Category Archives: frugal strategies

Brunswick Stew – recipe

October 29, 2017frugal strategies, recipesAvivah

Here’s the recipe for Brunswick stew for my readers who requested it!

This recipe comes from The Joy of Cooking.

Brunswick Stew (serves 8 – 10)

5 pounds of chicken parts
2 T. oil
1 c. chopped onion
1 c. chopped celery
3 c. fresh or frozen lima/cooked white beans
1.5 – 2 c. chopped tomatoes, canned or fresh
1 c. barbeque sauce or unseasoned tomato sauce
1 c. tomatoe puree
1 c. chicken stock
1 T. minced garlic or 2 t. garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
3 c. corn, fresh or frozen

Sprinkle salt and pepper on the chicken parts and saute the chicken in batches over a medium heat. Set aside.

Using the 2 T. of oil, saute the onions and celery until tender. Add the chicken to the pot. Add all remaining ingredients except for the corn, and bring to a boil over a high heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the chicken is almost tender, about 35 – 45 minutes.

Add the corn and simmer for another ten minutes.

This makes a nice large recipe and is frugal, filling and tasty!

Avivah

Why cooking in bulk will make your life easier

October 27, 2017frugal strategies, homemakingbulk cookingAvivah

Have you ever felt like you’re constantly cooking and struggling to keep up with the meals that need to be served? I have!

This year I have five boys ages 11 and down home all day, and not having any teenagers who are homeschooling means that there are fewer older children to delegate tasks to. That means that the younger boys are learning to step up and help more, which is good, and also that I do more.

Having meals ready on time makes our home run much more smoothly – there’s nothing like kids asking again and again for food and not having anything to serve them makes everyone irritable! Nutrition is important to me but I can’t spend hours in the kitchen – I try to stay home as much as I can, but I still have homeschooling, shopping, regular therapy appointments and extracurricular activities for the boys to attend to. Not to mention my work – sessions with clients in the evenings and in a couple of weeks I’ll be adding workshops back in to my schedule. Oh, and I try to get some sleep, too. 🙂

I make meals from scratch three times a day. It’s rarely fancy – we have hot cereal or eggs for breakfast just about every day. There’s nothing wrong with scrambled eggs and rice for lunch or dinner but when I get busy that becomes too frequent and it doesn’t feel like a meal to sit down together over! Since having a sit down meal with our family is an important value for me, I try to make a satisfying dinner.

With all of the holidays, I had been caught up in the cycle of cooking, cooking, cooking but never getting ahead. This week I’ve been able to get back into a cooking routine that makes my life much easier – cooking in bulk!

What I try to do is plan ahead so that I can double whatever I’m preparing for dinner. I then can serve some for dinner and ‘feed the freezer’ a meal that I can pull out at a later time.

Here’s a list of dinner meals for the last few days:

Mon – black bean vegetable soup and rice

Tues – baked chicken, chickpeas with sauce, salad, baked sweet potatoes

Weds. – chicken tangine with chickpeas

Thurs. – Brunswick stew

Here’s what my cooking schedule looked like the last few days:

On Sunday we had leftovers from Shabbos for dinner (chicken, potato kugel, roasted vegetables). I didn’t need to do any cooking for that night, so on Sunday afternoon I prepared a large pot of black bean soup.

I went out with the boys on Monday afternoon and before I did, left the soup on a very low flame to heat up. We walked in at 6:35 pm – I try to serve dinner at 6:30 pm – and were able to sit down to eat dinner as soon as we got inside.

Later in the evening I soaked a pan of chickpeas.

On Tuesday I cooked a pot of rice, a pot of buckwheat, ds10 baked a large pan of sweet potatoes and I asked someone else to put the chickpeas on to boil. I also baked a pan of chicken – all quick and simple things to prepare.

On Wednesday I did a big shopping trip and got a bunch of chicken on sale (including chicken wings for just 4.90 shekels a kilo so I got twelve kilos!). Since the chicken was fresh, I made peanut butter/honey chicken with sesame seeds for Shabbos and plain roasted wings to use for two other dishes I planned to make that day. I also cooked a few kilos of chicken gizzards.

(The buckwheat cooked on Tuesday was intended for a dish but the boys asked if they could eat it for lunch, so I let them have it.)

While the chicken was cooking, I prepared two chicken dishes: a double recipe of chicken tangine with chickpeas (using chickpeas I had cooked the day before), and Brunswick stew (using white beans I had also cooked in advance). I also made some quinoa black bean burgers using some leftovers I had in the fridge that I served for lunch the next day.

