Road Trip Treasure Kit and a Handmade Britax Carseat Cover! May 15, 2008

T-2weeks until we drive out.  We went with a U-Pack We Haul type of company and scrounged boxes where we could.  There are so many moves happening right now that the box and packing paper have turned into endangered resources and the competition is cut-throat!  We have come to the point of stalking the moving trucks on post, offering to take boxes of packing paper off of the incoming hands as they get it unpacked!  That has turned out to be the best plan, after getting hosed out of $60 for “great moving boxes” on Craigslist.  Some people posted their boxes saying they were great for moving.  DH brings home a bunch of junky salvaged gas station boxes.  Yay.  Go ahead and spend the money for the U-Haul packing stuff, because you can return what you do not use for a full refund and sell the “gently” used boxes on the other end.

My main focus for the trip (aside from not getting lost in Canada) has been how to entertain the toddler.  I don’t want to keep her doped up on DVD the whole time.  I hit a craigslist ad for a very large homeschooling family that were just picking up and leaving.  Everythinghad to go so I got a load of nice educational playthings for a decent price.  I’ve been stashing a bunch of her ignored toys away and picking up cheap “little happies” where I can.  So far, this is what I’ve come up with:

• Snack and Play Travel Tray- http://www.familytravelgear.com/page/FTG/PROD/car-snack-play-travel-tray  This nifty little soft tray has raised sides to keep toys and whatnots in front of the child.  Now she can do her puzzles and color and I *hopefully* wont’ have to stay turned around to pick up the pieces!  I found mine at a store on Ebay, but I don’t think I saved much once shipping was calculated.  We just tested it today and so far I’m pleased!
• Stickers and appropriate things to put them on!
• Coloring books and the crayons that twist up.  Mia is contact reactive to something in the paper covered crayons (I hear that there is often corn used in the paper), but these also have to work harder to melt all over the car.
• Color Magic markers and paper.  If you haven’t seen Crayola’s Color Magic sets yet, whoa nelly!  At first I thought, “How lazy. Just teach your child to be respectful of property and you won’t have multiple art incidents.”  But, being a frequent flyer of waiting rooms and doctors offices, these have earned their places. 
• Wallet with “credit cards”.  This is a big hit.  We save all of the fake cards that are sent with the applications.  Very productive recycling!  It has saved my tush in the pharmacy after an out of the ordinary Rx took almost an hour to fill.  It’s a big clutch wallet with lots of zippers, snaps and pockets and slots.  A few old receipts really make her day!
• Mr. Potato Head.  What more do you need to know?  They even have the “extension” kits at Walmart, so he has options.
• Magnadoodle!  Mess free drawing an I found some magnet kits at Toys R Us.  It is a fairy tale themed set with dresses and other things that you draw around, creating a scene.
• Puzzles. Lots of puzzles~
• Lacing cards from Eboo.  Mia has the fairy set, but they have boy options as well.  The yare big and colorful, great fine motor exercise.
• Lacing dress-up bear from Melissa&Doug.  You lace the bears clothes onto her picture that is on the lid of the storage box.  I think it might be too advanced for Mia without my help, maybe a good evening or hotel game.
• Memory game.  I could easily turn around and help her play by flipping the tiles over.
• Books. No brainer.
• Beads to make a necklace or bracelet, also from M&D. That was the test toy today, and it’s on the cumbersome and messy side of the fence.
• My First Leap Pad.  It has yet to get here, but we are borrowing several sets of books and cartridges.  I don’t plan on this being used all day, but they are nice when Mommy needs a break!
• Flashcards.  Mostly ABC’s and colors.
• Deck of cards. There is something enthralling about that mess.
• Music.  We can give up about 45 minutes of rock  or country for something that appeals to her
• Pipe cleaners.  Endless fun.  Try it in a restaurant!
• Figits  block twister guy. No idea what he’s really called.
• The cheap as allgetout toy section of walmarthas some nice little happies.  The “connect four” game is lots of fun since I don’t have to worry about her putting the chips in her mouth.  I also bought the suction cup balls, and mini puzzle alphabet foams. A mini version of the abc floor crepe rubber mats.
• Slinky.
• Elmers Go Paint, same concept as Color Magic, but with “paint”
• Aquadoodle mini book/pen
• Ravensburger has lots of great mini matching puzzles.  I found a set at our local Value Village  that have babies/mommy matching of jungle animals.  We also have a lttle zip purse of one piece farm puzzles.
• Madeline Press N Peel dress up doll/scene board.  Another VV score.  Like paper dolls, but with the vinyl pieces.
• Diego’s rescue animals pack. I think it was the only dora/diego thing NOT recalled for lead!
• Madeline Magnetic “paper dolls” with little scene board.
• Magic Cloth paper dolls
• Hand puppets (oh gosh those can keep her busy for hours!)
• Velcro mitt with ball catch game for rest stops
• Bubbles for either standstill traffic or rest stops

