Menu Plan Monday - 23rd Feb

Notes on last week's menu:
* We didn't get to the orange chicken stir fry this week - it was late by the time we got home from circus and I didn't feel like being adventurous. I ended up just seasoning the chicken and pan-frying, throwing in some carrots and frozen cauliflower, and serving it with rice. I must remember that Thursdays are late home & to plan something simple.

To use up this week:

Menu Plan this week:

Fairly plain & simple this week - we have quite a busy one.

Monday - hamburgers
Tuesday - steak & salad / veges depending on weather
Wednesday - tacos
Thursday - chicken laksa
Friday - grilled fish & veges
Saturday - out at a 50th party
Sunday - roast chicken & veges

For more exciting menu plan ideas, see Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday.

Recipe: Chocolate snowballs & condensed milk

The recipe is based on one from the weetbix site - http://www.weetbix.com.au/recipes/double-chocolate-balls.aspx

8 Weet-Bix, crushed (I used Aldi brand ones and had to use a few more to get the right consistency - maybe they are smaller?)
½ cup coconut
2 tablespoons cocoa
395g can sweetened condensed milk

1. Place all ingredients, except some of the coconut in a large bowl. Mix well.
2. Form mixture into 30 balls and toss in coconut. (Forming in balls works better if your hands are wet)
3. Refrigerate until firm. Eat!

If you don't keep condensed milk in the pantry, you can make your own! (I got this from the Simple Savings site)

1 cup (250 mL) of water
2 cups (500 g) of sugar
2 cups (500 g) of powdered milk
6 tbsp butter

Place all ingredients in the blender / food processor and let it blend for 2 minutes.

Keep it refrigerated. Makes the equivalent to two tins and can be used in any recipe that calls for it. (Or just eat it with a spoon lol!)

Grocery Challenge Wk 2 of 6

The Challenge: To only spend $25 / week on groceries for the next 6 weeks.

The Result (Wk 2):

Spent $14.60 on cheese, bread & a bottle of pepsi for the invalid on Sunday.
Spent $8.95 on noodles, bread & butter on Thursday.

Balance:

Groceries: $6.25+$25=$31.25-$14.60-$8.95=$7.70 (into change jar)
"Stash": $100
Meat money: $20

Our week of Learning - 22nd Feb

English: He practised the letters 'e' & 'f' in handwriting.

Maths: Leap into Maths Yr 1 workbook - Unit 20, as well working with balancing scales to measure weights of lots of things.

Science & Technology: Lots of science this week. Wednesday he finished off the weather unit by learning how to read a thermometer and recording the temperature every hour between 9am and 6pm. On Friday he started the new "Push/Pull" unit by doing experiments with a hair dryer & ping pong balls (air force).


HSIE (Human Society and it's environment): No formal history this week.

Creative & Practical Arts: Drama class. We also had an art day at our homeschool meeting so he got to do lots of arty things like making marbled paper, drawing a still-life, wet painting & more.


PDHPE (Personal Development, Health & Physical Education): Circus class, plus he has been doing lots of practice at home. He mastered spinning the hoop around his wrist this week - a small step, but one he's very proud of!

Life skills (cooking, gardening): He learnt the necessary skill of making chocolate snowballs :) (Recipe to follow).

Paying it forward

Last year I was a very pleased recipient of Lisa @ The Tin House's Pay It Forward challenge. I've finally gotten around to reciprocating.

"This is how it goes : it's the Pay It Forward exchange, based on the concept of the movie "Pay It Forward", where acts of kindness are done without expecting anything in return, just passing it on, hoping that the recipients will do the same and pay it forward, like a never ending chain of kindness...

I will make and send a handmade gift for the first 3 Aussie friends who post a comment to this post, requesting to join this exchange, and promising to pay it forward to 3 other persons, etc....

I don't know what my 3 gifts will be, and I can't make them in the next few weeks, but I can promise I will send them within the next 6 months . (I hope!)

What YOU have to do in return then, is pay it forward by making the same announcement and promise on YOUR blog."

So if you're an Aussie reader (sorry to any overseas readers - postage is a killer!) and you'd like to receive a handmade gift from me (bearing in mind that I am a beginner knitter & sewer lol!) and are willing to pay it forward yourself, leave a comment with your email in the form keztol at hotmail dot com so the nasty spambots don't see it.

Look what I made!!

