Avivah Werner

Category: Intentional Spending

  • Baskin Robbins – 31 cent scoops

    After I finished my last post, I thought that in case some of you enjoy ice cream, too, and didn’t know about the Ben and Jerry’s special, I could pass some helpful info on. 

    On Weds., April 30 – that’s later today (I’m posting after midnight so to me it still feels like Tuesday :)), Baskin Robbins will have scoops of ice cream for 31 cents each.  Not quite as good as free, but still lots of fun!

    We did this last year, and the kids enjoyed it.  A big part of why they can enjoy something like this so much is because we only do it once a year – otherwise, on the rare occasions I buy it, it’s from the supermarket in the gallon containers.  I’ve found that when something is a new or unusual experience, the kids get a lot more enjoyment out of it than they would if it were a regular occurence.

    Back to last year.  Because it was so cheap, I told the kids they could each get two scoops (being the big spender that I am :)).  As we were halfway through the line, a woman approached me and told me she wanted to pay for the ice cream for our family and asked how many scoops we wanted to get.  The store was packed and I don’t know what made her choose us out of the crowd (maybe because we were a noticeably large family?), but though I felt uncomfortable to have someone pay for us, she insisted.  She told me to tell the cashier when we got to the front that it was paid for. Which it was.  Wasn’t that sweet?

    It reminds me of something a friend told me today – she was driving on a highway and the person ahead of her paid her toll, so when she got there, she was told it was taken care of.  It wasn’t the monetary value of it as much as the thought that someone cared enough to do it which made the difference.

    It gives me a pause when I think how little both of those opportunities cost and how much good feeling they spread.  How much does it take for you to put a smile on someone’s face?  Could you buy an extra scoop when you go out and share it with someone who isn’t expecting it? 

    Random acts of kindness can light up someone’s day!

    Avivah

  • Free ice cream and fun together

    Today has been a busy and super nice day! 

    I started the day by taking my two oldest sons downtown with me to pick up some pallets that I want to dissemble to use for garden boxes.  While they were lugging them around, I enjoyed a chat with the woman I got them from.  Don’t you find that you have a chance to have nice interactions with the people you meet here and there?  I do!  I really enjoy speaking with people and getting to know them a bit. 

    We ended up talking about life stuff – stress management, quality of life choices, family – and several times she mentioned how happy I seemed.  I’ve already told you my secret to being happy – staying aware of the subtle and not so subtle things to appreciate in my day.  Her comment that it’s rare to meet someone like me was a sad reminder for me that being happy with who you are and what your life is like isn’t a popular approach. 

    I had to rush home to be at a meeting (got there exactly on time, to the minute), and then as soon as it was over rushed back to pick up the kids for a trip that I organized for our homeschool group.  What a fun trip it was!  The kids had a blast together, and the moms had fun talking while the kids were happily occupied. 

    After almost three hours hanging out together, some of us walked together to Ben and Jerry’s to enjoy a free scoop of ice cream (today was their yearly complimentary scoop day) – it was just a few blocks from where we had our trip, though I had no idea about the ice cream when I originally planned the trip.  Nice how that worked out! 

    Then the kids enjoyed their ice cream by the harbor, watching the boats and seagulls as they ate.  Have you ever noticed how calming and peaceful being around water is? 

    We got home, and a couple of kids started taking apart the pallets that we got earlier in the day.  One started mowing the yard, and another trimming the bushes.  While they were doing that, I was doing some yard work, and discovered a bunch of worms helping to improve the quality of my soil.  🙂  Three of my younger kids really enjoyed watching them and digging for them.  Then I remembered some recent online reading I did about red wriggler worms being the perfect composting worms – I don’t know if these are officially red wrigglers, but they’re reddish and they’re wriggling, so I suggested the kids collect them in a large container with dirt and some fresh matter for them to eat.  I’ll call that ‘science’ for the day.  🙂

    Avivah

  • How to cheaply renovate your kitchen

    I thought some of you might be interested in the rough figures of the cost breakdown for the kitchen renovation.  I have all the records and receipts, but I’m just going to do this off the top of my head for the sake of speed.  🙂

