supper planning sunday

Sorry this is getting up here so late! Crazy day! Some of these are repeats from last week that we never got around too....

Monday- hamburgers, corn on the cob, onion potatoes
Tuesday- spaghetti w/ pureed veggie sauce and salad
Wednesday- BBQ chicken quesadillas (kids will just have black bean and cheese), fruit
Thursday- homemade mac and cheese, green beans, and some other veggie
Friday-haven't planned yet
Saturday-haven't planned yet

so, what are you eating this week?? leave me a comment w/ a link to your blog if you post a menu! I would love to see it!

always good to hear of good customer service

I just read this article this morning. I am super impressed with how Cotton Babies stood behind their products. Cotton Babies was one of the sweet companies that donated a diaper for my cloth diaper workshop. I have had nothing but positive experience with them. After reading this article about them I would have to say that they went way above and beyond! Always love to brag on someone I hear good things about!

friday favorites: mini boden

Mini Boden is by far my favorite place to get clothes for Bubbie. Full price the prices are a little higher then I would pay, but if you sign up for their e-newsletter you can get great deals. For example this past spring on April Fools Day, they offered 20% off your total plus free shipping! I ordered Bubbie two tops, two pairs of shorts and two bathing suits and got a great price on them! Bubbie has the blow fish shirt above and it is super cute and he has been able to wear it for two summers as they size their clothes to fit two sizes (ie 5/6).


They also carry adorable stuff for girls! Sass is just starting to really fit in their "big" girl clothes, although I had ordered her several things last summer from the baby department. These clothes wash and wear amazingly and if you are into ebay, they resell awesome! The end of season sale is going on right now. This is a great time to stock up for next summer!!

I love me some Mini Boden!! What's a favorite product of yours? You can write about anything, clothes, food, cleaning products. Share your favorites with us and join this blog carnival by using MckLinky below! I can't wait to hop to your blog and read about one of your favorite things!

bye bye pull ups! hello imse vimse trainers!

UPDATE #1

Well, not a great update, but I have a feeling it's more my fault than the trainers. Sass was so good about telling me this morning when she had to go potty that I didn't make her try while we were at the dr's office and we had a flood accident. Her pants did get wet, but not the floor thankfully. The interesting thing is that I don't know that it was fault of the trainers. Remember I mentioned that these run really big.... well, when I pulled the trainers off of her, the middle was wet on the inside, but not the outside. My hunch is she leaked out the sides because little bitty's theighs are big enough to fill up the leg holes. We are going to continue testing them out the rest of the afternoon, but for now she is testing out a new goodmama fitted for nap time.... hopefully we will have more success!

Kelly's Closet had free shipping over the weekend and the Imse Vimse trainers on sale (they still are on sale), so I bit the bullet and bought a handful. I have to say first off that I am super impressed with the service from Kelly's Closet. I believe I ordered them on Sunday and they were on my doorstep yesterday! WOW! Talk about instant gratification! I will absolutely be ordering from them again!

So, these super cute trainers came yesterday. What's the difference between these and say, Gerber training pants? Well, these organic cotton undies have a layer of PUL in between the cotton which is suppose to help prevent accidents from getting the child's clothes wet, yet still feel the wetness of the undies. While we love our Gerber trainers, if Sass has an accident in them, it's flood city, so I'm too afraid to take her out for long periods in them. Because of this fear (which has been justified by puddles in public... so sorry Target, we didn't mean it..... either time it happened....), I have resorted to using Pull Ups for things like church, going out shopping, and play dates at other peoples homes.

I hate using Pull Ups, not only for the environmental reasons, or the cost, but I might as well put a diaper on the girl, because she totally knows the difference and will use the Pull Up just like a diaper. She is much more aware of her accidents when she is in panties. You know you are in trouble when she says "mama, I did something". Never a good sign! Beware if you order, these trainers run large. I ordered Sass the 15-24 month size which ranges from 24-31 lbs, she's only 23 but these are the smallest I could find!

This brings us to today.... test day! The new cloth trainers were washed last night and dried and are ready to be put to the test. We have swim lessons this morning and then Sass gets to go to the OB with me. Perfect place to try out the trainers! I will post an update later!

wordless wednesday

this little light of mine

i'm gonna let it shine!

cloth diapering on a budget

While cloth diapering can save you thousands over the long run versus the cost of disposables, the intial investment can be kind of steep. Depending on if you go the cheapest route of prefolds and covers or the more expensive route of pockets and AIO's or onesize diapers, you can easily layout several hundred dollars right up front, but then you are done! You're investment will have been made and if you can keep yourself from getting addicted to buying new diapers, you can save a lot of money.