I finished this dishcloth / face washer a couple of weeks ago and haven't posted about it yet. It's not perfect, but it's pretty special to me! It's the first thing I've made following a pattern that's more complicated than "knit x rows" :)

I used this waffle pattern I found, and made it out of cotton. It's so soft. I can see myself making a few of these!

Menu Plan Monday - 16th Feb

Notes on last week's menu:
* Thursday's spag bol was shifted to Saturday night.
* Homemade fish fingers went over well (basically just cut the fish into fingers, crumb with egg & breadcrumbs & cook in the oven).

To use up this week:

Menu Plan this week:

Monday - fried rice
Tuesday - pork chops & ?? (DH cooking)
Wednesday - shepherd's pie
Thursday - orange chicken stir fry
Friday - steak & veges
Saturday - leftovers
Sunday - steak with mushroom & onion gravy & veges

For more exciting menu plan ideas, see Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday.

Our week of Learning - 15th Feb

English: He practised the letter 'd' in handwriting, and did some find-a-words & crosswords with a "show" theme, as he was off to the regional show with his grandparents later in the week.

Maths: Leap into Maths Yr 1 workbook - Unit 19, as well as some show theme maths worksheets.

Science & Technology: He used the camera, Windows Movie Maker & his lego pieces to make a movie called 'Fire'. I'll post a link when it gets uploaded to the kid's video site we use. He's also been using a couple of different card-making programs to make cards for people.

HSIE (Human Society and it's environment): It turns out that the episode of 'Walking with Cavemen' that they showed on TV as episode 1 was actually episode 2!! So this week we watched episode 1!

Creative & Practical Arts: Drama class. He made chocolates for Valentine's Day for his cousins and grandparents.


PDHPE (Personal Development, Health & Physical Education): Circus class again - he seemed a lot more settled this week, and spent more time on individual equipment rather than flitting between everything.

Life skills (cooking, gardening): Nothing major this week.

Grocery Challenge Wk 1 of 6

The Challenge: To only spend $25 / week on groceries for the next 6 weeks.

The Result (Wk 1):

I was doing quite well in the start of the week - spent $18.75 on fruit, eggs & bread at the fruit shop on Tuesday.

Things fell off on Thursday though. Pete had to go into day surgery for a (relatively) minor procedure - we dropped him at 2pm and were told to pick him up at 5:30 on our way home from circus class. We got back - and he was still sitting there waiting to go in! He finally went in about five minutes later, and we were told to come back in another 2 hours!!! I had packed a few snacks in case we had to wait for 30mins or so, but 2 hours!!

It wasn't practical to go home, so we headed off to the nearest food court to get some tea. By the time Pete got out of recovery, it was after 8pm and he'd had nothing to eat since 8am but the small sandwich post-op. Needless to say, he was starving, so more take-away on the way home.. So for the night, we didn't get much change out of $40. Oh, and I was feeling stressed so I bought Billy an activity book to do that he didn't need, and didn't even use. It all came out of some "emergency money" I'd stashed away, but still..

The rest of the week went better.

Balance:

Groceries: $25-$18.75 = $6.25
"Stash": $150-$50 = $100

A Day in My Life - Feb 14th

Welcome to Saturday 14th Feb. We don't do Valentine's Day so there's nothing special going on here..

We're child free this morning (Billy is having a sleepover at his Ma's) so I could have a bit of a sleep in. Got up about 8am into a blissfully quiet house.

I curled up on the lounge in my pyjamas with my book and listened to the sound of the rain on the roof. Got up to make myself some breakfast and a cup of tea and went back to my book!

Finished my book about 9am, switched the computer on and answered some emails.

About 9:30 I went out into the kitchen to do the dishes as quietly as possible (DH was still asleep).

Back on the computer about 10am and started doing some research for the homeschooling group.

10:30 finally got to have a shower once Pete woke up, and put a load of clothes on to wash. A bit of tidying, a bit of time on the PC.

11:30 Clothes in the dryer, made up some of the now-famous One Hour French bread. Still waiting for MIL to drop B off. As much as enjoy the time to myself, I don't settle until he's back home...

12 My MIL & SIL dropped Billy off and visited for a while. Once they left we had lunch and watched an episode of Robin Hood. Did the folding and ironing, got a few things ready for our meeting on Monday, and then sat down (3pm) with a cup of tea.

