Another well orchestrated evening dinner thanks to my friend, Crockpot.

Wednesday night, I had to pick up my 1st grader from school at 4 pm, drag all of the kids to drop off dinner a a friend’s and attend a preschool open house. Once we got home I needed the 1st grader to complete his homework and dinner by 6:30 in order to get him to basketball on time. Millions of mothers, I am sure, have similar if not more hectic evenings on a regular basis. For my evening I planned on using my trusty crockpot to get me through. Fish packets is a regular meal in our house but I had never thought to cook them in the crockpot until I read a smiliar recipe on the Crockpot Lady’s Blog. When I first saw her recipe that takes 3-4 hours in the crock I thought how helpful is that? I am a crockpot purist who thinks of crockpot recipes as being convenient and delicious only if it cooks for 6-8 hours but I figured I would try this short-cook idea.

I thawed the fish for our fish packets at 3:00, in cold water and cut up the veggies, (onion, tomato, mushrooms, zucchini, peppers). Once thawed, I made the fish packets by placing each of the fish fillets on the bottom of a piece of foil and layering them with veggies, olive oil, minced garlic, basil, chopped rosemary and seasoned salt. I folded each of the layered piles up in individual foil packets and placed all the packets in the crockpot. The prep took less than 10 minutes. My husband doesn’t eat fish so I made a chicken packet for him. (So far, the kids haven’t noticed these replacements for daddy but he’ll have some explaining to do about a made-up allergy when they do figure it out). I placed them in the crockpot on high and they were warm when we rolled in the door at 5:20. Perfect! I cooked the tumeric rice in advance and warmed it in the microwave. Perfect. There was no rushing and dinner was delicious and ready to go. Thank you Crockpot!

With Kids, you Need to have a Clothing System

I have heard of several great ways to get your kids, especially girls, to put matching outfits together. You can invest in hangers of several different colors or put colored paper on your existing hangers and hang the coordinating pieces on them. Or you can put colored paper around the hangers for the same thing. I personally have no desire to have a 3 or 4 year old coordinate. I would rather see my daughter in a polka dot skirt, striped sweater with flowered tights than a perfectly coordinated outfit. It just makes me smile when I see young girls who have clearly dressed themselves. I mean really, you only get to be young and get away with it once and if it makes her happy then I say go for it. My only rules are that their clothing be weather appropriate and fit. You can bet that if there is a spaghetti-strap sun dress two sizes too small within my daughters reach during zero degree temps in January THAT is going to be the only thing she is going to want to wear and a tantrum will ensue when she is told that she can not wear it. So I must be sure that such clothing is out of reach.

My kids' closets have clothing bins that make up our simple clothing system. It has worked for us for a few years now. I put clear bins in my two oldest kids' closets that they use for clothes that are to be worn in the future. I label the bins with size and either “winter” or “summer.” Those two season categories tell me whether it’s long or short sleeved, long pants or shorts, etc. My youngest has a tall dresser of drawers so I use his drawers to do the same thing. We are often lucky to get hand me downs which go into the appropriate bin/drawer. I also try to hit big sales at the end of the seasons and I am never too shy to buy something that won’t be worn for 2 or 3 years if the price is right (if you could read the labels on the drawers in my 1 year old's room you'd see that the last drawer is for size 4). My daughter’s bins are up high out of reach (or she would cause trouble as explained) but my son’s closet makes it best for them to be piled on the floor and he doesn’t get into them.

There is a separate place in each of their closets for clothes that they outgrow. My kids are boy 7, girl 4, boy 1, so I only get to pass down the 7 year olds clothes within our house. So the oldest boy has a large bin for the things he outgrows that will eventually be worn by his little brother. When the bin is full they get filed in the youngest boy's room. The 4 year old girl has a shelf of outgrown things that gets bagged regularly to hand down to a friend’s daughter as does the youngest boy.

I find that having a place that is easily accessible to store future clothes can be a real money saver. You can buy clothes for the kids ahead on sale and you can be sure to find them when you need them. Of course I am hesitant to do this with pants because once kids have grown out of the toddler sizes they almost have to try pants on to get a good fit. However, shirts, sweaters, underwear, socks, pajamas, etc. can always be bought ahead. How many times have your kids grown something like pajamas mid season so you go and buy a couple pairs only to find that you had some tucked away in the back of a drawer. Well I have in the past, but not any more!

