Meet me at facebook!

Scary stuff. I just did a business page for Treehugging Tots and sent invites to all my friends. Now if nothing sells I'll know that my friends all hate my stuff. Hehe. Not that I want sympathy purchases. Well I wouldn't complain at this point, I'm so desperate to sell SOMETHING! I'm so excited the market season is coming up, I'm going to hit them hard this year! Anyway if you'd like to find me on facebook just search for Treehugging Tots and there I am!

A big old fail

Rainbow modeling one of the cute dresses that caused Mama to fail fail fail the no spend month

Of course! I knew it, I told you! Somehow at the Steiner fair $50 magically floated away from my wallet. How could I not buy beautiful wool for felting and a gorgeous silk dress ($10 - bargain!) that because of the magic of elastic fits both myself AND Indigo (how versatile is that, how could I NOT buy it?) plus some yummy biodynamic food and some pre-loved clothes. Sigh. Oh well. Sunday I did pretty well at the Expo, I spent $16 on a cloth nappy, which I've convinced myself falls into my grocery budget since I parted with my nappy stash and Rainbow has decided to become Miss Peepants every night, it was buy a cloth nappy or disposables, what's a girl to do? Which leads me to today. Indigo, Rainbow and I went to a teddy bear picnic sadly situated right next to an awesome op shop, so I went in to see what they had I could use as night nappies, I scored big time with two nappy covers and some flannel to cut up for inserts, all for 75c. So how I managed to spend $33 I'll never know! Somehow I ended up walking out with about 10 items of kids clothes. Darn it why when I happened to be there did someone come in with beautiful handmade dresses and tie dye tops in my children's sizes? Oh well, onward and upward, my week is full of lovely things that are not going to take me near any cool shops so I'm back on the wagon! Promise!

Another update. Yawn

Still doing well. How boring. Don't worry, tomorrow I'm going to a Steiner fair and Sunday I'm going to the baby expo in Melbourne so I'm sure my no spend month will come crashing down in spectacular fashion. Unless I claim it's all Christmas purchases. Hmm, yeah might try that. I spent $90 on food, which should do us the fortnight with a small top up next week. That plus I'll have to do a few fruit and vegie runs but I should come in at way way under $300 for the fortnight. I'm actually pretty proud because up until now I've been housebound but today I had to go to town to a big shopping centre but I just went in, did my banking and shopping and left. No meandering, that would only lead to bad things!

No spend update

Has it really only been one day? Time has lost all meaning since Crystal has gotten chicken pox, I can't believe it was only yesterday! She's plodding along like a little trouper, sleeping lots but not complaining too much. Just a little, but I would be too, she's got three pox on her eye lids that are pretty painful, and some in her mouth plus the usual all over her body and through her hair pox. My poor baby.

Anyway, no spend month. So far I've spent $40 on food, not bad for a week's worth, I shopped last night so Monday night and I won't need to shop until Friday night so I'm pretty impressed. We had a well stocked pantry though, so the $40 was just for some fruit and peanut butter, milk, rice cakes etc.

I also spent $30 on Christmas, I found an awesome wooden treehouse at the supermarket (who would have thunk it?) and it was the only one there so I snapped it up for Rainbow, my first Christmas purchase of the year, woo! I don't know when I'll get to go lay by bikes now that we're stuck at home.

So it's been kind of easy so far, although I have to admit I've found it challenging to think of the whole next month not buying anything non-essential. I really want a new rug for the lounge room! I'm going to a twilight fair next weekend! I want to spend spend spend! It's only going to get harder I think!

It just got a whole lot easier

This no spending thing. It's called chicken pox. Crystal had a temp yesterday and this morning and now she's rapidly getting blisters on her back, tummy and face. Again. Sigh. She had them when I was pregnant with Rainbow, but a little too mildly apparently. Oh well, it'll be all that much easier to not spend any money, don't need to put petrol in to go to school and back, can't go out anywhere, we're home bound! Should be kind of fun as long as she's not too uncomfortable, she's fine so far, just a little tired. And I have to add a new exception to my no spend rule, I'm allowed to by calamine lotion!

No spend month

I know I should probably wait until the start of next month or something to make it all nice and even, but I can't wait, I need to do it right now! Mainly because

a) I'm in a little bit of debt. Not a lot, I know it would be peanuts to some people but as I don't have credit cards or anything like that ANY debt makes me feel sick

b) I spend way too much. I have way too much. I don't NEED anything but I love shopping, especially op shopping!

c) My children need to learn that we don't need to buy buy buy

d) I have a few plans for next year that require big bucks so I'd better start saving now!

