Flats Challenge Day 2: Supplies and Preparation

It is Day 2 of the Flats Challenge! Today we are talking about the supplies needed and the preparation we made for the challenge. I began preparing for the Flats Challenge a few months ago, actually. I tried to get a little bit of everything so that I could compare and review the different types I am trying. Once I started trying flats, I really fell in love and have actually started to switch the bulk of my stash over to a flats and prefolds stash. This is why I have a relatively large flats stash right now! For covers I am using a mix of wool wraps, one size covers, and sized covers.

My flats:

• 5 flour sack towels - $4 for the set, purchased from Meijer on clearance. The regular price for these is $5 for five flour sack towels.

• 4 receiving blankets - I pulled these out of of my newborn baby clothes box. I had quite a few that were given to me when Ava was a newborn, so I chose 4 cute prints to become diapers.
• 2 Sweet Bobbins bamboo fleece - I paid $10 for these on a diaper swap page in EUC. I bought these especially as a nighttime solution. If you bought them new they run $9 each.
• 3 Geffen Baby hemp jersey - I bought these new from a website where I found a flash sale price of $13 total, though usually you would find three of these for $21.
• 3 Rebourne Cavewomen flats - I bought these new from Rebourne Clothing for $11 for three.
• 3 Diaper Rite large - I bought these used off of a swap page for $6.
• 2 Diaper Rite unbleached smalls - I bought these used off of a swap page for $5.
• 6 Imagine printed flats - I bought these used off of a swap page for $13.
• 2 Imagine Bamboo flats - I bought these used off of a swap page for $4.
• 2 Flip flats - I bought these used off of a swap page for $4.
• 1 Baby Monkeys Bamboo Terry Flat - I received this diaper at no cost to review (reviews will be posted once the Flats Challenge is over).
• 2 Orange Diaper Company Bamboo Terry Squares with doublers - I received these diapers at no cost to review (reviews will be posted once the Flats Challenge is over).
• 1 BumbleBeeBum Daddy Flat - I received this diaper at no cost to review (reviews will be posted once the Flats Challenge is over).
• 1 Urbun Sprout Fitted Flat - I received this diaper at no cost to review (reviews will be posted once the Flats Challenge is over). 
• 1 Brown Cow Cotton flat and cover - I received this diaper at no cost to review (reviews will be posted once the Flats Challenge is over).

My covers:

• Four Rebourne Woolie Wraps - I received one to review, three purchased by me later for about $30 each.
• 1 Gordy's Girl wool soaker - I received this to review. 
• 1 Flip cover - I purchased this used for $5.
• 3 Blueberry Coveralls - I purchased these new (seconds) a long time ago for $10 each.
• 3 GroVia covers - I purchased these used for $10 each.
• 3 Bummis Super Whisper Wraps - I purchased these new a long time ago for $14 each.

My first load of hand washed flats, covers and wipes!

My other supplies:

• 5 gallon bucket with lid - $5
• plunger - $5 (you can get this cheaper, but I wanted the blue one to match my bucket.)
• I use Soft Bottoms detergent which is around $10 for a 32 oz bottle. A bottle this size typically lasts me about two months for normal washing, and I think if I was to exclusively handwash flats I could make a bottle last four months. So the cost for this week should be about $1.
• I am not using a wet bag this week to see if I could in fact get by without one!

So my total flats stash cost is: $70 for flats, $102 for covers, $90 for wool, and $1 for detergent. Now, if I was just setting up a stash and not thinking about reviews I could definitely do with fewer covers and fewer flats. In fact, if I was on a tight budget I could easily have gotten my whole stash for $100 or less! Even so, with this larger stash that includes wool, the grand total is only $263. Compared to the $1500 - $2500 that most families spend on disposables during the diapering years for ONE child, this is still a huge savings!

Flats Challenge Day 1: Why Take The Challenge?

I am so excited to start the week of posts about the Flats Challenge! I am blogging along with Kim Rosas of DirtyDiaperLaundry this week while we and over 430 others use exclusively flat cloth diapers and hand wash them. I first heard about the challenge last spring when Ava was about 3 months old, but I was really new to cloth diapers at that time and flats were very intimidating to me. The thought of hand washing as well? It just didn't seem like something I could do. Now as I have cloth diapered for 15 months, I have started to realize just how manageable flats are. The hand washing part? I think it will be just fine.

My primary reason for taking the Flats Challenge is to show that flats are not as hard to use as people think. Learning the folding technique is what makes most people nervous about flats, and I am hoping to show that anyone can learn it! As many as 1 in 3 families struggle to afford to diaper their babies, and I hope that this challenge and series of blog posts can be a useful resource to help families be able to learn about how they can save money by using flat diapers. 