    Cabinets, gas cooktop, stainless steel hood, double oven, double stainless steel sink – $750 (cabinets are solid wood, custom purchased ten years earlier by the seller for $20,000 – still in excellent condition since they were used by an 87 year old and his wife – I posted about how I was able to buy these so cheaply from the private seller)

    Uhaul to bring cabinets home – $90

    Countertops – the first set, from building materials re-use center – $30 (24 feet total, brand new, 50% off that day)

    Uhaul to bring countertops home since we had all the kids with us – $65

    More countertops we bought at Home Depot when we burned the first one right after installing, which matched the first set – $150

    Electrician to do wiring for electric oven (we had gas) – $300

    Tiles – a) four boxes of ceramic tile from building materials re-use store – brand new – $50

    b) polished onyx mosaic for tiling- $70 (I think it was about $8 per square foot, and we were able to cut the mesh to get three rows of trim per sf – much nicer than anything Home Depot had, and much cheaper)- wholesale tile supply store

    Lighting – two 4 foot fluorescent fixtures from Home Depot – about $60, with bulbs

    That was the bulk of the expenses – then there were lots of little things, like paint ($35), stain ($6), paint roller covers ($6), screws, ducts ($20), base cove molding ($2), thinset ($20).  There are other little things but this is where I’m too lazy to look it all up right now, so I’ll just say another $100 for anything I might not be  thinking of right now, which is definitely much more than what was spent (it was probably closer to $20).  We bought a hammer drill and a jigsaw – let’s say $100 for both, though we ended up having to return the jigsaw since it didn’t work properly, so it was really just $50. 

    Instead of buying new wood when we needed some, we used the extra trim that the cabinet set came with to fill in , for example, creating a bracket from a decorative piece that had been previously used to frame the window.  We borrowed the tile cutter from a friend so we didn’t need to rent or buy that.  We had grout and paint rollers left over from when we did the bathroom in the summer. 

    I feel like I have to publicly say how amazing my husband has been about doing this.  (He doesn’t read my blog so this isn’t for him; it’s for me to express gratitude.)  He has a long work week and not much time at home.  When he is home, it’s for a couple hours here and there, except for his day off, which being Friday, isn’t a restful kind of day.  (Some of you might particularly appreciate the challenges in renovating a kitchen on Fridays, for all of the family members. :))  He really needs some downtime, which he gave up to do all this work on the kitchen, just because he knew it would make it nicer and more workable for me.  He would (initially) have been quite happy to have left it as it was.  That’s love.  🙂

    Getting back to the cost – you can see that I didn’t buy most of the main materials new, or even if they were new, didn’t get them from typical retail stores.  As a result, I was able to pay much less for supplies.  I did have a couple of expensive mistakes, specifically regarding those countertops.  The first one was when I had to pay for a Uhaul to bring them home (I can’t tell you how ridiculous I felt to pay for a 14 foot moving truck to transport two countertops – we should have gone home, dropped off the kids, and gone back to pick it up with the van empty); the second was when I used the wrong countertop for where the cooktop was.  If I had used the countertop without the backsplash for that area to start with, I wouldn’t have burnt it and wouldn’t have spent another $150 on new counters.  That would have saved $200.  If I hadn’t wanted a double wall oven, we could have saved several hundred dollars by keeping a gas oven in place because we wouldn’t have needed an electrician.  If we had done that, we could have done the kitchen for under $1500.  Even so, we’re satisfied with the final cost.  :))

    Avivah

  • The kitchen is finished!

    Remember way back when I posted that we were totally renovating our kitchen?  We got most of the big stuff done within a week and a half, but lots of small things (and not so small things, actually) were left.  True to the 80/20 rule, which states that 80 % of your results come from 20 % of your effort, and 80% of your time will be spent on 20% of the work, is what happened with our kitchen.

    Here’s what we did – pulled out everything but the floor.  Replaced the cabinets, counters, appliances, repainted the kitchen, vented the hood to the outside (didn’t have a vent before), tiled the backsplash along the length of both counters (at least 20 feet in length), and replaced the lighting.  Because we were using previously owned cabinets, there were other things we needed to do to customize them for our kitchen – cutting the microwave cabinet down to standard size, rebuilding the cabinet that was previously above the hood, staining the wood on the exposed cabinet sides, building a desk area using a drawer and leftover trim for brackets, and more. 

