done and to-do

nursery is getting closer to completion by the day!  this weekend, i made and framed a collage for the wall above matson's crib, had scott paint the edges of the closet where i spackled last week, we got the closet doors re-installed (and by we, i mean i mostly watched while scott did all of the work), i got fun fabric put into embroidery hoops to hang on the wall above matson's changing table, i ordered everything remaining from our target registry (have a few more things to get from babies r us, as well as finishing buying our cloth diapers and accessories), and i sorted through all of his clothes, took tags off, and bought a free and clear detergent to wash them in.  yes, i am nesting, why do you ask?

(speaking of clothes, by the way, we are so set!  i was looking through our stash thus far, figuring that i had enough newborn clothes and debating whether to get a few more 0-3 month items.  my friend jami has a 10 month old son, though, and graciously offered to lend us his clothes if we were interested - i said sure, and holy cow!  she gave me a box and bag of just newborn/0-3 items, and between her clothes and what we had for mats already, we filled his hamper to the brim, all with tiny, adorable clothes for his first few months of life!)

remaining on my list is having a maid service come in next week (my birthday gift from scott :)), washing matson's clothes, organizing the nursery and closet, attaching the cushion to the gliding ottoman (ahem), hemming/cute-ifying matson's curtains, doing some general house organization, freezing some meals for nights we don't have family around and no friends scheduled to bring us food, and trying to remind myself that mats won't really care how perfect his room and our house looks or doesn't look.

squeaky clean towels

last summer, a coworker and i were talking about how frustrating it is when your towels begin to get that stench - you know, the one where you pull a freshly laundered towel out of the closet, and as soon as it hits your wet skin it gives off that over-used, needs-to-be-washed bacterial/mildewy odor.  her solution is to throw out towels once that happens.

throwing away perfectly good towels and buying replacements just doesn't work for me, though, so when it seemed like every towel in my linen closet had reached that point a few months ago, i started looking for a real solution.  (all of our towels are a lovely chocolatey brown, by the by, so bleach is not an answer.)  turns out that it's a fairly common problem caused by using too much detergent, which builds up in the fabric and thus traps icky odors.  the solution?  i googled around and found out that we needed to strip our towels.  i ran them through a hot wash with an extra rinse cycle (no detergent), put vinegar into the fabric softener cup - and voila!  clean smelling towels!  (i also did them a second time with baking soda, but apparently with a high efficiency machine, you have to add water to powdered detergents first, making a paste, which i didn't do, so i kind of ended up with a very grainy lint tray after drying them.)

anyway, super easy, and much more efficient than throwing away and replacing a full set of towels.  also easy: halving the amount of detergent i had been using, so that i don't get fresh-yet-stinky towels again.

new camera

so our 6-year old point-and-shoot camera finally died.  i think it actually died on our chicago trip last september, but i haven't used it since then and finally got around to troubleshooting it last week.  it had been turning itself off when you would try to take a picture, even with brand new batteries.

i discharged and fully recharged my batteries last weekend, and was able to take a few pictures when i put them back in.  i turned it off and let it sit for a week, though, and it now powers down as soon as you turn it on - with the lens out!  very sad.  i do have my lovely dslr, but it's nice to have a smaller camera on hand for easier portability for traveling and long hikes.  in particular, though, with matson coming soon and scott being designated photographer of freshly-newborn matson, i think it's a good idea to have an easy to use camera alternative.

thus, i spent the last two days scouring camera reviews on amazon, consumer reports, and cnet.com (my favorite go-to spot for tech product reviews) ... and we bought a camera last night!  if you know me at all, that is pretty much record-breaking turnaround time on a buying decision.

i was debating between the canon sd1400 is, which consumer reports picked as one of their "best buys", and the canon sd1300 is.  they are essentially the same camera, both rated "very good" by cnet.com and with glowing customer reviews on amazon, with the slight difference that the 1400 has 14.1 megapixels where the 1300 has 12.1 (not a huge deal with the size of the pictures that they take), and the 1400 has slightly better video - a feature we're unlikely to use a great deal.

i vacillated between the two (and approximately 45 other cameras) and finally decided on the 1300 on sale for $110.  yesterday afternoon, armed with my $30 office depot rewards card and $20 off coupon and excited to get a nice camera for $60+tax, i went to officedepot.com and clicked "add to cart" ... and got a pop up saying that it wasn't available at that price any longer!  grrr.  i spent the rest of the day re-researching cameras, finally deciding to go ahead and do the 1400, which would be $130+tax after my discounts.  i decided to sleep on it, though, and talk it over with scott.  we had to return a dvd last night, though, so while we were out, we decided to drop by the office depot down the street from us to look at their cameras in person ... and lo and behold, they had the 1300 in store for $110!  hooray!  final price was $66 after discounts and tax.

today i'm going to utilize my amazon prime membership and get a case and a good memory card for it (memory cards are atrociously expensive at office depot), bringing our total cost for the whole camera package to ... $86!  great bargain shopping if i do say so myself.

more baby preparations

this has been the month of preparing for baby - we started off the first weekend of the month with our childbirth class, have taken infant/child cpr and breastfeeding since then (and have a baby care class this upcoming saturday), signed up for a doula, had my work baby shower, began weekly doctor appointments, packed my labor bag, and have finally begun to finalize nursery decor plans.  i think that's about it.

