ICE ICE BABY

I feel pretty joyous right now. I actually did it. That thing that I've been trying to do for years and even attempted a couple of months ago and kinda failed. I cooked a ton of food and stuck it in the freezer in the goal that each day around 5pm isn't a nutso event of trying to figure out what to make for dinner. It probably doesn't seem like much of an achievement. To me it is. Our family of four eats food daily and on the weekend what seems like hourly and my husband and I have a strong aversion to processed and prepared foods. This aversion keeps us healthy, but must take us longer to figure out what to eat and longer to make our meals.

I've spent (wasted) hours (days I'm sure) of my life pouring over recipes online and mommy blogs and menu planning websites looking for great ideas to help me get this food on the table with minimal stress. Don't get me wrong we both cook a lot and feed our family pretty well even without meal planning, but it gets stressful and I want more harmony in that already stressful time of picking up the kids, getting home, feeding the hungry dogs and in that moment where I really need to unwind I just wind up. Back to the meal planning websites, typically as soon as I get excited about the site's meal planning theory I then read a recipe for tuna casserole or beefy mexican cheesy dip and they lose me. The Once a Month Mom (OAMM) site offers options other than their Traditional menu (read pizza rollups and tuna taco pie). I made their Whole Foods menu in August and made a number of items from their Diet menu yesterday. The recipes are pretty good, some winners and some acceptable but it does take a lot of thinking out of preparing a whole lot of food at once.

When diving into the food prep yesterday in an attempt to stock our freezer for the month I realized a couple of things. I don't need to pre-make fancy breakfast items - we eat a lot of greek yogurt, frozen pancakes (we make a double batch on the weekend and the kids eat them throughout the week) and kind of an absurd amount of oatmeal. As long as I have a dark cup of coffee in the morning I don't really care what accompanies it. For lunch the kids are fed very well at their schools and we're fine with bringing leftovers from dinner to work and/or some simple soups with a roll. Dinner on the other hand in our house needs to be kind of exciting. Not always fancy, but prepared well with good ingredients and we like to talk about it a bit. So, we don't really require all of the breakfast and lunch items that the OAMM site includes in their monthly menus. A nutritionist friend introduced me to Pepperplate and I'm now thinking that this site is the current answer to my freezer cooking woes. You can hunt online for recipes (EatingWell, Food and Wine, Real Simple and Gojee are good places to start) and even use the recipes on OAMM as a guide for what will freeze well and add them to your Pepperplate account. You can then modify the number of servings, add the recipe to your shopping list and even create a meal plan for the week. Very cool. I like being in control and this site allows me to plan my meals and makes the hard stuff (grocery list and calculations) easy. The Pepperplate meal plan is my next experiment.

Oh and I finally bought a crock pot. It's so easy use, but I do feel older now. I balanced out the crock pot purchase by going to a rock show last night until 2am. Ok where was I? In case you're curious here is what I made and froze yesterday:

1. Pork Carnitas
2. Lentil Soup
3. Lime Coconut Chicken (used thighs instead of breast - cheaper)
4. Chipotle Shrimp
5. Spinach Turkey Burgers
6. Vegetarian Cassoulet
7. Broccoli Lasagna (I omitted the cream and the greens are for a side salad, not the lasagna, oh and Prince brand lasagne noodles are the bomb)
8. Chicken Taquitos (I left out the cream cheese, it's not an item that I like cooking with, I also boiled a whole organic chicken instead of using just breasts it's cheaper and then I end up with free chicken broth for other meals)
9. Orange Ricotta Pancakes this was a blend of the recipe from the OAMM site and a recipe we use all the time from another book. 2 cups milk mixed with a tbs of vinegar for a few minutes (set aside), 2 cups WW flour, 2 cups unbleached white flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda (Mix above) .zest of an orange, 4 eggs, .5 cup canola oil,  2 cups ricotta (mix all and cook).

DIY TOYS

I checked out a great book from our library recently called "Made to Play" - it's chock full of ideas for making toys for your kids or yourself or for other people's kids.

I know - I've never made a toy myself either. I only just learned to use a sewing machine and I felt like a super person afterwards and made lots of plans to make things then I didn't but I totally will. One day. The first thing I'll make is a play cape for the kids (there is an even cooler one in the book, but the pattern isn't online, so this is a different cape) -  or maybe a fabric instrument.

Paper Road Trip  - Made by Joel

An easier way to get started on making your own toys is to print some of these paper cities and cut and color with your kids. I'm really impressed by the creations on this guy's site and in his book. Not only do the toys look fun and tactile, but the design is modern and nice to look at. Cats are the new black - so here's a cat for you.
 

IS THAT GAS?

If you live in Burlington it probably is. Most of the homes in Burlington use natural gas to heat their homes and we're lucky enough to have it for cooking too. Seriously - we wouldn't look at a home that couldn't run a gas stove. We both worked in restaurants and have a hard time cooking with anything else.