Another Reason to Love a Label Maker!

As much fun as friends like to make of my labeling around my house I do think it's great for kids sight words. I have my son's clothes drawers labeled more for his sight word vocabulary than anything. We have labeled socks, underwear, winter pjs, summer pjs, sweat pants, short sleeved shirts and shorts. For toys we have several bins labeled also. I'll have to quiz him some day soon to see if these words have seeped into his brain yet.

Ideas to Help you Spend Less $

Baby sit friends kids. Really. Do it a lot. Fill your calendar. Not only will you not be able to go shopping but if you have the right kind of rambunctious kids and enough of them then you will be too busy to occupy your thoughts with shopping or to browse the internet for purchases. Oh and babysitting for short spurts just happens to be fun and helpful to your friends.

Organizing Winter hats, mittens & scarves

For a long time I wondered what people could be purchasing those large plastic drawer sets for. I just love organizational tools and so I must know all the multiple uses for them. But these large drawers had me puzzled. You can’t put anything in the drawers of much weight or the bottom of the drawer will bend down below the frame making it difficult to open. You also can not pile anything on top of the set of drawers or the plastic frame will bend down preventing you from opening the drawer below it. I have found that a set of drawers works perfectly for winter hats. lint rollers (for when you are going out the door), mittens and scarves. I put a few umbrellas on top which is also a light load perfect for the plastic drawers. The drawers we have has a set of wheels on it which makes it easy to roll out of the coat closet into more light so everyone can dig for what they want before a play day in the snow. I can imagine using them to store undies, socks and the like in a bedroom closet but I'm not sure what else. If you have found other uses please share.

Making Time for Friends by “Efficientizing” a Visit

I find that this time of year has me missing friends but I struggle to find the time for a nice visit. Everyone that I know with young kids has a pretty hectic schedule and it seems that everyone is going in different directions. However, if you can multi-task a visit with a good friend you both may be more likely to make it happen. We recently had two new neighbors move in on our street. Yesterday a neighbor across the street who I just love but don’t get to see enough came over and we made brownies and took them to each of the two new neighbors to introduce ourselves and our kids. We got to visit and welcome the new neighbors together.
I have also made dates with friends to organize their kitchen and attic (which I love to do) and not only did we get a task done but we spent some quality time together. Sometimes I’ll just tell a friend to “swing by one your way to Target and chat with me while I fold laundry.” If you put it out there with the invite then it is understood that you’ll be tasking during the visit so no one cares. There are parties that couple friends of mine will hopefully hold every year which I love that is along this line. Meg has a “Christmas Card Party” where everyone brings their Christmas cards to address and stuff and stamp. It give you a due date to get your cards which is nice but one gal didn’t have her cards ready so she brought nail polish and did her nails instead while we did our cards and another didn’t have her cards yet but brought envelopes to address that she put her cards in later. That’s really thinking! My friend Sue held her first annual (hint Sue) Christmas gift wrapping party. This had to be done with a small group of course because of the space constraints. I think there were 6 or 7 of us. It was so fun to see the other gifts and to chat while getting a bunch of gifts wrapped. It was worth hauling in laundry baskets of wrapping paper and presents.

I have also gotten together with a friend to get some freezer meals assembled. Anne and I did this before she had baby #3. We each planned the grocery shopping, met at my house, did the meal prep and exchanged grocery money to even out the bill. Another thing to do for a friend who just had a baby is to tell her that you’ll come over and fold a load of laundry or sweep the floors or something while she nurses or just demand that she give you a task that would be helpful. Heck anytime you can plan to swap floor cleaning or some other daunting household task. It goes super fast with two people on their hands and knees and then you can get the other person’s house the next time and your little ones will be preoccupied with playing together. Of course maybe some of these type of tasks is left only to close friends. I have had a very good friend offer to come and paint a room with me. Now that is friendship!

There are still a bunch of friends I would like to see soon so I am considering having a little no reason party in February or March but first I might think about what I can do to “efficientize” the party. Any ideas now that the Christmas season is over?