Paid some bills, and balanced our accounts. Answered some work emails, and tried to schedule some new work along with existing clients.

Cooked & ate tea (spag bol + I used the rest of the bread I made for lunch for garlic bread). Played around with a design I had in mind for a new client (I don't normally do paid work on the weekend but when inspiration strikes .. lol)

I downloaded a free yoga class from yogadownload.com (thanks to Libby for the heads up), then played around putting it and some music onto my new phone. Put Billy to bed during this time - listened to his stories of what he'd been up to at the regional show last night.

I went off to my room and did my yoga download - good thing I downloaded the gentle beginner's one - it's been a long time since I've done a proper yoga routine!!

Went to bed where I tossed and turned for quite a while - I'm not sure if it was doing the yoga straight before bed, or that my mind just wouldn't turn off.

For more "Day in my Life" stories check out Jenny's blog.

Evacuation folder

The devastation of the fires in Victoria has really made me think about our vulnerability here. The current death toll stands at 173 with 750 houses lost. It's shocking, scary and indescribable.

Our house is on the outer suburbs of our town. While we're not surrounded by trees, the bush isn't too far away. Seeing how quickly and ferociously the fire has swept through Victoria has spurred me to think about what would happen here.

Basically our fire plan is to get out - we wouldn't want to stay with the house if at all possible. We do need to talk about what to do if we were forced to stay and where we would go if we did evacuate (in case we were separated).

I've started to make up a fire evacuation folder that could be grabbed on the way out of the door. Currently it has our insurance policies, DVDs with our digital photos, and keys to our safe. I want to include bank account, superannuation, credit card details, addresses & phone nos of loved ones. I'll have a list of stuff to grab if there is time (in order of importance).

I think I should also have an emergency box (first aid kit, torches, radio etc) & go bag with snacks, water, change of clothes etc.

Do you have something like this in place? What do you have in yours?

Menu Plan Monday - 9th January

Notes on last week's menu:
* Both new recipes (thai beef salad & the orange honey cashew chicken) were very nice.
* We didn't do the spag bol because it was too hot. I think we had cold meat & salad instead.
* Friday night we had a blackout as I started to cook tea, so I ended up cooking the fish on the BBQ and having salad with it.

To use up this week:
* Zucchini

Menu Plan this week:

Monday - steak sandwiches with caramelised onions
Tuesday - no idea at this stage - I have to go to work that night so has to be something DH can prepare
Wednesday - homemade fish fingers & veges
Thursday - spaghetti bolognaise
Friday - chicken curry
Saturday - leftovers
Sunday - pizza

For more exciting menu plan ideas, see Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday.

Freezer inventory & grocery challenge

Apologies for the flurry of posts this afternoon!

I decided what better thing to do on a 40 deg day but a freezer inventory and re-org! I had to work fast though to avoid everything thawing..

This is what I have in my freezer & the number of portions (after I tossed the unrecognisable or badly freezer-bitten stuff):

Meat

• steak - 14
  
• mince - 10
  
• chicken - 4
• chicken wings - 1
  
• sausages - 10
  
• pork chops - 2
  
• fish - 3
• bacon
• bacon pieces (use for pizzas & flavouring)
• salami (handful - use for flavouring)
• ham
  
• devon
  

Frozen Veges

• celery
• mushrooms
• capsicum
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• peas
• carrots
• chillis
• mashed pumpkin (use for scones / bread)
  

Frozen Fruit

• bagfull of bananas (to make bread or muffins)
• 2 apples (cook for crumble etc)
• tinned pineapple - 3
• tinned fruit salad - 1
• coconut cream - 1
  

Prepared Meals / Sides / Other stuff

• cooked snags - 1
• cooked snag & onion casserole - 1
• pizza dough - 1
• couscous - 1
• tomato soup - 2
• chicken stock - 5
• shortcrust pastry - 3 or 4 sheets
  

There are at least 6 weeks worth of meals there (along with stuff from the pantry), so how's about a challenge?

I'm going to keep shopping to a minimum for the next 6 weeks. I'll try to keep it to fresh fruit & veges, and staples like eggs, milk, cheese, bread etc. Hmm, can I sneak ice-cream into staples??!

So the money I save doesn't just disappear I'll put some figures on it.

Normal grocery shopping budget is $95/week. If I allow $25/week for purchases, that should be $70/week I save - or $420 over the time.