We don't have a choice of who we can buy our gas from, it's all Vermont Gas but it's all good since their rates are low and they have this sick program that I love to tell people about. If your home uses too much gas - from the Vermont Gas site, "at least 0.5 Ccf per square foot of natural gas over the past year" then you'll qualify for an energy retrofit. Our bill is pretty low considering the winters we have in Vermont, the scalding hot showers I take and that we cook with gas - it runs about $125/month on their budget plan (we pay the same amount each month all year, which saves us from the $500 bill that you can end up with in February). All the same we live in a 55+ year old house and I'm not one to pass up free things so I called and was surprised to find out that we qualified. The program pays for an energy audit and for 1/3 of any recommended construction costs to retrofit the house, the remaining 2/3 of the bill is eligible for a 0% three year loan from a local credit union.

An auditor (Brian Fisher) came out from Vermont Gas really quickly after I called. He spent a couple of hours examining the full house and did a blower door test to see how much air we're losing from the house and more importantly to have a baseline against the test that runs after the work is complete. About a week later I received a report of the audit which included the recommendation to have about $3k in insulation work - foam boards in the basement, blown insulation on the full first floor and some other odds and ends around the house. He said our gas bill should go down 30-40% - we'll save money and help fight climate change. Awesome!

Brian recommended that before we start on the insulation work that I change my bathroom fans to high efficiency fans to ensure that air can get out of the house after it's all tightened up. He let me know that Burlington Electric Department will pay $110 towards a new one. I bought the Panasonic Whisper Green FX-08VKM3 - it's about $18 less now than it was a few months ago! I guess this is a good model at a great price, because the guy at Burlington Electric (John Lincoln 802-865-7362) said he was going to buy some for his house when I sent him the link. After the $110 rebate, we spent about $60 on the new fan. It's very quiet and goes on automatically. Our close friend came over and installed it with my husband in less than an hour since it replaced an existing fan.

Brian included a list of contractors that Vermont Gas works with. On a recommendation I chose Patriot Insulation in Colchester. I'm so happy that I did - they started work in a couple of weeks, explained everything they were going to do and showed up on time each morning and were very professional. The whole project took 3.5 days. They did a blower door test when they completed their planned work and decided the numbers weren't as low as they would like for them to be - meaning the house wasn't as tight as they would like. They spent another half day doing more insulation work, ran the test and got it to where they and Vermont Gas were happy. An immediate cosmetic improvement are the foam boards in the basement, they covered exposed concrete block that looked a bit scary. The foam boards are white so instead of running down to the basement and running back up as quickly as I can, I'm now more leisurely in my trips to the basement - our laundry room is down there, so the trips are often. It's hard to feel a physical difference since it's still the summer, but I'm hoping that in the winter we'll be much cozier. 

Even if you don't live in an area serviced by Vermont Gas - you can call your local provider or government and see if they offer incentives to reduce your home's energy usage.

KILL YOUR TELEVISION

OK, nothing as dramatic as beating your TV with a bat, however you can modify the way you consume your TV entertainment to save money and take commercials out of the equation. I'm really not sure why my husband and I ever subscribed to cable, we rarely watched it. When we had a cable subscription we also paid for a Netflix account and we typically just watched the Netflix movies. A few years ago we bought a Roku box for about $90, now you can get one for as low as $50. We have the Roku hooked up to our Netflix and Amazon Prime accounts and between those two Roku channels we have more than enough entertainment for our family. After the initial $90 layout for the hardware, we pay a bit over $8 per month for Netflix and the Amazon Prime video is included with the Amazon Prime account. There are also TONS of other awesome Roku channels - Pandora, TED, Vimeo, and CHOW to name very few. Some are paid, but the ones that we use other than Netflix are free. They have a channel for HBO GO, but you need an HBO subscription - so I don't understand that one at all since most people with a ROKU are not going to also have cable but I may be mistaken.

As far as Ned's Atomic Dustbin goes (musicians from the video above), they may have softened their stance on TV if they have kids. Watching Netflix on the Roku is so awesome for kids since they can watch the same.thing.over.and.over.and.over. There is always content for little kids and they're not assaulted with commercials. For us there is always something to watch and if I can't find it on Netflix, usually it's on Amazon either free or paid for just a couple of dollars. About once a month we spring for a $3 movie on Amazon to see a newish release.

I'm pretty sure there are now live sports channels on Roku, but if you watch a lot of sports then you may find that cable is easier and cheaper. If you're really into the prime time TV shows you can subscribe to the HULU plus channel for about $8/month - we prefer Netflix, but we're more into movies and kid programming than TV shows (the exception is Mad Men). The first month of my son's life I did subscribe to Hulu Plus and I watched A LOT of Parks & Recreation, then his nursing habits were further spaced and I watched mainly movies while I nursed. How do some mother's read books while nursing - I'm so curious? We used to spend about $80 each month on cable and now we spend about $11 on our TV entertainment. That is a savings of about $828 each year!

