Seeds for Christmas

I love a challenge - especially when it comes to penny pinching. While Nialle and I aren't always the greatest at saving money, I particularly make an effort to try and cut costs when it comes to Christmas gift giving. Christmas is one holiday that can not only blow our budget, but can get us into debt.

This Christmas, one of the gifts I'll be giving to acquaintances and close friends alike is packets of seeds. I harvested the seeds from the flowers in my backyard. If this is something you'd like to try, there's still time to go out and pick seeds before the snow flies.

Gathering seeds from your garden is easy and it allows you to give your loved ones seeds from flowers you know do well in your area. As a bonus, it doesn't take a lot of work or money to do either!

First, make sure that your seeds are ready to be picked. Here is a picture of some of my Giant Delphinium's seed pods. When the pods turn brown, feel crispy and have split open, you know they are ready.


If you're worried that your pods will burst and scatter the seeds on your flower bed before you get a chance to harvest them, you can pick the 'green' pods as they form and let them dry in your house.

Here I have done just that and spread some pods from Delphiniums, Onion Chives and Maiden Pinks in a cardboard box.

Handle the box and pods with care to make sure you don't lose too many seeds...and to make sure you don't mix up the pods either - that could spell disaster. Use separate boxes for each type of flower if you want so that the seeds don't get mixed up. I like using cardboard boxes because they absorb moisture and speed up the drying process.




When you're ready to extract the seeds from the pods, put the pods in a spare paper envelope. Here I have placed some dried heads from my onion chives into an envelope.




Pressing firmly on the outside of the envelope, roll the pods around to remove the seeds. If that doesn't work, you can also shake the seeds out of the pod into the open envelope. Pick out the empty pods once you think all the seeds have been removed.

Look, there's seeds for some onion chives. Yum

To make sure my seeds are dry, I usually keep them in the envelope for a few weeks and store it in a safe, dry place (away from nosy husbands, children and pets). Making sure everything is dry (and stays dry) is essential as moisture will rot the seeds.

Make sure to label the envelope!

Now comes the fun part! Package your seeds in a creative way - add a personal touch. The simplest of gifts become the most meaningful when the recipient sees how much work and thought you put into their present.

Here I did a watercolor of a Giant Delphinium and added some information on the plant. You can always add more information such as how to plant the seeds, interesting uses or a fascinating bit of history. If you don't like to paint, make up small cards with scrapbooking materials, or download cute labels from the internet.

I stapled a small envelope with the delphinium seeds in it to the back of the card. Include a grain or two of rice in this small envelope to help absorb any extra moisture from the seeds.

Place your seeds in an old basket with some gardening tools, gardening magazines or slip it in a Christmas card and you have a one-of-a-kind gift!

Pink and Purple

Poor Ada has thrush. So I went straight to the medicine cabinet and pulled out the Gentian Violet to start treatment. But, boy, is this stuff nasty...it stains absolutely everything it comes into contact with.

While we're all sure to wear old clothes, Ada has the worst of it what with having to wear the ugliest sleeper I could find. It's fringed in 3 1/2" of lace that interferes with her latch. Maybe 20 years ago, this thing was the hottest thing in fashion, but not anymore. It's destined for the trash once the thrush has gone away.

To complement the lace absurdity, Ada's lips are stained purple and instead of a soft blanket, she's wrapped up in an old towel. I'm hoping this experience doesn't cripple her future fashion sense.



In spite of looking like The Joker (Nialle's words, not mine), Ada's all smiles. Such a trooper.

Resistance is Futile...

After a particularly trying week, I passed Liam and Ada off to Nialle tonight and told my poor husband I was taking a bath. I barked out my instructions like a drill sergeant so there'd be no chance for interruptions during my long anticipated soak. "Liam needs supper. Give him eggs and toast. Ada's been fed, so if she cries she probably wants to be held. Put her on your shoulder and pat her back, she likes that. Then, put Liam in his pajamas, read him a story and put him to bed. Please."

With that, I turned my back to my family and saw the light of my deliverance coming through the crack under the bathroom door. The light was beckoning me. It promised me sanctuary and a wonderful, sweet haven where responsibilities didn't exist.

Turning the handle and entering the room, I quickly saw my retreat was anything but. The floor was riddled with towels and socks, the baby tub, the curling iron from this morning and soggy toilet paper (don't ask). Dirty tracks from the cat meandered from the tub, along the floor and out the door of the bathroom. The garbage next to the toilet sat overflowing with toilet paper from yesterday when Liam decided he needed to blow his nose and that he was going to do it 'hisself'.