• I have a higher than normal water bill due in a couple of weeks, so $70 will go to that.
• I'll put aside $20/week to go to restock on meat at the end of the 6 weeks - $120.
• That will leave $230 to go into savings.
  

I'll report in each week - Anyone want to join in?

Our week of learning - 8th Feb

We had such a busy week this week. Monday our homeschooling get-together started up again with an Australia Day theme, Tuesday we had drama class, Wednesday we went up to visit Mum & Dad, my sister & nieces as they were home from holidays, Thursday was circus class, Friday I had to go and see a client (which means B comes too) - so despite my good intentions of only being out 3 days / week, we were out every day! I'm tired...

English: He practised the letter 'c' in handwriting, and wrote an acrostic poem about weather. (Acrostic poems are ones where the first letter of each line form a word).

Wind makes me
Excited
And
Thunder makes me
Hide under my bed.
Every time lightning strikes I
Roar!

Maths: Leap into Maths Yr 1 workbook - Unit 18.

Science & Technology: He played a DK computer CD called 'Become a Science Explorer'. We had other things planned but it was too hot and we were too exhausted, so we substituted. I love the flexibility :)

HSIE (Human Society and it's environment): We watched the first episode of 'Walking with Cavemen' - in fact Billy watched it a 2nd time just because he enjoyed it! So there's been lots of cavemen discussions going on around here! I've requested the DVD from the library as for some reason the tv is showing episode 4 this week, not episode 2!!

Creative & Practical Arts: Drama started back with lots of new kids in the class. I think there are 16 in the class now - I pity the teacher :) (I think she has an assistant now to help out)

PDHPE (Personal Development, Health & Physical Education): Circus class started! They started off as a group doing work with hula hoops (round the waist & wrist) and then moved on to balancing - I expected balancing would be on beams - but no, it was on each other's backs!! Then for the rest of the time they could go and do whatever activity they wanted out of what the instructor had - unicycle, juggling, spinning plates, diablo, devil sticks, not sure what else. They could just swap between them whenever they wanted. The only things with restrictions were the "high" stuff - trapeze, rope & pole - Billy did have a go at the rope under supervision.

Basically apart from being unco like me, and having very little strength, he had a good time. John (the teacher) told me afterwards (in a nice way) that he has a problem with listening & following instructions (like that's news to me!), so he won't be allowed on the trapeze until he can listen because of safety issues.

In an effort to get fit& strong for circus class and Auskick, Billy has developed an exercise chart with Pete and he marks it off each day - too cute! He's doing squats, jogging around our yard (bit hot for that atm), sit ups and bench presses with the hand weights.

Life skills (cooking, gardening): He cooked more scrambled eggs - this time completely by himself, even serving it out. They were pretty tasty too! It's been too hot to do much else in the kitchen or garden.

Sixth photo tag

Libby tagged me (*ahem* a week or so ago) with the 'sixth photo' tag. The rules are simple:

* Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.
* Go to the 6th Folder, then pick the 6th picture in that folder.
* Post that picture on your blog and the story that goes along with the picture.
* Tag 6 other people that you know or don’t know to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog or an e-mail letting them know you chose them.

Here's mine:


This photo was taken at a play cafe when a few local mums got together back in 2006. The boys (Billy at the back) are about to dive into the ball pit - always a fun occupation!

So now, over to you.. I won't tag anyone but if you want to do it, leave me a comment to say you will.

(And I know I have several other tags to get to - I'm slack!!)

Our week of learning - 2 Feb

Last week we were pretty much back into school but our external activities hadn't started - this is the first full on week!

I've succumbed and set up a weekly routine for our school work - it felt too much like school to me so I'd resisted, but I think we will both benefit from the routine (as long as it's still flexible!). Basically I've allocated a subject to each morning (an hour or so), with the external activities (this term drama & circus class) in the afternoons.

English: He started writing a script for a play - it's an ongoing project! He did the letter 'b' in handwriting. I've also been teaching him how to use the dictionary (a kid's one) to look up words he wants to spell - in an attempt to save my sanity!

I'm an avid reader so I was so pleased to see him pick up a book and sit down and read it to himself this week. Finally I think he's feeling confident enough about his reading that he is enjoying reading a book.

Maths: Leap into Maths Yr 1 workbook - Unit 17.

Science & Technology: He's discovered Publisher and has been busy creating newsletters, business cards etc!

