Frustrations. Girl Mom Frustrations.

The amount of sexism in toys isn't really apparent until you ARE a parent.

Why do I say this?

I don't have a girl that likes typical "girl" toys. Does she like dolls and Barbies? Yes, but she also wants to be a construction worker, a mechanic, a gardener, a Star Wars character and lots and lots of other characters that wouldn't be considered a "girl" thing to do, especially according to toy companies.

Toys are not for boys or girls. Toys are to play with. Toys are just toys. They don't all need to be pink or blue. They don't all need to be marketed to just boys or just girls.

Crap like this really irritates the shit out of me. Why? Because boys can play with dollhouses too. Girls can be construction workers too. There's no boundaries or limits to children's imaginations.

The Monkey asked for a pink utility belt.

Blue, yellow, green, red? Yes. Your typical "boy" colors? Yes.

BUT PINK. I COULDN'T FIND PINK. WTF.

So I made one. A better utility belt than I could have purchased.

And I'm tempted to make more and sell them.

Parents of girls need more options when it comes to dress up clothes. Melissa & Doug has absolutely awesome options for dress up clothes, but when it comes to kids that know what colors they love to wear and are concerned about fashion at a young age...it can be hard to find what your kid will play with.

Same with boy options too. Not all boys want blue. Some want green, yellow, red, teal, orange, AND pink. All of those colors are awesome options.

All children need to be treated equally and have an equal opportunity to imagine whatever they want. As parents it's our job to cultivate their creativity - and to make sure they have what they need to play. Can I change how toy companies make toys and their color choices? No, but I can make my child happy by making what she wants.

Are there any other children out there that want "utility" belts like this?

The Fresh 20 For One Week (Winter Menu) - Review

I bought The Fresh 20 cookbook last year thinking that this was going to be awesome (because I do like menu planning, I like eating fresh, I like cooking), but I bought it on Kindle and so it's not like you can resell it if you don't like it. What I should have done was borrowed it from the library first because I have a problem with it.

I really like the menus for Spring, Summer, and Fall but the Winter menus are so perplexing to me. And I only really like one week out of the four that are in the recipe book. The three menus that I don't like have ingredients that The Monkey won't eat - and recipes that I probably wouldn't like either OR food that's not in-season and food that's not cheap in Minnesota (like clams - those bastards are so expensive!). 

So I tried the only week that looked good to me and that looked like it might be a fairly reasonable budget. 

THANK GOODNESS I already had meat in the freezer because to be quite honest - if I didn't have the meat, our grocery bill for one week would have been over $175. RIDICULOUS. I had a three pound roast, chicken breasts, turkey sausage, and fish already so it wasn't too bad (but buying all that meat for one week would have been so expensive from either Byerly's OR the Co-op). 

I did it though - I made a beef roast, sausage, fish with veggies, a vegetarian meal, and a plate of pasta with the leftover roast beef. 

All of the recipes were really great, and tasted awesome. But I think I'm going to have to review the Spring menus to see what I can mash together for when we start getting our CSA boxes - my problem is that not everything we have will fit together with pre-planned menus SO I need to be able to fudge recipes a bit and move things around, when dealing with leftovers that can be hard to do (plus it's not like you actually want to cook EVERY NIGHT when a frozen pizza will do the job...). 

Conclusion - if you hate menu planning, you can cook 5 out of 7 days, and have approximately $150 to spend if you eat all organic, then go for it. Buy the cookbook, cook the food (which the recipes are really good!) and plan away!

Tuesday's Frugal Mission

Mer.

Frugality.

Frugal.

CHEAP.

Frugal doesn't necessarily mean cheap. Frugal means thinking about where you're spending your money, what you're spending your money on, and actively making a choice on how you're spending money.

Some days I'm great at being frugal. Others... not so much. OY. I think it's like that for a lot of people.

In any case, today I had a BRILLIANT idea. I saw these awesome curtain rod strings at Ikea and thought - I NEED THOSE FOR MY BACK PORCH.

And then I remembered that I bought the same curtain rod strings - in fact I bought them to string up in the dining room to hold The Monkey's art work but I never got around to it (and I've determined I really like the painting we have in the dining room anyway so I bought magnet clips for the fridge). I thought I might have donated the string or maybe sold it in the last yard sale that we had but no, I didn't do anything with it. Instead the curtain rod string thingy was just hanging out in a basket in the closet.

I even have leftover home decor fabric from when I made curtains for The Monkey's room when I was pregnant. SCORE.

All I need are 4 extra corner holder thingys from Ikea and some type of hanger clips and I'm all set to hang up some curtains - instead of using the tension rods which keep falling on The Monkey when she's playing back there (it's sort of funny. I mean you suddenly hear something snap and then a 3 year old screaming "GHOST! IT'S A GHOST! I CAN'T SEE!!!").

So the total cost for these curtains AFTER finding what I already have in my house will be under $10. WOO HOO!!!

My NEXT frugal mission after Ikea and the curtain rod string thingy is to go to the library.

I reserved 5 books - two are urban homesteading books which are all about turning your yard into a vegetable garden and basically making the most out of a 1/4 acre of land. Here in the city we have like an 1/8 of an acre - but with the tree coming down in the back, I can start to take advantage of all the sunlight we're going to get next year and plan out more vegetables and determine how to PRESERVE what I grow. That's the tough part - you can only eat so much while it's fresh so knowing how to preserve homegrown food is really a good thing to know. I'd like to do lasagna gardening in our front flower beds for vegetables and move all the flowers into the actual yard - but make some sort of patio for chairs and a table (yes, we hang out in the front yard here in Minnesota, sometimes even in the garage!). First I need to read HOW to do some of this shit and determine how much sun the front gets to know if I can actually move some flowers and how bad chicken wire will look from the street. Maybe I should start looking at what grows best for vines... Meh, whatever... I have lots of months to think about gardening and to write down which flowers did the best this year.

Three books are just for funzies - one stupid Nora Roberts book (the last in a trilogy which will take me two or three days to read); another last-of-a-trilogy book in the Grave Mercy series which won't take me long at all; and the 4th book in the Logan McRae series by Stuart MacBride (if you can't tell it's a book set in Scotland by a Scottish author).

And the last frugal thing that I do today:

Make lunch with leftovers from dinner - some type of veggie wrap or quesadilla with the grilled veggies from last night.

Cook dinner with the last of our CSA veggies from last Thursday. Tonight = roasted veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, beets, turnips) with rice pilaf.

If you notice, there's no meat listed above. Basically we get enough veggies where I don't really need to cook meat with a meal. There's no way we can eat everything if I include meat. We become partial vegetarians in the summer with the amount of vegetables we receive with our CSA and with what I supplement from the co-op or Cub or Target or Byerly's. That doesn't mean we don't have meat - in the freezer there's pork chops, chicken, ground beef, fish, and shrimp. I have meat so when we do need some protein I can just pull it out of the freezer instead of running to the grocery store or wherever to get meat. It's a cheap way to eat meat - I buy when it's all on sale (and I don't buy the cheap stuff, I buy organic free range chicken, organic grass fed beef, organic fed pork, etc...) and then I toss it into bags with marinade in portions for 1 or 2 people.

So.. I think that's all we're up to today.

Happy Tuesday!!!