We had the chicken tangine Weds. night for dinner. Later in the evening I boiled a large pot of potatoes and soaked a pan of lentils.

On Thursday morning ds10 mashed the pot of potatoes and I cooked the lentils. While they were cooking I prepared two lentil mixtures: lentil meatloaf and lentil-rice-mushroom casserole. I made 2 large 9 x 13 pans of each. We had one pan of lentil-rice casserole for lunch; the other three pans of food went into the freezer.

I then had an unexpected furniture delivery that took a lot of time and energy to organize (looks great now, though!), and it was later in the afternoon before I could take a nap. Before I lay down, I put the Brunswick stew on a very low flame to heat up. I got up at 6:10 pm but dinner was ready on time thanks to the advance preparation!

Thursday evening, I prepared the filling for shepherd’s pie, chopping up the chicken gizzards I cooked the day before, then topped the chicken and vegetable mixture with the potatoes ds10 had mashed that morning. Once the two huge pans were baked, they went right into the freezer for two different meals. (In case you’re wondering, I also made some chicken soup and roasted chicken for Shabbos.)

With some advance thought and a bit of extra effort, I now have four different dishes/6 meals in the freezer. It didn’t take much extra work but ready to go meals in the freezer are my ‘fast food’ for busy days!

Avivah

Homemade Taco Seasoning

September 26, 2017frugal strategies, recipeshomemade taco seasoningAvivah

A friend of mine gave me some packages of taco seasoning that she wasn’t using and while I wouldn’t have bought them, once I had them I started noticing how many frugal bean/legume recipes I had that called for taco seasoning. The mix of flavors definitely enhanced the taste of the final dish, even if the processed mixture didn’t enhance the nutritional value!

This recipe for homemade taco seasoning makes it possible to enjoy the convenience of a premixed taco seasoning mix without any objectionable ingredients! It’s super quick to mix up, affordable, and good for you.

Homemade Taco Seasoning

1/2 c. chili powder (*note below)
1/4 c. onion powder
1/8 c. cumin
1 T. garlic powder
1 T. paprika
1 T. salt

Mix all the ingredients together, and store in a jar. Two rounded tablespoons equals one packet of taco seasoning.

——————————–

* If like me, you don’t have chili powder in your pantry and don’t want to go out and buy it just to make this recipe, it’s easy to mix up your own. To make chili powder, the recipe I used called for: 2 T. paprika, 2 t. oregano, 1 1/2 t. cumin, 1/2 t. garlic powder, and 3/4 t. onion powder.

**Yet another note: chili powder and cayenne pepper are not the same thing! Cayenne is much hotter and not a good substitute. I learned this years ago when I made what I thought would be a delicious and exotic salad and dressing, and used cayenne since I thought it was interchangeable with chili powder. Every single person took a bite and then reached for his water glass. 🙁 No one touched the salad after that first bite.

———————————–

Avivah

Shifts in our home as the teens move out of homeschooling!

September 18, 2017frugal strategies, homeschoolingAvivah

It has been a busy summer and has only gotten busier as the official school year has begun! I’ve hoped to write in detail about some of the following points, but due to time constraints will just touch on some updates!

First of all, dd16 is now in seminary! She travels daily to Jerusalem and I get to see her a few minutes in the evening, if I’m luckly. She is really loving it so far. My experience has been when my kids have wanted the school experience, they have thrived because it was something they chose and are emotionally invested in.

Next big change around here is that ds15 is now attending a local yeshiva high school. It’s a new program with a small first class. He leaves around 7ish in the morning and gets home about twelve hours later, so it’s a long day and that’s an adjustment.

Ds18 is in a post high school yeshiva (and I never got to tell you about his high school graduation and how he spoke beautifully when asked to represent his class…) and has said that everything is better than he expected. His yeshiva has a no cell phone policy, which has some benefits. But it also means that in addition to seeing him once a month instead of once a week, I hardly speak to him. I count myself lucky if I speak to him ten minutes a week. And that’s longer than he’s speaking to anyone else on the phone during the week!

Dd21 is working on building up her industrial design business. She works from home, and that makes my transition from not having homeschooled teens around to keep an eye on younger siblings a little bit easier. But she’s supposed to be working, not babysitting, so I really try to keep this to a minimum.