Extraordinary Uses for Hanging Produce Baskets

Our basement is circa 1970. The ceilings are on the low side and filled with water pipes and gas pipes and some mysterious phone pipes that are no longer used. Our electric box is right behind the washer and dryer which is annoying because I would have liked to put shelves there for dryer sheets, stain remover and detergents and the like. So, I found a perfect use for this hanging produce basket which was once very useful as a produce basket at our last house which was skimpy on the kitchen cupboards. In the basement of this house I hung it over the pipes in the ceiling and it hangs at perfect arms reach for grabbing stain removers, dryer sheets and other laundry necessities above the dryer. I am sure these hanging baskets could come in handy in many places. I love finding unintended useful purposes for cheap things or in this case for something I already had.

There is still plenty of winter left to enjoy the convenience of Frozen Meals!

In case no one actually reads the details of my monthly menus (is anyone really spending time doing that?), I will brag that for the first couple weeks of December I never cooked a meal and for about 10 meals in January I will provide my family with delicious whole food meals that I simply take out of the freezer and pop in the oven. Today I made six batches of shepherd’s pie for my next Freezer Friends exchange. One of the six we had for dinner. I have organized a second group of Freezer Friends and thankfully got my dear friend Jen to join today so that I won’t have to be cooking for two groups. Thanks Jen! After talking with her I got to thinking that most of the women in the new Freezer Friends group have not been in the habit of doubling or tripling or quadrupling meals they make to be frozen but they are interested in trying it. I haven’t seen any emails yet about what they will be making for their first January 29th due date so I thought that a list of freezer friendly meals might get some ideas generated. Here is a list of things that I have doubled/tripled/quadrupled for freezing or have received in a Freezer Friends exchange. There are so many more possibilities but this is a good sampling:

Chilis, stews and soups of almost any kind

Chicken Entrees:
Chicken tortilla soup
Chicken tex mex (rice and such)
Chicken Cacciatore
Chicken pot pie Chicken Divan
Mexican chicken lasagna
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Rosemary Rasberry Balsamic glazed Chicken
Creamy Chicken enchiladas
Chicken Burritos
Baked Pasta w/ chicken sausage & spinach
White Chicken Chili
Beef Entrees:
Shepherds pie (pot roast shredded or ground beef)
Taco pie (biscuit type topping)
Moroccan Beef
Burgers (turkey, mango chutney turkey, southwest beef, bbq pork, bacon wrapped, momwiches, etc.)
Beef enchiladas
Meatloaf (many variations)
Stuffed Cabbage
Stuffed peppers
Beef Veggie soup with many variations
Meatballs (turkey or beef)
Lasagne
Stuffed Shells
Misc:
Poppy Turkey -
Creamy Cajun shrimp pasta
Eggplant parmesan
Spinach pie – a lot of egg in a spring form pan w/ phyllo on top
3 bean chili
Calzones
Gumbos (many variations)
Pasta Sauce with meat or veggies
Pizza (homemade and ½ baked can be frozen and popped in the oven)

My latest goal is to start freezing crock pot meals. Two conveniences combined! Does life really get any easier?

January Resolutions to Spend Less Money

I have heard a lot of people making New Year’s resolutions to spend less money. I have been doing that for a couple years and it has been a wonderful experience. Why do I say it was an “experience” (other than the fact that I have become a frugal nerd)? When you set out to stick to a tight budget which limits your spending to only necessities you can actually have a wonderful experience. Let me explain. I could really go on and on about the wonderful experience I have had over the last couple years not spending money but I am trying to be brief. Think about the purchases that you are considering in the near future. You may be saying that you don’t have any. Uh huh. I doubt it. You are thinking of curtains for some room or the next car purchase or perhaps a new purse or boots that you are hoping will be on sale. Even if you know you can not afford these things right now you are probably thinking of how you might be able to make those purchase in the future. If you totally forget about acquiring any of these things for an extended time, say until your student loan/ home equity/credit card/mortgage (you name your enemy) is paid off, and focus on using the things that you already have and being completely satisfied with what you have it can be an awesome experience. Not only can you experience the strength you get from setting a somewhat difficult goal and achieving it but you also free yourself from thinking about acquiring stuff or improving the stuff you have with more stuff or spending your precious time and energy shopping for stuff. To be successful at being satisfied with the stuff you have you must shut yourself off to the things you know that make you want stuff. This might mean changing who you spend time with or not looking at magazines or watching certain television shows and throwing every last single catalog that comes in the mail straight into the trash WITHOUT perusing it first or not attending an annual homes tour. Identify honestly the things in your life that cause you to want stuff and eliminate them until your goal is met.