I’m still working on the system of dispersal. I’ve heard lots of great ideas, like wrapping everything up and doling out little “gifts” every so often.  That won’t get us through 10 days, or we’d have to have a separate trailer just for the toys!  I have one of those cardboard mini chests that we aren’t using. You know, the ones you get for “temporary” storage but end up using until they fall apart?  This one is about 3.5″ high and is the perfect treasure chest.  Some of the bigger items don’t fit, so I may just police the use of those from the back of the car.  Here is the tentative plan: She will have everyday access to some toys like the Leap Pad, Magnadoodle and books with the occasional DVD.  She will be allowed to open one “treasure” drawer per day and play with the contents.  There are four drawers and we’ll likely go through each at least twice, so after day four I’ll switch and mix the contents again so it’s not the same stash the second time around.  I’ll also keep a bag of wrapped toys and give her one or two to unwrap every day.  We’ll be driving 6-8hrs/day for 8-10 days. 

I had a few projects on my to-do list for the trip, the biggest being a new carseat cover for her Britax Marathon.  I searched Ebay and couldn’t find any within our budget so I decided I’d make my own, darnit!  Homemade custom covers are being sold on Ebay for nearly $90!!   I just can’t justify it when I know how to sew!  I draped an old sheet over the seat, pinned it, traced the seams and marked where the holes needed to go.  Then I cut the odd looking shapes out of the sheet, smoothed edges and took the liberty of straightening any lines I thought looked wonky.  I then laid them onto a big sheet of craft paper and traced the sheet pieces.  I measured and marked holes and then added a seam allowance.  I chose an outdoor strength fabric with a neat Scandinavian print for the outside, low-loft FUSIBLE batting for the inner (next time I’ll go with more loft, as this doesn’t offer a lot of cushion) and plain muslin for the backside.  I made sure that my pattern pieces were labeled for dummies before cutting anything out.  After cutting all layers out, I fused everything together and stay stitched each separate piece as close to the raw edge as possible to keep batting in place.  Ironically, everything joined perfectly!  I only had to add about 12 inches to the skirt part that goes around with the elastic to hold it in places but it was a quick fix.  Maybe one day I’ll get a tutorial up!  DISCLAIMER!!!!!—– This carseat cover is strictly for backup in the event that my toddler has an accident and will be used as an interim cover until the original can be washed.  Carseat covers are made with flame retardant fabrics therefore we should ideally only use those manufactured by the appropriate company.  There, don’t blame me if something happens.

 

 

Here she is! It’s a bit baggy but it will do between washings!

Road worthiness, road readiness April 29, 2008

We still do not have PCS orders, but it can’t be too far away.  Our request for a compassionate reassignment has made it to the top of the chain and we should hear something this week.  Although we are hoping for Colorado, we know it could be anywhere. 

We have finally finished the bathroom!  All of our flooring is done, the bathroom is painted and the cabinets are installed.  For the cheapest thing at Home Depot, they sure brighten up the room and look nice.  We’ll see what happens after renting it for a while.

The newest challenge is doing our own Dity Move.  There are so many families moving to and from Anchorage this summer that the moving companies are anticipating saturation.  We are opting to do our own move (called a Dity Move, mentioned above).  We toyed with the idea of doing a U-haul, then looked at PODS (there are no services up here right now) and think we may have settled on ABF.  They will leave a trailer in front of our house three days before the move, drive it to our destination and give us 3 days to unpack it.  We will only have to drive our car and pull a small trailer.  I like this much better than our previous scenario of being stuffed into a UHaul cab, PULLING the Suby. 

The challenge within the challenge is keeping a toddler happy for the 10+ days it will possibly take to drive from Anchorage to Destination X.  A good chunk of that time will be spent driving through Canada, with little around to look at.  I’ve googled and dogpiled, goodsearched and yahoo’d and have come up with a list of toys/findings that should be useful for our trip.  I also have a “treasure box” system in the works and will post pictures of it when it’s done.

I have so many projects that need to be finished before this move comes to fruition!

 

See what we will be travelling with? She’s downright nutty!

