Just What I Needed- The $100 Start Up

I pulled into the driveway after a long and hard day. Waiting for my Boy Child to open the gate, I just hoped he'd hurry. I was exhausted- both physically and mentally.

It had been one of those days when all the little things that cost money started adding up into a big ugly pile in my lap. I may be a master frugalista, but life still requires cash, and sometimes you need a little more than others. This summer had a lineup of things-from fun stuff like camping trips to the necessary and big stuff like a newer reliable car to get my family around- all of which would require more cash.

Being an industrious kind of gal, I perused the local job boards. Ugh. It was awful. Have you looked at employment sites lately? In the area I live, the lack of suitable jobs for me was totally discouraging, but not as much as the micro salary range of the jobs I did see.

While lamenting my dismal prospects, Boy Child came up and showed me the hole he had worn in his shoes, and Girl Child let me know that she had outgrown her swimsuit. It continued like this with things raining down- dental visits, vet visits, some wonderful opportunities that were great deals- some just things we'd just need to deal with whether we liked it or not- but all requiring me to think about how to round up money.

Driving home, I was thinking about how miserable I would be in some of the jobs that were available, and wondered how I'd live on one. It was a scary and overwhelming thought, and wasn't helping me with my dilemma at all.

So, when Boy Child found a box at the gate, I perked up and ripped it open before we even got to the house.

Don't you just love when things show up in life exactly when you need them?

It was a brand new copy of Chris Guillebeau's new book- The $100 Startup. The subtitle was like a message just for me- "Reinvent the way you make a living, do what you love, and create a new future." 

I'm only a few pages into it so far, and a full review will come later, but I can already see that this is just the inspirational kind of thinking I needed. Rather than resorting to soul sucking and poorly paying work, I'm brainstorming ways to use my creative talents to come up with something else. Whoohooo!

I have no problem crediting a higher power here- Thank God I got this book right now, before my mind spiraled into gloomy and dark visions of minimum wage and crummy apartments in the hood. (Yes...I know...that's a bit dramatic, but that's how I tend to be.)

If you're not familiar with Guillebeau, you simply must check out his Art of Non-Conformity. He's a go getter with a fabulous outlook on life, who actually inspired my kids and I to tackle our plan to explore all 50 states before the oldest is 18. I can't wait to see what ideas come out of this book.

I'd also love to hear what creative and fun ways other people are coming up with to fund their life adventures. Inspiration is contagious and I certainly would love to catch and spread more of it. So....any ideas to share?

Less Screen Time and More Conversations

My family sort of participated in the recent Screen Free Week. For us, it wasn't exactly screen free, but more of a consciously reduced screen week. We use the computer for school and work, and it wasn't a time we could opt out of those, but we were able to cut back on our time we spent staring at screens significantly.

We don't even really watch TV, with the exception of movies on Netflix once in a while- mostly educational stuff, with a good dose of Phinneas and Ferb thrown in because laughter makes the world a better place to live in. It wasn't terribly hard, but we took the week off of any Netflix of any sort.

OK...fine... I'll admit it... I do watch Desperate Housewives on TV, but it's one stinkin' show, one night a week and it's not even year round. I certainly don't let my kids watch it. They're thrilled that the show is coming to an end because it's the one night a week when I shoo them off to their rooms so I can have some grown up entertainment. I didn't skip it because it was in it's final episodes ever (and yes, I realize I sound rather defensive here, but a gal's gotta have something- at least this gal does.)

We did skip using the Wii all week and no DS games for Boy Child either. Facebook was generally not opened until the end of the day when all work had been completed and kids were off to bed. I did cheat a smidgen on that one, but for the most part I made huge progress in weaning myself from it for the week.

Before we started this little experiment, I imagined that we would spend all of our extra screenless time playing games, reading books and being a productive, creative and crafty family. Due to a crazy schedule full of lots of driving and state tests and working late nights, we actually didn't do a whole lot of those things that week. What we did do however, was talk...a lot, and it was awesome.

