EDIT – just discovered the fitness and food sections on Pinterest.  I might have to up my time limit from five minutes to fifteen.

I have been purposely avoiding Pinterest for quite some time.  From what I had heard, I knew that it could be the sort of site that could suck me in and turn into a major time waster, so I just avoiding going there in the first place.  I don’t remember what convinced me to finally go check it out a few weeks ago, but I did.  And sure enough, half an hour later I was still browsing around.  Damn you, Pinterest.

I loved looking at wide-open, clutter-free rooms and clean kitchen counters.  I got some good ideas for food storage, toy storage and garage organization.  And seeing all of those neat spaces inspired me to get up and clean my own kitchen.  So I did.  After half an hour on Pinterest, I spent the next half hour making my kitchen sparkle and (sort of) look like the immaculate, minimalist kitchens that I had been eyeballing online.

But the next time I went to Pinterest, I found myself looking at all sorts of other stuff – crafty things like altered t-shirt dresses and refinished furniture and handmade birthday wall hangings.  They all looked cute and crafty, but – yikes!  I was over-inspired.  If that’s not already a word, I’m coining it now.  Inspiration is a great thing – if we put it to use and it makes our life (or someone else’s) better.  But over-inspiration seems like it could just lead to… nothing at all except more browsing around online once our crafty DIY to-do list gets too long and becomes paralyzing.

Simplicity is awesome.  But sometimes we tackle a DIY project in the name of simplicity and it ends up being way more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive (and maybe not as enjoyable) as we had planned.  If it’s something you truly love doing, then by all means – do it.  But if you’re forcing yourself to do crafty things because you think you should or because your friends are doing it, or because (fill in the blank)… you might want to ask whether you’d be better off without it in the first place, or looking on Craigslist or at a thrift store to see if you can find a used version of whatever it is.  If you love quilting, make a quilt.  If you just think you want to love quilting but actually hate it, go buy a quilt at a garage sale – if you actually need a quilt (that post is worth reading no matter what you think about quilts – and it’s funny!).  Otherwise, carry on without a quilt.

I’ve been back to Pinterest a few times since then.  I set a five minute time limit for myself, which keeps me from browsing around for ages (Why is it that time goes by so fast when we’re online?  Why does it not go by that fast when we’re stuck in traffic?  Questions to ponder…).  And I focus on areas that can help me organize and simplify the life I already have/want.  For example, I’m looking for good ways to organize toys in our playroom.  We don’t have any furniture or shelving in there, so everything is on the floor.  There has to be a better way.  And of course, knowing me, it will have to be something I can buy used that won’t cost a lot of money.

But the problem with browsing around and looking at toy storage ideas is that it can easily lead to browsing around and looking at all sorts of other home improvements.  Which can lead to jealousy or a desire to upgrade things that really don’t need to be upgraded.  As an example – my kitchen is fine.  It’s clean and orderly (and no longer contains a yeast packet that expired 8 years ago).  My counters are clear (well, most of the time anyway) and I have ample space to work.  My counters are laminate and my cabinets are plain light-colored wood.  My stove has metal coil burners, and while I prefered the glass-top stove that we put in our old house, the one I have now works just fine.  Nothing in my kitchen is fancy, but I’m able to cook all sorts of awesome food there, and everything works just the way it should.  I could spend a ton of money making my kitchen look like something from a magazine.  Or I could spend a ton of hours replacing the fronts of my cabinet doors with old barn wood and painting our dining room table to give it a crafty “distressed” look.  But I’m not going to.  Because I would rather spend that money and time doing something else.

So while I think it’s awesome to see all the crafty, amazing things people have done on sites like Pinterest and BetterAfter, I think it’s just as important to remind ourselves to be grateful for what we have and to allow ourselves to stop improving when everything is fine the way it is.  So instead of browsing Craigslist to find a dresser that I can turn into a craft storage area, I’ll read this post and remind myself that my house feels much better with less furniture in it – even if it’s impossibly cute, crafty furniture.  And I’ll keep getting rid of clutter instead of trying to organize it. And I’ll find some second-hand shelves that will work just fine to store toys in the playroom.  They probably won’t be amazing or worthy of being featured on a home-improvement website, but they will get the toys up off the floor, and that’s really all that I’m looking for.