    But it’s finally done.  Really, really finished!  And it looks beautiful.  Looking at it is so empowering for everyone in the family.  I kept thinking of things here and there that would improve it, but now it’s all done.  My 13 year old daughter finished the tiling for the final wall yesterday (my neighbor’s 40 year old daughter was visiting today, and told me she couldn’t believe it when she looked outside yesterday and saw her operating the power tile cutter independently – actually, dh taught the 9 and 11 year olds to use it, too :)).

    The kids have learned a lot from this project.  Here are some of the lessons: 1) Living within your means doesn’t mean doing without.  You just have to be willing to find other options.  The kitchen cost us under $2000 (including paying for an electrician, all power tools purchased, supplies, cabinets, appliances and 2 Uhauls rented to bring the supplies home).   

    Lesson 2 – just because everyone else hires experts doesn’t mean that you can’t do just as good a job on your own.  You just have to be willing to learn, and trust your ability to accomplish your goal.

    Lesson 3 –  There’s a huge amount of satisfaction in doing something on your own, and sticking with it until the end when it’s finished.  Every person in this family helped out and has a sense of pride in our project.

    Our only regret is that our digital camera wasn’t working properly when we started, so we don’t have before and after pictures. 🙂

    Avivah

  • Convenience foods on a budget

    I’ve been noticing a trend when I’m grocery shopping – I see many items being packaged for convenience that traditionally haven’t been sold in that way.  Junk foods have been packaged like this for eternity, but now the healthy food is following suit.  Some examples of what I mean are: bags of carrot sticks (not baby carrots), prewashed potatoes for baking, and hard-boiled eggs in a sealed package.   And those things come at a much higher price as a result.

    I dislike seeing everything commercialized, but I also understand that marketers are appealing to the desire of today’s busy shoppers to minimize the time in the kitchen.   And aren’t all of us busy?  I know I appreciate shortcuts that simplify my life!   I’ll share with you how you can make your own convenience foods, cheaply and easily.

    When I buy a few heads of cabbage, I’ll take some time to shred a bunch.  Then I fill a couple of gallon sized ziploc bags, squeeze out any extra air, and keep it in the fridge to quickly use in salads, stir fries, or kimchi.  I do that with green and purple cabbage, as well as carrots.  Carrots – buy a five pound bag, peel them all, and cut them into sticks, then fill a bunch of sandwich bags for your kids’ lunches.  Do you like hardboiled eggs?  It takes less than a half hour for them to boil, whether you make two or twenty, and either way the effort involved is just putting the eggs in the pot, filling it with water, and putting it on a burner.  (That takes all of 1 minute?)

    You’d be surprised at how little time it actually takes to do large amounts.  It’s the same principle that once you’re baking cake, you might as well quadruple the recipe and have four times the amount with just a little more work.  Once you’re doing it, it doesn’t take much more effort to do lots than a small amount.

    You can use the same approach for less healthy things like snack foods.  If you bake cookies or other treats, put it in small portions in separate sandwich bags.  But it doesn’t matter if you make it yourself (that just means it’s cheaper and healthier).  You can take the big bags of popcorn, pretzels, or snack crackers and likewise divvy them up into portion sizes.

    I have to send my oldest son to school every day with breakfast and lunch (he waits to eat dinner until he gets home), so I use the same approach for him.  (No, I don’t send him processed garbage just because it’s convenient.  :)) I make a bunch of a dish and then divide it into meal size portions, putting it aside in the fridge or freezer for him.  Last night my 13 year old daughter made a huge amount of broccoli lo mein – everyone said it was delicious!  (If you tell me you’d like the recipe, I’ll share it here with you – it was a big winner in our house, including the friends of the kids who ate over last night.)  So we put aside several containers for my son to take for lunch. 

    Since I often eat a different meal than my kids (because of my food plan restrictions), I do the same thing to keep my life simple.  At the beginning of the week, I will chop up a bunch of veggies for salads, and place it into separate containers so I can just grab one each day for lunch.  (If you use grape tomatoes or keep the chopped tomatoes at the very top of the salad, the salad will stay fresh through the week- this was a very helpful tip for me when I finally figured it out!)  When I make my chicken, meat, salmon patties, or whatever, I make up a bunch, and then package it in a meal sized amount and put it in individual bags.  It makes my mealtimes much faster when I can just grab a bag out of the fridge or freezer.