We talked while we made dinner and cleaned the kitchen, and while we got ready and folded laundry. A few times, we ended up talking for over an hour and getting so deep into the discussions that we completely ignored the baskets of clean clothes or sink full of dirty dishes we were next to.

In short, we connected as a family, which was exactly what we needed. The week has past, and I am still making an effort to stay off Facebook and be more focused in my screen time, so I can have those moments with my family. After the week was over, we've had a chance to pull out some board games, got some new books and just this morning, Girl Child and I made Shrinky Dink jewelry while Boy Child carved a bar of soap into the shape of a person. All the while, we chatted, and it was very, very good for my soul.


Next time you get a chance to turn away from all the screens in your life, don't worry if you don't have time to play a game or bake a cake or make a craft though. If you feel like you're too tired to do anything and are tempted to turn on a screen out of boredom, wait.... Just talk with your kids. It's totally worth it.

Sketchbook Mania- A Tale of Procrastination

Have you heard of the Traveling Sketchbook Project? It's a brilliant plan where anyone, anywhere can order a blank sketchbook, fill it with whatever artsy medium suits their fancy and send it back to be a part of a world traveling exhibit of artists sketchbooks. They even have ideas of themes as a jumping off point.

I loved the idea, and ordered my book just before the deadline last fall, choosing "Uncharted Waters" as my theme. It just seems to go well with the unknown future, antsy, restless, can't believe I turned 40 type of energy I've been feeling.

It came in November, and while I was excited to open the package, I was confused at how flat it was. I ripped it open right there at the mailbox, and to be honest, I was a little disappointed. It was small, thin and just so very plain. Of course the idea is that as the artist, I get to dress it up, but it just seemed so little and plain Jane.

I set it on my shelf where it sat, neglected and alone for 2 1/2 months. Poor thing.

In my defense, winter is a busy time full of holidays and celebrations and my craftiness was being used up on other endeavors instead of the sketchbook.

About two weeks before the deadline to mail the finished book back, I started thinking about the project. I had already paid, and there are no refunds. Since I'm incredibly cheap thrifty, I didn't want my money to go to waste. Plus, they blacklist you if you sign up and don't finish. I had to maintain my good name, and honestly, as soon as opened my mind to the project, the ideas started to flow.

Nine days before it was due, I actually started. First thing, a purple velvet cover, during the attaching of which, I learned about spray adhesives, and probably lost a few brain cells in the process.

For the last week, I've been sketching, painting and gluing like a mad woman. I've torn up my all of my crafty areas and made a giant mess of my home. Paint, stickers, fabric and trim are spread across almost every flat surface in view. I discovered how amazing watercolor pencils are, how helpful gesso is, and how quickly super glue dries things to your fingers. I also realized that I still like sparkly things, unicorns and rainbows as much as I did when I was 8 years old.

"Uncharted Waters" represents the future to me, and since young people are the future, I recruited my kids and the group of homeschooling kids that I do art workshops with to do postcard sized paintings to glue in. They were a natural fit and didn't let me down with their awesome work. I also scored by getting 9 pages out of the way.

Now, I'm down to the wire. The sketchbook needs to be in the mail tomorrow, and still has a couple of pages  to finish. The whole thing has been a mad dash, but it's also been incredible fun. Waiting until the last minute is not nearly as bad when the job to be done is one you enjoy. In this case, I've had a blast playing with new mediums and exploring things in the book. If it had been something like taxes, no amount of coffee in the world would have made those late nights any fun for me.

I hope to do it again next year, but I also hope to be a little more organized..

I wonder how many other people procrastinate as badly as I do? Part of the problem is probably just that I try to cram so many things in. How do you all handle fitting in all the things you really want to do?

As for me, I should be painting rather than typing right now.

Organizing the "School Year"

Just when I've been trying to hold on to summer and ignore the cooler nights and the bombardment of activities that fall brings, I remember the charter school will want me to start keeping track of what my kids are learning again. It's actually a small price for all the enriching things our family gets access too, but it can put a damper on my eternal summer lounging dreams.