In our Weather unit we made a wind sock, learnt about the points on the compass and how to read one, and checked several times through the day to see which way the wind was coming from.




HSIE (Human Society and it's environment): We discussed the rise of the mammals and the ice-age. I'm having to rethink the way I was doing history - it wasn't holding his interest at all and he was getting very reluctant to do it (declaring 'History is boring' - *gasp* - it wounded my history-loving heart!!). He did enjoy the dinosaur lapbook though. So not so much of the book, and more hands-on from now on - and in impeccable timing 'Walking with Caveman' started tonight on TV so I got Pete to tape it ready for history this week.

Creative & Practical Arts: No lessons last week. There's been lots of imaginative play, finger puppets etc etc though.

PDHPE (Personal Development, Health & Physical Education): It's been too hot to be active!

Life skills (cooking, gardening): I've incorporated this into our routine as well, inspired by Stephanie Alexander's book. No gardening this week, but he made a salad pretty much by himself - washed & tore the lettuce, chopped cucumber etc. I just need to make sure I don't try to incorporate it when I'm short of time!! He also made scrambled eggs under supervision.

Menu Plan Monday - 2nd Feb

Notes on last week's menu:
* Didn't get to the freezer meal as it has been HOT and they are mainly stew type things.
* I ended up grocery shopping on Friday just because I won't have time next week, but we managed the 'hardship' of doing without stuff quite well.

To use up this week:
* Zucchini

Menu Plan this week:

* I'm going for mainly cooler things or quick cooking things this week as the forecast is for another hot week.

Monday - thai beef salad
Tuesday - spag bol (sauce in freezer, just need to reheat & cook pasta)
Wednesday - Orange honey cashew chicken
Thursday - steak & salad
Friday - Grilled fish with zucchini agrodolce (Stephanie Alexander book)
Saturday - leftovers
Sunday - marinated chicken wings

For more exciting menu plan ideas, see Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday.

Book Review: Kitchen Garden Cooking with kids by Stephanie Alexander

I've been eyeing this book off for a while, so when I spotted it in the library the other day, I grabbed it.

The website explains it better than I could:

"Stephanie Alexander's philosophy is that there is no such thing as special food for children: if food is good, then everyone will enjoy it regardless of age. In Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids, Stephanie gathers together 120 recipes, all specially written for children, with simple instructions, a colourful layout and lots of fast, fun facts for curious minds. But while all of these recipes can be negotiated by a couple of eight-year-olds in aprons - with a bit of adult supervision - the dishes are anything but standard kids' fare: alongside the muffins and slices are homemade pastas, Indian curries, Asian tea eggs and vegetable rich winter soups.

Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids also tells the story behind the recipes - the inspiring tale of the Kitchen Garden at Collingwood College. In 2001, Stephanie initiated a garden and cooking program in a large inner-city Melbourne school. Since then the program has given hundreds of primary school children the opportunity to plant, grow, harvest, cook and eat the very best kind of food - freshly grown, organic, unprocessed and delicious.

In the same way that The Cook's Companion changed the culinary habits of a generation, Kitchen Garden Cooking with kids will challenge the way we think about the eating habits of our children."

It really is a wonderfully inspiring book. The first section talks about the way they set it up, and walks through the first few years of the gardening and cooking program. Then comes the gorgeous looking and sounding recipes! The recipes have got lots of instructions and even little tidbits of information that I found intriguing! I especially liked the way the recipes are set out by season.

It's now been added to my "purchase" list for sometime in the future, and it's given me the push to allow Billy more of a role in the kitchen. If you have kids, and like gardening & cooking - I definitely recommend it!

Sometimes you have to be sneaky..

For a week or so I've been asking Billy to start cleaning the shelves in his bedroom cupboard - I just wanted him to do 1 shelf at a time as I knew he'd get overwhelmed otherwise. Somehow it just hasn't made it onto his priority list :)

So rather than get angry, today I got sneaky. I just went in there myself and started cleaning - sure enough, a few minutes later "What are you doing? Can I do it too?" :)

Between us it probably only took about an hour and the shelves are now very tidy with strict instructions to keep it that way - yeah right! I only managed to throw out 3 shopping bags of rubbish - I could've got more if he wasn't helping - he's a hoarder but getting better. I also put aside a box of puzzles & toys to pass down to his cousins that he's grown out of.

So now there's room to start transferring stuff from some of the other cupboards where plastic toys are breeding...

