Nathalie's Notes

DIY Draft Dodger

You know I’ve been getting so crafty around here I just had to share this DIY Draft Dodger I’ve been wanting to make. We found one like the one below in the pantry/laundry room/storage closet upon moving in but the boys quickly trashed it. I found a few cute ideas on—where else?—Pinterest and ended up coming up with my own alternative version.

Here is the one I finally settled on … it works perfectly!

Green Zone: Pitter-Patter

If you get a chance to pick up Saturday’s News-Register, my “Confessions of a Green Wannabe” column ran in the special Green Zone section. I don’t have a link to share yet but the issue is on newsstands around the county, for local readers who don’t subscribe to our community paper(ahem!).

I only have 600ish words to work with so I couldn’t list all these links in the paper but am happy to do it here and encourage you to check out the cool and cute stuff created by local (mostly) stay-at-home mamas.

I absolutely adore this store and love going there with my kids because there is a playroom for them and the staff is super understanding when they don’t stay right where they’re supposed to. I also love shopping there because awesome deals are to be had like Sam’s $3.00 Cars slippers!

I’m excited to share the awesome owner, Jennifer Johnson, is willing to take some Nathalie’s Notes products on for a test-run. I am so, so excited about that!

Pitter-Patter Children’s Consignment store in Newberg (619 E. Hancock). 503.538.4215

www.pitter-patternewberg.com

Little Red Wagon

Little Birdie & Me

Burp-EASE

Sweet Pea & Pumpkin

Heidi Boos with Stampin’ Up

Mo’s Bows

Glitter Bug Girls

Baby Bumz

Betty Jane Designs

Casey & Kyle Comics

Simply Cute Creations

Forget Me Not

Lil’ britches

BE your own kind of beautiful

Handknit treats

PJ Creations

p.s. Fun fact: love that I ended up having to do my interview with Jennifer with both of my children, in my sweaty work-out clothes sporting the frazzled-mom look. She didn’t bat an eye and knew I was just doing what a work-from-home mama’s gotta do!

I {heart} Grocery Outlet

 

As you likely know, we are big fans of Grocery Outlet Bargain Market and were so excited to get a brand new one up the street from our house.

A few things you should know about shopping at Grocery Outlet Bargain Market – if you love it, stock up … it might not be there next time. Yes, that kind of sucks but the deals are too awesome to focus on that.

Secondly, you might have to make a second stop to get more produce or the exact items on your list … GOMB is better for your basics, goodies, random deals and ideal for people willing to base meals around bargains.

My favorite deals from yesterday:

cutie mandarins – a big bag for 2.99

Drew’s organic fizzy tea (Sparkling green tea) 3 for $1

Organic whole wheat elbow macaroni – 99 cents a box

And these frozen Ocean Market Wild Alaskan Mediterranean crusted salmon, packs of 2 for $4 (ish – I can’t remember, it was $4 or less per box)

(Two boxes feeds my family of 4 for two nights … my kids eat more than you might believe … First night is usually the salmon steaks with the boys splitting one between them. Second night, I split the leftovers into tacos).

Happy bargain shopping! You should know that I’m in no way affiliated with Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, just a fan. If they wanted to sponsor my blog … well, I’d be honored.

{What’s working: DIY furniture}

Of course, when I say “do it yourself” it’s more of a team effort where I’m the idea person (by which I mean rip-the-picture-out-of-magazine-person) and Matt’s the finisher. Here are two of our recycled materials projects.

A year ago exactly, I posted this picture I saw on http://www.designmom.com/.

 

I didn’t know where we’d be living, only that we were moving and had put in (yet another) offer on a house. This one, though, I was pretty certain was The One. While the inspection was pending, I visualized this bench in the entry way, with my kids’ boots in it.

This morning I took this picture in our entry way. Love, love, love it. Matt made this for me for Christmas. Should you fancy one for your own home … let me know.( Shoe bins are from Target.)

A couple years ago, during yet another move, a door broke off our dining room cabinet, I kept it knowing I wanted to repurpose it somehow, just not quite sure how. Until I saw this idea in Good Housekeeping last year. I tucked it in my idea binder and waited for the right time to try it.

During my recent personal crisis I decided to do some self-esteem boosting – it’s amazing what seemingly small things can do! One of which was spray-painting for the first time. (Yes, I’m 35.) So with the help of some girlfriends, I sanded and spray-painted the door.

(Side note: I left it in Matt’s shop so long, he offered to paint the other side for me and I took him up on it.) He hung it up for me last night in my new studio and it’s just how I pictured it.

The little books are from a company I like called Compendium. For doses of inspiration visit their blog.

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{What’s working–simplicity}

 

Two fun facts about me:

1) I’m the kind of person who can make simple complicated. But, I’m happy to share that a shift in how I spend my energy and money has lead to my working out a system for truly simple dinners that taste good, are generally healthy and not even a little bit gourmet, but work fine for weeknight “get ‘em fed” meals. Details below.