LESS OF A MONEY PIT

This is going to be a very short and simple post. I've been out enjoying the amazing weather all day with my kids who will soon not be available to me during the week since one is starting kindergarten and the other preschool. Now I need to clean the kitchen and put together dinner which will be super simple since I prepared it last week and I just need to cook it.

To finally get to the point - interest rates are sick low right now - lowest in history! The mortgage we got on our place three years ago was pretty low at 4.75%, but we're refinancing the loan for 3.5%. Even though we've paid three years into the 4.75% loan, the 3.5% one is over $20k cheaper for the life of the loan (both 30 year fixed). That works out to a savings of $165/month. Sweet! Free money - I love being rewarded for having good credit. We have most of our financial things with USAA, because they're awesome however our mortgage broker has beat their rates the last two times we checked (the last mortgage and this one).

If you're in Vermont - give Reeni Murphy a call, she's great to work with - (802) 658-5599 Ext. 3118 or email her at RMurphy@mfsinc.com. I'm not sure which states she services, but she beat out the rates from all of the large discount mortgage companies that I found online. You don't want to give your SSN to any of them until you're positive you want to work with them on your refi, since every time your credit report is pulled it's a ding on your score. So f'in stupid. If you have over a 720 credit score, then you'll qualify for the lowest available rates - so don't freak out if your credit score isn't an 800. 

It's the same nearly 60 year old house with the same old house issues, but at least it costs less. Maybe we'll put away that money for some renovations. What would you do with some extra flow?

PUT A BIRD ON IT

Portlandia is great - watch it. Another great original is Envelop.eu! We have this very boring, very utilitarian espresso brown couch that I bought sight unseen, online purely because it was made from Crypton fabric and seemingly waterproof. The cats that "ran away" (as we tell our daughter, but really they're in great homes) were really into pissing all over my sofa and I was hoping this new couch would not get nasty. The last couch was very soft, smelled very gross and according to my husband, "was the best couch he ever had" (I bought it before we lived together so I take offense that he thinks he "had" that couch even if it was nasty). I guess after marriage my stuff becomes his stuff and vice versa. Sweet! Now I have a huge record collection. Back to the real story - the brown sofa is pretty boring and I just went back to the Crypton site after years away and it looks like they currently also carry only one sofa option, but it's pretty cool and much cheaper than the one that I bought. Dang! They also making a pretty nice modern nursery glider.

I put a bird on it.

When we moved to our current home we toyed with getting a new sofa that was a bit more stylish, but decided to just spruce it up with some throw pillows and save money for big stuff, like renovating our kitchen. After a lot of online and in-person shopping and seeing only boring or ridiculously expensive pillows that would totally break us I happened upon Envelop. It's a Belgium based site that allows designers to upload their designs which are then printed onto various housewares like aprons, pillow covers, placemats, and the like and the designers make some money and you can end up with a very original design for something that tends to be really boring. For the pillow cases, the USD/Euro exchange rate was almost one to one a couple of years ago so I got them for about $20 each and bought the pillow inserts at Michael's Arts and Crafts for about $6. I got six of them and I love looking at them. Other than our original art in the house, they're one of my favorite buys.

FAIL

Okra Cornmeal Cakes topped with tomatoes, muenster, red onion and jalapenos. This is one of the OAMM recipes and also starred as tonight's dinner. 

I was pretty confident when I was writing a bit ago about the Once a Month Mom meal planning that I could spend a whole day cooking and have food for the month. I failed. Big time. After making a couple of dishes on Sunday big plans were made to cook all night on Monday while my husband hung with the kids. He rarely gets home after 6:30, but that night it was more like 9, so I made a couple more items from the OAMM menu and crashed. Again I planned to cook a ton on Tuesday night, then I got really tired so I made one more recipe and went to bed. Tonight I just said f that and didn't make any plans to do anything other than prep dinner and hang out with the family.

This would have gone much smoother had I just set aside a weekend day and just banged all of these recipes out. Instead I'm stressing about it daily. Also, I'm not that physically productive at night these days. I can do desk work, but I'm not into being on my feet late night. When I worked at a desk job that wasn't an issue, but now that I run around after two kids all day it's an issue.

This week's CSA share!

The fridge is full of produce, not only from shopping for a few needed items for the OAMM recipes but also from my amazing CSA. Having all of this fresh produce is wonderful and we're really lucky to have it, but I don't want to fail it. This produce deserves to be eaten by our family with none of it going to rot and that is a bit of pressure. The next two afternoons when my son is napping and my daughter is at camp I'll finish up the recipes. That's the plan.

