Grocery Trip #1 - 30 Days of Nothing

Continuing the 30 Days Challenge ...

Today was my first grocery shopping trip in September. I am so pleased with how it went. I made my menu plan for the next week, focusing on using items I already had. So what we are eating is super basic and simple plus I am thawing some entrees that I froze previously.

So in addition to the frozen meals, and some meat I had in the freezer, I also have a vegetable share at a CSA. That has already been paid for this year, even though I will continue to receive produce through Sept and Oct.

So really, there wasn't much to buy this week. Here's what I got:
yogurt
flour
milk
mushrooms
pluots
apples
eggs
ketchup
popcorn kernels

Total: $22.35

Note - I don't need to buy bread because I make all our bread at home. I have been doing it about a year and I love it. I can't believe I bought bread all those years....

Staying out of the stores : 30 Days of Nothing

I am loving it so far. (I know, I know... it is still the honeymoon phase!) It is really nice to be so mindful of spending money and it feels good when I think through things a bit more than is typical.

I think the key is staying out of the stores AND stop browsing the sale ads! It might be on sale, but it still costs MONEY!

A few things that have come up...

• I had to pay a bill for something we did last month, that I had sorta forgotten about so it was not on my approved expense list.


• I have been wanting to get a 3-ring binder for a long time to put my menu planning sheets in but I just haven't got around to it. With this no-spending challenge, I spent 5 minutes and found an unused binder that I could re-purpose for this. Score! I am hoping to find one more lying around to store recipes.


• I REALLY, REALLY want a reusable water bottle (like Klean Kanteen). REALLY REALLY I DO! I am not going to buy it now, but wait until October. In some ways that seems cheesy, as it is likely I will spend the money anyway, and this just shifts it. But really, I think it is smart to hold off on purchases like that, maybe something else will come up or I will change my mind.

30 Days of Nothing

I have decided to participate in this 30 days of Nothing month from Owlhaven.

It is open to anyone participating in any fashion which is good because I am actually doing "30 days of Not as much as usual" instead. I looked through my budget sheet for September and made notes of all the "approved expenses" for the month to come. My plan is to not spend anything that was not on that list. So no random clearance items I run across, no clothes, no paper products, no toys or games or art supplies.

I am also limiting my food budget to $200. I am actually not sure how hard/easy that will be. I tend to be a hoarder but I find that in overspending one month to "stock up," I rarely go under in subsequent months for some reason. So my plan is to use up a BUNCH of foods that I already have. The only exception to this will be the trip we always take in September to the orchards to get apples and pears. I don't want to miss out on stocking up on those for the year.

I am actually really excited about it. It felt good to look through the whole budget at the start of the month and think through what our expenses would be more carefully. I feel a bit more in touch with things than usual.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Unplugged Project - Insects

We're a day late due to the holiday but we did do an unplugged project.

I printed out some pictures of animals using Microsoft word clip art - two sets, one for each child. Some were insects, some were not. Some were tricky (spiders), some were not (elephants). We got two pieces of paper for each child, labeled "Insects" and "Not insects" and the kids cut and pasted the animals into the right category.

They liked it a lot and are proud of their "posters" on our wall. It was super simple for me and was a great learning opportunity for both.

Alphabet Activity

I saw this fun idea on Jenni's blog and thought the boys would enjoy it. Both kids did it, with my older ones glueing the letters in order and my younger one putting them in his own order.

They love cutting and glueing and it gave me an opportunity to teach them some new things about the alphabet. And they are so proud to see their creations hanging on the wall.

Cylinders! - Finally Another Unplugged Project

I am not sure where on earth we have been or what we have been doing all summer but we have missed a whole bunch of really fun looking Unplugged Projects. Here we are this week finally getting back in the groove. We barely squeezed this one in between school shopping and tooth wiggling but here it is. This week's theme is CYLINDERS.

We made a marble coaster out of a collection of paper tubes - toilet paper, paper towel and wrapping paper. Here is the original coaster that I helped with. My boys are now modifying it and doing some "experimenting" and having a good time still. I think this may last a while if they don't lose the only marble we have!

Story Stretcher Activity - Friendship with George and Martha

I was reading through some blogs when I ran across this plug for a book called Story Stretchers. Basically it gives childrens's books and ideas of acitivities to do related to the story. Some are art activities and some are active games or others. I thought it sounded super so I went straight to my library's website and requested it. When it arrived, I flipped through it and quickly grew excited about giving some of the activities a try.

The books chapters are each a different theme and I picked Friendship as something I wanted to focus on with my kids, so I requested each of the 5 books on friendship from the library. A few of them came in, so we did our first activities today. (Note there are 5 activities for each children's book listed, but I just chose a couple simple ones that I had the supplies for and I thought my kids would like.)

George and Martha - One Fine Day by James Marshall

First, we used the ideas in Story Stretchers to talk about the cover of the book and general things about friendship. Then we read the book. After that we did two activities, one was an art activity and the other was to play fun music and walk around on a pretend tightrope. My kids both had great fun. They love this kind of little planned activity with mom, and they love books, so I think this is a perfect fit for us.

