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Kid-made Party Invitations Capture Spirit and Save Money

I embrace birthday time and love throwing my kids special birthday parties at home, in just the style they are requesting. And it starts with the invitation. My oldest daughter really enjoys art, craftiness and taking full ownership of her ideas. So making her own invitations fits right into her style, where she values her friends and is proud to give them her handmade work.

We’ve had Madeline parties, art parties, puppet show parties, Frosty the Snowman movie parties and now, it’s an American Girl pizza party. It’s a big kid only “drop off” party where the activities have been planned out by the birthday girl herself. The second name on the invitation is the name of the friend’s doll, which was the inspiration for making her own cards this time.

Below is the inside of the card, with her name and our address blurred out for the sake of our family’s privacy.

The key to making our invitations has been stamps. Which can be bought at big box craft stores. But down’t go without a coupon! Stamps can be expensive. Out of all the big craft places, I like Jo Ann’s and Michaels the best because they have a phone app you can download, and pull up current coupons right in the store with no need to print. Here’s a link to the Michaels app, and the Jo Ann’s app.

As you can see by our invitations, our stamps get used year after year. They are a good investment and a handy, fun thing to keep around. Once your supply is stocked, they can be used for endless things, eliminating the need to buy cards.

The other thing that helps in making invitations, and home parties in general, is keeping the numbers low so that small details honoring the child are kept to at a manageable, enjoyable level. That includes the number of invitations you have make! Children don’t like mass producing. So build in lots of time to make invitations, doing a little bit one day and then some more the next – when the inspiration strikes again.

Below, is the invitation my oldest daughter and I made together for her fifth birthday. I used a large sponge to cut out a teacup shape that she stamped onto the card and I outlined it with marker for her. She did the other stamps too. For the inside, I did  more of the work on this one because she was only five years-old.  This year, at age seven, it was a completely different situation. She took her ideas and made them happen. Again, I blurred out are the details of her name and where we live.


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Fall is Cooking in my Kitchen

Fall cooking has arrived in our kitchen. It started last week with baked butternut squash and risotto. Then when our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farmer brought us a pumpkin, it meant fall had officially arrived.

We didn’t waste much time getting it into the oven, in simple farmer fashion. I love when Megan Allen, our farmer from the Care of the Earth CSA, tells me the simple secrets to cooking. I did just what she said.

In her words, here’s how it’s done. To cook: remove seeds and chop into several large pieces; bake at 425 for about 1 hr and 15 minutes; let cool and then remove flesh; puree to use in any favorite recipes (bread, cheesecake, muffins, ravioli, stuffed shells,lasagna).Farmers make everything seem like it is just second nature. And if she makes it sound simple, it makes me feel like I can do it.

The pumpkin baking, from the puree to the roasted pumpkin seeds that my toddler couldn’t get enough of, most definitely says fall has arrived.

With our pumpkin puree we baked a loaf of pumpkin banana bread from this recipe on all recipes.com. I use this site a lot because the recipes always work, are a simple one step process and use basic enough ingredients that I always have in my kitchen.  On the other hand, these recipes use a lot of sugar, vegetable oil and white flour.  So I usually cut the sugar amounts by half, substitute whole-wheat flour and use olive oil instead of vegetable oil. If it’s a heavy bread or cookies, it helps to still use a quarter portion of white flour of what the recipe calls for. Adding a teaspoon of yeast help in the rising process too.

For the pumpkin seeds, I drizzled them in melted butter, shock some salt on them and baked them on 300 degrees for 45 minutes.

Next up with the rest of our puree will be these chocolate chip pumpkin cookies from Sweet Greens. I made them last year for my baby’s first birthday, and they will forever be an annual celebration of fall in our kitchen. They were that good.

After that, I’ll be putting my immersion blender to work with fall soups – potatoes, carrots, oh my.

Yes I L-O-V-E cooking in the fall. I love doing it to celebrate my two fall babies who were born in October. And I love doing it with the kitchen door open, inviting the fall breezes inside. Outside my kitchen windows the leaves are changing, making the sidewalk glow yellow from the ginkgo trees above. Yes I love fall, in so many ways.

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Mom of nine passes on her bread-making wisdom

I’m running a little late posting this link for my column from last week, Mom of nine passes on her bread-making wisdom.  But when I just saw friend on Facebook asking how to make a simple loaf of bread – I thought it might be of use to a few people.

I learned all I know about baking bread from this the lady, Janie Rose, who I featured Wednesday in my weekly column that I write for the Knoxville News Sentinel. And lucky for you, she is having a bread making class in November. So now you can learn too!