Dd22 is working locally and I enjoy that she’s living at home so I get to see her a bit in the evenings.

And ds24 and his lovely wife are doing well and it’s always nice to see them together!

So that leaves just the youngest five boys at home during the days – officially four are homeschooling this year. It’s going to be a big shift not to have the older kids around.

I do like my children. And I miss them when they’re not around. But I’m grateful they’re growing into independent adults even if it means some pangs and inconvenience for me.

I’ve been busy in the last month doing lots of decluttering and reorganizing of my home space. The kids (dd21, ds18, dd16 and ds15) built a pergola for our yard with swings and an integrated set of monkey bars, and we build another pergola on our porch that completely covers the porch. They are all hard workers and did an amazing job. I realized just yesterday that the one large beam remaining from building the pergolas is perfect for a balance beam for the kids, and yesterday set that up on the porch for them. It’s a nice to feel very settled as we begin our homeschooling year that everything was mostly in place to support us, inside and out.

I’ve also been giving a lot of thought in the last couple of months to what I’d like to focus on in the coming year, personally and with my family. Doing this clarification process is always powerful for me. I also just finished locally giving a four week family mission statement workshop series, helping others to navigate this process that personally has been so valuable for me.

Yesterday we finally had a speech evaluation for Yirmi, eight months after I started the application process. We also had an OT eval a week ago, and Yirmi is now authorized for weekly therapy if we want it.

And just a couple of hours after completing the speech evaluation, I headed to Jerusalem together with ds11 to meet with the Ministry of Education’s representative regarding the new homeschooling application that I filed for this year to include Yirmi. The rep is hoping that my past request made when living in the north was technically completed so that it will make the process of approving our new application simpler.

However, I got a call today from the local department of Education in the north asking me to remind them of the status of my file! I thought they should be the ones with a record of that but sometimes I can have unreasonable expectations. 🙂 He wasn’t clear if an official exemption from the compulsory education law was granted or not. However, the representative did remember me and that I had done all the necessary steps, and it’s clear that I’m not the one who dropped the ball in completing the legal paperwork. If they don’t have a record that I was granted permisson to homeschool, we’ll need to begin the entire process again. More on that as time goes on.

In addition, yesterday my bulk order arrived – I make an order twice a year. Mostly this is several cartons of coconut oil, but this order also included a 20 kg bag of coconut flour and 11 kg of almond flour. I’ve been wanting to make desserts that are gluten free for everyone in the family – until now we’ve made special desserts for ds5 that look as similar as possible as the gluten filled treats that everyone else gets. While white flour and sugar still remain much less expensive than these ingredients, buying in bulk makes the cost of baking gluten free more reasonable.

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful summer and your autumn is off to a great start!

Avivah

Our new double bunk beds – look what our kids built!

November 18, 2016frugal strategies, homeschooling, parentingAvivah

I’ve been meaning to share with you about our latest upgrade in furniture – a double set of bunk beds!

Here’s what inspired this project:

Our three younger boys share a room. There were two beds in their room and one of the boys slept on a trundle that pulls out. The only problem with this scenario was the trundle wasn’t regularly getting pushed back in each morning and when it was left out, it made the room look crowded and attracted clutter.

I wanted to have more floor space, increase sleeping space and make it easier for the boys to keep their room tidy without as much help from me. So I decided to replace each of the twin beds with a bunk bed.

And then I decided we’d build them ourselves!

I looked online for plans and chose to adapt the plans I found on ana-white.com; ds17 modified the plans according to my specifications.

Before - the pile of wood waiting to be transformed! — Before – the pile of wood waiting to be transformed!

The day wore on and cutting all the boards seemed endless. Finally the wood was cut and they could get started putting everything together. The sun set, night began to fall and they were still working.

Ds4 took a nice long afternoon nap so when ds10, ds9 and ds7 were in bed he was wide awake and ready to help out!

Ds4 excited about getting to help build!

In our home, tools aren’t for for staged photo shoots – our kids learn to use them with supervision.

Ds4 then moved on to screw together the section dd20 was working on.

It was pretty exciting to see the sides taking shape!

When we put them together in the boys’s room, they could hardly wait to climb up on them!

The bunk beds are sturdy and well-built. We’ve freed up a significant amount of floor space, made clean-up much easier – and now that there’s a fourth bed, ds4 sleeps in this room, too!

"Hey, what are they doing up there?" — “Hey, what are they doing up there?”

