About Me

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I am a cloth diapering, breastfeeding, cosleeping, baby led weaning, extended rear facing, eco conscious, married mommy to two beautiful children. They have changed my view on the world we live in. It is now my number 1 goal to make it the best I can for them to grow up in. I find myself always rethinking how I want to live my life and often feel like sharing my findings and thoughts with others. So I guess here's my chance :o) I will talk about topics that interest me. If you dont like them or dont agree, well... there's nothing much I can do!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

A quick 20 chore Tuesday

It's been a while since I have tasked myself with doing tons of work on a Tuesday so lets give it a try!


  1. Clear kitchen table
  2. Put away dishes
  3. Get rid of table cloth
  4. Prepare supper
  5. Vacuum main floor
  6. Purge living room toys
  7. Clear diaper bags
  8. Change Abigail's bed
  9. Wash linen
  10. Vacuum A's room
  11. Vacuum Z's room
  12. Vacuum bathroom
  13. Scrub toilet
  14. Scrub main floor bathroom
  15. Fold laundry
  16. Wash diapers
  17. Pick toys for donation
  18. Fold and separate donation clothing
  19. Print out extra pages for my planner
  20. Try to figure out a budget
I wonder how well I'll do!


Saturday, January 25, 2014

Meal plan for the week - Doing so on a budget now.

Now that we are down to income, sticking to our meal plan will be very important. I will also have to strategically plan certain meals during the week whether they need fresh or frozen meat. So here is this week!

Sat - Lobster asparagus pasta casserole

Sun - Chicken and green bean casserole

Mon - Corned beef with cabbage, potatoes, carrots and turnip

Tue - Leftovers since boiled dinner is ALWAYS better the next day!

Wed - Spaghetti

Thur - Slow cooker whole chicken

Fri - Pan fried talapia

Sat - Kabobs


Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Wordless Wednesday - Yet another snow day

Trying something new - Preparing fruit ahead of time

As a breastfeeding mom, I already know that nutrition plays an important role in maintaining a healthy milk supply. Since one of my 2014 goals is to complete a half marathon this upcoming May, a healthy diet will become even more important. I will be trying something new in order to help my family eat healthy snacks easily and more frequently.

Food waste has occasionally been a problem for us. We buy tons of fresh organic produce and since it takes some time to prepare something, we often go for something quicker like crackers. Now that Zachary is a year old and Keegan is getting ready to go on another 2 month deployment, figuring out a system that allows us to have fresh produce readily available whenever we want it will be super useful.

So here is all our fruit for the week. It isn't all organic (thanks to Jen and Joey Go Green's fb post) so washing it well will be very important. I am trying a hot water and vinegar rinse on the strawberries, blueberries and grapes.


And here it is, all cut up and ready to eat whenever we want over the next couple days. The freshly cut up fruit will most likely be the first to go and the apples and oranges will be saved for later on in the week.


Do you do anything special with your produce to help it last longer?

Thursday, January 16, 2014

My new planner.

There are some great apps out there that can keep track of everything and share with other members of the family. Our phones are linked and we also share a Cozi account so we can always double check with the others schedule before deciding on anything. But there is just something about a nice planner and your favorite pen that makes me want to sit down and plan everything. There never seems to be a planner that has everything I want in it so here I go making one perfect!

I wanted something that had a 2 page monthly calendar,  a page per week for planning, each week separated in 2 columns and with lots of lined writing space. This is pretty standard in most planners. I found Mom's Agenda 2014 at Chapter's this week on sale! It's great. Not only does it have the calendar items I want but also lots of other organizational pages too. It has pages for a monthly budget, spring cleaning checklists, kids' and mom's weekly routine. But I still want more.

I also would like a weekly cleaning checklist, weekly blogging topics, and a section for our meal planning. So I'm looking for some reproductibles now to print off. Since my planner is spiral bound, I can get the pages added and rebound at staples! Then I will finally have a planner with everything I want!

What must you absolutely have in a planner?

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Cutting back on the technology.

How many hours do you spend on your phone or computer a day? And I'm not talking about work related time either. I probably spend 4-5 hours a day. When we got our new phones, iPad and laptop, it is completely natural to want to spend lots of time on them learning how they work. A shiny new toy! Now I am realizing that my husband and I definitely need to take a step back.