I know a lot of my readers are big DIYers and into crafty stuff.  So tell me.  Do sites like Pinterest inspire you?  Or do they just make you look around at your own stuff and feel like you need to change/upgrade everything in sight?

As an aside, I found this cookie recipe yesterday on Pinterest.  They are amazing.  They took five minutes.  And our son loved squishing them with a fork to make the lines on them.  I subbed walnuts instead of peanuts and used sunflower seed butter instead of peanut butter, because that’s what we had on hand.  They turned out fantastic.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’ve done a lot of decluttering over the past couple years.  I’ve taken numerous carloads of stuff to Goodwill, and have (except for last month when I was on a mission to find stuff for our son’s play kitchen) mostly stopped going in to shop when I drop stuff off.  I got rid of about half of my craft supplies, and I’ve cleared out closets and cupboards all through the house, tossing or recycling or donating stuff that we didn’t need anymore. 

I had already made one pass through the kitchen a year or so ago, getting rid of stuff that we weren’t using.  But I mostly focused on gadgets and excess glassware rather than food.  Last night, I was browsing around online and I came across this awesome blog written by a lady who has managed to get rid of 10,000 things by purging 100 items at a time!  Pretty inspiring if you’re thinking about getting rid of clutter.  Christine’s writing had me laughing out loud, and then it got me up off my butt and into the kitchen to do something about our too-full cupboards. 

I love to cook.  And to shop for groceries.  We eat all of our meals at home (and I do mean all… we took a friend out for his 90th birthday last month and he chose Olive Garden.  But before that, we hadn’t eaten out since September).  That’s how I justify our full pantry, freezer, and cupboards.  But I had noticed lately that there was stuff at the back of the cupboards that I was never using, and it was just serving to make the cupboards a little less useful than they would otherwise be.

So at about 11pm, I was standing in the kitchen surrounded by boxes and jars and bags of stuff that I didn’t need.  Some of it was a wee tad bit expired and went in the trash:

Yes, we moved to a new house in 2009.  I vaguely remember being in a big hurry to clean out the old house and I think I tossed everything from the fridge and pantry into a cooler and boxes without paying much attention.  But you would think that I would have noticed this when I unpacked.  Or at any time during the past 2.5 years.  Anyway.  Moving on. 

In addition to a couple of seriously expired things, I also found a few duplicates.  Two bags of dill seed (that’s going to take a while to use up…), three containers of cardamom, two bags of ground ginger.  Good thing I like to cook from scratch and use a lot of spices. 

By the time I finished consolidating, purging and cleaning, I had quite a pile on the kitchen table.  All of this stuff will either be donated to family or friends who will use it, or trashed if it’s expired, or recycled if it’s an empty container (I was able to consolidate a lot of stuff so that it takes up less cabinet space.  Three honey jars are now combined into one, for example):

I also found a few more gadgets and dishes that I didn’t need.  Three baby food grinders?  I think we’re fine with one. 

I came across a few nearly empty jars of cocoa butter and coconut oil that I had used a while back to make lotion.  So I dumped them into a saucepan, melted them down, and filled a container with my newly-minted lotion.  That meant I was able to recycle three containers that had been taking up space in my pantry.

I ended up getting rid of everything in that picture plus about half that much again by the time I was finished.  So much better.  I don’t have to root around in the cupboard to find what I’m looking for.  And everything in the cupboards is stuff that I use on a regular basis.  And none of it expired when I was in my 20s. 

Anyway, I hope Christine’s blog inspires you and makes you laugh.  And if you have anything in your kitchen that expired in 2004, please tell me about it to make me feel better!