Note ds10 on the left - he was there all along, reading his book. — Note ds10 on the left – he was there all along reading his book

The beds are sized to fit our growing boys who will probably be in the 6′ range – ds17 added extra headroom between the bottom and top bunks so that an adult can sit there comfortably. This resulted in taller than usual bunk beds but we have high ceilings and there’s still comfortable head space for the child on top.

I wanted to maximize the space under the beds, and asked ds17 to adapt the plans so that the bottom bunk would be high enough for a trundle bed to fit underneath. We planned to build a trundle as a later project but then I had a brainstorm – we could cut down their previous bed (that I was planning to sell) and then use it as a trundle. Since that bed had a trundle that includes three built-in storage drawers we now have two trundles plus the storage space! Amazing how it all fits there, isn’t it?! The wood is a slightly different shade than the bunk beds but I decided not to be a perfectionist. 🙂 These two additional beds will be very helpful when we have extra people sleeping over.

We’re all happy with how the bunk beds turned out. I’m especially glad we could adapt our space to make it work better for our needs and simultaneously create an empowering learning experience for our children. This was a big project that took a couple of days to complete; all the kids (not just those in the pictures) were involved in the cutting, assembly and staining of these beds. And everyone has a tangible sense of accomplishment and appreciation now that they’re finished!

Avivah

How our daughter paid her way through college

August 10, 2016frugal strategies, parentingAvivah

In my last post I shared that our daughter was the top student in her graduating class. I didn’t mention, that while she was engaged in a very demanding full-time academic program, she was also paying her own way through college and seminary.

Someone recently told me dd was ‘lucky’ to be able to do this. I think luck is what happens when hard work and preparation meet, and while dd is the first to say that she felt that G-d helped her to achieve all that she did, I wouldn’t say that luck played much of a part. Money didn’t fall on her from the sky!

She worked super hard, didn’t lose focus and didn’t get discouraged – she had clarity about her goal, continually looked for ways to make it possible and organized her time and energies to support her goals. She worked really, really hard for the last three years.

For her first year (age 17), she was simultaneously studying in an Israeli seminary (without a dorm) and at college. She lived with an elderly woman and helped her out in exchange for room, board and a salary. She later switched arrangements to live with a family in exchange for room and board, and did house cleaning to cover tuition expenses.

Second year (age 18)- she studied at an American seminary along with attending college. (This seminary did have a dorm.) She was offered a scholarship at the seminary in exchange for a work-study arrangement, where she was the kitchen supervisor. She qualified for a Pell grant to supplement the remaining seminary costs. She volunteered for the Perach organization as a tutor for children in need; volunteers for this organization are given a stipend of several thousand shekels for every year they participate towards their college tuition in Israel. She continued doing cleaning work to cover remaining expenses. (She did not continue with Perach for her third year because she felt she would have more control over her schedule if she worked for pay the same amount of hours she volunteered.)

Third year (age 19) – Since she had finished two years of seminary by this point, she only had college tuition to pay. We had moved to RBS from northern Israel so she was able to live at home and commute daily to college.

She had several jobs during this time. 1) She was hired as a workshop safety instructor by the college. The workshop is filled with industrial tools like a huge carpentry shop and her task was to teach younger students how to use the tools and to ensure their safety when they worked there. 2) She worked once a week as a mentor for an organization that helps children at risk. 3) She did cleaning work once a week.

I believe there was one scholarship that she applied for in her second year and I don’t remember if she ended up getting that or not – it might have been around 1000 shekels. She also had some financial help from a family member in the first year that she was very appreciative of. It’s likely there were other stipends or scholarships she might have been able to get if we had known about them. Not being Israeli and not having lived here very long, we don’t know the system as well as those who are native to Israel.

Attending school and getting an education are two entirely different things. Dd really invested herself in her studies, and got a great education.

Is it because she paid for everything herself that she did as well as she did? There’s no question that as seriously as she would have taken her studies, she valued it even more because it was her initiative, her effort and her money that paid for it all!

Avivah

Our latest home renovation project – a pergola!

October 3, 2015frugal strategies, parentingbuild pergolaAvivah

This summer I had a vision of building a pergola for our very sunny front porch. But I was too busy to get this project off the ground so it didn’t go beyond talking.

When we talked about plans for the upcoming Sukkos holiday, the kids asked me if we were going to build a pergola. I told them I wasn’t going to take charge of this project, and if it was going to get done, someone else was going to have to take it on and see it through from beginning to end. In the past this has been ds22, but he wouldn’t be home in time to get it done.

