Most used infant products-the first month

So I thought it might be useful or interesting to hear my most used baby items so far.

1. My Moby Wrap- I have LOVED this. The bug adores being in it and will snuggle right up. I love having him so close to me and rarely if we're out do we use the stroller. Its just been easier to use the Moby.


2. The My Brest Friend Pillow. I love this pillow and love how secure it is. Those first few weeks of nursing can be tough so anything you can get to make it easier do it. This was one of my favorite things that I had.

3. My Kleen Kanteen- The hubs makes sure that this is always filled and I don't think I would drink anything in those first weeks unless it was right there for me. I love these and bring them EVERYWHERE.

4. Zippy Pajamas-I loved not dealing with buttons or snaps in the middle of the night.

5. Sophie the Giraffe-This toy is so cute, I love it. The bug tracks it with his eyes and will bat it with his hands too :)

Cloth Diapering so far

pic of my Bug's cute little cloth diapered tush!

Some of our parenting decisions were made automatically for us; cloth diapering and breastfeeding being the biggest. It was VERY important to both of us for me to stay home to raise the bug and for that to happen we had to lessen the cost of having a child. Diapering a child comes with an obscene cost, cloth diapering seemed like the best way to cut that and it has been. Thankfully we had purchased some cloth when we took care of my nieces twins and one of my friends handed me down some of her cloth diapers as her kids outgrew them; so even the cloth diapers didn't really have a significant impact on our budget. Even if we did have to purchase them it really just does make sense financially to go cloth. There are other bloggers who have gone into the cost analysis so I'm not going to do the math, I'll just link up a few here, here and here. I also like the environmental aspect of cloth diapering and appreciate how my frugal choices also tend to be green.

What we didn't realize is that when we left the hospital they would give us TONS of disposable diapers, we literally left with 5 packages. These 5 packages proved to be a great incentive to start with the cloth, we both HATED them. The bug some how leaked so bad that every time we changed him at night we were changing the sheets and his clothes too (some times ours as well).

It was so irritating, and both brands that they gave us let to the same effect. The hubs and I were so happy when we started using cloth because they really held the business in. We honestly haven't even noticed the laundry part of it too much, it works out to be an extra load every 2-3 days and you don't have to fold them!

So yeah, we cloth diaper and it isn't at all horrible like everyone insisted it would be when we were pregnant (all while giving us knowing looks and saying "we'll see how long that lasts"). It just works for us and for the boy, although I could see how if you were working full time or didn't have a washing machine cloth diapering would be hard. Also breastfeeding has its own advantages on cloth diapering so if I was formula feeding I might be singing a different tune.

The one thing that bothers me when people talk about cloth diapering is that they believe you have to buy the fancy expensive diapers. You can go crazy with cloth there are many many different options and some of them cost over $20 a diaper but you can go way cheaper than that. We opted to purchase prefolds, cheap prorap covers
and snappis to secure. Diapering with those options it costs about $50 per size and you can reuse for subsequent children, super cheap!

So what do you do? What made your decision for you?

Hamilton Beach has AWESOME customer service

So about 3 weeks ago I was using my faithful Hamilton Beach crockpot that my Mother-In-Law had given us when we got our house to make us something scrumptious. As I went to stir whatever it was that was in there the crockpot slumped over and almost fell off of the counter. After further review I realized that one of the legs broke off my poor crockpot. Needless to say I was pizzed. I wrote them an email letting them know what happened and that it wasn't under warantee but how disappointed I was that it happened to begin with. They wrote me back within a day and enclosed a Fed-Ex label to send it back to the company. Coming home today I found a brand new crockpot that is nicer than the one we sent in on my front doorstep. I'm so impressed with their customer service on this, they went above and beyond what was necessary to make sure I was happy. Now I have a bright shiny new crockpot to play with! :)

My Flip

So I think I mentioned here that I bought the amazing Flip Video for the hubs for his birthday. When I got it I also splurged for the underwater case knowing that we would be LOVING that bad boy in Hawaii! Well when we got to Hawaii we found out that the underwater case wasn't working so well and the whole thing broke about 4 days into our trip. BOOO!!!!! The day it broke we were in Hanauma Bay, one of the best snorkelling destinations in the world, and about 5 minutes after it broke we saw a Hammerhead shark!!! OH MY GOSH DO I WISH THAT THING WAS WORKING THEN!!!!! Here's the letter I sent to them, I'll let you know what I get back.


