Month: July 2012

The Joy of Financial Responsibility’s Accomplishment

I sent this email to my sister this morning and I just wanted to share it with you all over here too because it really makes me happy.

God has blessed us with our financial situation and the ability to stay afloat through good budgeting (even with some mistakes) so that I can stay at home to raise our two (almost three) girls. Along with choosing the budget and for me to stay home, comes gradual financial decisions and less of the “eggs all in one basket” whims. While the later method sounds foolish, there are some cases (like purchasing a vehicle) where “eggs all in one basket” is really the only choice.

One way to “cut back” and be more financially responsible in our spending has been to cloth diaper over disposable diapers. One helper of that decision has been Abi’s skin sensitivity, but another has been the obvious money saver.

I must confess, I have been slightly jealous of those with duel income or at least a greater nest egg that have been able to make the cloth diaper switch all at once, purchasing their whole stash in one big chunk of a withdrawal.

But the reality has been for us that the slower building of our stash and adjusting our stash method has been the piece by piece and most responsible approach for us.

This may not sound like too much of a sacrifice until you see the behind the scenes of that picture. Adding 1-4 diapers per month to get to a 3 day washing schedule for Abi and build our stash for a newborn has involved hours of research, trial/error, craigslist hopefuls and failures, waiting on 3 week difference international postage, and much strategy of mine and the girls’ allowance money over an eight month period.

That being said, I give you my email to my sis this morning and share with you my domestic joy:

“So I’m dorkily excited because my last shipment of cloth diapers came in today. I got 6 more. I have been slowly picking at adding cloth diapers to our stash for the last, seriously, EIGHT months and we finally have a full stash from birth to potty training. I’m SO EXCITED to no longer be looking at, sewing, altering, and fussing with cloth diapers to build up our stash. As it is our newbie baby stash has me washing every 2 days, for the 3month to 18 month phase I’ll be washing every 2-2.5 days and for the 18month plus phase I’ll be washing every 3 days. YAY! This just gives me a REALITY washing experience (cause washing daily is not on my agenda along with managing 3 kids/nursing/house work/wifehood/outside of our house ministry oh yeah and eating, breathing and sleeping).

So as I wash the “fresh from the factory” 6 diapers, adjust our diaper bins to fit our new diapers in, and settle into the new washing machine routine just know that this domestic-happy me is smiling…. big time.

And after next month’s allowance money spend on 3 wetbags (one for Hannah’s diaper bag [since Sundays/Wednesdays Abi and Hannah will be separate and I’d like a “catch the dirty diaper and lock out the smell” bag for each], one for the living room changing table [new baby = CONSTANT changes] and one for the nursery changing table), I will happily put the cloth diaper thoughts aside and just coast through diapering 2 kiddos. [Sure some of these things are not needed, but there also is a “convenience” factor of diapering two kids 2 years apart that plays into my success on minimal hours of sleep. – Just being real.]

On our registry there are still 3 covers/prefold sets for the 3m-18m phase that could be quite helpful to add to our stash as night diapers (prefolds/covers are the only thing we’ve found that can hold a HUGE amount of pee and not leak all over the bed while the child does aerobics in the night), but nothing we couldn’t live without. So it’s possible that in the future I may purchase 2-3 more diapers, but it’s just nice to sort of close the door on the “building our stash to actually work for our lifestyle” phase and move on. =D

If we were Mr. and Mrs. Moneybanks, we would have dropped the money all at once (up to $300 – and that’s on the cheap side!), but that’s not the case with us, so purchasing primarily 1-2 cloth diapers from overseas and waiting out the 3 week difference between purchase and receiving we have done… for eight months. And now…. YAY! We’re done! YAY!

The washer never sounded so good.

=)

– delighting in domesticity. ;)”

Our financial situation is really good due to my husband’s hard work and great budgeting. So please do not think for one minute that I am complaining or in any way feeling oppressed. We are blessed beyond belief to be able to sponsor two (soon to be three) World Vision kids as well as serve the Lord in many ways with our finances. I’m just happy to see the fruit of our budgeting coming to a close in the world of cloth diapering. =D

– Thanks for sharing in my joy. =)

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Summer Water

This year as we pulled into the community sprinkler park (FREE!) Rachael and Abi started squealing from the back seat. A smile hit my face… maybe this year will be more interactive. A flashback of last year’s “we don’t do water” instantly looked brighter.

I had to do all I could to keep Abi from running across the street straight to the sprinklers. Rachael jumped in place, her patience and obedience displayed, while I got all our stuff from the car/applied sunblock. (Funny how much goes into a morning of water play.)

We circled the sprinkler pad a few times, soaking it all in. And then Abi let go of my hand and Ms. Assertive was off…

Rachael, Ms. Precautions, close behind her in a moment of boldness.

 JUMP!

I love how no matter where we are, they just love playing together.

 

 There also was a park attached to the sprinkler pad so we could dry off with joy on the slide. =)

 This time Rachael was the assertive one.
 But this one didn’t need a personal invitation. 😉
 Ms. Big Sister took it upon her own initiative to make sure Abi’s first trip down the slide was fun and secure. (Precious to watch her care for her little sister.)
 Then Abi decided it would be fun to ride on Rachael’s lap. 
Sweet sisters.
– We’ll definitely be returning again this summer. =D
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Wordless Wednesdays: Responsibly Fun!

Rinsing and putting dishes aside to dry…

 It’s simple, but it communicates such trust in her independence and ability.

 [FYI, no my three year old did not handle the knives. 😉 ]

Love her. 

– Proud Mommy.

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Sew Easy

Been working on a few projects here and there. One of which I made in a total of 40 minutes.