I'M TRYING

Yup - we live here and when it's nice out, we're out!

So, I'm trying to do the menu planning that I talked about here. The plan was to do any remaining grocery shopping on Saturday - I bought most of the stuff at Costco on Friday, but they don't have a great organic/free range selection and often times for the non-frozen stuff the amounts are way too big for us so I need to hit other stores. It was also my MIL's 60th birthday this weekend and the weather was gorgeous, so I didn't shop and I didn't spend all day cooking. We ate, drank, walked, played with the kids and enjoyed ourselves. Oh well, the summers are very short in Vermont and I try to not feel guilty if we spend time enjoying the outdoors while letting other chores go undone.

I did set aside a couple of hourse between outdoor activities and birthday festivities to make some of the OAMM meals and take a shower. I settled on the whole foods menu for august. I was able to make the quinoa salad, tilapia and the flank steak and set that aside - it claims to be 6 meals but the quinoa salad is more of a side dish for our family. I brought half of the salad to the birthday party last night and froze the rest to serve probably with the tilapia another night. It was very easy and it's nice to know that I have the main part of 4 meals in the freezer. I'll just prepare some veggies or salad to serve along side and done.

My plan is to make the rest of the meals over the next couple of evenings and let my husband take care of the kids after dinner while I cook. The quinoa salad called for red peppers, but we have a TON of cherry tomatoes from our CSA so I used those instead and there is a chicken salad that I'm making today that calls for strawberries and I'll use grapes instead since the kids ate all of the strawberries that I bought this morning. What I'm trying to say is - you can swap out ingredients if you need to, don't stress about it.  Also, there isn't a snowballs chance in hell that I'm making tortillas or whole wheat buns. Whatevs.

NASTY LITTLE CREATURES

Nasty little creature - lice

Lice is disgusting. I spent two weeks this spring doing little else than washing and drying everything in our house and picking nits out of our daughter's hair. I got it too. Nasty! It is more than unsettling to feel like little bugs are living on you and sucking your blood for it's nourishment. She got it from our neighbor who is a year older and in kindergarten. From what I have gathered our school district is riddled with lice. Lice is an equal opportunity blood sucker, however I think you can do some things to prevent it. Oh and here is the money saving part - we spent an extra $50 during the lice episode from additional water and electricity used when I was washing, drying and vacuuming constantly for two weeks. Some how I also managed (barely) to take care of the kids and dogs.

1. You can spray a mixture of tea tree oil and water onto your kid's hair every morning before school - I mix 20-30 drops of 100% tea tree oil into a 2oz spray bottle with water. The lice don't like tea tree oil and it may help. Who knows. Even if it doesn't work tea tree oil is good for the scalp.  
2. Buy a good nit comb and take it to your kid's hair once a week just to check. It doesn't hurt and if you catch it early it is way easier to get rid off. We used the Nit Free Terminator, it claims to remove all nits - it doesn't, but it does help. To get rid of all nits you need a lot of light, something to entertain your kid (I used my ipod touch) and a ton of patience.  
3. Buy a Garment bag for your child's coat/hat/gloves/sweaters/scarf (we live in Vermont) to keep at school. Lice have a tendency to walk from head to head and from coats and hats to other coats and hats. If your child has theirs in a garment bag, then it'll reduce that a bit. They still get it from hugging and you don't want to tell your kids not to hug other kids and turn them into anti-social misanthropes.
4. If your kid does get lice - get NIX and get rid of it quickly. I talked to our pediatrician about some of the natural remedies and she guffawed. She's into natural remedies, but for these nasty little creatures you have to unfortunately fight with insecticide. 

My head has been itching the entire time I've been writing this post. I can not talk or as I've just learned write about lice without my whole body getting the heebie geebies. Ugh.
GOOD LUCK!

NOT SO SEXY SPREADSHEET

This is that breakdown of our pet costs that I promised you here. We spend roughly $2,825 annually. Spreadsheets are not very sexy, regardless you can click here to get to the Google Doc.

If you want to make it your own, just log in to Google Docs and make a copy of it. While making this I realized how sad it must look that we have no line item for toys for our dogs. We've ended up at the emergency vet (~$500) with both of them trying to get toys out of their stomach and/or anal cavity. They don't get to play with dog toys - boo hoo.

ALL UP IN MY GRILL

Not busted grill

I'm totally puzzled at how teeth and eyes are excluded from regular medical health benefits. How did that happen?! Some jedi at an insurance company was like let's just exclude some parts of the body that happen to also be located on the head (which is a pretty important part of the body IMHO) and see if people notice. Fortunately, the company that my husband works for has amazing benefits and employees get free dental care. For their families it's an extra roughly $830 per year. Which is not that bad considering it pays for a lot.

