I seem to be running full bore into this lifestyle change thing though, yes, I’m still on the relatively "light" end of the scale. Cloth diapers and cloth toilet paper (for pee only in this house), Diva Cups and baking soda/ACV un-shampoo, whole foods, no preservatives or artificial colours/flavours, square-foot gardening, rain barrels, Freecycle, green smoothies, and now - GASP! - I’m considering no tv. B watches quite a bit of Treehouse; it seems to be on all the time while he’s up and in the house even if he’s not watching it every single minute. In the rec room downstairs, a room we don’t use much but probably will use more once the hot weather hits, we have a tv with built-in DVD player. Upstairs, we have, well, wait just a second and I’ll take a picture…

Upstairs, we have this. Pardon the messy room, please. I have a 3.5-year-old who is awesome at taking out but not so hot at putting away. Also, we have a little bit of a storage issue so even when "tidy" there are piles against the cabinet and wall to the left of it. And not that it matters but the walls are actually a light sage-y green, not the off-white whatever they look here. And yes, I am aware that I have absolutely nothing on any of the walls in my house as yet unless you count the four-hook key rack inside my back door; I’m working on it.

I’m thinking (just occurred to me about 10 minutes ago after reading this blog post by Chrysanthemama) that I could put the tv in the furnace room and, after clearing off the upper shelves of the cabinet (you should have seen the top before yesterday morning - nothing like having someone in to wash all your windows inside and out to motivate you to look like less of a slob), relocating the printer, storing the VCR and DVD players, and putting the shelf back into the current printer spot, I could put a curtain up over the tv hole and we could store some of B’s bigger toys behind there (after doing yet another major purge, that is). I could attach it with a simple tension rod and use a dark fabric so it doesn’t jump out at you. Yes? I’m thinking so but we’ll see. We won’t exactly be tv-free but its usage would be greatly reduced, I think. I don’t watch it much (despite ending up with a full cable package for free - seems my provider inadvertently connected me when they were out a few months ago to fix my internet) and we can have movie nights instead of movies-any-time-of-the-day-or-week and it’ll maybe be a bit of a bonding thing. I’m thinking, again, that it doesn’t sound like a bad plan. Of course, it will suck not being able to watch Prison Break from the beginning on DVD with my honey at my house (I’m hooked but he’s never seen it); we’ll have to do it at his place since B’s bedroom (and mine, incidentally) is directly off of the living room and it would be too loud once he’s in bed. S just chuckles and shakes his head when I do things like this but I know that he is impressed and proud and love my "quirks" (sad that they’re classified as quirks, isn’t it?). Maybe someday I’ll get him converted and then he’ll be able to join me in my different-ness.

Here’s the garden plan so far. The beds are 4x5 and are actually going to be all in a straight line (not in a rectangle like the diagram shows) running east/west with the top left bed in the diagram being the west-most one. There is going to be 24" of walking/working space around each one on all sides and all beds will have large trellises at the back (north side), with the fourth probably having a trellis for the melons on the west side too. I’m hoping to use a 33/33/33 mixture of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost; tonight I’ll figure out how many cubic feet of each I’d need for the beds (which are 12" high) and then tomorrow I’ll price it all out. I’d rather not go with "traditional" soil.

Some of the squares (each one is one square foot) are blank because I don’t know what I want to put in them. Some of the squares (for example, the carrots) will be planted in stages - plant a few, let them sprout and grow a little, plant some more, etc, so they’re not all ready to pick at the same time. It is just me and B and occasionally S and his daughter so it’s not like I’m feeding a family of five. The tomatoes and peppers will hopefully be made into salsa and sauce and the like, hence the relatively large number of those plants.

Not much has been going on since I last posted, hence the lack of posting for an entire week…

B had his very first soccer get-together ever. I’m not sure I can call it a practice although maybe it sort of was. They met the coach, got their schedules and uniforms, and kicked the ball around a bit. Or sort of. B is one of the youngest ones, I think, at 3.5 in the Under 5 group. He was alternately interested and disinterested and while he didn’t line up with the other kids to attmpt goals on the coach or attempt passing back and forth to a partner, he did get together with his partner from a previous exercise and they kicked the ball back and forth between themselves. You could literally see B warming up to the whole experience with each kick. Here’s my poor little urchin in his too-big uniform, squinting into the sun.