A messy Origami fold - Ava didn't want to hold still today.

An additional benefit to learning to hand wash diapers is the ability to take cloth on the road very easily. I love that I can take my camp washer and flats camping now or on a road trip and not have to spend money on disposables! Learning to hand wash diapers (or clothes!) in a camp washer is also great in case of power outages, weather emergencies, or instances where a washer breaks down. Many families don't have their own washer or dryer and can't get to a laundromat, so I hope that this series will also show that hand washing diapers is doable for anyone and can be a great cost saver!

My camp washer! I've never been so excited about a plunger before.

I started using my flats occasionally a few weeks ago to practice the folds, and I have fallen in love with the simplicity of them! They are so easy to get clean since most are only one layer of fabric and they dry lightning fast on the line. For anyone who has struggled to find a washing routine that will actually get their cloth diapers clean, flats are a great option to try. It is hard to mess up a flat diaper!

First flat of the challenge: Geffen Baby flat pad folded in a GroVia cover.

I hope you all will follow along this week as I learn and explore flats and hand washing! Follow along on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #flatschallenge. 

Being Brave in the Kitchen: how I learned to cook outside the box

The other day I made a huge vat of venison potato soup with random things in my pantry and fridge that were in desperate need of being used up. I didn't follow any recipe really; I just used the basic building blocks of soup making that I've learned over the years.

I haven't always been able to do this. In high school I worked every afternoon at our local library, which meant that I didn't have any opportunities to cook along with my mom like my sister did. I don't begrudge this, but it did delay my abilities somewhat. In college I began cooking for myself a lot during  my junior year when I was in a college apartment and realized how much money I could save by not using a meal plan. (Plus my introverted self just couldn't stand that cafeteria any longer.) Most of my meals were cooked by obediently following a recipe and I used a lot of convenience food shortcuts due to my crazy busy schedule.

When Ben and I got married I really started to branch out with my cooking. The more I learned about avoiding processed foods, the more I was pushed to stretch my skills and try new things. Ben's cooking style also has encouraged me to add my own spin to recipes instead of just following the recipe to the letter. He loves cooking without recipes, and just kind of knows what will work together.

We started watching Jamie at Home on BBCA a couple years ago. In this series Jamie Oliver cooks from his kitchen garden and each episode is centered around one star ingredient. Watching him cook has changed the way I cook. I have learned so much from his cooking shows about how to mix flavors and what ingredients go together well. Recently his series 30 Minute Meals was also on BBCA and I felt like that series gave me a whole new set of quick cooking skills. One of the best things I've learned from Jamie is to not be fussy about measuring, especially spices. If I have a recipe that I'm using I just eyeball the spice measurements and then adjust everything to taste as I go.

The other huge influence on my cooking has been Aimée of SimpleBites. I have been a faithful reader since the inception of her blog and I realized recently that reading her blog is what has taught me how to be brave in the kitchen and try new things like making soup without a recipe. What I realized was that even though I might not make all of the recipes that come through my inbox, reading all of them has given me a working knowledge of flavor and ingredient combinations. So now on a random weekday when I look in my cupboard to find 8 pounds of potatoes in need of using, I can easily throw together a delicious soup using nothing but things in my pantry and the wisdom I've learned from my cooking mentors over the years.

Being brave in the kitchen doesn't always have to mean cooking without a recipe. It is having the know-how to tweak a recipe on the fly when you've run out of an ingredient. It's being able to google kneading and teach yourself bread making. It's the ability to add your own delicious twist to a recipe to make it truly your own. And sometimes, it's making a huge pot of venison potato soup from scratch with no recipe whatsoever.

On living wholly, with no regrets

I dreamt last night that we bumped into each other somewhere and decided to grab a cup of coffee and catch up. The dream skipped a bit, as dreams do, and he was offering me a choice. A chance at something he wished we would've had. The dream became rather out-of-body then: I could see my dream self sitting there, but I was somehow separate, able to analyze the events unfolding. He took her hand and insisted he would leave it all for her this time. My dream self shook her head, swelling with pity for him as he tried to reclaim memories and make them reality. As I watched, I thought about all that would crumble if my dream self accepted the offer, all the sadness and hurt it would cause. I thought about the beautiful life I've been given and how I wouldn't go back in time to change any of it. My dream self gave his hand a squeeze as he sat there with drooping shoulders, and then the dream got foggy and began to dissipate like a mist.

I rolled over in bed and was greeted with "mama!" and a toothy grin. Ava scooted over to me and with a loud "mmmaahh!" planted one of her sloppy open mouth kisses on my cheek. I pulled her in close for a hug and a tickle and sighed with happiness. I love the family God has blessed me with. Yesterday was Mother's Day and though we certainly had our share of toddler tantrums to deal with, Ava seemed to have an extra dose of cute and kisses and hugs for mama throughout the day. And after I put her down to sleep for the night I came downstairs to find that Ben had made me chocolate chip cookies and had a plate of cookies and milk waiting for me.

