She was 92.

Visit here.

Now, that's an idea: Secret Agent Josephine "reconfigured" some of her child's watercolors to create an original set of greeting cards for grownups.

With a child's birthday on the horizon, I've been contemplating parties. After this year, we're shifting to family+one invited friend for dinner and cake.

Simple tea party birthday with tea cups as favors:

Invite a handful of children using handwritten invitations.

Set the table with china teacups and saucers gathered from antique stores and thrift stores.

Iron a cotton bed sheet for a tablecloth if necessary--floral is good.

Refreshments can be cucumber sandwiches, muffins, fruit salad, etc., made by the children as the party activity. They can create a centerpiece together, too, using found items from outdoors.

Offer milk in a small pitcher and tiny sugar tongs for dispensing sugar cubes.

The girls will fight over who gets to pour. The birthday girl gets to serve her friends, and after that she must be gracious and let others share the glory of pouring from a fancy teapot.

After being civilized for the duration, let 'em loose outside to play for awhile! No party games necessary.

Each child leaves with their teacup and saucer--don't be surprised if a bit of trading occurs when they find out they can take their cup home.

To take it a step farther, rinse the cups after tea, fill them with potting soil, and plant grass or a single bulb in each--careful transportation home is key!

Safety Tats are nifty customized temporary tattoos for children. They are printed with a parent or caregiver's phone number in case of emergency. Very cute designs, but they cost about $20 for 30 tattoos.

When I fear becoming separated from my children (amusement park, mall) I write my phone number with a ballpoint pen or Sharpie (shhh!) on the inside of their arms or palms. Not very cute, but it does the job!

I think my problem with clutter (and specifically the clothing clutter that comprises the ever present Mount Washmore in my basement) started back when we first discovered frugality.

One of my many happy frugal discoveries was thrift shopping. With the news that we were expecting a baby, I stockpiled deals on baby clothes. I took into account the age and size my child would be during each season of the coming few years and outfitted her through age three, including toys, accessories and blankies, for less than $50.00. Between the thoughtful gifts I received at my baby shower and what I had stockpiled on my own, I was set. . .

. . . NOT!!

Guess what? I hadn't taken into account the obvious: Babies don't grow at a uniform rate! By six months of age, my baby couldn't wear anything I'd bought for her. Her summer clothes fit in the winter! It was all downhill from there.

I couldn't let my stockpile go--what if I had another baby?! In the meantime, I started trading with friends, and the Hand-Me-Down Express started choo-chooing down the tracks to my basement.

Eventually, bags overtook my laundry room. (Did I mention that we also washed our own cloth diapers at the time, too?) When my second child was about three years old, I accepted that my children would never wear half the adorable stuff I'd stashed, and I hauled loads of clothing to the Salvation Army--but not as much as I should have.

The pattern was set: If it's free and it's cute, I will keep it. The result is that we have more clothing than anyone actually needs, and more than I can reasonably handle in the laundry room.

My poor, neglected blog. I still have posts in progress, promised long ago, that will eventually appear.




I ran out of plastic trash bags the other day and decided not to buy more. Last year we bought this inexpensive trash can from Ikea. Now I've discovered that it's the perfect size to hold a paper grocery sack.

We have so little trash lately that I'm considering burning paper trash just for the fun of seeing how little we end up having to set out on trash day.

We continue to have a laaarge quantity of recycling each week, and that has to stop. I don't believe that recycling is much more earth friendly than NOT recycling. We need to cut down on single-use containers, be they cans of food, glass bottles, or PLASTIC!!!

Check out Today's Creative Blog which features a new creative blog almost daily. I've linked to the work of a crafter who makes beautiful art from photos, fabric scraps and notions.

I found the link by way of Ric Rac.

This is one week's worth of Sonoma Diet groceries for a family of four. This is from my first trip to a new (for me) grocery store, and it was hard to avoid plastic in the produce aisle. Organics were scarce, too. The last time we "ate Sonoma" my fingernails and hair started to grow really fast, and I felt GREAT.

As I've mentioned before, the diet is based on a Mediterranean menu (Sonoma, California shares the same climate). I tried to choose meals with the least "exotic" ingredients for Iowa in the winter, but let's face it: a lot of this food came from far away.



I love beets. I've only ever eaten them from a jar or a can. These fresh beets (which I roasted) made my urine (excuse me) turn red the next day--which has never happened before. BIG scare at first!



Very messy, but oooooh so good.

My camera is giving me grief, and so the photos are lacking. . . sadly lacking.

I wanted to show you my dining room table heavily laden with the results of one day of grocery shopping. This was after I decided to plan a week's worth of meals and snacks from the Sonoma Diet Cookbook. Eating from the Sonoma Diet Cookbook is labor intensive (lots of chopping involved) but absolutely the most delicious, healthy, "happy family" way of eating that I know. Never have my children turned up their noses at a single recipe from Sonoma. In fact, when I told Curt I was going to go "mostly Sonoma" for awhile, he was a happy man: No more mac n' cheese or canned soup on the horizon (I've been bad).

