B is for Beer!

Mr. B's work schedule is changed so that he's home on Fridays and Saturdays, and works Sunday through Thursday.  So today begins our weekend.  He was very sweet and let me sleep three hours longer than usual this morning while he took care of the girls.  When I woke up, something smelled different - good, but different.

Turns out he got up at 5:30 (roughly his normal wake up time) with Miss C and decided to finally bite the bullet and brew some beer.  He's had the ingredients since my dad bought it for him at Christmas, but he hasn't had the time.  Each five gallon batch makes about 50 bottles of beer.  While the physical brewing is hot and time intensive, I love the bottling process near the end.  When the primary fermentation is done, I'll post on the progress of the batch.

 Miss F looking mischievous as Daddy checks the temperature of the brew.

The Letter B

Our letter of the week "lessons" have settled into a flow where every day has at least a reference of the letter, and it's very laid back. On Monday, we read Ben, Billy, and the Birdhouse by Cecilia Mendin and Joanne Meier.  We've actually read it probably 30 times already since getting it from the library last week, but it was our official activity yesterday.  On her own, Miss F sang the "buh" sound to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  I think I'm going to count it, even though - or especially since - I didn't come up with the idea.

  

Miss F has been asking for pancakes lately, so today, for the letter B, I made blueberry pancakes.

 

For good measure, I also made a lowercase b out of batter.

 

Apparently, I took too long, because Miss F filled up on pears while I was making pancakes and wouldn't touch them when they were ready. But we still talked about B making the "buh" sound, blueberries, and other things that started with B. I think I'll freeze the letter I made and break it out for the letter d :o)

Frugal Accomplishments - September 1st through 7th

I've been reading the blog The Prudent Homemaker for a couple of years now.  She posts, among other things, a weekly list of her frugal accomplishments.  Since I'm the type of person who needs to have a record of accomplishments in order to stay motivated, I'm going to try to keep a record of the little things that we do to keep our expenses down.

-Cooked up bacon and saved the grease for future cooking.  One pound of bacon yielded one cup of grease, which will keep us at least a month.  The bacon was local and nitrate free bacon that we picked up at the farmer's market.

-Cut herbs from our front yard: oregano, chives, sage, thyme, winter savory.  Chives and some thyme were put in vinegar.  Everything else is hanging to dry.

-Cleaned and re-seasoned a new-to-me cast iron chicken fryer.  It needed to be done, but it also served as practice before I re-season a rare waffle maker that my dad found for me at a flea market.  I've started re-seasoning the collar of the waffle maker as well.

-Made cloth diaper detergent for the first time.  With two in cloth, Rockin' Green (at $15 a bag) got to be too expensive.  I wish I would have looked for a recipe sooner! It seems to be working really well.  It's just 1 cup of borax, 1 cup of washing soda, and 1/2 cup of OxiClean Free.  That small amount of ingredients that I happened to have on hand will wash 20-40 loads of diapers.  Woo hoo for not leaving the house AND not spending any extra money!

-Gleaned 25 pounds of apples from my grandfather's yard.

-Gleaned 18 Bartlett pears and 5 Asian pears from my dad's yard.

-Received one honeydew melon from my mom's yard.

-Used a rotisserie chicken carcass and garlic papers to make chicken stock.

-Stored 1/3 of a loaf of bread that accidentally got left out and went stale to use later as bread crumbs.

-Foraged a handful of grapes from a local park. We missed the season this year :-(

-Changed our cell phone plans so that we save approximately $30 per month.

-Harvested five jalapenos, two pumpkins, and three figs.  There is one more mostly ripe fig and a few unripe ones on the tree.  This is our first year with this tree - not a bad haul.

-Found a 2 year old boneless chuck roast in the freezer (oops) and cooked enough pot roast for dinner, 2 lunches for Mr. B, and 2 pints of meat for other meals.

-Cooked down 1 bushel of Roma tomatoes for spaghetti/pizza sauce.  The herbs and some of the garlic used in the sauce were collected from our front yard.  We canned 11 pints so far with more on the stove right now.

-Inventoried the pantry.  I need to find a system that works for us that allows me to see how much we actually eat.  There are some things (creamed corn) that have been there forever, and some things (jam) that we ration because I'm afraid of running out.  If I know how much of things we eat, I can buy more or less when it's on sale, and we'll end up saving money.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

When we were in the hospital with Miss C, Mr. B's mom drove his car back to our house and left his lights on with the keys locked in the car.  The battery was dead by the time we got home, so he jumped his car from mine.  As it turns out, my alternator was on its way out, and jumping the car fried it.  We didn't learn this until all of the battery-dependent systems (including lights and windshield wipers) died...while driving on a highway...in the pouring rain...with two kids in the car.

We researched how to replace an alternator ourselves, but we really couldn't do it without a good possibility of ruining something else in the process because of how my engine compartment is set up.  So I found a reputable car repair shop, and it cost us over $500 to replace the alternator.  It had to be replaced, but it was rather a painful expense.  It always seems to go that we make a little headway with our finances, but get knocked back on our rear ends.

Thankfully, Mr. B had just volunteered to change his schedule so that he made time-and-a-half on one of his work days, and I'm starting to tutor again.  I'm trying to tell myself we'll be back to where we were in three months or so, but it's difficult not to be discouraged.