Grinding your own wheat to make homemade bread as she does, might sound time consuming and a thing of the past. But it turns out there is a good handful of people in Knoxville interested in Janie’s bread-making. Within 24 hours of the article being published – she received 17 phone calls from people wanting to take her bread-making class.

It’ s a great way to save money too! I pay $31 for a 50 pound bag of grain, compared to about $5 for a five pound bag of good organic flour at the store. Plus there is the health benefits of it too, that I talk about in my column. Janie told me she did the math and figured, depending on the cost of honey, making one loaf of bread costs less than $1. Fresh bakery style bread in the grocery store or farmer’s market can run as high as $6 a loaf. Making your own bread can save a bundle!

Janie lives about a mile down the street from me. In 2009, when she learned I had a brand new baby at home, it wasn’t two hours later until she brought me two pans of fresh pizza dough ready to be topped and baked for dinner. A mother nine, Janie was a La Leche League leader for many years and made several trips to their national conferences – sometimes taking on speaking roles. Her children range in age from 11 to 34. Most of them were born at home and she spent the last 30 years homeschooling them.

She’s some kind of mama!

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The return of Betty the Bus and the rear-facing car seat

I have a love-hate relationship with my mini van, leaning more on the side of hate than the love. Because really, I’m the mom who still dreams of getting my three daughters in the back of a Prius. Nonetheless, it was a long eight weeks that we recently endured while Betty the Bus (our van) was in the shop getting a full body makeover after getting pummeled with egg size hail in April.

In the meantime I drove my husband’s SUV with all three girls across the backseat, all in car seats – no boosters.

You see, I’m kind of a safety nut when it comes to car seats. I like toddlers in rear-facing seats and kids buckled in five point harnesses as long as possible. My take is, if they make a seat to do these things, then someone sees the need to have them on the market. And if I don’t use them, and something were to happen to my kids in a wreck, I could not live with myself knowing I didn’t do everything possible to keep them safe.

So upon the return of the van, it’s not the XM radio, or the DVD player, or the GPS system I’m most happy to have back – it’s having my two-year-old back in her rear-facing car seat. And the peace of mind that comes with it, putting my heart at ease during our daily routines where interstate driving is a must.

Having her rear-facing in the SUV was possible. But it’s not as comfortable as in my van where she is in a bucket seat with the back part reclined to provide more space for her to stretch out her legs. There’s also more cargo room for me and my long legs that go with my  5’9″ body, when her  rear-facing seat is placed behind me. Other arrangement options, with her rear-facing in the SUV, would have included the potential for more back seat fighting between the two big girls if placed next to each other.  Yes I could have put the rear-facing seat in the middle. But that makes passing across the backseat impossible and leads to loading compilations in parking lots where one girl would end up  standing on one side of the car alone.

The issue of scrunched legs in rear-facing car seats, weather you have a sedan, an SUV or a mini van, is something a lot parents worry about. But what I’m talking about here, is a measure of comfort and peace while three children share one backseat. You can read more about the leg issue here, on The Car Seat Lady. She addresses it nicely, from a safety standpoint and assures children’s legs are still safer in a rear-facing seat.

When I put my toddler forward facing in the SUV, I thought I’d only be making an exception for two weeks – but the repairs took A LOT longer than that. Everyday felt risky to me, driving around without her rear-facing seat.

In May the American Association of Pediatrics announced its recommendation (you can read about it here) that toddlers should remain rear-facing until age two, or as  long as their seat allows. In the case of our SUV it was doable, but not so accommodating to three children sharing one backseat. So the bottom line is – I have a new found love for automatic opening doors that magically send kids jumping into the van and a rear-facing car seat that would make my pediatrician proud.

For more about the car seat laws in Tennessee, I’m attaching a guest editorial I wrote for The Tennessean, Nashville’s daily newspaper. It was was published March 28, 2011. Unfortunately the link has expired from the newspaper’s online site.

Tennessee’s child safety seat laws must be updated

by Rebecca Simmons

Child restraint laws on the Tennessee books are from 2004, the year I had my first child.

The law – stating babies must ride rear-facing until they are one-year-old and 20 pounds, and that children may be placed in a booster seat at four-years-old and 40 pounds – are officially outdated.

A new policy published by the American Association of Pediatricians March 21 recommends infants and toddlers ride rear-facing until age two. It also states children should ride in a five-point harness forward facing car seat as long as their seat allows and then a booster seat until they reach 4 feet 9 inches tall and are between eight and 12-years-old.

