Wheeee! Fit

My Christmas present is a lot of fun.

I don’t love to go to exercise classes, but they do tend to be the only thing that has made me stick to the required number of reps of any exercise long enough to get any benefit.

Until now.

Today and yesterday have found me sneaking off to the basement to stand on my Wii Fit balance board and contort myself in strange ways, all for fun. They’ve finally figured out how to make exercising fun. I can play games all day!

Frugal Friday – Almost-Free DTV

I keep getting mailings from my erstwhile cable company wooing me to come back.
“From $115 a month!” they cry, as if that’s a good thing.

Instead, I fire up my digital-ready LCD TV (which does not need to cost the earth See?) and make sure my $30 indoor antenna is pointing East North East, and I pick up everything I could get on basic cable and more.

If you are the frugal type who doesn’t live for TV and doesn’t have a raving sports maniac in the house, then you can set yourself up like this just fine. And, after the initial purchases it is free. Even basic cable cost me $20 a month plus all those wierd taxes they add on. Multiply that by a year and you’ve just paid for your digital-ready TV.

The picture is crystal clear most of the time, and the problems I do encounter have more to do with the stations transmitting them than with my equipment. (I have heard from a neighbor that her converter box signal craps out sometimes, just like my over-the-air signal).

This site will help you find out if you have a strong enough signal in your area (in the US) for this scheme to work.

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Rollercoaster

Yesterday started out normally enough: get the boys dressed, wave K & A off, have breakfast.

Then the phone rang. One of my friends with news of yet another incipient Christmas tragedy in her family. The word “unfair” may have been bandied about a bit.

Then there were some very normal errands to run, albeit with helpful grandparents in tow to make it a little more exotic.

Then there was the snow. Not altogether unexpected at this time of year, but still, it added a little spice.

THEN there was the phone call from the husband who had tried to skive off home for lunch, only to be derailed by a flat tire (can you be derailed by a flat tire? After all if you travel on rails you probably don’t have tires. OK, he was de-roaded, which I can say since he didn’t have the locking nut thingy for his wheels and had to call a tow truck to come and lift his car up and carry it to a garage). I performed a rescue mission with sandwhiches and hot coffee (and no disgruntled three year old in the back. He was, again, being looked after by the resident grandparents. Thanks!).

Then there was the phone call saying the incipient Christmas tragedy was now an official Christmas tragedy. (Prayers for a bereaved family, please).

Then there was the email saying a friend had given birth at about the same time, to a 10lb baby girl called Rachael. This is very happy news.

Then there was news of another friend’s very unlikely and very, very welcome pregnancy. Also very happy news.

And I got to write about all of this in my paper journal with a pen celebrating the new drug that K invented. Launched a couple of weeks ago and already helping people.

(As he says, you know you’ve achieved something when your invention is on a promotional pen!)

And all this without including any of the drama that comes with having two children under the age of 6 kicking about the house.

Life just keeps happening, doesn’t it?

Millennial Mom Monday – New Traditions

Getting married and having children means blending the traditions of your own family with those of your spouse.  This really shows up around special occasions, like Christmas and birthdays.

Our first Christmas together, I hadn’t thought to tell my husband that, in my family, Santa had begun to fill the stockings of the grown-ups as well as the children, some years ago. This meant there was some awkwardness on Christmas morning when only one of us had a sock full of loot. Easily remedied the next year and ever since, as you can imagine.

On birthdays around here there is a choice: Mum’s sponge cake or Dad’s dense Biscuit Cake (the crumb-filled and delicious chocolate slab his mother made for him).

But as well as adopting our parents’ traditions we have gradually been building our own.

After lugging a real christmas tree home (the first year in a shopping cart, because we lived in the city, didn’t own a car, and had underestimated how much a real tree weighed. The next year hanging out of the back of our tiny Mitsubishi), Kevin never has the energy to do much but observe as I, kid at heart, drag out the tinsel and the baubles and decorate the tree. So now, every year, I decorate the tree while Kevin snaps pictures from the safety of his armchair, and tells me when I’ve left a bare spot.