2) For the last couple years I’ve spent an inordinate time loathing dinner and everything about it from meal planning to grocery shopping to the actual making of meals while one, or two, hungry/cranky/daddy-craving kids clung to various parts of my body. By the time I finally got dinner on the table if someone so much as suggested they didn’t like something I had to resist the urge to dump the plate on their head, whether they were 3 or 38. This is a stress (and rage) I know I share with some of my friends and readers … so, here is my solution:

Grain + Protein + Vegetable + Sauce = Dinner.

Favorite grains: quinoa, brown rice (freeze batches add water and defrost), tortillas

Favorite proteins: eggs, canned tuna or salmon, chicken breasts, beans, cheese

Favorite veggies: whatever deal I can get on fresh or frozen

Favorite sauce: When my computer broke, I had to use my trust old cookbooks and learned to make a white sauce … really, it was new information to me and has changed how I make dinner. Sam hates tomatoes. Every time he tries a bite, he still hates it. So learning to make and dress up white sauce has been huge for us. I add artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, kalamata olives, capers, sautéed onions, lemon juice … whatever. It’s been good every time. If anyone wants details or specifics, email me … when in a real hurry, melt butter, add lemon sauce and chopped up herbs, fresh if you can.

Another thing I’ve been doing is saving myself steps and cents, even little ones, where I can … hence, the homemade taco seasoning packets.

1 Tbsp chili powder

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 onion powder

1/4 tsp crushed red pepper

1/4 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp paprika

1 1/2 tsp cumin

tsp salt

tsp pepper

repeat into as many snack-size baggies as you’d like and stash in your pantry.

I still wish dinner wasn’t every day … but I’m adjusting.

Meatless Monday: Salad Dressing

One of the first things I liked about my friend Barbara is that she made her own salad dressing. It just seemed like the kind of thing my alter ego {the me I didn't realize I would eventually become} would do. What's funny about being attracted to it then was that I didn't even really eat, much less make, salad back then.

As you may know we bought a new house, by new I mean two years newer than this one {1900} and it'll require, uh, adjusting to a new budget. We've got all kinds of ideas on how to make that work, one of which is not buying salad dressing for a year.

The tool that'll help me accomplish that goal is my Pampered Chef Salad Mixer where you literally measure, mix and pour. The mixer has recipes for four basic dressings printed right on the container: Asian, Caesar, Italian & French. I'd post some of the recipes here but they don't actually have measurements, it's more like "fill to this line, add to this line, dash of this, shake of that" and mix. A bonus cool thing about this little gadget is that you can use it to let your toddler scramble their own eggs. Very cool.

If you have the following on hand:

Vegetable oil, 1/4 cup grated Romano or Parmesan cheese, garlic cloves, sugar, Dijon mustard, coarse black pepper, lemon juice ... you've got the makings of your own Caesar dressing and a couple bucks back in your pocket. I'm not saying it'll pay the mortgage but it's a step.

If you're not so much into making your own, my two favorite dressings are:

Annie's Naturals Goddess Dressing and Blue Heron Blue Cheese Dressing. I'll be working on approximating those for the next year.

Meatless Monday: Asparagus Soup

My best friend from the crib mentioned the other day that I haven't been posting recipes. Yeah, about that. Another loving person in my life suggested that perhaps posting these recipes and my notes alongside them were boring to readers and that really, nobody cared. Which kind of bummed me out because I enjoyed sharing and writing about the things I'm doing these days ... I rather consider my life my muse, playground and office and it seems I spend a lot of time in the kitchen these days ... not quite what I expected for myself, but the shocker is actually how much I enjoy it. Sometimes. Plus, all these notes are drafts for my kitchen memoir, Not like the Picture.

This one's for you Mel ... 

The same day I discovered this delicious, easy to make, asparagus soup, my friend Emily's "On a Shoestring" column ran in our local paper.

Source: Google search of "asparagus soup" lead to allrecipes.com. One of the things I love about that site is the way you can enter how many people you're serving and the math gets done for you.

This posted recipe serves four but I don't know why you wouldn't just double it and freeze leftovers.

For four servings you'll need:

1 pound fresh asparagus (coming into season right about now)

3/4 cup chopped onion (Tip: while your eyes are already watering, chop extra for the week)

1/2 cup vegetable broth

1 tablespoon butter

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour (whole wheat flour works great)

1 teaspoon salt

1 pinch ground black pepper

1 1/4 cups vegetable broth

1 cup soy milk (I was out but used almond milk which is on mega-sale at Grocery Outlet)

1/2 cup yogurt

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (you don't need this if you don't have it) 

1. Place asparagus and onion in a saucepan with 1/2 cup vegetable broth. Bring the broth to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer until the vegetables are tender.
2. Reserve a few asparagus tips for garnish. Place remaining vegetable mixture in an electric blender and puree until smooth.
3. Melt butter in the pan that was used for simmering the asparagus and onions. Stir while sprinkling flour, salt, and pepper into the butter. Do not let the flour brown. Allow the mixture to cook only 2 minutes. Stir in remaining 1 1/4 cups vegetable broth and increase the heat. Continue stirring until the mixture comes to a boil.
4. Stir the vegetable puree and milk into the saucepan. Whisk yogurt into the mixture, followed by lemon juice. Stir until heated through, then ladle into bowls. Garnish with reserved asparagus tips. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese if desired.