My kids are young and not ready for the large dental bills yet and my teeth are fine, except for the four crowns right up front. More on that later. I have a great dentist that we trust, but it's still about $100 for each cleaning. Our dentist, Chuck Seleen told us about reduced cost dental care through Vermont Tech. The cleanings and xrays take a tad longer with the training hygenists, but it's worth it for $20 cleanings and $40 xrays. Vermont Tech sends the report and x-rays to Dr. Seleen and he lets me know if he needs to see any of us. Adults are allowed to go once per year and kids twice per year. We end up spending about $240 per year since I go to Dr. Seleen once each year in addition to the cleaning at Vermont Tech and one of us ends up needing x-rays that year too. I only get x-rays once every few years or so. Try to find a dental hygiene school in your town and call to get an appointment. You'll need to call right at the beginning of the semester if you want to get in. We call ( 802-879-2323) mid-August and early January.

Going to Vermont Tech saves us roughly $600 as opposed to paying for dental insurance. I can use that money to pay for my nearly useless eyes. Without science I would have grey hair, a busted grill and be nearly blind. There is no way that I'd be married to my sexy husband and have two awesome kids. He's a great guy and all, but he's not blind. Cheers to you science!

My husband's snowboard is grillalicious.

PS. About my busted grill - to say that I'm clumsy is mild. My grill is busted when au naturel due to an unfortunate run in with a tile floor, but thanks to my talented dentist and Contour Dental Arts no one knows that. Now you know, but whatevs. Typically the crowns last for a really long time, but just as a special treat two of them fell out before the holidays last year. They were only a few years old and long story short - NEVER go to Atlanta Dental Arts. Well, you can go there if you want, but know that work that should last 15-20 years may last a few years and you'll spend $1k per tooth. So, all I got for xmas last year was my two front teeth. At least my grill isn't busted.

OLD DOGS NEW TIPS

Unproductive.

We have two old-ish dogs. The younger of the two, Flapjack is a Hurricane Katrina rescue from New Orleans. He's a mix of something, we think Catahoula Leopard Dog (what?!) and pit bull. He came to us with worms and many other small issues. He healed pretty quickly from his week or so livin' on the streets after the hurricane most likely eating rotting corpses of whatever to survive - my hope is that he ate only skunks and squirrels since that is what he's most interested in now. He'll be 8 (we think) in a few months and NEVER gets sick and is only mildly anxious during fireworks or very loud storms. His ears are very soft. Wait I forgot - he likes to eat poo, rub his back in decaying dead animals that he finds on our walks and killed a skunk a couple of weeks ago. All things considered, he's still a great dog.

Sasha hiking at Cloudland Canyon in TN

Our older dog, Sasha is a card carrying Rhodesian Ridgeback from Kalahari in Mobile, Alabama  - her aunt won the hound group of the 2002 Westminster Dog Show, which is how I found her. I was watching the show, then I looked up the breeder on the internets and the next day she emailed me that she had a couple of non-show females available and that was that. Sasha has a crooked ridge and she's really big - not a show dog. I love her dearly, but she was definitely a spontaneous purchase. She'll be 10 on October 18th. She was bred by a very conscientious breeder who brought the father to Alabama from Australia. I'm pretty sure that she's not inbred. However, they can come with some health issues even if they're bred well - so read up before getting one. They are large - which has never been an issue for us since we've had a house and a yard throughout her life. Sasha is too good to play in her yard, so she needs to be taken to other large open areas to play. She doesn't like dog parks, too many dogs in her pretty face - we were just told that she looks like Sandra Bullock. Back to the health issues - I think I mentioned that Flapjack never gets sick and is a mutt. Sasha had mange for about 4 months as a puppy and required expensive baths every couple of weeks. She started peeing on our bed the night before our wedding and has been on Proin ever since. She lost a bunch of her hair on her sides (seasonal flank alopecia) and takes melatonin for that - it all grew back. Oh yeah, she has a heart murmur too. If you're looking to save money on pets, don't get them. If you are still set on getting them, get a mutt it should save you money on meds and vet bills. I've found that ordering pet meds is much cheaper from KV Supply than from other online shops and definitely cheaper than buying meds at the vet.

Sasha and Nico from a few years ago

Regardless of mutt or purebreed dog you'll need to get them on heartworm preventative and flea meds - buy the generics and you'll save a lot! The ingredients in Iverheart Plus matches Heartgard Plus and Ecto Advance is exactly the same as Frontline Plus. You'll also want to feed your dogs, they like that. We used to spend a lot on Evo dog food and on a recommendation from a friend a couple of years ago, we switched to the salmon no grain dog food from Costo - it's about $40 cheaper per month than the Evo and seems to work well for our dogs. Our vet instructed us to feed the dogs less than what it says on the bag of dog food. Our dogs are really fit and I'm sure that only feeding our 85 pound dog 3 cups of food a day helps. It all depends on the dog and the type of food - so ask your vet how much you should feed your dog and don't rely on the bag of food to guide you. They make more money when your dog is fat. We buy them milkbones at Costco too - the dogs dance in circles nightly at 8pm to let us know that it's time for their T-R-E-A-T-S'. Nico (my daughter) makes them lay down and sets the milkbones in front of their noses then tells the dogs to wait, then after watching the saliva run out of their mouths for a bit she yells "OK!" and they devour their T-R-E-A-T-S'. We can't say that word in our house without the dogs freaking the f out. 

