Since when did we become a nation of whimps? As parents, we fear the whining of our children. Even the slightest expression of discomfort by a child brings it's parents into compliance with nearly anything they want.
And once you establish a baseline of inappropriate behavior, the child uses that as a new base from which to negotiate more inappropriate behavior. Every step in the wrong direction just brings more opportunities for whining to get even more.
That is the job of the young ones... to test our limits. And whining is the hallmark of a limit being tested. I don't WANT to go to bed yet. I don't WANT to eat my peas. I didn't WANT a hot dog, I wanted a HAM-BURGER!!! WHAAAAAAA!
Next thing you know, Mom is turned into a short order cook, making sure every kid gets their own whims addressed. Suzy won't eat rice and Johnny won't eat pasta. So we make two of everything, every night... one with a side dish of pasta, the other with a side dish or rice. WHEEE!!!
Failing to set limits and enforce them, even with all the whining going on, only sets the stage for more difficult moments later on. I have a friend who is struggling right now with her daughter's need to purchase a new car. A few days ago, her old car was totalled. This is the second car that this child has totalled, and Daddy believes that of course his 22 year old baby girl has not been at fault for ANY of the problems she's had. THey're taking the insurance money and looking for a brand new car. A BRAND NEW car. Not a USED car, like what Mom & Dad always buy, and what Mom & Dad and big brother drive.. no... a BRAND NEW car... because baby girl has been researching cars and found one that she likes and of course it happens to be a NEW car model and why would anyone get an OLD car when they CAN get new...
Baby girl doesn't have a real job yet... just an internship that's scheduled to start in a week or so... but never mind, Daddy will co-sign. Because after all, if he doesn't, she will be disappointed. And we have not been teaching our children (now young adults) to withstand the crushing disappointment of having to accept a car that is not what we might have hoped to get. If he changes his mind now, she might have to re-research the whole thing, go shopping for a USED car (one that she can afford without a loan and a co-signer)...
It's all so sad, poor kid. Did all this work to find the PERFECT car for herself, and without her parent's help, she might be denied the opportunity to HAVE that car. Mind you, Mom & Dad do not drive new cars. They are NOT the "new car buying" types.
Somewhere along the line, this Daddy stopped wanting to endure baby girl's whining. I'm sure he figures he's finished with the hard part of parenting and it's time to enjoy the kid as she sails into adulthood, finds love, gets married, finds job fulfillment, has babies, and starts to visit on holidays and beg for Mom to PLEASE do everything the way it was done when she was little... because all that stuff that she fussed & whined about back then, is suddenly precious to her now.
But she's not there yet. None of them are. Parenting doesn't really stop, ever... does it? Hopefully, someday, I will train my kids how to gracefully accept aging, how to manage the long term planning and thriving... how to continue to be a lifelong learner, long after the job requirement for continuing education has ended.
Unfortunately, too many people today are letting the kids' whining change their minds about stuff... about requiring the kids to study... about requiring the kids to entertain themselves without the use of electronics... about requiring the kids to eat WHATEVER Mom puts on the table.
Today, on Fox News Network, there was an interview of an educator, about Common Core. Suddenly, I understand. It's about having common requirements for what kids should know. It's not about "teaching to the test"... but unfortunately, that's what a lot of teachers and school systems have turned it into. They teach to the test, not to the information. They're not as much about teaching the kids how to think, as they are about teaching them to memorize a lot of standard information. I suppose this is an improvement over the dumbing down of education where 1 plus 1 didn't ALWAYS equal 2... or rather answering things OTHER than two didn't necessarily mean that the kid was going to fail the test. If he could come up with an explanation of how he GOT to the other answer, he could get partial credit. At least Common Core, in theory, SHOULD do away with that nonsense.
SO, what does this have to do with my Whining rant? Well... the educator being interviewed pointed out that the biggest complaints about Common Core was that parents were upset that the children were whining, having difficulty with the concepts, upset about their homework. And this educator pointed out that this is the job of a parent, to make the kids DO the homework, to help them learn the hard concepts, and not to let the kid's whining stop them from that goal.
BRILLIANT!
Why didn't I think of that?
OK... so here's what I think. There's a saying, "if you look good while you're exercising, you are not exercising hard enough"... I think maybe we should apply this principle to parenting and whining... "if your kids are not whining, you're not parenting properly"... hmmm... maybe it'll work.
Showing posts with label home economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home economics. Show all posts
Monday, May 5, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
The world's best organizing secret
No exaggeration. This past few weeks I have been going through my closets, as I have done for about a decade, and realized that this helpful hint needs to be shared with as many people as possible!
Every year, at the beginning of the year (or whenever you choose to designate as your cleaning day... spring cleaning? Birthday cleaning? for me... it's a New year's resolution cleaning...), turn around all of your hangers. Instead of putting them onto the rod from the front, as you're used to, turn them so that you have to hook them over the rod from behind. Put all of your things from shelves onto a bottom or top shelf. Cram them in if you have to. And put all of the things from your drawers into as few drawers as you can manage.
Every time you need something, get it out. When you wash it, put it back away in it's proper place.
By the end of the year, the things you WEAR will be in their proper place. The things you haven't cared enough about to bother to wear within the past year will still be on backwards hangars, on the bottom (or top) shelf that's hard to reach, or crammed into the bottom drawer.
Purge those things. Either give them away, or toss them, or sell them at a yard sale. For things you can't envision parting with (a favorite old silk blouse), it's ok to keep them if you are a seamstress who wants to use it for a quilt, but take it out of your closet and put it into your quilting project stash. Be very picky about what you are willing to add to your stash.
There will be a few exceptions to this rule... the formal dress that you did not have a chance to wear because you didn't go to any formal events this year... the interview suit that, likewise, did not see any interviews. But more often, the reason you did not wear something is that you saw a little stain on it, or the collar doesn't stand up nicely any more, or there is a problem with the hem and you don't like it enough to fix it. Or maybe it's no longer your size and you're hoping to get back into it someday. (for those, understand that the day you can fit into skinny clothes again, you will prefer a newer, more updated wardrobe choice than the old skinny clothes that are the style of a decade ago.)
You will have to say "goodbye" to socks without mates undergarments that have holes in them, and pants that lost their shape. But recognize that if you have not worn these things in a full year, you will most likely never wear them. Let them monopolize valuable real estate in someone ELSE's closet! You can use the space in your closet to see the remaining clothing more clearly, organize yourself and ... well, fill it up.
I mean, if you threw away your formerly favorite white sweater because it had a stain on it and you couldn't wear it for the past year, but you really love having a white sweater and consider it as a staple in your closet, you now have space to bring in a new, WEAR-able white sweater!
And honestly, you will never know how great it feels to drive to the Salvation Army with a trunkload of stuff that used to clutter up your closet, until you've done it once. After that, you'll be hooked.
Every year, at the beginning of the year (or whenever you choose to designate as your cleaning day... spring cleaning? Birthday cleaning? for me... it's a New year's resolution cleaning...), turn around all of your hangers. Instead of putting them onto the rod from the front, as you're used to, turn them so that you have to hook them over the rod from behind. Put all of your things from shelves onto a bottom or top shelf. Cram them in if you have to. And put all of the things from your drawers into as few drawers as you can manage.
Every time you need something, get it out. When you wash it, put it back away in it's proper place.
By the end of the year, the things you WEAR will be in their proper place. The things you haven't cared enough about to bother to wear within the past year will still be on backwards hangars, on the bottom (or top) shelf that's hard to reach, or crammed into the bottom drawer.
Purge those things. Either give them away, or toss them, or sell them at a yard sale. For things you can't envision parting with (a favorite old silk blouse), it's ok to keep them if you are a seamstress who wants to use it for a quilt, but take it out of your closet and put it into your quilting project stash. Be very picky about what you are willing to add to your stash.
There will be a few exceptions to this rule... the formal dress that you did not have a chance to wear because you didn't go to any formal events this year... the interview suit that, likewise, did not see any interviews. But more often, the reason you did not wear something is that you saw a little stain on it, or the collar doesn't stand up nicely any more, or there is a problem with the hem and you don't like it enough to fix it. Or maybe it's no longer your size and you're hoping to get back into it someday. (for those, understand that the day you can fit into skinny clothes again, you will prefer a newer, more updated wardrobe choice than the old skinny clothes that are the style of a decade ago.)
You will have to say "goodbye" to socks without mates undergarments that have holes in them, and pants that lost their shape. But recognize that if you have not worn these things in a full year, you will most likely never wear them. Let them monopolize valuable real estate in someone ELSE's closet! You can use the space in your closet to see the remaining clothing more clearly, organize yourself and ... well, fill it up.
I mean, if you threw away your formerly favorite white sweater because it had a stain on it and you couldn't wear it for the past year, but you really love having a white sweater and consider it as a staple in your closet, you now have space to bring in a new, WEAR-able white sweater!
And honestly, you will never know how great it feels to drive to the Salvation Army with a trunkload of stuff that used to clutter up your closet, until you've done it once. After that, you'll be hooked.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Adoption
Wayne & I have this feeling that we are not quite finished with parenting. For what it's worth, his own children choose not to soak in the opportunities that our parenting could provide. Their birth mother, Wayne's ex, has given them some information about how to be an adult, that conflicts with the information we've given to them. I'm astounded at the things they come up with from time to time, more astounded by the stuff they've come up with after a recent visit from her, but I've learned to live with the fact that they will always think we're pretty stupid and boring for thinking that a J-O-B is an important thing, and a TRIP TO EUROPE is something that comes after years of working, planning and saving up for it. We will never convince them that the summer before a last year of college is NOT their last chance for fun in life before the drudgery starts, but...
We hope they will eventually all be happily employed, and that the drudgery they anticipate will not be as bad as they fear. At this point, we have more energy to provide information than they have willingness to take.
So what does a parent do when they have more parenting in them than children available? They consider adoption. Well, not all do, some just consider waiting for the opportunity to be a grandparent, but we think grandparenting is the proper moment to spoil a child, and we hope that our older children will be launched, at least further than they are at the moment, before grandchildren arrive.
