One question I remember being asked a lot when I was pregnant with Ezra was what diapers we would be using – disposable or cloth?

My answer was always that we would use disposables when Ezra was a newborn, then change to cloth. It satisfied both parties and if I’m anything, it’s a people pleaser.

Truthfully, I didn’t want to use cloth. The thought of additional work in the form of extra loads of laundry made me feel tired and plus um ew poop?

But then …. our stash of diapers we’d received as gifts from showers slowly dwindled and the real cost of diapers became a factor. Our parents helped us out sometimes with diapers and we really appreciated that but the nature of the beast with disposables is that, well, they’re disposable. You’re always running out of them. And diapers are not cheap. We switched from Pampers to Huggies to save a few bucks but we were still spending a lot of money on diapers and it was kind of painful. Especially considering it wasn’t a cost that would be disappearing any time soon.

If you consider the fact that you’re potentially using diapers until your child is 3 years old (and possibly a little longer depending on how night potty training goes) that’s a lot of diapers. Not to mention, every child is different in terms of how wet they can stand to be so that may mean more diaper changes and more diapers you’re having to buy.

We watched our diaper budget slowly creep up. Ezra has typically used 5 diapers/day since he was around 3 months old or so which means we were going through about 155 diapers per month, give or take. Yikes!! Even with buying diapers on Amazon.com we still found ourselves spending around $60 or so a month on diapers, and that does not include the cost of nighttime diapers which are sold in smaller quantities at a higher price. Daytime diapers alone would be costing us close to $2,200 over a spread of 3 years, but likely that number is slightly higher since we went through a greater quantity of newborn diapers and we also used Pampers at the time which is a costlier brand.

The Why

Anyway, the point is if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s repeatedly paying for something over time instead of doing a one time payment and being done with it.

For example, say you’re paying $10/month for a software service. That seems like a great deal because the software is really expensive – $300 – and you need to use it on a daily basis. *BUT!* If you consider how long you’d be using the software, let’s say 5 years, and multiply that by the subscription fee it turns out you’d be paying $600 for something that really only costs $300. Now you’ve overpaid by half and have nothing to show for it because you don’t even own a license to the software to begin with.

And that is how I eventually came to look at cloth diapers. Disposables were like a constant monthly subscription I was paying. If I could keep the cost of cloth diapers under my estimated total cost for disposables, I would be saving myself thousands of dollars over time – money that I could put into something else, like buying fictional software. I love saving money more than I hate doing laundry so, that was my main motivation for making the switch.

The How

The one advantage disposables have over cloth (at least in terms of money) is that you don’t think you’re spending that much…and really that isn’t much of an advantage. The cost is spread out over such a long period of time you probably don’t realize how much you’re truly spending. It’s a lot like buying a house – you think you’re only paying $150,000 for it but really you pay more than double when you factor in interest and everything else.

I had to figure out a way to make our monthly diaper budget work to build up our cloth stash over time while still keeping costs down as we transitioned from disposable to full time cloth. We budgeted $65/month for diapering needs but I still needed a portion of that for a couple months to buy disposables. The reason? I didn’t really want to waste the water and soap washing 2 or 3 diapers, and I really didn’t want to add 2 or 3 dirty diapers to a load of clothing.

We started this switch when Ezra was 6 months old and my goal was to be using cloth full time by his first birthday – and we did reach that goal, while staying on a budget.

Here’s how we did it:

I first had to figure out just how many diapers I needed, so I knew how much money I’d likely be spending.

There are two factors to consider when planning out your Magic Diaper Stash Number. They are -

A – How many diapers does your child go through per day? (Just consider the day time because nighttime needs are usually different)

B – How often can you realistically wash your diapers? This number shouldn’t be any higher than every 3 days, because anything beyond that you risk stains setting in (not to mention stink factor).

Take the number from A and multiply it by 7 to get your weekly diaper requirement. For example, in our case Ezra goes through roughly 5 diapers a day which means I need 35 diapers per week. That’s a lot of diapers! But wait…. we aren’t done yet.

Next, subtract 7 from B. I wash every three days, so 7 – 3 = 4. Take 4 and multiply it by your daily diaper need, 4 times 5 = 20.

That means 20 is the Magic Diaper Number; it’s how many diapers you need in your stash to cover for the whole week, including wash days. The number will be higher the more you’re washing because you’ll have more diapers in and out of your stash to cover for wash days and to make sure you don’t wear your stash out faster.

A real life example with your magic diaper number of 20 would be -

Sunday, little Johnny uses 4 diapers which means you’ve got 16 clean diapers remaining. On Monday, he uses 5 diapers, leaving 11 clean diapers in your stash. Tuesday, he goes through 5 again so now you have 6 clean diapers. Wednesday is wash day (the third day) – you have 14 dirty diapers to wash. On Wednesday, Johnny ends up feeling ambitious and uses all 6 clean diapers, but that’s okay because when Thursday rolls around your 14 diapers you had in the wash are now fresh and clean and ready to go. You won’t be washing again until Sunday.

In our case, 20 was our magic number. But with the average diaper costing around $17.95, that meant we would be spending around $360 for our stash, not including tax and shipping. That’s a lot of money. Or is it?

Let’s take the really popular diaper, bumGenius 4.0. New, one of these diapers is $17.95. Let’s do some math to figure out the true cost of this diaper, though.

Assuming you will use this diaper about 2 times a week (depending on how often you’re washing diapers and how big your stash is) that means you’d be using it 104 times a year. That means the first year you use this diaper, it costs you $0.17 per use.

Totally ignoring the fact that there’s no way you could stretch a 104 count of disposable diapers over one year, if you compare the cost per diaper of a 104-count box of disposables to the cost of the single bumGenius 4.0, the bumGenius still wins. Amazon.com has a 104-count of Pampers Cruisers Ultra Diapers (size 5) for $43.19 which means the cost per diaper is $0.42. My one bumGenius 4.0 has blown that out of the water and, again, I’m not even considering the fact that (A) I couldn’t stretch that box of disposables over 1 year and (B) the larger the diaper size, the smaller the count becomes per box which means your cost increases.

Looking at it another way, Ezra’s rate of 5 diapers per day means that he would go through that box of Pampers Cruisers in approximately 21 days, or three weeks. So if I compare the cost of the bumGenius diaper for three weeks of use to the box of Pampers, the cost/use of the bumGenius is $2.99 (6 uses over three weeks time). That’s a lot better than spending $43.19.

This doesn’t even take into account the fact that I’ll be using that one diaper for a longer period of time than three weeks, or even one year. Likely, I’ll be using it for two and a half years (since we started cloth diapering at 6 months). The true cost of this one diaper is actually $0.07. How did I come up with that number?

2 uses per week (at 52 weeks per year) = 104 uses per year.

2 and a half years (130 weeks) of two uses per week = 260 uses

The cost of the diaper – $17.95 – divided over each use = $0.07 (rounding up)

Were I to add in extra detergent or water costs to my total I am still saving money. In our particular case, we saw a $5-8 increase in our water bill and I use coupons to buy detergent (and since the detergent I use is only for cloth diapers, I don’t go through it quickly at all). These costs have added pennies to the total per diaper which means it’s still cheaper to do cloth versus disposable.

Pretty unbelievable, huh?

So, if we’re on a budget of $65/month for diapering how did I grow our stash from nothing to 20 diapers over 6 months time?

It was difficult at first, but as the cloth diaper stash grew it became easier because I needed disposables less and less.