To show we’re not perfect… February 16, 2008

Yesterday, I was THAT mom with THAT kid in the grocery store.  Mia was screaming, arching out of the cart seat and nearly hyperventilating.  I should have known better than to do errands yesterday; she had an IVIG infusion in the morning and she is always crabby afterwards.  So, she’s crabby and falls asleep in the car (thankyou benedryl..also makes her crabby), and the ultimate bonehead move, I woke her up at the grocery store.  Bad mommy.

Mia is learning to use the potty.  We’ve been talking about it for a while, preparing her for the idea.  We bought a little potty for her to mess with because she is deathly afraid of the big toilet. She explored it by taking it apart, wearing the seat as a hat, carrying the lid around and eventually sitting on it.  She had only used it a few times until today, all day with a few accidents so far.  She was so scared of her own pee and screamed whenever she went, but today I’m using the tough luck approach.  I told her we had no diapers today and have kept her in old stretch pants.  I ask her every ten minutes or so if she needs to potty and she even asks on her own sometimes.  It is getting closer to the time for “big girl” underwear! 

Bought once, used a million times! February 6, 2008

I was born into a secondhand-loving family.  When my dad started his own business, it would get hairy at times and second hand was just how we rolled.  It’s amazing what people will just give away.

• Thrift.  Love these places!  Salvation Army, Goodwill and local churches usually have at least one around.  The church I grew up in was where a lot of the city’s aristocracy went on Sundays, so consequently the thrift house run by that church gained their castoffs.  You could find lightly used high-end items most times.  This is an awesome option for kids, especially the older active set that spill and tear while playing.  The drawback is that you have to spend a great deal of time sorting through the clothes or things that are crammed onto shelves.  I’d make sure everyone used the bathroom and was fed before going in!
• Resale/Consignment.  If you like to know that you won’t have to dig through five stained shirts to get to the first non-stained item, go here but don’t expect to pay thrift prices.  Sometimes they only take high-end, like the boutiques, and sometimes they’ll be more lenient, like Platos Closet.  These are also where I sometimes take my things for extra cash.  The children’s resale store isn’t great, you leave feeling like you need to file a report but Platos Closet once gave me an extra $15.  Since then I’ve significantly cut back on buying clothes.
• Craigslist.org  I love Craig.  You can buy or sell many things here.  I sold Mia’s changing table, exersaucer, our unused electric blanket…  Even what I thought was an ugly useless video shelf.  My husband put it up for $30 and I balked at it, saying no one would pay more than $10 for it.  Not even an hourlater someone called and bought it!  We found my beloved Subaru on Craigslist and our beater for husbands commute.
• Ebay.  Okay.  If ever there were a double edged sword, it was Ebay.  You have to be uber careful since you can’t physically check the items out.  I fell into the Ebay Trap  when I first started using it and ended up with a lot of crappy buys, mostly cheap foreign made clothes that fell apart.  But I won it for.99 darnit!  I have since limited myself only to buying brands I know.  Some kids clothes like Hanna Andersson and Gymboree I have found tougher than cockroaches, so I have no problem plunking some PayPal on them.  I only buy shoes whose sizes I know, same for jeans and other clothes.  It’s a great place to buy high-end for cheap, but you need to be careful and know the items you’re buying.  Jeans are an easy ripoff.  I adore the fit of Joes Jeans, so I have familiarized myself with what an authentic pair looks like in comparison to a ripoff, same for Seven For All Mankind.  Most important, I try to onlyuse what is in my Paypal.  I get my paypal funds from selling on Ebay, but you should be careful here as well.  Research what you want to sell. See if anyone else is having luck with it before you list.  Sometimes people simply hear, “you can make money on ebay” and they just list everything they see.  Nobody wants to pay you to ship them a piece of junk.  I urge you to look at their selling guides first.
• freecycle.org  This is a yahoogroup that has grown to insane proportions.  The initial idea was to keep usable objects from the landfills. You join and receive emails from people offering or asking for an item, or you can do the same.  I have cleared many “junk” items out of my house to people who thought they hit the jackpot. I have also made scores from other people’s unwanted, like the screen door and my daughters crib mattress.  You’d be surprised at what people are willing to give you.  I have stopped my husband from buying things after asking for and receiving them on freecycle. 
• other yahoo groups.  There are actually loops out there where people resell their kids clothes. I found a very nice group of moms who are all about some gymboree and hanna.  They offer very fair prices for clothes that are often very gently used.
• Just ask!Sometimes you don’t even have to buy or look at ads.  My husband and I were going to look at a pulk to pull Mia in while I snowshoed or skied, and it would have set us back about $250.  While at her occupational therapy, I was telling her therapist about it.  She looked at the other therapist in the room and asked “Hey, do you still have that pulk that you wanted to get rid of?”  Voila.  Free pulk.  Just get the word out that you are looking for something but be willing to offer something in return. We got super lucky on this one!
• Wheel-N-Deal.  This is the term my husband has given for barter and trade.  We bartered some help with our flooring by offering a friend a case of beer.  I’ve traded babysitting and sewing skills as well.  Our Man Cave (aka The Garage) is host to heaps and piles of “junk” that he has picked up for free or cheap and plans to use to “trade up”, or get something better.  He has outfitted much of his manly Jeep doing this and it has kept a lot of purchases from going onto the credit card.  The mini fridge that I was critical of got something pretty pricey for that Jeep!