Before I met Wayne, I was considering adoption as a single parent, and several years ago, when I mentioned it to him, he thought it was nutty, until I mentioned that I had no intention of starting from scratch, at day one. I do NOT want to adopt an infant. I am selfish enough that I want to be able to retire someday. And I would like to have the kids finished with college before social security sets in... or at least close to finished. I don't want to be attending undergraduate graduation parties at age 75! Once he hear that, and realized how many young people are stranded without families at very vulnerable ages, he decided that it was a good idea.
We started with foster care, and got a home study for foster-adoption. With the groups of kids (some sibling groups) that have come through our house, we've developed a feel for how to manage certain issues with children who have come from a chaotic environment. If normal parents need to be pretty organized in order to maintain a sense of security in their household, then foster parents need to be extremely organized. Certain forms of discipline are not permitted... frankly, forms of discipline that I had never considered are on the "unpermitted" list, so that's not much of a problem, but when you see the "unpermitted" list, you start to think... so.. if not that, then HOW?...
In most cases, anticipating the issues and resolving them before they become issues is a big tactic. First, it's tough for kids to just take whatever shows up on their plate at dinner time. It's a whole lot easier if they have time to anticipate and think through the dinner plans. So we have a basic plan for every week. Tacos on Tuesdays, for example, and Pizza on Fridays. When we're just on our own, we are a little loose about the schedule But if we have kids in the house, we post the schedule on a calendar and teach it to them. Knowing what's going to be on the plate solves a ton of tantrums when it's not the mac & cheese that they were hoping for.
Another food-related rule... we have the kids help us prepare the vegetables. Usually in the form of a salad. Since vegetables tend to be a challenging thing for children to eat, we get their hands involved in the making of it. They get to taste the dressings and put a few nuts or raisins on the lettuce. They get to taste the little popcorn tomatoes and feel how they pop in their mouth, and choose whether to put them on the salad or maybe try the on the side with some dressing to dip in. We find that if they help make the salads and we all eat it around the breakfast bar while we're cooking up the rest of the dinner, they get a whole lot more vegetables into their tummies before they even know what hit them!
And then dessert only happens after they've eaten enough of what is on their plate. They don't need to save space for dessert, they can have it an hour after dinner, but they don't get dessert until they have eaten at least an appropriate amount of the nutritious dinner that we have made. Whether or not they are allowed to eat the sweets is entirely their choice. If they whine that they're hungry, they can finish their dinner (we can warm it up for them), and if they whine that they want their dessert, we tell them that they can have dessert as soon as dinner is finished. It's as simple as that, and while it does not entirely cut out all whining, we have effectively cut down on it by a giant step. Given that the kids we get in our house are children who have been raised on diets that are often VERY MUCH NOT LIKE what we usually eat. Maybe they eat potatoes for every meal, or McDonald's happy meals 7 dinners a week... or mac & cheese as a staple. The fact that they will not get exactly what their chaotic previous home gave them, makes mealtime difficult from the start, so every little step we can make in helping the kids understand and be more comfortable and willing to eat and participate, the better.
A clutter rule... anything not put away properly (after warnings) goes to jail. It simply disappears. If they ask for it, then they don't get it back until 24 hours passes. This works well for a favorite jacket that didn't get hung up, or a toy they were playing with and didn't put away. If they let it drop where it landed and did not put it away despite my reminders, it will disappear. After they ask if I know where it is, I tell them that it's went to our jail for being out of place, and now that they're noticed it and want it back, they need to wait until the next day. "This time tomorrow, you can have it back." It becomes a little game. But they know they'll get it back and can anticipate the fun of having it again. And we can discuss where it lives so that they won't it again.
Yes, this kind of parenting is more intensive, requires more work, more listening to whining... cooking for ourselves, making whatever we have ingredients for, putting it on the table without having to supervise them doing the cooking... yelling about stuff that's not put away or putting it away to avoid the yelling... it all makes the chores easier to accomplish, but these things do not teach the children how to manage things... how to eat what is fixed for them by someone who is not a short-order cook... how to clean up after themselves.
The theory is that if you do this enough, they'll eventually require less supervision. The reality is that as they learn these lessons, there are others that we need to impart, other labor-intensive parenting tasks that will help the kids get a step closer towards adulthood, independence, success. If we do it right, it's labor intensive. But we've done it with a few kids so far, in relatively short term (1-3 months long), and so far it's successful. No need to do all the "no-nos" when you parent like this. No withholding of food or sending them to bed without their dinner, if you avoid the food struggle before it starts, you know?
We hope they will eventually all be happily employed, and that the drudgery they anticipate will not be as bad as they fear. At this point, we have more energy to provide information than they have willingness to take.
So what does a parent do when they have more parenting in them than children available? They consider adoption. Well, not all do, some just consider waiting for the opportunity to be a grandparent, but we think grandparenting is the proper moment to spoil a child, and we hope that our older children will be launched, at least further than they are at the moment, before grandchildren arrive.
Before I met Wayne, I was considering adoption as a single parent, and several years ago, when I mentioned it to him, he thought it was nutty, until I mentioned that I had no intention of starting from scratch, at day one. I do NOT want to adopt an infant. I am selfish enough that I want to be able to retire someday. And I would like to have the kids finished with college before social security sets in... or at least close to finished. I don't want to be attending undergraduate graduation parties at age 75! Once he hear that, and realized how many young people are stranded without families at very vulnerable ages, he decided that it was a good idea.
We started with foster care, and got a home study for foster-adoption. With the groups of kids (some sibling groups) that have come through our house, we've developed a feel for how to manage certain issues with children who have come from a chaotic environment. If normal parents need to be pretty organized in order to maintain a sense of security in their household, then foster parents need to be extremely organized. Certain forms of discipline are not permitted... frankly, forms of discipline that I had never considered are on the "unpermitted" list, so that's not much of a problem, but when you see the "unpermitted" list, you start to think... so.. if not that, then HOW?...
In most cases, anticipating the issues and resolving them before they become issues is a big tactic. First, it's tough for kids to just take whatever shows up on their plate at dinner time. It's a whole lot easier if they have time to anticipate and think through the dinner plans. So we have a basic plan for every week. Tacos on Tuesdays, for example, and Pizza on Fridays. When we're just on our own, we are a little loose about the schedule But if we have kids in the house, we post the schedule on a calendar and teach it to them. Knowing what's going to be on the plate solves a ton of tantrums when it's not the mac & cheese that they were hoping for.
Another food-related rule... we have the kids help us prepare the vegetables. Usually in the form of a salad. Since vegetables tend to be a challenging thing for children to eat, we get their hands involved in the making of it. They get to taste the dressings and put a few nuts or raisins on the lettuce. They get to taste the little popcorn tomatoes and feel how they pop in their mouth, and choose whether to put them on the salad or maybe try the on the side with some dressing to dip in. We find that if they help make the salads and we all eat it around the breakfast bar while we're cooking up the rest of the dinner, they get a whole lot more vegetables into their tummies before they even know what hit them!
And then dessert only happens after they've eaten enough of what is on their plate. They don't need to save space for dessert, they can have it an hour after dinner, but they don't get dessert until they have eaten at least an appropriate amount of the nutritious dinner that we have made. Whether or not they are allowed to eat the sweets is entirely their choice. If they whine that they're hungry, they can finish their dinner (we can warm it up for them), and if they whine that they want their dessert, we tell them that they can have dessert as soon as dinner is finished. It's as simple as that, and while it does not entirely cut out all whining, we have effectively cut down on it by a giant step. Given that the kids we get in our house are children who have been raised on diets that are often VERY MUCH NOT LIKE what we usually eat. Maybe they eat potatoes for every meal, or McDonald's happy meals 7 dinners a week... or mac & cheese as a staple. The fact that they will not get exactly what their chaotic previous home gave them, makes mealtime difficult from the start, so every little step we can make in helping the kids understand and be more comfortable and willing to eat and participate, the better.
A clutter rule... anything not put away properly (after warnings) goes to jail. It simply disappears. If they ask for it, then they don't get it back until 24 hours passes. This works well for a favorite jacket that didn't get hung up, or a toy they were playing with and didn't put away. If they let it drop where it landed and did not put it away despite my reminders, it will disappear. After they ask if I know where it is, I tell them that it's went to our jail for being out of place, and now that they're noticed it and want it back, they need to wait until the next day. "This time tomorrow, you can have it back." It becomes a little game. But they know they'll get it back and can anticipate the fun of having it again. And we can discuss where it lives so that they won't it again.
Yes, this kind of parenting is more intensive, requires more work, more listening to whining... cooking for ourselves, making whatever we have ingredients for, putting it on the table without having to supervise them doing the cooking... yelling about stuff that's not put away or putting it away to avoid the yelling... it all makes the chores easier to accomplish, but these things do not teach the children how to manage things... how to eat what is fixed for them by someone who is not a short-order cook... how to clean up after themselves.
The theory is that if you do this enough, they'll eventually require less supervision. The reality is that as they learn these lessons, there are others that we need to impart, other labor-intensive parenting tasks that will help the kids get a step closer towards adulthood, independence, success. If we do it right, it's labor intensive. But we've done it with a few kids so far, in relatively short term (1-3 months long), and so far it's successful. No need to do all the "no-nos" when you parent like this. No withholding of food or sending them to bed without their dinner, if you avoid the food struggle before it starts, you know?
dogs & kids ... not so different
I just read an article in Modern Dog magazine about how there are groups of therapy dogs who help children learn about bullying. In general, the dog and handler will spend an hour a day for a week in a class, where the handler will teach the children about how to be a good pet owner. They use this opportunity to teach the children any number of interesting concepts. In this case, mostly concepts about bullying. How to recognize it, how bullies often start by being mean to pets or other animals, how bullies behave and how bullying can be stopped. It is easy and natural for a child to feel empathy & become protective of an animal, some will recognize that they have been bullies, others recognize that they have been bullied. And others have watched bullying and not known what to do. This program helps them learn how to intervene, and to choose to intervene in the first place.
