Big Brood

In this article, we see Lawrence Dillon talking about how being the last of 8 has helped to inform his artistic direction as a composer but didn’t help him so much with dental hygiene.

Do you have any budding composers in your house?  Do you see your goslings art effected by their older siblings?

While changes in grocery and fuel prices will naturally lag behind the price of commodities, they are linked. In an article at kiplinger.com, we see that the commodity prices may be a bubble about to burst.

What’s the takeaway? Commodity prices are inflated due to speculation (ie: people wanting to make a quick profit). This speculation is further driven by lower returns in most other areas of possible investment.

ETFs are allowing more and more investors to jump in and out of the commodities market, increasing volatilty and adding to the market. The dollar is falling, which inflates prices as foreign suppliers try to compensate to maintain profits.

In the end, we’ll hopefully see a drop in some of these commodity prices in the summer but not that much as supply is still low compared to demand.

 Have you seen these price increases recently?  Have you changed any of your habits because of them?

When looking to grow our cash, I keep running across a few different types of investments mentioned in many places. In this post, I want to talk about the basic categories of investments that I will eventually write about a lot more. The major types of investments that I hear about are stocks, bonds and mutual funds.

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… whenever you look at cars passing on the road, you’re silently tallying the number of seats.

… every once-in-a-while you walk into your living room and think to yourself: Hey, where did all these kids come from!?

Our favorite healthy, filling, budget breakfast is crockpot oatmeal.

I finally sat down to figure the cost per serving. This following recipe feeds about 5. You can increase or decrease as needed for your family.

Crockpot Oatmeal

• 2 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
• 5 1/2 cups water
• 3 dried apricots, diced
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/3 cup craisins
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 an apple, diced

Before you go to bed at night, add all of the ingredients to your crockpot, turn crockpot to low. Wake up to breakfast already made.

Feel free to add or subtract ingredients that suit your family. Some options would be honey instead of sugar, raisins instead of craisins, etc. I have heard some families add chopped pecans before serving too.

The cost is around 19 cents per serving. You could certainly decrease this by taking away some of the dried fruit or using fruit that is locally in season.

… you go out to a buffet, they ask you “How many kids?” and it’s a hard question for you to answer.

The Star-Telegram has an article talking to the Hinkles about 10 tips to save money on your food bill.

We don’t have any teens yet so I’m glad to get a little advice from a more “advanced” family. From their tips, the only things I don’t think we’ve tried are:

• Shopping at international markets where you may find things like rice and spices cheaper.
• Setting a once-a-month Use-It-Up week to use up leftovers and bits & pieces.
• Setting aside stale bread. I don’t think we usually get much stale bread.

We do have a few small international markets around here, so it sounds like we need to take our price book and check them out!

Do you have any other tips to add to these that help you to save money on your bill?

Looks like the new CEO for Eli Lily offers his big family as inspiration for many of the skills that got him to the top.

A large family taught Lechleiter how to negotiate, cooperate and get along with others. It also taught him the importance of education. He tore through high school, taking advanced chemistry, physics and calculus classes.

I’ve certainly seen a lot of negotiation happen around here. Too often it’s the “Take it or leave it” negotiation tactic, but I’ve often seen some wonderfully giving moments between my children that make me feel ashamed for my own “It’s MINE!” attitude that I have sometimes.

How about you? Do you see any budding CEO’s in your brood? What kind of “business skills” do you think your goslings are learning?

This is the week to get my tomato and pepper seeds started.  The last frost date for our area is about 6 weeks away and the seeds need about that amount of time to get a good start. 

Thursday my grandma will come over to give me a hand.  I have about 150 tomato seeds, 5 different varieties and 100 pepper seeds to start.  This may seem like an insane amount but I want to be sure to have enough to have a good crop and share seedlings with family and friends. 

I want to plant 20-30 tomato plants this year to hopefully can and freeze enough to get us through this next year.  As gander has mentioned, groceries are going up up up in price and anything is a help!  We have all the jars we need and will only need to purchase the lids.  It seems no one cans any more so boxes of canning jars keep getting delivered to our house!  In fact I have a box on my driveway now!

You might wonder why you would start your own seeds…One big reason is the savings.  One packet of heirloom amish paste tomato seeds was $2.75 for 50 seeds.  I may be able to purchase 2 nice nursery grown tomato plants for that price, and probably not heirloom.  I also like knowing how the plant was grown, from the beginning and what has been sprayed on it or not sprayed on it for that matter.   This is also a great educational experience for the goslings.  They get to see the seeds in the packet become the food on their plates.  It always amazes me how much more willing they are to eat the produce from OUR garden. 

You may have heard starting seeds is too complicated or too much work.  I have little experience myself but the couple of times I have tried I have had great success with only a few hours work. 

The supplies needed are:

• A growing medium such as a sterilized soilless mixture like Jiffy mix
• A container to grow in.  Anything will work as long as it is sterilized (be creative, try yogurt containers, egg cartons, produce containers, old garden center flats), just run through dishwasher or soak in a 10% bleach solution
• The seeds, of course.
• A warm place for your seeds to start, such as a kitchen counter. 

  This is all you need until your seedlings sprout. 

Once they have popped up out of the dirt you will need some kind of light source.  A full day sunny window will work.  We don’t have this option so we use artificial light.  We use hanging shop lights with fluorescent tubes in them.  We hang them from chains in the ceiling so they can be raised up as the plants grow.  I will be sure to post pictures once we get it set up.  We put the lights on a timer so the plants get 14 or so hours of light a day and water once a day. 

I would love to hear from others out there who have had success or failure starting seeds at home.