The kids agreed that they wanted to have a pergola, and ds16 volunteered to take responsibility for getting it done on time. It would be a tight deadline to meet since our conversation took place the night of Sept. 20, and it had to be done by Sept. 25.

Ds16 got information about the structure, what size boards to use, where to buy it,borrowed tools, ordered the lumber, and arranged the lumber delivery (it arrived the day after Yom Kippur, Sept. 24).

(Disclaimer at my childrens’ request: they’re dressed in work clothes and don’t walk around publicly like this.)

Once it arrived, he got all of his siblings at home involved in staining all the lumber with him.

I had been gone that day at the hospital for the pre-op appointment with ds3 and when I came home late in the afternoon the Werner crew (ds6, ds8, dd14, dd19 and of course ds16) hard at work!

If you’re wondering what my part was – he asked for my feedback about my preference for the width of the boards and what color stain I wanted, and I also wrote the check for him to pay with at the hardware store. 🙂

Ds22 and ds16 putting up the first ledger board! — Ds22 and ds16 putting up the first board

Ds22 got home a couple of hours later and that evening and the next morning he and ds16 worked nonstop to build the pergola. They were amazing. Within 24 hours of the unstained lumber being delivered, the pergola was finished! They both had very dark suntans after all those hours in the blazing suns but they said it was worth it.

Can you believe we were so busy admiring the final result that we didn’t take a picture once it was done and the porch was cleaned up?

But it’s beautiful. And now for Sukkos it’s a beautiful frame for our sukka -we have so much room, more spacious and convenient than any sukka we’ve ever had. We had 17 people for the first day of yom tov with plenty of room; we could easily have had double that.

This was an empowering and gratifying project for ds16. He’s very competent but in the past has been the younger brother following his older brother’s lead on projects. This time the roles were reversed. He gave the instructions and while everyone worked hard together, he’s the one who made this project happen. You can hire someone to build a pergola for you, but being able to do it yourself builds a person’s sense of competence and ability in a way that watching someone to do the job could never match.

Avivah

Fun and Easy Granola – recipe

June 16, 2015frugal strategies, parenting, recipeshow to make granola, make granola with kidsAvivah

Today my home is filled with the delicious smells of homemade granola!

Granola makes a yummy and quick breakfast or snack, and is a fun and gratifying activity to do with kids with just a bit of oversight from you!

And if you’ve ever seen the price for ready made granola in the store, after making this you’ll wonder why anyone would pay so much. 🙂

Fun and Easy Granola

3 c. rolled oats
- 1/2 c. oil
- 1/4 – 1/2 c. sweetener (honey, date syrup, sugar)
- 1 t. vanilla
1 c. coarsely chopped nuts (almonds, walnuts, peanuts)
1 c. shredded or flaked coconut
1/2 c. sesame seeds
1 c. sunflower seeds (or sliced almonds, chopped walnuts)
optional – dried fruit (eg raisins, banana chips, papaya, mango, apple – anything!) chocolate chips –

Mix the oil, sweetener and vanilla together and heat over a low flame for 5 minutes. Pour the hot mixture over the oats and mix thoroughly. Spread in a thin layer on a baking pan, then bake at 300 degrees for about 45, stirring periodically. Mix the remaining dry ingredients and add them to the cooled oats. If you want to add dried fruit or chocoiate chips, you can also add that now.

That’s it!

Not so photogenic but very delicious! — Doesn’t look like much but it tastes sooo good!

– I made three times this recipe, using 1 kg of oats as a base. I used coconut oil but you can use any oil.

– If you’re using sugar for your sweetener then stay to the lower side of the recommended amount.

– Granola is incredibly flexible and you can add in all kinds of nuts and dried fruit to keep it different and fun every time.

Avivah

The things I love about my new kitchen – pictures

June 14, 2015frugal strategies, homemakingAvivah

Last week I shared with you my disappointment about my kitchen counters. Now I’m moving on to the good things. The final cosmetic finishes aren’t yet done but today I’ll share with you some of what I love about my new kitchen!

Since I’m constantly cooking and washing dishes, I didn’t want to have a dish drainer on the counter because it’s constantly being filled and it keeps the counter looking untidy. The solution – hidden built-in dish drainers. Yep, two of them. 🙂

Which brings me to the next advantage. I now have two sinks and they’re both nice and big. For the first time in many years I have a separate work space for dairy, along with ample storage space for dairy dishes, silverware and pots. All of a sudden it’s so easy to cook for and clean up from a dairy meal!