As I lay in bed this morning cuddling with my girl, I had such a peace on my heart. I feel like my goal to live wholly this year has already brought fruit. I am so thankful for the man I am married to and for the ways that God has aligned us. From parenting to politics to homesteading to religion, we have grown up and learned so much together and are strong in our united beliefs.

I don't always feel Grown Up. It's such a strange elusive milestone. I felt sure years ago that when I got married I would be a Grown Up, but then I did and I was still just me. Then I felt sure that when I had my first child I would be a Grown Up, but then I did and I was still just me. But something this morning made me feel Grown Up. That knowing deep inside that I am exactly where I should be and have exactly the family I should have. That is giving me the strength to know today that I am a strong, confident woman who is exactly where God wants her to be. I am wholeheartedly living my life with no regrets.

I'm linking up with the One Word 365 community via Only a Breath this month!
I'm also linking up with Ashleigh Baker and her Simple Story link up. I love that she has started a movement back toward just telling stories on our blogs with less worry about pinnable content.

Building a Log Chicken Coop: a story in pictures

It was Ben who had the genius idea of building a log chicken coop. I admit, I was a little skeptical, but only because I had never seen any chicken coops like it before. 

We got a free (for the price of Ben's time and energy clearing the trees out of his Grandpa's property) load of pine logs to use for the coop.

On a warm Saturday in March, we hosted a barn raising. I contributed the world's best pork roast feast and a case of beer to the event as payment for our friends' time and efforts.

With one day of work done, the barn was about halfway built, and the door was framed in.

Ava sat and assisted with picking bark off of the logs.

Another day and more friends' help later, all the logs were in place and the barn just needed a roof.

The long chainsaw cut down each side to even the logs out for the roof beams was one of the most tedious parts, and made me the most nervous.

After the roof was installed, Ben framed out half of the barn and added a door, two windows, nesting boxes, roosts, and a nice floor to keep the chickens up out of the mud. We had such a wet spring that the ground in front of and inside the door was just churned into a mud pit, so we had to add some pallets and boards to walk on.

I think the finished coop looks so fantastic. I am so proud of all of Ben's hard work that he put into it!

Inside the chickens' pen we added two log roosts, though they are being stubborn about using them right now. You can see a rope stretched across the ceiling: that is Ben's genius pulley system for the trap door that leads to their run. All I have to do to let them out is pull the handle on the outside of the coop and hook it onto its support to leave the door open for the day.

Some of the chickens use the roosts. Others have started preferring the nesting boxes! Oops.

I can't wait until these nesting boxes are full of eggs each morning!

The run for the chickens is 20'x20' to allow as much room as possible. We can't really free range them too much. If we let them run inside our picket fence then we have issues with our dogs, and if we let them run outside our picket fence we risk issues with our neighbors.

They are very happy in their log home though. They love watching me garden and they get so excited when I bring them table scraps.

This is the lovely view when you walk toward the back of our property. Our big raised bed garden is being planted this week, our chickens are happy in their run, and I can't wait to start harvesting fresh veggies, fruits, and eggs!

What I'm Into: April 2013

I decided to join up with the What I'm Into link up over at HopefulLeigh this month for the first time. I love the life recap format of these posts and I think they're a great way to capture a snapshot of what we were up to in the past month.

On my nightstand:
I'm still in the middle of reading Sarah Mae and Sally Clarkson's book Desperate: Hope for the Mom Who Needs To Breathe. This book is a must read for moms of tinies and moms who are now past these trenches. It's such an encouraging book for me right now. Just knowing that these years are beyond hard for everyone is encouraging! The book also encourages the moms who are past these years to remember how hard life is with tinies and step up to help young mamas out. Along the same lines, I'm also reading What It Is Is Beautiful, by Sarah Dunning Park. It's a lovely collection of her poetry about mothering tinies. I love that her poems are raw, real emotion. She beautifully captures both the highs and lows of motherhood in this book.

Want to read:
Oh goodness, so many. I just bought Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts for my Kindle app and am hoping to start that one soon. I am literally years behind on reading Ted Dekker's books, though I have most of them on my shelf, so those are next on my list too. I also have a stack of gentle parenting books that I need to start soon to get some new ideas for dealing with Ava's temper tantrums. First on that list is Loving Our Kids On Purpose: Making a Heart-To-Heart Connection by Danny Silk.