No matter. I was going to pretend none of that existed. The tub was within view and its gleaming porcelain sides called out to me. Hmmm, those sides aren't so gleaming. In fact, this tub is just disgusting. I couldn't pretend away that grime in the tub and I wasn't going to soak in THAT. I hate cleaning the tub, but this bath was going to happen; I WAS going to have a relaxing night. Out of the bathroom I marched, quickly grabbing some cleaning supplies before anyone saw me and thought that I was free game for a barrage of questions, a favour, or a feeding.

There. The tub was clean. The water was running at just the right temperature and I had selected my bath salts and book.

This was going to be my first postpartum bath since Ada's birth and I was really looking forward to it. I dipped a toe in the water. I was thisclose to my destination when the bathroom door swung open wildly and Liam burst in on the scene. "BUMMY!" he gleefully exclaimed as he pointed at my bare rear end.

My weary and pathetic reply was, "Yes, Liam, Mommy has a bum. Now can you please give her some privacy so she can take a bath?"

"OK, Mommy, I shut the door."

"Thanks."

With that Liam shut the door and I sank slowly into the tub, enjoying every bit of the hot water. I reveled in the unadulterated peace. The revelry was short lived as Liam popped his head in and declared, "Mommy, I shut the door!"

Grumble. "Yes, Liam, you did. Now can you please shut it again?"

This time the door stayed shut and I opened my book. My eyes were on the page, but my mind started estimating how much water I had just poured and how much this bath was going to cost me on our next water bill. Had I been to selfish taking this bath? All of a sudden I was wracked with guilt - this extravagance had cost me $0.30. No self respecting girl of dutch heritage would spend that much on herself! After much deliberation, I thought the cost could be excused away as this opportunity to relax would increase the chances of my son reaching his third birthday.

My eyes were still on the pages of the book, but now my ears were tuned to the drama going on outside the bathroom door. Liam was eating supper finally and kept dropping his fork. I could envision the pattern the falling eggs had made on the floor. Will Nialle clean it up or leave it? I'll bet the cat is helping himself to some of those eggs right now. He better not puke them up on the carpet again.

Then Liam was demanding milk. Then he dropped his fork again. Then he was saying he was done his supper. Then he was declaring he actually wanted to keep eating.

Filled was the sippy cup. Picked up was the fork. Off came the bib and off came the tray to the high chair. Back on went the bib and back on went the tray to the highchair.

Ada started to fuss and Nialle picked her up when Liam decided for the final time that he was actually done his supper and wanted to be washed up. Not wanting to put Ada down, Nialle started the bargaining, "Can't you eat just a little more?...Just this much...how about this?" until finally I heard, "EAT IT!" followed promptly by a loud, "NO!"

I'm not ashamed in the least to say that at that point, I was glad Liam was someone else's problem.

I heard various cries and clatters as Nialle and Liam cleaned up the living room for bedtime. In the commotion, I swear I heard someone step on the cat. I wickedly thought: Please don't need me. Please don't need me. Don't make me get out of here! And then a thought even more wicked entered my mind - After Liam goes to bed, I can sneak out and get some knitting done before anyone notices me!

I heard the story read, the song sung and Liam was put to bed.

I emerged from my refuge glancing cautiously around the house. Was HE in bed? Was SHE with her dad? Could I sit on the couch and sneak in some knitting?

Yes...yes...so far it was clear. No...nope...I don't see anyone. I sank into the couch and greedily picked up my knitting needles. Knit, purl, knit, purl.

Was it true? Had I succeeded in not only a bath, but a night of knitting as well? What bliss! What sheer and utter bliss! A woman happy is a woman knitting! A woman happy is a woman with a toddler in bed, a husband holding her babe and a night of solitude ahead of her...

...well, that is the woman HAD a night of peace until she heard a little voice at piercing decibels exclaim:

"I NEED TO USE THE TOI-LER!"


Dang it.

Buying Your Cloth Diapers

One reason why I never jumped on cloth diapering when Liam was a baby was because I thought it would cost us around $700 up front for us to start cloth diapering. We couldn't afford to drop that much money all at once. And frankly, I didn't have to because there are a lot of frugal ways you can start cloth diapering. I wish that I knew then what I know now.

Yes, cloth diapers will cost more up front, but think in terms of how much disposable cost for one month (roughly $50). For the cost of 4-8 months of disposables, you can buy cloth diapers that will last your child until they are 35lbs and then you can use those same diapers with your next kid too!

For an overview on the different types of diapers you can buy see this post or bum around (get it? BUM around? Har har) on this cloth diapering blog.