Over the last several years – ever since my husband and I decided to have children – I’ve read lots of books and articles about the idea of giving up the supermom ideal and getting over the fact that we can’t “do it all” if we want to do any of it well.   The Minimalist Mom recently wrote about rejecting the supermom ideal and I think her post will resonate with a lot of people.  Basically, it’s all about prioritizing, and doing the things that are truly important to each of us, rather than trying to do it all.  It’s an excellent reminder to focus on what matters and well worth reading.

I’m fully on board with that idea, but I see it as the way to truly be a “supermom” rather than feeling like I’m giving up on the idea of being “supermom”.  The way I look at it, being “supermom” has nothing to do with juggling 75 different hats.  To me, it means focusing my energies on the things that will make my life and my family’s life as great as possible.  That has nothing to with carting my boys off to lots of different activities, scheduled play dates, or advanced early learning preschools.  It has nothing to do with having a spotless house every second of the day (although I do like to keep it reasonably clean).  It has nothing to do with keeping myself so busy that I never have time to read to my boys or build snowmen with them.  It has nothing to do with trips to Disneyland or themed birthday parties or working extra hours to be able to afford the newest toys and the best professional photographer to take pictures of my little guys.  The list goes on and on here, and will be different for each of us.  I may not give a hoot about themed birthday parties, but another mom might love them.  Go for it.  Just make sure you’re focusing your time and energy on stuff that actually makes you and your family happy, rather than what you think is supposed to make you happy, or what you see other people doing.  Trust me, it might not be making them happy either.

Instead of saying that we’re rejecting the ideal of being a supermom (ostensibly, the mom who “does it all” – a career, a family, a perfect house, PTA meetings, lessons for every activity under the sun, etc.), why don’t we just focus on the fact that there’s really nothing “super” at all about that sort of life, for the vast majority of people.  True, there may be some people – I imagine they are few and far between – who truly thrive on constant stress and are actually able to devote themselves 100% to numerous different aspects of a fully-packed schedule.  But I think that most of us – if we’re honest about what really matters and what really contributes to our enjoyment of life – feel better when we don’t try to do too much.  When we have a little downtime in our days.  When we don’t fall into bed each night completely exhausted and dreading the alarm clock, but also already running through the next day’s to-do list.

We all have to earn a living.  We can adapt our lifestyles to fit a lower income if we prefer to work less, although that’s not appealing to everyone. Some families choose to have one parent work full time and the other focus on the house and children full time.  Some have both work full time and share the household duties.  Some mix it up with part time work for both parents.  Some are single parents who have to do it all.  In our house, my husband works full time at our business; I work very part-time at our business and spend most of my time taking care of the children and the household chores.  It works for us.  If we choose to have children, we have to figure out the best way to go about raising them – it won’t be the same for everybody, nor should it.  Life is not all fun and games, and it would probably get old pretty fast if it were.  But once we pare down to the basics and get those covered, we have options in terms of where we focus our time and energy.  Saying no to some of the activities and expenses (that are sometimes initially seen as necessary) might be just the thing we need.  Less is more when it comes to filling up our days.  Instead of a several hours at the mall shopping for the perfect Christmas gifts for everybody you know, spend a those hours reading books with your children or playing tag with them at a local park.  Catch up via phone or skype or email with the people for whom you would have been buying gifts.  Instead of feeling exhausted at the end of the day, you’ll feel great.  And you won’t have to work as much to earn money to pay for all the gifts.

So instead of saying that we’re giving up on being supermom (which makes it sound a bit like we’re throwing in the towel), let’s say instead that we’re focusing on what really matters.  We’re giving up the extraneous stuff that was just draining our energy, wasting time, and making us feel badly about ourselves because of the constant comparisons with other moms.  And that leaves us free to truly be supermoms.  Or superdads.  Or superfriends.  Or super-whatever-is-most-important-to-us.