Car accidents are still the number one cause of death for children ages four (the age most parents in Tennessee place a child be a booster seat) and older, according to the AAP. Until 2009 car accidents were the leading cause of death for all children. Now children under age two riding rear-facing are 75 percent less likely to die or be severely injured in a crash as if they were riding forward facing, according to the AAP.

So why not drive on the safe side? There are many car seats on the market now to fit children rear-facing till 40 pounds and even convert to being forward facing up to 65 pounds. My six-year old is 50 pounds and 50 inches. She uses a five-point harness car seat that fits up to 80 pounds.

These seats are on the market for a reason. More people should be urged to use them.

There is a note attached to Tennessee’s current law that states “if a child’s safety seat has a higher rear-facing weight rating, usually 30 or 35 pounds, it may continued to be used in a rear-facing position so long as the child’s weight permits.” The wording needs to change. The “may” should be a must.

Plastic car seats deteriorate

This law is too old. Car seats have changed a lot since 2004. I should know. I have had three babies since then. I have owned 7 car seats and I’ve been a consumer long enough to have two of them expire.

Yes car seats do expire. All car seats come with a Date of Manufacture and depending on the brand, most expire five or six years after that date. This is due to the plastic breaking down after being exposed to extreme heat and cold therefore not performing as intended in a crash. Think about those deteriorating plastic toys in the backyard. The same thing happens to car seats.

Twice a year Babies R Us holds a Safety Week giving clients the chance to save 25 percent on a new car seat when you bring in an old one. Used car seats are sent to the manufacturer to be disposed of properly.

Unlike in 2004, there are now approximately eight car seats available for rear facing toddlers up to 35-40 pounds. One, the Cosco Alpha Omega Elite starts at just $60.00 and is often distributed locally through the health department and other grant funded organizations. Cost doesn’t have to be a factor in safety.

There are also several convertible seats available now that go from a five-point harness to a booster seat when a child is ready. This option closes the gap between a toddler-size car seat to a booster seat. And it could save the lives of four-year-olds being placed in booster seats too early.

So please, use extra caution when you restrain your child and go beyond what the laws are telling us. It’s the best way to keep you child safe in the car.

Rebecca Simmons lives in Knoxville, TN and is an advocate for natural parenting. She shares other tips and stories regarding family life on her blog simplynaturalmom.com.

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Waste Free Lunches, made easy and fun

Waste Free lunches make perfect sense to me. And with a little thought, once you get into the swing of things, you’ll be skipping right over the pre-packaged lunch options in the store – and saving money too! Buying individual pre-packaged containers of crackers, yogurts and apple sauce costs about twice as much as just buying a regular size product and diving out the food accordingly.

My daughters attend a Montessori school where waste free lunches are encouraged and juice boxes are outlawed in the handbook. So really, as the chief lunch packer – I’ve never really known anything different. To give a snip bit of how fun it can be, I’m showing you a picture of their lunch boxes one day last week. Below is: organic baby carrots, ham, Laughing Cow cheese, strawberries, a mix of dates and sunflower seeds and a homemade banana muffin.

The food is packed into silicone baking cups (ours were a gift with the book Cook it in a Cup) and put in an aluminum bento box by Sigg. The boxes are prefect for my toddler and my pre-school age girls because they are so simply to open – even my 23-month-old can do it.  Note for local Knoxville  folks – these  Sigg boxes are on clearance for 50 percent off at Earthfare in Berden right now!

My first grader still prefers her lunch in a Laptop Lunchbox, which has been in constant daily use since she was two-years old! Talk about quality and reusing to save the earth – I highly recommend these! However my four-year-old gets frustrated trying to open it and opts for the above set up.

My children are also asked to bring a cloth napkin in their lunch to school. Below are the cloth napkins I sewed – very simply. They are reversible. To make them I took two fat quarters, placed them right sides together and cut both pieces at the same time into four equal squares. Then I sewed them inside out (leaving a hole to turn them right side in). Then I ironed them flat and did a straight stitch along the edges. My girls particularly enjoyed picking out their own fabric combinations using random fabrics we had left from various projects, or well intended ideas that never happened. I’m sure you know what I mean!

For some other tips and products that work for us when it comes to packing lunches, in the top photo there is a glass drinking bottle by Life Factor. Around it is a name band by Inch Bug. For the name stickers on the lunch containers, you can’t go wrong with Mabel’s Labels. We get the colorful skinny minis that come with 80 labels for $21. Both the Inch Bug bands and the sticky labels have lasted a LONG time, and have been well worth the cost – preventing us from losing lunch items and the need to replace them.

