Life in Color Photo – Page 16 – Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

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Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

No Spend September wrap up

October 2, 2014

Bj and I did another no spend month this September. We did this last year, and LOVED it. It was a great way to reset our goals and priorities. Just like last year we gave ourselves $400 to spend on essentials. We came in way under budget and it was even easier than last time. I think my favorite thing about the no spend month is that we are together a lot more. There are less “errands” and more activities at home. We don’t really stock up any more than usual for the month, but it’s just our style to have a bit of extra food, especially the stuff we put up ourselves. Here is our fridge:

We also have a freezer in the basement, as well as all my home canned stuff. Because of the season there was no shortage of fresh produce, and I was perfectly willing to spend $100 on tomatoes, as I did last year, because this is the time I put them up. But our friend generously gave us a ton because this year was crazy amazing for the PNW and tomatoes (except for mine, grumble).

These were extra after she canned all she wanted! Crazy!

We also participated in a few Salem Harvests. My kids were tons of help of course:

haha

The main difference between this month and the others is that we DON’T EAT OUT!

Which encourages me to try new things, like baba ganoush!

But mostly easy, seasonal things are where it’s at for September.

We’re lucky to ALL get free hair cuts from Nana!

We even went camping (in my Grandpa’s backyard). Turns out you can go camping with out going to the grocery store first and buying bags full of junk food 🙂
So how did we total up?

Week 1

$19.64 kickstarter (this was an unfortunate over site on my part, I didn’t realize when the kickstarter ended and thus the charge)

$.25 library parking

Total $19.89

Week 2

$2.50 organic celery

$0 movies

$25.58 canning tools for a friend

$17 Saturday market (food & corn)

$0 ($14) Jo-Ann’s

Total $45.08

Week 3

$25 doctor co-pay

$21.48 salt & straw ice cream

$17.78 toy store

$19.27 Burgerville

$22.18 Costco

$2.89 malt vinegar

$28 encyclopedia set

$20 carousel rides

$10 elephants car wash

Total $166.60

Week 4

$15 two dozen half pint jars

$6.78 milk and cilantro

Total $21.78

Monthly Total: $253.35

We don’t usually use gift cards, as it kind of defeats the purpose, but we HAD to go to the movies. Bj proposed to me while we were watching Ghostbusters and they re-released it to the theaters, obviously we couldn’t miss it! And I did use a gift card at Jo-Ann’s. Tuesday’s new dance class required a very specific black skirt that I just couldn’t bring myself to buy so I made one instead. The ice cream and toy store was a doctor’s reward, and we were up in Portland and starving so we got Burgerville on the way home. So there are expenses that were not necessary to survive the month, but overall I’m super happy. You may notice there is no gas on the list. We did end up getting an electric car after the last no spend September. We love it! It cost us 44 cents to “fill” it at home, which I probably did a handful of times.

Have you ever tried something like this? What did you think?
A day in the life of a homeschooling mama

September 30, 2014

I found this post very interesting by a child-led homeschooling mama. I just love her blog and she has lots of wonderful ideas, but I was struck by how little time she had for herself during the day (or at least the day she featured), basically none. This is my biggest worry about homeschooling. That I’ll be with both the kids all the time and won’t have time to do what I (some what selfishly, I admit) want to do. I decided it would be fun to look at one of my days and just picked one. Of course it got out of control and a bit crazy, but you know what, I’ve decided to share it. Mostly as a record to myself. And also as a way to answer that age old question, “how do you do it?”
1:45-2:50 AM up with Bennet. She’s slept through the night twice and they were glorious, glorious nights. But as of now we’re back to up in the night.
6:30 Bennet gets up. I ply her with books white I have a few more minutes to sleep. This doesn’t work for too long because Bennet loves her gummy vitamins. I think she must go to bed dreaming about them. Because “vi-ma-mins?” downstairs to get vi-ma-mins?” starts and doesn’t stop.
7:00 head downstairs in a bit of a fog. Heat up left over oatmeal and make toast. Face time Bj. Decide I should start the grape juice. Gather the supplies and clean grapes. Sit on the floor and eat a bite while watching a little bit of Bones (I usually don’t watch much and Bennet is starting to understand things on the iPad so I think my time getting to sneak this in is limited, the girls rarely have any screen time).

