Twinning Tuesday, An Introduction

Two years ago, when I first found out that I was expecting twins, I did what a lot of expectant parents do; I started reading and researching!

My learning curve was a steep one; my older child was two and half, so I felt that pregnancy and caring for a newborn was still fairly recent in my memory, but twins? I knew next to nothing.

Not only did I find that my basic knowledge of twins was minimal (fraternal? half identical? what?!) but that I struggled to find the information that fit our soon to be twin family. Although there were books, blogs, groups and web sites about twins, not many of them talked about baby wearing, co-sleeping, cloth diapering and breast feeding (let alone tandem nursing!)

The Two Little Ones, about 6 hours old, Baby Girl on the left and Little Boy on the right

 ... and again at 18 months old, Baby Girl on the left, Little Boy on the right.

Now I am eighteen months into my journey as mama to my twins, Baby Girl and Little Boy. Over the past year and a half, we figured out a lot. The best way to parent our babes, while maintaining an Attachment Parenting approach. We have successfully navigated breast feeding, co-sleeping, baby wearing, gentle parenting and cloth diapering.

 I'll be starting an occasional series on twins: Twinning Tuesday. In it I'll be covering all sorts of topics, the sorts of things I wish that I had been able to read about both when I was expecting and when my two Littles were growing.


I hope you'll be joining me in the coming weeks; please feel free to email me here, or leave a comment, if there is a particular topic you are interested in my covering. I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Menu Planning

Each week I make a menu plan (well, most weeks!)

I have found that spending just a few minutes each weekend, planning ahead what our evening meals will be, make our days much smoother. No more last minute rushing or runs for expensive carry out food.

I tend to base my meal plans on a couple of factors:

- what fresh produce do I have available in the fridge,
- what we have available in the pantry,
- what our schedule looks like for each day,
- and, using my psychic abilities to correctly predict what every member of my family will want for dinner on each day.

At this stage, I only make one evening meal; the two Little Ones eat the same as we do, which makes meals a little easier.

One other thing! We are a vegetarian family, although we do eat eggs, some dairy, and very occasionally fish. I also try to follow a mostly gluten free diet, so although the rest of my family are not gluten free, evening meals are typically GF.

This week is fairly typical, schedule-wise, so our menu is pretty typical too!

Monday
     Fish Sticks
     Quinoa
     Roasted Broccoli

Tuesday
     White Bean and Hominy Chilli
     Popovers
     Green Salad

Wednesday
     Chicks and Pots (Roasted Chickpeas and Sweet Potatoes)
     Sauteed Spinach and Mushrooms

Thursday
     Spinach Pesto Pizza

Friday
     Open Faced Burritos (Brown Rice and Black Beans)
     Avocado Slices
     Spinach
     Salsa
 
Saturday
     Egg Salad, with Green Salad

Sunday
     Rustle (We love Rustle in our home! Those meals where you pull all sorts of leftovers together to make a meal? Rustle!)


So what is your menu planning for this week looking like? Do you make a menu plan each week? Feel free to share, or post a link back to your own menu planning blog; I'd love to hear from you!
    
     
     
     

Upcycling Sunday!

Upcycling, def. the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value.

Wikipedia.org

Despite the ups and downs of the last couple of months, upcycling things out of our home (through selling, donating, gifting and Freeycling) has gone on unabated. Back in December 2012, I joined a challenge to free my home of 2013 items in the year 2013. At the time this seemed a little unrealistic, and yeet here we are, barely a third of the way through the year, and I have currently moved 1,412 items from our home!

That's right! 1,412!!

In addition to Freecycle, I have also started putting together boxes for Goodwill (just in case items are not taken through Freecycle), and I have also started to sell an item here or there through Craigslist.org or Ebay. 

Selling items is newer for me, and I can't say that it has been a huge money maker for us, but the few dollars here and there do start to add up.

But really the biggest Upcycling news in our home this week is this ...

 In the past, this chair has been the waiting area for any items awaiting sale/donating/gifting. And we are now at the stage where our waiting area has been whittled down to a single box. Yay! Which means we get our chair back!! (I am going to conveniently forget that Baby Girl and Little Boy are now using the chair to either get to the books on the bookcase behind the chair, or to catapult themselves onto the floor ... )

How is your Upcycling going? Do you have any donation goals you are working towards? Feel free to share in the comments; I'd love to hear from you!

Food Waste Friday: How Did That Happen?!

I just love The Frugal Girl blog. Really - just love!

Each week (well - most weeks) she blogs about her food waste, a kind of public declaration, aimed to reduce her own food waste. And she invites the rest of us to join her!


So, I have had a couple of pretty huge FWFs in the past (Food Waste Fails), like this one, and this one. Let's just say that Food Waste Friday and I have had a bit of a rocky relationship over the past couple of months.

So, this will make a nice change of pace!

This week, I have no food waste to inform you all of. Nothing at all!

Instead of the usual photos of yucky, gone off food, this week you get to see the inside of my zero-waste fridge!

Here is the part that I hope is not going to really disappoint you, because I'm not sure that I did anything special towards my zero waste week. I did a big shop at the beginning of the week, and had masses of produce in the fridge, but between big salads for lunch and plenty of veg with evening meals, it's about all gone.

Now, let's see how next week looks!


How was your food waste this week? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!