• The first thing I did was to figure out what type of cloth diaper I wanted to try. I was lucky enough that my really good friend was already a pro at cloth and she let me try out a few different brands to see what I like. If you don’t have someone you can do this with, Diaper Junction offers a “cloth diaper test drive” program that lets you try some of the most popular brands without making a huge commitment (I’ll talk more about what diapers I use in part 2 of this series).
• Once I was settled on what brands I wanted, I had a better idea of what I would actually be spending. The next step was to save on the cost of disposables to free up money each month to put toward buying cloth. We were already using Huggies and I scored a pretty big box of diapers on sale at Babies R Us and that was a major help. If that wouldn’t have happened, though, I would have switched to our generic store brand. Do whatever you can to save – use coupons, buy on Amazon.com, etc…
• I joined a few Buy/Sell/Trade groups on Facebook for cloth diaper brands I was interested in filling our stash up with. In my stash, I actually only have 1 brand new diaper and three inserts that I paid the full price for. Everything else I either bought on sale, from my friend who let me try out a few brands, or I bought from a b/s/t group. Even better, once you get involved in a group like that it’s an easy way to offload diapers you no longer are interested in or just aren’t working out for your child
• Keep an eye on special deals or “Seconds” sales. Earth day is a great day to look for deals on diapers, as is Black Friday. If you’re really into bumGenius, their retail website (Cottonbabies.com) has Seconds sales a couple times a year. A seconds sale is merchandise that’s offered at an extremely discounted rate, that couldn’t be sold at full retail because of a slight imperfection or defect. Normally this means the seam wasn’t sewn perfectly straight or the color is slightly off. It’s kind of like the TJ Maxx of diapers.

The one cloth diaper I’ve paid full price for, and it was totally worth it, Best Bottom “Fox Trot”

So how much did I actually spend on our stash?

I spent about $264 total on our diaper stash. Not bad at all, considering I was initially thinking it would be in the ballpark of $360. Not to mention, I met our goal of cloth diapering full time two months sooner than I anticipated, which means we have been cloth diapering on a regular basis since Ezra was 10 months old. I think I’ll give myself a pat on the back, *pat pat pat*.

Coming up next in this series on cloth diapers, I’m going to talk about -

• Cloth diaper jargon – What in the world is an AIO or AI2 or pocket or PUL or fitted or whatever?
• How do I wash them? Do I need a special washer? How do I get poop off a diaper (um, yuck)?
• How long do they last? Do diapers depreciate? What about diaper rashes?
• What diapers make up our stash? How do I store and organize them?

My hope is that this post can help if you’re considering switching to cloth (or even if you’re starting your stash before your baby is born) – please let me know in the comments if you’re a fellow cloth diapering mama, or if you’re more into disposables (I don’t judge! ). Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Money Mondays: 5 Tips for Saving up for a Newborn
2. Thought dump
3. Money Monday: (on a Tuesday) January Totals & February Budget

It was really no big deal to have a small house before we had a kid. Now with Ezra, sometimes things feel smaller than they really are which means I’ve gotten really good at making the best use of each room and finding furniture and accessories that are both proportional to the rooms but also functional (and durable) for a child.

The biggest challenge in that area has been the living room. We have three bedrooms in this house, but two of them are being used as bedrooms and the third is our home office. That meant we really didn’t have a playroom so our living room has to do double duty (I could have done a playroom in the basement, but I hate being in the basement since there’s very little natural light). The challenge, for me anyway, was how to keep it an adult space but also a kid-friendly space.

The previous owners of our home did a bit of renovating before selling and the biggest thing they did to the living room was remove a wall dividing it from the kitchen and create a bit of an open concept feel. I really appreciate this but it did cut down the usable wall space in the room in terms of what furniture can comfortably fit.

Over the last three years that we’ve lived here, we’ve tried several different layouts for the living room, of which I only have a picture of one (of course) but this is actually the same layout we have right now:

This is our living room back in 2011. Obviously, the rug is way too big for the space as was the oversized arm chair (and we’ve since swapped that chair for a more size-appropriate armchair). I had just downsized our tv armoire from a giant sideboard to the stand seen above (which was from a local antique mall and was actually not a tv stand. Thank goodness for drills and circular bits so you can drill a hole for cords). Our furniture was so large because our previous apartment had very tall ceilings so the room could handle large pieces of furniture. In this house, our ceilings are tall but not as tall as what we were used to so  – while the rooms were actually the same size as what we had in our apartment – everything felt very smashed together.

Now add a kid and all his stuff into the mix and things got downright cramped.

My style has definitely changed over time and I’m a lot more open and adventurous with color than I once was, but I’m also more of a minimalist. I enjoy a small, curated collection of things whereas I used to like having large collections on display. A lot of that change probably has to do with Ezra… but I think it also has to do with growing up and learning what I really like in terms of interiors.

But this isn’t my style evolution; this is about how I made our living room both an adult space and a kid space. Here’s what our living room looks like today -

You can’t see any toys, huh? It doesn’t even look like a kid lives here. It’s all in the art of illusion + functional furniture and storage. Here’s how I did it:

I swapped out large, less functional pieces of furniture for ones that looked good + offered a ton of storage.

The best example of this is the white bookshelves I had in our “entry” (which I’m putting in quotes because we don’t really have an entry… you just kind of spill into our living room once you’re through the front door). This is what I used to have in our entry -

You can probably guess everything on the lower shelves didn’t last very long when Ezra got mobile. And you would guess correctly.

Before I removed the bookshelves, I gave them a fair shot. I cleared everything off the lower shelves and bought a few baskets from Home Goods that I could store Ezra-friendly things in that would be at his level.

This worked for awhile but I started to really dislike the look of it; the baskets had no lids so the toys were still visible when put away and it started to feel like I was living in a miniature toy store at all times. And while I really don’t mind my house looking like Toys r Us when Ezra is up and playing… when he goes to bed, I like to relax and feel like the living room is a peaceful place.

Ezra had a set of dressers in his room, one of which was a 2-door cabinet with two shelves in it. It wasn’t really doing much good in his room so I brought it out to the living room. I divided up the bookshelves and temporarily kept one in the living room and the other went into his room for more book and toy storage; now both are in his room since he’s got quite the library going on.

This cabinet is vintage Eames-era and is actually the third part to a dresser that is connected together with a vanity table (which can be closed, turning it into a super long desk). This piece is timeless and was an awesome Craigslist score (only $150 for all three pieces!).

It is surprisingly roomy inside and is perfect for holding all sorts of boy-type things -

I keep all of Ezra’s big toys in this cabinet. Cleanup is super easy; just toss it all in and shut the door. He loves running back out here after naps, or in the morning, and getting all his toys out. It’s like it’s all new for him, every time.

Similarly, I de-cluttered the accent wall area of our living room to make more play space and more negative space.

We got rid of our oversized chair and bought this glider on Black Friday last year. For a little while, I had one of the white bookshelves that had previously been in our entry beside the new chair, but Ezra got to the point where he was pulling the books I’d left on the top shelf off and ripping pages out of them so it was time for that to go. So, now we have this stand from IKEA in its place and the up-side is that both pieces take up way less room which means there’s more space to play. On top of that, I’m a huge fan of negative space; sometimes your eyes just need a break. This chair + table combination make this wall a lot less busy and easier on the eyes. It’s also one of the first things you see when you walk into our house so I didn’t want anything too crazy happening.

I hide Ezra’s activity cube behind this chair just to keep it out of the way while he is asleep or napping. When he was smaller and still used his swing, I pushed the swing behind the chair – at the time, it was the tan oversized one – to keep it out of the way but still give him plenty of room to swing, and it also gave him something interesting to look at while he was swinging since it faced the front door.