I figured that getting organized for our "school year" will be helpful for me in getting in the swing of things. I really have trouble with the "school year" concept because learning seems to occur fairly naturally and year round when I don't push it, and a part of me just has an inherent resistance to outside forces that want me to do things at certain times "just because." But, rather than being ruffled over my inability to conform easily, and the silliness of it all, I'm focusing on the fact that external forces aside- this place is a mess, and a little organization could benefit us all.

So, I started with some book shelves that we keep a lot of "educational" things on. About midway through I began to question what on earth I had started.

First, the incredible quantity of dust hit me. Literally. In the face. So, now I have itchy eyes and am sneezing and amazed at what can hide on the back side of bookshelves. It's not like we don't dust either. I mean, I pay my kids to do it weekly, but this is the behind the scenes action, and it's not pretty. I am convinced it would not be this bad if there were pavement withing a quarter mile of my house, but who knows. It might be anyway. We're really not that great at housework.

Anyway, next, I was taken aback by the sheer volume of stuff. Where did all this stuff come from, and why do I have it? Some of it's good, and has just been hidden. It's like a surprise holiday with presents. Some of it consists of things we just never got around to doing and probably never will. Some is stuff that I can't imagine why I hung on to in the first place. I pulled it all off the shelves, sneezing and whining and making a huge and overwhelming mess. I was tempted at this point to just head out to the pool with my book and a glass of wine, but had a sneaking suspicion that this disaster would still be waiting for me when I returned. On rare occasions, one of my children will spontaneously clean something up, but this calamity was beyond their skill level.

So, I buckled down and got to work. I sat for what felt like days, but was probably hours, creating piles around me- to keep, to give away, to recycle, to throw out. The keeping stuff got further broken down- science, math, history, art. It all was shelved neatly, arranged by subject, then within that, arranged aesthetically by size and shape. I'm quite proud of my effort, and excited about all the fun things we have to choose from. We are blessed indeed.

The give away pile got further sorted as well- stuff that goes to friends and stuff that goes to the thrift store. So far, it's only made it to the garage, but I'll be glad to see it go for good. The mini mountains of trash and recycling have been hauled away.

There was also a decent sized pile at the end consisting of stuff I didn't quite know what to do with. For now, its sitting on the other side of the room so it doesn't ugly up the view of the pretty shelves I have carefully organized. I guess the job isn't completely finished, but I don't really have it in me to deal with that last bit today, and why not celebrate what I did accomplish?

I wonder how long this will last though? Maintenance is a trick unto itself. Do any of you well organized people have secrets about keeping things orderly? I am just not naturally inclined that way, but I really do appreciate the beauty of it.

For now, I think I've earned my poolside lounging. I'm even bringing a few books I found during my hard work with me.

Packing and Planning

The dining room is crammed with piles of stuff- not the usual piles of stuff like games, books, and large scale craft projects that pretty much always invade our dining room, but stuff for our adventure in the desert.What exactly does one take for 5 weeks in the desert? We are planning on taking a whole lotta stuff, and beginning to worry about where the passengers are going to fit on this little journey. It turns out that some of our packings are actually a lot like our usual clutter- books and games, but only small scale craft projects to go, and now it's all packed semi-neatly in baskets and bags in the corner and ready to go instead of just random stacks on any available flat surface.
I am noticing that an inordinately large amount of space is going towards food. We're big fans of food around here and we enjoy snacking so much that we tend to travel everywhere we go with fairly large quantities of edible items. It just makes everyone happy to have handy nibbles that don't require stopping and going in a restaurant or worse, relying on gas station mini mart fodder. So, half the car is full of food.

