Tightwad tuesday: draft dodging

Eliminate door drafts. Install weather stripping around doors that open to the outside. If you have a large crack or gap underneath a door, you can easily (and inexpensively) block the draft by filling a leg of an old pair of tights with sand or rice until it is long enough to stretch across the width of the door way, and then cutting and tying it off with a knot. Or if you really want to be all fancy-schmancy, get some fabric that coordinates with your home's decor (fleece or terrycloth from an old towel would work nicely), sew a tube the length of your door and about as big around as your arm, fill it with rice or sand, and tie off each end with a cheerful ribbon.

Learning can be fun?

Last Tuesday we took a field trip with our homeschool group to the Pacific Science Center. Here are a few snaps...

Oh, and did I mention the work study program is an integral part of our homeschool curriculum? I believe in putting my kids to work as young as possible...

Tightwad tuesday: big buckets of love

Recycle used industrial buckets and use them to store dry goods: sugar, flour, salt, rice, wheat, long-term food storage, pet food or whatever else is hanging around the house that needs protection from moisture and pests. One caveat: do not use a bucket that has formerly contained any kind of detergent, paint or other chemical; stick to food-grade buckets.

Food-grade buckets are available at most supermarkets, especially those with in-store bakeries. Just go up to the bakery counter and ask if they have any empty frosting buckets or other industrial buckets they no longer need. (The two buckets pictured above actually held eggs. Go figure.) Be sure to get the lids, too, if they will be used to store food. Lidless buckets are also useful; they make great wastebaskets or containers for gardening.

Take the buckets home and give them a thorough scrubbing with hot water and a bleach-based product. They stack nicely and are easy to label and relabel (I like to use masking tape and a Sharpie to put contents and date on each bucket).

This may very well be my favorite tightwad tip ever because I love getting things free, especially things that I use all the time. Free. It feels good just to say it.

Happy halloween!

If you think...

...I've been ignoring my blog and my Facebook page, you're absolutely right. Real life has taken over the front seat and blogging has been kicked to the curb. For now.

Just to reward your patience, here are some snapshots from our yearly outing to the Roslyn harvest festival. You can check out the snaps from last year's festival if you want to see how much Jimmy and Audrey have changed this year.

Here's a little recap of what's new with us in October:

Audrey: walking is now her preferred method of transit. She talks constantly—still mostly jabbering, but with a few words like "banana", "kitty", "Mommy", and "Daddy" mixed in. Oh, and she just gave up her morning nap this week, so we're figuring out how to readjust our schedule accordingly.

Jimmy: after taking Columbia Virtual Academy's placement testing, we determined he's between first and second grade in both reading and math, but technically he's enrolled in kindergarten so we don't have to log twenty hours of teaching per week (the state requirement is 10 hours of instruction per week for kindergarten, and at first grade it bumps up to twenty). Homeschool is more work and more fun than both Jimmy and I expected; right now we're studying vocabulary for colors in Spanish, animals in science, vowels and consonants, and writing numbers from 100 to 200.

Jim: got a new job. We're ecstatic because he will soon have a four-block, five-minute walking commute (instead of driving forty-five minutes each way on roads that are very icy in the winter), better benefits, and a higher salary (not to mention what we'll be saving on gasoline!)

Me: got a new haircut and started going to Overeaters Anonymous. I've always had a rather skeptical-bordering-on-derisive view of twelve-step programs, but I'm over that. After just one month, it's already been life-changing. And yes, it is partially to blame for my scaled-back blogging, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

Station identification

You've been warned in my last post; I'm in an introspective frame of mind. So when I say I'm going to pause for station identification, I mean I'm going to take a post to talk about who I am and what I believe. If you'd rather run for a bathroom break or check what's on another channel, feel free. I'll get back to my regular programming, but not just yet.

I'm Mormon, and although I don't bring it up often in this blog, my faith is a big part of who I am. Twice a year, Mormon leaders broadcast a General Conference via satellite for church members around the globe. Back when we first moved here and Jim was trying to talk me into switching from cable to sattelite dish television, being able to watch the conference on television was his big selling point. It worked. The first weekend of each April and October, I'm glued to our television for all of the sessions; I even recorded it on our DVR while I was at Jimmy's soccer game yesterday morning so I could watch it later. Each conference, I come away with something different, based on the talks given and what I've gotten out of them. This conference it's all about prayer.

I mentioned in my last post that this coming year I'm going to be working on some things I've been putting off and struggling with, and one of those things is prayer. For several months now I've been praying more often, asking for strength in areas I feel weak, but just in the last two weeks, I've been making a concerted effort to pray every day, no mean feat for me. What's amazing is, as I've been working to do better myself, I've had several opportunities to teach my son about the power of prayer, that his prayers are heard and answered. Just in the last two days, I've seen four separate instances where he has prayed, received a specific answer, and I've been able to talk with him to identify the answer and that it came to him from God. Each time we then prayed and thanked Heavenly Father for answering our prayers.

I think if our planet could harness the power of faith in a five-year-old's prayer, we could end hunger, achieve world peace, balance economies, and probably even stop global warming. Lack of faith is really a grown up problem. I'm getting used to being schooled by my kids.