Kids cost a fortune! February 2, 2008

Especially if you feed them pre-packaged food!  I do err on the side of granola, FYI, but I try not to judge people out loud for their choices!  Inside my head I’m pretty elitist and quite high and mighty, but I’m not going to go out of my way and tell someone that they are lazy or wrong for doing/not doing something the way I would. Tomayto, potahto, you know? So, here are the things I do that have majorly impacted our finances:

• Breastfeeding.  Before we found out the extent of our daughters allergies and gastric disease, I breastfed.  Formula is seriously high priced and seemed like too much of a pain in the ass to me.  All I had to do was find a discreet place to sit down, cover up and Baby was happy.  No mixing, no warming, no getting up in the night (we also co-slept. It was the only way any of us got any sleep!)  Plus it forced me to take a load off every couple of hours. I had a perfect excuse to sit in the rocking chair and stare at her or read a book!  My daughter weaned at just shy of 12 months.  If you figure a “good” formula is about $.31/oz, we saved a little over $3,000 in the first year. http://www.kellymom.com/bf/start/prepare/bfcostbenefits.html#table1 This is where I got the numbers.  Before knowing the extent of Mia’s conditions, we would have been getting something like nutrimigen had we not breastfed.  I dare say that $.31/oz would be conservative by this time.
• Blenderize!  Before I had a baby, I worked in daycare.  Even then I didn’t understand why jarred food was so superior.  When my daughter weaned to sipper cups and solids, she ate what we ate, just blended up into baby friendly fare.  Granted it made her break out like crazy, but the point is that it really wasn’t a hardship to chuck it into the processor, freeze it in an ice-cube tray and pop it into ziplocks later.  All I had to do was get a cube and microwave it.  http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/cost.htm  This site compares the cost of jarred and home-made babyfood by brand.  Plus jars are wasteful if you don’t recycle. Down, hippy!
• Cloth Diapers.    I get freaked out just thinking about the chemical gels…ew.  Cloth was a choice at first, but it turned out to be the best choice for allergies.  The upfront cost is skeevy, but by the end of the first year you’ve only spent about $600 or so with cloth (and that is EVERYTHING from the dipes to the energy used to wash/dry…IF you use a dryer!)  It doesn’t hold a candle to the $2,000 using the cheap disposables in a year. http://babyslime.livejournal.com/151952.html This is a great article on the cost, how “hard” it is and environmental impact.  My husband could care less about the trees and animals, he liked the dollar signs!  And this next link is for the cost calculator to plug in your diapers and see how much you could spend or save http://www.diaperpin.com/calculator/calculator.asp  I haven’t perfected being perfect, so we cheat a little bit.  We have found that cloth at night just won’t work, no matter how “nighttime rated” they are. So we use Seventh Generation disposables at night.  They don’t have plastics or use chlorine and are the only brand I’ve found that won’t make her little butt break out.  I only have to buy diapers once a month unless I get behind on the diaper laundry
• Baby wipes.  I flex on these.  Mia is allergic to every brand we’ve tried except the Seventh Generation wipes, and you don’t get any more bang for your buck there than you would with other brands.  Before she was born, we were gifted and given a ton of baby washcloths without the biase taped edges, almost raw.  I nabbed an empty wipes container and filled it with water, one drop of bleach (that helps keep the beasties from growing, and no, it doesn’t hurt. One little drop in a couple of cups of water, people) and if your kid can use shampoo, a drop of that.    I cheat on this one.  I use them when she hasn’t pooped.  When she does, I keep a roll of TP to wipe her and flush that and then use the washcloths.  They go in with the diaper laundry.