I added storage baskets with lids to keep toys corralled, but still give the look of an adult room.

I had been using uncovered baskets but, like I said, I started to hate the look. I found these lidded baskets at Home Goods in the clearance section for $9.99 each and they fit perfectly on the shelf. They are so deep and hold a ton of toys. Each one is just about halfway full so there’s definitely room to store more things as time goes on.

Ignore the center frame on top of this shelf – it has no picture in it yet and I keep forgetting to get one printed for it until I’m dusting (or taking pictures for the blog…). Anyway, I also use the small space between the shelf and the wall to squeeze in some extra storage. Ezra’s popper is there, and so is my yoga mat.

I realize these lids might not make it very long since they’re woven and my boy is kind of wild but… in the meantime, they get the job done.

Aslan approves of the toy selection in this drawer. Mostly he wants Sophie the Giraffe since she squeaks.

Lastly, I used out of the way spaces to store large toys which makes them not visible when they aren’t in use.

Apart from that small space between the tall bookshelf and the wall, the only other out of the way place to store large toys was beside the couch. I keep an activity table and large toy car there (the car is there in the picture below, it’s just turned to the side and the table is blocking its view).

I have a dog and cat who like to perch so the sofa table actually doubles as their lookout post. There’s a little cushion on there that they love sitting on and looking out the big window. It also makes for a good get-away spot for them when Ezra’s after their tails.

Other small changes I made were to change out our wool rug for a cotton one that is a lot easier to clean, plus I actually keep blankets on the couch for sticky fingers and dirty paws. There is also a child protection lock on the drawer of the tv stand to keep curious fingers out.

I’m pretty happy overall with the changes and I feel like it’s a good balance of design + fun. I really am looking forward to eventually having a dedicated playroom, though. But, in the meantime, our living room playroom combo is making it work

Related posts:

1. Home Tour: My office (aka, the room from Ikea)
2. Nursery planning
3. Organizing my yarn stash

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Ah. Sleep.

Every parent’s bane. Or every parent’s joy (when they have a “good sleeper”).

I’m not going to talk about whether Ezra is a good or bad sleeper because I don’t want anyone comparing their child to mine. I feel like sleep becomes this huge competitive issue among parents – there will be one mom who says “Well, my baby was sleeping through the night at 7 weeks old” and she just might be saying that because she is proud or excited…but, inevitably, the mom whose baby was not sleeping through the night at 7 weeks old will feel like she is being judged, or will look at her child and think “Why the heck aren’t you sleeping through the night?? You are 8 weeks old and should be doing that by now!!” It’s a slippery slope.

I fell into that trap, of comparing and stressing and pressuring myself and, to some extent, Ezra, into fitting into this mold of what I thought sleep should look like.

Sleep stopped being a battle when I stopped worrying.

I have heard and said so many times about so many things “let go” but I think, with this sleep thing, I actually learned what that means. I simply let go of all expectations I had on it. And by expectations I mean things I thought Ezra should be doing, or things I thought I should be doing. I accepted the fact that my baby has never read “Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child” or “The Happiest Baby Guide to Sleep” or any other sleep book, so he simply didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing (;) ). I accepted that some nights he will sleep 12 hours, other nights he will sleep 8 hours, other nights he will wake once, and some nights he will wake not at all. I accepted that, like anyone else, he will have an overall sleep pattern that is unique to him. I accepted his body knows what it’s doing to help him figure things out.

And, wouldn’t you know it… when I accepted those things and let go of trying to fit this sleep stuff into a pre-determined package, we all became well rested, because the stress was gone.

With all that said, I’m going to share 3 mistakes we made and 3 things we did “right,” but keep in mind “right” is a subjective term here and what is right for us may not be right for you.

3 Things We Should Have Done Differently

1. Not waited so long to transition to the crib – We did not transition Ezra to his crib until he was 4 months old. He slept in his Rock N Play from birth until 4 months (he also spent about a week sleeping in a pack n play). This was a mistake for us because Ezra became so accustomed to sleeping at a slight incline (the RNP is slightly inclined) that sleeping flat on his back was very hard for him. He struggled to fall asleep because he just wasn’t used to being flat on his back. The next time around, I’ll either start immediately with using the crib or, if I do use the RNP, have other times where the baby sleeps on his/her back (like during nap time or something).
2. Been more consistent with swaddling – We swaddled Ezra pretty consistently for the first week or so, then decided he “hated” swaddling because he was always breaking his arms out. Well, I don’t know that he hated swaddling so much as he was just a squirmy baby. He had a very strong startle reflex and, in all honesty, we probably weren’t swaddling him tight enough. When we finally got a proper swaddling blanket (Aiden + Anais), and started swaddling him tightly every night, he started sleeping longer stretches. We should have done that consistently from the beginning.
3. Believed a book or sleep system was the “correct” way and tried to make it work – This is a huge mistake. I’m not saying don’t try sleep solutions you read about (see point 1 below), but I’m saying when you see they aren’t working…just move on. Don’t dwell on it. Don’t think you failed or your baby failed. Just mark it down as experience gained and move onto the next. We made this mistakes once and it really disrupted everything – trying to force Ezra into a certain sleep mold ended up not only impacting our nights but our days as well..naps became messed up, feeding schedules went awry, it was a mess.

3 Things We Did “Right”

1. Tried, tried and tried again – If one thing didn’t work, we tried something else. We also did not completely rule anything out until after we had tried it for three nights. Early bedtime is a good example of this. We tried it at 2 months and it did not work. Ezra thought it was playtime and ended up going to sleep at his then-normal bedtime (which was 9pm). We gave it a fair shot and, after the third night, we went back to 9pm bedtime and things were fine. At the 5 month mark, we started noticing Ezra getting tired earlier and earlier so we decided to introduce an early bedtime and see how he did. He took to it like a champ and now goes to bed at 8pm. And that leads me to number 2…
2. Listen/Pay attention to baby’s cues – I truly believe there is no one single solution that will work for every single baby on the planet when it comes to sleep. Think about your own personal sleep habits. I’m sure they are very different from your significant other, your mom, your sibling, your neighbor and your dog. We all have unique ways we like to fall asleep. With that said, there are a few things I think every baby does like (loud white noise, a dark room and a swaddling blanket) but even those things can vary slightly from baby to baby. Having never met your baby before, you have a lot to learn and their sleep habits is one of them.You can’t learn it until you start trying things and paying attention to how your baby reacts.
3. Built a solid routine from the start – Some parents balk at the words “routine” and “baby” appearing in the same sentence. If you are one of those people, it might help you to better understand that when I say routine for baby, I am not talking about a schedule. I am talking about crafting a series of actions that are repeated night to night, that sync up with your baby’s natural rhythms. I strongly believe that over time your baby will know there is a routine in place (and that it won’t take long for them to catch on) and this routine will become your saving grace – when traveling, when at grandma & grandpa’s, when you’ve had a bad day, etc…It’s something comforting for everyone to fall back on. We were touch and go with a routine for the first couple of weeks but, as we started figuring things out, the routine emerged. I don’t believe in enforcing a routine just to have one, or because it’s what you think should happen. Pick a couple things you want to happen (for example, story time, bath time and a snack or something), pick an order that makes sense for your and your baby, then see what happens.

Related posts:

1. A typical day with a 6 or 7 month old
2. A typical day with a 9 month old
3. A typical day with a 4 month old

I’ve never seen so many tulips in my life than the number of tulips that are at the Cincinnati Zoo right now. There are probably thousands.

