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. =)

July 19, 2012 0

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 (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!

July 17, 2012 0

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. =)

July 16, 2012 0

More Home Decor plus Organization

So after seeing this idea on pinterest: using a wine rack for a towel holder,

it began to make my creative juices flow.

Since wine racks like this one are easily $50-80 or more, I instantly vetoed the wire rack idea.

In doing some searching, I found that the cheapest places to find wine racks still required a $15-20+ investment that I thought was a bit outlandish for my personal frugality. Plus some looked a little difficult to convert. And in looking at towel racks the prices weren’t looking better.

So I kept thinking and let it sit on the back burner while our kid towels took up bulky space in the linen closet and were a bit difficult to stack due to their cute hoods.

Then I saw it on the thrift store shelf. With a tag on it for $1.99 plus it was 25% off day. =)

So I bought it, brought it home and cleaned it up.

Then painted it (already had the paint) to match our shower curtain/turqoise bathrub (seriously, we have a turquoise bathtub and toilet) with some much-needed supervision and assistance.

Then I found this lonely space on the bathroom wall.

Mounted our new friend.

And stuffed him with kid and baby towels alike.

We’re not going to store any wet towels in this guy since the active towels are stored on our single towel rack. There are currently two sweet critter towels (a duck and a butterfly) and will soon be a sweet newborn towel as well. But for the remaining towels with great character, this rack will work wonderfully.

And it brings more life and joy to the bathroom.

Total project cost: about an hour in research, $0.69 at the thrift store (after 25% off applied), and 2 hours from cleaning to painting to drying to mounting/stuffing in the towels.

Wins all around! =D

July 10, 2012 0

Home Improvement

So my nesting and “always looking to improve our space for cheap” bug has been biting again lately. I have been evaluating our primary living spaces, reflecting on homeschooling and came up with a plan for intentionally making “away” spaces to aid in variety in play/learning. In other words, it was time for a change.

I decided to tackle these two spaces, ultimately making them three spaces to allow for separation and decluttering.

I will unveil first the before photos and then two of the completed spaces since the third space is not fully finished yet.

The before:

The practicality of my homeschooling shelves clashed some with the reality of two small girls. So I decided moving the books away from the homeschooling supplies and “closing” the homeschooling/discovery play supplies to a “Mommy distribution” policy would aid in keeping it cleaner.

The “office” space is on the opposite side of the fireplace from the homeschooling supply and books/piano. [We don’t have a room assigned for our office space b/c we decided instead to have a playroom and teach the value of “no touching” even in a common space, plus reserve a bedroom for respite care/adoption.]

Our main room in our house is the living room, arrayed with two couches, a large TV (gifted to us) and then this wall of: cat climber (right), dollhouse (I painted and got from an old therapy work “exchange”) sitting on top of a table (covered by a blanket) with extra blankets stored under it (movie watching snuggle time), princess castle, then large lego bin (left) and then you start running into our “entertainment” section by the TV.

And now, the After:

I started by moving the homeschooling supplies and the piano to divide our large common room that holds our missions table (outdoor patio glass table/metal chairs kept inside), dining room table (closer by the kitchen) and office area.

[Side note]: Since our fireplace is not a working feature of our household (cracked chimney), we don’t use this area as a sitting area, but we do use the “missions wall” to add/learn about missions projects, our world vision kids, missionary friends, etc. I’ve displayed information about the global hunger needs, persecution, and world vision village phases for the reminder and active, ongoing conversation about God’s work and the labor/laborers still needed in the harvest. I am ultimately going to flip our large poster area with our (soon to be) three world vision kids display area to allow for an easier update space and a larger space to display the children’s artwork/letters. I’m in no rush to complete this project since changes will be coming to our missions wall with two of our missionary friends coming home in August, therefore, taking down their pictures/information and moving them to the missions binder for continued prayer for the region, even when our missionary friends are not there. Anyway… so that’s the posters/info you see displayed on the wall above the toys.

Hoping to deter run-by piano use, Matt and I moved the piano sideways, thus providing an endcap to the missions table/dining room area and making the illusion of a separated play area with the toys from the living room.

