One December, our area had a horrendous ice storm. The worst in ten years. Our town and the surrounding towns, looked like a war zone of mass destruction covered over with ice. Over 380,000 people were without electricity and some without water due to the distribution centers not having the power to supply water. There were still over 110,000 people without electricity weeks later.

My personal enlightening began with that storm. I knew something good had to become of it.

We were one of the many families without electricity, although we were fortunate enough to have water. For three days we were without modern luxuries. We heated our living room with our wood burning fireplace. We cooked in the fireplace and sat wrapped in blankets on the living room floor directly in front of the blazing fire to keep warm, while we played card games by candlelight to past the time and just talked and laughed.

My husband went to work every morning and there I was at home alone, without heat, and working very hard keeping the fire going all day long, carrying firewood in daily. There wasn't television, video games, music, and worst of all, I was without my blessed computer. All I could do is sit on the fireplace's brick hearth to keep warm and work on one of my oil paintings or read a book by candlelight.

That experience got me thinking and appreciating the luxuries that we were born into. The luxuries we evolved into throughout the years due to modern technologies. The luxuries we take for granted everyday, like breathing without thinking about it.

What did families do in the 1800's? How did they keep warm? How did they cook their meals? How did they bathe in such cold temperatures and without running water? What did families do at night when it got dark and cold? What did they do for their entertainment and to pass their time? Of course they heated their bath water and cooked in pots over a fir in a hearth, and used oil lanterns and candle light. Just like we did.

Men were busting their buns working in their fields tending their crops, tending to livestock, mending fences, hunting for food for their families, making repairs around their homesteads, building new barns or smokehouses and chopping firewood daily.

Women were busy sewing their clothes by hand, stitch for stitch, mending clothes, making quilts by hand from scraps of left over material, gathering fresh eggs, feeding the chickens, killing a chicken and plucking them for dinner, washing clothes

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