Apparently, the program can work miracles. I believe it.
I have used dogs to teach another issue... about our internal energies, and our food needs, and our socialization and our need for discipline and to know our place in life.
Dogs need to be fed healthy food. They will eat what you give them, and if you give them junk, you will end up with an unhealthy dog.
Dogs need a certain amount of exercise. Inertia is not natural. We train ourselves and dogs to learn to sit quietly, but naturally, both people and dogs have a certain amount of energy that they want to work out. Learning to self-regulate behavior without taking the opportunity to work off this natural energy, is counterproductive. We end up feeling stressed, distracted, and even physically uncomfortable. We self-medicate with foods that cause sluggishness, and we wonder why our society has started being more pudgy than healthy.
If we do not give our dogs enough opportunity to work off their energy, we end up with a chewy, yippy dog. The same happens with children... oh, you're right, they probably won't chew up your shoes if you don't take them for a morning walk, but ... just try this experiment. For one week after school, bring them home, sit them down, make them do their homework immediately and don't let them bounce around. You'll see distracted, frustrated children whose adrenaline is not being worked off... the next week, bring them home from school and have them do 45 minutes of physical activity, then give them 15 minutes to calm down, before they sit down and do their homework... I'll BET you see less of the chewy-puppy-like behavior and a lot more calmness.
But start also looking at the other aspects of responsible dog ownership and you'll see more similarities. Dogs need to be properly socialized. So do humans. Dogs need to have consistent, easy-to understand rules with many reminders... so do young humans. Dogs respond better to positive behavior controls rather than physical punishment... don't be surprised to hear that humans ALSO respond better to positive behavior controls.
My dog knows that treats come to good puppies, and pups who jump up on visitors do not get treats. Pups only get treats if they sit properly and politely. (oh yeah, and treats for her are less about food and more about praise, attention, or the opportunity to play fetch).
And children in my house know that if they want to watch TV or use any electronic device, they need to finish their homework first. If they want to fuss & delay over the homework, the ability to watch TV or play video games will be delayed until they have finished their work first.
It's not a perfect system, but it's amazingly effective, and all done without anyone ever having to worry about time out, or spanking, or yelling... Like I said, it's not perfect. I've had a dog bark at me because I'm not throwing the Frisbee fast enough... or a child yell because she really does not feel like doing her homework right now... but there is always a choice. I'll throw the Frisbee after you stop barking, we'll turn on the TV once the homework is finished... you can keep barking or yelling or delaying as long as you want. I'm fine with that. When you're ready, we can get on with the fun.
Of course, if the dog is too full of barking or the child is too full of bouncing, maybe I've not given them enough activity, and so if I want to encourage them to succeed, I need to re-think my organization. Make sure they've worked off their friskies before I expect them to be able to sit quietly... it's not rocket science.
Apparently, the program can work miracles. I believe it.
I have used dogs to teach another issue... about our internal energies, and our food needs, and our socialization and our need for discipline and to know our place in life.
Dogs need to be fed healthy food. They will eat what you give them, and if you give them junk, you will end up with an unhealthy dog.
Dogs need a certain amount of exercise. Inertia is not natural. We train ourselves and dogs to learn to sit quietly, but naturally, both people and dogs have a certain amount of energy that they want to work out. Learning to self-regulate behavior without taking the opportunity to work off this natural energy, is counterproductive. We end up feeling stressed, distracted, and even physically uncomfortable. We self-medicate with foods that cause sluggishness, and we wonder why our society has started being more pudgy than healthy.
If we do not give our dogs enough opportunity to work off their energy, we end up with a chewy, yippy dog. The same happens with children... oh, you're right, they probably won't chew up your shoes if you don't take them for a morning walk, but ... just try this experiment. For one week after school, bring them home, sit them down, make them do their homework immediately and don't let them bounce around. You'll see distracted, frustrated children whose adrenaline is not being worked off... the next week, bring them home from school and have them do 45 minutes of physical activity, then give them 15 minutes to calm down, before they sit down and do their homework... I'll BET you see less of the chewy-puppy-like behavior and a lot more calmness.
But start also looking at the other aspects of responsible dog ownership and you'll see more similarities. Dogs need to be properly socialized. So do humans. Dogs need to have consistent, easy-to understand rules with many reminders... so do young humans. Dogs respond better to positive behavior controls rather than physical punishment... don't be surprised to hear that humans ALSO respond better to positive behavior controls.
My dog knows that treats come to good puppies, and pups who jump up on visitors do not get treats. Pups only get treats if they sit properly and politely. (oh yeah, and treats for her are less about food and more about praise, attention, or the opportunity to play fetch).
And children in my house know that if they want to watch TV or use any electronic device, they need to finish their homework first. If they want to fuss & delay over the homework, the ability to watch TV or play video games will be delayed until they have finished their work first.
It's not a perfect system, but it's amazingly effective, and all done without anyone ever having to worry about time out, or spanking, or yelling... Like I said, it's not perfect. I've had a dog bark at me because I'm not throwing the Frisbee fast enough... or a child yell because she really does not feel like doing her homework right now... but there is always a choice. I'll throw the Frisbee after you stop barking, we'll turn on the TV once the homework is finished... you can keep barking or yelling or delaying as long as you want. I'm fine with that. When you're ready, we can get on with the fun.
Of course, if the dog is too full of barking or the child is too full of bouncing, maybe I've not given them enough activity, and so if I want to encourage them to succeed, I need to re-think my organization. Make sure they've worked off their friskies before I expect them to be able to sit quietly... it's not rocket science.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
My first quilt
Surely there as a way to DIY something that would not look calico, ruffled, shabby/country chic and old-fashioned... I thought a bedspread would be a good start.
Remember, this was before the internet. FInding a pattern required a trip to the library or bookstore. And I knew of no quilting groups for younger women (as I was at the time). I just knew I wanted something different from the old-fashioned, Americana type quilt that would be at home in a country cozy house. I wanted urban... or beachy... not farmhouse. So I stumbled upon the tumbling blocks pattern and realized that it could be altered to give a little modern twist. Use some brighter fabrics. In this case, a range from cobalt, to teal to purple...
I honestly don't remember how I did the quilt top. People I've met recently ask if I had trouble with all the Y seams... apparently, that's not something that quilters look forward to... I don't remember it being a big problem for me. The problem was putting it together into a useful object. So I put it aside.
And then, about 25 years later, my Mom died. My Dad spent a few lonely years, and I really, really needed to do something special for him for his next birthday. So last year in late August, I pulled the old quilt top out. It did not have a border, just a bunch of diamond shapes sticking out... in some areas, it was so skee-jawed (mom's term, I think the modern quilting term would be "wonky"), that I didn't think it could be made into a square/rectangular quilt shape. But I powered through it. I pieced a few yards of dark blue, and spray-based it to a fluffy-lofted filling, and then spray basted the top to it. It had (and still has) giant folds and wrinkles in it. But that was the only way to get it semi-straight. I rolled the diamond sides over to the back side, so if you look at the back, it's got a strange, rolled hem with a pattern to it... well, "pattern" would be a misnomer... variegated colors. I didn't cut off any diamond tips, just folded them under. Probably a mistake, but it made for a kind of undulating and VERY home-made-y finish to it. Then I stitched in the ditch.
With my home sewing machine, this was a challenge... a fluffy lofted quilt pushing through the normal sized arm... SOOOO... I chose to start in kind of a spiral, stitching all the ditches that were outside and easy to reach, turning as I found a corner...
That did pretty good. It got me through about 1/3 of the quilt on each side, and a little from the top & bottom... the middle 1/3 of the quilt was the only part that was tough to quilt. But Dad's October 6th, 85th birthday was looming and I had a deadline. On October 3, 2012, I finished the quilt!
more than 25 years in the making. I started it just after graduate school, between 1983 and 1985... and now it was done.
My Dad, who was has become my idea of the best type of "cool", now has it. He's slowed down, so he needs the extra warmth. But the modern style fits his style. Although he grew up in a very rural community and had not a lot of family money, he worked hard and got himself through medical school. He went to Korea at about the time period referenced in M*A*S*H, and worked in an Evac unit. He returned to Ft. Meade and met my mother, who was working as head of the secretarial pool in the Department of the Navy at the Pentagon (the part of the pentagon that was victim of the 9-11 attacks 40+ years after she left it). They married and moved to live in New York. Mom worked for the CIA and Dad was a resident in pathology at the hospital across the street. They lived in a very urban way, living in a building that everyone who was there knew was condemned, and as soon as all the residents could be ousted, it would be demolished. They were the picture of the first "yuppies"... hosting martini parties and living the best young-adult life available to a dual income professional couple. When they had me, they chose the most modern way of child-birth, the natural method... Dad, the newly minted pathologist working in a research hospital, was aware of all the newest research, and he decided that all the epidurals and such were probably not a good idea.
After I arrived, they moved to "the country", a gated community in Rockaway beach. We lived on the beach across from our church. I probably made sandcastles with some of the boys who, 40 years later, were victim of the 9-11 attacks on the WTC. That very Catholic, very Irish neighborhood was hard hit, considering the number of them who had chosen careers in law enforcement and firefighting. But 50 years ago, before our country lost it's innocence, my Daddy was still a smoker. Mom, with her black hair and bright blue eyes looked like a young Liz Taylor... and Dad looked like... well, there's one photo of him leaning against his car at the beach. I'm playing in the sand at his feet, and he has a cigarette pack rolled up in his t-shirt. He looked like the picture of James Dean, a Rebel without a cause.... the ultimate of "cool". Given that they maintained their own moral compasses and did not do the heavy drinking, drugging, and cheating that the hipster generation might have done, they really were "cool". Doing the part of the hip stuff that we look at old movies and long for... the super-cool martini parties, the fondue parties, etc... but missing the part of that generation's behavior that caused many of them to get old before their times.