To read more about the benefits of waste free lunches visit WasteFreeLunches.org.

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The Greatest Homemade Sewing Kit

My girls and I assembled this sewing kit for my niece Hanna. Her birthday is in the beginning of the month and it always sneaks up on me, leaving me in a hurry to get a gift to the post office for it to be delivered into the Rocky Mountains of Colorado on time, where they live. So I was glad to have everything on hand this time, to create this great gift using repurposed goods from our own sewing room. We did it in one afternoon, after school on a Tuesday. And it made there for the party on Saturday. Thank goodness!

The vintage suitcase was something I had picked up at thrift store a while back, knowing eventually I’d come up with the perfect use for it. And this was it!

Below is a picture of what the total gift looked like, when the package was opened. I had recently bought the sewing book for my girls. But given our timeframe, I added it to the mix and decided to pick up another one  for us later.

All the supplies we put in the sewing kit were things we had on hand, in my sewing room that I keep well stocked in order to sew on a moment’s notice. Because, with three kids, sometimes a moments notice is all I get and I like to be prepared – and not spend my limited sewing time running to the store. Plus I like a bargain. So I stock up when I see one.

Some things come with enough in one package for sharing – like needles, embroidery thread, yards of fabric and fat quarter bundles. The girls didn’t mind sharing from their supplies either – of buttons, beads, yarn and and little scraps of this and that.

Below is a photo of all the supplies and embelishments included in the kit. They are: polyester stuffing, Heat & Bond for appliqué jobs, fabric roles and fat quarters, felt, scissors, a measuring tape,  various pins and needles with two pin holders made by my girls, a pipe cleaner with a safety pin on the end used to thread ribbons through fabric to make draw string bags, embroidery thread, an embroidery hoop with burlap fabric, a yarn ball, velcro, buttons, beads, scrap ribbons, rickrack, fringes and a spiral shoe lace.

With all that – really, who knows where a girl’s imagination will take her!

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This is no bla bla bla Breastfeeding Post

Next month marks my birthday of becoming a mom. Along with my first baby turning seven, of course! But that age is a milestone I’m not ready to accept yet, as well as my youngest daughter turning two the week after that!

This also marks seven years of breastfeeding and seven years of me wearing nursing bras. I’m not here to tell you how hard it’s been or a bunch of bla bla bla…..that will bring up lots of personal feelings about how others choose to feed their babies. Because I’ve learned, some women, even 30 years into motherhood, are still emotionally affected about their choice to have or not have breastfed their children. I have been very fortunate to stay home with my girls, and experience the extended opportunity of nursing into the toddler years. And I am grateful for that.

On that note, I do want to pass along this post – 15 Reasons Why Breastfeeding Doesn’t Suck and is Worth A Try, over at Conscience Parenting. It is an amazingly accurate piece portraying how I have felt through the years on this journey of breastfeeding, with humor attached.

This week I shared a rare sweet nap with my toddler who I still call my baby.  Actually, I accidentally fell asleep with her, woke up late, panicked, ran to make an afternoon cup of coffee and rushed out the door to pick up the big girls only to forget I had five miles worth of gas left in my car.

I’m always rushing as a result of trying to squish a thousand tasks into 100 seconds. Except when I sit down to fulfill my toddler girl’s sweet requests of “Mommy, milky, please,” or “milky side?” She still has a way of looking at me with the most endearing eyes while she nurses, telling me she’s getting exactly the love she needs at that very moment. It’s the perfect peace for both of us, and her sisters feel it too. Which is why I’m just not ready to give it up.

I go in spurts of being ready close the door on this phase of life. I joke about applying to the show What not to Wear with a plea about how my fashion, or there lack of, has been hampered since January 2004 by either maternity cloths or nursing tanks, and dresses made specially for quick access in the moment of needing to calm a crying baby or a toddler with a boo boo.

So there it is, all the reasons why my commitment to breastfeeding just keeps going. Because on days like today, among the hectic schedules, deadlines, and expectations I place on myself, it all takes a pause for nursing. I snuggle up with my baby, stroke her hair and find calmness in her peace.

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Trying to make it all fit, while the old dog whines

At the moment I’m feeling scattered, torn, impatient, hopeful and dreamy of what I would like to come of it all. There always is more than enough happening on so many fronts. I try to not to look behind.

There is our old dog Blair who limps around day in and day out. He whines and sleeps but is still so sweet and faithful even with his severe arthritis and his state of being senile. He requires a lot for us these days. He teaches me things and warms my heart as he endures his old age, and maybe his final days. He’s been with us for 12 years, our first baby. We decorated him up with Christmas lights our first year married. He went to the beach with us before there were kids to take along. He’s worn feather boas and been to little girl tea parties. He pulls at my heart these days. I wish he could talk.