There was a third activity that I had originally planned on doing but it involved a nature walk and I was not up for that today. This worked out really well today and I want to do more of these. I would like to try to plan a little in advance so we can do some of the more ambitious activities but even the simple ones will work out too.

What I'm Reading

Well it has been 4 months since I posted what I have been reading but I definitely have been reading. I have to get to bed so I'll just leave you with the covers.

Here's the most recent ones:

Unplugged Project : Paint

This week's project - Paint.

The boys had a great time painting - they were excited from the time I mentioned the word as we don't really pull the paints out much. I was so happy this was the theme as I had two new things I wanted to try out. The first was my new wipe-clean tablecloth that I bought on a summer sale at Fred Meyer. The second was an trick I learned by looking at other unplugged projects late last year. We used egg cartons as paint pallettes. It worked great and the kids had great fun.



I just let them do their own thing while I hung out nearby and offered assistance as needed. I even managed to get a batch of granola in the oven. A huge highlight for them was that I gave them each a little cup of water to "clean" off their brush between colors. They made about 3 pictures each over about an hour I would say.

Unplugged Project : Ribbon

This weeks theme is Ribbon.

The boys made faces by gluing pieces of the only ribbon I had on hand onto paper. They actually spent quite a bit of time on them and had a fun time. Very simple this week.

The face my 5 year old made. The hair is blowing in the wind he says.

This is what my 2 year old made. My idea was faces but he said "No" - so instead I present some sort of abstract art.

Unplugged Project : Newspaper

This weeks theme is newpaper.

We decided to make hats out of the paper. Here are the instructions if you are interested in making some as well.

My 5-year old made 2 - one for him and one for his stuffed dog and my 2-year old only wanted to make one for his dog.

And then I even pulled out the paints and let the kids paint them. They had a really great time. The downside was they could not wear them right away as they had to dry.

Turnoff Week Summary

Daily Record
Monday - Super!
No TV. No Blogs. No spastic email checking. I spent moderate amount of time on computer.

Tuesday - Ok.
No TV. No Blogs. A bit of spastic email checking. Need to rein this in before it gets out of control. Going to set times to check tomorrow.


Wednesday - Super!
No TV. No Blogs. Only checked email at set times.


Thursday - Ok.
Notice the email checking habit seems to creep back in if I don't explicitly set email times.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday - Good.
No TV. No Blogs. Maybe a bit too much email.

Weekly Summary
Some areas went really well. My kids did not ask for a single video all week so we watched even less than I would have allowed. Since I had put my laptop away (and that is where my son typically types) he also ended up not using the computer any this week as well.

I had a bit more trouble as I was trying to follow a bit of a fuzzy rule on computer use so it was easy to fall back into wasting time and checking email too frequently. I definitely did a lot better than is typical since I was so conscious of it. This is something I want to continue working on. But it felt nice to take a break cold-turkey from reading blogs and sped my time doing a variety of other things.

TV-Turnoff Week Blog Challenge

I am so excited about participating in the TV-Turnoff Week Blog Challenge. This will be our first time. I think one of the most beneficial things about the whole experience is what I am doing now – sitting down and thinking about the amount of time we watch TV and use our computer and setting goals for how I would like things to be.

Our current status:
My kids are allowed to watch 1 video (30 mins-1 hour) each day. Most days they do not even ask for one.
I don’t watch any television at all.
My 5-year old loves to use the computer. I have yet to do a good job imposing any sort of limit on this, although I keep saying I am.
Most days he does not use it but when he does, he does not ever want to quit.
I have been waffling on how much time to limit him to.
And I am a spastic email and blog update checker who has trouble walking anywhere near a computer without sitting down for “just a minute.”
I know this sucks a lot of time that I could be getting things done or spending time with my kids.

I am happy with the limited amount of time my kids watch TV, I am not going to do a TV-free week.
Instead I am going to concentrate in areas where I think we have issues:
Computer Use for Me and My 5 Year Old Son

Our goals for the week:
· Limit my 5-year to 30 minutes of computer time a day. I have been really indecisive on this, not knowing what the “right” amount of time is and not having a good mechanism for keeping track. I am going to commit to 30 minutes a day for the week, and then re-evaluate at the end of the week – and try not to question my decision during the week. I also will use this week to figure out a good timing method. The problem is that he does not always do it in one sitting.
· Limit my computer usage. Gosh- how am I going to do this? I can’t really go “cold turkey” as I have some things I need to do each day on the computer. I am going to unplug my laptop that I use to read blogs and waste time during the day and put it out of sight for the week. I have a slow, old computer in the home office that I will use to read email and take care of things that need to be done. The difficult issue here is how to appropriately limit my use of this. I think I will go for no more repeated running in and out to check my mail, and I am hanging up a big note on my monitor that says “Are you wasting your time?” to help encourage me to only do what I need to and get off.

So I guess the summary is that we are not actually turning everything off, but using this week to try out some new limits and maybe break some bad habits. We’ll see how it goes!

Weekly Unplugged Project : Scissors

This week's Unplugged Project topic is scissors. We have missed quite a few weeks so I wanted to jump back in even if I was feeling less than inspired today.