I just came across a blog post that has me wishing that I still lived just around the corner from a big thrift store.  I rarely go browsing around the thrift store anymore.  In an effort to keep from cluttering up our house, these days I try to just stop at the donation door, drop stuff off, and keep going!  But I think I’m going to have to go in and check out the artwork next time I’m in town.  Check this out.  And this one.  I’m feeling very inspired.  The big Goodwill where I shop has half price day every other Saturday, and I will definitely be on the lookout for giant artwork.  I know that large frames are very expensive if purchased new, as are canvases.  If I come across a piece with a decent frame (or even a large wrapped canvas that doesn’t need a frame), I’ll bring it home and see what our son can do with a few jars of paint and a brush.  Have any of you done anything like this?  If you have a blog where you posted pictures, please include a link in the comments so that we can see your finished product and get even more inspired!

Cooler weather is here and our son has outgrown all of his long pants from last winter – so it’s time for a trip to Goodwill anyway.  Now I just have an extra reason to go.

One of my favorite bloggers – Gena from Choosing Raw – recently posted an “ABCs of Me” post.  Those are always fun and a good way to share a little bit more with my  readers in a concise way.  So here are the ABCs of Frugal Babe.

A – Age.  I’m 33

B – Bed Size.  Queen.

C – Chore I dislike.  Hmmm.  There are a few, but I’m going to go with cleaning the bathroom.  These days, I force myself to do it often instead of letting it go until it’s a really big chore.

D – Dogs.  We have an awesome pound puppy mutt that we got in 2004.  Love her to pieces.

E – Essential start to my day.  Snuggles with the baby and our little guy, a big glass of water, and the bowl of oats that my husband makes for us every morning.

F – Favorite Colors.  It depends on the day, and what we’re talking about.  Wall paint?  Neutrals and whites.  Clothes?  Blue, red, black.

G – Gold or silver?  Silver, or white gold.

H – Height.  I’m 5’5″.

I – Instruments I play(ed).  In high school, I took a year of piano lessons.  I love to sing, much to the chagrin of everybody around me.  And I wonder if I could still wow people with the recorder the way I did in 4th grade?

J – Job title.  I’m mostly a stay-at-home mom and homemaker, but I also spend about 15 hours a week working for the business that my husband and I own.  I handle the accounting, taxes, and a chunk of the marketing.

K – Kids.  We have two awesome little boys.

L – Live.  On our little mini-farm in a small town, somewhere in America where we have four real seasons.

M - Money tip I like best.  Whatever you earn, spend less.

N – Never plan to…  bungee jump, skydive, or any other free-fall activity that might result in soiling my undies.

O – Overnight hospital stays.  None, and hoping to keep it that way!

P - Pet Peeves.  People who drive without focusing 100% of their attention on driving safely.  Hang up, pull over if you need to do something other than drive, and don’t be in such a hurry.

Q - Quote from a movie.  Pretty much anything from Billy Madison.  Just thinking about that movie makes me laugh.

R – Righty or lefty?  Righty

S - Siblings.  Two brothers and one sister, all of whom I count among my best friends.

T - Time I wake up.  Several times throughout the night, when our little guy is hungry and decides it’s time to nurse.  But I’m usually up for the day sometime between 8 and 9.

U – Underwear.  Whatever’s clean and comfy.

V - Vegetables I don’t like.  I didn’t think there was any such thing, but I recently discovered that turnip greens should definitely be picked when they’re small.  Wait until they’re two feet long and they are not the best tasting things, especially if your preferred method of eating greens is to blend lots of them (raw) into a smoothie.

W – What makes me run late.  Well, I have a three-year-old and a five-month-old.

X – X-rays I’ve had.  Just dental and I’d like to keep it that way!

Y – Yummy food I make.  Lots of salads, veggie burgers, grilled veggie salad, zucchini noodles with veggies and sauce, spinach artichoke dip.

Z – Zoo animals I like.  I’m conflicted on this one.  Zoos are better than the circus, and I know that well-managed zoos do a lot as far as conservation and protection for endangered species.  But still… it’s keeping animals in captivity, largely for entertainment purposes.

Do you have a blog?  If you do, consider yourself tagged!

