parenting

Ohdeeoh has another take on the family interview, giving me even more fodder for something I hope to execute this weekend. Fun!

PopATot: Ingenious or not worth the money? I feel like we could be at the perfect age/mobility range for one of these in the spring, to keep one baby safely contained if another needs immediate attention. But probably I’ll just bring the less-popular of our exersaucers outside (the one we got at a yard sale for $5) rather than shelling out $50.

crafting

Crafting a Green World is hitting all the right notes with me lately, the way that Ohdeeoh seemed to be in my brain a few months ago. This week, cute small projects with fabric scraps. Also, more organic fabric and yarn sources. Must get that chicken print! Or perhaps spend some time making rubber stamps out of shoe soles.

eating

Re-nest helps us eat local! It doesn’t seem especially accurate for my state (why would a pile of produce be available right now in Minnesota that is not available in Wisconsin?), but it does give a sense of regional best buys.

The NRDC, Natural Resources Defense Council, has an online tool that can help you minimize the amount of well-traveled foods you consume. You can plug in the time of year down to early and late part of each month, plus the state in question. Once the tool churns out foods harvested or cellared in your state this time of year, it will also offer foods from neighboring states.

I’ve been having a leftover bottleneck lately, so the Parenthacks post on the topic comes at a good time for me.

resources

Whole Foods highlights their new recycling programs: Brita water filters and #5 plastics to be turned directly into toothbrushes and other hosuehold goods.

Kelly at Almost Frugal talks about rethinking your behavior to provide new ways to be frugal, and I totally agree. It’s easy to be prisoner to ideas that maybe have worked in the past, or items that are easy and comfortable.

Mommies with Cents posts a free opportunity to fight childhood hunger, an important cause to me and countless others.

Share Our Strength is an organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger. Some food banks across the country are reporting a 40- to 50-percent increase in demand.

Share Our Strength’s “Operation No Kid Hungry” works with the Mobile Giving Foundation to raise funds for food banks across the country. By simply texting the word “SHARE” to 20222 on your mobile device, you can instantly make a $5 donation to Share Our Strength. Wireless users can choose to donate once, twice or even up to five times to contribute.

I have a lot of links and good stuff for sage reads this week, but it’ll post tomorrow so we can focus on the CPSIA today.

Despite massive crafter and consumer outcry, as well as that of resale and thrift stores and even public libraries, it looks like the CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act) is going to go into effect, and soon. One of the first lessons you learn when being trained in public policy is to consider the unintended consequences of whatever you are advocating for, since change never happens in a vacuum. With CPSIA, all products intended for children under 12 years of age will be required to have third party testing for lead and phthalates. However, the act does not have any exceptions for items that, by their nature, wouldn’t have even a trace of lead. Like, you know, cute handmade kids’ clothing. Natural wooden toys, library books, and stuffed animals will all require expensive third party testing.

So clearly this is bad news, bad news that isn’t going away.

Etsy as an action kit (PDF) you can download, but I’ll make it easy for you. Call your member of Congress. The Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121, just ask for their office. (If you don’t know who that is, find out.) Don’t worry, they won’t actually answer the phone. An eager 23 year old staffer will, though, so please tell them that you are a constituent — they’ll probably ask for your name and address — and you’d like to see a delay in the implementation of the CPSIA to consider exemptions for one of a kind items and those made with natural materials.

It will take you two minutes or less to do this, and no one really bothers to call Washington about anything, so when a member of Congress gets even five messages about the same issue? They take notice. Why should you believe me? Remember, this is what I actually do for a living!

I’ll get off my soapbox now

It’s time to think about Valentine’s Day, and if you have school-aged kids, I’m sure your mind, like mine, is on how to create 20-30 cards without spending a bundle. I’m starting now because I need my 4-year-old’s participation and it’s hard to get him to commit to a project for more than 20 minutes at a time, so I need a few windows of project time to get everything done by the 14th.

This is a great craft for a variety of age groups using items you’re sure to have in your house. You could potentially have a green, upcycled holiday costing you $0!