Deep bottom corner cabinets are usually very difficult to access, with lots of wasted space. This corner carousel that makes use of all the space and makes it easy to find what I need.

All of the bottom cabinets except one have shelves that pull out so there are lots of drawers. I strongly prefer drawers. Here’s what the pull-out shelves look like.

Here’s the only cabinet not to have a pullout shelf and it makes it the perfect place for pantry items. Since it’s a blind corner cabinet, the storage is about double what you can see here.

Next to the pantry is this cabinet that has a chrome design on the front that none of the other cabinets have. Wonder why?

Open the doors and you see storage space for vegetables – close at hand but out of sight! These heavy duty metal slotted drawers together with the special door opening provide air circulation to keep the vegetables fresh.

I asked the person who fabricated the countertops to raise them since I’m tall. That little bit of additional height makes it more comfortable for me to work at the counters.

I wanted a very light, open look with lots of cabinet and counter space. At the same time that we have so much more cabinetry in the kitchen, it feels more spacious and open than it did before.

Below is the right side of the kitchen.

The left side of the kitchen that was a holding place for unpacked boxes is now a great work area.

I bought the cabinets used and having all the features I wanted, plus everything fitting into my kitchen space so well is pretty amazing!

The next thing I’m going to do is put up one more top cabinet in the space next to the window (just thought of how to do this yesterday!), then tile the backsplash and cover the toekick. That will hopefully bring the entire kitchen together.

In the meantime, we’re all enjoying our new kitchen!

Avivah

My new Shabbos candleholders

June 1, 2015frugal strategies, homemaking, personal developmentAvivah

Jewish sages teach that the day of Shabbos (Sabbath) is a source of blessing. I’ve been reflecting on this recently and thinking about different ways that I could value and honor this special day more, to feel and receive more of the blessing in my life.

There are some things I’d like to change about how I approach Shabbos, and one of those things is what I use for candle lighting. My mother-in-law generously bought me a lovely pair of candlesticks when I got married and I supplemented with tea lights as each child was born. During an international move fifteen years ago, the candlesticks were badly damaged and couldn’t be repaired. Since then I’ve used only tea lights in simple glass holders, and when I moved I didn’t bring the holders so for almost 4 years it’s been just tea lights.

It’s not that I wouldn’t have wanted something nicer. But there’s always something more pressing that needs to be purchased. While expensive silver candlesticks aren’t my choice for a couple of reasons even though I love how they look, I’ve been thinking that getting nicer candle holders for the candles that I light for Shabbos would be more honoring of this special day.

Yesterday morning I was walking through the industrial zone. I had several errands there and since I wasn’t on a tight schedule, decided to look into each storefront as I passed in order to familiarize myself with the area.

I noticed a flyer on a storefront window about a sale they were having on crystal candelabras and went inside. It was a strange store, no lights on, a huge area with boxes and just a couple of bookshelves displaying various items. I had to actively get the attention of the man who was in charge and he seemed reluctant to answer my question about prices.

When I pressed him for the price, I learned he sells to stores in addition to his own six retail stores but he doesn’t sell to private individuals. Hence the strange storefront – it’s his warehouse. He happened to be there for just a half hour loading merchandise to take to the stores when I came in. He told me even though this wasn’t a storefront, since I was there he was willing to sell to me at the same price he sells to stores (where the prices are then marked up 200 – 400%).

I’m so happy with them. They’re beautiful but not overdone or something that would make anyone jealous – just the balance that I wanted. (The picture above really doesn’t do them justice – I love how the light sparkles through the prisms but you can’t see that here.)

I had such a strong feeling that G-d had led me right into this store at just this time, because I had so much wanted to do something to honor Shabbos. This ‘coincidence’ made it possible for me to buy lovely crystal candle holders at a price that was affordable for us; I wouldn’t have considered them at the typical retail price.

As our sages have said, “In the way that a man wants to go, so he is led!”

Sample fountain for illustration purposes — Sample fountain

Edited to add – I wrote this post in the morning and later that night went to a lecture run by Arachim. I attended a lecture of theirs in the past and wanted to give a donation to support their work but it was given on Shabbos. This time I was able to donate and they gave each person who donated a gift – mine was a kiddush fountain!

Another way to beautify one of the mitzvos of Shabbos!

Avivah

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