Beeting Myself Up

          Last week, I made homemade smoothies for the kids when they came in from playing in the snow. We were a little low on frozen fruit, but I used the rest of the frozen strawberries and part of a bag of frozen cherries. I like to sweeten things naturally, so I keep 100% fruit juice concentrate in a jar (in the refrigerator) to use for smoothies, sweetenen yogurt, or have some gelatin with (oh, my aching joints). I poured in a good amount to help give the kids a vitamin boost and reduce the amount of sweetener that I'd need to make the smoothie more palatable. I store the juice in jars that my mom gave me filled with freezer jam (originally they contained various nut butters ). How resourceful of us to reuse glass jars, right? My mom grew up in a family of  nine, so no waste was allowed.  Her Amish large-family heritage still follows her today. She is still very frugal.
           I caught the drip of juice from the jar after pouring the juice into the blender. After sticking my finger in my mouth, I let out a yelp like you wouldn't believe and held the jar up to the light. Instead of the sweet tang of Cranberry Raspberry juice, I had gotten a suprising jolt of pickled beet juice. The color was almost a dead ringer for the juice. The night before, my mom had graciously put the left-overs from Christmas away. Instead of putting her yummy Amish red beets back into the jar she had canned them in, she had put them into one of the jars I reuse for concentrated fruit juice...and to make it even more confusing,  she put that jar right in front of the actual jar of fruit juice concentrate.
              Well, I decided to see if I could doctor the concoction to a state of edibility by adding actual juice, and honey. My mom and I added some cinnamon too. My oldest three had sample with spoons and declined it, but Gracie declared it good. My mom said it should be very healthy for us. "Vinegar is a digestant." I was very healthy that morning, along with my mom. After that, I proclaimed that all beet juice be forever housed on the top shelf of our refrigerator (three shelves removed from the fruit juice concentrate). We had a really good laugh about it, and then I made a smoothie for the rest of the girls with just frozen cherries.
             I still love to save money (my mommy's so proud), and a few years ago (after many, many requests from my hubby) I started cutting Charles' hair. I started paying attention to the haircuts my girls were getting and took that over as well. It should come as no surprise that Mr. Blue Eyes had a trim from me too. Our son was beginning to look a little Peter Boyle-ish; so this past weekend, my hubby held him; and I snipped a few wisps. The final straw came yesterday when I searched Youtube for a video to cut my own hair. Guess what? My hair came out lovely. (Here's the video in case your curious.) Do you realize how much money this saves us? My hubby averages one haircut every four-six weeks. Our girls get haircuts about once a season. This saves us more than $700 dollars a year if you figure out $20 a cut plus tip.
                 For the record, I will not continue to add "digestant" to our smoothies, but I am encouraged to continue making economical changes to our lifestyles. I have a lot to live up to if I want to emulate the ideal woman of the Bible (Proverbs 31 lays it all out...). I'll just content myself with asking God to work through me and not "beet" myself up about the rest.