I’m really kind of bad at being a girl. Woman, yes, mom, of course. But I never had an influence in my life in terms of grooming and I remember a roommate in college who particularly found my lack of knowledge about panty hose and shoes to be incredibly amusing and starting teaching me the things most people pick up from their mothers or sisters, I assume. I got good at it during my big career years, but in my years as a parent (and working predominantly in the nonprofit sector), I’ve fallen off the wagon.

Today, I fell hard.

A friend and very important professional contact invited me to a networking reception tonight, and I was wearing a nice black sweater and cute shoes, but I had khaki pants and a so-so white t-shirt as well. It was not 23rd-floor-cocktail-lounge suitable, at all. No time to go home and change, and no clean clothes any way! I’ve let our ‘to be drycleaned’ pile take over the majority of our closet and just generally have let my nice wardrobe go.

Quite fortunately for me, if not for our strict household budget, I work adjascent to a very nice shopping district in our city, which happens to have two high-end resale stores. One is a boutique run by Goodwill and one is privately owned. I stopped by the Goodwill store first and grabbed a cute necklace for $1.99, J Jill dress pants for $12.99 and a dressy Gap tank for $4.99. 

Much better, outfitwise, but the truth is, I need to dress like this everyday now that I am working full time again. Which means I need to get to even more swaps, because I am in no mood for buying clothes! I actually went to an amazing swap this weekend and brought home a garbage bag sized load for myself and the boys. I grabbed another bag of boys clothes from freecycle the next day.

And still somehow, we need more. We always need more. Boys really destroy their clothes, don’t they?

I’m trying to figure out who I am in the blogging world since I’m no longer a stay-at-home mom to infant triplets trying to maintain a connection to the outside world. I love to write and I miss writing, so I keep getting called back here.

These days, our world is a little most focus on the *frugal* than the *green* because we’re really trying hard to pay down our debt. It’s especially difficult when our childcare costs are so high, but we both love what we do for work so they are costs we are willing to bear, and they will go down significantly in another year when the little ones will join their brother in our neighborhood public school (it’s a public Montessori school that starts with half-days at 3 years old). Until then, we have to do everything we can to meet all of our sometime staggering financial obligations, which these days means I am watching every dollar very closely.

But yes, we’re still shopping almost exclusively at Whole Foods, and my diamond shoes sometimes do feel a little tight! I know I am insanely blessed and that we’re still very lucky and will come out of this unscathed. Something like the pile up of becoming pregnant with triplets, losing my job and benefits, and the economy tanking is not likely to happen to us again, and if it does, the next time, I’ll be better prepared.

I can’t decide if I want to see Food, Inc., or if it will just send me totally off the grid.

I thought Swagbucks was one of those things I would always stay away from on the internet, but when I saw how quickly points could add up to Amazon giftcards, I decided to give it a try. Now, from “Deal”icious Mom, I’ve learned:

Also, just recently they added EuphoriaBaby.com. Eupohoria Baby is an online baby and maternity store based out of South Carolina that sells toys, towels, organic clothing, and cloth diapers among other things. The great news and the reason I am mentioning this site is because you can cash  in only 10 Swagbucks for a $5 gift card to EuphoriaBaby.com! That’s a huge steal!

I maximize my swagbucks by always searching through them first, even when I’m pretty sure Google will give me a better result. Yes, it eats up 10 seconds of my day, but it’s worth it. So worth it, I might just cash in my next 60 points at EuphoriaBaby for one of these, since my 4 year old still dotes on his dolls he got at Hanukkah…

Our nickname for taking control of our finances is BROKEWATCH. We describe things when we’re chatting online during the day as VBWC (”very BROKEWATCH compatible”) or deny each other purchases citing, “Sorry, not during BROKEWATCH.” I’ve been reading a finance guru because I lack even the most basic sense of household money management and we rotate referring to him as Dave Barry, Jeff Ramsey, or even Gordon Ramsey when it comes up in conversation.

I find that a little humor about it definitely helps, especially when we’re working really hard at it. For example, this weekend. We were out of town in Atlanta, our first jaunt without kids since, well, since we’ve had kids. We had free airfare from winning a raffle and a free hotel room from DH’s accumlated points since he used to be a frequent business traveler. We had relatively inexpensive tickets to see the world’s finest baseball team. We opted against a rental car for public transportation and set ourselves a strict food budget limited to our cash on hand and a starbucks gift card we got via coinstar.

And you know what? It was kind of fun. I liked the sense of challenge it gave us. We were more creative, for sure, and everything tasted that much sweeter.

My famiy has a Hallmark habit. A bad one. You haven’t shown that you care if you haven’t selected exactly the right mass-consumer paper greeting. Because of the number of grandmas in our life (5), I spent $26 on cards in May, and then another $10 just for my dad for Father’s Day. Add in postage and we spent over $40 in the past two months on something that doesn’t mesh with our budgeting or environmental values. I say no more! I have a bulging pile of kids’ artwork on top of our microwave, and fine printables like these from hotcakes:

I just can’t pay into the “Your Greetings Must Come from Wallgreens” cabal anymore, you know?