ACCESSORIES

Regardless of what type of cloth diaper you go with, you'll need a diaper pail. Mine cost $15.00 a the LDS (no we're not going Mormon here, we're going to the Local Diaper Store).

You'll also want diaper liners. These look like bounce dryer sheets and catch the poop for you so all you have to do is hold the diaper upside down over the toilet and let the poop and liner fall in to be flushed away. Diaper liners make all the difference for us because it means we don't have to dunk the poopy diapers in the toilet. The dunking process is messy and I find it makes the diaper pail smell worse. Trust me, use the diaper liners because it will make cloth diapering more enjoyable and you'll be more likely to stick with it. For 200 diaper liners I paid $12.99 at the LDS. I've since learned you can get these cheaper elsewhere, but there aren't too many cloth diaper stores where I live, so I'll just have to pay a bit more. I expect these to last us for about 6 months or so.

You can buy a fancy plastic bag to hold your dirty diapers in when you go out, or you can just use a left over grocery bag*. So, your costs for a 'dirty duds' bag will range from $0 - $16.

THE DIAPERS

MAKE THEM

This is what my mom and I did. In order to this to truly save a lot of money, a lot has to fall into place. My mom happened to find flannel on sale for half price, so that saved us a bundle. You'll also want to have a surger on hand because this will make sewing the diapers much quicker. And you'll also need to have a schedule where you can set aside large amounts of time for sewing diapers. It was a ton of work (mostly on my mom's part) and in the end we spent maybe $120-$130 total on the pattern, fabric, thread, elastics and velcro for the diapers.

If you have plain flannel diapers, you'll need covers for the diapers. These are sold in various sizes (small, medium, large, XL) and range in price from $8 each to $30 each. You'll want about three covers for each size range. I only bought for sizes small, Large and XL and that will do us just fine.

36 diapers = $120
9 covers (3 for each size range) = $75 - $270 (ouch! don't go for the expensive ones)

BUY 'EM USED

This option has me really excited. I poked around on kijiji edmonton and there were two pages of used diapers for sale. The prices were considerably reasonable and compared with what I paid to make our diapers. The selection of diapers for sale was impressive and you can choose from the fancy types and the plain jane types too.If I had known I could have bought used cloth diapers so easily, I would have and I could have saved my mom a lot of grey hairs!

Prices vary, but they're dang cheap - even for the expensive all-in-one kind diapers! No more than $100 - $200 to get started (the same cost as 2-4 months of disposables)

GET THEM AS GIFTS

Ask friends and family to buy you cloth diapers as baby shower gifts or birthday gifts

No cost to you, just sheer enjoyment.

SLOW AND SURE

You can always put aside $20-$40/month while you are pregnant to help offset the initial cost of buying your cloth diapers.



WHATEVER YOU DO, BUY OR MAKE ONE-SIZE-FITS ALL

(This is my personal opinion) This will save you money because you can have a diaper that fits a child from 8lbs to 35lbs. You only have to pay once for all the diapers you'll need rather than three times for the three size ranges cloth diapers are sold in.

To take it to the next level, having a one-size-fits all that is also an all-in-one (where the diaper cover is sewn to the outside of the diaper) will mean less fuss for you. Because the diaper cover is sewn to the outside of the diaper, this type of diaper can also save you more money. If you can, go for this type of diaper because they're fabulous. We use our homemade diapers at home, but take the fancy ones out on the town because they're more user friendly when you're visiting or shopping.

The only downside is that on kids under 6 months, one-size-fits-all diapers look huge. So, when Ada wears a fancy dress to church, she does wear a disposable because it looks nicer under her dress (vanity, oh vanity). But on other days she wears one-size-fits-all under her pants and although she looks like she has a "front butt", she's still cute.

I hope this post helps to dispel some of the myths of cloth diapering (mainly the startup costs). Both Nialle and I love that we switched to cloth diapers and haven't looked back since.

__________________________________________________________

*I want to buy a nice plastic bag to put our diapers in, but haven't gotten around to it yet, so we just put the dirty cloth diapers in an old grocery bag when we're out and about. Last Sunday, we were over at our friends' house and the husband actually threw out all of our bag of diapers because he thought they were a bag of garbage. Luckily, I discovered this mistake quickly and our diapers weren't taken out to the street with the trash. The moral of the story is that if you're going to use a plastic grocery bag to store your dirty diapers in, look out for people inadvertently chucking it in the garbage!

Energy Costs of Cloth Diapering

When we first started cloth diapering before Ada was born, I have to admit I was a little wary of the whole process. I thought it would be a nuisance and an inconvenience and that I would regret ever making the switch. I thought the smell would be awful and the mess disgusting. Kindra's posts on cloth diapering helped me to decide to finally make the switch from disposables to cloth.