A few years ago, now that we had a couple of kids who were probably old enough not to eat the fallen pine needles, we thought it would be fun to go back to a real tree. We were seized with the urge to go and cut down our own Christmas tree; something we had heard other people talking about doing year after year. We thought it sounded kind of crazy but kind of nice, and that we’d give it a try.

From that first ‘timber’, it has been something our boys look forward to, and take for granted now. Their excitement over this new tradition is the thing that drags us out of the house on the first weekend in December that doesn’t include high winds or sub-zero temperatures, and gets Kevin face down in the mud with a hacksaw.

So what new traditions have you formed in your family?

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Frugal Friday – Victorian Parlour Games

This Friday night, instead of shelling out your hard-earned dollars for a movie all of you can agree on but none of you will love, gather the family in your version of the Parlour and try out some good old Victorian Parlour Games.

Kids will love them, you’ll spend time together, and everyone will be encouraged to get a little silly, which does wonders for your relationships.

Don’t remember any Victorian Parlour Games? Not to worry, I have a selection below:

STATUES
Everyone, except the chosen “clown”, assumes a pose, somewhere in the room — the sillier the better. You can stand on one leg, draw an imaginary bow like Cupid, strike a heroic pose. (You may stand with your arms crossed,scowling if you must). When everyone has chosen their pose, they stand still as statues. Now the clown begins his/her work.

The clown passes from person to person trying to make them laugh or smile by pulling funny faces, telling jokes etc. If the statue cracks, they’re out. The statue who stays serious and still the longest wins, and becomes the new clown.

source: Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood

LOOKABOUT

One person chooses an object in the room and shows it to everyone. Everyone else leaves the room while the object is hidden. When they come back in, everyone must look for the item. When they see it they should go and sit down. The last person to find it loses, and is the hider next time.
You don’t want to make it obvious where you saw the object, so that you don’t help the other players too much. The misdirection can be as much fun as the search. I imagine this would work better in a Victorian-style knick-knack-cluttered living room, rather than a modern, minimalist home!

source: Seeds of Knowledge

BLIND MAN’S BLUFF

One person is blindfolded while everyone else moves around them, quietly. The blindman blunders around trying to catch people. If he does, he then gets to paw them (those saucy Victorians!) and try to guess who he has caught. If he is correct, the captured becomes the next blindman, otherwise the first blindman keeps trying.

source: every children’s birthday party I ever attended (and in those days you still wore floor length ‘party dresses’ to proper parties!).

CONSEQUENCES

A game for families with children old enough to write.

Take long strips of paper, one for each person. Each person writes something on the paper, folds it over and passes it to the next person, over and over again until each of these things have been written:

1, A woman’s name
2, A man’s name
3, Place name
4, He said…
5, She said…
6, A consequence.

Everyone opens up the paper they end up with and read the ’story’ like this.

“Florence Nightingale met Frank Sinatra at Chuckie Cheese’s. He said …. then she said… and the consequence was…”

Sometimes it’s downright surreal, sometimes silly, and sometimes it really works out…with hilarious results.
source: rainy Sunday afternoons in my childhood.

PICTURE CONSEQUENCES

For the less literary, there are picture consequences, which work the same way. Instead of story lines, you draw a head and neck, then fold down the paper. The next person draws a body and arms, the next legs, and the last one feet. You can also add a name at the bottom. Unravel to create fabulous creatures.
source: rainy Sunday afternoons in my earlier childhood.

THE NAME GAME

Everyone writes down the name of a famous person on a slip of paper, folds it and puts it in a bowl. Pass the bowl to the first person, who becomes the first clue-giver. They must try to get the person next to them to guess the name, without saying anything too obvious (for example you couldn’t say, “His first name is Frank and he’s a singer” or even “His initials are FS”. You have 30 seconds to try to get someone to guess. If they do, you both get a point. If not, the name goes back in the bowl and it is the next person’s turn.
source: Seeds of Knowledge

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All of which should be enough to keep you going.

And I didn’t even mention “Charades”.