Next came the books. Who knows if my visions of sitting peacefully on a rock and reading while the sun sets will actually happen, but I like to be prepared. First, I ordered myself a few books that look like good reflective reading including
The Art of Non-Conformity, Wishcraft, and another one on creating work that you love, the name of which isn't coming to me, and is currently buried under mountains of stuff. My local library didn't have any of these, and besides I figured the late fines I could accrue by taking library books on this journey would be embarrassing and costly. Then, I learned that my library offers extended vacation loans! Is that amazing or what? Yes, we can borrow books for the whole time we'll be gone, and we won't even get in trouble, well, unless we drop them in a campfire or off the edge of the Grand Canyon or something. So, I borrowed some audio books since I can't drive and read at the same time, and Boy Child got a few books to read as well- including a fictional journal about a boy in the Donner Party. Not the cheeriest travel story I'm sure, but on the bright side, we have all that food, thereby reducing the chances we will have to eat each other if we get stuck anywhere, and in general, any mishaps we encounter will probably not look so bad in light of their sad story.

Girl Child has an elaborate system of lists, maps and plans spread across 3 rooms, and I am gently nudging that we have enough lists, now we just need to get the stuff packed and loaded. Boy Child swears he already has everything packed he needs. We'll see about that. He also had it in his mind that we would leave before 8 am, but I reminded him that this is supposed to be a relaxing vacation, and alarms and rushing off in the early morning may not be the best way to start that.

So, it's pouring rain, and the wind is blowing like crazy, neither of which is helping my car loading attempts, and we're still trying to figure out how exactly we're going to make all of this stuff fit. One way or another, we'll cram it all in (or on) the car though and will be hitting the road, and hopefully sunnier skies. Off we go....

Traumatic School Lunch Memories- Bird by Bird

Anne Lamott's writing book, Bird By Bird, is an oldie, but a goody, that I just recently discovered. A friend who always points me in the direction of good reads, recommended it years ago. I've been feeling a little fragmented and stagnant, and in general like I've been neglecting my writing. So, when I came across the book at a thrift store, I grabbed it. I have been reading sections of off and on for a month.

Anne's writing is raw and honest, which I knew from Traveling Mercies, the story of her unlikely path to finding faith, and Operating Instructions, the tell all story of her unexpected pregnancy, and the brutal, early days of motherhood. Anne isn't for those who are squeamish or easily offended because she just tells it like it is, and it isn't always pretty. My jaw dropped at least a couple of times while reading her life stories.

In Bird By Bird, Anne talks about her own life as a writer, and tries to encourage others in getting past the road blocks and obstacles to writing, and just getting busy with the pen and paper (or laptop as the case is more likely to be these days.) Anne also teaches adult writing classes, and gives a few assignments that she also gives to her writing students. One exercise that she feels everyone can benefit from, and easily accomplish is writing about school lunches. Everyone, at least in America, must have some memories of school lunches.

Well, aside from the poor, unsocialized, homeschooled children like mine, who never went to school, and therefore are completely going to miss out on this assignment. They'll be OK though. They are creative thinkers. I'm sure they could write about how their mother put ground flax seed in their birthday cake or used a napkin to soak up all the grease on their pepperoni pizza before she let them eat it. There's plenty of weird lunch material they could draw from.

As for me, when I started thinking about school lunches, I immediately had the most unpleasant flashback. Imagine being 8 years old, and one of the only non-rich kids at your private school. There is no cafeteria- everyone brings their lunch. As the other kids open their Twinkies, and bologna on Wonder white bread, I open my super cool Scooby Do lunchbox wondering what my step dad had packed for me on this day.

For reference, my step dad at the time was a bit of an odd fellow, who would seem normal and even semi nice at times, and just plain crazy, illogical and mean at others. In hindsight, he probably had post traumatic stress disorder from his stint in Vietnam, but as a kid, the only thing I knew was that he was OK in a good mood, but you didn't want to make him mad.
He would sometimes give us canned Spaghetios every night for dinner for weeks straight (OK, again, in hindsight, maybe it was only like 5 days, but it felt like weeks.) At first we thought "Yay, cool, Spaghettios!" (I know, I had very bad taste in food at the time, but I was a kid) But after the third day, we were like "Ugh, Spaghettios again?" He responded to our complaints with a pretty scary temper, so we kept them quiet.

