My Painter's Roses

I am not a gardener, in fact, I am not a huge fan of dirt unless it is i some way attached to a horse, so I take absolutely ZERO credit for these roses, they came with the house. That being said I am one who appreciates people who garden like the previous owners of this house.

Produce Outlet

I have blogged about going to the Produce Outlet before, and even though I know they have the best produce prices I do not always go there becasue it is out of the way and it is easier to buy my produce at the supermarket with the rest of our food. However, in an effort to combat rising food prices I am going to make a more concerted effort to buy our produce there. Today, for $14.50 I got:

-- 6 pounds of carrots
-- 2 avocado
-- 1 pint of grape tomatoes
-- 3 pounds of apples
-- 1 pound of lemons
-- 1 pound of limes
-- 1 pineapple
-- 2 pounds of zucchini

The carrots were 6 pounds for $2.50 my market sells 5 pounds of carrots for $3.50, so I saved $1.00 there and got an extra pound. grape tomatoes were $1.50 a pint where are my supermarket sells them for $2.50 a pint on sale. The pineapple was $2.00 and they are at least $5.00 at the supermarket. The last time I looked at lemons they were $.79 each, so I definitely saved there. Off the top of my head I don;t know what the supermarket sells the other items for but I know there was money saved.

I would urge you to investigate if there is a produce outlet (Produce Junction) in your neighborhood!

Ditching Disposables

I have been thinking a lot lately about all of the disposable products we use everyday. Things like paper napkins and paper plates are things that you don't usually spend too much time thinking about, but with gas at $4 + a gallon and food prices going up I thought it was time to reevaluate the type of things that we (literally) throw our money away on.

Disposal products you will find in my house currently:

1. Paper Napkins
2. Paper Plates
3. Small Paper Bathroom Cups
4. Tissues
5. Toilet Paper
6. Paper Towels

We are currently experimenting with cloth napkins and so far it is going well. I am not doing extra laundry and we have not run out of cloth, so I think I can say that we have eliminated #1.

We have 12 place settings of our everyday dishes and we run the dishwasher about 2x a week. Unless we are having a party or a BBQ there is no need to keep paper plates on hand at all times, so I think we can eliminate #2.

#3 is a sticking point for me. It just seems to be more hygienic, but I am the only one who uses a cup in the bathroom so I would only be sharing my germs with myself. I think #3 can go.

I am not getting rid of #4 and #5. I know that there are handkerchiefs, but this is a hygiene issue and tissues and TP are here to stay in my house.

#6 I deem a necessity. We have a baby and 2 large dogs in our house. All of which occasionally make messes I would not want to clean up with anything reusable. For anyone who has has to clean poop off of a carpet you understand completely.

So that means that we can stop buying 3 of the 6 disposable products we currently use with little to no impact to our daily lives. This means less money thrown away and also less impact on the environment (I hope).

What disposable products can you not live without? What have you eliminated from your lives and why?

My Men

Feel the Burn

BPA Free Bottles

So this is the hot topic is babyhood these days, what bottles are BPA free and where can you find them. Since I am nursing Nate I don't have a stockpile of bottles and really haven't been worrying about this, I'm certainly not throwing out my perfectly good and fairly expensive Dr. Brown's bottles although I did return some that weren't open yet and decided that if I were going to buy anymore bottles I would buy glass or the BPA free plastic ones. Although around here Dr. Brown's glass and BPA free bottles are really hard to find, so I was kind of stuck.

Maybe this is old news to everyone else but I am just finding out about this. Dr. Brown's will replace your old bottles with BPA free ones (up to 3) if you send them the UPC from the box.

Safe Mama has the whole story and the address to send the codes in order to get the replacement bottles.

First Day Back

So today is my first day back to work. I was a little teary when I dropped Nate off at my mom's this morning, but it isn't really as bad as I thought it would be.

my co-workers seem excited to have me back (which is a nice little ego boost) and had pics of Nate all over the library along with flowers and food in the staff lounge.

Pumping in my office is not so much fun but a necessary evil as Nate is EBF (exclusively breast fed). No formula for my kiddo! I did go to my mom's house to feed him on my lunch hour and that worked out rather well. He was happy to see me and that little smile makes everything better.

Update: My mom just called to say that Nate pooped all over every stitch of clothing he had on... maybe this work thing isn't so bad after all.

The End...

Today is the last day of my maternity leave, I start back to work tomorrow. I am trying today to get as much baby lovin' as possible... regular blogging will begin tomorrow I promise.

First Mother's Day Present

My mother's day present from hubby and Nate which will be arriving tomorrow... Am I one lucky mommy or what?

Happy Mother's Day

...from Nate and I to all of you

(Nate's onesie says "I Love Mommy"