I’ve Got The Music In Me…

This week I’m practicing Christmas carols and songs on the guitar, having promised to go in to the preschool Christmas party and lead a sing-along.

I’m looking forward to it, but it’s a bit of a far-cry from my days singing four-part harmony original compositions by a choir director who was to go on to become “the pre-eminent Scottish composer of his generation”.

In the mid-eighties my mother taught at a small private school in darkest Ayrshire. A new young music teacher joined the staff and was put up in a staff cottage down at the end of a muddy lane on the edge of the school grounds. He was a passionate, somewhat scruffy, dark haired, bearded and bright-eyed type. Among his other duties in the school, he led a choir of adult voices made up of teachers and their roped-in spouses (including my parents), maybe a few parents and, since I was too young to be left at home alone, me.

The choir met for a couple of months leading up to the school’s annual Christmas concert, which was always held in a frigid old stone church on the village’s main (one) street. In late October it always seemed ridiculous to be learning about Good King Wenceslas’s snowy footprints in four-part harmony, but the nights soon drew in, as they say, and the cold came with them.

A soon as most of the choir members arrived Jimmy (as I was, in a rather grown-up fashion allowed to call our leader) would somewhat reluctantly tear himself away from an impassioned conversation with a nearby somebody about the inequities caused by the long-running miners’ strikes, and start handing out sheets of music to the small group crammed into his tiny living room. There were dining room chairs and a kitchen bench for the ladies, at the front. The few men up the back tried to sit up straight on the edge of the sofa and armchairs. Jimmy perched sideways on his piano stool, playing with one hand and guesturing animatedly with the other. There were weeks when he was the only tenor there, and two game basses struggled on in the back of the room.

I had been in choirs before, at church and at school, but there was an intensity about the way Jimmy led this choir, that was new to me. He demanded precision and could be now severe, now jokey. It was the first of three or four choirs I’ve been in that were led by real professionals, for whom this was an avocation as well as an occupation and they’ve all been the same: brilliant and funny and fearsome; passionate.

I loved the precision that Jimmy demanded. I loved being squashed into that living room with teachers and other grown-ups, pretending I was grown up too. I loved his wife, Lynne, peeking her head — and a tray of sherries –around the door. I loved bundling up and putting on my gloves and standing in the old, cold church singing my heart out. I even love (the memory of) Jimmy’s scowls when we blew a difficult passage.

But what really sticks with me was the night Jimmy passed around a hand-written piece that was utterly foreign to me. It was his setting of a Renaissance song (a madrigal? A carol?) called “Adam Lay YBounden”. He had written a haunting, dischordant (to my ears), odd and utterly beautiful setting of it. I was enchanted by the music and also by the idea that this guy, who worked with my Mum, had written this music and we were performing it along with the standard Christmas carols and that This Could Be Done.

I know that that was the year Jimmy started playing traditional Scottish music, because I was there in the room, while he and Donald talked about their band and their next gig. About five years later I was there when some of that came to fruition. I listened with amazement as this classical work had a bunch of weary parents, who were only there because their kids were in some school orchestra, tapping their fingers on the knees to the familiar Burns tunes woven into the piece, then guffawing as the brass section perfectly mimicked a bunch of drunken Scotsmen, boasting.

For a few weeks leading up to this, Jimmy (now Dr. James McMillan) had been coming into Ayrshire secondary schools and trying to teach us the very thing I had learned in his living room: that artists live among us; that music –even classical music– is ours to make; and that it should be enjoyed.

He had his work cut out at our school.

We didn’t have an orchestra. We had a ragtag bunch of Wednesday afternoon skivvers who liked to hang out in the music department and play electric guitars, drums, keyboards — and hashily at that.

But he seized it. And he made us compose. He made us bang and pluck and strum and tootle on anything that was to hand and called it music. Then he turned the rhythm backwards and made that the “B” section. Then he took a sarcastic comment from the back of the class and acted on it, gleefully turning the scrawled music on the blackboard, that he had picked out of our busking, upside down. Voila, the “C” theme. Then he slowed us down and found the “D”. We got to perform this wierd and wonderful cacophony as an interlude in the Strathclyde Concerto No. 2, by Peter Maxwell Davies, along with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

And for once, our school was no less grand than the schools with real, organized sports teams and prize-winning orchestras and kids who could actually read music.