regarding the baby classes - i think we're both glad that we're taking them.  as i've said before, we've been reading through "natural childbirth the bradley way", so there wasn't a ton in the childbirth class that we were surprised by, but nonetheless we found it both helpful and affirming.  some of the things that the instructor talked about, such as relaxing through contractions to manage pain (even for women who are planning to get an epidural), are right on par with what the bradley book talks about.  we came out of the class feeling like we've been doing the right things in preparing and that while some parts of the book are outdated (which we recognized already), others are right on track.  breastfeeding and cpr both gave us a little more confidence with things that neither of us is familiar with, which i think will be helpful.  (hopefully no need for familiarity with cpr, though!)

we signed up for a doula through our hospital a few weeks ago, and i finally got to chat with her on the phone for a bit this weekend.  from her website, in which she offers crystal healings and features a photo of herself at her wedding wearing fairy wings, i feared that she might be a little flaky - but after talking with her, i think she'll be great.  she worked as a nurse for 12 years and has been doula-ing for about 2 years, so she's been through a ton of births and seems like a great source of experience and calm.  she was excited that we're planning to do a natural (pain med-free) birth, but is supportive of whatever clients end up doing and says that her goal is to make sure that however baby comes out, that we're happy with the experience.  i'm down with that!

you'll notice, by the way, that i earlier said "begun to finalize nursery decor plans" - i don't yet have any nursery decor completed, and changed my mind on half of it last friday, but i do have plans!  i think it'll be cute when it's done, but you'll have to wait until then for pictures.  (and by the way, mom, i finished the ottoman cushion!!!!  i'm going to stop at joann's tonight to pick up some sturdier thread/cord to adhere it to the ottoman - but the cushion itself is done and looks great.  i actually did it last monday on my day off, but slacked on picking up the thread all week.)

saturday's dinner cost breakdown

i think it's worth mentioning that both of the dinner recipes i made this weekend (refried bean tostadas and salsa chicken)  came from my hunt for inexpensive dinner ideas!  my rough cost break-down to feed 8 adults and a 3-year old on saturday night:

• salsa chicken: total cost: ~$13.20, cost per adult: $1.65
• chicken: ~$6 (actual cost unknown - had chicken breasts in my freezer, and i have no idea how much they each weigh, but i typically get chicken for around $2/lb and i used 4 chicken breasts)
• salsa: $1 (used 1 jar of generic salsa on sale for $1/jar)
• cheese: $1.50 (shredded half of a large block of cheeddar that i think cost around $3 total)
• green peppers: $3 (might omit these in the future and just get a better salsa, though)
• black olives: $1.50
• sour cream: ~$.20 (bought a tub for about $2.25, but we used a small amount)
• spices: minimal cost, used what i already have at home
• refried bean tostadas: total cost: $5, cost per adult: $.63
• tortillas: $1 (doubled the recipe to make 12 tostadas, used a whole 12 pack of tortillas that were on sale for $.99)
• refried beans: $1 (used leftover refried beans in the fridge and another 1/2 can that was on sale for $1, but i'll use the price of the can since i now have new leftover refried beans)
• salsa: $.50 (1/2 jar of generic salsa)
• cheese: $1 (high estimate - shredded the other half of my large block of cheese, but we have quite a bit of shredded cheddar left over)
• sour cream: ~$.50 (again, used a small amount overall)
• tomatoes: ~$1 (chopped up some roma tomatoes that i had on hand to put on top - have some leftover)
• other sides: total cost: $10.25, cost per adult: $1.28
• guacamole: $6 ($1/ea for 3 avocados, a few roma tomatoes on sale for $1/lb, and some cilantro that i had going bad in the fridge)
• chips: $.75 (we keep these on hand, bag of la favorita costs $2, we used less than half)
• rice: ~$.50 (total guess, we keep rice on hand, and i have no idea what the bag cost or what percentage we used)
• salad: ~$3 (bag of greens with some veggies on sale for $1.50, added some green bell pepper and carrots that we had on hand)
• total cost of the whole meal including sides: $28.45
• total cost of the whole meal per adult: $3.56

and really, the cost per adult is actually high as we have lots of leftovers: 4 of us had dinner from it last night, and scott and i still have a few lunches/dinners left!

for january, i have $2 left in my grocery envelope at the end of the month - which means so far so good on my quest to keep my grocery budget in check! i just went shopping last week, though, and am pretty well stocked up, so i'm going to try to drop my grocery budget to $300 in february to prep for march when i'll have to be feeding both of us 3 meals a day from home.

i'm trying to figure out how to balance stocking up on items (especially meats) that are on a good sale with what we actually need for that week or two weeks.  i guess to a certain extent, the trick lies in making sure that if i stock up on steaks or pork chops, that i plan meals that actually use up those items, rather than buying them and then not using them for months at a time.  (meats we freeze, at least, so i guess it's easier to stock up on them - produce, not so much.)  how much stockpiled loss-leader frozen meat do you really need in your freezer, though, before it's just not worth it?  i think that in general, i still need to work on being more strategic with my menu planning.