Will I ever have any space?
Will I have to fight this child to sleep every night?
Will he ever go to sleep?

I roll over and turn my back on the tossing, turning, screeching, toddler.

My eyes fall on my big boy.
In his almost too small bed.
Asleep.

I remember when it was that boy screeching and fighting sleep.
I remember when he woke every 45 minutes.
I remember when he had to run his scratchy little fingers up and down my arms and drive me insane in order to fall asleep.

As the current toddler head butts me, I roll over and start the patting and rocking all over again, but this time I remember…

I remember that these nights won’t last forever.
I remember that one day this one will be almost too big for the toddler bed.
I remember that one day he will only need a quick cuddle and story before he falls asleep… on his own.

“This too shall pass” they say…
and it will.

Despite the current ‘never ending days’ soon they will be gone.
Soon I will have all the space I could ever dream of, and soon I will miss these days…

How quickly I forget…
And there are so many many things I need to remember….

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I need to remember… is a post from: picklebums.com

Recently, while pondering where we shop for our food, I shared that our monthly grocery budget was $550. I got a lot of comments and emails from people asking me to share our budgeting secrets. I promised I would… but to be honest I’ve been putting off this post for a while.

I am no budgeting guru.
I don’t have any amazing tips or tricks up my sleeve.
We don’t use any fancy system.

So if you are here looking for life changing budgeting tips, best you click away now, before you are disappointed.

If you are determined to keep on reading then I’m happy to share a few things we’ve done to keep our spending under control, perhaps they will be helpful to others, or perhaps not.

What’s in The Budget?

Ok, lets see what our budget actually covers…

$550 a month covers basic food for our family of six, as well as groceries and staples like toilet paper, cleaning goods etc.

It covers about half the nappies we use, the other half are reusable cloth nappies.

It doesn’t cover the occasional take out meal or after school bakery snack. It doesn’t include anything my husband might spend on snacks or food while at work (though he usually takes leftovers and snacks from home which are part of the budget). We also often buy items like laundry detergent or dishwasher detergent in bulk which is outside of our usual monthly budget.

We are also acutely aware that we can’t maintain this budget forever. Over the past 12 months we’ve upped our budget by $100 and as our children grow and eating 12 nectarines in 24 hours becomes a regular thing, our budget will have to grow with them.

How Do You Do That?

The short answer is…. I don’t know, we just do!

And the long answer? Well here are a few things that I think help us come in under budget each month.

We use the envelope system.
Put simply, at the start of each month we put the grocery money in an envelope and when it’s gone, it’s gone. I’m a visual person. I need to see it to know where I’m at, so this helps me keep track of spending, and stops me just chucking things into my basket without thinking.

We do a big shop once a month.
Once a month we drive into the suburbs and stock up on a months worth of staples at Aldi. I do a basic monthly menu plan and over time have learned how much of things we’ll need to get through a whole month. We pick up fresh fruit and veg and a few other bits and pieces locally each week, but the majority of our shopping is done monthly. My goal is to not end up at the shops every day and to use what we have. This is getting harder to do however, the bigger our kids get, the more they eat and I am struggling to fit a months worth in a single trolley these days!

We try to eat what is in season and we grow some of it ourselves.
Some years are better than others when it comes to growing our own food, but it kills me to pay big bucks for a zucchini in winter when I know that we’ll have more than we can possibly eat at the end of summer, so I just don’t. We are getting better at storing or preserving the things we’ve grown too. Last year we only bought two jars of jam, and we go through at least a jar a month! We also have some lovely friends who are happy to have our excess produce in return for things they’ve grown or have access to. One friend keeps my kid’s three minute noodle addiction supplied in return for fresh eggs every fortnight.

We don’t eat lots of meat.
We enjoy eating meat but right now our budget doesn’t stretch to a lot of it. Instead we eat a few vegetarian meals, we like tuna (a lot), and I usually use less meat than the recipe calls for and make up the difference with things like beans, lentils or extra veg. We also choose less expensive cuts of meat… chicken and minced beef are pretty much our staples. Our kids idea of a treat is a whopping great leg of lamb!

If we can do without, or use something else we do.
I don’t buy many commercial cleaning products, just a lot of bicarb and vinegar. We probably use half cloth, half disposable nappies at the moment. We don’t really buy expensive personal grooming products like face cream, or hair products, we just don’t use them (you can probably tell!). We use cloth instead of paper for things like serviettes and wipes.

I try to make lots of things from scratch.
Our shopping baskets are not 100% free of snacks and treats but I try to make at least half of the school snacks and sweet treats we eat myself. The same goes for things like tortillas, bread rolls etc. This is definitely a work in progress for me, and I often splurge on this stuff when I am feeling stretched and just can’t face having to roll out another darn tortilla.