In the case of my school lunch memory though- there was at least actual spaghetti involved, not Spaghettios. Now, I like spaghetti, but what he did with it on this occasion still causes me distress to think about. The spaghetti was sandwiched between 2 slices of white bread. It gets worse. He had also decided to add frozen peas and carrots in the mix. Yes, I had a cold spaghetti and pea sandwich on white bread.
Well, of course I didn't eat it. I tried to hide it as quickly as possible before anyone saw the atrocity and called attention to it. But you know how kids are always wanting to see what everybody else has and trade lunch stuff. Someone saw. The secret was out. I think I must have subconsciously blocked out what followed, but we all know how mean kids can be, and that was some pretty easy teasing material right there.

What could he have possibly been thinking? A cold spaghetti and peas sandwich? Why on earth would he do that? Did he actually think it was just a handy way to get a complete meal, including veggies, or was  he trying to cause me humiliation and grief? Of course I took to making my own sandwiches at that point, just to be sure. Who knows, maybe that was his point- to get his step kids to be more self sufficient. I'll never know since my mother and he divorced, and I haven't seem him in over 20 years.

Still, the memory of that sandwich is something I'll never forget. I don't think anyone ever asked me to trade lunches with them at that school again. A few years later, we moved a thousand miles away, and I went to a new school- one where no one knew about my cold spaghetti and peas sandwich- one where I could trade my lunches without the fear of that story coming to haunt me.

Anyone else have any school lunch memories- traumatic or otherwise?

Sing Song Story of the World

A few years ago, someone loaned me a copy of the first volume in Susan Wise Bauer's "Story of the World" series. She uses a "story based" approach to introducing historical periods, which I thought was a lot more fun than a boring textbook. I wouldn't exactly say that I have a "classical child" which the subtitle states this is history for, but I do have a couple of story lovers, so they both enjoyed this approach as well.
Our family loves tie in activities too, so I not only kept the borrowed book for ages, I also got the corresponding activity book to go with it. There are about 14 times more activities listed for each chapter than I could possibly imagine doing, but perhaps someone more organized than me might actually accomplish all of them with their kids. I like to have a lot to choose from in any case, so I appreciated the offerings that ranged from maps to coloring to crafts to cooking. We've only done a fraction of the offerings, but have had fun with the ones we've tried.

A while later, while lamenting curriculum purchases that we never finish with a group of other relaxed homeschooling moms like myself (meaning we are relaxed as far as curriculum, not necessarily as far as all other things in life, but anyway...) another friend mentioned that she had the CDs for several volumes in the Story of the World series. She talked up the way her kids could listen in the car or in beds, while she was busy doing something other than reading. Well we love audio books, and I was very excited to hear about this option. I mentioned this, but unfortunately, she did not offer to loan them to me- probably because she heard that I had borrowed the book for so long.

Oh well. I am resourceful, and I was able to find a copy of the second volume on CD "The Middle Ages" in a homeschool lending library (which has very long check out periods and no late fees, both of which work really well for me.) So we snatched it up, and I ordered the activity book for it as well.

Well, we're enjoying the stories in the second volume, but I do have to say that this is one case where both my kids and I preferred my reading the books aloud over listening to them on the CDs. When listening to a story, the experience really comes down to the narrator and whether or not they have your attention. In this case, the narrator sounds like a very nice lady, but has one of those patronizing preschool teacher kind of voices. I feel a little like she's talking down to me the whole time. There's just something about condescending tones, that are also found in many "educational" videos, just don't really do it for me or my kids.

I wonder why people feel the need to use a "you're not smart enough for this so I'm going to really enunciate, smile a lot, and use small words" voice with kids? Personally, I have never been one to talk in those tones or dumb down conversations with my own kids, so they tend to be baffled when other people share educational facts in a very happy sing song voice, at the slowest speed possible.

With videos and CDs, they just roll their eyes, and sometimes start doing impersonations throughout the day. "Mother..." (pause for 10 seconds with scary smile) ..."I'm going to do my chores now. Chores are household jobs that helpful children perform." With real life humans, they are polite enough not to roll their eyes, but I can tell it annoys the heck out of them.