I wasn't game to take a 'before' photo lol.

Menu Plan Monday - 26th January

Notes on last week's menu:
I tried a new pizza dough recipe which made great thin crust pizzas but the general consensus was the family preferred thicker... *sigh*

To use up this week:
* roast turkey
* I have a freezer full of unidentified meals - I'm trying to slowly use them up to make some space

Menu Plan this week:

Well, after a couple of unexpected social events this week where we supplied part of the meal, the money I had put aside for fresh stuff this week has been "eaten up"! I have about $2 in my wallet, and while I could raid other envelopes for money, I'm going to try my best to do without.

We have no:
* eggs - I have "no-egg" if I need to do some baking, or will find recipes that don't use eggs. I made banana muffins today so that will do us for a while. We'll just have to forgo eggs for breakfast!
* bread - I can make bread (made some today for today & tomorrow) plus we still have heaps of wraps. The yeast is running short, so can fall back on scones or pikelets if necessary.
* fresh fruit - this is the biggest one. I have heaps of tins of fruit, it just depends how many complaints I get about the lack of fruit pieces :)
* milk - I have powdered milk for cooking & my tea. DH uses milk on his cereal and won't use powdered milk, so I'll make some bircher muesli using yoghurt instead - or he can just put up with it! I'll bet this week Billy decides he wants milkshakes to drink :)

So a few challenges there, but we should be able to manage without too much hardship!

Monday - roast turkey (carried over from last night as we went to friend's place for dinner)
Tuesday - freezer meal & pasta / dumplings / rice - depends what it is when it's thawed out!
Wednesday - t-bone & chips
Thursday - BBQ thai spiced chicken, rice & veges
Friday - turkey & salad wraps
Saturday - leftovers
Sunday - rolled roast beef & veges

For more exciting menu plan ideas, see Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday.



Eating from the garden:
* Garden?? What garden??!

Planting this week:
* Not sure yet, need to sit down & plan.

Getting stuck into the house

It's been filthy hot this week, I've had a migraine most of the week, and we've been had a few days where we've had to leave early and got home late-ish. So the house is a mess!

It's cooler today, so time to get stuck into things. I have probably 3 loads of washing to do, clean the kitchen & hallway from all the things that have been dumped there. Plus I have a bit of paid work to try and get to.

Let's do it!

Guess who I met yesterday???!

Yep, that's right - Libby!



And what did we do together? Went hunting for poo !!


We went on a National Parks & Wildlife Discovery tour - "Whose Poo's that?" (with the kids lol) - at the gorgeous Tomaree National Park. The tour consisted on looking for animal tracks & poo, and trying to identify what types of animals had been there. As you can see we saw LOTS of rabbit poo!, but also tracks of birds, lizards & possibly wallabies. It was really interesting - I learnt some stuff myself!



During the tour, the day changed from the occasional spits of rain, to a light drizzle, so that put a stop to our plans to go to the beach. So we headed for shelter and went to Fighterworld, an aviation museum at the nearby Williamtown RAAF base.

The kids got to sit in the cockpit of a couple of fighter jets (don't ask me what they were!), look at lots of jets coming in to land and take off, and try out the ejector seats.




We were very tempted to leave them strapped in while we went and had a coffee, but refrained!

It was a great day - it was so nice to meet Libby, Amy & Christy - Libby & I have "known" each other for years online but this was our first meeting in real life. I'm pretty sure it won't be the last!! The kids got on well, and I felt so comfortable with Libby like we'd been doing stuff together for years.

Finances and pocket money

I bought myself a copy of the Simply Budgets program after hearing some good reviews of it, so I spent last week entering budget details and trying to get my head around the program. I've been a fan of Microsoft Money for years for tracking expenses, but it's budgetting side was quite atrocious (in my opinion!!)

Simply Budgets doesn't track expenses - it simply forecasts your cash flow. They use the analogy that tracking is like driving while looking out of the rear window - which I had heard before but is quite apt! With Simply Budgets, you enter in your regular expenses, starting dates, cycles etc and it forecasts your cash flow. You can select that you'll be paying things via credit card if you want.

One of the good things about it is the long term savings forecasts for things like fridge replacement, car tyres, car batteries etc. You enter the life of the item (it suggests a length for many things), the cost and the current age, and it tells you how much you need to save to have the money when you need it.

