in your fireplace. We use some over the weekend and they do work very very well. But that's really all it is just two simple things that you already have around your house and it puts them to good use. So those fire starters are the third thing I want to talk about today. And the next one this is something that just makes me very, very happy.

I bought this on Etsy and it is a dry erase menu board that sticks to my fridge. We have a stainless steel fridge and I am very very particular about not putting anything on it. I don't want magnets to scratch the fridge or anything like that. But this menu board it is made out of clear acrylic and it has labels for each day of the week. And it comes with a dry erase marker. And the magnets that attaches to the fridge are very, very pretty. They're very clean lines. And I really like this thing. I am not a super big menu planner. But recently, I have wanted a place where I can at least drop down my ideas. And this has proved to be very, very helpful. And it's also nice when you know my husband comes home from work and he can look at the board and he knows what's coming up. So I will link to that in the show notes. But again, it is just a clear acrylic mini board and I got this off of Etsy. So it feels good to to support a small business and who knows maybe it would be a great Christmas present for someone. So the last few things are kind of more homestead related. The first one is my works leaf shredder. I talked about this and my goals for the month of November and I wanted to shred leaves and get them on the garden. I will say that with how the weather has been I haven't done as much of that as I was hoping was because it hasn't been too freakin cold to do anything outside. I'm hoping though this week actually it's gonna be a little bit warmer and so I'm hoping that I will have time to get some more meat shredded, but I have the works leaf shredder and my dad found this at garage sale so I did not pay full price for it and honestly it's missing some of the parts I think like it's not the full complete setup with the legs and everything. But this is an electric leaf shredder. And basically you just plug it into the wall set on top of a trash can and turn it on and the inside of it is basically like a string we've ever trimmer and you just toss release in there, they fall into the into the trash can and then you can use them as mulch for the garden. I really really love this thing I used at the beginning of this month and also the end of October and I will say it's a very very messy job. Like you'll definitely want to do this on a day that you're planning to wash your hair because it will make a mess. You have leaf dust all over you. I know that when I put my nose FTI but after I blew my nose after doing this I had like leaf dirt in my nose. So definitely do this on a day where you are planning to be dirty and to take a good shower after but this works the shredder is really really awesome. If I were you and I was trying to buy one I would search on Facebook marketplace or something like that. First. I know that when I was contemplating one I found one on Facebook marketplace and I was very tempted to buy it when I waited I guess it was a it was a good thing. That I waited because of my dad told me that he had one so the works for you don't leave shredder is my one of my favorites for the month of November. It has made the process of getting these meat shredded it's so much easier it does get them into nice tiny little pieces. That way they will decompose quickly and hopefully they will be good mulch for the garden coming spring and summer. The last thing that I want to mention today is another thing that I mentioned at the beginning of the month another one of my goals for the month of November. I wanted to buy a new grinder. I wanted to run into the venison for the deer that I took back in October. And so I did a lot of research on the meat grinder and I wanted one that was going to be pretty easy. When we started this hunting process for it. We looked at Cabela's and we saw some meat grinders in person and all of them. The cheaper ones they just seemed really really chintzy and not like they were going to be anything better than the attachment we have for my KitchenAid mixer. So I wanted something that actually seems kind of like professional high quality, heavy duty. And so I did some research on the internet and Weston brand is what kept coming up. And so Weston, they have their own website where they do sell the meat grinders. And so I looked around there and I finally decided on the Pro Series number eight meat grinder and I think the numbers they have a lot of different numbers of them and I think it really just has to do with the horsepower and like the capacity that can hold all at once. The number eight to me it looked like a good middle of the road. It's not like it was too tiny but it wasn't like super, super commercial size because obviously we're only doing one deal at a time. We would just like the process to go a little bit more smoothly. And so I ended up buying my meat grinder from a website that was called Red restaurant store.com They have over $100 cheaper and I mean this definitely is an investment this meat grinder I think normal price retail is $500 And so I got it for just under four for web restaurant store.com. I will link that in the show notes as well. But my meat grinder is shipped relatively quickly and when it arrived it was perfectly packaged. And oh my gosh, this meat grinder has been life changing. Normally my husband and I will tag team in the meat writing process and it still takes a decent amount of time but oh my goodness, I was doing the grinding on my own and I couldn't keep up with it. It was moving so quickly just flowing right through the ground venison. It really didn't get stuck on anything. It was actually super easy to clean away easier to clean and the KitchenAid attachment for the mixer and I am pumped because this thing just worked so so well and made the process so much easier. Now, if you are brand new into the world of hunting or brand new into the world of processing meat, I definitely don't think you have to go right into it and make the big investment of a meat grinder like this. Because as I said before, we've been using our KitchenAid mixer attachment with I think which I think it's like $100 We've used that for probably four years at least and it does the job. It just goes a lot slower. And it can tend to get stuck. It doesn't really I can tend to get stuck. But if you're doing this just once a year, the KitchenAid mixer attachment is probably just fine. But if you are wanting to get more into it like we are where we are at least gonna have to do to grind this year maybe even three hopefully. So you want to get that much more into it and you really really do like brown the game needs then this meat grinder is definitely going to make your life easier. So again, I'll put a link to that in the show notes. It is the Weston number eight Pro Series. So those are my six favorites for the month of November. I'm just going to run through them again really quick. First, I talked about pros shampoo and conditioner. This is a custom shampoo and conditioner company and I am absolutely in love with the results that I have gotten and also how little product I have to use a little bit my referral link in the show notes for you. I also am loving Supergoop CLOUD NINE Sun balm which is an SPF 40 bond that I'm mixing with my current tinted sunscreen favorite which is do skin by Beautycounter. So I'll put a link to both of those in the show notes. I also talked about DIY fire starters which are made out of just toilet paper tubes and linens collected from the dryer. I also mentioned the Etsy menu board or the menu board that I got off Etsy the brand or the company name of the girl in there it's called Girl Friday and it's a beautiful clear acrylic mini board with the days of the week and I have a stuck to my fridge. I also talked about my works leaf shredder which has the shredding nice so much easier for the garden. And then my new beloved toy my Western and for each Pro Series meat grinder. Again, I did this process on my own I started it I don't know did morning and I was expecting to be done probably around two o'clock. I was done by noon. And I just enjoyed the process so much more. So links for all of those will be in the show notes and next week. It'll be like the day before December when the podcast episode comes out. So I'll be talking about home set updates and also my goals for the month of December. I will talk to you next week.