So, again, while we liked the stories, we couldn't quite figure out what my friend was so excited about with the audio versions. I mean, we were amused when at one point in story of Beowulf, the narrator exclaims in a perfect remedial educator voice "Beowulf ripped off their arms, and caused them great harm." While it gave us a good laugh, I still wasn't hooked. Then, I realized that the version I acquired is not the same one she has.

Apparently, I have the singsong version of Story of the World and she has the version that is narrated by Jim Weiss! Now, we've heard fabulous tales told by this fellow, and I am quite sure his version would be much more up my alley. But, probably due to my "long borrowing" history, my friend has still not offered to loan me her CDs, and the lending library isn't purchasing new copies. I'm just glad I borrowed this one instead of purchasing it myself.

We'll still finish the volume, as we do like the stories, but when we move on to the next volumes, I'll be on the look out for the least sing song version possible. If I don't find those, we'll stick with the paper book versions and go back to the tried and true method of my reading aloud. In any case, we are still enjoying the series, the stories, and the activities that go along with them.

I'd love to hear about other fun history sources your family is using. What have you enjoyed....or not enjoyed?

Popping Up Some Edible Science

My hands on family loves both food and science, so we were really excited to come across Vicki Cobb's book Science Experiments You Can Eat at the library.
It isn't slick or glossy, nor does it have a lot of colorful illustrations. But, it is full of all kinds of fun chemistry and science experiments, most of which seem plenty easy to try at home.  While everything I looked at in the book so far has involved food ingredients, they did not all sound like something I would want to eat. Molds for example... not so tasty sounding.

We started with something that we would want to eat- the popcorn experiments. We love popcorn and our air popper is out a couple of times a week, For this experiment, we were looking at measuring the moisture in popcorn kernels, and how varying amounts would effect the finished product.

One group of popcorn kernels were to be soaked in water overnight. Not being professional scientists, but rather a group of sidetracked multi-taskers, we accidentally forgot all about the kernels the next day, so they actually ended up soaking for a couple of days. When we remembered, the kernels had swollen incredibly, and the water actually had a fairly strong alcoholic smell to it. So, we ended up with a bonus experiment in brewing, however, we decided that the children should probably not actually consume that batch. Never one to waste though, I figured we could just give it to the chickens.

 The second batch, was to be dried in the oven on a very low heat for a couple of hours. Now, I would have thought that popcorn kernels are already dried, but apparently, we were just removing any trace of moisture that was there. Thankfully, we did not forget about this batch, as I'm sure the results would have been even smellier than the forgotten wet batch. The kernels didn't look dramatically different, but they did shrink up a bit.

The last batch was the control- just plain popcorn. We wanted to observe how the kernels varied in appearance, size and weight both before and after popping.

My Girl Child is an organized little thing, so she got busy and took thorough notes of the process. I got out the butter and nutritional yeast, ready to snack.

The wet batch not only smelled bad, but it hardly popped at all.

The super dried batch popped, but not as well as it normally would. It didn't quite look right, and when we tasted it, well, it was really dry. Not that popcorn isn't usually dry, but this was not your normal dry- it was like sandpaper dry.

The normal batch popped up light and fluffy as we expected and it was the only one we ate. The chickens didn't complain about the pitifully popped and possibly alcoholic wet batch or the dry as the desert batch. In fact, they happily gobbled it all up, and if they were at all "loopy" afterward, we couldn't tell the difference. It was cold out anyway, so maybe it helped to keep them warm that night.

We learned that apparently there is a science to having just the right amount of moisture in popcorn kernels, and that manufacturers can't just wing it when they dry it, or they will have unhappy customers and an unpleasant product.

We've tried a few other experiments out of the book, and will try more in the future, I'm sure. Some we are likely to actually eat, like the rock candy, and others we are not so likely to consume, like the ones involving molds. In any case, it's a fun little book with lots of great activities, so don't let the lack of pretty pictures discourage you.

What kinds of science experiments is your family popping up these days?