These days, he feels cold more often than he exudes cool... so the quilt is a good fit.
I held it in the back of my mind that this quilt was not good enough for him, but better to give it than to hold it back and wait. We don't have time to wait, these days. But I still worried. And then the miracle of modern technology came to my rescue. I was browsing and found a quilter's guild. Actually, I found LOTS of quilters' guilds. So I found one that fit my schedule and went, and then joined. And I talked to people, heard their stories, saw how perfect their quilts were, and asked some questions... And I explained how intensely IMPERFECT this first quilt was. And they helped me let go of it. THe imperfections...
I guess the quilters who finish their projects are the ones who don't get mired in worry about the imperfections. Maybe I'll tell that to my artistic niece, who seems to have a hard time finishing her projects... that finishing it is more important than perfecting it. What a great lesson to learn....
... lesson learned... 25+ years later
Thursday, March 14, 2013
lip gloss
A few months ago I saw a Pinterest on lip gloss. I looked it up and saw that several people have used the same recipe. Problem is, the recipe as written, results in gritty lip gloss. More appropriate for a lip scrub. And while lip scrub of that sort is wonderful to help reduce dry flakes, it is not the type of gloss that you'd love to wear and would feel... well... KISS-able.
The basic recipe is to take drink mix like crystal lite or Koolaid, and stir it into petroleum jelly (such as Vaseline). One of the recipes announced that you just have to stir it longer, but I tried it, and it does not work.
One of my biggest complaints about recipes in some networks (and on some internet sources, and in some books) have not been tested. I had wondered about this for years, and then I saw "Julie, Julia", where they mentioned that a specific cookbook of Julia Child's era had not been tested. The recipes were made up by what sounded good, but without regard to the chemistry of the process. For example, there may have been no explanation that the reason pasta water needs salt is that this is the only opportunity to season the pasta from the inside, where it needs it. And when you boil the pasta in salt and it gives off its gluten, it makes a liquid that is perfect for the task of giving sauces the proper texture. Save some of the pasta water and you've got the perfect additive to cheese to form the perfect alfredo, for example.
Watching that movie made me realize that the problem with many of the ideas out there that people have, for food as well as home improvement projects, as well as smaller craft projects such as I am describing here, is that they were created without regard to whether or not they really work.
Which is why I found myself wondering whether I could figure out how to mix a watery drink mix with the crystals dissolved, into a hard oil like Vaseline. I decided to try it out. I took some drink mix, put just enough water in to dissolve the crystals. But it was clearly not going to mix up properly. It didn't work. So I left it on the counter, overnight, rather than washing out the little dish. I was thinking on it.
Miraculously, the next day, the water had mostly evaporated, leaving a sticky, nasty mess in the little dish. A mess that would have been a pain to wash... like syrup, not like a drink. BUT... WAIT... it's no longer watery. Maybe...
I tried mixing in a little Vaseline. Wow. Magic. LIP GLOSS. No crystals, no strange problems with water refusing to mix with oil...
So, here's the formula. Get a small dish, put drink crystals in it that are colored in the palette you choose (pink lemonade may yield pink... pomegranate may yield darker rose, cherry will be red, etc.) Put a few drops of water in until it's all dissolved, and then let it wait. Once the mixture is sticky and no longer watery, mix it with Vaseline. Then fill a lip gloss pot (available at craft stores, or in kits for air travel liquid containers), and enjoy. The flavor is more enjoyable than most lip glosses, so be careful, you will be tempted to re-apply more frequently through the day.
My next experiment will be to use coconut oil instead of Vaseline. The difference is that coconut oil is an opaque white color when room temperature, more the texture of a lipstick, and may hold the color better. It will be less like gloss and more like lipstick. IF this works.
Stay tuned, I'll let you know the results of that experiment when I do it. But first, I need to finish using my wonderful new lip gloss!
Oh, and P.S. This is a great project to do with your teen girls. It tastes great, and supplies just a tiny bit of color to the lips, just like the glosses that are made for tweens, but much, MUCH less expensive and much more fun!
The basic recipe is to take drink mix like crystal lite or Koolaid, and stir it into petroleum jelly (such as Vaseline). One of the recipes announced that you just have to stir it longer, but I tried it, and it does not work.
One of my biggest complaints about recipes in some networks (and on some internet sources, and in some books) have not been tested. I had wondered about this for years, and then I saw "Julie, Julia", where they mentioned that a specific cookbook of Julia Child's era had not been tested. The recipes were made up by what sounded good, but without regard to the chemistry of the process. For example, there may have been no explanation that the reason pasta water needs salt is that this is the only opportunity to season the pasta from the inside, where it needs it. And when you boil the pasta in salt and it gives off its gluten, it makes a liquid that is perfect for the task of giving sauces the proper texture. Save some of the pasta water and you've got the perfect additive to cheese to form the perfect alfredo, for example.
Watching that movie made me realize that the problem with many of the ideas out there that people have, for food as well as home improvement projects, as well as smaller craft projects such as I am describing here, is that they were created without regard to whether or not they really work.
Which is why I found myself wondering whether I could figure out how to mix a watery drink mix with the crystals dissolved, into a hard oil like Vaseline. I decided to try it out. I took some drink mix, put just enough water in to dissolve the crystals. But it was clearly not going to mix up properly. It didn't work. So I left it on the counter, overnight, rather than washing out the little dish. I was thinking on it.
Miraculously, the next day, the water had mostly evaporated, leaving a sticky, nasty mess in the little dish. A mess that would have been a pain to wash... like syrup, not like a drink. BUT... WAIT... it's no longer watery. Maybe...
I tried mixing in a little Vaseline. Wow. Magic. LIP GLOSS. No crystals, no strange problems with water refusing to mix with oil...
So, here's the formula. Get a small dish, put drink crystals in it that are colored in the palette you choose (pink lemonade may yield pink... pomegranate may yield darker rose, cherry will be red, etc.) Put a few drops of water in until it's all dissolved, and then let it wait. Once the mixture is sticky and no longer watery, mix it with Vaseline. Then fill a lip gloss pot (available at craft stores, or in kits for air travel liquid containers), and enjoy. The flavor is more enjoyable than most lip glosses, so be careful, you will be tempted to re-apply more frequently through the day.
My next experiment will be to use coconut oil instead of Vaseline. The difference is that coconut oil is an opaque white color when room temperature, more the texture of a lipstick, and may hold the color better. It will be less like gloss and more like lipstick. IF this works.
Stay tuned, I'll let you know the results of that experiment when I do it. But first, I need to finish using my wonderful new lip gloss!
Oh, and P.S. This is a great project to do with your teen girls. It tastes great, and supplies just a tiny bit of color to the lips, just like the glosses that are made for tweens, but much, MUCH less expensive and much more fun!
how to help your kids
I just heard the most astute saying EVER, about raising kids to be a success.
If you want to help your kids, give them nothing. If you want to ruin your kids, give them everything.
It should go without saying, but too many people of my generation have flipped their priorities, and have ruined the kids. There are lots of excuses... such as feeling guilt for not spending as much time with the kids, or wanting to give the kids everything that Mom & Dad didn't have while growing up... perfectly noble causes, despite being misguided. Parents with those excuses (or similar ones) can be helped. If they think about this, recognize their errors, and work at it, they can change.
It's not easy, you've got to live with some whining from children who are used to getting everything, who have been taught to have self-esteem without achievement, to have pride without having worked for anything to be proud of... and that everyone gets a trophy, whether they win or lose. There have been no "losers" in their teams, schools or clubs, so the introduction to the rejection of the adult world will be harder on them. If you can, introduce them early, to the fact that you don't ALWAYS get a trophy, that you don't ALWAYS get what you want, that unconditional love does not mean unlimited spending. If you have bought into the theory that everyone should be a winner and "learning to lose" involves getting a crown at the end of the tournament even though you did not make as many points as the winner, then it's going to be hard to pull back and help your kids learn these harder lessons, but you must. If they do not learn how to acknowledge a mistake and learn from it, rather than ignore it and be proud of themselves for simply being themselves, then they will not succeed in our world. If you raise your children to take whatever is given without ever having to work for it, or to give back, then you are raising future welfare mothers.
But if you understand this principle, then you can succeed at being a parent. Do for yourself, what you need to help them learn to do. Acknowledge that you may have made a mistake, that you need to change, and that it will not be easy. Then set some limits and guidelines for yourself and work at it. It might be hard work, and it's not fair that you have to work this hard, to endure your children's cries of "unfair", when you have just come home from a 9 hour workday and 2 hours of commute time... you're exhausted, barely had time to shop for dinner, and now have kids with homework and a preference for plopping in front of the TV and cellphone rather than finishing the homework... they want you to pick up McDonald's rather than cook a balanced meal. It's very easy to let them do as they want, and then find ways to excuse it... look for loopholes for turning in the homework late, or do it for them, or ... well, whatever... rather than listen to their complaints. But that is the job you took on when you decided to become a parent, and it's not supposed to be easy.
Luckily, the rewards for a job well done will be plentiful, when the time comes.
With children, you need to learn the value of deferred gratification. And to the extent that you have learned it, you must also teach it. It is well worth the effort.
There is a different kind of parent, the type whose excuse for giving everything to the kids is less about the kids and more about themselves, more particularly, about their battle with their co-parent. The type of giving that is about bribing the kids to like you more than your co-parent. For parents who are busily telling the kids, "life would be better with me because I can afford more fun for you", or, "your other parent WOULD pay for you to have fun if they loved you enough... but since they don't, I will pay for it... it may put me in the poorhouse, but I'll give you EVERYTHING" (and believe me, as a divorce lawyer, I'm sorry to say I learned that this is not as rare as it should be)... they are not only messing up the kids' relationships with the other parent, they are messing up the kid's relationship with money, and the kids' understanding of what it takes to work to get something.
Those parents, with that excuse for giving everything to the kids, are probably never going to really understand the depth of how big a mess they are making. The infamous problem of children of divorce is undoubtedly in large part caused by parents who are continuing their personal battles by raising the children like this.