A lovely new organic market opened across from the public market in our city. As a promotion, I got a postcard from them in the mail yesterday. For 30% off…. ENTIRE PURCHASE. I think my husband was a little scared by how gleefully I clutched that piece of paper. It felt like a present! I’m pretty certain they didn’t anticipate someone filling up a cart or two of groceries and then presenting that postcard, but I read it 47 times and there is no fine print! I am working really, really hard at reigning in our grocery budget (a post for another time), and this will go a long way towards that goal for this month. Yay!

One household task I’ve never really minded, and maybe even kind of enjoy, is laundry. Good thing, considering on any given Friday, I do 4-5 loads, and then another 3-5 across the course of the weekend. It probably explains, at least a little, why we never batted an eye at the idea of cloth diapering triplets.

I work Tuesday-Thursday, so by Friday my inner domestic goddess is literally bursting at the seams. During the morning nap, I clean up, get the first few loads going, and perhaps a few other household projects. For the school year, we picked up my 4 year old (P) before lunch, and then during the second nap, he and I would do a project of some sorts. Today, we made brownies. But this is our last Friday of the school year, and from now on he will be at summer camp, and by the fall, who knows? I could be working full time and this could be it. Sniff!

As the whirlwind of my life seems to be calming down a little, oh how I find I miss blogging! I’m back, but sage is going to be a different place. Less reposting deals from other sites, more ‘Holy crap how do I deal with this economy with six mouths to feed?’, less round-up of crafts I want to do, and more what I’m actually doing. (Read: more mommyblogging) Please join me!

What have I been up to for the last three months?

• Physical therapy for the little guys, who aren’t quite walking yet but will be soon. They’ll be 15 months tomorrow.
• Lots of projects and cooking with the big brother.
• Mostly, marriage repair, a category I’ve never excelled at but that we desperately need after 12 intense years, two cross country moves, countless job changes, and four kids.
• Uncabling! We are an AppleTV and DVDs from the library household now, and couldn’t be happier.
• Trying to budget, finally, after living for years like just hunting for bargains would be enough.
• Tons of cooking, especially the once-fearful whole chickens.

I don’t know how often I’ll blog. I don’t know if I’ll always be on topic. But I really miss writing, so write I will.

I wrote the sage reads below a few days ago, and in the interceding time have come to realize that while I love blogging and this blog was such a great friend when my babies were little and I had lots of free time in the house during naps and limited contact otherwise with the outside world, I need to focus back in on my family full of almost-toddlers, a stellar preschooler, and a husband who I love to pieces but has always (and unfairly) had to compete for my attention in all of this.

I’m going to continue to write at BeCentsAble every other week and to tweet when I can. Thanks for reading!

crafting

What I love about the Apartment Therapy family of blogs (including re-nest and ohdeeoh) is the focus on making something useful, chic, fresh, and functional out of something else you already have, extolling the values of both design and of reuse. A perfect example is How to: Make Shades Out of Mini Blinds. I can’t even tell you how many sets of mini blinds I’ve thrown away in various homes, let alone the custom roman shades we spent weeks making in our old condo, doing all of these steps by scratch. Never again!

Craft: inspires me similarly with the maternity top –> wrap tee. I have a few shirts I haven’t been able to sell on Craigslist (and one I didn’t really want to part with, anyhow) that are going to get this treatment now.

Craft: links I’ve also had open forever and are really helpful how-tos for some persistent problems in my life:

• How to sew your own bedding (too much twin bedding for P, who now sleeps on a full/double bottom bunk)
  
• How to sew a blind hem (I’m looking at you, gray wool pants!)
• How to darn (and possibly resurrect my favorite, favorite sweater-coat-wrap-thing)

What an awesome rainy day activity, the yarn bowl! I remember making something like this but with paper mache. This looks at least slightly neater.

eating

Lemon bread and other yummy things are featured in the recipe box post at i have to say… Lemony baked goods always fit the bill right at the start of spring. Almost time to dust off my Passover Lemon Squares recipe!

If I were feeling more birthday-crafty this week, I’d definitely be making this cute dot cake for my triplets. Definitely saving the frosting trick for future reference though, especially the idea of using stencils to make letters. And these dot cookies would make such cute matching favors! (Crafty Crow also links to a how to on making stencils out of plastic lids, helping me to imagine actually decorating a cake someday, something I’ve always been rather challenged at.)

resources

Tiny Choices hosts the Green Moms Carnival and they’re talking spring cleaning. Lots of great ideas for eco-friendly cleaning, organizing, and more. And $5 Dinners has more homemade cleaning products recipes, one of which I’m going to try out as soon as a Dawn coupon I’m expecting in a trade arrives in my mailbox.

While you’re making your own, Crafting a Green World has links to some DIY beauty supplies.

Re-nest shares a list of plants good for xeriscaping, meaning they would be drought-tollerant and save money and resources since they require less watering, in general. As our yard emerges from the last clumps of snow, I am definitely giving this list more than a quick glance, since we have some persistently weedy areas that I would like to fill with perennials and then forget about.

Also outdoors, I have a rusty-but-cute mailbox that is screaming for some of this lower-VOC spray paint. I’m thinking of doing the porch light fixtures, too. Color suggestions to match a cream brick exterior?