The day before we had picked grapes at my friend’s place, as they still had lots of juice from the year before. So ya, a lot of grapes.
8:30 spend ten minutes organizing the linen closet

8:45 check on juice and help Bennet with a xylophone she found somewhere.

9:00 text with Bj, shower and get ready
9:30 my friend comes over with her son so I can show her how to make juice.
10:45 Tuesday wakes up, and immediately goes outside with her buddy to play
11:35 start making lunch
11:55 eat outside

(Tuesday snapped this photo of me with her camera)
12:30 canning
1:15-1:35 get Bennet down. It takes longer every day and she sleeps less every day but I am just not ready to give up on the nap yet.
2:05 our friends leave. I put another batch in the canner and sit down to have juice with Tuesday when
2:12 Bennet wakes up, so I try to get her back down
2:35 run downstairs and turn off burners when I realize she’s not going to go to sleep so easily
2:40 hear an epic down pour. Tuesday runs in and tells me her fairy garden is covered with “wet wetness” and could I please bring it in?
2:45 rub Bennet’s back
3:15 Bennet and I fall asleep
5:25 Tuesday wakes us up because we’ve been “sleeping forever!” (meanwhile she’s been playing. She has a two hour “rest time” where she plays and reads every day, but sometimes it’s less)
I answer texts and return phone calls. We head downstairs so I can start back up the juice process. I have to finish this day because mold sets in on grapes in our climate so quickly and it will spread seemingly instantly. Besides ALL THE FRUIT FLIES drive me crazy. The girls meanwhile color. Tuesday found a book that has cursive in it and wants to try it so I grab some great texture cursive letter cards we have so she can run her fingers over the letters and try it. At some point we eat some dinner, left overs I’m sure, though I can’t find what we did for food in my notes.

7:30 Bennet gets in the sink to play.

8:15 Tuesday gets in the other sink and hilarious giggles ensue.
9:10 Tuesday takes Bennet upstairs to change and get ready for bed.

Finish canning, cleaning. Read them stories between canner loads. Halve all the small tomatoes and oil for the dehydrator.
11:09 they’re asleep

(35 quarts of grape juice – I’ll give half to the friend who helped me earlier in the day)
Laundry, clean up, get in bed and watch a little Bones and knit to wind down.
12:05 lights out.
So ya, I guess I didn’t get any time to myself. But you know what, I did get done what I wanted to do that day. I had a secret hope of getting a few quilt blocks done, but the grapes (and tomatoes) had to be dealt with and we got it done. The girls didn’t have any hands on lessons from me, but I don’t think I could ask for better from them. They spent time outside playing with another kid, digging in dirt and making lots of pretend food. They did more than keep themselves busy; they actively sought and completed work important to them. And this is what I just LOVE about the more free style/unschooling type of thing we are doing now. I wouldn’t have even though to have Tuesday draw her camera with detail, or write out the alphabet. She did it, because she wanted to. She wanted to see if she could do it from memory, and then found a way to check her work. Of course I often wish there are more hours in the day, and that I could sit and give them all my attention for long periods of time. Some days I am able to do that. And some days I’m canning 35 quarts of juice, after having Bj gone for days at a conference, and it’s survival mode. But it’s all good.
Maybe I will do one of our “normal” days sometime… if we ever have one!
How learning looked this week

September 21, 2014

We having been moving towards a very child led/free form style of homeschooling. This summer was all about writing for Tuesday, she is quite the little note maker. I didn’t set up many activities, but followed their interest. And of course they participate in the day to day around here, which always brings up more questions that leads to more answer finding. I love that. It is hard to describe what we do since we don’t follow any curriculum and don’t have a set schedule or day specific goals. The girls love to do art projects and I encourage that with lots of materials for them to experiment with. There is a blog I just love, called An Everyday Story, that does a weekly wrap up of their week in learning. She has a few others participating with her and I love the idea of focusing on what the kids are doing. If nothing else to help me see how their interests change and grow.
So here is our week in learning.