Tv worth watching:
Our favorite right now is The Americans on FX. This show has moved up to my top five favorites along with Justified and Sons of Anarchy. I've been feeling kind of meh about a lot of our old favorites: Modern Family just isn't as funny as it used to be; we are only watching the Office because it's the last season; Community is terrible with the new director/writer. I do still love New Girl though. I'm slowly getting caught up on Call The Midwife, which is the only show aside from Downton Abbey that can make me ugly cry almost every episode. Call the Midwife is one of those shows that I will probably end up buying and re-watching often. It's that good. I still keep up with Once Upon a Time, though it has had some lame episodes this season. The episode from last week, Lacey, was SO depressing that I almost don't want to watch any more. I haven't even watched the one from this past Sunday yet because I just don't want to see any more Lacey/Gold interactions.

Movies I've seen (in or out of theaters):
We watched Snow White and the Huntsman recently when it showed up on tv. I am so not a Kristen Stewart fan that she kind of wrecked the movie for me. Charlize Theron was rather terrifying though, which redeemed it somewhat. We watched A Good Year, an older Russell Crowe movie, a couple weeks ago. Oh my goodness, I loved that movie. Pro tip? Make sure you have a bottle of good wine when watching a movie about a vineyard. (We didn't and it was sad.)

In my kitchen:
I've been making a lot of old favorites recently, things that are easy and don't take a lot of time like chicken salad, burgers, hot dogs, pasta, etc. I've been feeling rather uninspired with meal planning recently, which I'm chalking up to this in between seasons time right now. I'm craving fresh veg and summery dishes, but nothing is in season yet. I made an awesome mini meatloaf recipe from Aimee of SimpleBites last week that we just loved though! I also discovered a new crock pot curry recipe that the whole family loved, which is awesome since up until now we hadn't found a really good one.

In my ears:
I'm so boring with music. I get stuck in a musical rut very easily and then don't change it up for months! The last four months I've had The Lumineers' cd on repeat in my car, although I do mix it up occasionally with She and Him or Fun. Now that its warm out I am busting out some country music again for car rides. When driving home down a dirt road on a hot day you just have to have Jason Aldean's 'Dirt Road Anthem' playing.

What I'm looking forward to next month:
Eggs! I am so excited to get the first eggs from my chickens. Around Memorial Day is about the earliest we will see any eggs, and some of the breeds could even take until July to lay their first eggs. I am also looking forward to having fresh veggies from our garden again. We are planting seeds this week and then the waiting and watching begin!

Spring Time and Chicken Math

There are crocuses blooming outside! I don't think there is anything that says 'Spring' to me quite like crocuses. Seeing those tiny little flowers gets me in the mood to clean all the things and plan my garden.

You know what else says 'Spring?' Chicks. Which brings me to Chicken Math. What is Chicken Math, you ask? Allow me to share an example.

So initially Ben and I were going to get six to eight laying hens and a few meat birds. We looked up some mail order hatcheries and discovered Minimums. You see, in order for your mail order chicks to stay alive, they need to be shipped with at least 25 in the box. After reconfiguring our desired number of birds, we decided to order 15 laying hens and 10 meat birds. Easy, right? Nope. I then realized that the meat birds would be ready for harvesting around 6-8 weeks old which would have been... well, now actually. We decided that we didn't really want to be harvesting birds right away in March, so we scratched the meat birds off the list and decided to just get 25 layers. After all, what are ten more going to hurt?

We found a hatchery locally where we could purchase less than 25 for a pick up order, but due to quantity discounts the Hatchery Choice assortment with 25 chicks was the same price as choosing 15 individual chicks. So we got our assortment of 25 adorable chicks and I was hooked! I got all our breeds figured out from our mystery assortment and it turned out that they were all brown egg layers. That's good, right? Not when I was hoping for Easter Eggers, the breed that lays blue or green eggs.

I decided I needed some Easter Eggers, and then I found out about Marans. French Copper Marans, to be precise. They lay a gorgeous dark chocolate brown egg. It literally looks like a real chocolate egg. I decided to get two Easter Eggers and two Marans. But.... TSC has a six chick minimum! So I got six Easter Eggers. Then I found out that the Marans were straight run, meaning they are not sexed. So obviously if I want two hens I need to buy more chicks to help my odds. So I have four Marans now.

Have you kept up with the math here? So via chicken math we have:
8 chicks + 7 meats = 25 chicks
2 EE chicks + 2 Maran chicks = 10 chicks
Total chicks in my basement brooder = 35

The really great part about Chicken Math though, is that certain types of chickens don't really count toward the total. Roosters, for instance. Three of my Marans are roosters and probably two of the Easter Eggers are as well.

35 chicks - 5 roosters = 30 chicks

Also, any hens that aren't laying don't count, and young chicks don't count.

30 chicks - 30 chicks not yet laying = 0

So really, I don't have any chickens. Hmmm, maybe I need to go to TSC now.