One of my favorite talks from this weekend's conference was by Elder David A. Bednar, who is the junior member of the Mormon church's Quorum of Twelve Apostles. As I listened to his eloquent talk, it pierced my heart and seemed directed at the very core of what I'm trying to do with my life right at this moment. He touched on the topics of both prayer and gratitude, and of the former, he said this:

"...meaningful morning and evening prayers are linked to and are a continuation of each other.

"Please consider this example: there may be things in our character, in our behavior or concerning our spiritual growth about which we need to counsel with Heavenly Father in morning prayer. After expressing appropriate thanks for blessings recieved, we plead for understanding, direction, and for help to do the things we cannot do in our own strength alone.

"For example, as we pray we might reflect on those occasions when we have spoken harshly or inappropriately to those we love the most; recognize that we know better than this but we do not always act in accordance with what we know; express remorse for our weaknesses and for not putting off the natural man more earnestly; determine to pattern our own life after the Savior more completely; and plead for greater strength to do and to become better. Such a prayer is a key part of the spiritual preparation for our day. Then during the course of the day, we keep a prayer in our heart for continued assistance and guidance, even as Alma suggested: 'Let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord.'

"We notice during this particular day that there are occasions where normally we would have a tendancy to speak harshly, and we do not. Or we might be inclined to anger, but we are not. We discern heavenly help and strength, and humbly recognize answers to our prayer, even in that moment of recognition we offer a silent prayer of gratitude. At the end of our day, we kneel again and report back to our Father. We review the events of the day and express heartfelt thanks for the blessings and the help we received. We repent, and with the assistance of the Spirit of the Lord, identify ways we can do and become better tomorrow.

"Thus, brothers and sisters, our evening prayer builds upon and is a continuation of our morning prayer, and our evening prayer also is a preparation for meaningful morning prayer. Morning and evening prayers, and all the prayers in between, are not unrelated, discrete events. Rather, they are linked together, each day, and across days, weeks, months and even years. This is, in part, how we fulfill the scriptural admonition to pray always."

Countdown to thirty-nine

That's right: a week from today I hit the big 3-9. Which feels like more than just the runner up for a major milestone, because I'll have less than a year to think about what it means to be forty before it smacks me across the head.

When I hit my last decade marker, I was depressed because I hadn't reached some important goals I hoped to accomplish by that point: getting my bachelor's degree and starting our family topped the list. Fortunately, Jim's birthday present to me was a pair of diamond solitaire earrings, which immediately yanked me back from the brink of despair because, hey, who needs some lousy piece of paper to hang on your wall when you have diamonds, right?

My thirties have had a great run. I did get my degree. I swam, biked and ran a triathlon. I learned (and forgot a lot of) Spanish. I traveled to Mexico. Twice. I read several hundred books. I gave birth to two wonderful children. And I'm still married to the same sensitive, intelligent, generous guy with great taste in jewelry. Oh, and handsome. Did I mention handsome?

I've been pretty introspective about it over the last couple weeks, because I want to be at peace with being forty, which means this is the year to get just a few more things done before the decade ends. I've got some big things in the works, too. Things I've been needing to do, putting off, struggling with. But I can feel it: this is the year.

Housekeeping and safety

This post might not be about what you'd think from the title. I've made a few little "housekeeping" changes to my layout: cleaned up some buttons I'm not using while I take a hiatus from writing poetry (more on that in some other post, some other day); got rid of my blogroll and replaced it with a "followers" list; deleted the part in my profile about which town I live in. This was after reading an excellent post about blog safety by my good friend Aubrey. Which is just the segue I needed to transition from housekeeping into safety...

Recently Aubrey had a truly horrific experience with her blog and some very benign pictures she had posted of herself being viewed by an unintended and unwanted audience. She had an unfortunate crash-course in blog safety, and has generously passed on what she learned. It's definitely worth a read.

The reason I replaced my blogroll with a followers list is to safeguard the online privacy of my family and friends whose blogs I follow. Instead of using a blogroll to see when you update your blogs, I'm now doing it from the privacy of my dashboard. And I would request a favor of any of you who have me on your blogroll, if I may: if you have a link to my blog which uses my first and/or last name, please change it to "chicklegirl." I'd be ever so grateful.

I would strongly encourage any of you aforementioned friends and family who have used your first and/or last names as well as any information about where you live (like pictures of your house with the address showing, etc.) on your blogs to discontinue doing so. One of my friends who is a writer uses her full name on her blog to establish a professional reputation, but she is otherwise careful to omit any other distinguishing characteristics that would enable identity theft or stalking.

It may seem like a pain to go to all the trouble to remove information if you've been posting it on your blog. Especially if you've been doing it for a while. But it's worth every effort to protect yourself and your loved ones.

Better safe than sorry.

Tightwad tuesday: take note

With the price of gasoline hiking ever upward, the cost of food will continue to follow. Keep tabs on the lowest prices by making a price comparison notebook.

Write down the costs for items you use often and compare between different stores, as well as between different brands within the same store. This will also help you be sure you're truly getting a good deal when something goes on "sale", because some brands are still cheaper at their regular price than other brands at a "sale" price.

Jimmy got game

At the risk of seeming too much the doting soccer mom, I'm excited to report that Jimmy scored his first goal today. Sadly, I missed this historic event because I was home mowing the lawn.

Thank goodness for camcorders and husbands who are willing to trade off taxi duty. You can get all the game day commentary and video highlights (complete with rockin' soundtrack) on Jim's blog.