I really like the way you can set your own cycle for things - I have a 6 weekly chiro appointment and it really used to peeve me in Money that it could only be monthly or 2 monthly. This one you can set a 'number of days' cycle.

One of the hardest things for me to get my head around is that it doesn't track expenses. There is nowhere to enter an 'actual' figure - you simply roll the budget over and change the opening balance of your account. I'm still trying to decide if this is good or bad! The only times I tend to look back at expenses is to work out a) did I pay something and / or when, and b) how much was something. I'm not sure if bank records will be good enough for this, but time will tell.

It has made me realise that we have a $1000 hole coming up in April that needs to be plugged before then! It's also made me think about the way my accounts were structured, so I've done some reorganising in that area.

It's only been a week, but so far I think it will be a very useful investment.

**********

Bel reminded me that I hadn't updated on my grand pocket money scheme for Billy that started in December. Well, its so far so good! His room has never been clean for this long before - I suspect some of it may be surface clean - I haven't gone delving under cushions and things, but I'll accept that for now!!




His chart consists of 2 things he has to do each day to get the full amount of pocket money each week - keep his room clean, and be good. 'Be good' is of course a relative term - as long as he doesn't have a complete melt-down and isn't consistently bad then he's ok! I have just added an extra line this week - 'clean teeth'. I added that one after realising his hygiene habits have slipped somewhat lately - he was 'sprung' when I found his toothbrush still packed away 4 days after we'd gotten back from holidays!!! (Yes, no 'mum of the year' awards here for not checking lol!)

So most weeks he's gotten the full amount of pocket money ($2) - he loses 10c for each square not stamped. While we were away it got spent a fair amount on lollies since we were at the corner shop every day or so buying bread. I consider it a learning exercise though - he still got to work out what he could afford and he started to see that some things were better value than others. Plus the pride on his face as he was offering around lollies that he'd bought 'with his own money' was priceless!

This morning he had $11 in his wallet when we went shopping - and boy was it burning a hole in his pocket!! I talked him out of buying half of the toy shop (we went in there to buy a nephew's present), but he finally ended up buying a Disney magazine with a WALL-E pencil case while we were in the supermarket. He's still coming to grips with the idea that once he spends it, it's gone - he was still talking about going back next week and buying a toy that he *had* almost had enough money for! Oh well, better to learn that at 6 than 26!!

It's also cut way down on the stuff I would usually buy for him - now when he starts harping for something I just say "do you have enough money for that?" and it usually stops him in his tracks!

So all in all, it's successful so far!

Menu Plan Monday - 19th January

Notes on last week's menu:
The souvlaki was quite a nice recipe and will go into rotation, the chow mein was quite salty and nothing at all like I expected. Probably won't do it again.

Having a day set aside to use up leftovers is working well.

To use up this week:
* roast beef

Menu Plan this week:

Monday - beef & salad wraps
Tuesday - meatballs in tomato & basil sauce
Wednesday - chicken curry & rice
Thursday - leftover roast with salad or veges
Friday - pizza
Saturday - leftovers
Sunday - roast chicken & veges

For more exciting menu plan ideas, see Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday.



Eating from the garden:
* Garden?? What garden??!

Planting this week:
* Not sure yet, need to sit down & plan.

Back to school!

We started back with our school work this week - just because we could lol! It'd been a while since we'd done anything formal - with our November trip and then the lead up to Xmas, we'd gotten pretty relaxed with things.

I'm working on doing about an hour's "formal" work each day - the rest is learning from life. Our focus in Term 1 will be:

• English - Billy still writes mainly with capital lessons - or a combination - and while his writing is ok, it's not going to win any neatness awards! I'm planning to spend a lesson each week going through a handwriting book I have and getting him to do the exercises - he was quite excited to be awarded with stickers when we did it this week :) On the reading side, he's doing the library reading challenge at the moment, and the usual reading each night - us reading more advanced books so he gets a feel for better sentence structure and grammar, and him reading smaller books to us.
  
• Maths - we're working through the Year 1 Leap into Maths book - 1 unit each week.
• Science & Tech - we still have a couple of things to do to finish off the Weather unit from last term, and then we'll be doing a Push / Pull unit - basically forces in air & water & gravity.
• HSIE - Prehistoric man and early civilizations
• Creative & Practical Arts - Drama classes, playing musical instruments at home
• PDHPE - (Physical Education) - He's starting a circus class learning basic circus skills!