The garden is coming along nicely behind the scenes. I sat down the other night and yesterday and, using graph paper, mapped out how many beds I could fit along the length of my fence and then planned out what would go in each square foot. It was surprisingly difficult since according to companion gardening, corn does not like to be with tomatoes (for example). When I dropped B off to my parents on my way in to work last night, Dad was cutting the last of the boards; I opted to go with 4-foot x 5-foot beds instead of the traditional 4x4 since they fit better for me, left me with 24" of space between the beds instead of 22", and left me more room at the driveway end of the fence, where there are a few patio stones at the gate that I was afraid of running into. Now to get my plants out there. A couple of my tomatoes are getting what appears to be a bit of blight on a few leaves. It seems to be contained to a single cluster on the affected plants so I’ve pinched off that shoot but I’ll have to read up on it and see what I need to do to help it and prevent it. I was hoping to get things into the garden by Friday but we had some good frost this morning and it’s -1C right now with a projected high of only 9C today (insane!!!) so I guess there’s no rush. Hopefully soon though. In the meantime, I’ll spend some time poking around the ft2garden site and one of the other square-foot gardening forums.

What’s this, you ask? Well, after much procrastination, I dove (dived?) in last night and planned meals for the remainder of the week and started on next week as well. I picked up the cute little binder this morning and I love it!

A mama on MDC posted her template for weekly meal planning and I sat down with it last night. The main column is the days of the week with lines for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner; the smaller column is topped by a shopping list and has a spot for notes on the bottom. Simple and practical with no frills. I went through and made form fields for all the input spots (because I’m anal like that and because I’ll probably be doing most of my planning on the computer) and also put one beside each day header so that I can indicate if I’m working a day shift, night shift (and thus no need for a sit-down supper), or if I’m off. I printed off this week’s plan as well as any recipes that I might need and everything is neatly secure inside. When next week’s plan becomes current, I’ll move this week’s behind one of the dividers and put the new week in its place at the front. I’m thinking I’ll also print off a second copy of the plan each week so I can put it on the fridge door and see it every time I walk past because I’m afraid otherwise that I’ll forget that I need to prepare this or that (eg: soak beans) and won’t have certain things ready when I need them. (What do you think, Rachael?)

This week’s plan looks like this:

Monday - off
:: didn’t fill in since I started after supper last night

Tuesday - off
Breakfast :: peanut butter oatmeal pancakes, berry syrup, fresh orange juice
Lunch :: apple and cheese quesidillas, canned fruit
Supper :: leftover Moroccan chicken, lemon/garlic asparagus, brown rice

Wednesday - off
Breakfast :: apple-cinnamon waffles, applesauce-berry syrup
Lunch :: chicken roll-ups with pesto, smoothie
Supper :: sweet potato burritos, corn, yogurt, canned fruit

Thursday - days
Breakfast :: oatmeal
Lunch :: nuts & dried apricots, smoothie with protein powder
Supper :: chicken pasta salad with peas, peppers, tomato, asparagus, dill

Friday - days
Breakfast :: leftover waffles
Lunch :: leftovers - rice with sauce from Moroccan chicken
Supper :: apple puffed pancake

Saturday - nights
Breakfast :: egg burrito with pepper, tomato, cheese
Lunch :: toasted english muffin with tuna, pineapple, tomato, mozzarella
Supper :: leftover pasta salad, fruit

Sunday - nights
Breakfast :: [sleeping in from nights; no breakfast]
Lunch :: pasta with sauce
Supper :: turkey chili

I’m not sure what apple butter is supposed to taste like since this is my only experience with it but I have a hard time imagining that this particular brand isn’t extraordinary. I first tasted apple butter upon impulse buying a jar at my local health food store (I had gone in to buy agave nectar) and at the first taste I was hooked. The flavour is so incredibly pure and is the perfect mix of sweet and tart. Imagine my absolute delight when I found it at my local Independent Grocer (a regular chain store) for a whole $1.40 cheaper than the health food store. Cheaper and much more convenient to get to. The only problem is that I have a horrible urge to just grab a spoon and dig in until it’s all gone.