Since we do homeschooling at the dining room table, this small play area will allow Abi a “space away, yet nearby” to play while Rachael does her table work. Abi, my more “touch-base” kid, didn’t enjoy looking at books (the previous bookcase was there instead of the toys) for the homeschooling time and often would not play alone in the other room since her character likes to be close for a few “touch bases” during homeschooling.

This set-up will allow her to play quietly with the dollhouse/animals/legos/miscellanious basket of larger electronic toys while still remaining socially close by.

I chose to use a small buildable shelving unit to allow for decluttering and easy “slide-in/out” old laundry basket storage. When everything has a place and we don’t see all the utter details of the toys, things look much neater. Plus asking Abi to clean up entailing putting things in bins = realistic expectation for her age.

Next I tackled the living room space. Due to the shape of our living room and the ridiculously heavy TV, we really have found the best set-up for the living room large furniture. But I was wanting to make a quiet space available for a little bit of a refuge away. Since we have toys in the other two play areas (playroom and large common room), I wanted to make a space where the girls could go to enjoy the quiet while still reserving their rooms for sleep (we’ve found it helps best to reserve their rooms for sleep, thus creating the environment at the “doorstep” of their room and clear expectations while in their room).

Thus I give you, our new space (with minimal but nice changes):

I pulled the toys out, made a “forward facing” bookshelf from a pinterest-inspired idea mixed with a “what we have around the house” reality.

I also decided to keep the small metal bin of “edible books” (cardboard/foam books) for easy Abi access. While Abi can reach the bottom shelf of the wall-mounted bookshelves, I know that she also enjoys her “dump and fill” nature in all environments and often finds “the right book” best by spreading books out on the floor. So her board-book bin allows such enjoyment at her level.Rachael can reach the bottom shelf with ease and the top shelf while standing on a pillow animal.

I put all the reading pillows under the bookshelves, with hopes to couple them with the blankets previously stored in the living room and also allow movie-time snuggling with pillows too.

To the right of this picture is our large three-paned front window, which allows this space to be naturally lit for most of the day. Between the two couches, the pillows and the blankets, this allows a nice quiet area of learning, reading and discovering. We have already enjoyed the snuggle time on the couch (verses the floor in the previous room) which my back and my Mommy’s delight so appreciates.

The limitation of this bookshelf allows us the ability to put enough reachable books on there without overwhelming the girls with choices (fits about 25 books). That limitation also allows us to switch out books every few months or so to keep up the variety and interest.

I made this shelf out of 1 eight-foot 2×1 board we had left over in the garage, 1 sixteen inch scrap-board, and old laundry line. Thanks to our church maintenance guy, Michael, and a phone conversation with my brainy Dad, I got the boards measured out, cut down, screwed together and mounted with 5 metal brackets to the wall. I used an additional 8.5 inch piece of wood in the middle section of the bookshelf to provide extra support since books, while light individually, can add up in weight.

I will unveil the office space another day when it is completed. When I rearrange I like to also take the opportunity to clean out, vacuum, wash down the items, etc. I have put the office on pause for a few days to return to my regular housework/chores (so as not to get too far behind on those) while taking on these new projects. I’m also waiting for a chance to put the finishing touches on my two bookshelves. 😉

Thus far, to flip the two spaces between the large common room and the living room it has cost me $10 in dry wall screws (we ran out and the small package was not a deal) and 5 metal brackets at $0.89 a piece to secure the bookshelf to the wall. As mentioned earlier, I already had the wood, extra laundry line, paint, and obviously all the toys.

Plus with using black Tempera paint to paint the shelves, the girls enjoyed helping paint as well and I didn’t completely spazz out when Abi decided to taste the paint. EEK! Granted, only one taste sufficed the child. 😉

The project took me two days of time (life had to happen between), which I also count a cost to the project. And it was a cost well worth the “new” spaces.

June 28, 2012 0

A Trick of the Trade.. or Two

I have found reusing your old baby bumper on the twin bed keeps stuffed animal friends and lovey blankets from fall in the crack between the bed and the wall.

Seahorse makes his blog modeling debut.

I also just learned that freezing a toy beanbag animal makes a nice and comforting ice pack for those little one ouchies that need much love. Plus your little friend is washable.

Now who wouldn’t want one of these friends on their boo-boo?

– Suddenly a Congo line breaks out! –

– Hope these are helpful to you. =)

June 25, 2012 0