I recently shared with a few friends that I hadn’t spent any money on any unnecessaries in about two years and how it was difficult to part with money now. My friends gasped in horror at the idea of not spending money or shopping for such a long span of time. I suppose I don’t particularly like shopping with kids in tow (and I’ve generally always been too cheap to pay a sitter to shop) so it didn’t seem like that much of a loss to me but I was surprised that my friends thought that it would be so difficult. I suppose that if you have financial goals or needs bigger than acquiring more stuff then you just do what you got to do (or don't do). I am certain that these friends of mine would be able to do what needed to be done if they were faced with a financial challenge. I know they could do it if they had to but they just have not faced such a challenge. These are strong intellegent women, don't get me wrong, they are my friends. :)

The really fun part of spending less money is the creative thinking you force upon yourself to make do with what you have. The library is a wonderful resource for jump starting this kind of brainstorming which is where I came across Amy Dzcyczyn's The Complete Tightwad Gazette . Amy’s book gets you in a mind set of creative frugalism. I have established uses for things in the last two years that I will continue for years to come that saves money and encourages creativity. Finding extra-ordinary uses for ordinary items can be rather surprising and quite fun. Thinking outside of the box is what has me using bread tabs for cleaning/scraping gunk, using potato/onion sacks for scrubbers, cleaning with disinfecting vinegar water, planning our meals and grocery trips like never before, creating our invention box, mastering stain removal (I have never been good at this but I am getting better), redecorating with curtains I found in a box from our last move and mending socks and other garments rather than tossing them. Sometimes you do have to purchase a few things but you can do so in a minimalist fashion. For instance take up garage saling or searching Craigs List and surprise yourself and your family at what you can do with nearly free items. Buy shoe polish or shoe strings rather than buying new shoes, shop for kids clothes at resale shops (they keep growing so there is no way around buying kids new cloths at some point), or admit to yourself that one pair of decent shoes for a child is plenty and you do not need to buy another because those ones on sale are just so cute. Being honest about what you need versus want is a great experience also especially when you really want is financial independence.

My New Year’s resolution for 2009 is actually to spend more money. In two months we will have met a huge financial goal of paying off our student loans on one income. We have limited our spending to such a great extent that resolving to spend more money is not exactly going to be difficult or haphazard. In the last two years I think we have eaten out about four times although I can not recall the specific instances (my husband says only about two times) and visited McDonalds about 6 times (3 times involved a road trip to visit family). Up until a couple months ago I think I bought 3 shirts off the clearance rack and a skirt to get me through post partum weight struggles at discount stores in two years. So this year for us will be about putting those former student loan payments into savings (easier now that we have changed our spending habits) and trying to relax a little with some entertainment money. It would be fun to visit the movie theatre at least once and to get a sitter every couple months so we can have a date night (just did that last night and it was wonderful). Perhaps taking the kids out to dinner a few times would be nice and adding a few activities to our current fun free activities that we may not have splurged on pre-school loan pay off. I know that these little things we do will be enjoyed much more after our two year tightwad venture and knowing that we met our financial goals before enjoying them again. Karate lessons for my son and gymnastics classes for my daughter will also be a wonderful way for us to enjoy having met one of our big financial goals.

January 2009 Menu

Happy New Year! I started off my new year updating my freezer inventory list. Ahhh, that feels good.

Here is my January 2009 menu. It's going to be a month of laziness in the kitchen here. I only have 5 new recipes on this month's menu and we are resorting back to our tried and true recipes. I have baked and consumed enough cookies this Christmas season for about a year! The solution may be just to stay out of the kitchen. We will be having a lot of meals from the freezer and focusing that domestic time and energy on cleaning and reorganizing all the closets, cupboards and drawers that have gotten a bit out of control over Christmas. The storage area of our basement gets strategically very messy around Christmas for Santa so it is time to clean that area out as well, which is no small job.

You should be able to double click on these smaller images to enlarge.