On other fronts there is all that I take on and all that I want to take on. There are piles of books, ideas, aspirations and dreams. But where’s the time? Take something from this, and something from that gets left behind and unfinished. Or someone begs for more of my attention, which is always loud and clear.

Life is a million little pieces trying to fit together in just the perfect way. I won’t know what the finished picture will look like today, or tomorrow, or even next year. It’s one piece at a time. Sometimes it’s one piece a day.

This post is part was inspired by a series on the blog The Extraordinary Ordinary, where bloggers write for 15 minutes and post their thoughts to share. Also, check out my friend Jennifer’s post too, where I found the idea. 

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Behind These Old Windows :: Children’s Living Room

Behind These Old Windows is a series I do here, from time-to-time, to share repurposed and handmade ideas while decorating around the house. We live in a 90 year-old house with huge windows and the original wavy glass. They fill every room with character and inspiration.

The featured space is used as a quiet reading area/books on CD listening center for the girls. The sofa is great because it fits all three girls plus an adult storyteller. The space also doubles as a toddler/baby play nook because, well, the little ones always want to stick close to mama. And thankfully, those cabinets close up and hide more toys, and the not-so-pretty but well-loved books.

The redesign of this living area was inspired by a drop-in visit to an estate sale in our neighborhood, where I found the two corner cabinets that are on either side of the windows and the matching desk. While trying to find the perfect fabric to replace the glass doors on these handmade pieces that were meant to display kitchen dishes, I decided it was time for the walls to go gray. (Previously they were a creme yellow color and had endured some serious abuse the last six years – baby doll stroller banging, writing on the walls, cracked plaster and so on.)

Besides those items, the lamps and the new rug – everything else got reused and rearranged. The sofa is vintage and was purchased before I got married to go in our tiny carriage house that we referred to as “The Love Shack.” The gold 1970s chair was in my house as a child and was what my mom refereed to as the “Thinking Chair,” before our generation coined it timeout. The bookshelf seen in the third shot, and the three baby beds, were handcrafted by my dad and and given as gifts throughout time. The curtains are freshly sewn, using an easy inside out pillow case style with simple straight lines.

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“Just go with your instincts,” says the 79-year-old mom

I always figure when people are older than me, and they have more children than me, that they must have more wisdom than me. My neighbor is just that. She’s 79-years-old and knows just how to give advice without making it sound like advice. Which is the best kind, for me.

The other day while standing in the garden talking about her fig tree, I explained a situation that I was contemplating how to handle. It was a situation that sounded like a nice idea, but not something I was really in favor of. How do I know when I’m being too ridged in my parenting and not open enough to break down for a little fun?

I shared some of the details. Then the 79-year-old mom shared some stories about the issue from when she was a child. And her advice was simple.

“Just go with your instincts,” she said.

This is precisely why I love this woman and the generation she comes from. She was an army wife who gave birth to her forth child while her husband was in Vietnam. She breastfed in a day when doing so was rare, because in her mind, it was just what you did with babies.

When I had my first baby it took me months (if not years) to feel comfortable following my instincts to co-sleep. It was not something I planned on doing but sleeping in a chair all night with a nursing baby wasn’t something I planned on either.

The one person who made me feel like sleeping with my baby was completely normal was my midwife – the one who sat crunched under a sink in a tiny bathroom for three hours and 17 minutes while I was in the bathtub trying to push out my baby. At my two-week postpartum appointment my exhaustion was obvious.

She suggested we create a co-sleeper by inserting a piece of plywood between our mattress and box springs, pad it with blankets and let our newborn sleep there.

I love these notions of literally, being simply natural.

Finally, after buying every Dr. Sears book on the market and making him an imaginary member of my family, I embraced the fact that I was not the same kind of mom I encountered at playgroups where moms were competing for bragging rights on how many hours their babies was sleeping at night.

It took me moving to another town and meeting an amazingly supportive group of moms (through a newly formed chapter of the Holistic Moms Network) to feel like my “go with your instincts” style was not an outdated pair of shoes from never, never land.

This is why it was so refreshing, while talking to my neighbor about that baby who is now in the first grade and happily sleeping through the night in her own bed, to hear that the simple notion of “just go with your instincts” still applies just the same.

Except this time I didn’t turn to Dr. Sears because Mrs. Mary was standing right by her fig tree, right when I needed her.

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