Hi Michelle,
Money is tight this year, since my husband lost his job. We are doing fine, but there isn’t any “extra” money if you know what I mean. Can you give me some ideas on what to put in Easter Baskets this year that won’t cost a lot?
Thanks!
Anna, mom of 3.
Hi Anna!
I know exactly what you mean about money being tight. I just lost a fairly large client myself, and while we are not in nearly the same trouble as a lot of folks these days, we don’t have any “just for fun” money! So, here are some ideas I’ve gathered for Easter Baskets this year.
- First of all, remember that having fun doesn’t have to cost a lot. You can wait until just a few days before Easter and look at your local “big box” stores for some great sales. For example, last year, I was planning on doing my candy/easter egg shopping at Walmart, but my local Shopko was having 60 percent off all their Easter items. They are usually less crowded too – so I headed there.
Make your holiday more about crafts and the easter egg hunt, than about presents!
Tags: easter, easter baskets, easter crafts
When we lived in Vermont, my husband and I decided that we couldn’t rely on just one job to provide us with our main source of income. Instead, we came up with various ideas to make money for our family. In the six years we lived on the farm we sold vegetables and berries; made and sold maple syrup; drove a school bus; fixed computers; designed and marketed web sites; wrote books and articles; baked and sold breads, pastries and pizzas and much more.
One morning in Vermont, I watched part of a Vermont Public Radio pledge drive special from a woman who talked about creating multiple revenue streams and I thought to myself, “hey, that’s what we do already!”
I just didn’t know it had a name. In fact, it was a skill I learned from a book called The Good Life
by Helen and Scott Nearing. They advocated a very similar lifestyle during the Depression.
- The first step to creating your multiple revenue streams is to not quit your full-time job if you currently have one. As soon as you start implementing your multiple streams, you can cut back on your hours or perhaps work from home, but in the beginning, you’ll need to rely on that income to get you through. If you are one of many who currently feel that while your job is safe now, but you may be in jeopardy soon – take advantage of the time and money and start implementing your multiple stream strategies right away. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: frugal, money, personal finance
Otherwise entitled: Why I can’t shop at Aldi…
Yup! You can call me yet another crunchy name…I am Michelle and I am a label reader. I read every label for every product that my husband and children (and me) eat, drink, spray, squeeze – you name it. If it somehow gets absorbed by our bodies – I read the label before I buy it. This tends to drive my husband crazy if he’s with me on a trip to Wal-Mart. Fortunately, I know most of my preferred brands and I can pluck them off the shelves without reading the labels.
Now, lest you think that this somehow turns our grocery bill into thousands of dollars each month – you would be very wrong. I read all the labels, buy appropriate products and still keep our groceries (including paper products and cleaning supplies and other miscellany) to between $600-$800 per month. I can do it on less than $400, but I choose not to because there are some things we like to have around and some convenience foods that make my life easier – especially with morning sickness coming on strong.
So, why can’t I shop at Aldi? Well, we went to Aldi last week. I had heard so many great things about it and being one that could care less about brand names, I thought I’d check it out. Unfortunately, every other item I picked up had HFCS as one of its main ingredients. Contrary to what the corn board or whoever they are would like you to think High Fructose Corn Syrup is very bad for you. It encourages obesity and if you need more convincing, go here because I don’t want to write a whole article on it right now! Most of Aldi’s foods also contained MSG which I won’t tolerate. I did pick up some tuna fish and some canned wild salmon, so that was a bit of a bargain. I believe we found a good deal on potatoes. But their cereal, oatmeal (except the regular oats), even their canned soup – all had either MSG or HFCS or worse! I simply won’t tolerate those ingredients in my children’s food. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: food, HFCS, high fructose corn syrup, label reading, nutrition
This essay, by John Taylor Gatto, has inspired me to no end. I hope it will inspire you too!
The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher
by John Taylor Gatto
New Society Publishers, 1992
“Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing
better to do at the time, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. The
license I hold certifies that I am an instructor of English language and
English literature, but that isn’t what I do at all. I don’t teach
English, I teach school — and I win awards doing it.
“Teaching means different things in different places, but seven
lessons are universally taught Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They
constitute a national curriculum you pay more for in more ways than you
can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. You are at liberty,
of course, to regard these lessons any way you like, but believe me when
I say I intend no irony in this presentation. These are the things I
teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you
will:
I.
“A lady named Kathy wrote this to me from Dubois, Indiana the other
day:
“”What big ideas are important to little kids? Well, the biggest
idea I think they need is that what they are learning isn’t
idiosyncratic — that this is some system to it all and it’s not just
raining down on them as they helplessly absorb. That’s the task, to
understand, to make coherent.”
“Kathy has it wrong. The first lesson I teach is confusion.
Everything I teach is out of context… I teach the unrelating of
everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbiting of
planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural
drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests,
fire drills, computer languages, parent’s nights, staff-development
days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers you may never see
again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the
outside world… what do any of these things have to do with each
other?
“Even in the best schools a close examination of curriculum and its
sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions.
Fortunately the children have no words to define the panic and anger
they feel at constant violations of natural order and sequence fobbed
off on them as quality in education. The logic of the school-mind is
that it is better to leave school with a tool kit of superficial jargon
derived from economics, sociology, natural science and so on than to
leave with one genuine enthusiasm. But quality in education entails
learning about something in depth. Confusion is thrust upon kids by too
many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest
relationship with each other, pretending for the most part, to an
expertise they do not possess.