    Avivah

  • Once a month shopping

    Have you ever heard of once a month cooking?  Basically, you prepare a month’s worth of meals in one day, then stick them in the freezer and just pull one out every night.  This isn’t realistic for me because of the logistics of doing this on the scale necessary for a family of our size, but a couple of months I started doing something different with my shopping that reminds me of this basic idea.

    And that is – once a month shopping!  I’ve drastically cut down on my shopping by only shopping at the beginning of the month for staples, plus once every two weeks for veggies.  This has been great!  Here’s how it works: I start the month by buying all the chicken and meat I need (whatever is on sale that week is what I use for the month).  Then when I get home I roast all of the chicken and freeze it in meal size pans.  I bag the fresh meat into meal sized portions and put that in the freezer, so I can pull out one package to prepare a meal without needing to defrost the entire family pack.  This is where the biggest part of my food expenses go.

    I buy a month’s worth of eggs (around 18 – 20 dozen) at the beginning of the month, and keep it in an unheated room in the basement where they stay very cool.  This might not work as well in the summer, but for now it’s good.  I go to as many as 3 or 4 stores in two separate shopping trips within the first four days of the month, and buy lots of whatever staples they have on sale that week, so that eliminates the need to keep a weekly eye on the sales flyers.  I suppose basic staples are always on sale, because I haven’t had a problem finding what I need at sale prices on this schedule, with the exception of cheese.

    As far as vegetables go, I can’t do all of that once a month for obvious reasons.  So I go twice a month.  I get about 100 lb of potatoes, a bunch of onions, and maybe 30 lb of sweet potatoes close to the beginning of the month.  Then I buy the perishable type veggies like tomatoes, peppers, cukes, and I use them within the first week after I buy them, since they don’t stay fresh very long.  I also buy lots of squash and cold weather vegetables (carrots, turnips, rutabagas, beets, turnips, parsnips, cabbage) that stay fresh longer.  These are also kept in the basement room along with the eggs.    I make some of these into jars of lacto fermented veggies, and I use these more the second and fourth weeks of the month, when the less hardy veggies are used up.  I buy several bags of romaine hearts each time and find that they easily stay for two weeks, so I use that as the basis for daily salads with whatever veggies I want to throw in.

    Cabbage has become very popular here because it’s so versatile and stays fresh a long time; I can do so many things with it!  (And at 3 lb for a dollar, you can’t beat the price!)  Lacto fermented sauerkraut and cortido, coleslaw and other salads, sauteed in stir fries – today I made a lunch dish called colcannon that the kids enjoyed.

    Colcannon:

    Simmer 1 1/4 lb chopped green cabbage in 2 c. water and 1 T. oil.  Saute 1 c. onions/leeks in 1/2 c. butter until translucent. Add 1  1/4 lb. cooked potatoes, quartered and 1 c. milk to the potato mix and simmer it all until warm.  Then puree this mix -but I just quickly mashed it because as you know I like to save time – and add it to the cooked cabbage.  Mix it all together, season with salt and pepper and top with some more butter if you like.  Filled with protein, carbs, healthy fats, and veggies -a balanced meal and cheap to boot!

    Carrots are also great – the kids like carrot sticks and I shred and then bag a large amount of carrots so I can add them to fresh salads.  This is in addition to all the other veggies they eat, but carrots are easy to always have around.

    I used to shop weekly to stock up on the sales for whatever the three main supermarkets had that I wanted.  Now it’s just the main shopping the first week, two trips to the vegetable market, and that’s it for the month.  The hard part about this is that I use about two thirds  of my monthly food budget within the first few days and that leaves the much smaller amount for the remaining 27 or so days!  After years of budgeting equal amounts per week, I sometimes feel momentarily nervous.  Then I remind myself that I have lots of food and I’m certainly not going to run out before I replenish my budget.  After my shopping trip last week on the 4th, I had $7 remaining to last for eleven days (my shopping cycle begins the 15th of each month).   As meager as that sounds, my fridge, freezer and pantry are all full, even now, in the last few days before the month runs out – I have at least 50 lb of potatoes, many pounds of oats, rice, wheat, a freezer with poultry and lamb, lots of canned goods, plenty of milk, butter, and eggs, and some root veggies and lettuce so I’m nowhere near suffering any lack!