This week we did:

• English - Worked on lower case 'a' in handwriting, lots of reading.
  
• Maths - Year 1 Leap into Maths Unit 15.
  
• Science & Tech - tried to make crystals using a crystal kit he got for Xmas - it looks like a dismal failure atm!
  
• HSIE - He made a dinosaur lapbook - this was our first ever lapbook and I can see the attraction now! I just had to put aside my perfectionism and my ideas of how I thought it should look!
  

Front of the lapbook

Inside the egg is a baby dinosaur printout

Inside the lapbook - the top left printout shows where dinosaurs used to live. The right hand side has print outs showing how big dinosaurs were in comparison with other dinosaurs & man. The top right one shows how they defended themselves with armour, spikes etc

The middle books open out to show information about carnivores and herbivores - the front page has Billy's definition of each, and then subsequent pages have printouts of various dinos of that type.

On the left hand side, the blue book opens out to show the 3 periods of dinosaurs - triassic, jurassic and cretaceous, and when they were.

The yellow booklet has information about how they died, and then subsequent pages show fossils and footprints. I took pity on him and typed those as he dictated - otherwise we'd still be there next year!

Ta da - our first lapbook! It was a great way to summarise our learnings - we hadn't studied dinosaurs out of the text-book as such, but had read lots of books about them, and did activities at a couple of dinosaur exhibits. I was pleasantly suprised at how much he had retained.

Balance

Several bloggers I read have chosen a word to represent this year, and for me, it has to be balance that I'm trying to achieve. Balance between the needs of me, family, work, homeschooling & home (with everything it incorporates).

I think I say this every year, but maybe if I make it my theme it will help me focus on it.

I started pulling back from some things last year that were taking a lot - not necessarily in time but emotional energy. I resigned today from another organisation that while I still think is a great thing, just wasn't a fit for me at this particular point in time with that particular group.

I'm trying to get more organised but I'm recognising that I like to go overboard with "systems", so have pared back to a basic notebook and calendar. As I commented to a friend - I know what I need to do, I need to stop looking for the perfect system and JUST DO IT!

This week has been good. We started back with school work and spent (on average) an hour each day on it (more in a later post). I've been able to get some paid work done through the day - sometimes locking myself away for an hour to concentrate, other days just working when I could. I've spent several nights knitting and other nights reading! Most mornings I did a few minutes of stretching after my shower - I've made a note to look for a Yoga DVD in the library so I can get back into that. The house is reasonable - still lots to do but slowly. The garden hasn't had a lot of attention lavished on it due to a few HOT days this week (41C one day!), but I have been out watering and got a bit of weeding done. I haven't wasted any food this week, and cut up some leftover veges to freeze tonight. I've worked out where we're up to with our finances and haven't spent anything over budget.

It's been a good week!!

Menu Plan Monday - 12th January

Notes on last week's menu:

To use up this week:
* roast beef
* tin tuna

Menu Plan this week:

Monday - souvlaki & salad wraps
Tuesday - sausages & grilled vegetables
Wednesday - chow mein & rice
Thursday - leftover beef - not sure what yet
Friday - tuna mornay
Saturday - leftovers
Sunday - roast beef & veges

For more exciting menu plan ideas, see Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday.



Eating from the garden:
* Garden?? What garden??!

Planting this week:
* Not sure yet, need to sit down & plan.

Refreshed, relaxed and ready to go..

We got back early this afternoon from our trip away. Having the 2 weeks away made it really relaxing as we weren't rushing to fit everything in. We had fantastic weather for much of it too.

I did lots of this:


and this (I taught myself to knit using a kid's learn to knit book, and made myself a dishcloth & a puppet for Billy):


Billy did lots of:





and a bit of this:



He had a fantastic time playing with lots of kids from the caravan park - he was old enough that I could let him roam a fair bit (under strict rules lol and not near the water).

Pete did lots of this:


(I didn't have a picture of him drinking beer or playing on his computer - I'll leave that up to your imagination!)

A few other highlights were - watching the dolphins swim up the river a few mornings right outside our van:

* a magician came to the caravan park and put on a show - B got to be one of his helpers!


* we ventured out to the Pet Porpoise Pool at Coffs Harbour for a great morning out.


Now there is a pile of stuff in the hallway to be unpacked, the garden has been severely neglected and I need to start thinking about work - but it was good while it lasted!!