“Meaning, not disconnected facts, is what sane human beings seek,
and education is a set of codes for processing raw facts into meaning.
Behind the patchwork quilt of school sequences, and the school obsession
with facts and theories the age-old human search lies well concealed.
This is harder to see in elementary school where the hierarchy of school
experience seems to make better sense because the good-natured simple
relationship of “let’s do this” and “let’s do that now” is just assumed
to mean something and the clientele has not yet consciously discerned
how little substance is behind the play and pretense.
“Think of all the great natural sequences like learning to walk and
learning to talk, following the progression of light from sunrise to
sunset, witnessing the ancient procedures of a farm, a smithy, or a
shoemaker, watching your mother prepare a Thanksgiving feast — all of
the parts are in perfect harmony with each other, each action justifies
itself and illuminates the past and future. School sequences aren’t
like that, not inside a single class and not among the total menu of
daily classes. School sequences are crazy. There is no particular
reason for any of them, nothing that bears close scrutiny. Few teachers
would dare to teach the tools whereby dogmas of a school or a teacher
could be criticized since everything must be accepted. School subjects
are learned, if they can be learned, like children learn the catechism
or memorize the 39 articles of Anglicanism. I teach the un-relating of
everything, an infinite fragmentation the opposite of cohesion; what I
do is more related to television programming than to making a scheme of
order. In a world where home is only a ghost because both parents work
or because too many moves or too many job changes or too much ambition
or something else has left everybody too confused to stay in a family
relation I teach you how to accept confusion as your destiny. That’s
the first lesson I teach.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: homeschool
Just stop. I know, I know but it’s so tempting…even I am tempted occasionally to buy complete crap: like funky little plastic cups for the 4th of July, or cute little porcelain baby-faced statues, or another plate, or another bowl, or another pan.
Now, I’m not talking about the stuff you need. I bought some hangars and wasp and hornet spray over the weekend – and while I was tempted by other Wal-Mart crap I didn’t buy it.
Need a quick fix? Go shopping. Push the cart around your favorite store. Put a bunch of stuff you like in the cart. Push it up to the front of the store. Now leave it. Don’t go through the check out. All the fun of shopping and none of the spending.
Have trouble not purchasing? Don’t go out. Stay home. Watch TV. Clean out a closet – and discover lots of other cheap crap you did buy. Donate it to a thrift store so someone else can buy it. Read a book…one that you got from the library.
I get a lot of questions on how to become a published writer. I also get a lot of submissions to Organically Inclined from writers. In my many lives so far here on Earth, I have been the editor of a number of publications – and I’ve also been the one at the mailbox, waiting for the rejection letters to roll in.
Here are, then, my top five ways to make sure an editor never reads anything your write!
1. Spell the editor’s name wrong – also use the wrong address, bad punctuation and lowercase letters only in your email.
Want to be impressive? Utilize your initial email like a business letter. Put your address in the header; put the date in the upper right hand corner; address the person you are emailing with “Dear ….”
2. Don’t state your purpose right away. Open your letter with a lot of information about yourself that isn’t relevant and then load up the letter with lots of links to articles you’ve written that aren’t at all relevant to the topic you are proposing.
Tags: cover letters, editors, freelance, query letters, writing
Another reason to hang your laundry:
Hanging your laundry not only saves you money on energy by not running your dryer – it also saves you money on clothing!
You know all that lint in your lint screen? Yup – it’s your clothes, falling apart, right in front of your eyes! Who knows – maybe that’s where the other sock goes to die…it doesn’t disappear, it just disintegrates into lint!
Hanging your laundry is also a great way to “bleach” your clothes without using bleach. I have hung stained whites on the line and been surprised to find them bleached and stain-free when I come back to take them down later in the day. The sun has bleached – and sanitized – my clothes for me and it didn’t cost a dime.
This is also a great way to keep cloth diapers fresh and clean.
Have a frugal and green tip? Email Michelle!
Tags: being frugal, frugal, frugal tips, going green, green
From Jan Tritten – At Midwifery Today…
- A good midwife is worth her weight in gold if you want a good birth experience. Shop carefully and pay her well.
- Thou shalt eat a healthy diet: 80-100 grams of protein, salt food to taste and lots of fruits and veggies and eat seafood; and be happy.
- Trust Birth, trust yourself. You can do it.
- Prenatal care is what you do between your visits to your care provider. Eat well. Love lots. Reduce stress. Your baby will appreciate it!
- Homebirth: the gold standard. If possible, stay home for your birth. Birth centers are a good option, too. When necessary, hospitals save lives.
- Avoid unnecessary technology like the plague. It may be the plague – including ultrasound (Dopplers and scans) during pregnancy!
- Just say no to drugs and intervention.
- Your body is perfectly designed to carry, grow and birth your baby. If that isn’t enough, your body can feed your baby too!!
- Birth Works; let it. Know that you can do it. It is an awesome and important step to motherhood – Â a miracle you can achieve.
- Thou shalt breastfeed your baby for as long as possible. The health benefit for motherbaby is unsurpassed by any other act. Breast is best.
Jan Tritten
Midwifery Today