    I’m very disciplined about sticking to my food budget so I don’t give myself leeway by shopping a day or two earlier or spending a penny more than I allocate each month.    I have had to raise my food budget in the last year, since staples have gone up significantly in price (and my kids keep getting bigger and bigger!), and now spend about $540 a month; that includes everything.  I choose to be disciplined, because I don’t think I could maintain my budget without this discipline.  Since I spend less than half of what is typical for a large family, I know I could easily significantly increase my monthly expenditures without having any qualitative improvement to show for it, and this discipline guards me against that.

    So this new approach has benefited me by saving lots of my time, gas, and energy, leaving more time to enjoy my family, while spending the same amount as before, and feeding my family as well as ever!

    Avivah

  • Vegetable bargains

    I popped out to the store today to pick up some refreshments for our homeschooling gathering tomorrow, and when I was there saw some veggies on sale.  There are vegetables on sale, and then there are veggies that are super cheap.  These were in the latter category – on the reduced rack.

    There was a point that I shunned reduced produce racks, thinking they were semi rotten vegetables that the store owner was still trying to crank some profit from.   But I’ve since learned that often there is just an overstock of a given vegetable and they want to sell the produce quickly before it goes bad.  I stay away from produce that looks really bad, since I don’t find it worth my time or money to cut away all the yukky spots. 

    To find these reduced racks, look for small privately owned markets that discount produce substantially when it’s ripe or a little overripe.  I’ve found a local Asian market and a Russian market both have these, along with another local smallish store.The large supermarkets very rarely have these sections -I’ve only twice in years found reduced produce at national chains – both times ripe (not overripe) bananas.  They just throw away anything with imperfections. 

    The challenge with reduced produce is that it has a short shelf life, and you need to use it pretty promptly.  For a family like ours, that’s not usually a problem, since the kids love fruits and vegetables and go through it fast.  But sometimes I’ve gotten carried away by the super cheap prices and gotten too much, and then had to make a real effort to use it so it didn’t go bad. 

    Now that I’ve learned about making fermented vegetables, I don’t have that kind of pressure anymore.  Today I bought a lot of tomatoes and peppers, and then prepared two quarts of tomato pepper relish when I got home (you’d be amazed how many plum tomatoes you have to use to fill up a two quart jar!).  I also added some tomatoes to the batch of salsa I made, which was way too spicy for my taste.  (My policy is to make a recipe the first time as it’s written, so I know what it’s supposed to taste like before I make my adaptations to it.)  It’s nice that I can just add some vegetables to already fermented vegetables and then put it back on the shelf to ferment some more. 

    My dd13 made two versions of cortido (Latin American sauerkraut), using the pineapple vinegar we made as the fermenting agent instead of sea salt for two quarts and sea salt for the other two quarts.  (The pineapple vinegar was interesting and easy to make – you put the core and skin of a pineapple in a jar with some oregano and water to cover, and let it sit out, covered for 3 days.  Then strain it out and voila – pineapple vinegar!) 

    Avivah

  • Using up turkey bones

    After two weeks of no food shopping, I went out last night and stocked up on chicken for the month, as well as a few other things.  Without checking, I assumed I would have room in the freezer for it (especially since I hadn’t put anything in for two weeks), which is usually true.  Well, that was a mistake.  My freezer is very full, for which I’m grateful.  But since I didn’t realize this until I got home, I put myself in a challenging situation of having alot of perishable food and no place to store it.  Believe me, I’m not complaining about having too much food.  But I was very busy for hours last night trying to find a solution (and I’m still working on it today!).

    I started by rearranging the fridge to make room for the new groceries.  Since earlier in the day I defrosted a large amount of fish to make two new recipes in bulk, I took that out.  Then I prepared two fish pies and several loaves of a three layer fish dish – so there was more room in the fridge – but then I needed freezer space to store it!  It was a classic catch 22 situation, and one that was repeated every time I tried to make more room.