I am eating this way to reinforce health through nutrition. Curt cannot eat more than about 10 grams of fat per meal, and Sonoma meals are generally low fat and nutrient dense.

My thought was to buy a week's worth of "Sonoma" style food to see what it costs (it cost about $167.00, including brand new bottles of things like sesame oil). Then "live" the menu plan for a week, noting places where a few more local, seasonal substitutions might be made, and identifying ways to take advantage of leftovers, and therefore save on cost.

One thing that drives up cost is using "happy animals" for meat sources. Niman Ranch is the next best thing to locally sourced meat. Niman's is not a single ranch but rather a network of suppliers who adhere to humane and healthy practices in raising animals. They're certified by the Animal Welfare Institute.

While buying from Niman's is not quite as good as buying from the local guy in the country, it's the next best thing. Yes, it's pricey but we don't eat much meat in the first place.

Here are online prices for pork roasts.

I can get Niman products from a local market here in Des Moines, and luckily, most of the Niman pork providers are in Iowa, so my pork does not have to travel far. It's practically local!

In the photo, you'll see that the table almost collapsed (not really) under the heft of so many fresh fruits and vegetables. You will also note that it was impossible to avoid plastic for some of the ingredients. I could have brought home more plastic clad items, but I paid more for ingredients NOT wrapped in plastic when I had a choice.

Sooo. . . halfway through a week of cooking Sonoma meals, I realized I'd over planned. I could have pared back the number of recipes by at least one third and had plenty of food. I was also too ambitious to plan for cooked meals (breakfast casseroles and quiches) for breakfast during the weekdays (what was I thinking?!) versus saving those for the slower paced weekend mornings.

I'll be curious to see how next week plays out with the Sonoma Diet, low/no plastic plan. And hopefully by that time I'll have photos, too.

p.s. Ask your local grocery or specialty market if they carry Niman meats. You might be surprised!

(My software works. I can upload graphics again!)

Yesterday I made a first feeble attempt to shop for plastic-free groceries. I shopped at two stores.

Notes from the Mainstream Supermarket:

1. Spinach: The only plastic-free greens in the produce department were heads of butter lettuce, so that's what I bought instead of spinach.

2. Carrots: The only choice was an expensive bunch of elegant, slender carrots with their long green tops intact.

3. Rice: Impossible to buy without plastic. The boxed varieties hide interior plastic pouches--double packaging!

4. Chicken: I buy organic chicken, which goes for about $4,000.00 per pound. All chicken was wrapped in plastic. I asked the butcher if he had any unpackaged chickens in the case or the freezer. No, he didn't.

I successfully purchased coffee, fruit, and half n' half without plastic.

Notes from the Upscale Grocery Store:

1. Rice: I found small quantities of rice packaged in cloth bags, but the cloth bags were sealed in plastic. I also found small cans of Italian aged rice for $10.00. No way. I'm headed to an Asian market next.

2. Chicken:

"May I help you?" asked the butcher.

Inhale. . . "Well . . . I'm doing a project to see if I can buy groceries without bringing home plastic. I'm looking for chicken."

"I have some chicken right here!" he smiled. Sure enough, he produced a tray of chicken breasts.

"Sold!" I said. I had wanted to buy a whole chicken (thriftier) but chicken breasts would do. I didn't even look at the price.

"Do you have any chorizo?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, your chorizo choices are gonna have some plastic," he replied.

"Okay. Well. . . I see you have some ground Italian sausage. I'll have some of that instead."

The guy grabbed a small plastic sheet to protect his hand as he scooped up some sausage. Before I could say anything he exclaimed, "Oh no, I used plastic!"

I laughed. "That's okay."

"I have an idea!" he offered, "I'll push the sausage off of the plastic and onto the butcher paper so you won't bring the plastic home."

"Well, uh. . . that's fine." He wrapped my purchases, and then I noticed something.

"Does the butcher paper have a plastic coating?" I wondered. He thought it was wax. I scraped it with my fingernail. The wax paper I remember from childhood could be scratched with a fingernail, and this wax was not scratching.

"Wait," he said, "Let's look at a new roll." He found a new roll of butcher paper (which was sealed in plastic), and peered at the label.

"It doesn't say anything about what it's made with, but here's the name of the company if you want to look it up, okay?" I copied the name of the company, thanked him and set out on my way.

He called after me, "Hey, is the project you're doing a contest or are you doing it to raise awareness?"

"Oh, it's to raise awareness."

"Cool," he said.

On the way out of the store, my husband said he was on board with getting rid of plastic.

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah, I've been thinking about eliminating plastic for awhile."

This is going to be fun.