This type of parent, unfortunately, does not have the instinct that tells them how to protect the kids from their own inappropriate feelings. With luck, they have simply been in too much pain to recognize this. With luck, for the sake of their kids, they will be able to open up their minds to the possibility that maybe they have made a mistake, and then be able to correct it. For many, it will take therapy.
This type of parenting, the RIGHT type of parenting, that will give your kids the tools they need to work, is humble. It's less about the price of being a mother, the motherly instinct, and mother's day,... it's less about being a martyr... less about being a soccer mom, less about being praised for being motherly, and more about being a traditional, self-sacrificing mother. The type of mother who supports the child and is willing to let them fall so they will learn better to walk. Who endures their kids' claims that they are not cool, that they are mean... because Mom knows that being mean and un-cool is what it takes to get the homework done and keep the inappropriate media options away from the kids' eyes. The RIGHT type of parenting is learning how to maintain the connection between your co-parent and the child, even if you are estranged from the co-parent. And if you are the parent who does not get to have the child overnight at least half the time, it's about learning how to maintain the connection without resorting to tricks like giving the kids expensive gifts.
When you are separated as co-parents, learning how to give your child "nothing", (and thereby, giving the child the experience they need to get themselves EVERYTHING), involves learning how to be a cooperative co-parent rather than a competitive co-parent. Because in a competition, the co-parent who wins will be the one who spends more. And that, ultimately, is what spoils the child.
Spoil your child with attention, with closeness, with letting them work side-by-side with you in the yard or kitchen. Spoil your child with your time. Spoil the child with your emotional toughness. Be impervious to their begging for random stuff. But don't spoil them with the stuff. PLEASE. The best thing you can do for your home economy, is to exercise extreme caution when it comes to spending on the children.
If you want to help your kids, give them nothing. If you want to ruin your kids, give them everything.
It should go without saying, but too many people of my generation have flipped their priorities, and have ruined the kids. There are lots of excuses... such as feeling guilt for not spending as much time with the kids, or wanting to give the kids everything that Mom & Dad didn't have while growing up... perfectly noble causes, despite being misguided. Parents with those excuses (or similar ones) can be helped. If they think about this, recognize their errors, and work at it, they can change.
It's not easy, you've got to live with some whining from children who are used to getting everything, who have been taught to have self-esteem without achievement, to have pride without having worked for anything to be proud of... and that everyone gets a trophy, whether they win or lose. There have been no "losers" in their teams, schools or clubs, so the introduction to the rejection of the adult world will be harder on them. If you can, introduce them early, to the fact that you don't ALWAYS get a trophy, that you don't ALWAYS get what you want, that unconditional love does not mean unlimited spending. If you have bought into the theory that everyone should be a winner and "learning to lose" involves getting a crown at the end of the tournament even though you did not make as many points as the winner, then it's going to be hard to pull back and help your kids learn these harder lessons, but you must. If they do not learn how to acknowledge a mistake and learn from it, rather than ignore it and be proud of themselves for simply being themselves, then they will not succeed in our world. If you raise your children to take whatever is given without ever having to work for it, or to give back, then you are raising future welfare mothers.
But if you understand this principle, then you can succeed at being a parent. Do for yourself, what you need to help them learn to do. Acknowledge that you may have made a mistake, that you need to change, and that it will not be easy. Then set some limits and guidelines for yourself and work at it. It might be hard work, and it's not fair that you have to work this hard, to endure your children's cries of "unfair", when you have just come home from a 9 hour workday and 2 hours of commute time... you're exhausted, barely had time to shop for dinner, and now have kids with homework and a preference for plopping in front of the TV and cellphone rather than finishing the homework... they want you to pick up McDonald's rather than cook a balanced meal. It's very easy to let them do as they want, and then find ways to excuse it... look for loopholes for turning in the homework late, or do it for them, or ... well, whatever... rather than listen to their complaints. But that is the job you took on when you decided to become a parent, and it's not supposed to be easy.
Luckily, the rewards for a job well done will be plentiful, when the time comes.
With children, you need to learn the value of deferred gratification. And to the extent that you have learned it, you must also teach it. It is well worth the effort.
There is a different kind of parent, the type whose excuse for giving everything to the kids is less about the kids and more about themselves, more particularly, about their battle with their co-parent. The type of giving that is about bribing the kids to like you more than your co-parent. For parents who are busily telling the kids, "life would be better with me because I can afford more fun for you", or, "your other parent WOULD pay for you to have fun if they loved you enough... but since they don't, I will pay for it... it may put me in the poorhouse, but I'll give you EVERYTHING" (and believe me, as a divorce lawyer, I'm sorry to say I learned that this is not as rare as it should be)... they are not only messing up the kids' relationships with the other parent, they are messing up the kid's relationship with money, and the kids' understanding of what it takes to work to get something.
Those parents, with that excuse for giving everything to the kids, are probably never going to really understand the depth of how big a mess they are making. The infamous problem of children of divorce is undoubtedly in large part caused by parents who are continuing their personal battles by raising the children like this.
This type of parent, unfortunately, does not have the instinct that tells them how to protect the kids from their own inappropriate feelings. With luck, they have simply been in too much pain to recognize this. With luck, for the sake of their kids, they will be able to open up their minds to the possibility that maybe they have made a mistake, and then be able to correct it. For many, it will take therapy.
This type of parenting, the RIGHT type of parenting, that will give your kids the tools they need to work, is humble. It's less about the price of being a mother, the motherly instinct, and mother's day,... it's less about being a martyr... less about being a soccer mom, less about being praised for being motherly, and more about being a traditional, self-sacrificing mother. The type of mother who supports the child and is willing to let them fall so they will learn better to walk. Who endures their kids' claims that they are not cool, that they are mean... because Mom knows that being mean and un-cool is what it takes to get the homework done and keep the inappropriate media options away from the kids' eyes. The RIGHT type of parenting is learning how to maintain the connection between your co-parent and the child, even if you are estranged from the co-parent. And if you are the parent who does not get to have the child overnight at least half the time, it's about learning how to maintain the connection without resorting to tricks like giving the kids expensive gifts.
When you are separated as co-parents, learning how to give your child "nothing", (and thereby, giving the child the experience they need to get themselves EVERYTHING), involves learning how to be a cooperative co-parent rather than a competitive co-parent. Because in a competition, the co-parent who wins will be the one who spends more. And that, ultimately, is what spoils the child.
Spoil your child with attention, with closeness, with letting them work side-by-side with you in the yard or kitchen. Spoil your child with your time. Spoil the child with your emotional toughness. Be impervious to their begging for random stuff. But don't spoil them with the stuff. PLEASE. The best thing you can do for your home economy, is to exercise extreme caution when it comes to spending on the children.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
homemade lip gloss and lip scrub
In an effort to cut costs, going with cheap make-up is one option. But sometimes the cheap stuff has odd ingredients, changes color, aggravates allergies, etc. And of course, for a girly girl who likes to play with make-up, it's not as much FUN. Flavored lipsticks are less intense if they're the cheap variety, and then there's the whole feeling of "I'm cheapening up on myself", which never feels good.
But what MIGHT feel good is knowing you've got a homemade, (green), healthy, CUSTOM-mixed option.
In the past, I have made my own custom face masques, hair rinses, hair conditioners, and cheek blushers. Those, I will offer later. Today, I present my homemade lip gloss and scrub. All over the internet, I found recipes for a lip gloss. The result was ALWAYS gritty. Some of the recipes even admitted that they were gritty. One offered a remedy to smooth it out... "stir longer". I tried. That does not work.
You see, the recipe generally goes like this. You take petroleum oil such as Vaseline, add a drink powder such as Crystal Light or KoolAid, and voila... lip gloss.
When I made it, it was a lip scrub, and no amount of stirring will fix that. It's as though the people who made up the recipe and passed it around did not bother to test it out, or maybe they were willing to settle for less than the best they could do. I had to take it a step further.
Here's the fix for getting rid of the grit in homemade lip gloss: The night before, put your powder in a small dish. Drop just enough water into it to dissolve the grit. The result should be a little too liquid to even envision mixing with Vaseline. So let it sit overnight. The next morning, you'll find the stuff in the dish has turned gummy. PERFECT. NOW put in a little Vaseline and mix it up. You'll find no need to stir & stir & stir... the granules are already dissolved, the grit is gone, and as long as it has not crystallized again, it will now mix up perfectly.
The taste is yummy. The tint is very faint. Perfect for younger women who might crave the chance to use make up but who you might be a little worried about them taking that step just yet. And, if you use more drink mix powder, you get a stronger color. Less is a fainter color. AND, of course, if your lips are cracked or chapped, and need a little treatment... skip the step where you dissolve the granules.
Clean lip gloss pots can be bought in packs with travel-sized containers, or you can take an old one of your own and clean it out REALLY well. There is nothing more fun than using a lip gloss that you made on your own.
My next experiment will be to use coconut oil. At room temperature, coconut oil is hard, more like lipstick, and white... so maybe it will leave more color on the lips when used? Or less? I know it has nutrients that are good for the skin and lips, so it's worth the try. I'll write another post when I do that. Stay tuned.
But what MIGHT feel good is knowing you've got a homemade, (green), healthy, CUSTOM-mixed option.
In the past, I have made my own custom face masques, hair rinses, hair conditioners, and cheek blushers. Those, I will offer later. Today, I present my homemade lip gloss and scrub. All over the internet, I found recipes for a lip gloss. The result was ALWAYS gritty. Some of the recipes even admitted that they were gritty. One offered a remedy to smooth it out... "stir longer". I tried. That does not work.
You see, the recipe generally goes like this. You take petroleum oil such as Vaseline, add a drink powder such as Crystal Light or KoolAid, and voila... lip gloss.
When I made it, it was a lip scrub, and no amount of stirring will fix that. It's as though the people who made up the recipe and passed it around did not bother to test it out, or maybe they were willing to settle for less than the best they could do. I had to take it a step further.