I got the following email from Connie in response to my post asking you what you wanted me to write about:

It feels like many of the decisions you have made came about as a result of both your values and preparing yourselves and your home for children. How might your decisions have changed if you hadn’t been planning to have children? I find that some priorities, like eating good quality foods and staying healthy are easy for me to implement now, but others are more difficult, in part because I am not planning to have children. I don’t have as much of a reason to settle down in one place, grow a garden, etc. I definitely want to do those things, but they get pushed to the backburner so much more easily when there are new adventures in new places to be had. I am preparing to move to CA, and there have been several discussions about whether to rent, buy, or buy a larger plot (terribly expensive) to accomplish some of those personal goals.

My instinctive reaction is to say that everything in our life would be different if we didn’t have children, since they’re such a huge part of our life.  But when I thought about it a bit more, I realized that isn’t the case at all.  It is difficult to imagine my life without children, but I can remember our life before our children arrived, and we have kept much of it the same.

My husband and I moved into our first apartment together nearly seven years before our first child was born.  We knew that we wanted children eventually, but we had a lot of stuff we wanted to do first.  We traveled at least once a year to relatively far-flung places.  We bought a house.  We started a business that would allow us to work from home.  Having our own business and working from home has been hugely beneficial in terms of parenting, but it’s something that we would have done regardless of our plans to have children.  It allows us a lot of flexibility and freedom, and we took advantage of that for several years before we had children.

Our current house with its huge backyard is excellent for children (what kid wouldn’t love a half acre to run around in?), but we were attracted to the backyard primarily for gardening purposes rather than as a play area for our children.  My husband and I are both devoted to healthy eating, and we both love growing our own food.  Although it’s hard to imagine my life without children now that I have them, I think that my husband and I would have been drawn towards a home with a sizable yard even if we hadn’t had children (or planned to have them).  We might have looked for a smaller house if it had been just the two of us, but I think that we would have ended up buying (rather than renting) and seeking out a place with a big yard where we could have our fruit trees and garden beds.  In addition, we both love dogs and will probably always have one.  Having a house with a yard is a big plus for the dog too – it’s a place where she can run around sans leash and chase a frisbee to her heart’s content.

Although our life does revolve around our children much of the time now (it sort of has to, given that they’re still so little), we’ve managed to fit our children into the lifestyle that we already enjoyed before they were born.  We don’t like rigid schedules (so we’ve avoided many of the over-scheduling problems that plague many parents of little children), we like being outdoors, we like being at home, we love gardening, we like finding free entertainment and enjoying the little things in life… those are all things that we have kept the same.

There’s no one-size-fits-all path in life.  Whether you’re planning to have children or not, you should seek out a path that makes you happy.  If that’s renting apartments for short stints so that you can travel the world, so be it.  If it’s settling down in a fixer-upper house with a yard and a garden and projects to last the next 30 years, so be it.  Or anywhere in between.  If you are planning to have children, you can focus on following your own desires and wishes and avoiding the “you should be doing xyz” traps that are perpetuated by advertising designed to separate your from your money.  You can raise happy, well-adjusted children in all sorts of unconventional settings, and you don’t need a ton of money, stuff, or a white picket fence to do so.  If you’re planning to not have children, you do have some more flexibility in terms of doing whatever you want, since nobody will be depending on you for food, shelter, and years of guidance.  Either way, focusing on your own goals will work much better than trying to keep up with what everybody else is doing, or what advertising tells you that you should be doing.

Connie, thanks for the question, and best of luck with your move to California!