Confessions

Click here for my new Confessions column. Let me know what you think.

 

Label Reading tool

How cool is this? Seventh Generation has a Label Reading Guide to ingredients you can download onto your phone or computer. If you log in you can also download coupons if you're into that kind of thing. And hello, using resources available to you for free money? I'm in.

Let me know if you find it helpful.

Crash course in checking - homemade economic stimulus package

I'm starting to hear some talk about another economic stimulus package. I've got one for ya. How about a little Home Economics stimulus package?

Don't get queasy, but when's the last time you balanced your checkbook? I mean really reconciled it with your bank statement, not just glanced at your on line balance?

Okay, I'll go first. I balanced it yesterday. To the penny. Pious much? Does that really sound like me?

I used to be the kind of person who balanced to the penny and accounted for every purchase. Even though I don't consider myself a "math" person, keeping books and accounting work make up for a significant part of my employment history. So you can imagine my distress as I slowly started loosing my grip on my balance. Makes for an interesting life metaphor if you think about it.

The beginning of my unraveling was when we got damn debit cards. For years I cut them up when they came in the mail and didn't discuss the option with Matt. Until he started saying that it seemed like everyone else's bank offered a debit card and he wanted one.

"I think I'll go in and talk to our bank about it." Damn. Not wanting him to look like a dumbass I told him I'd been cutting them up all these years because I didn't trust us to keep track of all the little receipts. No problem. We set up a system. A basket by the door. Then an envelope on the headboard. Then another envelope in the car. None of it worked and I became more and more frustrated before finally throwing my hands up around the end of my pregnancy and deciding to deal with it later.

I just didn't think it would be more than a year later.

For those of you are solid on your accounts and do not get nauseous thinking about this stuff, hats off to you. Really. For those of you who have never done it, or for those like me who used to, meant to and plan to again someday ... how about now?

If you're unsure where to start - and granted I might be an unlikely source for how to get back on the wagon having fallen off myself, or am I? - here are some suggestions that worked for me.

• If you share your finances with a partner, pick a point person. And--this is important--pick a mutually agreeable plan for communicating about money. Matt and I decided on a cash allowance carrot (I'll explain in a minute) where we sit down together every other week to go over our finances and when we're done we get the cash.
• Start over by getting a new check register - either from a box of checks you last ordered or your bank.
• Make today your starting point. My system is banking on the fact that you utilize your on line banking - sorry - so take the balance the bank shows at this moment. Track your bank's balance and transactions very carefully for a couple weeks, noting anything you didn't have receipts for from now on - do not try to go backwards or you will get too overwhelmed. **
• Let the past go and from now on enter every transaction at your earliest opportunity. USE the register for tracking purposes - write down not only where you spent the money but why, e.g. "Lowe's - plumbing" or "Mac Pharmacy - Lucy aspirin" or "Target - staples and retail therapy." If you get a few too many of the last kind at the end of the month you'll have a good starting point for creating your own economic stimulus package!
• Some other register basics: date, type of entry be it: check number, ATM, Deposit, or automatic transaction, carry your balance and double check your math. I usually add up the column I just did to make sure it equals my prior balance.
• Regularly commit to balancing your checkbook, reconciling it to your bank statement - hell, you can do this by muting the commercials during your favorite shows is you want. Weekly seems like a manageable goal. You'll likely develop your own system but I use a circle in my register to track what has yet to clear and a check to mark what has. I add up the circles, add that amount to the balance MY register says and that should equal what the bank says.
• Troubleshooting: double check your math if you're off - really, turn down the volume for a minute. Compare your register to the bank statement in case you missed anything.
• Since it's impossible for some reason to get all our receipts in one place so I can keep track of them, and also because it makes me feel like a SuperNag if I keep asking Matt for his and neither of us wants to feel like we're be controlling about money, we settled on a cash allowance system where every pay check we each get some cash to spend as we wish until next payday. We are working on tweaking the amount to keep it reasonable but still useful. The other benefit of this system is no million receipts for small purchases.
• Finally, when implementing something like this, it's nice to have someone to talk to as you make the changes ... hopefully you have a friend who is happy to talk all things organization with you. Ahem.

The bottom line is, it's your money. You work hard for it. Know how you spend it. Who cares if you didn't do this before today? If it makes you feel more in control of your spending and confident financially, that's a good thing. And hey, obviously it's no magic solution to put more money in your pocket, and yet, when you are conscious about how you spend money, you can't help but make better choices resulting in what? Yeah, more money, baby!

**If you use a lot of checks and know you have quite a few outstanding, leave a page blank for those and go on line, change the date range to six months out and sort by check number. You'll see which ones are outstanding. Know that until those clear, your account isn't exactly right but hopefully you have an idea if they are big or small amounts - account for that as you make big purchases.