Here's the fix for getting rid of the grit in homemade lip gloss: The night before, put your powder in a small dish. Drop just enough water into it to dissolve the grit. The result should be a little too liquid to even envision mixing with Vaseline. So let it sit overnight. The next morning, you'll find the stuff in the dish has turned gummy. PERFECT. NOW put in a little Vaseline and mix it up. You'll find no need to stir & stir & stir... the granules are already dissolved, the grit is gone, and as long as it has not crystallized again, it will now mix up perfectly.
The taste is yummy. The tint is very faint. Perfect for younger women who might crave the chance to use make up but who you might be a little worried about them taking that step just yet. And, if you use more drink mix powder, you get a stronger color. Less is a fainter color. AND, of course, if your lips are cracked or chapped, and need a little treatment... skip the step where you dissolve the granules.
Clean lip gloss pots can be bought in packs with travel-sized containers, or you can take an old one of your own and clean it out REALLY well. There is nothing more fun than using a lip gloss that you made on your own.
My next experiment will be to use coconut oil. At room temperature, coconut oil is hard, more like lipstick, and white... so maybe it will leave more color on the lips when used? Or less? I know it has nutrients that are good for the skin and lips, so it's worth the try. I'll write another post when I do that. Stay tuned.
Friday, February 22, 2013
PIZZA
OK, so if you find things to cook at home that are easier than going out, and taste at least as good (if not better), then you'll cook at home more often. A few years ago, we found how to cook pizza so that it's better than what we can get from a restaurant, takeout-or home delivery. I'm not kidding, we've had foster kids who declared it to be the best they'd ever had.
Of course, for the foster kids, helping make their own meal added to the flavor. It's always so much more satisfying when you do something on your own that turns out to be GREAT, right?
So we start with pizza stones. We went to Home Depot and got a couple of stone tiles to use. You don't want a glazed stone for this, the glazing will ruin this. If you can get an unglazed clay tile, like saltillo, then great, but any unglazed stone will do. Get it BIG, you want your whole pizza to fit on it. We got two 12 inch tiles, and they aren't exactly large enough for one 12 inch pizza. We cut the second tile to fit across our oven.
The trick with pizza stones, which I forgot last night, is to get them VERY hot before you put the pizza in to cook. If they are hot, the bottom of your pizza will cook fast, making it crispier. Not having a hot stone in the oven means the bottom of your pizza cooks last. Your toppings may be great, but your crust will be limp or soggy, cooked last (if at all). Having the stone hot is the most important trick to a tasty, firm crust at the center bottom of the pizza!
We use Mamma Mary's thin & crispy 12 inch pizza crusts. One is about the right size for a pizza for 2 adults. Teens, you probably need more than half a thin crust pizza... children, there will be leftovers (cooking leftover pizza in a minute). You start by putting a very thin layer of oil on top of the cold crust, seal it JUST a little from sauce soaking in and making it soggy. And now I'll put in a tiny word for Mamma Mary's crusts. We discovered them a few years ago. This company makes crusts that are reasonably priced, comes with the thin & crispy style we like, do not have excess dough or stray flavors cooked in, so that we can make it what we want. AND they keep on the pantry shelf for MONTHS, till we're ready to use them. They come two (or more) to a package and the package contains a separate baggie to put your leftover into so you can keep it in the fridge for the next time you use it.
We made tomato sauce from our garden last summer, but sometimes it's not as thick as we want. I mix some of the homemade tomato sauce with tomato paste to thicken it up. The alternative is to use canned tomato sauce (keep a tupperware container available for leftovers). Add some basil or oregano, and little bits of garlic or garlic powder, to give it a little oomph, if you've used canned tomatoes. If you make your own tomato sauce with your own spices, whatever you choose to put in your basic sauce is fine for pizzas. The only problem seems to be the texture. Thin is fine for pasta, but for pizza, you want a tomato sauce with a little body to it!
Slices of tomato are fun, too... and can be really cool if you're doing a specialty pizza like one that has feta or ricotta, apples or pears, walnuts... all those cute toppings that you find at a chic and adult pizza place... but today we're looking for reasons not to get take-out, so we're going to work with the usual take-out toppings... not the pears & ricotta...
Cheese is always an issue. We put the tomato sauce on first, then any veggies... we saute the veggies a little to soften them up and pull out any sweetness we can get from them, and put them on the 'za before we put on the cheese. We use part skim cheese or full fat. Anything less fat than "part skim", and it does not melt or bubble up properly.
The biggest mistake people make with cheese on pizza is that they put on too much. It really does not require a lot of cheese to make a pizza great. Too much and the pizza will not crisp up right, it will melt but not get those wonderful little brown bubbles, the toppings will be smothered. EVERY time I think I've not got enough cheese left to make a pizza, and I put one together anyways and hope for the best, it turns out to have been the PERFECT amount of cheese, creating a bubbly, thin layer that browns up nicely.
And with meat... if you're using sausage or burger, please, PLEASE brown it first in a pan, sweating out as much of the fat as you can, before you put it on top of all that cheese. If you're using pepperoni, it seems to not leave as many little puddles of fat on a pizza cooked the way we do (with the stones, and not too much cheese), but sausage can REALLY produce too many puddles of boiling oil on your pizza if you don't take off some of the fat first by giving it a little swirl in the browning pan. Interestingly, people make a mistake of putting on too much cheese, they make a mistake of putting on too LITTLE toppings. Remember that if you have a slice of pepperoni that's about an inch & a half around when you put it on, it will shrink during cooking. If you put the pepperonis on so they look like you want the pizza to look when you're finished, it'll be clearly too few pieces. Generally, it works best if you put the pepperonis in an overlapping pattern... start from the center and just overlap as they go out. Same goes for thin slices of ham or any other type of meat that will shrink up as it cooks.
Let the meat be on top, so it cooks fully and crisps up nicely. Assuming you've not overloaded the pizza with toppings, and pre-heated the stones till they're super-hot, the cooking time is about 10-15 minutes... depending upon how crisp you want it. Around here, we like it a little crunchy at the edges.
For the thin crust pizza, take the toppings ALL the way out to the edge. For a chewier crust, choose the thicker crust, which has a slightly larger edge. EVEN if you're used to ordering the chewier crust from your take-out place, TRY the thin crust for the DIY pizza. I suspect you'll like it better than anything you can buy in a restaurant or take-out. When you're making a pizza for home, and do it right, and the toppings are on properly and the taste is good, suddenly you're less interested in wasting perfectly good crust by not putting toppings on it! If you want something to dip, make a bread stick, you know?
And most importantly, this one is great for the kiddos to get involved. They love getting their hands oily by putting a tablespoon worth of oil on the crust and spreading it around... they like stealing random pieces of pepperoni. They learn to appreciate veggies like Onions and bell peppers if they help in sauteing and putting them on the tomato sauce. And maybe more importantly, they learn that too much cheese is not only high fat and unhealthy, but messes up the pizza by making it harder to get that good, crispy crunch that everyone seems to like so well...
In our house, except during Lent, Friday night is Pizza night... and it's a dinner that EVERYONE looks forward to... a great punctuation for a good workweek, and a great start to the weekend!
Of course, for the foster kids, helping make their own meal added to the flavor. It's always so much more satisfying when you do something on your own that turns out to be GREAT, right?
So we start with pizza stones. We went to Home Depot and got a couple of stone tiles to use. You don't want a glazed stone for this, the glazing will ruin this. If you can get an unglazed clay tile, like saltillo, then great, but any unglazed stone will do. Get it BIG, you want your whole pizza to fit on it. We got two 12 inch tiles, and they aren't exactly large enough for one 12 inch pizza. We cut the second tile to fit across our oven.
The trick with pizza stones, which I forgot last night, is to get them VERY hot before you put the pizza in to cook. If they are hot, the bottom of your pizza will cook fast, making it crispier. Not having a hot stone in the oven means the bottom of your pizza cooks last. Your toppings may be great, but your crust will be limp or soggy, cooked last (if at all). Having the stone hot is the most important trick to a tasty, firm crust at the center bottom of the pizza!
We use Mamma Mary's thin & crispy 12 inch pizza crusts. One is about the right size for a pizza for 2 adults. Teens, you probably need more than half a thin crust pizza... children, there will be leftovers (cooking leftover pizza in a minute). You start by putting a very thin layer of oil on top of the cold crust, seal it JUST a little from sauce soaking in and making it soggy. And now I'll put in a tiny word for Mamma Mary's crusts. We discovered them a few years ago. This company makes crusts that are reasonably priced, comes with the thin & crispy style we like, do not have excess dough or stray flavors cooked in, so that we can make it what we want. AND they keep on the pantry shelf for MONTHS, till we're ready to use them. They come two (or more) to a package and the package contains a separate baggie to put your leftover into so you can keep it in the fridge for the next time you use it.
We made tomato sauce from our garden last summer, but sometimes it's not as thick as we want. I mix some of the homemade tomato sauce with tomato paste to thicken it up. The alternative is to use canned tomato sauce (keep a tupperware container available for leftovers). Add some basil or oregano, and little bits of garlic or garlic powder, to give it a little oomph, if you've used canned tomatoes. If you make your own tomato sauce with your own spices, whatever you choose to put in your basic sauce is fine for pizzas. The only problem seems to be the texture. Thin is fine for pasta, but for pizza, you want a tomato sauce with a little body to it!
Slices of tomato are fun, too... and can be really cool if you're doing a specialty pizza like one that has feta or ricotta, apples or pears, walnuts... all those cute toppings that you find at a chic and adult pizza place... but today we're looking for reasons not to get take-out, so we're going to work with the usual take-out toppings... not the pears & ricotta...
Cheese is always an issue. We put the tomato sauce on first, then any veggies... we saute the veggies a little to soften them up and pull out any sweetness we can get from them, and put them on the 'za before we put on the cheese. We use part skim cheese or full fat. Anything less fat than "part skim", and it does not melt or bubble up properly.