And the colors are so vibrant! Just look at them, in the photo.

Yesterday, my mom, Ezra and I visited the zoo. I didn’t know the tulips were blooming, so that was a nice surprise. Ezra was more interested in the tigers at the Cat Canyon than checking out blooming flowers, but it didn’t stop me from snapping a picture on our way by.

Tulips have nothing to do with links, though. They have everything to do with spring and being both strong and fragile at once. You might think I’m going somewhere deep with that last metaphor, but you’re wrong.

I’m going straight to the links -

“You are not a terrible parent if you can’t figure out a way for your children to eat as healthy as your friend’s children do. She’s obviously using a bizarre and probably illegal form of hypnotism.” A good reminder from The Actual Pastor

18 microwave snacks you can cook in a mug. Yes.

Hanging a potless plant with a pop of color, via Design Sponge

“You love the baby more than you love me, don’t you?”

Don Draper’s Dead End – Yes and yes and yes! I have totally lost interest in Mad Men and it’s for this very reason.

I’ve really been enjoying the information on HowTheyBlog.com – there are some great tips!

My writing elsewhere -

I wrote on Establishing Good Sleep Habits for Life’n'Stats

Happy Wednesday!

Related posts:

1. Mid-week links #1
2. Mid-Week Links #4
3. Mid-week Links #2

One of my goals for 2013 was to move out of our house.

I set this goal in a big fat hurry.

I tend to do things that way. Maybe you can relate? I think of something that I know should happen and I throw my whole self into getting it done.

It’s like I can’t even rest until I know it’s done and we did it and whew.

It’s a little different, though, with houses. They just don’t sell themselves. Or buy themselves.

So the goal I set? Well, it’s already the end of April. The year isn’t over but my realistic self is telling my impatient self to wait. I’m not that great at waiting.

But I am good at making lists. Lists pass the time between the waiting and the doing. They bring a purpose to the waiting so it’s more paint brushes and hammers and less thumb twiddling and pining after homes on Zillow.

If we want to sell our home, there are a few things we need to do first. Those things are:

• Get pre-approved. Before anything can happen, this has to happen first. And even before that can happen, we have to figure out what lender we’re wanting to work with.
• Earmark money specifically for moving. We have money for a down payment, but we have no money to pay for moving. We moved ourselves last time but that was going from a small apartment to a felt-big-to-us-but-is-still-kinda-small home. Now we will be going from a small home to a medium-to-large home. We have more stuff. It’s funny what you accumulate over three years – apart from dust bunnies, grey hairs and socks with no matches.

• Declutter. Granted I’m a bit of a neat freak, we do have clutter in one area of our home – the garage. Our garage is pretty much a glorified storage shed. There’s no way a car is fitting in it, unless it’s a clown car, whether it’s clutter free or not. But before we list or show, I’d like it to be organized.
• Put a concrete pad down beside our driveway. This is an absolute must even for just living here. Our driveway situation is pretty ridiculous, in that I have to park in a way that looks like I was taught how to drive by a five year old. A concrete pad will give extra parking and improve the only real complaint that we foresee being lodged at our house. In fact, the driveway was our one complaint when buying but we were willing to overlook it. The market, right now, is a buyer’s one so I can see the driveway being a deal breaker.
• Repaint/touch up the paint in all rooms. We’ll do this right before listing our house for sale, so everything is nice and fresh.
• Repaint the trim throughout the whole house. Again, right before we list.
• Repair the caulk around our bathtub. This is really unsightly and has needed to be done for awhile. We have a tiled shower and where the tile meats the tub, the caulk usually ends up cracking and we have to repair it every so often.
• Landscape the front yard. It’s all about curb appeal! Unfortunately, we have pretty bad soil in our front yard. I’ve mentioned it before, but nothing grows in the flower beds in our front yard. Not even weeds. It’s a barren, brown wasteland. Our new plan is to turn it into a container garden. We’ll tackle this project after the concrete pad is put down, since the yard will probably get torn up.
• Repair the fence in the backyard and spruce up the flower beds. There is one awkward flower bed in the backyard that really serves no purpose other than existing. We also have a chain link fence with a few areas that need to be repaired.

So that’s our list. It’s not super long, but it will take some time to work through. And time is something we have plenty of.

Money is something we don’t have plenty of, so we will be doing all of this on a budget. I hope to get all of this down for $8,000 or less. It will be a challenge, but we’re up for it. And I plan on blogging about it, so that will be fun and keep me accountable to our budget. Wish us luck!

Related posts:

1. Money Monday: Allowances – yes or no?
2. A glimpse of… my sad, pathetic, sorry excuse for a garden
3. Money Monday: We eat out way too much

This was a busy weekend!

Friday was as slow as this year’s tax return deposits. So slow, I can’t even remember what we did. And since I took no pictures on Friday, I have no record of what really happened. So I’ll make something up. Friday, we slept in and ate ice cream for every meal. Ezra ran a marathon and I greeted him at the finish line with his favorite stuffie – a hedgepig (aka, hedgehog) named Gilbert. Then we went to the park and swung (swang? swinged?) for 5 hours at which point we were tired so we went home and hung out in our jammies until Alex came home. It was pizza for dinner.

Oh, actually it really was pizza for dinner. And just like that I remember what really happened on Friday. Ezra had a little buddy over for a play date and the two of them played for a bit then it was bath time, and then bed time.

Yesterday, I do remember what happened. It was quite the busy day! We had a birthday party to go to for Ezra’s best buddies who turned one. These little twins were born one day before Ezra and they are so adorable. I love watching the three of them play together.

The party was a ton of fun for Mr. Ezra. He had all the fruit he could eat, a little bit of birthday cake, a croissant (which was a huge hit with him… my child is part French, I guess) and tons of laughing at the twins’ dogs. Not to mention hanging with his friends. Oh and eating all of their fruit.
But I said that already.

Seriously, though, this child’s cellular tissue is probably made of strawberries and pineapple.

Today, we took it easy after all of the excitement of yesterday and hung around at home. In the afternoon, Ezra’s grandma came for a visit and the four of us headed to the park to snap some pictures to commemorate Ezra’s first year. I took 217 photos so I admit I have a problem with click click clicking the shutter. At one point, Alex took over snapping and when I look at the number of photos I took (217) versus the number of photos he took (25), my problem is all the more clear. And did I mention we were there taking pictures for only an hour?

But can you blame me? Look at this face:

You can see that Gilbert – the hedgepig I mentioned earlier – is present in both pictures. I think we can safely say Ezra has a “lovey.” So I’ll tell you Gilbert’s origin story:

In the mail I received a card from Anthropologie, giving me a discount in the month of March in honor of me aging another year. This is the only birthday month discount I ever really look forward to. So, one Sunday, the three of us headed up to the mall so I could spend some birthday money and this card from Anthro. I don’t know why, but our Anthropologie seriously downgraded their kids section. It went from about the size of a kitchen island to about the size of a kitchen drawer. And in that drawer was a small basket of stuffed animals. Ezra got sight of this little guy and he had to have him. And they have been inseparable since.

And that’s the story of how I spent my 15% off Anthropologie discount card on a stuffed animal for my son (and also on an $88 sweater that I still haven’t worn and will likely return because on second thought it isn’t that flattering after all), aka Gilbert’s Origin Story.

As for how he got the name ‘Gilbert,’ I don’t know. It just happened.