Here's my rules -

I'm allowed to buy food. Phew! Thank goodness for that! But not take away, and I have to spend $150 or less per week

I'm allowed to buy petrol. I'd love to go public transport but I can't, where we are it's very limited and does't go anywhere I need/want to go, such as school!

I'm allowed to pay bills. Although I don't really want to.

I'm allowed to do Christmas shopping. Which kind of seems like a cop out but I'm getting the girls new bikes for Christmas and if I want to be able to afford them easily I really need to lay by them now! And if I see anything that would be perfect I'll buy it and put it away, they wont be getting much other than their bikes but if I see anything unique for their stockings I'll get it.

I'm allowed to buy supplies for the market. This rule has a bug BUT. BUT I can only buy supplies once I've done all the sewing I can with the materials I already have. Market season is almost here and I have lots of new project I want to whip up for our stalls but I know if I go buy what I need for my new ideas I won't get around to finishing my old ideas!

Wish me luck!

Day one: spent nothing. Kind of hard to because I'm at home with no car and a sick Crystal home from school.

An open letter to home educators

I like it, I like it a lot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2PGGeTOA4

Beautiful unschooling days

I have a love hate relationship with our unschooling journey, but it's been a love fest lately. I think it might be the weather, the seasons have this effect on me, I do love winter but then come spring and I feel like I've woken from a deep sleep. I'm alive!

Today Indigo rode her scooter to my mum's while I stayed home and played with little Rainbow. My mum has been really anti homeschool but she's finally jumped on board and true to her style she's being fantastic! So she and my step dad and Indigo were doing 'science experiments' with bi carb the yummiest of which was making honeycomb. Then she had a swim in their pool and planted some seedlings and seeds and I went over and had coffee but she didn't want to come home so I took Crystal to gymnastics while she stayed there and lucky she did! They found a swarm of bees in a tree so they called a bee person to come and look and Indigo got chatting and was invited to go to the keepers house and she showed her all the hives and how they get the honey out and gave her a jar of honey and some honey comb and some dead bees to look at in the microscope. So she spent the rest of the day on the internet learning everything there is to know about bees! Pretty much perfect unschooling days!

A revelation!

I have a clean kitchen. Shock. Complete and utter shock. I do not tend to have a clean kitchen without having spent a lot of time doing dishes and collecting random bits of rubbish. It's too soon to say, but I'm going to be optimistic and say this is the dawn of a new era in my house. It was very simple, I'm sure most people actually already work this way, but it's not something that comes naturally to me. Last night, while I was cooking dinner I filled the sink full of hot soapy water. While I was waiting for the vegies to steam I put all the ingredients back in the fridge/pantry and gave the scraps to the chooks (they were out of their pen so I only had to throw it out the window, easy as) I plated up dinner and before I called everyone in I quickly washed the saucepan - I'd only used it to steam vegies so it was a two second job. Then everyone ate and I told them to scrape their scraps to the dogs and wash their own plates and cutlery each. Then I washed my plate and the frying pan. And then it was done. Seriously. It was that easy after all the times that I've sat there procrastinating about whether I should do the dishes and then end up not doing them and waking up to a trashed kitchen and food stuck on plates. It was that easy! My head is spinning!

365 project day 7

It's getting warmer! We can go to the beach without freezing!

365 project day 6

All you need is love... looks totally posed but I just walked into my kitchen and thought cooool, Beatles and fruit, looks like a still life.

365 project day 5

We had a bunny tragedy at our place, I went out to give them breakfast one morning and all but two were dead, and one of the ones that was alive was paralysed and so close to the end. I couldn't bring myself to put her down so I nursed her, basically all I could do was give her sugar water and keep her warm. Then a miracle! She completely recovered, she went from not being able to hold up her head to sitting but having tremors to bounding around the place like nothing happened! The other bunny that I thought was fine did die though so we only have this little baby left, so we took her to church for the blessing of the animals day. With the number of mozzies already around so far - and it's only spring - I have no idea how I'm going to keep her from getting another mozzie born illness, she's living inside now, but even so we don't have screens so I just squished a mozzie then. Hope she lives.

365 project day 4

Rainbow, completely and utterly worn our, bbq for the afl grand final, I'm proud to say I slept through the first one but decided to be social and go out for the re-match, I managed to completely avoid watching any of it though!

365 day three

Nothin too exciting, one of the kids toys. His eyes freak me out!

365 day two

My best friend on a walk near my house.

365 day one

Another bonus is now I can share my 365 project on the blog! I know I could probably link it somehow... but I really don't know how to anything other than the basics, so I'll just put the pics here.

Day one, Rainbow and Crystal in the canola fields near our house.

It worked!

Blogger thank you for listening to my whinge and fixing the problem. I am happy. So now for a photo post. Joy!