    I realized last night that I had some fresh turkey bones in the fridge so I made a pot of stock (that now needs to go into the freezer).  I deboned it and have a pan full of turkey for a stir fry or pot pie now, but then my kids told me we have more turkey bones in the freezer.  So I figured I would just cook up another batch and be finished with all of the bones at once.

    Because of their shape, they take up a disproportionate amount of room, so even though I would need to put stock and a pan or two of shredded turkey back in the freezer, I figured I would have some space gain.  I asked my ds8 to bring up all the bones – and he brought up three big supermarket bags full!  I didn’t realize they had been accumulating – I vaguely remember dh bringing them home and asking what to do with them, and me telling him to put them in the freezer.  But I didn’t see how much he had, and assumed it was the same amount as usual (enough for one pot of soup).  Usually I don’t  have more than one batch in the freezer at a time at the very most, but there was a lot after Thanksgiving (in case you’re wondering how we could possibly have so many turkey carcasses, we got them for free from a friend who owns a restaurant).  I’m now on my second bagful, so we’re down about 8 carcasses.  Just 10 or so carcasses still waiting to be dealt with!!  My sink and counter are full of them!

    I’ve decided to spend all day making stock and since it’s so concentrated, I can freeze it in small amounts.  When I defrost it, I’ll add plenty of water and each container of stock will be the base for a delicious soup.  Since I’ll have an entire shelf available in the freezer with all of those bones taken out, I’m planning to spend some time cooking ahead all the chicken I brought home and then pans of chicken will replace the bones.  And then I should have a little more room in the fridge – so I can go shopping for vegetables. 🙂

    By the way, do you know how extremely good for you properly prepared bone broths/stocks are (not the stuff that comes in a can from the supermarket)?  I didn’t, until reading Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon a couple of years ago, a combination of a cookbook and nutritional information resource.  She goes into detail about the benefits – a gelatin rich broth (the gelatin is released by the bones that are cooked for a long time) supply hydrophilic colloids to the diet (you’ll have to read the book to know what that means!), and are protein sparing and thereby allow the body to fully utilize the proteins taken in.  Gelatin also is useful in the treatment of many chronic diseases.   Broths also contain amino acids, cartilage, and collagen, which have been used to treat a number of health ills.  In short, they are very nourishing and if you are on a limited food budget, they are not only inexpensive to make, but can substitute for meat in the diet.  You can cook your grains in them, use it to flavor other dishes, or use it as a base for incredibly flavorful soup.  I always marvel at how everyone seems to think that you need a powdered MSG filled soup mix to give a soup flavor – definitely not!

    Last winter I posted instructions on how to make stock from scratch, so if you want to try your hand at it, you can click here.

    Avivah

  • The pantry principle

    I recently shared on a message board some tips for food budgeting (I posted about this here in Feb.), and realized by the feedback there that part of my approach needed to be clarified.  Too often, people will tell me, “Food costs more where I live, I can’t get xyz item at that price here.”   First of all, the point is not to use the items that I use or that my recipes are any more affordable than yours.  Use recipes that utilize foods that are affordable where you live.More important than using economy ingredients is the pantry principle. Many foods are usually pricey, but if you stock up when the prices are right, you can enjoy what most would consider more expensive meals while staying within your budgetary limitations. I use some ingredients that tend to be expensive. But for me, they’re not.  Why?  I don’t shop for ingredients for specific recipes – I shop to fill my pantry.  That means when cheese is on sale, for example, as it was this week, I’ll buy a large amount and put it in the freezer for when I’ll need it.  Peanut butter is on sale, I stock up. Etc, etc, etc.

    If you were to watch me shopping for non perishables, you would notice that though I usually have a full shopping cart, there are only a few different items -thirty of this, twenty of that. I buy alot of whatever is on sale, usually saving an average of 33 – 50% on my bill from what it would be if I just bought the ingredients when I needed them. I try to keep my pantry and freezer filled with staple ingredients that I regularly use.  When it’s time to plan my menu for the week, I think about what I have on hand.  Do I have a lot of pasta, or a lot of potatoes?  Am I running low on canned tomatoes but have a bunch of canned fish?  Did I buy alot of something perishable on sale that needs to be cooked up and put into the freezer right away (this week it was bananas, last week it was cottage cheese)?