It’s funny: I was noticing a few hours ago as I was pushing my cart through the grocery aisles, that I’m much more conscious of what is going into the cart. It’s only been a week or two but I’m more aware of ingredients and what isn’t necessary to be in my food. I’m finding it almost easy to put stuff back on the shelf. No crackers, no cookies, no chips (not that I bought many of those anyway) but even the sauces and other things are getting put back. Who needs all those unpronounceable ingredients? Give me pure foods with no unnatural preservatives, colours, or flavours or I’ll make my own (or do without entirely). I’m surprised at how easy the transition has been so far. Admittedly, I’m finding it very hard to cook but that is because I need to sit down, as I mentioned yesterday, and come up with a week-long (at minimum) meal plan and go with that because then I’ll know what’s coming up and will have the time to do any necessary preparation like soaking beans or marinating for 24 hours or preparing something that needs to sit for an extended period of time to meld the flavours. It’s all a learning experience but so far, I’m enjoying it and am even still excited by the challenge of it.

I look back at myself a couple of years ago too and chuckle again. In the last couple of years I have made several changes in my daily living:

• cloth toilet paper for pee (took an old flannel sheet, cut small rectangles, folded them in half, and serged them into double-layered toss-’em-in-the-washer wipes)
• mama-made cloth pull-ups for B when he was training (and cloth-diapered him part time for awhile when he was full-time in diapers)
• re-usable grocery bags (and just picked up a tub/bucket for produce on today’s trip)
• recycle everything I can right down to shredding reciepts and other small papers and recycling those too
• use a Diva Cup instead of pads/tampons (I’ve never been a pad girl and so did not go the cloth pads route though I would have if I did use pads); interestingly, and as I’ve also read, the cup has considerably shortened and lightened my flow and eliminated the slight cramps/discomfort I would occasionally get
• when my hair was longer I washed it using baking soda and apple cider vinegar and, incidentally, I need to get back into doing that
• I’ve made my own laundry soap, both liquid and powder (currently using Arm & Hammer though because I got two huge tubs for an incredible sale price)
• I line dry most of my clothes in the summer

There are probably a few other things too but those are the ones that come readily to mind. I also have some things I need to do still, both for the frugality aspect of things and the healthy eating factor, including:

• make almond milk
• make peanut butter to replace the sugar-laden regular variety
• can produce and vegetables from my garden this year
• get in on a CSA farm next year (the "local" ones are full up for this year)
• use my juicer (I’ve only used it once to try it out)
• use my dehydrator to make crackers and preserve fruit
• make yogurt in my new-to-me (vintage Salton found at Value Village) yogurt maker

With this new way of doing things and living in general comes de-cluttering (maybe to make room for the acquisitions of juicer, pasta machine, food mill, etc?). My Seven Things for this week is pretty dismal though. I did not get rid of seven things and it might even be a stretch to count the things that I did get rid of (though technically they are "things").

1. Sunday -  to my sister as I continued to purge my freezer and cupboards - sausage, ground beef, pepperoni, pizza pockets, and pogos
2. Thursday - also to my sister, an ice cream pail of white sugar and a tube of crescent rolls
3. Friday - Safety 1st booster seat for the table (to Freecycle)

I’m taking a bit of time while B sleeps to clean up my bookmarks and in doing that, I’m coming across some awesome food-related links that had become buried even though they had only recently been added to my favourites. I’m interested in whole foods, from scratch cooking, with as few canned or packaged ingredients as possible. The links that I’m loving today are Group Recipes (beta) and Happy Foody. What I’m needing to do is sit down and figure out (à la Rachael) what the main part of my meal is going to be for a period of time (two weeks to a month) and then print out those recipes and make a shopping list. When my brother and I were living together that’s what we did for the most part and it worked fabulously. If I’m going to be buying more perishables I need to have an immediate plan to use them. Today is the first day of five off work for me and I think that will be one of my self-assigned chores.