Hello,
I'm writing to let you know what happened with my flip video. You see, my husband and I have been saving our pennies for a trip to Hawaii. We are keenly aware that this could very well be our last real vacation as we are looking to start a family soon and we hear kids are pretty expensive. For my husbands birthday in August I ordered the Flip Video with the Underwater case so that we could record and remember this major trip. At first we were in love with its simplicity, and talked so many of our friends into purchasing as well. Then we took it on our trip. The first few days it was fine, but then we tried it underwater (with the underwater case). The underwater case did not keep out the water and the camera hasn't started since. Sadly the day it broke we were in Hanauma Bay, one of the best snorkeling locations in the world and also the ENTIRE reason we bought the flip video with the underwater case. We are back from our vacation now and are understandably devastated that we weren't able to capture the majority of our trip like we had planned to. I have enclosed our invoice below, please let me know how you plan to rectify this situation.
Sincerely and with a broken heart,
Dirkey

Interesting Article on BPA's

Click here to read. Article links plastic bottles to Diabetes and Heart Disease, two things that run in my family already! There are also some other scary things linked to it in the article.
This is why I always use my Klean Kanteen from Non Toxic Tots.
I recently renewed my dedication to not use plastic bottles its amazing that I don't generally get drinks while I'm out but I still accumulate a good amount of plastic bottles. I just have to remember to ALWAYS bring my Klean Kanteen!

After much prodding-Soggy Mama has been launched

My good friend Melody has been gently persuaded by me for the past 2 months to start a blog, and if you know anything about me and how I gently persuade people it usually is similar to a 2 year old trying to convince you to do something. I start out all nice like "mama drink?" then in about 5 seconds it moves straight to "MAMA DRINK MAMA DRINK MAMA DRIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNKK!!!". In this case it was "Melody you should start a blog" all nonchalant like, then quickly moved to "MELODY BLOG, MELODY BLOG, MEEEEEEELLOOOODYYYY BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG!!!!!!!"
So like any tired mama she just gave in and started one for little old me. Now I can waste away hours reading about her fabulous toilet swishing life and just dreaming of when we move out to our big duplex in Lancaster to be neighbors.
Without further ado I bring you Confessions of a Soggy Mama

My hair, my crown of glory

So yeah, Dirkey's got her some thick old hair. Hair that hairdressers constantly comment on (oh when I say constant I'm talking about the two times a year that I go to a salon to get it cut). When Mama K told me that she washed her hair with a bar of soap I was skeptical. My brain was kind of exploding thinking that a bar of soap could never replace the ever changing amount of products that I put in my hair to make my ponytail look that much better. For one, I had never in my life, gone without conditioner. How does one do that, can you comb your hair afterwards? I've never even gotten it wet without putting conditioner in it before I attempted to comb it afterwards. So despite of my skepticism at how well this Shampoo Bar does, I decided to try it out. Now I stepped in gradually and used the bar in conjunction with a good natural conditioner but the more I read about it the more I saw that the websites said you don't need conditioner if you do this. I took the scary step last week and stopped using conditioner and you know what, I don't miss it. My hair looks and feels great (even though its still not out of its elastic jail of a ponytail).
I normally get mine at Chagrin Valley.

Kitchen stuff is my weakness

Shoes don't do anything for me, I can live without makeup or electronics. Find me in a kitchen store and I'm looking like a five year old in a candy store. I scramble to regain the frugal footing I keep for most of my lifestyle. Recently I got a coupon for One of my favorite stores for $10 off any purchase. I asked the hubs if I could use $20 to just spend there on anything I wanted and he agreed, because it is our joint money we generally check with each other with any purchase. So theoretically I had thirty bucks with which to spend at my favorite store. I walked around with great joy just looking at the gorgeous serving dishes, neat little kitchen gadgets, cookbooks, serving spoons; trying to narrow down my decision to fit within my $30 budget.
I ended up with these

We've recently gotten rid of about 98% of all plastic containers in our house and when we have kids running around I knew I didn't want to feed them off of plastic either. I know, I know you do run into the problem of breakage but you know thats ok with me. So yes I used my $30 to purchase bowls for our future children but can you blame me these are some freaking cute bowls!!!!!
Check out the insides!!!

The hubs convinced me that it would truly be a sin to let these collect dust until we have little ones to feed, so now these are designated for blueberry eating! It makes the berrys taste that much better eating out of the cuteness! :)
Oh yeah, they didn't cost $30 they were $5.95 each. I did buy much more from the store but it was for the hubs birthday so I actually didn't hit my $30 allotment for me.
For the curious here is what I ended up getting the hubs for his birthday. We are big on Miso soup and Oriental cooking so I got him some fun bowls for when I make it at home.

How to travel to Hawaii on a budget>

So I had mentioned before that the hubs and I were planning a trip to Hawaii. We were throwing around alot of ideas, with varying degrees of expensiveness. This trip is probably the last big trip for awhile so we really wanted to make the most of it and do it right. Now I have been to Oahu before, for a family reunion (my aunt and one of my cousins live there), and I definitely wanted to at least spend a week on Oahu to see my family. We were throwing around the idea of going to another island as well and had settled on Kauai as our second island. So we set off to planning with that intention.

