Lent is just about a week away and it is time for me to start getting ready. I wrote about Lent last year explaining my position and practice and then later reflected on what I learned about myself. This year I plan to observe this time period again, but with a few additions.

My focus will be Spring Cleaning... physically, spiritually and household-ly, or to nicely alliterate: Health, Heart and Home.

Lent starts February 17th (Ash Wednesday) and continues just over 6 weeks until Easter Sunday. My plan is still evolving, but I've come up with a few ideas that I'm excited about.

Health - As usual, I will stop eating desserts/sweets. It seems like such a good time of year to detox the body from holiday and winter feasting to prepare for the freshness of spring. This year, however, I hope to take on another challenge. The big push here in the UK is to eat "5-A-Day". By that they mean we should strive to eat five fruit and vegetable servings in a day. The bar is not too high - juice can count as one portion. But, in all reality, I'm not sure if I actually do eat that much in a day. I want to take a week during the Lent period to focus on intentionally serving "5-A-Day" to my family and see if there is a significant change from our typical weekly diet.

Heart - I would like to chose 6 verses for the six weeks of Lent to meditate on and memorize. I hope to focus particularly on verses that pertain to my role of homemaker. As part of this, I will post them around the house in places that I often look to help me dwell on God's truths throughout the week.

Home - Somehow my urge to spring clean always seems to come long before spring. While technically spring cleaning should probably take place after Easter, I have decided that Lent is the perfect time to clean out the clutter and dirt from the months of being house-bound. I have a six-week plan for this as well that I will go into more detail about later. In brief, I will chose one room to focus on for each week: bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room, kids bedrooms, and master bedroom. My goal will be to get rid of everything that is unnecessary and clean/organize everything else. I'm a huge fan of Simple Mom and she has many good tips for de-cluttering your life as well as a 2-week spring cleaning party that she hosted last year.

I'm excited. I'm ready. Care to join me?

Or, for those who like play-on-words: "Eggs"periment, perhaps.

To this point, we have been buying regular, "barn" eggs that cost ₤1.86 for 18. This is by far the best deal and frankly, we haven't had the money to choose otherwise. Now, with my husband finally getting paid for his work, we have the ability to make a choice. But what to choose??

Organic, Free-Range, Local, Barn, Sustainable, Woodland... all with various shocking price tags. Can the labels be trusted? What do they REALLY mean in practice? What is the healthy choice for my family? If you've read my summary of The Omnivore's Dilemma, then you know this question isn't easily answered.

When we were at the grocery store a couple of days ago, we decided to try a couple different kinds of eggs. We bought a local, free-range version and a store brand, organic free-range. I still had some of the "barn" eggs at home, so the next morning I decided to boil up one of each. I used a sharpie to mark the eggs and boiled them together for 10 minutes. We were rather surprised at the difference when we cut them open, so I had to take a picture. Can you guess which is which (the picture doesn't do justice to reality)?

Obviously the first, pale version is the "barn" eggs while the second and third are free-range and organic respectively. As far as taste goes, the latter two definitely tasted more "eggy" - if that makes sense. We couldn't really tell a difference between them both, though I found them to be a bit more firm in texture compared to the "barn" version. Clearly, by the color I know which was more beneficial nutritiously. We were just amazed at how pale the "barn" eggs were in contrast to the other two.

They say "ignorance is bliss" and I can definitely not eat "barn" eggs blissfully anymore. I don't know which path we'll choose. There are still quite a few options out there that we haven't tried or compared price-wise. I wish we could have our own chickens. Maybe someday...