I’m thrilled to announce that I have found the perfect veggie burger!  I’ve probably tried about 20 different recipes over the years (plus several kinds of packaged veggie burgers, which are way too expensive to have on a regular basis).  Earlier this week, I wrote about the excellent burger buns that I made, and how they needed to be paired with excellent veggie burgers.  I don’t know why I hadn’t already seen Angela’s fantastic veggie burgers, because I make something from her site about once a week.  But thanks to your recommendations, I whipped up a batch of burgers yesterday.  The recipe made enough for two meals for the three of us (huge bonus – I love having something in the fridge ready to go when it’s dinner time).  And it got two thumbs up from both of my guys.  I think it’s the first time in my life that I’ve actually wanted to go light on the condiments so that I can really taste the burger.  If you have a food processor, this recipe comes together pretty fast.  A lot of the ingredients need to be chopped or ground up (oats, bread, almonds, carrots), and I just did them each separately in the food processor before dumping them all together into my mixing bowl.  The flax egg did a great job of holding everything together.  I tasted the “dough” before I baked them, and could tell it was a winner.  Then I was especially thrilled halfway through baking when I flipped them over and they didn’t crack or fall apart – they held their shape perfectly.  If you’ve been looking for a great homemade veggie burger, I highly recommend them!

On to other things… I often get emails from readers asking me questions, or asking how I’ve handled various situations.  Usually I just respond directly to the reader, but I think some of those questions might be things that other readers are interested in too.  So I’m opening this up for reader questions and ideas.  Is there something you’d like to see me cover that I haven’t?  Any questions you’d like me to answer?  You can leave comments or send me an email (babe at frugalbabe dot com) and I’ll try to incorporate your thoughts into some of my future posts.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Happy Thursday!  I feel like sharing some great links with you all today.  First of all, my current favorite workout site.  I love the fact that everything on Bodyrock TV can be done at home with very little equipment, and pretty much all of the workouts are 30 minutes or less.  But they’re intense, and they’re kicking my post-partum butt back into shape.  I don’t have a sandbag, which she uses a lot, but I’ve found that a 25 pound dumbbell works just fine.  If you’re looking to shake up your workout routine, this site might be just what you need.

On a totally different topic, one of my Facebook friends shared a link to an article that perfectly sums up my views on parenting and what we want for our children.  I do not care whether my boys are at the top of their class someday.  I do not care whether they are stand-out athletes.  It does not matter to me that they be the best at everything they do.  I want them to be happy.  I want them to be compassionate.  I want them to be honest.  I want them to feel fulfilled – but not stressed.  I want them to succeed at whatever it is they set their hearts on, but I don’t want them to be overwhelmed with a drive for success that overshadows everything else.

My husband and I have not enrolled our three year old in any activities at all yet.  This is his time to play, explore, and have fun, without structure.  As our boys get older, we’ll let them decide what activities they want to participate in, but there will always be a limit of one at a time.  I will be fiercely protective of their free time, because I feel like the fast-paced, goal-oriented world we live in will suck us into a whirlwind unless we actively prevent it.  I feel strongly that life is not supposed to be one constant competition to see who is smartest, strongest, fastest, etc.  I want my boys to stop and smell the flowers, so we will not be shuttling from one activity to the other for the next 18 years.

The article I wrote earlier in the week about children and money got several comments from readers who mentioned that activities significantly drive up the cost associated with kids.  Just to clarify, the reason we have avoided activities so far – and the reasons we will limit them in the future – has nothing to do with money.  We believe that life is better when it’s not so crazy busy, and that’s the life we’re creating for our boys.   On a side note, we have no plans to send our sons to preschool either.  This is also not financially-related, although I suppose it will save us some money.  I guess you could say that we’re planning to homeschool for the preschool years.  I realize that most kids go to preschool these days, but I rarely do anything just because most people do it.  It seems like preschool has morphed over the years from being mostly play-oriented (sort of like daycare) to being much more academically-oriented, with parents feeling pressure to make sure their children are advancing academically as early as three years old.  I firmly reject this ideology, and feel strongly that unstructured, creative play is the best way for the under-five crowd to learn and develop the skills they will need later on in life.  There will be lots and lots of years of structured school and work for our boys.  I want to protect their freedom to just play and be kids for as long as I can.   I realize that other parents will make different decisions, and this is not a criticism of those choices.  Rather, it’s an explanation of the choices we’re making for our own children, and nothing more.