As for why we call a hedgehog a hedgepig, I also don’t know. But why not?

So that was our weekend. This week, every daily column in my planner has a whole lot of nothing scribbled inside it. Not sure how I managed to plan nothing for the entire week, but that only means we’re open for adventure and spontaneity. Or grocery shopping. Whichever comes first.

Related posts:

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I think he had a really fun time at his party. His favorite thing? The cake. Hands down.

“Mom, you’ve been holdin’ out on me for 12 months!!”

Ezra was on a sugar high for four hours after eating -almost- all of that cake on his tray. The funniest part of all was when we first put it on his tray, he didn’t even use his hands. He dove straight in with his face a la Randy in The Christmas Story aka, “show us how the piggies eat!”

But that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves. The morning of Ezra’s party -which also fell on his actual birthday, April 6th- Alex and I gave him his present from us and, after he opened it and we played for a bit, I headed out to my parent’s house to start making the food and decorate.

“Just what I always wanted! Blocks!”

I got to my parent’s house about 3 hours before the party was set to start and I thought that would be enough time but we were scrambling at the last minute, setting up food still when the guests started arriving.

I was furiously snapping pics after guests arrived so I had to quickly get photos of the food before it was all gone. I planned the menu around a few of Ezra’s favorite foods. We served:

• Ham and cheddar sandwiches on pretzel buns (German roots, holla!)
• Mini turkey sandwiches with lettuce and tomato on wheat
• Mini peanut butter + banana sandwiches on rolls (for the kids… or the adults who have a special place in their heart for pb + bananas)
• Baked potato bites (sliced, baked red potatoes topped with a sour cream and cream cheese combo, turkey bacon bits and chopped chives)
• Baked macaroni and cheese with broccoli
• Layered Mexican dip (one of the layers is avocado, which is one of Ezra’s favorite foods)
• Veggies with a creamy sage dip

For beverages, we kept it simple with water and pop, but I did have a berry lemonade spritzer that was a hit.

And, as for desserts, there was the cake -of course!- and some sugar cookies decorated like foxes that I made. We also had a fruit pizza which I never snapped a photo of, but it was delicious!

Ezra’s cake was yellow white white icing. I topped it with blue and green sugar pearls. There’s also a layer of gold sugar under that, that you can’t see. I ordered the ‘one’ candles online, and the fox topper is something Alex and I had purchased when we first found out we were pregnant. It’s not really a cake topper, obviously, but it looked cute and was a good size for the top of a cake.

The cookies were a huge hit. I used the Old Fashioned Sugar Cookie recipe from The Cookiepedia, and this tutorial from The Bearfoot Baker to make the cookies look like foxes. And now I have a huge amount of respect for professional bakers and people who ice sugar cookies all day long. That is tiring work. And I only made 3 dozen.

I tried to keep it relatively simple with the decorations. Our colors were lime green, baby blue and white with pops of orange and yellow. I made two fabric bunting banners – one you saw in the picture above, on the food table – and the other was around the table with the desserts. We also had a few tissue paper pom poms around, plus orange and blue balloons.

I made a photo banner for the living room, displaying one photo from each of the past 12 months and a few blurbs about milestones or notable things that happened in Ezra’s life each month. It turned out really cute, but it was really hard to pick just one picture for each month.

I used green pom pom trim that I had previously used to trim out Ezra’s curtains in his room. I didn’t have enough for the banner, so I had to get a few more yards from Joann Fabrics. To attach the paper to the trim, I used mini clothespins. The paper was a slightly heavier weight than standard copy paper but the mini clothespins held each piece of just fine. I had the pages printed at Kinkos and they did a really great job.

The woodland animals on each paper were part of a printable package I’d ordered off Etsy.

The one thing I forgot to get a picture of was the favor bags. We had four kids coming and I personalized their bags, but everyone got a book – fox themed! – a little toy or something special and a treat. The favors were in a white paper bag, sealed shut with a fox sticker (using the fox in the pic above, actually). The treats were in a little fox burlap sack, that I had gotten off of Etsy.

I had everyone put the presents for the birthday boy in the living room. Ezra didn’t have too much interest in opening presents – he wanted to play with his baby buddies – so I tried to divide up the present opening into blocks so he didn’t get too overwhelmed. It didn’t really matter though… I ended up opening most of his presents myself. And that means I get to play with all of it myself, right?

Ezra had a few special things he wore for his birthday. He wore the “birthday boy” shirt pictured above right when he arrived and before we had cake. For his cake smash, he wore Best Bottoms’ new Fox Trot cloth diaper. It’s hard to see the pattern in the picture below, but it’s really cute.

And, after his cake smash, he wore this cute little fox t-shirt I found on Etsy, by b. children’s wear.

This is the best picture I could get of the shirt because, after cake, Ezra was a wild man!

All in all, it was a great day but it sure did blow by quickly. Before I knew it, all the guests had gone and it was just us and our little one year old. I guess I can’t call him a baby anymore *sniff sniff*.

If anyone is interested, here are a few links to my sources for various things we used for the party:

Napkins, plates, cups and plasticware – Party City. The colors we used were Kiwi, Leaf Green and Robin’s Egg
Solid orange balloons and ‘Happy Birthday’ blue balloons – Party City
Tissue paper poms poms, one package each of white, kiwi and Caribbean – Party City (it’s cheaper to buy them here than from Joann Fabrics or Michael’s, plus these come already folded accordion style and have a really nice, long nylon cord).
Cake topper – Dapper Fox figurine, by Jim Shore
‘One’ candles – Baker’s Nook (I saw that you can get these candles at Party City, too. They’re cheaper at Baker’s Nook, but you can’t choose your color. They randomly send you colors)
Blue and green sugar pearls – Joann Fabrics
Green pom pom trim – Joann Fabrics (this is the style trim I used, but not the color. I can’t find the green online)
Birthday Boy t-shirt – Kohls
Flynn the Handsome Fox t-shirt – b. children’s wear
Fox Trot Best Bottoms Cloth Diaper – Nicki’s Diapers
Woodland Animals Clip Art Set – Pixel Paper Prints
Fox muslin party favor bags – Crimson Hollow

If you’re wondering about anything else I haven’t listed here, let me know!

Related posts:

1. A glimpse of… my homegrown scallions
2. A glimpse of… my job
3. A glimpse of… my most recent (completed!) knitting project

We had nothing on the calendar – for once! – but time has a way of getting filled up whether you plan for it to or not.

Friday night I hung out at home and did a lot of this:

I’m a little obsessed with Grey’s Anatomy right now. I realize I’m about 9 years late to this party, and I’m okay with that. Because I have the advantage… I get to watch it straight through, back to back episodes, as many as I want, whenever I want, thanks to Netflix instant while everyone else who jumped on the bandwagon from the start had to wait a week between each episode! So, clearly I win. Of course, I’ll be in the same boat as everyone else when I finally catch up … but I just don’t think about that part.

I’m working on knitting up a few items for a Mommy & Me package I want to add to my shop, so that’s what’s on my needles in the picture. I’m testing out an organic cotton yarn. It’s unbelievably soft and I kind of want to make myself some socks with it.

While I was on a Grey’s and knitting bender, Alex was doing a lot of this:

Source

That’s not his guitar or amp in the picture, but he was playing electric guitar with a couple friends. I would have taken a picture of his guitar and amp but, frankly, it’s late and I don’t feel like going down to the basement to get a picture, haha.

Ezra missed all this excitement as he was sleeping at the time but, earlier in the day, he was on a destruction kick. Mostly aimed at the cat’s cardboard scratcher box.