Have a fabulous Saturday! The overcast, raining sky has given way to a mix of sun and clouds. Things are looking good. Happy long weekend to my fellow Canadians. I’ll post my sad little Seven Things list tomorrow.

I’m not sure why this pile of fruit is so appealing to me but it is. I love the look of it, the colours of it, the shapes and sizes and smells of it. I love how fresh and healthy and wholesome it looks, all those pieces piled together. These are all grocery store purchases. I so wish I lived near a farmer’s market or store (that isn’t part of a national chain) that sold variety like this. And can you believe that until today I’d never ever eaten a fresh apricot? The only ones I’ve tasted have been dried or in jam. I must say that they are rather tasty little things and cute to boot. (B picked one up, brushed it lightly on his cheek, and declared it, "Soft. Like a turtle." And then he laughed in a "silly me!" sort of way and said, "Turtles aren’t soft! They’re hard. I’d break my nose!" I think "soft like a turtle", although seemingly an oxymoron, pretty accurately describes B himself. Silly little man.)

And after giving my never-used-even-once juicer (I bought it because it was on sale for a really good price) away on Freecyle a couple of months back, I purchased another one yesterday, also on sale. This second one I’ve actually pulled out of the box and - and! - put together and used. I juiced a few apples, a kiwi, and two carrots. How fancy. 

Way too early in the morning (or too late at night, as the case actually is) but I’m sitting here in the dark surfing for blog rings. I’ve come across The Seven Things Project via the ring of the same name and am disappointed to find that the project came to an end (at least for the creator of the project/ring) back in July. It would definitely be fitting with my plans for my lifestyle. Which is why I’m going to do it anyway. Even without the ring. I expect it might be somewhat easy for the first few weeks but after that, even with the excess that I have, I know it will become quite difficult but, like the project creator, I plan to blog my seven things on the same day every week and say a little bit about them. Care to join in and commit to your own seven things?

Starting fresh. I can’t say that I’ve really missed blogging but I was playing around online one night and registered for blogsome. The banner quickly followed and it has been calling me with it’s clean, bright, and fresh cheeriness ever since. A few things have changed in my life since I last wrote (on the now deleted Wordpress blog) and I’m planning on even more changes, slowly putting them into practice.

I don’t remember exactly when I stopped blogging but quite possibly it was before I bought my little house in July. So that is one change: I’ve bought a house. I’ve also met the most amazing man in the world (despite not wanting to meet anyone) and my happiest times are when the four of us (my son, B; my boyfriend, S; his daughter; and myself) are spending time together. The daily changes and steps towards change, though, are in relation to trying to be more frugal, live more simply, and spend more time just enjoying the world I live in. I have many plants started for a garden this year, plans to do a bit of landscaping and beautifying of the yard, plans to cook more from scratch and use whole foods instead of processed as well as eliminating refined foods (like white flour and white sugar) and reducing sugars. I want to live a simpler life, drastically de-clutter, and get rid of things that I really do not need (and yet have been hoarding just in case I do). I want to get more sleep, get up earlier, and enjoy my child more.

B is a very spirited 3.5-year-old and often has me at the end of my rope. I’m hoping that the change in diet and major reduction (hopefully elimination) in artificial products going into his body will effect some behavioural changes and together we can have a much happier relationship. To borrow Mary Sheedy Kurcinka’s definition of a spirited child, from her book Raising Your Spirited Child, a spirited child is one who is more. "The word that distinguishes spirited children from other children is more. They are normal children who are more intense, persistent, sensitive, perceptive, and uncomfortable with change than other children. All children possess these characteristics, but spirited kids possess them wiht a depth and range not available to other children. Spirited kids are the Super Ball in a room full of rubber balls. Other kids bounce three feet off the ground. Every bounce for a spirited child hits the ceiling." 

And so, now that I’ve given you a rambling incomplete intro, I’ll leave you with this photo of a couple of my seedlings as they were a few weeks ago. I’m now just waiting for the long weekend (and for me to actually build my garden) so I can get them outside and really watch them take off growing. Currently they’re quite big and definitely ready for transplanting.