Moving on… Another great link:  A guest post today on Minimalist Mom, about the difficulties of simplifying and de-cluttering when you have small children.  I can totally relate to this one.  Right now, our dining room table is covered with paper, ink, crayons, and rubber stamps (our son has been making thank-you cards for people who gave him birthday gifts).  We have a huge bag of crayons that never seem to find their way back into their bag at the end of the day, and various blocks, wooden trains, and Legos all over the floor, no matter how often we pick them up.  The guest post was written by a blogger named Amber, and I clicked through to her site to find another great article.  This one sums up exactly how my relationship with cleaning (and cooking) has changed over the years.  I used to describe myself as someone who hated to cook, and hated to clean (or do pretty much anything domestic).  These days, I love to cook, and I actually enjoy cleaning too.  Somewhere along the way I told myself that I enjoy cleaning – or at least that I really enjoy having a clean house – and where the spirit leads, the body will follow.  Amber mentioned that today is her 10th wedding anniversary, and today also happens to be my 8th wedding anniversary.  So happy anniversary to both of us!

We finished transforming our backyard shed into an office today!  And yes, pictures will be coming soon.  We still have to paint the exterior and put a porch on it (because of course you can’t have a backyard shed/office without a cute little porch!) but the inside is finished.  One giant project that can now be checked off of our list.

I also just found out about an awesome new e-book package sale, and I know some of you will be interested in it.  It features books from a lot of my favorite bloggers, and includes 30 e-books for $47.  The retail value if you bought each book on its own would be $453, so this is a steal if you’re interested in even a few of the books.

The package deal was put together by Corey from Simple Marriage and Mandi from Life… Your Way.  It’s a collection of books devoted to simplifying your family’s life from all sorts of different perspectives, and it’s available until March 25th at 2pm eastern time.  As an added bonus, a portion of each sale will be donated to The Mentoring Project, an organization that works to provide mentors for children who are growing up without fathers.  So what’s in the e-book package?  Lots of good stuff…  Here’s what you get for $47:

Family Minimalism

Inside Out Simplicity by Joshua Becker (retail $11.99)

Simple Guide To A Minimalist Life by Leo Babauta (retail $9.95)

The Minimalist Mom by Dusti Arab (retail $17)

Food And Cooking

5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes by Jules Clancy (retail $37)

Healthy Snacks To Go by Katie Kimball (retail $6.95)

Healthy Eating Handbook by Melanie Thomassian (retail $27)

Real Food On A Real Budget by Stephanie Langford (retail $18.97)

The Real Food Cleansing Guide by Lisa Byrne (retail $29)

Green Living

Simply Car Free by Tammy Strobel (retail $9.95)

Healthy Homemaking by Stephanie Langford (retail $12.95)

Herbal Nurturing: A Family Healing and Learning Guide by Michele Augur (retail $8.95)

Intimacy And Marriage

Stripped Down Marriage by Tony DiLorenzo (retail $12)

A Simple Marriage by Corey Allan (retail $18)

Buck Naked Marriage by Corey Allan (retail $9.50)

15 Minute Marriage Makeover by Dustin Riechmann (retail $27)

Getting Lucky With The Wife by Sarah Baron (retail $18)

Money

The Super-Charged Guide To Financial Freedom by Jeff Nickles (retail $14.60)

The Hybrid Homemaker by Melissa Gorzelanczyk (retail $17)

Organizing

Organizing Life As Mom by Jessica Fisher (retail $9)

Tell Your Time by Amy Lynn Andrews (retail $12)

Parenting

Parenting With Positive Guidance by Amanda Morgan (retail $9)

Finding Educational Activities In The Most Unexpected Places by Angie Kauffman (retail $7.50)

Personal Development

Your Life. Live It.  Love It.  by Sherri Kruger (retail $19.95)

The Gratitude Journal by Sherri Kruger (retail $5.99)

Flying By The Seat Of My Soul by Tess Marshall (retail $5.97)

The 7 Week Life Cleanse by Katie Tallo (retail $20)

How To Be Rich And Happy by John Strelecky and Tim Brownson (retail $19)

Travel

Family Camping Handbook by Katie Kimball ($4.95)

Work At Home

Smalltopia by Tammy Strobel (retail $27)

Holidays

Thanksgiving Your Way + Planning Printables and Christmas Your Way + Planning Printables, by Mandi Ehman (retail $7)

Click here to buy all 30 e-books.