BUT, some things have gone our way. Right after picking my car up at the shop, we ran to meet a member of a natural living group from Facebook that I had been talking to. My water kefir grains have been prolific, so I've been giving them away to strangers and friends alike. I met this woman at a local farm with a CSA program. She was so grateful for the grains that she gave us some much needed eggs from her CSA share. I hadn't mentioned that we needed them, but we really did need them.

I realized the farm was really close to my grandfather's house, so we called him on our way out. He had us come over to pick apples from the tree in his yard. The apples were just spoiling on the lawn and attracting deer and bees. He has an old picker that he made himself. It's three metal bars wire tied to a garden stake with an old onion bag on a circular wire.

 

He can't find an onion bag to fit it anymore, so he's been taping it back together over the years.  I mentioned that our local farm store had a picker for sale, but he just said his father's picker was homemade as well.  I think he liked to carry on that tradition.  We got over 25 pounds of apples for just an hour worth of work on Mr. B's part and an hour's worth of visiting on mine. A lot of the apples have large bad spots, but they're free, and they'll be great applesauce.

Day Two Success

Today was a good day for the letter A!

 

Grammy came over to spend some time with the girls, and she reread It's A! with Miss F. When she left, Miss F and I took some homemade play-doh outside and made letters. I was pleasantly surprised when Miss F identified A without any prompting! Of course, I prompted her a couple more times just to make sure she could do it :o)

I made her an apple out of the play-doh, and we talked about things that started with the letter A.  Then, I gave her free play time with the play-doh while I made some lunch.

 

 

I'm not going to post every homeschooling activity we do, but I was rather pleased with the goings-on today.

Our First Day!

Our first day of homeschooling started out with a whimper on a casual note.  Our letter of the week is A (obviously).  A lady for whom I tutor gave us some animal crackers for Miss F yesterday, so I took advantage of the opportunity.  Miss F found the baggie today, and we counted out crackers for her snack.  We talked about "A is for animal crackers" and tried to identify the animals as she ate them.  As a kid, I remember the animals being much more distinct, but we gave them all names anyway.

We got several books from the library, and read the first one:  It's A! by Mary Elizabeth Salzmann.  It's a nice little book about the sounds A makes and the words that start with and include those sounds.

While at the library, I also picked up Let them Play by Jeff A. Johnson and Denita Dinger.  It's funny, since I'm trying to institute a somewhat vaguely structured learning experience, and at the same time, I am interested in and am actively pursuing learning through play.  I can't wait until we move, because poor Miss F has been stifled in the play arena due to the nature of our yard.  Since almost everything in our yard is edible, she tries to rip up and eat everything she can find.  That means that I have to watch her constantly - not because I'm afraid that she'll hurt herself, but because I'm afraid we will have no plants left when she's done.  Everything that's not gardened is on a steep slope.  So she can either play on the hill, or on the very splintery deck.  Poor kiddo.

Tomorrow is Mr. B's first day back to work since Miss C's birth, so I'll get my first full day experiencing life as a SAHM of two.

A New Chapter

Miss F turned two in June, and we welcomed her new baby sister, Miss C, two weeks ago. We've quickly learned that I need to be very conscious about the quantity and quality of one-on-one time I give Miss F. One night just before bed, she collapsed in my lap for a prolonged snuggle - she missed her mama. We also realized that she didn't mature overnight just because she became a big sister.  Mr. B and I found ourselves getting frustrated with her for being a two year old. She was playing with the baby's car seat when we told her not to, dumping puzzle pieces all over, and even tossed her glass of milk on the living room floor. Since the baby was born, Miss F has learned to climb into Miss C's crib and to open doors.  I had hoped to have at least a few months before either of those particular milestones.  Miss C's arrival has been an adjustment for all of us, but one we're happy to make.

At the same time, we're trying to sell our house. We found the perfect house for us - an old four bedroom farmhouse on 2/3 of an acre with mature fruit trees that costs less than our house now -  but we can't find anyone to buy our townhouse. It's frustrating, but we're carrying on here as if nothing's different. We're still canning and gardening as if we're not leaving. At worst (or at best, I'm not sure), someone else will harvest our crops.

Mr. B is still looking for a job in his field. He has been looking since graduating college in 2009, but he earned his masters in December, so we're hoping for more luck now in his search. Just in the last week, he's gotten some interviews, but the pay is *significantly* lower than his current pay. As it is, we're barely making ends meet.  I had been working five - yes, five - part time jobs simultaneously in the last year, but I quit them all (except a couple hours of private tutoring sessions) in July.  We were miserable when I worked at night, and we ended up spending extra money on transportation and food to allow me to work jobs I didn't love.  I read Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin this week, and we're starting to follow the program so that we can afford to live on a smaller income.

Since Miss F is now two, I'm starting to plan activities with homeschooling in mind.  I really liked how Mrs. Mordecai of Be It Ever So Humble approached letters with her son, so I'm doing letters of the week with Miss F starting the day after Labor Day.  It's in no way a formal thing, but if we happen to make the letter A during play-doh time or sing a song about A or read a book about A, well that's a little more exposure each time.  I'm looking forward to posting about our letter activities (and other things) as the weeks go on.

 

Miss F loves her little sister.

 

Miss F is showing her daddy and little sister the apple we foraged on the way to the park.