The biggest mistake people make with cheese on pizza is that they put on too much. It really does not require a lot of cheese to make a pizza great. Too much and the pizza will not crisp up right, it will melt but not get those wonderful little brown bubbles, the toppings will be smothered. EVERY time I think I've not got enough cheese left to make a pizza, and I put one together anyways and hope for the best, it turns out to have been the PERFECT amount of cheese, creating a bubbly, thin layer that browns up nicely.
And with meat... if you're using sausage or burger, please, PLEASE brown it first in a pan, sweating out as much of the fat as you can, before you put it on top of all that cheese. If you're using pepperoni, it seems to not leave as many little puddles of fat on a pizza cooked the way we do (with the stones, and not too much cheese), but sausage can REALLY produce too many puddles of boiling oil on your pizza if you don't take off some of the fat first by giving it a little swirl in the browning pan. Interestingly, people make a mistake of putting on too much cheese, they make a mistake of putting on too LITTLE toppings. Remember that if you have a slice of pepperoni that's about an inch & a half around when you put it on, it will shrink during cooking. If you put the pepperonis on so they look like you want the pizza to look when you're finished, it'll be clearly too few pieces. Generally, it works best if you put the pepperonis in an overlapping pattern... start from the center and just overlap as they go out. Same goes for thin slices of ham or any other type of meat that will shrink up as it cooks.
Let the meat be on top, so it cooks fully and crisps up nicely. Assuming you've not overloaded the pizza with toppings, and pre-heated the stones till they're super-hot, the cooking time is about 10-15 minutes... depending upon how crisp you want it. Around here, we like it a little crunchy at the edges.
For the thin crust pizza, take the toppings ALL the way out to the edge. For a chewier crust, choose the thicker crust, which has a slightly larger edge. EVEN if you're used to ordering the chewier crust from your take-out place, TRY the thin crust for the DIY pizza. I suspect you'll like it better than anything you can buy in a restaurant or take-out. When you're making a pizza for home, and do it right, and the toppings are on properly and the taste is good, suddenly you're less interested in wasting perfectly good crust by not putting toppings on it! If you want something to dip, make a bread stick, you know?
And most importantly, this one is great for the kiddos to get involved. They love getting their hands oily by putting a tablespoon worth of oil on the crust and spreading it around... they like stealing random pieces of pepperoni. They learn to appreciate veggies like Onions and bell peppers if they help in sauteing and putting them on the tomato sauce. And maybe more importantly, they learn that too much cheese is not only high fat and unhealthy, but messes up the pizza by making it harder to get that good, crispy crunch that everyone seems to like so well...
In our house, except during Lent, Friday night is Pizza night... and it's a dinner that EVERYONE looks forward to... a great punctuation for a good workweek, and a great start to the weekend!
Monday, December 10, 2012
Our Daily salad
I didn't get to Costco last Friday as planned. But we went over the weekend. It's a whole lot easier shopping during the Christmas season if you go during the workweek, preferably on a morning when the kids are in school. The stores are SOOOO much easier! And the traffic.
Oh well, we did it the hard way.
But I was desperate. In my quest to get healthier, we are eating salads every day if we can, and we were running out of our favorite lettuce. Getting lettuce from Costco is a commitment. It means you have to EAT that lettuce before it starts to go bad. We will get a package of 6 romaine hearts and spend the week eating them, one a day, before dinner. It's good to have some extra refrigerator space downstairs in the rec room!
To make the salad something to look forward to, we also use mandarin orange sections... a product that would be unreasonably expensive if we weren't ALSO buying these at Costco. And we add a sprinkle of slivered almonds. Unfortunately, not available at Costco, but I can get them in bulk at Wegman's (we also put them on yogurt, so we keep lots of them around). And a dollop of honey-mustard dressing. I've not yet looked to see if we could get the dressing at Costco. I fear that the bottle of dressing I'd get from there might be bigger than would fit the fridge, and to make a green, leafy salad a daily habit, it's got to be EASY. Running up & down stairs for the salad dressing might be a step further than I'd be willing to do.
There's a principle of management... these days it's called "process management", and they have various ways of enforcing it... you may have heard of "Lean Six Sigma"... which is the process of taking a manufacturing process that is working well, and slowly identifying issues that are causing variation (variation is considered inappropriate in a manufacturing situation, if they are creating widgets, they want every widget to match)... you spent your time nibbling away at the pieces of the process that cause the widgets to fall outside of the standard deviation (a statistics term, the standard deviation is considered "sigma"... and in any grouping of objects, nearly all of the objects fall within six "sigmas"...). To reduce the size of the six sigmas that the grouping of objects falls within, to make that variation smaller, is the goal.
When I am trying to organize my life, I use the same principles. I find something that works, and reduce the work needed to make it happen. If I can cut down the number of times I have to go to the store to get the ingredients... if I can cut down the number of trips to the refrigerator in the rec room... if I can cut down the amount of product wasted because we don't eat it in time... then I am more likely to do the thing. Cleaning the bathroom is easier if the products used to clean it are stored in the bathroom. Sweeping the floor is easier (and more likely to get done), if the broom and dustpan are nearby. My sewing project is more likely to get done if the sewing machine and equipment are someplace where I can use them easily and not stored away in a closet so that every time I use them is a project in cleaning my closet, just to get access to the equipment. And I am more likely to eat my healthy salad if the ingredients are close at hand and easy to put together.
Wayne likes a variation in the salad. He prefers Craisins or tomato chunks over mandarin orange slices. And he prefers a spicy pepper vinaigrette over my honey mustard flavor... I make sure to keep lots of his favorite ingredients close at hand also. Because if his favorite ingredients are nearby, I can often rely upon him to do the salad-making.
With all the ingredients close at hand, inexpensive, and easy to manage, as well as flavorful... we eat a bowlful of salad every day.
Someday, when we retire, we hope to be able to afford to travel, and we hope to have good enough health that we will not be forced into being one of those little old couples who hobbles on & off of a bus tour through Europe... no, we want to be healthy enough to go off the beaten path, to climb pyramids in Egypt, ride elephants through the jungles of Thailand, and hike up & down the hills & stairways of Assisi.
Our daily salad is one step in the right direction.
Oh well, we did it the hard way.
But I was desperate. In my quest to get healthier, we are eating salads every day if we can, and we were running out of our favorite lettuce. Getting lettuce from Costco is a commitment. It means you have to EAT that lettuce before it starts to go bad. We will get a package of 6 romaine hearts and spend the week eating them, one a day, before dinner. It's good to have some extra refrigerator space downstairs in the rec room!
To make the salad something to look forward to, we also use mandarin orange sections... a product that would be unreasonably expensive if we weren't ALSO buying these at Costco. And we add a sprinkle of slivered almonds. Unfortunately, not available at Costco, but I can get them in bulk at Wegman's (we also put them on yogurt, so we keep lots of them around). And a dollop of honey-mustard dressing. I've not yet looked to see if we could get the dressing at Costco. I fear that the bottle of dressing I'd get from there might be bigger than would fit the fridge, and to make a green, leafy salad a daily habit, it's got to be EASY. Running up & down stairs for the salad dressing might be a step further than I'd be willing to do.
There's a principle of management... these days it's called "process management", and they have various ways of enforcing it... you may have heard of "Lean Six Sigma"... which is the process of taking a manufacturing process that is working well, and slowly identifying issues that are causing variation (variation is considered inappropriate in a manufacturing situation, if they are creating widgets, they want every widget to match)... you spent your time nibbling away at the pieces of the process that cause the widgets to fall outside of the standard deviation (a statistics term, the standard deviation is considered "sigma"... and in any grouping of objects, nearly all of the objects fall within six "sigmas"...). To reduce the size of the six sigmas that the grouping of objects falls within, to make that variation smaller, is the goal.
When I am trying to organize my life, I use the same principles. I find something that works, and reduce the work needed to make it happen. If I can cut down the number of times I have to go to the store to get the ingredients... if I can cut down the number of trips to the refrigerator in the rec room... if I can cut down the amount of product wasted because we don't eat it in time... then I am more likely to do the thing. Cleaning the bathroom is easier if the products used to clean it are stored in the bathroom. Sweeping the floor is easier (and more likely to get done), if the broom and dustpan are nearby. My sewing project is more likely to get done if the sewing machine and equipment are someplace where I can use them easily and not stored away in a closet so that every time I use them is a project in cleaning my closet, just to get access to the equipment. And I am more likely to eat my healthy salad if the ingredients are close at hand and easy to put together.
Wayne likes a variation in the salad. He prefers Craisins or tomato chunks over mandarin orange slices. And he prefers a spicy pepper vinaigrette over my honey mustard flavor... I make sure to keep lots of his favorite ingredients close at hand also. Because if his favorite ingredients are nearby, I can often rely upon him to do the salad-making.
With all the ingredients close at hand, inexpensive, and easy to manage, as well as flavorful... we eat a bowlful of salad every day.
Someday, when we retire, we hope to be able to afford to travel, and we hope to have good enough health that we will not be forced into being one of those little old couples who hobbles on & off of a bus tour through Europe... no, we want to be healthy enough to go off the beaten path, to climb pyramids in Egypt, ride elephants through the jungles of Thailand, and hike up & down the hills & stairways of Assisi.
Our daily salad is one step in the right direction.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Timesaver, my new medicine cabinet
My sweetie just installed a new medicine cabinet in my walk-in closet. It's a beautiful thing. The closet had a wall at the far end and the shelves and hanging rods lining either side would have been blocked if I had put much down near that wall, but I had an idea... There's a lot of light in that closet, and I could fix my hair while dressing if I had a mirror there. And a shelf. And I was already keeping a tube of deoderant on one of my sweater shelves. So maybe... hmmm...
A medicine cabinet was the solution. One with a mirrored interior as well as a mirror on the front. He hung it high enough that if I'm wearing heels, I will be able to check my hair and fix my mascara without having to lean over a single inch!