Saturday was supposed to be a day of relaxing but instead it turned into a day spent at the car dealership. Well, really just a morning spent there. Alex and Ezra hung out at home while I took one of our car’s to get serviced. It was supposed to be a 45 minute service but it turned into a 2 and a half hour one because we actually needed the 60,000 mile tune up. Thank God I had brought my laptop and knitting with me. I seriously was tempted to take advantage of their free wifi and stream Grey’s, but I restrained myself. Instead I listened to some podcasts.

By the time Ezra woke up from his morning nap, I was still at the car dealership so the two of them came to pick me up and we all three grabbed lunch at Panera. Panera has these new pasta dishes and I was so excited to try them because, finally, there was something new at Panera. There are three different kinds and, a couple weeks ago when we were there for dinner, Alex and I both ordered the pasta bolognese. The employee taking our order asked me like five times if I wanted to add a salad or soup to our full size pasta dishes and I told her every time, no I don’t want anything else just the pasta please and thank you.

The employee had a reason for asking us multiple times if we wanted to add on anything. The portions are so small. And we got the big size. So, needless to say, I have not ordered the pasta since then and this was a very long digression about carbohydrates.

After lunch, we picked up the car and headed home for some playtime. For some reason – growth spurt? Teeth? World domination? We’ll never know – Ezra took a huge nap in the afternoon. After almost two and a half hours we finally woke him up so we could eat some dinner. We met my parents, my sister and her boyfriend at a local restaurant called Rima’s Diner. The food was pretty good, but mostly it was good to see my dad since he’s going out of town for a little bit on a business trip.

This morning, we should have gone to church but when I woke up I was so tired. Like, bone tired. For the past month or so, Ezra has been waking up consistently at least one time a night – anywhere from 12:30am – 3:30am. Suddenly, he stopped doing that and last night was the third night in a row of him sleeping straight through until wake up time. But, I keep expecting him to wake up at any moment during that three hour window so I had been staying up. I feel like the second I go to bed early, or start to fall asleep, fate will conspire to wake my child up and I’ll have to get up and rock him back to sleep again.

I’m not even complaining about the waking up – It only takes about 10 minutes and it’s pretty much the only snuggle time I get anymore – I’m complaining that I wish babies were more predictable, haha.

Anyway, we missed church and instead had lunch then ran to Joann Fabrics to get some fabric to make decorations for Ezra’s 1 year birthday party, which is coming up soon.

I’m going to be making several bunting banners. I cut out a few of the triangles this evening and I realized I bought way way way way too much fabric. So, I’ll have to find a use for the extras. Maybe throw pillow covers since it just so happens all of these fabrics would look great in my living room.

After Ezra’s second nap, we went to the grocery store. I’ve been needing to go there all week but kept putting it off and putting it off. We were down to bare bones – I’m talking having to cobble together weird meals and snacks like pretzels dipped in sour cream or graham crackers with butter.

We successfully avoided buying any of the Easter candy that was everywhere tempting us.

Now, the weekend is over and Alex and I are relaxing on the couch. He’s watching The Walking Dead and I’m counting down the minutes until this episode is over and I can pop in my headphones, break out the iPad and watch more Grey’s. I told you it was an obsession!

How was your weekend?

Related posts:

1. Mid-Week Links #4
2. Currently…

I did a review but, shortly after the review, I noticed that I was using my planner less and less. The reasons I was using it less were:

• It was almost too pretty. As weird as that sounds, I hated writing in it because I was messing it up and it seriously bugged me.
• I really missed the big block of open space I had in my week view for my Moleskine planner, under the daily columns.
• I wasn’t really happy with the division of the days in the Erin Condren planner. I don’t organize my day by morning, afternoon and evening when I’m planning things. I know some people just re-name those segments into things like “day,” “To Do’s,” etc… but I didn’t want to have to rename 365 columns.
• There weren’t enough lined notebook pages, and I hated that the add-on notebooks I got were unlined pages. I’m left handed and write with a slant so I need lines!!

So now I have a really pretty unused Erin Condren planner sitting on my desk. Oh well.

I decided to just transform another Moleskine since I was really happy with my 2012 planner. For some unknown reason, though, the local bookstore near me stopped selling large grid notebooks like I’d previously used and none of the office supplies stores sold them either. I had to order one online, but that turned out okay because I was able to get a white one.

I love the color white. (Yeah, yeah….white is technically not a color. Whatever.)

I know this sounds silly, but the flower sticker on the cover of the notebook? I’ve been saving it for years. I didn’t know what I was saving it for. But then I got this notebook and it seemed absolutely perfect. So I put a flower on it (not as good as “put a bird on it,” but you know).

Have you seen all the Smash Journal stuff lately? It’s been around for a little while, but it seems like it’s picking up steam the last few months. I thought I’d take the idea of the smash journal and apply it to my planner. I love collage art and have always wanted an art journal but since I don’t keep a paper journal anymore I thought this would be a great in-between.

Ezra and I visited Joann Fabrics and they had quite a few Smash stuff on sale. We got the fabric tabs I used to divide the months, a roll of washi tape (I’m late to the washi tape parade, but man is this stuff fun!) and a roll of decorative clear tape. I also grabbed a small deck of 4 x 4 square scrapbook paper in different patterns.

Here’s the cover page. I picked a few of my favorite paper patterns from the scrapbook deck and taped them down with the decorative clear tape. That tape is pretty cool, actually. It’s just as removable as washi tape so there’s no pressure when placing things.

You can only see the tabs of March – September, but the planner does go all the way through to December.

I did everything the same as last time – 7 x 7 squares (7 columns, 7 rows) with 3 rows at the top and at the bottom. This time, I added washi tape on the side, to keep the monthly tabs in place. Only in March I added a strip of washi tape at the bottom because I forgot to leave the 3 row space and it was bugging me.

I have quite a few of the Erin Condren labels left that came with that planner; that’s what the birthday sticker is on the 6th.

I didn’t change anything with the weekly view, either. I am using the section below the daily columns for weekly budget tracking and for goals with my Etsy shop. I’m also tracking daily spending, any errands or To Do lists I have and dinner plans in each daily column.

The tabs I used kind of feel like a fabric. They were square, so I folded them over and wrote each month on a different tab. The blank tab is a notes section but I’m not completely committed to calling it notes so…hence it being blank.

I did change the blog planning pages. I decided to use one side as a monthly calender to plan out posts and the facing page is divided into two columns – one for blog To Do’s and the other for inspiration (post ideas, picture ideas, etc…).

The last section, as I mentioned, is for notes and lists and whatever else. I haven’t been doing a lot in that section but there are a good amount of pages leftover that it should last me for the whole year. I think I’ll probably journal in that section, too.

And that’s that!

If you’re interested, the supplies I used were:

Multi-colored Washi Tape by K&Company
Fabric Smash Tabs by K&Company
Smash Clear Triangle Tape by K&Company

You can check out the entire Smash line of products here.

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1. Moleskine notebook turned planner
2. Video Review: Erin Condren Planner
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Yeah, it’s been quiet around here.

Ever lost your mojo? I feel like that happens to me on a bi-monthly basis, haha. Definitely not the first time I’ve felt this way, and it certainly won’t be the last.

You know that great feeling you have after you’ve successfully completed a project, or cleared out a bunch of clutter from your basement that was just overflowing with junk? I’m trying to get to that place. I’ve been clearing out life clutter, though. And that is, admittedly, a heck of a lot more difficult to clear out than furniture and boxes of junk.