You will need:

• One treat per classmate. If you’re an avid couponer, you likely have a stash of small candy you can use. We’ll be breaking out the warehouse-store box of fruit leather, or if you have the time and inclination homemade treats are always nice.
• One paper shopping bag per 4 classmates. My son has 28 in his class, so we’ll be using 7 bags to make 56 hearts.
• Crayons, markers, stamps, stickers, or other art supplies/adornments. Older kids can make magazine collages, toddlers can just scribble with a crayon to make one to send to Grandma. Alphabet stamps are especially fun for homemade “conversation hearts.”
• A single hole punch.
• Scissors.
  
• Yarn or ribbon and a plastic/dull point needle.

The fun part:

1. Cut open and set your kid(s) to decorating the inside of the bags
2. Based on the size of your treat(s), select a heart template (many sources online, including a Family Fun magazine PDF) and trace onto decorated bags, cut out hearts
3. Holding two hearts together, punch holes approximately 3/4 of an inch apart around the edge, starting at the bottom of the heart and leaving an opening large enough for your treats on the top
4. Thread plastic needle with extra yarn or spare pieces of thin ribbon and get your little ones sewing them together. Older kids can skip the hole punches and practice using the sewing machine!
5. Insert treats, punch additional holes at the top, and finish sewing around

Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to show someone how much you love them (and the environment) with recycled greetings!

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So, how was your weekend?

parenting

Thinking of different ways to say thank you for holidays or other occasions? I’m loving the printable calendar with coloring book-esque pages for P to personalize and then send off to his many grandparents. (Thanks, as usual, to Crafty Crow for such inspiring finds.) I also loved the painted picture frames at plum pudding. I always look at the not-so-pretty ones at Goodwill and think about how they could have another life.

Crafty Crow also shares a tutorial for making a kid’s drawing into a rubber stamp. My kid is in Montessori school. I need to get in with all of these super creative Montessori mamas, they seem like my kind!

crafting

Crafting a Green World offers up yet another cool yarn alternative — old cassette tapes! I particularly love the idea of knitting an iPod case from them

resources

Green Mom Finds posts the opposite of the Dirty Dozen, the 10 foods you don’t really need to buy organic:

1. Asparagus
2. Avocados
3. Bananas
4. Broccoli
5. Mango
6. Kiwi
7. Cabbage
8. Onions
9. Papaya
10. Pineapple

(I disagree on bananas because organic bananas are less likely to come from deforested rain forest, but that’s just me. Well, and organic broccoli just tastes *so* much better. Anyhow, I won’t quibble over every item!)

Mom is Broke shares a few more homemade cleaner recipes. And one that we tried this week that seems to work… Leave about 1/2 liter of cola in your toilet overnight and it will eat away at those stubborn stains.

Re-nest muses both on spiffying up an old cork board and donating corks to make more. We’re not big wine drinkers here in the land of beer, but I have more than one bulletin board hanging out in my home office that could use some prettying.

Ohdeeoh points out a good destination for the super-cute photos you took with your phone, only to realize they make terrible prints due to their low resolution: teeny tiles. I have so may cute shots of P when he was 2 living on my phone, with nowhere to go. The extra crafty types could even use them in a mosaic, I’d imagine.

Because of a favorably located meeting this morning, I had the opportunity to make a few stops and still make it to work on time. First, I ran into Target. Over the weekend, my husband brought home a big bottle of our laundry detergent that, I noticed, happened to be on 30% clearance.

I thought perhaps I would find a few more bottles at that great price, but I’ve also been hearing about some crazy good finds (A color printer for $20? A double stroller for $30?) so I basically cruised the clearance end caps in a few departments and found something fantastic! We’ve had a Panasonic cordless phone set we’ve loved for years but have always wanted a 3rd handset. I found this:

The original Target price was $119.00, the clearance price was $29.99, and when I paid I got a $5/$50 coupon that printed with my receipt. (You can get the same phone for $71 at Amazon right now, if you’re in the market. And unfortunately, the laundry detergent has mysteriously returned to its normal price.)

My next stop was our local department store, where I happened to be about 4th in line for the big cosmetics class action settlement. I got my free Clinique and I was out of there to a neighboring Children’s Place where I returned some holiday sleepers we got as gifts for a larger size. (Why am I buying 12-18m items for my babies? Where has the time gone?) I owed them $0.43 in order to get the sleepers in the patterns I wanted.