I can open it, keep it open, and stand right there while I choose lip colors to coordinate with my outfit, and brush on my eye shadow. I am closer to the mirror than if I were leaning over the bathroom sink. And I have never been the type to sit down and spend a half hour on makeup at one of those vanities with the little stools tucked under it. For me, if makeup isn't easy and quick, it doesn't get used.
I'm pleased with this addition to my closet! I spent yesterday afternoon moving all of my makeup from the bathroom shelf, into my closet, and reorganizing it. No more walking from bathroom, to closet, back to bathroom, several times whenever I get dressed to go out. I can now do it all right in my closet. Put on deoderant, smooth my hair, and stand right up next to the mirror as I put on my mascara without having to lean over a countertop to do it!
My bathroom cabinet is now totally devoted to toothpaste, cleansers, etc., and my closet cabinet has my finishing touches. Everything is easier to find, and there is no need to dig through stacks of colors to find the right one. I have space to work, without having taken over any more space from someplace else in the house.
What is it about girls and organizing products? I could have been no happier with Wayne if he had bought home a dozen roses...
A medicine cabinet was the solution. One with a mirrored interior as well as a mirror on the front. He hung it high enough that if I'm wearing heels, I will be able to check my hair and fix my mascara without having to lean over a single inch!
I can open it, keep it open, and stand right there while I choose lip colors to coordinate with my outfit, and brush on my eye shadow. I am closer to the mirror than if I were leaning over the bathroom sink. And I have never been the type to sit down and spend a half hour on makeup at one of those vanities with the little stools tucked under it. For me, if makeup isn't easy and quick, it doesn't get used.
I'm pleased with this addition to my closet! I spent yesterday afternoon moving all of my makeup from the bathroom shelf, into my closet, and reorganizing it. No more walking from bathroom, to closet, back to bathroom, several times whenever I get dressed to go out. I can now do it all right in my closet. Put on deoderant, smooth my hair, and stand right up next to the mirror as I put on my mascara without having to lean over a countertop to do it!
My bathroom cabinet is now totally devoted to toothpaste, cleansers, etc., and my closet cabinet has my finishing touches. Everything is easier to find, and there is no need to dig through stacks of colors to find the right one. I have space to work, without having taken over any more space from someplace else in the house.
What is it about girls and organizing products? I could have been no happier with Wayne if he had bought home a dozen roses...
Friday, December 7, 2012
Resisting the Costco traps
I'm about to go pick up a few things from Costco today, and a friend wants to go with me sometime so I can suggest to her how to avoid going Costco-nuts. I admit, it's an easy thing to do. I have made a few mistakes, myself... the extra large box of Bisquick, purchased with the idea that I was going to start making pancakes every weekend... an idea that does not match my lifestyle! ... the oversized pack of kiwis that did not get used fast enough to justify the savings or the storage room space.
But if you've got a knowledge of what can be found in Costco that is a regular purchase of yours, you can get some really great stuff. A case of tomato sauce. A giant bag of frozen chicken breast fillets (make sure you've got freezer space before purchasing any Costco sized frozen goods). A giant bag of pine nuts that you'll use this weekend for making pesto with all that great basil you've been growing all summer... these are things that are worth their weight in gold.
And if you've got a large enough storage space, the costco sized toilet paper, paper towels, and napkins are great. They've got no expiration date, and nearly every family needs them from time to time, shopping for these things in costco will save you time and money if you have the space to store them.
As long as we're talking about resisting the traps, I can't miss talking about the free samples. You'll get and taste all kinds of free stuff if you're there on the weekend. It's a regular carnival of new products to sample. And lots of those products sound fun. If you're NEW to the Costco experience, it's best to avoid these things entirely, sample, but know that you do not want to BUY. ALWAYS tell yourself that if you really need it, you'll come back for it later. If you're an experienced Costco shopper, you need to have a formula that you use when you choose whether to purchase one of these wonderful new things that you're sampling... The formula needs to include, WHEN will I use it? Do I have the space to store it? Will my family like it? Is the flavor (because usually it's a food item that creates the worst temptations) worth the price? And of course, is this item better than what I will am using already?
An example of what is a good idea in Costco... Frozen Taquitos are the easy lunch or dinner that Wayne likes if we're not in the mood to cook and we're each going to forage for leftovers or whatever... good for a couple times a month. So when we found that Costco sells frozen taquitos, for half the price that I can get them at the supermarket on sale... of COURSE we get them. I just have to make sure there's enough freezer space to store them. And we use chicken breast fillets at least once a week, so the costco-sized frozen fillets are perfect for us. And cashews are great. We love eating them by the handful and they contain some good nutrients, so getting a large container of them is something my family can work with. Same with slivered almonds. But we don't have as much use for whole almonds, so buying whole almonds makes no sense. At the beginning of any holiday season, I'll buy a large bag of flour, a large bag of sugar, of chocolate chips, pecans, walnuts. And if I've got a baking weekend coming up, I'll do the double-pack of eggs. Luckily, NUTS last a long time if you have the freezer space for the leftovers.
Today I'm going to pick up eggs and pepperoni for pizza night this evening. No reason to get pepperoni from the grocery if it's the same stuff, freezable, and a much better price at Costco! And for all those freezable Costco sized purchases, I'll get some Costco-sized ziplock baggies. I wash baggies for re-use, but eventually I do need a new supply, and this is the moment... we're running low.
As part of the purpose of this new blog, we will explore issues about storage of stuff, about usage, about price... we'll look to see whether we're being wasteful, cluttering up our houses or our environment with stuff that will not do us any good... or whether we're being frugal, using every last bit of things that can be used. I AM trying to avoid excess junk in the footprint I leave on this earth... We DO get our water filtered rather than through little plastic bottles... but I'm not exactly turning our shower into a "grey water" system for the garden (and switching to the higher priced, environmentally friendly soaps needed to do it right.)
The trick in Costco is to not get anything that you can neither store nor use before it's expiration date. If your family does not eat rice, what's the point of having a 100 lb bag of white rice cluttering up your pantry? But if you eat rice every day, the opportunity to have that much rice for a great price without having to shop every week for it, is a great thing.
So those are the things that need to go through my mind as I contemplate my trip to Costco. I need a list. I need to avoid the pretty, interesting, impulse buys. And as Wayne says, I have enough NUTS to last me through the next 3 holiday seasons... so no more costco sized bags of walnuts... taking up space in the fridge where his Taquitos might usually live.
But if you've got a knowledge of what can be found in Costco that is a regular purchase of yours, you can get some really great stuff. A case of tomato sauce. A giant bag of frozen chicken breast fillets (make sure you've got freezer space before purchasing any Costco sized frozen goods). A giant bag of pine nuts that you'll use this weekend for making pesto with all that great basil you've been growing all summer... these are things that are worth their weight in gold.
And if you've got a large enough storage space, the costco sized toilet paper, paper towels, and napkins are great. They've got no expiration date, and nearly every family needs them from time to time, shopping for these things in costco will save you time and money if you have the space to store them.
As long as we're talking about resisting the traps, I can't miss talking about the free samples. You'll get and taste all kinds of free stuff if you're there on the weekend. It's a regular carnival of new products to sample. And lots of those products sound fun. If you're NEW to the Costco experience, it's best to avoid these things entirely, sample, but know that you do not want to BUY. ALWAYS tell yourself that if you really need it, you'll come back for it later. If you're an experienced Costco shopper, you need to have a formula that you use when you choose whether to purchase one of these wonderful new things that you're sampling... The formula needs to include, WHEN will I use it? Do I have the space to store it? Will my family like it? Is the flavor (because usually it's a food item that creates the worst temptations) worth the price? And of course, is this item better than what I will am using already?
An example of what is a good idea in Costco... Frozen Taquitos are the easy lunch or dinner that Wayne likes if we're not in the mood to cook and we're each going to forage for leftovers or whatever... good for a couple times a month. So when we found that Costco sells frozen taquitos, for half the price that I can get them at the supermarket on sale... of COURSE we get them. I just have to make sure there's enough freezer space to store them. And we use chicken breast fillets at least once a week, so the costco-sized frozen fillets are perfect for us. And cashews are great. We love eating them by the handful and they contain some good nutrients, so getting a large container of them is something my family can work with. Same with slivered almonds. But we don't have as much use for whole almonds, so buying whole almonds makes no sense. At the beginning of any holiday season, I'll buy a large bag of flour, a large bag of sugar, of chocolate chips, pecans, walnuts. And if I've got a baking weekend coming up, I'll do the double-pack of eggs. Luckily, NUTS last a long time if you have the freezer space for the leftovers.
Today I'm going to pick up eggs and pepperoni for pizza night this evening. No reason to get pepperoni from the grocery if it's the same stuff, freezable, and a much better price at Costco! And for all those freezable Costco sized purchases, I'll get some Costco-sized ziplock baggies. I wash baggies for re-use, but eventually I do need a new supply, and this is the moment... we're running low.
As part of the purpose of this new blog, we will explore issues about storage of stuff, about usage, about price... we'll look to see whether we're being wasteful, cluttering up our houses or our environment with stuff that will not do us any good... or whether we're being frugal, using every last bit of things that can be used. I AM trying to avoid excess junk in the footprint I leave on this earth... We DO get our water filtered rather than through little plastic bottles... but I'm not exactly turning our shower into a "grey water" system for the garden (and switching to the higher priced, environmentally friendly soaps needed to do it right.)
The trick in Costco is to not get anything that you can neither store nor use before it's expiration date. If your family does not eat rice, what's the point of having a 100 lb bag of white rice cluttering up your pantry? But if you eat rice every day, the opportunity to have that much rice for a great price without having to shop every week for it, is a great thing.
So those are the things that need to go through my mind as I contemplate my trip to Costco. I need a list. I need to avoid the pretty, interesting, impulse buys. And as Wayne says, I have enough NUTS to last me through the next 3 holiday seasons... so no more costco sized bags of walnuts... taking up space in the fridge where his Taquitos might usually live.
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