I’m a tight-arse.
Yep, you read that right. I’m a tight-arse.
I think that is the single biggest thing that keeps our budget in check. I don’t like to spend money unless I absolutely have to. Sure… I can impulse buy with the best of them, and now and then I manage to justify splurging on things we don’t really need, but I get terrible buyers remorse and that definitely keeps me in check. I also get a strange sense of pride for being able to feed my family well and live comfortably within our budget. I dream of one day being able to buy an enormous, locally grownm, organic, leg of lamb every week, and one day, when we are not on a single income and trying to build our own house, we will do just that. But for now, our priorities don’t put expensive food at the top of the list and I think we are doing just fine.

So there you are…. nothing earth shattering really, but that’s how we do it.

How about you?

How do you manage to stay within your budget and feed a growing family?
Got any great tips for finding grocery bargains?
Any recipes that are family friendly and economical?

Please jump in and share your ideas and information in the comments, or if you have a blog post you’ve written on the subject please include a link so we can come have a read.

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Muddling Through a Food Budget. is a post from: picklebums.com

I think I may have an unhealthy obsession with bird houses….

I need a collection of these.
I’m pretty sure I could make a tea pot bird house.
We’ve grown gourds before but never done anything with them.
And I’ve just decided what the kids are getting for Christmas next year!

I am trying to mitigate the bird house thing with other garden pretties…

These beaded garden stakes look pretty, and easy enough for the kids to help make.

We’ve made spider webs like this one for climbing veggies before and they are always fun.

Our neighbors have a little pine forest so I think we could collect enough pine cones to make a lovely rain chain, but I’m not sure where we could hang it.

I adore this stacked rock sculpture… I need to start collecting suitable rocks now!

Of course all these things would look lovely… if we had a garden instead of a forest of weeds!

What garden pretties would you put in your dream garden?

{image by See-ming Lee via flickr}

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Lovely Links – Garden Pretties… is a post from: picklebums.com

I am back making school lunches and next week my big boy will need lunch for kinder (preschool) too, thankfully only once a week, but all of them want to know when I will start leaving notes in their lunch boxes! So I think it’s time for some new lunch box notes.

I am not really into valentines day. I like the sentiment, but not the commercialised, overly romantic, connotations that it most often has here in Australia. So I’m ignoring those bits and focusing on the idea of doing something nice for people I care about…

These little love notes will grace my kids lunch boxes next week, and maybe I’ll stick a few in surprise places around the house too.

You can download these love notes in pdf format here.
Just save, print, cut out and write…

You can find the original Picklebums Lunch Box notes here, along with some ideas of what to write on them. They’d make fun and funky Valentines notes too!.

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Printable Love or Lunch Box Notes. is a post from: picklebums.com

It’s one part science, 1 part magic, 1 part sensory play and 2 parts fun!

It’s begins as two simple ingredients – wet and dry, corn flour and water.

Mix them together and at first it just looks like a tub of mess… but sink your hands in. Go on… I know you want to.

Squeeze the ooey gooey goopiness and it suddenly feels hard in your hand. Open your fingers and it magically turns to liquid again and oozes back into the tub.

For little hands this is a fun sensory experience, but for older hands this is science and magic! There was much talk about mixing, consistency, ingredients, measuring, solutions, etc…

Individual Goop Recipe

For each child:
1 cup of corn flour
1/4-1/2 cup of water.

Give each child a container or tub to mix in. Pour water into the cornflour a little at a time mixing as you go. Add water until the mixture is quite wet, but not watery. You may need to add a little more water or corn flour as you go.

This mix can be quite messy to play with, but if you let it dry you can sweep or vaccum up the dried corn flour quiet easily and it washed off hands and out of clothes without issue.

Now pour and squelch and make a mess till your hearts content!

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Sensory Play – A Tub Full of Goop! is a post from: picklebums.com

vice 1 (vs)
n.
a. An evil, degrading, or immoral practice or habit.
b. A serious moral failing.
c. Wicked or evil conduct or habits; corruption.

I like to sleep in.
I like to eat cheap, crappy, Turkish Delight in secret, so I don’t have to share.
I would like nothing better than an entire day to play around on Pinterest.

What I’d secretly like to do is to eat Turkish Delight while spending the day in bed mucking around on Pinterest…

So I’ve shared mine, now you share yours…
What’s your vice?

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What’s Your Vice? is a post from: picklebums.com

There are so many things that I love about school holidays but after six weeks with all six of us crammed into our little house things are a getting little fractious.

We’ve all enjoyed being a little (or a lot) lazy but lately it feels as thought we’ve let things slide almost to the point of insanity. Late nights, early mornings, too much TV, tantrums, crappy food, shouting…

It’s clearly time to get back on track and I’ve been thinking about the expectations we have of our kids, and for our family as a whole.