When it was over, we went back to being school kids and Jimmy went on to become a star in the classical world. And all over Ayrshire, there were kids whose ears pricked up every time the Scottish Chamber Orchestra came on TV or was mentioned on the radio, because for one night, we had sat among them and played music that was ours, and they had listened to us.

I was lucky. I came from a home where music was a normal, everyday thing. But I’ve learned that mine was not the average experience.

So, it’s a small step, but I hope that by taking my guitar into a class of three year olds and singing Christmas songs with them, I’m starting something. I want these kids to know that music doesn’t just come from speakers, and that instruments aren’t meant to be listened to reverently. I want them to know that we can all sit around on the floor and bang on things and strum things and shake things and that the music belongs to them.

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Fried Potatoes

This is a great way to use up left-over baked or boiled or roast potatoes (if you ever have such a thing).

Delicious, nutritious and super-simple. Even my kids will eat this, and Weight Watchers approves too!

INGREDIENTS

1 large potato or several smaller ones
Olive Oil
Salt

METHOD

1. If your potato is already cooked, slice it cross-wise into circles about half or three-quarters of an inch thick. If not, scrub it, prick with a fork and cook in the microwave for 5-8 minutes, turning over once. No need to over-cook.
2. Heat a layer of oil about as deep as the potatoes are thick  in a skillet until it is almost smoking (if it’s smoking, it’s too hot. Taking off the heat for until it cools a bit).
3. Slide your potato slices into the sizzling oil and cook for a couple of minutes until bottom is golden brown and a little crispy. Turn and cook for another couple of minutes.
4. Drain on paper towels and dust with salt.

This can be left to cool and packed into a lunch box and, my five year old swears, makes a great accompaniment to a packed lunch.

SERVES 2

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Seeing Is Believing

Kev: G, did you go to Picture People today and get your photograph taken?
G, aged 3: Were you there?
K: No, but I saw your pictures.
G: Did you use your long eyes to see them?

Millennial Mothers – The Joy of…

Recently I was having a bad morning. I was kind of grumpy anyway, and then my dearly beloved hove into view and said something that I took the wrong way (of course).

I barked at him, he barked at me, and there we were faced with the prospect of spending the whole day circling each other, scoring points and holding grudges.

Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered. But I wasn’t sure how to get myself out of my bad mood, either. I felt it from my brain to my slumped shoulders, to my clenched fists. It was up to me to do something.

So I took advantage of the fact that I was locking myself in the smallest room in the house – alone for once. I turned the shower on as hot as I could stand and then I jumped in and started to sing. Loudly.

“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!”

I didn’t know it, but I clapped anyway. It was very silly. By the time I had reached,

“…do all three: clap, clap, stomp, stomp, hoo-oo-ray!” I was starting to feel a little cheerier.

So that I didn’t lose momentum I launched straight into a chorus of “On Top Of Spaghetti…”

Hanging out with little kids for the past almost-six years, has really upped the silliness quotient in my life. It has allowed me to rediscover all kinds of things, from the joy of silly songs, to the smell of Play-Doh and the fun to be had colouring-in.

What about you? What has hanging out with little kids brought  back into your life?

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Frugal Friday – Gift Bags

My kids have a lot of classmates. 41. Plus three teachers. I’d like to give them all a little something, but I don’t want to buy more plastic cr*p, litter the world with wrapping paper, or spend a fortune. Or shop. So I decided to make packets containing the dry ingredients for shortbread that they can make with their parents (only a stick of butter required), and wrap them in drawstring bags made from cheap’n'cheerful quilting cotton, that the kids can use as treasure-keepers.

