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.