I drew shapes on paper and asked my kids (2 and 5) to cut on the lines as best they could. I thought this was a good chance to get an idea of where their scissor skills are and help them as I could. My 5 year old did pretty well, and I had a chance to sit down with my 2 year old and give him some pointers. His cutting actually drastically improved in just a few minutes, with a couple of tips.

So I was pretty happy - we were amused for a while and some of us even learned some new things!

Avoid Temptation!

If you want to avoid the temptation of spending a bunch of money and filling your over-stuffed house with yet more stuff, stay out of the toy store. We had some time to kill today and decided to pop into an independent toy store. There was also a particular toy I was looking for that I thought would be a fun family activity for the summer. (Beamo)

I was actually a little nervous as my kids have seen basically no advertising and have rarely been in a toy store. The only exposure they have to toys besides the ones we own are when we go play at friends houses. This really limits the nagging and begging and keeps from planting the seeds of discontent. I have to say my kids did excellent in the store, although they were a little sad to leave and have to stop playing with the doll house.

I, on the other hand, experienced a lot of temptation. There are so many cool toys out there. I did buy a few things, all activities that will hopefull entertain the kids on our upcoming cross-country plane ride. So I will not be blogging for a while, but hopefully when we return I will be able to jump back into the weekly unplugged projects.

Baking with Kids

The kids and I had another at-home day today! I really needed one and I think they have really benefited from it too. I just felt like we were too busy to do the things we wanted to do and just relax a little.

One thing we did this morning was a little baking. We made two things:
http://www.tammysrecipes.com/breakfast_grain_muffins
http://www.tammysrecipes.com/whole_wheat_cinnamon_graham_squares

The muffins were a new recipe which we liked ok. The molasses flavor was very strong and I am thinking that is not my favorite flavor. I'd like to try them again and maybe use sorghum. I have never used it before so I am not sure what the flavor would be like.

The squares are a staple in our house now, I think this is the fourth batch we've made. They are not a dessert, they are a good snack food. Sorta like a graham cracker.

I realized though tat I did most the work and made the kids watch a lot. I seem to do better encouraging participation when I only have one child with me but when I have both, I get a bit ovewhelmed. I am going to work on giving them more responsibilities.

Nature-Deficit Disorder?

I read an interesting book today. I'm not sure if "read" is the right term as I have to admit that I mostly skimmed it. I checked it out from the library a few weeks ago and it has just been sitting on my bedside table. I figured I'd better read it today when I realized it is almost due.

The book is Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. There were several things I thought were interesting:

• nature inspires creativity
• experiencing nature is not about being a spectator
• natural outdoor play has been criminalized
• current high-tech environment is overstimulating
• nature is restorative
• main reasons children play outside less are fear and lack of time

I thought he was very convincing that it is important for children to spend time in nature and to spend time in unstructured outdoor play. I believe that he is right and there is a lot of value in relaxing and enjoying nature, learning about the world around you and experincing some freedom and imagination.

But what I am still stumped on is how to accomplish this. With my tiny backyard and my lack of knowledge about nature and the flora and fauna of our region. But it has got me thinking and as I make our summer plans it helps me focus in on what I want this summer to be like.

Zoo in the Off-Season

We headed to our local zoo on Tuesday. It may have been one of my best zoo visits yet. The reason I liked it so much was that there were very few people there. In fact, we kept running into the same folks over and over again. I would say we saw about 5 other groups walking around. We kept commmenting that we were surprised it was worth it for the zoo to be open.

Anyway, we had a really awesome time. We were able to move at our own pace and spend as much time watching things like the primates showing off, and we had a great view! I will have to say that I see why there weren't many people there. It was raining on and off all day and I am not even sure if the temperature managed to hit 50 but we were prepared for it and we were totally comfortable.

Give you zoo a chance in the off-season sometime! You may be pleasantly surprised!

Weekly Unplugged Project : Shiny

The topic for this week's Unplugged Project is Shiny!

Sorry, no photos again this week.

We started off by talking quite a bit about what shiny means. I was a little surprised that my 5-year old did not really get it. I guess it is a little abstract and we are constantly bombarding them with things like colors and shapes but not attributes like shiny. So that was great!

But we had a good deal of trouble coming up with an idea for a project. I ended up just giving the kids sheets of aluminum foil to make something out of. My oldest made a shiny window and the younger made something else. I am actually not quite sure what it is, but he had fun.

Another thing we did this week was enjoy some sun-SHINY! We were so glad to see it too! Unfortunately, I believe the rain is on its way back.

Weekly Unplugged Project : Music

For this week's Unplugged project we made shakers out of toilet paper rolls. Unfortunately, my camera is not working and I could not find a picture of this activity online, although I found several descriptions like this one.

Basically you take an empty roll and staple one end shut. Then add some beans or other small item, and staple the other end (flattening it the other way.) My son did not feel like decorating so we left it bare. Then we enjoyed singing and practicing shaking and stopping, and shaking and stopping. It is amazing how it only takes a simple game and kids can have a ball.

As soon as I post this, we are off to try another music idea that I saw on Becky's blog today.