Here are some of my money saving tips:

1. Sign up for newsletters, join Facebook groups and follow the brands you like on Twitter

You will get great coupon codes and discounts by doing these things. This is the way I essentially find out about all my sales that I post. You can get free shipping and great discounts by doing this. You also may luck out and get to be a tester for new products by doing these things!

2. Shop the seconds sales!

Seconds usually have minor defects that prevent them from being sold as first quality. The defects can vary from crooked stitching, the wrong color snaps and discontinued colors. This is a great way to stock up on good diapers cheap. My two favorite seconds shops are the Thirsties Outlet and the Swaddlebees outlet (which sells SB's and Blueberrys). Their e newsletters will usually tell you when they are stocking the outlet! I know CottonBabies tends to sell Bumgenius seconds, but I never seem to get there in time!

3. Buy used.

Okay, I know that at first this sounds gross. But this is really a great way to try out new brands with out making a huge investment. And put it this way, if you used a diaper service (which so many of our mamas did), I can guarantee you that they didn't return you (or your mama) the exact same diapers week by week. I just do some extra sterilization to these dipes when I get them. You do have to be careful that you know what you are getting. Ask lots of questions and look very carefully at pictures and the persons feedback, but you can save a ton of money this way! The two site I tend to sell/buy off of are The Cloth Diaper Swap board on Babycenter.com ( You have to request to become a member of this one) and Diaperswappers.com (really watch who you buy from on this one, I sell here more than buy). I also try to sell/swap with friends and have even thought about listing diapers here for my readers.

4. Resell Diapers

If you buy good cloth diapers you will be amazed at the resell value on them. As Sass has outgrown diapers or I have purchased ones I don't love I have resold them and used the money to then buy new diapers. If you take good care of your diapers you should be able to resell them for at least 50% of what you paid for them, if not more depending on the brand and popularity of the diaper.

5. Look for good deals on green blogs.

I find a lot of good deals on mommy blogs I read, so be on the lookout! I recently posted a great deal on g diapers where you can get 6 covers with snap in liners for $40. One cover normally sells for $18.99 so this is a huge steal! These are the kinds of things you need to watch for to stock up and save when the sales are good! (By the way, that deal is good until the end of the month, use code: g1378swanson at check out. Only good on the everyday g's 6 pack!)

Leave me a comment if you have any other great tips!

not me monday

Not Me Monday is brought to you by one of my favorite blogs, My Charming Kids. This is a place where blog mamas can unite together and confess all their imperfections as moms, you know... all the things we would NEVER really do! ;)

I will start off by saying I absolutely would never use my pregnancy as an excuse to eat the dessert picture below. No way, no how! And I totally wouldn't have eaten it for say, three days in a row. That would be just excessive. I never would have justified it by drinking milk and counting the raspberries as fruit serving either. Nope! Not me!


Being an attentive, always on the ball mother, I never would have been so distracted by blogging that my daughter would have had enough time to color all over herself while sitting within inches of me. Not me, I keep an eye on my children at all times.

And in preparations for the Fourth of July, I would never have gone as far as tying red ribbons in Sass' navy blue crocs. Absolutely not! I didn't dress her in red, white and blue as many days as I could this past week just so she could wear them either. That would be way too thematic and bring me back to my first grade teacher days. I'm so not that cheesy!

I absolutely did not condone my brother bribing my 4 year old with $10 to go down the water slide at his neighborhood pool. I didn't encourage it either by explaining to said 4 year old that $10 was enough to buy a new lego set later and I would never had gone as far as telling him I would take him to Target that afternoon to use his $10 towards said Legos. The above mentioned 4 year old didn't ride the slide a thousand times after that because he loved it so much either. Surely you can see the fear in his face.

And lastly, (be grateful I have no pictures of this one), I most definitely didn't try to tiny a URL of directions to our community center this past week and email the link to my friends to only find out that I didn't send them a link to the community center after all.... the link surely wouldn't have directed my friends to an exotic site instead. I absolutely did not laugh so hard that I cried when they called to tell me what I did, sending dirty links on accident is not funny! They would never now refer to music time at the community center as "dirty music time" and I'm sure they will stop teasing me about sending out dirty emails sometime soon!
(PSA: tiny.cc does NOT create 100% unique URLs, learn from my mistake and use tinyurl.com instead and always check your tiny link before sending it or publishing it anywhere!).

Well, that's it! My dirty laundry is aired! Are you brave enough to share yours this week.... come on, you can do it!