I’ve already read a few of these books, but not most of them, and there are several that I can’t wait to read.  The usual disclaimer applies here… as with any affiliate e-book sale, if you buy the package, I get a commission.  I feel like this e-book package fits perfectly with my blog, and I think it would be a great resource for my readers too.  Themes of simplicity, green living, nutritious food, happy families, healthy marriages, strong financial skills… these are some of the things that are most important to me, and I love that they are the sort of topics these books address.  Happy reading!

It’s nearly the end of February, which means we’re starting to think about gardens around here.  I’m sure we still have quite a bit of cold and snow ahead of us, but it’s been warm and sunny lately, which has me thinking of spring.  With a new baby due to arrive in early April, we’re probably going to simplify the garden a bit this year.  We’re going to focus on the crops that were the easiest and highest-yielding last year, and skip the ones that seemed to be pest magnets or required a lot of upkeep.  We’re going to plant more onions and potatoes than we did last year, since we ran out of them a couple months ago, and since they’re so easy to grow (stick them in the ground and wait until harvest time!)  We’ll probably do about the same amount of carrots, tomatoes, and peppers, and not as many beets (we still have beets coming out our ears – luckily they’ve stored well over the winter).  In the next week or so we’ll turn over the soil in the beds under our cold frames and get spinach and swiss chard started outside.  We’ll be getting our pepper and tomato seedlings going soon too, in the basement.  It’s all very exciting after months of looking at a brown backyard.

For those of you who would like to grow more of your own food but don’t think you can because you don’t have enough space, here’s a guest post from Suzanne Staton about container gardening.   We have a few dwarf citrus trees growing in containers so that we can move them indoors in the winter – container gardening can be useful even if you have a huge yard!

Gardening is a great way to both supplement the food you buy commercially, which is nice for your budget, and to make sure that you’re eating healthy food grown without pesticides or other chemicals—or at least only the chemicals you decide to put on the plants yourself!

It’s even good for the environment, because instead of big trucks having to transport food to you, burning fuel and polluting the air, you just walk outside and pick it yourself. And plants absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, which is good for the atmosphere. A win on every front!

But what if you don’t have a yard? Container gardening to the rescue!

What is it?

Container garden is a great alternative for apartment dwellers or other people who don’t have yards. It’s also useful if you have certain plants that won’t survive winter temperatures and need to be moved indoors during extreme weather.

With container gardening, instead of planting plants in the ground, you plant them in a vessel of some kind. Containers can be placed outside, such as on a patio or balcony, or inside where the plant can get light, such as by a window.

What can you grow?

Anything you can grow in the ground, you can grow in a container. The main issue is size. The size of the pot will limit the how deep roots can go, so stick to plants that don’t need a deep root system.

Good choices for container gardens are herbs, vegetables and edible flowers. Fruit also works well if the host plant is small, such as strawberries or raspberries. Tree-based plants can be more cumbersome, since they require larger pots, but dwarf varieties exist for some fruits that work well for smaller spaces.

What to use

Any vessel that can tolerate dirt and water without deteriorating and that has drainage will work for container gardening.

Traditional plant pots, hanging baskets and planter boxes are all common holders for plants, but your choice of receptacle is limited only by your imagination. You can use old boots, tea kettles, buckets, and even wheelbarrows and worn-out birdbaths if you have room.

Some materials, such as wood, are more susceptible to rotting than others. For these vessels, it’s a good idea to seal the material and line the container with plastic. And always make sure that any container you use is free of toxic residue.

If the holder you want to use doesn’t have drainage holes, just drill or poke some in the bottom. Then get to gardening!

This guest post was written by Suzanne Staton, author of Laughing Wallet, your online home for frugal living tips. Enjoy life for less, and get your wallet laughing!