I was happy, for obvious reasons, but also because I had three really painless transactions for things I could really use. I got $200+ worth of merchandise for $30.42 (or $25.42 if you factor in the coupon that printed), too. If you have the discipline not to blow your budget or buy things you don’t really need, it looks like Target stores are indeed full of good finds.

Mir at Want Not details a great price on Organic Valley milk boxes:

But look what I just discovered—they’re running a special on Organic Valley milk boxes right now! Packs of 24 are marked down to $25, plus you can use coupon code VALLEY55 to get another 20% off, so you’ll get 24 boxes of organic, aseptic milk for $20 (that’s about $.83/box).

“Deal”icious Mom posts about a free subscription to Kiwi Magazine, that also happens to come with $5 in Earth’s Best coupons. Seriously, don’t ever pay for a magazine subscription, okay? I get Kiwi, Wondertime, Family Fun, and Readymade for free, and so will you if you hunt around long enough.

And on the topic of Earth’s Best, they are offering a rebate deal right now for coupons, samples, toys and more, exactly the moment when I am no longer spending $100 on their products each week! It’s great to be done with formula, of course, but I could have gotten a lot of free stuff if they had started this promotion any earlier.

Bought anything at a cosmetics counter before you knew all the crap in conventional makeup? Like me, you’re probably entitled to some free products! Check out the list of products and then look at Skin Deep, the cosmetics safety database, to find something with ingredients you can live with. I’m looking at the Clinique Moisture Surge, myself. Here’s more information:

To be eligible for the money, you must “currently be a resident of the United States who purchased department store cosmetics in the United States between May 29, 1994 through July 16, 2003.”

For a list of which stores are involved in the suit, and how you can redeem your $25, visit the official lawsuit website at http://www.cosmeticssettlement.com/.

I have to admit, I’ve been tweeting more this week than reading blogs… Like I needed another digital hobby! But I have gotten back in the regular blogging saddle, so not too bad overall, right?

Importantly, re-nest reminds us all that if you’re in the market for a CSA share this year, it’s time to sign up in most locations! Just looking at that box makes me excited for June and forget for a moment that the anticipated high temperature tomorrow is -3.

Thrifty Jinxy shares 10 reuse ideas for milk jugs, many of which hadn’t dawned on me. I could certainly use some refrigerator organizers to keep the baby food universe separate from everything else.

Doesn’t Crafting a Green World make sewing a quilt from t-shirts sound easy and fun? I’ve been saving lots of baby clothes for this exact purpose. I’m not even going to pretend that it’s for a keepsake for my boys, it’s definitely for the sentimental mama!

More tweets and other stuff soon

I’m talking about greening birthday celebrations at BeCentsAble, and always looking for more ideas. I’ve just started designing the triplets’ invitations and thinking about a general theme (which I won’t spoil for those of you who know me IRL and will be at the big party!). And the theme for P, I think, is “run around the gym and get really tired!”

So much chicken!

Sunday: Mac and cheese with chicken, kale, and white beans (actually constructed from leftover and not too bad!)

Monday: I’ve got chicken, tomatoes, and green beans in the slow cooker with a lot of garlic. Will finish off with some feta cheese at the end and make some rice pilaf. It smells awesome!

Tuesday: Grilled pesto chicken and polenta

Wednesday: Out? Take out? Mama needs a break

Thursday: Pierogies with turkey kielbasa, onions, and sour cream

Friday: Almond chicken (this is a family favorite — very easy and very tasty — see the original Martha Stewart recipe below) and sweet potato fries

Saturday: Pizza night!

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ALMOND CRUSTED CHICKEN
Serves 4
3/4  cup dry breadcrumbs
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
1 1/2 cups sliced almonds, broken into pieces
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons water
2 whole boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons canola oil

1. Preheat oven to 400º. Place breadcrumbs in a medium bowl, and season with salt and pepper. Place almonds in a separate bowl, and set aside. Place eggs in a small bowl with 2 teaspoons water, and beat lightly. Dip chicken in egg mixture, wiping away excess with your fingers, and dip in breadcrumb mixture. Dredge until lightly coated. Dip in egg again, and then coat thoroughly with almonds.

2. Heat butter and oil in a 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Sauté chicken until nicely browned, about 3 minutes, and turn over. Cook 1 minute more; then transfer pan to oven, and bake until chicken is cooked through, about 10 minutes.