FlapJack

You probably can't take your pets with you everywhere you go. We've used nice kennels and paid $30 per dog per night, but I'd much rather use a pet sitter. For $30 per night you can hire a college kid or recent grad to stay at your house and take care of your pets in a way less stressful setting than a kennel. Bonuses are someone watching your house, taking in your mail and watering your plants. You can find them through local schools or on sites like sittercity.com. We can't take our dogs anywhere, so we spend a good chunk of change each year on pet sitting. To wrap it all up - dogs are expensive. Kids are expensive too, but eventually they'll clean up their own poo.

PS. I'll add a google doc with a breakdown of costs tomorrow. Pinky swear! DONE - here it is. We spend roughly $2,825 each year.

PPS. Catahoula, Ridgeback, and Alopecia are not in google blogger's spellcheck dictionary - for shame!

WIN/WIN

Watch it spin!

I like salad and I like having my 5 year old (the 1 year old isn't much help yet) help out in the kitchen. She loves to spin salad and I like to eat clean greens - win/win. We had a previous salad spinner from the same company - OXO, but it had a solid white top and you couldn't take it apart to clean it. One night I peeked in between the plastic parts and saw pretty solid black masses of mildew. Nasty! I ripped it apart to try and clean it and end up breaking it. I called OXO customer service and told them what happened. They were pretty awesome and sent me a new top to fit the bottom that was still fine, but it was the exact same model that you can't take apart to clean. They said to just leave the plunger open and let it dry. What I really wanted was their new model that you can take apart to clean and it's clear, so if it does get dirty - you'll see it pretty quickly. Sometimes luck takes over and  I accidentally (for real) dropped the salad spinner that I no longer wanted on the floor and it shattered - it was about 10 years old. I ordered the clear, cleanable OXO and it's pretty awesome. My daughter is really enjoying being able to look at the greens while they spin and she's able to entertain the 1 year old too. Win/Win.

By the way, when it comes to home goods I'm constantly torn between making a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond to use the $5 or 20% coupon that I seem to get daily in the mail and just finding the item online or checking out Costco to see if they have it. Bed, Bath and Beyond is 25 minutes from my house and unless I'm buying a really large item and happen to be heading that way for something else it doesn't make sense to spend that much time and energy (mine and the car's) for a small purchase - Amazon or Costco (I'm there every two weeks) is the way to go for me.

HUNGRY AGAIN?!

So it seems that we all need to eat every day and if you have children, partners, pets this all gets more and more complicated as our lives get more full of activities. I'm not cooking food for my dogs (yet!), but I am the main kitchen lackey for our family of four. My husband had that role for about five years, but he passed the torch to me a little over a year ago when I passed him the torch of working outside of the home. On the dog food note - my friend is making food for her dogs and swears that it's easy and cheap to make healthy dog food at home. She doesn't have kids. I may try it one day just to cut down on the "crap! we're out of dog food again" trips to the store.

When I started cooking again after about a five year hiatus - the food was pretty horrible. I have a background in working in kitchens, so this was a shock to me. I was 8 months pregnant, in pain when I stood and not that into eating, so the meals were uninspired. My husband informed me that I need to use recipes for awhile and stop winging it. He was over the mushy stir-fry. I took his advice and used recipes - found lots of great ones on Gojee.com and even started menu planning. Before the menu planning I found myself running to the grocery store almost daily - I find that I need to hit City Market (local co-op), Hannaford and Costco to get all of the things that we like at an OK price. Food is pricey in Vermont - about 30% more than what we paid when we lived in Atlanta. The likelihood that we'll be mugged or home invaded in Burlington has decreased so it's a wash. Just entering the grocery store, especially without a list meant that for sure I would spend roughly $30 - too much for one day's worth of food at home. The weekly menu planning has cut that down to about $200 per week.

My close friend just started to use the Once a Month Mom site for menu planning and I'm stoked to try it out. I'll update to post what I spent at the store and how long it took to prepare the full month. I have a fairly well stocked spice and pantry cabinet and I plan to modify the recipes to use the items that are in my CSA (Ants in Your Pants in Colchester, VT). You end up with 6-10 breakfasts, 8 lunches, and 14 dinners. The site has a lot of different menus - traditional, diet, vegetarian, gluten free, baby foods, school lunches, and whole foods. The site creates the grocery list that you can modify for the number of servings that you'll need (across the month). The site also provides instructions on how to cook most efficiently on the big prep day, labels for the freezer bags and full recipes. Again - I'm stoked! Now if only it could fold and put away our laundry.