Are they too high? Too low?

Do I ask them to do too much or too little to help around the home?

Is the behavior I expect from them appropriate for their age and stage of development?

Are they really old enough to stop whining?

Are they actually capable of keeping their room under control?

Do I expect more of the boys because they have their older sisters to live up to?

Are my expectations in line with what I really want for my family?

The answer to all those questions is…

Well…

Most of the time I just don’t know.

Usually I take a wild stab in the dark and wait and see if things come crashing down around me or not. Not exactly the most enlightened way to parent huh?

But I’ve been thinking about it lately and really it’s hard to know exactly where my kids are at, what they are ready for, or what they could achieve if given the chance. I want to challenge them, to encourage them to be all they can be and do all they can do, but I don’t want to force them into things they are not ready for, that just makes everyone miserable.

So I’ve come up with an idea that just might answer my question…

Expect a little more… Accept a little less.

If I expect a little more than I might normally, I give my children the chance to shine, to try new things and grow and develop. At the same time, if I am happy to accept a little less then I am creating an environment where it is ok to ask for help, it’s ok to have a bad patch, to work on a skill at your own pace or make a mistake.

It doesn’t mean that I raise the bar way too high, or that I let them get away with murder… it’s just a way to hedge my bets a little, to let them walk the high wire with a safe place to fall onto.

What expectations do you have of your kids?
How do you decide if you are expecting too much or too little?

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Expect a Little More, Accept a Little Less. is a post from: picklebums.com

I’ve been living in denial for the last week or so, but there is no getting away from it… my girls go back to school on Thursday and my big boy has orientation at ‘grown-up kinder’ (ie 4 year old preschool). That means I am back making the dreaded school lunches, and this year I have a kinder lunch to make too!

I need a little inspiration. A little something to jog my memory and help me remember what it was I fed these children last year, and the year before. Surely if I managed this stuff before, all be it a little begrudgingly, I can do it again?

I’ve trawled back through my archives and rounded up some back to school cooking ideas. Some of these recipes don’t fit my ‘cooking from scratch’ goal 100% as some of them contain ingredients that are already pretty heavily processed which I’m trying to reduce or avoid, but I feel that making those items is still better than buying 100% shop bought, super highly processed, full of crap snacks.

I am a work in progress. I don’t think we will ever be totally, utterly, processed food free. I will never make every single thing we eat from scratch, and I will never cut out every ingredient that I couldn’t possibly grow or somehow make myself at home. I am going for the 80/20 rule (thanks Shae) and I’m not beating myself up over the rest.

Homemade School Snacks

Homemade Pizza Rolls
Big Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Cornies Biscuits.
Thousands of Biscuits – tiny cookies made from freezable dough.
Apple Spice Cakes
Berry Bars.
Breakfast Muffins

Are you trying new things and cooking from scratch?
Got any recipes or ideas for school snacks to share?

You can read more about what motivated me to begin cooking more from scratch here. And don’t forget to visit Little Eco Footprints and join in Trish’s Skipping the Supermarket Challenge.

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Adventures in Cooking From Scratch – Back to School Snacks. is a post from: picklebums.com

Some days are all sunshine and roses… and other days are all tantrums and dirty looks.

Have your kids ever lost the plot in a public place?

Play Wordless Wednesday with My Little Drummer Boys :)

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Real Life Wednesday is a post from: picklebums.com

“Hasn’t he grown!” a random relative said to me over the Christmas period.

While I knew that remark was coloured by the fact they hadn’t seen him in almost a year, it suddenly dawned on me that he had, in fact, grown, and not just in height.

Last year was busy. Insanely busy in the true sense of the word. Things happened that I never dreamed would happen, good, bad, and indifferent, and somewhere, in the middle of all that, my middle child grew up.

Looking into those endless blue eyes that often twinkle with mischief but sometimes stare back still, clam and deep, I wonder how it happened without me noticing.

How did I not notice that he was charming, sociable and funny?

His confidence has blossomed and his imagination has grown to match. He is quirky and, I suspect, a little different to your average four year old boy. Still obsessed with all things green. Still wanting to be a chef… or a lion tamer. He has no interest in super heroes, but plays both boy roles in the Narnia stories and puts his own, little boy, spin on all the games and fantasies his sisters concoct.

Once I thought he would be ‘the death of me’. That he would wear me down until there was nothing left but a dried out shell of a person, crinkly and crumpled in a dusty corner. Now he is the one who builds me up, whose funny high pitched giggle makes me smile when I need it most.

It’s funny how the things you think you will never cope with, morph into the things you think you could never live without.

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He Snuck Past Me… is a post from: picklebums.com