Yesterday, I tweeted that I was only going to play candy crush when I was nursing Zachary. That alone cut my time spent on that game quite a bit. Keegan and I discussed in the car today about taking an even bigger break. We will no longer be walking around looking at the phones in our hands. Definitely want to spend more time spend together with family.

There will be some exceptions. I will still take the time to write during the week. We will still take plenty of pictures and share them with friends. We will just cut back on the mindless surfing.

Have you tried to consciously cut back your time spent online and spend more of with with family?

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Meal plan - weekly challenge

So here is our plan for the week. Now that Keegan is back to work and that we are a single income household, it is even more important for us to stick to a plan. Got half our groceries at the Farmer's Market yesterday. Off to the grocery store to get the rest. 

Sun - Baked salmon

Mon - Cobb style burgers

Tue - Creamy mushroom pork chops

Wed - Beef stir fry

Thur - Salmon egg bake

Fri - Pizza

Sat/Sun - ? since we are unsure as to when we will have Zachary's first birthday party (Stop growing so fast little buddy!!)

If we stick to the whole plan, it will be the first time since there always tends to be a meal that changes. I'm hoping for 6 out of 6. Share what you have planned for the week!

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Challenge update - Getting things ready

So it has been a month now that I made the decision to reduce our home energy consumption. Small changes have been easy. There are still some big things that we haven't done yet. We will be making some more phone calls next week to book certain things. Here are the small things we have done recently to help.


  • Since it is too cold to put the clothes out on the line to dry, we have set up drying racks in Zachary's bedroom. The air is so dry due to our electric heat that the clothes tends to dry within 12hrs and help put some much needed moisture back into the air.
  • I am trying to remember turning off the lights when I leave the room.
  • I am opening the window curtains during the day (using natural light) and closing them at night (trying to keep more heat in)
  • Separating our laundry into heavy and light piles. The heavy adult clothes and cloth diapers get hung up to dry, and the lighter children's clothes go quickly in the dryer.
  • We keep electronics (like out coffee pot, toaster, bread maker, laptop) unplugged when not in use.
  • Use programmable thermostats.
Still left to do.
  • Use our ceiling fans to redistribute heat that has risen in the bedrooms.
  • Schedule a Home energy assessment
Once we have our assessment, we will then be able to complete more tasks to make our home more efficient.


Remember to join our Facebook page to follow our updates daily.

Our kitchen command centre

In my quest to be more organized, I'm often trying new things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. But when my husband actually comes out and says that he likes something I did, I take it and run with it! So here I go!

We meal plan, use cook books regularly, recharge our electronics, keep our calendar, and sort through mail all at our kitchen table. It can get pretty hectic. It's no wonder I found a 6 month old government baby bonus cheque the other day! So in order to be more efficient, I'm cleaning and reorganizing our kitchen command centre.

Before 
Quite disorganized and lots of stuff on the table as well. 


After.

On the tower, we have:
All our Racheal Ray magazines as well as our favorite cookbooks. 
My notebook and budget/meal planning binder.
Abigail's "learn to write" workbooks.
Small basket with our chargers and the MacBook.

Then we have:
Weekly meal plan board.
Big "write everything down" calendar.
White and peg board for important mail and messages.

Now that everything is easily accessible and has its own space, hopefully we can keep it neat and organized and be efficient in our planning.  

Do you have a "command centre" in your home?




Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Bring on 2014

2013 was awesome. Kicking off the year with a vbac was wicked. I had worked and fought so hard to have the birth that I wanted. All my work paid off. Putting that much effort into something made me realise that if i truly want something, I can get there. The rest of the year was spent slowly turning our house into the home I want. Here are my goals for 2014.

Home energy challenge - I'd love to drop our home energy consumption by 10%.

Meal planning - Since my maternity benefits end this month, we will soon be a 1 income family. In our quest to eat local and organic, meal planning will become increasingly important. 

Deal with/prevent clutter - We are slowly selling/giving away things that we simply no longer need in our home. We now have an extra space downstairs for the kids to play in! Having less stuff makes it easier to keep tidy. I also recently joined So Damn Domestic. Having a small task to do each day will help as well.

Run a half marathon - There is a local event in May. Keegan ran it last year and has plans to run it again this year if he is around. I have joined up with another mom and we will train together!

Blog more often - I enjoy writing. I enjoy sharing. With the several big goals I have set up for this year, 
I'm hoping to share weekly updates.

Be sure to like my Facebook page to follow along and to share updates.
Have you set up any goals for 2014?