Every Sunday and Wednesday and on various babysitting occasions, we find ourselves taping a name tag to Rachael and Abi’s sippy cups before dropping them off. I use masking tape since it comes off of the cup easier than the nursery stickers provided. But each Sunday morning there is the “Oh right, we forgot, let’s find the tape, a permanent marker or pen and get the names on there.” Sure we could write the names on Saturday night if we were overly thoughtful parents, but we aren’t. LOL.

So I came up with a crafty solution that will eliminate confusion and can translate to more than just sippy cups.

After viewing a diaper strap tutorial, I modified it to work for us and to work with what I had in fabric.

I started out by measuring the middle of our sippy cups and kid water bottles. After measuring, I took the variance of 2 inches between all the cups middles to measure out the length of my soft-side of the Velcro (will explain more later). Then I knew from the 7inch to 8.5inch width of my sippy cups that I needed to make the strip of fabric at least 9 inches to accommodate the cups. I chose to make my base fabric 10 inches just to be safe.

I grabbed out a few scrap pieces of receiving blankets used for other projects, measured my soft-sided Velcro and cut it. I decided to place my soft-sided Velcro on the inside of my strap so the sticky part of the Velcro would only adhere to the strap and the soft-side would not adhere to clothing/etc if exposed by a fatter cup than the smallest setting.

I measured the sticky side of my Velcro to be 1.5 inches to make sure it’d stick really well, defying toddler curiosity, and the soft-side of my Velcro to be 3 inches to allow for further cup variance in size should we get other cups in the future. (Sticky side of Velcro is located on other side of fabric behind the button).

Then it was to work sewing the fabric, flipping the fabric inside out, folding in the edges and sewing them shut, sewing on the Velcro, and then the hardest part; stitching the names.

I free-handed with a pencil on the fabric the girls’ names (excluding the one pictures above. I just free-handed that on the sewing machine) and then sewed accordingly. I wasn’t worried about perfection, just readability and functionality with a little cuteness of course.

I added on a reused button from my button tin just for a little flare.

And voila! Our cup name tags (on three different sized cups):

 Front and back.
 Front and back.
 Front and back (see a trend?)

I made 2 for Abi since she’s the sticky-fingered/less neat child. That way one can be in the wash while the other is in use. Also, we’re carrying around cups less frequently for Rachael so I wasn’t as worried about making her two. If I find we need two for Rachael, I’ll make her a second one in 15 minutes (her name is long).

Abi also discovered while playing with one off of her cup that they can be used as bracelets. =) They can also be used as bag tags, luggage tags, and pretty much anything you need to label for kiddo that has a loop. Be creative. =D

Functional, cute, effective and fun.

Cost: No financial cost, total of 40 minutes of free-time during the girls’ nap time.

YAY!

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Avoiding Wastefulness

In thinking about the girls’ bathing routine there was one piece that annoyed me. Since bath time is viewed by two small children as a time to play, and clearly not a functional washing period, we often struggled some in washing hair. So we decided to just not do it anymore. Kidding!

See, once you get past the whole “I promise I’ll try not to dump a whole bucket of water in your eyes so please stop shrieking” part, there’s the “why won’t this soap EVER come out of your hair” annoyance.

In looking into the problem deeper, it was blatantly obvious that the large amount of shampoo that poured out of the bottle was the culprit in annoyance and wastefulness. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but attempting to get a small amount of shampoo from the bottle while trying to assure child’s lack of drowning and tip the bottle just right to keep from palming a mountain of shampoo was challenging.

So after running across this idea in frugality, I thought it would work well for our shampooing needs as well.

So we converted our shampoo into foaming shampoo, which our children now call “whipped creme on your head” followed by hysterical laughter. Way to go Ms. Creativity. 😉

We worked together on this project: me filling an inch of shampoo in the bottom of a foam dispenser and adding water to about an inch from the top. (shown on our sensitive soap)

 Inch of soap in dispenser.              Water added to 1 inch from top.

After the lid was screwed on, Rachael and Abi began their participation. (It took us five minutes so we did it during lunch – hence the bibs). 😉

Shake, shake, shake…

And voila! Foaming shampoo that’s portioned out well. (shown below: soap, not shampoo)

2 Squirts for Abi. 3-4 Squirts for Rachael. And then we rub in the whipped creme. 😉

It comes out of their hair much better, since it’s not in abundance, and it saves us money in avoiding wastefulness.

Win, win!

We also used a really cute dispenser, “Hello Kitty”, which is a THRILL to our children in getting to use the “kitty shampoo.” – Gotta enjoy life where you can. 😉

We also tried this for their sensitive skin body wash (pictured above). Now, since the bodywash is lotion-based it squirts out of the foam dispenser unevenly, causing much hysterical laughter as the bathtub wall sometimes receives a spraying. But, it works well enough to prolong out the life of the soap and “portion control” the “liquid gold” soap for our little sensitive skinned kiddos.

Plus, slapping a label on it helps too. 😉

We tried this method for our handsoap dispensers too, using liquid handsoap (which always comes out of the pump squirters in WAY too large an amount for little hands). Now the foaming soap is fun, well portioned, AND my counter/elbows don’t catch the extra soap waste every time we wash hands. YAY! More Wins!

– maybe this could help you too. =)

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Wordless Wednesday: Gone Fishing

Ingredients: fridge magnets, some kind of string, stick from backyard (debarked would be smart – we learned later. hehe.), “catching dish”, (optional) a few drops of blue food dye in water, and large dose of excitement. 
 Abi trying to catch with hands, not fishing pole. 😉

 Our day’s great catch. =)
– fun indeed!
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