This is last week's CSA delivery!

 
I'm trying to not use my kitchen much, since we don't have central AC and much to people's disbelief it does get hot in Vermont in the summer. Most days are breezy and 72, but we do have the occasional humid and hot (above 80) spells. I'm going with the August 2012 Whole Foods menu first to keep the cooking time to a minimum. It calls for making whole wheat buns and tortillas - not happening. My friend also told me about a site called Ziplist  - it's sort of like Gojee - where you enter an ingredient and the system feeds up recipes, but you pick and choose which recipes you want, then you create a grocery list from there and there is a corresponding iPhone app so you can bring your shopping list with you. I take a long time deciding what to eat. I'm a total foodie and picking meals at a restaurant is kinda excruciating. I want to try the no thinking plan on Once a Month Mom where it just tells me what I'm going to eat.

I found this conversion table on the Once a Month Mom site, they found it on another site and anyways - here it is. I plan to leave it somewhere handy in the kitchen since it's thoughtfully designed and useful  - why isn't everything?!

Salad in a mother f'in jar!

Off topic - salad in a jar is pretty dope too.

CHEAP TRAVEL

Cool kids map of the world - off we go!

 My husband and I have pretty solid credit so occasionally I exploit that by actually applying for some of the credit card deals that seem too good to pass up.  I have to caveat this tip with the info that my husband has asked me to no longer do this since he's very risk averse and doesn't want us to open and close too many cards and leave a negative mark on our credit scores. I get that. I also just got us two free plane tickets on United. Booyah!

I opened the United MileagePlus Explorer Chase Credit Card and we each got 30,000 miles after the first month. It's free the first year and as long as you leave it open for 6 months there is no issue with using the miles. I closed the cards at the six month mark and we each had more than enough miles for a domestic round trip ticket. My husband is heading to a wedding in Atlanta and I'm off to a girls weekend in Chicago - all for $10, $5 for each ticket. We even have miles leftover. Pretty sweet!

SLEEP LIKE MY BABY

Update 07.02.12 - Happy Canada Day! The Marriott bed arrived from Jamison in less than two weeks and after nearly a week sleeping on it I have to say that it's everything that we hoped for. My husband and I both love it and my lower back pain is gone. Costco took back their mattress with no questions asked. 

Mattress shopping is boring and puzzling and time consuming. It takes lots of research and time in the store checking out mattresses - ugh! Or not. We had a 10 year old Sealy Posturepedic that had given up on supporting us and my husband hated it. I went to Costco and was very excited to find a Novaform® Gel Memory Foam Queen Mattress for $400. I brought it home without so much as touching it and could not wait to go to sleep that night. Much to our dismay it was hard as a rock and sleeping on it SUCKED. It still sucks two months later. I've been researching everything and finally my husband threw me a bone and said that the best bed that he'd ever slept on was at the Marriott Marquis Times Square from a trip we took in 2006.

Now I love a good detective challenge so as soon as I woke up the next morning and fed the dogs, the kids, myself and maybe got out of my pjs (maybe not) I was on the phone with the hotel to track down that mattress. It didn't take long to find Jamison Bedding - they've been making beds in the USA for 129 years. I called up and asked some questions and they spent so much time telling me all about their beds and box springs and specifically the ones that Marriott hotels uses. I ended up buying a queen supreme foam 7" mattress from them with the Marriott box spring and they threw in a mattress topper for free - the whole thing was $1500 including delivery. This is kind of a risky endeavor for me since there is no risk free try out period or 100% refund like I'll get on the Novaform mattress that is going back to Costco the DAY that this new mattress gets here, however I've stayed at quite a few Marriott hotels and always loved the bed. Here goes nothing! I'll update with how it is when it arrives and I've had a few nights of sleep on it. Our last bed was too soft for my husband and the Novaform is too firm and this is a medium so I'm hoping that goldilocks will be pleased with this one.

I'm curious to hear anyone else's mattress stories!

DON'T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT

Concealer - this is the one thing that no matter what I do not leave the house without it. I don't sleep that well and even if I did I still may have less than perfectly colored skin under my eyes. Even with concealer I don't, however it's much improved with a good swipe of the stuff. I used to use only MAC and then it just ended up that their light textured blend in the tube was too light and their heavier stuff in the pot was too heavy. I switched to Trish McEvoy Flawless Concealer which is a great product, but it's $40 and I decided to stay home this year with my kids and I'm not getting a side job to purchase makeup.