The thing I've realized about planning trips is that you really need to decide what type of vacation you want to have right from the get go. We really wanted to just relax and have a good time. We went to Europe together and did the "see everything you can possibly see in 10 days thing", seriously 3 country's in two weeks! So ultimately we decided to stick to Oahu since I'm not going to Hawaii without visiting my peeps! Which thankfully also decreases our total price by about $300 bucks for airfare.

I love traveling and I'm pretty good (if I do say so myself) at getting a good deal. We found airfare from Sidestep. Sidestep is a service that you enter in your information and they search all the travel sites to find out the best value then you complete your transaction on the site with the best value. This time we found our best price was with Northwest Airlines and it cost us about $650 a piece (from Philadelphia). We have one layover in Minnesota so I'm hoping that there might be a possibility to see my sister and her kids even if its only a few minutes.

Once we booked our flight I settled into trying to find a place to stay. I had the luxury of experience with this and was able to remember what each of the parts of the Island were like. If we went with a hotel they really are mostly located in Waikiki, while there was a really nice one near my Aunt called Ihilani. The hotels at Waikiki are nice but it is very much a city type atmosphere and the beaches were very crowded there, it really didn't seam like the best choice for the hubs and I. Ihilani was a gorgeous resort with a really beautiful beach but if we booked there we really wouldn't have been able to afford much else. I then started looking into Bed and Breakfasts to see if this might be a better option. Turns out there are some awesome B&B's in Oahu and we found one that really fits our budget that is right on the ocean!!! We were able to do this for about $130 a night. Since beaches are public property we probably will take a trip to Ihilani's beach one day as its my aunts favorite beach.

We then turned our sites to a rental car, I found most rentals for compact cars were about $25 while the convertibles were about $50. The hubs and I were toying with the idea of a convertible but couldn't justify $50 a day. I was a step away from booking on Sidestep when I thought to check one other website, Hotwire. I was able to find a convertible for $25 a day, which completely rocks my socks off!!!

So thats where we stand now, we have the big stuff out of the way and now we are starting to investigate some of the things to do on the Island. More on that later :)

Frugal Friday-Staying Hydrated

I don't know about you but I'm a thirsty girl. I used to wet my whistle by stopping at WAWA or another convenience store to buy soda's, juices or waters. Besides being bad for me (the soda's and the juices that is) it was killing my pocket book. Generally drinks go for a little over a dollar a bottle and I was definitely getting more than one a day.
Enter my Klean Kanteen:
Now I fill up before I leave the house, pretty much every day so while I'm searching yard sales, grocery shopping, driving to the shore, going to work; there is always some good old healthy water next to me. Its saved me countless dollars. Of course you can use any water bottle and don't need to buy some name brand jobbie. I choose my Klean Kanteen because of the materials used and also the manufacturing methods the company uses; if you would like one you can purchase yours here.
I've found that my most frugal changes haven't been the big ones, but have been my small changes. Looking around at my lifestyle and changing the things that don't seem to matter; I find out that they really do and the money adds up!
What are you guys up to?
Join in the fun, grab the code below and post your own frugal ideas!

Don't forget to leave a comment so I know to link you up :)

<a href="http://www.dirkey.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="Dirkey" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2306/2422433079_00cdb91b63_m.jpg" border="0" /></a>

I found out that Frugal Friday didn't start here-the original is at Biblical Womanhood, go check out the original!

Pink paint and primer I'm a happy camper

Our house no longer has ANY pink rooms!!! Alright well we only had one to being with but still that was one to many for me. I like pink alot just not on walls, my mom had a thing that no room in the house could be painted the same color and mine was pink by default (youngest of six). Her bedroom was blue, my brother's green, my sister's purple and I was left with either pink or grey.. I vowed then that I would NEVER have a pink room when I grew up, when we bought this house there was a ton of colors in it one of them being pink so of course that had to be the first to go. The room we just painted had bright green carpet with light pink paint which bows stenciled on the top of it (even on the heating vent!). Schmoop and I have bought the colors for the upstairs; we have a chocolate brown for our room, bonsai green for the guest room, kale green for the office, and like a thunderstorm blue for the bathroom. Once we get it all painted we are ripping out the carpet(all the carpet upstairs is different colors drives me INSANE!), we want a nice off white or tan berber throughout the upstairs. So right now after about an hour of painting we have one very primered white room soon to be Bonsai Green. I cant wait to get all the painting and the carpet done upstairs so we can move all the bedroom furniture up there and out of the laundry room!!
by the way Sherwin Williams rocks my world!! and Walmarts paint kits suck butt.

so Fresh!!

So Mama K gave me the bestest birthday gift, well she gave me a bunch but one sticks out tonight. This is probably because I just used it, its Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Soap . This stuff is amazing!!!! Buy it, Use it, Be REFRESHED!
Thanks Mama K!!!!