But today is the first day of Spring and it’s Wednesday which means it’s the day my baby hangs out with his Grandma and I get some quiet time. I’m spending my time, like I do every Wednesday, at my local Starbucks. Something about a chai latte and some oatmeal, it just clears my head.

I feel like I’m waking up, you know? Like I’ve been asleep for months and didn’t even realize it. It’s like I literally woke up one morning and figuratively felt like the fog lifted, too.

I don’t have a bunch of amazing one-liners to share, though. Or soul-piercing thoughts. Or even anything that amazing. Mostly, I’m getting back to the basics. I realized I’d rather have a few things that are really great and worth treasuring, than many things that stress me out and make me feel bad about myself.

Enough vague talk, though. As my waking up relates to the blog (and I have talked about this before… history loves to repeat itself, eh?) it occurred to me I was writing to someone I didn’t know and didn’t like very much. No one in particular, just this person I had in my head who I thought should like me and who I thought I should talk to. I don’t know her name, or anything about her really. Mostly because she doesn’t exist. “They,” and by they I mean people who tell you how to blog, say you should have your audience in mind when writing to give yourself a focus. And it just dawned on me that who I had in mind? Yeah, I didn’t like her very much. She was judgmental. She loved to compare what I was doing to other writers/bloggers and somehow always managed to find me as coming up short. Mostly, she was unhappy. She also had these unreasonable expectations on me. It was kinda stressful.

So I said goodbye to her and decided to start writing for myself, and to myself, and we’ll see what happens. Less instructional, less formal and more everyday pieces of my life, more carefree. This is my blog anyway, right? Not hers.

What will stick around? Money Monday, for sure. But I don’t know how in depth I’m going to go. I love talking about budgets and learning and all that but…I’m not a financial guru and I had psyched myself up to become this person who could be like the go-to chick for advice on money. Confession – when I get an idea, I dream it up to epic proportions and usually get lost somewhere in the dream then feel like a huge failure until the dream bubble pops and I float back down to earth and just kind of abandon the whole project. So, yeah, no crazy financial talk on this blog. Mostly just simple budgeting tips, recipes, recipe reviews and so on.

My new monthly feature, Revisiting, I definitely am keeping around because it’s a fun idea to me and I enjoyed brainstorming topics for each month.

Book reviews are something I want to bring back. You may or may not know this (actually you do, since I’m writing to myself haha) but I was an English major in college. I focused on literature and was a huge book nerd up until a few years ago when I got burnt out on books and also had to downsize my personal library of close to 1,000 books down to about 75 books. Painful process, but that’s what happens when you (A) move in with someone and you have a small space, and (B) are faced with a move and books are heavy and a pain in the butt to pack up.

I’m going to talk more about knitting. Someone told me to not talk about knitting on the blog because, and I quote, “people don’t care about that.” That may very well be true but the fact of the matter is…. I care about it. And I have a really small shop where I sell things I’ve knit. And also I love knitting. Oh and did I mention that I love knitting? It’s like my thing. So it’s part of the deal.

Lastly, I want to talk more about what’s happening in my life. I like looking back on my other blogs to see what I was doing at any given moment. I probably won’t talk about my child as much as he gets older because I don’t want him overexposed online before he’s even 2. It’s hard to reign that in because, let’s face it, he is so stinkin’ cute. But you can expect to hear more about what’s happening in my day-to-day life, inane stories you probably don’t care about (or maybe you do?), and other things that make me laugh hysterically but may make you roll your eyes or otherwise click out of this window…or you might also find hysterical. You just never know with people.

You may have noticed this post is titled “Mid-Week Links #4″ but here we are, 933 words in, and no links. So as a special reward for reading (now) 946 words, here are a few links (and this feature will also be staying because I kind of am obsessed with the internet and am constantly reading things on it) -

Even though I said I didn’t want to, I actually became a cloth diaper convert (GASP!). BumGenius has released two new prints and the boy one is called Irwin, after Steve Irwin the late crocodile hunter (the girl one is Maathai). Check them out if you’re into cloth!

How to use spaghetti squash instead of pasta, at Meet the Sullivans. Great post. I wish Ezra like anything from the squash family. Unfortunately, he’s more of a carrot kinda veggie guy.

This post on DIY cat magnets at Design*Sponge had me laughing out loud, literally. Why are cats so funny? They don’t even know they’re funny and that’s the best part.

There’s been talk with a few of my favorite ladies of planning an NYC trip in the summer, so Cole’s round-up of a few of her favorite NYC places and things caught my eye.

I love love love love Meredith’s embellished sweater. She used embroidery floss to add flowers to the shoulders of a plain white sweater. It’s so cute!

We’ve recently been into quinoa again over here so when Gina posted a recipe for Quinoa Pizza Snack Bites I had to pin it to try it out later. I think these would be great for Ezra at lunch or dinner.

I’ve had foxes on the brain lately since we’re kind of a family obsessed with foxes and it’s Ezra’s first birthday party theme. I just ordered this adorable shirt for him to wear on his birthday and I can’t wait to get it.

I don’t know if you heard the news, but Google Reader is going away on July 1st (fifth bullet point down on the list). This seriously came as a shock to me and is kind of a huge disappointment as I use Reader on a daily (sometimes multi-daily) basis. I’ve switched over to Feedly, though, and can’t believe I hadn’t found it sooner. The UI alone makes the switch worth it – it’s just plain pretty to look at. I found Feedly from this Lifehacker article on the 5 best alternatives to Google Reader.

Happy Wednesday

Related posts:

1. Mid-week links #1
2. Mid-week Links #2
3. Mid-week Links #3

*Edit – grocery spending now updated!*

It’s a new month! I’ll be back in another entry to go over how we ended February with our groceries and other spending, as well as to go over March’s budget. In the meantime, I actually sat down and made a meal plan and am so excited to get on with making these recipes.

I found this cool blog, Closet Cooking, that has a ton of recipes. All of my recipes for this upcoming week are from there. The author of the blog is pretty adventurous and has some interesting combinations of flavors. Here’s the recipes I chose for this week:

Tuesday – Tilapia Piccata with Garlic Mashed Cauliflower
Wednesday – Eating with my family
Thursday – Beef & Barley Stew and dinner rolls
Friday – BBQ Chicken Pizza
Saturday - Banana Mango Pancakes with breakfast potatoes
Sunday – It’s my birthday! So we’ll be going out to eat
Monday – Cherry Teriyaki Chicken with Baby Bok Choy & Shiitake Mushrooms

We haven’t gone grocery shopping to get the items for these meals yet. Ezra and I are planning on going tomorrow so I’ll updated this entry with our totals later on. I’ve noticed that, since Ezra is now eating a lot more solid food, our grocery bill has started to creep up pretty badly. Luckily, Alex won a large gift card at work that has paid for groceries the last couple weeks. But, what’s left on the gift card is now earmarked for Ezra’s birthday party so it’s time to reign in the spending. Our pre-baby budget was $70/week and, right now, that isn’t doable. I’ve set our new budget at $100/week with the hopes of whittling that down over time. I think I can do it!

Since I don’t have a grocery spending breakdown to share just yet, I’ll share these two bad-quality iPhone pics of weekend culinary adventures.

On Saturday night, I cooked two chicken breasts in this cashew and cumin cooking sauce. I added peas as well, plus some leftover broccoli that was sitting in the fridge. Verdict? Despite the fact that it said “mild,” it was pretty spicy. I had to dump sour cream all over my plate and it was still spicy. I should say that I really can’t stand spicy food…. I do love Indian and Thai but I always get it at a level 0 or 1 haha. Alex said this was probably like a level 3 out of 10. So, to some, that isn’t spicy at all. But to me… it was way too much.