    It’s not what you buy that will make the big difference, it’s how you buy!

    Avivah

  • Deck building

    So often I think about posting but life is so busy that I just don’t get around to it!! This is the busiest time of year for me, and this year is busier than usual with our newest arrival taking up time and attention.  🙂

    Today was my official due date – it’s so nice that the baby has been a member of the family almost three weeks already, instead of waiting and wondering when he would be born.   Since I didn’t have to spend energy on wondering and waiting, I was able to move on to something else that I had been thinking about for quite a while. :)))

    I’ve been wanting to build a deck for the past year, and had planned it for a summer project with my kids.  I thought it would be especially nice since we would have a sturdy surface to put up the new easily assembled kind of blow up pool and the kids could enjoy water play in the hot weather.  But when the oldest two kids suddenly ended up going to sleep away camp for a month, I shelved the plans for this year – it seemed like too much to take on in the eighth month of pregnancy, in the heat of the summer, without two of the most capable workers. 

    My husband has been against this idea since I first brought it up, and didn’t get more receptive to it as time went on.  🙂  He felt that I have so much to do that he didn’t want to see me take on another big project.  I explained to him a couple of months ago that I like having something to do, but he was happy when I realized that the deck was too big a project for me at that time and stopped thinking about it.

    What does this have to do with anything right now?  Well, yesterday afternoon I had this sudden idea that we could build the deck (freestanding platform style) before my husband came home today at 4 pm.  I knew he would be happy to have it done, and if he didn’t know we were doing it, he wouldn’t worry that I was doing too much so soon after birth.  I discussed the possibility with the kids, who were very enthusiastic, but told them my concerns about the very tight time frame we would be working under.  When I first thought about building it, I planned to allot a week to get it done – and now I was giving us a day!  I talked to them about what would have to be done in what order, and the importance of being focused on our tasks.  They realized that I wouldn’t be able to physically help them with the building (it being so soon after birth), and the actual work would all be up to them – I would just direct them.  Since I had read books about deck building several months ago, I knew what we needed to do and we didn’t need to spend much time thinking about it or researching – we just had to work out the size and layout we wanted.

    The kids really wanted to do it so that we could use it for Sukkos (last year we were on the dirt and when it rained, it became mud; not so pleasant) and eagerly agreed to take on the challenge, and boy, they are an amazing team!  It was very sweet to see all six of them (oldest ds wasn’t home at first) all working together – hammering, unscrewing, etc- even my 17 month old was in on the action – he found a large bolt and used it as a hammer to bang on the wood alongside his older siblings.  When ds14 got home, he jumped right in to help.

    We decided on a deck that would be 16.5 feet by almost 13 feet, eight inches off of the ground.  (Because it is freestanding, we didn’t have to worry about digging foundations or applying for permits, both potentially a big concern.)  Since we were using lumber for the frame that we collected a few months ago from a deck someone was dismantling, it took significantly more time to assemble than it would have if we had just purchased exactly the lumber we needed from the store.  But the boards were already in the yard, and it was a good feeling to finally put them to use. 

    We didn’t actually manage to finish everything before my husband got home, but we did have the entire frame finished by then, and I came home from the lumber yard with the final load of wood to cover the frame with right after dh got home.  He literally was speechless – he couldn’t believe that we thought of the idea and gotten so much done in the day that he was gone.  The kids at first couldn’t tell how he felt about it, because he just kept saying how shocked he was – so finally ds8 asked if he was happy about it.  And dh told him he just couldn’t believe it, that he thought it was amazing.

    Tomorrow morning the kids plan to finish attaching the surface boards – most of them are down, but all of them aren’t yet screwed into place.  Since I have alot of other things I need to do tomorrow (being erev Sukkos), they decided they want to wake up early so they can finish it by 11 am or so before they need to get to their other tasks.  It has been exciting for them to watch the deck take form and know that they have really made this crazy idea happen in time to use for our sukka this year. 

    I strongly believe in giving kids opportunities to stretch themselves.  As parents, we can’t give our children confidence or self esteem, but we can give them experiences that have the potential to build an inner confidence.  When kids successfully accomplish something that feels significant to them,  they feel more confident and that confidence will carry over into many other areas of life.

    Avivah