The girls asked to paint. I’m trying to say YES to more activities they want to do, even if they are messy and put a little crimp into what I want to do. I think having blocks of time in the morning where I don’t answer the phone and just am more available to them is my goal for this fall.

Bennet is two (just, she turned two in July), so she still cycles through activities pretty quickly. At this point Tuesday was still painting, meanwhile Bennet and I did a few other activities.

Taking advantage of our amazing weather. I devised this on the fly; wrote out upper and lower case letters in chalk. Then had Tuesday throw a water balloon on a letter I called out. I love how this morphed into her smashing balloons with her feet to get more precise on her popping. I also called out words and had her find the starting letter. Then she wanted to spell whole words this way.

I organized all our games recently and after creating a note with game, age range, and amount of players I realized we had 117! Oh my! So we’re pulling them out and using them. This one was great, but I gave it to Goodwill after playing and realizing it was missing a letter. I don’t mind using a game once or twice and donating it since most of them I get for a dollar.

Not only has Tuesday taught Bennie to count to ten, but she is always showing her how to do something new, here it’s how to use the vacuum.

YES you can help me. YES you can use a sharpie.

I simply set my box of colored postcards and file of postage on the table. I wrote a note and asked if Tuesday wanted to. That led to us figuring out how much postage we needed. Pennies worked great for this. I gave her 49 and for every stamp she put on she had to “buy” it with the pennies, so she could see how much postage she had left to put on. We find unused postage of various amounts at the coin and stamp shop. They are face value or less, so it doesn’t cost us extra to do this. But is MUCH more fun.

Even though it is No Spend September I splurged and bought this 2002 set of encyclopedias for $28!!! I am so thrilled as I have been longing for a set of new-ish encyclopedias ever since I saw this post. I’m glad I spent a year waiting until I found a set that was much more recent than anything else (I was seeing 80s as the only cheap option before this amazing score). For those of you local there is a set of these same type from 1995 at the South Salem Goodwill (at least there was earlier this week) for about $40. WE HAVE BEEN LOVING THESE. I can say for sure these are going to be a great addition for us, though we have lots (no TONS) of books already. Tuesday and I have researched Asia, which led to talking about maps and grids, and then how rice is cultivated. I have been looking online to answer certain questions but this is much more hands on for her and really it’s amazing how much we are both learning.

Tuesday and Bennet are finally playing in the outdoor play kitchen again. They were not using it much once I moved it to this corner. Tuesday is “canning” and I didn’t realize until later that she was actually feeding Bennet her results (but mom she likes it!). So happy our totally enclosed back yard lets them play outside while I watch from the kitchen window and cook.

Patterns on the fridge. Started by copying designs that came with the set and then said, “I want to make my own designs mama.” YES to that!

We’re reading chapters every night and having great discussions on then vs. now. Tuesday has throughly enjoyed this set of pens. To be honest, so do I! I figured we needed a few not-back to school supplies.

You’re never too old to learn! I was lucky enough to take a wonderful quilt class this weekend.

Bennet and I had some alone time Sunday morning. I’m still trying to find the perfect activities for her age. I love this color game, but it’s just out of her reach developmentally.

And while she didn’t want to take turns, or just put in one bean, this game still thrilled her.
I’ve realized as I’ve blogged less that I miss the record of the every day. These are the little things that are hard to remember. I’m hoping doing a weekly round up like this will help me see how and what we’re learning and remember all the little and big steps they’re taking!

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