Also on Saturday, I decided to use three bananas that were pretty ripe to make some banana bread. I had a bag of mini Reese’s cups in the pantry… they’re candy, but they’re my favorite mix-in for banana bread.

I was out of all-purpose flour so I had to use whole wheat. I also used light brown sugar instead of white sugar. I was worried about the whole wheat drying the bread out but it was totally okay. It’s definitely not as moist, but the mini Reese’s more than make up for that

What’s on your meal plan for this week?

—–

Here’s my update with the grocery spending for this week.

Budget – $100
Actual – $97.58

I’m pretty happy that we came in under budget, even though it wasn’t by much! We got a lot of produce this time, some meat and a few other things.

Please excuse the random high chair and bib. And also the little pom hiding under the table, hoping some food item would fall.

I feel like we did pretty well with our haul and only spending $97. We saved $9.89, which means the original bill was $107.47. Thank goodness for the Kroger Plus Card. I didn’t have any coupons this time but I was kicking myself because I saw some deals that I could have combined with coupons I’d left at home. But there’s always next time!

Related posts:

1. Money Monday: We eat out way too much
2. Money Monday: (on a Tuesday) January Totals & February Budget
3. Project: Food Budget – Week 10

So, without further ado, here’s February’s Revisiting – A February dinner party

Back in 2009, Alex and I were members of a meetup.com group called the Cincinnati Gourmet Dinner Club. There were about 20 of us and we took turns hosting monthly dinners in our homes. The number of people you hosted depended on your house and how many you could comfortably entertain. In our case, we had about 12 or 14 people attend (can’t remember exactly). At the time, we were living in a Civil-war era apartment downtown, so squeezing that many people into our front living room was quite a feat. I don’t have a good picture of the room we set the table up in (or a picture of the table, for that matter… major bummer), but I do have a picture of our small kitchen:

It was a galley style kitchen and, if it had a middle name, that name would be “cozy.” I actually really loved that kitchen, despite it’s limited counterspace. The radiator right smack in the middle was amazing on cold winter mornings. I do miss that.

Anyway, when it was our turn to host a dinner party we chose the month of February. It was set to happen right around Valentine’s day, but a snowstorm derailed those plans and the party was rescheduled to February 21st. We kept with the Valentine theme, though, because I had bought every guest a vintage valentine from the antique mall and didn’t really want to keep those for myself, haha. On top of that, my color scheme was metallics + deep reds and if that doesn’t say “Valentines” I don’t know what does.

This dinner party marked the first time we got to use our entire set of fine china we’d received as wedding gifts. We were really lucky and received everything we’d registered for from the set with the exception of a platter and one place setting. And it just so happened that a couple weeks before the party, Macy’s ran a huge sale on home items and I was able to get those missing pieces at a nice discount. Our pattern is Lauren Ralph Lauren, “Silk Ribbon Pearl” and I still love it. I keep a few pieces out on display in our kitchen, as well as two place settings in case we ever feel like dining on something fancy (because mac n cheese just tastes better on an expensive plate).

I remember agonizing over the recipes. Since this was a gourmet group, I tried to go big. My menu was -

Appetizers –

Gruyere and brie cheeses with crackers
Mini spinach quiche bites

Starter -

Tomato basil bisque

Main course & Sides -

Lavender encrusted beef medallions
Asparagus with orange dressing
Mashed potatoes with lavender & rosemary
Mushrooms in a red wine sauce

Dessert -
Pear galettes with chocolate sauce
Shortbread tarts with lemon filling

Without a doubt, it was the most ambitious dinner I’d ever created. I was pretty proud of how everything turned out – I’m a damn good cook, if I do say so myself! – and it was so much fun entertaining and enjoying the company of new friends. Although there was an awkward moment where one guest (who was the date of one of the club members) started talking about his divorce…to all of us…who were complete strangers to him. It was weird. And I’ll also say, it was my first time cooking beef ever and I was a nervous wreck about it being done just right. Not to mention I was using kitchen-grade lavender, which I had also never used. I had done a practice round a few weeks prior and it turned out really bad. Like inedible. And that was the first time I’d ever made anything inedible (since then, I’ve made another inedible dish that featured tofu… so that brings my inedible tally up to 2). But thankfully when it came down to the night of the party, everything went off without a hitch.

Anyway, if I had the chance to host this dinner again, here’s a little moodboard I cooked up of how I’d set the table up the second time around -

A - Aquarelle Menu Card from Minted.com, $2.56/card
B – LSA Red Wine Glass (set of four) from Occa Home, $67
C – Silver Thread by Hermes (5-piece place setting) from Michael C. Fina, $855
D – Shell arrangement by Martha Stewart
E – Arbor Rectangular Dining Table by Crate Barrel (sadly, this table is no longer available, but a similar one can be found here)
F – Lazy Susan Large Hammered Pillar Candles by Zinc Door, $60 (silver and gold)
G – Spire White Dining Chair by Zinc Door, $173
H – Cross Dye Basic Napkin in Medieval Blue (set of four) by West Elm, $16.00
I – 3-ring Napkin Ring by Crate & Barrel, $3.95
J – “Shaker” Flatware Set by Oneida, $125 (service for 8)

Obviously, that Hermes five-piece place setting is beyond out of my budget (lol, I mean seriously, $855 for plates??) but… it certainly is beautiful!

For the menu, I’d keep the same appetizers, dessert and main dish but I would change out the starter and the sides. Instead of tomato basil bisque, I’d lighten it up and do a spring mix salad tossed with tart apples, blanched almonds, crumbled goat cheese and topped with a balsamic vinaigrette. The sides I’d do the second time around would be Garlicky Spinach with Red Peppers (I would not include the peanuts or raisins) and Roasted New Potatoes with Thyme (I wouldn’t include the garlic; I’d swap it out for rosemary). I’m getting really hungry thinking about all this!

I’ll share my Pears Galettes with Chocolate Sauce recipe from that night. It was a huge hit and just reading the card over makes me want to whip some up this weekend. In the pic above, there’s a card for pain au chocolate dough which is what I was originally going to use for the galettes, but I ran out of time and needed something a little simpler so I went with a pre-made pastry dough.

You’ll need -

1 12oz puff pastry, ready-to-bake (Pillsbury makes a puff pastry crust)
1 1/2 ounces plain bakers chocolate, chopped into pieces
Flour to dust
2 ripe pears (not totally squishy though), cored and cut into thick slices
Ground cinnamon to taste
6 level tsp of dark brown sugar
1/4 pint 1% or 2% milk (you could also do whole but the sauce will be a little more thick)

Instructions -

Place baking sheet in 390-degree oven. Unroll dough onto lightly floured surface and set aside chocolate pieces. Using a cup or circular cookie cutter, cut out 6 circles roughly 4″ in diameter. Place on a second baking sheet.

Arrange pears on top of the dough and sprinkle with cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of sugar (per pear)

Place second baking sheet on the one in the oven and cook 6-8 minutes, or until the dough is golden brown

To make chocolate sauce – bring milk to a boil then whisk in chocolate pieces. Bubble for 3 minutes or until the sauce is syrupy.

Dust cooked galettes with additional cinnamon if desired and drizzle with warm chocolate sauce

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. February Recipe Review
2. Money Monday: (on a Tuesday) January Totals & February Budget
3. Sunday Evening Snippets