With my (very) rudimentary sewing skills, making 30 bags took me about 2 hours all in.  Filling up sandwich bags with dry ingredients probably took another hour and a half, although I did it in several sessions (and found it quite relaxing: a cup of this, quarter of a cup of that, two spoons of the other).
My costs were about 50 cents per package and could have been cheaper if I’d had a fabric stash and used yarn for the drawstrings. Even more importantly, I spent no time in toy stores, dollar stores or any place I didn’t want to be.

MATERIALS

• Ziplock sandwich bags (you can get biodegradable ones or hope they get reused). Roughly 6″x5″
• Cotton or muslin or flannel or some other cheap fabric (I bought Christmas-themed cotton which was already on sale the day before Thanksgiving). I was making 44 bags roughly 6″ x 7″ (before seaming) so I bought 3 yards of a 45″ wide fabric.
• Thread to match.
• Sewing machine and rudimentary knowledge of how to use it (believe me, that’s all you need. This could be done by hand. It would just take a whole lot longer).
• Ribbon (about a foot for every bag you’re going to make). I used grosgrain, but ran short and ended up using yarn for a few bags.
• Dry ingredients for your favourite cookie recipe.
• Paper for the instructions.

METHOD

-Iron the fabric and cut, lengthwise into three equal strips (15″ tall each)...

-Iron a hem into the long edge of each strip as follows.

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Place the fabric pattern-side down on your ironing table..

Fold over a 1.5″ hem and iron it.

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-Open up what you just ironed, and fold the raw edge down to the crease..

Iron the new edge.
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. – Fold over the original crease again for a nice raw-edge-free hem.

Repeat on all long edges.

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-Fold in half, right sides together, and iron along the bottom to hold it in place

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(No pins! No basting!)

(Somewhere my Primary school sewing teacher is sobbing gently!)

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- Mark the fabric every six inches.

This is where you will sew the bags’ side seams.

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- Sew along the long edges. Be careful to sew close to the folded edge, so that you create a large enough ‘pocket’ for the drawstring to go through.

Do both long edges on all your strips of fabric.

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- Sew the side seams.

.Place the needle a little to one side of the 6″ mark you made,and a little below the long seam you just sewed — a few millimetres will do. (I know, I’m mixing measuring systems, but those tiny parts of an inch annoy me. Millimetres are good. Look ‘em up.)

Reverse up and sew just a little over the long seam, then sew down to the bottom of the bag. You can stop a little before the bottom crease, and reverse a bit for a secure end, or you can just run off the bottom of the bag. (These are quick and dirty gifts for kids who will lose them in three weeks anyway!).

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- For the side seam of the next bag, place the needle a few millimetres to the left of the seam you just made.

(this picture shows that I was using a zig-zag stitch at first, but I abandoned that for straight seams.I think they worked better).

Repeat the same method, backing up a bit over the long seam and sewing to the bottom.

- Repeat this all the way along the strip until you have a series of little almost-6″ pockets in the fabric.

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- Cut carefully between the close side seams.

(The little bit of reversing-over-the-long-seam you did will hold the drawstring pocket’s seam in place when you cut through it).

- Trim as many of the long threads as you can bear, but don’t be too fussy

(see point above about these being for kids).

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- Turn right-side out.

Thread 12″ or grosgrain ribbon onto a large-eyed tapestry needle and push through the drawstring pocket, ending up where you started.

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THE FILLING
- I recommend setting up a production line, with all your dry ingredients in separate, large bowls on the counter top.

(Reaching into the flour bag over and over is just too foutery).

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- Scoop your ingredients into ziplock bags, carefully squeeze excess air out and fold the bags over.

- Stuff the bags into the drawstring bags and pull closed.

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OTHER NOTES
Don’t forget to add baking instructions, including: any other ingredients they’ll need, size of baking tin (if necessary), temperature and time, best method/shape, and any special requirements (for example, my shortbread needs to be pricked with a fork all over before being baked).
You can type and print the instructions and stick them in the bag, or you can get creative. You could hand-write one, scan it and print copies. Cut it out with fancy scissors, paste it to a square of your fabric that you’ve cut with pinking shears, and then tie it onto the drawstring. Go wild!