I hunted online for some recommendations for a good drugstore concealer and came across this old school yet helpful word doc - in it I came across Maybelline Instant Age Rewind Eraser Dark Circles. I picked one up at my local Rite Aid for about $10 and it's awesome! It goes on easily and gave me great coverage all day - I didn't notice any difference between this and the much more expensive Trish McEvoy version. I got the number 20 light color and I have light olive skin, people always say I'm dark but that's mainly since I moved to Vermont from the south. I just found it on Amazon for the next one for only $7.54 if you purchase with their subscribe and save program! Score!


PS - This is not my video, it's a repost from YouTube and does a great job at explaining how to use this product.

I THOUGHT THIS WAS HELPING

Update August 5, 2012 - The Nature's Gate is fine if you're not going to sweat much or go in the water - if you are then don't buy it. It'll come right off. Alba Botanica is on sale at our local co-op (maybe at yours too) for 6.99 for 4 oz and it works really well. Just be sure to buy their mineral formulas since they sell both mineral and chemical sunscreens.

Update June 12, 2012 - We normally buy Badger, but just bought Nature's Gate Mineral Kids Block for the body since it was on sale and much cheaper and I've been really happy with it. It's $8.15 on Amazon for 4oz which is a fair bit cheaper than most of the zinc blocks. For the face we all use MyChelle SPF 28 with Zinclear, it's a bit more expensive but it is so light and so easy to rub in that it's all we use now. I love it!

I was under the impression the sunscreen that I was using and putting on my kids all the time it seems in the warmer months was helping. Well, it seems that the studies say otherwise. I was using high SPF sunscreens that contain oxybenzone - which according to some research is a hormone disrupter. The shortened version of all of the research is that the sunscreens with a bunch of chemicals in them are not a good option to rub on your body and especially not on your child's body. Here is a list of good sunscreens, we've used Badger for the last few years - it isn't greasy once you rub it in well - you will get a workout rubbing it in! The easy to remember tip for sunscreens is - "mineral good chemical bad". The minerals used are typically Zinc Oxide or Titanium Dioxide - look for those as the main ingredients and you'll be all set.

WASH THAT GREY RIGHT OUT OF YOUR HAIR

I've dealt with grey hair since I was twelve years old, not at all kidding. I have dark, curly hair that is prone to early greying - inherited from my mother. Luckily, I inherited other awesome things from my mom - tenacity, independence and good skin - yay mom! The first time I colored my hair at fourteen, much to my mother's ire I chose a gothic black to match my Doc Marten's and Head on the Door t-shirt. I looked AWFUL and my mom quickly packed me in the car and off to her hair salon for my first professional coloring session - I ended up with a not so awful auburn color and did not color my hair at home again for many years.

Flash forward about twenty years - married, working full time and a one year old daughter. Spending a few hours each month at the hair salon on my precious weekends away from my family seemed like a complete waste of time and money and I searched for a way to free myself of this obligation. I need to add that letting my hair grow out grey is just not my thing, I love seeing women au naturelle, but just not my reflection. I asked my hairstylist for some tips on how to color my hair myself. She was a friend and obliged and let me know which brand she was using and which color to buy and how to mix/apply properly. Schwarzkopf Igora Royal is what I used then and woo hoo it worked! I went from spending the time and money at the salon, to doing my color myself at home but with the results from a salon. Now if you're looking for some drastic changes - this is not the way to go. However, if you're looking to give your roots a monthly touch-up - then go for it. I switched recently to Schwarzkopf's Essensity Organic color and I LOVE IT! I've tried colors from the grocery store and have not had luck getting a natural color that blends my roots well with the existing growth. So, I just do what is now comfortable for me and wanted to share it. I buy the color on Amazon and use half a tube each month - $3.50 per application. You'll also want to get the corresponding developing lotion - it's made with beeswax and is thick and easy to apply. Speaking of which - it's in my hair right now and I best hop in the shower before I leave it in for too long and risk a trip to the salon. BRB.

It came out great - no greys and no blend line. Granted - this may not work for everyone, hair is a funny thing. Choosing the right hair color and the right red lipstick are very personal decisions. One thing that you could try is to go to a hair salon that uses a color that you can buy online and have them do it the first time for you - if you like it just reproduce it at home. I've used the Schwarzkopf for a few years now and haven't strayed. I did completely fubar it once and buy 6-00 instead of 6-0 and ended up with a stripe of black (only did the roots thankfully) and my husband asked if I had an appointment at the salon to help take care of that. My husband is thrifty to say the least, so I knew that I had really messed up if he was suggesting that I spend money at the salon. My current hairstylist fixed me right up  - she actually made it so much nicer than normal and added a few highlights, but it's just not something I can keep up with (time+money) and I was right back to coloring my hair at home again. So, the moral of that story is really figure out what color you need and pay attention to what you're buying online - the numbers do matter. Ignore the name of the colors and just go with what works - my color is called Dark Blonde and it's not blonde at all. Try it out  - it's worth the risk if it works!