We've been using cloth diapers for about 3 months now and the results are in - I love cloth diapering! It is a bit more work than using disposables (and I only mean a bit), but the amount of money we are saving makes it all worth while.

Ada's clearly not impressed with the view

One of my friends remarked that she thought of using cloth diapers, but figured that the amount of water she would use to wash them would make the savings negligible.

Liam...future underwear model. He's wearing Happy Heinys, a brand I was introduced to by a generous relative. She bought Ada some of these diapers as a gift and I loved the diapers so much that I had to buy more!

There's lot of websites out there that talk about how much you can save by using cloth diapers, but I wanted to figure out how much savings we were seeing in our little house each month. That way I can give an accurate account to friends and family and it's always nice to know how much we're spending too.

Our washer and dryer came with the house and by no means are they energy efficient. These beasts use a lot of energy, but in spite of all this, still save us big bucks when it comes to diapering.

Here's how much it costs us to wash a load of diapers at our current energy rates:

WASHER
50 gallons/load of water @ $2.20/cubic metre of water = $0.36 of water/load
(one cubic metre of water is about 264 gallons of water)
959 kWh/year of energy@ $0.1125 per kWh = $0.30 of energy/load
$15.99 for a jug of Ecos laundry detergent (105 loads/jug) = $0.15 of laundry detergent/load

Total: $0.81/load


DRYER
898 kWh/year of electricity @0.1125 per kWh = $0.27/dryer load of diapers

Total: $0.27/hour of drying time

For two kids in cloth diapers, I wash about 27 diapers twice a week. In the summer I line dry our clothes. In the winter I also line dry the clothes, but I expect I'll be popping the diapers in the dryer because I'll have too much laundry to line dry all the time.



Let's look at monthly energy costs of cloth diapering:

SUMMER
(washing + line drying)
$6.48

WINTER
(washing + machine drying)
$8.64

If I had both Liam and Ada in disposables, I'd be spending $90/month. This cost is based on how we used to diaper Liam by using the cheap Superstore diapers during the day and the expensive Pamper diapers at night. If we had only one child in diapers, we'd probably be spending $45/month in diapers. This cost would be significantly more if we used only the expensive disposable diapers. No matter how you look at it, cloth diapers are cheaper!

We see more savings because we have two kids in diapers right now. Once Liam is finished potty training, our savings won't seem as impressive, but we'll keep with cloth diapering. Over the past 6 months our bills (fuel, property taxes, water, electricity) have gone up so much that we are now paying $150 more per month than we were in the spring. I guess what I'm saying is cloth diapering helps keep our costs down.

Look out soon for a post on the costs of starting cloth diapering ...(hint: it's not as much as you think)

Consulting the Book of Toddler

And Mr. Poopy-Pants-Know-It-All spake and said, "The time is nigh for me to act two-years-of-age. As I biddest, so shall it be done.

"From this day forth shall I utter such abominations as, 'NO' and 'HOLY SMOKE' and 'NO' again. And, when I have said it a million times before, I shall sayest 'NO' again.

"I shall beget much confusion and fury in my kingdom whilst I throwest my toys about and whilst I touchest the things I was bade not to touch. There shall be much wailing and gnashing of teeth as I resist the discipline of my fathers.

"Stiff necked boy that I am, so shall I be done with naps. But though my napest time be gone, I shall rise before the sun at 5:30am.

"I shall push my sister in her swing most vigorously and I shall try to carry her about the house with all my strength.

"So shall I refuse the eating of my vegetables and the cleaning of my ears. So shall I also refuse to heed my mother's warnings. Refusals shall be the name of the game and the name of the game shall refusals be.

"Heartily will I roll my eyes and heave my breast with sighing when my mother dost bid me do as she please.

And Mr. Poopy-Pants-Know-It-All also spake, saying, "I shall fill my diapers with The Great Stink four times a day. Four times a day, no more, no less. Four shall be the number I shalt fill, and the number of the filling shall be four. Five shalt I not fill, neither fill I three, excepting that I then proceed to four. Five is right out. Once the number four, being the fourth number, be reached, then shall I be satisfied with the filling of my pants.

"So shall it be!"

...and so it was.

Ada Two Months Old

Such a good sleeper. Ada already has slept through the night twice!
Watching Curious George with her big brother (both sans pantalons)...

Daddy's little girl...

Full of smiles and even gave her first laugh on her two month birthday!

She's a doll and each day is better than the last with our little Ada!