Thanks Calbear, I’ll look into those.

I am looking for an option to outsource my oldest dd’s Latin next year. She will be in fifth grade. She has done latin for several years, playing around with several different curricula. She is super social, so I had decided on Schole Academy, which has face-to-face video class with the teacher and other students—but our charter school that funds our homeschooling won’t pay for it because it is a religious school. Same for Wilson Hill Academy. Can anyone suggest a similar class from a non-religious provider?

I am musing on the irony of this, in light of the fact that Japanese culture is generally far more accepting of racism and xenophobia than most Western cultures nowadays.

Very interesting to learn about the shinto roots of Kondo’s methods. It seemed very strange, though, that the author said that the memes and backlash against her methods used “starkly xenophobic terms” and later “xenophobic language”, but she never gave any examples of that, they just contained general rudeness/mockery. I also wasn’t actually aware that general use for the term ‘people of color’ included Japanese in the definition. Many Japanese are fairer-complexioned than many “white” people—most of my Japanese cousins are fairer than my siblings and I. So, does the term just mean not-European ancestry?

I updated our budget for the month, and we’re closer to the end of our budgeted food money than I realized. We put a good chunk of money into savings this month, and I am determined to keep it there and finish the rest of the month in the budget, which means ten days for just under $80. Which I should totally be able to do, as we have food storage of staples already in the house. I just need to cook from scratch to utilize them, and save the budget for perishables. So I’ve been cooking up a storm. Tonight: French Onion Soup, with homemade bread and salad

Yep, that’s the idea. Here’s hoping it wasn’t a fluke.

I declare the first goodwill-item reselling experiment a success! After everything is factored in, I made almost $65 selling the wakeboard I found.

We’re doing pretty well on our grocery budget here. I’m over half my budget, but I’ve got ingredients for the next week already. One budget area we struggle with is dh buying food out while working. He’s teaching an evening class at the community college this term to bring in some extra money, but I’m concerned that his eating out on evenings he is teaching or out lesson prepping/grading will eat a significant chunk of what he earns. In the past I have tried making extra dinner to send leftovers with him, but he doesn’t like eating leftovers. At least, that was my excuse to myself for giving up on that one, but I realized that he doesn’t really mind eating leftovers when it’s something he really likes—so this week I’m finding something he’s willing to take with to eat at least twice, to start with. The three older kids started swimming lessons, which the charter school paid for. But I did pay to take my four-year-old swimming at the same time. $10.75 for the two of us. Trying to figure out how to not pay that for the next seven sessions, without leaving him feeling miserable and excluded. I might see if my nephew wants to go with us—two kids would only be $4.50, and they could play together in the kiddie pool.

It was only worth $6, but I still thought it was pretty neat. The fine print said there was a 98% chance of the free stock being worth $2-$10, 1% of it being worth $10-$50, and 1% of it being worth $50-$200. Here’s a link to use the promotion, if anyone wants it: https://share.robinhood.com/michelc1276

I got a free stock from a promotion for signing up with the stock investment app “Robin Hood”. Didn’t cost me anything to sign up. Are we allowed to post links to things like that on here?

I’m testing the waters with purchasing from Goodwill and reselling on eBay. I’ve done this with fractional-size violins for my growing kids before, and generally made a small profit after selling the instruments they have grown out of, when they hadn’t received any damage while we owned them. I thought maybe I’d try doing it for the profit vs. just when my kid needs an instrument, and I was looking on the goodwill website when I noticed a wakeboard at my local goodwill, and thought I’d try that. I bought it, cleaned it up, and posted it on eBay. It cost me $31.96 including tax and the gas to drive over and pick it up. We’ll see what happens. Dh thinks I’m nuts.

I started using dietbet.com for motivation in early November. I lost about twelve pounds before my gallbladder attack, and earned about thirty dollars. The best part for me turned out to be the necessity to maintain the weight lost to the end of the month—no hitting my goal, then immediately bouncing back upwards. I’ve had a few weeks off now for my gallbladder, surgery, recovery and the holidays. Now that I can move to exercise again, I signed up for another round this month. In terms of actual weight loss methods, I just count calories and eat less than I burn each day.

I used to donate to a local charity, but one of the ladies there was super picky and pretty rude to me about some items I brought to donate—items I would have been happy to receive when we were unemployed and struggling a few years earlier. Now I donate to Goodwill or Deseret Industries.

A lot of the basic music skills with rhythm, tones, and reading music will translate across instruments.

Yes, even with two different instruments. I would probably set a minimum basic requirement for daily music practice (either a length of time or a choice of one Hoffmann lesson/practice these things on mandolin) and then let them choose each day which one they want to do.

I would start them on Hoffman when you start up school after the holidays, but still let them do the class when it comes around again. Let Hoffman provide the consistent instruction they need to be able to progress, and let the live class provide the fun/interest/motivation of the personal contact with others over music. If you can afford that, it seems like the best of both worlds.

Also, one thing that made a big difference was when I arranged for the instruments to be ready and out at dc’s eye level at all times. Way more likely that they will decide to practice on their own, or less likely to resist being told to, if they can just pick it up and start. That meant finding wall hangers for the violins and cello and hanging them at their owners’ eye levels. Then the shoulder rests could be left on and the end pin out at the right level, and I would go through and tune them a couple times a week so they were always ready to go. After that, the string players would pick it up and play something for fun throughout the day, as only the pianist had done before that.

Our Suzuki teachers have used that line, “You only need to practice on the days that you eat.” But when we used to try for every single day I found that we had a much harder time being consistent over the long term. We would just get burned out. Five days a week works well for us—they make consistent progress, and with a built-in break each weekend, we’re much better at sticking with it week after week. Sometimes someone—usually cello boy—will choose to practice on a weekend, but it’s somehow a lot more fun when it’s their choice.

My kids get gummy bears for practicing their instruments. We line up five bears to “watch” them practice, or six if they start their practice without a reminder from me, and they get them at the end. Before official school age, they are only doing lessons with Mom, and practicing is totally voluntary. When they reach school age and start paid lessons, they make an agreement to practice five days per week. If they have a bad attitude about doing it, I eat a gummy bear. Generally they shape up pretty quickly before all their bears disappear. (If they don’t, though, they are still required to finish.). Even my super-musical, largely self-motivated cello boy, who will sometimes wake us all up in the morning to the sound of him practicing independently, also sometimes needs the reminder that we made a bargain, and his side of the bargain is practice. My side is providing lessons and renting his instrument. If he gave a lot of trouble about it, I would still require music as a part of his education, but he would be doing piano or violin like his sisters (so much cheaper!)

Just out of curiosity, would you have the same reaction to the idea of you living in your car temporarily to save money, vs. a kid?

Well, she didn’t say it was a kid—these are adults making this decision.

Well, I just finished wrapping up going over my budget from this year. Besides my surprise surgery last week, dh slid off the road and busted two tires (thankfully he was not injured!) but that made him worry about us on snowy roads, so he unilaterally decided to get full new sets of tires for both cars. I think mine could have made due for a while longer, but I can’t be unhappy with him for it. And my car’s battery went out and had to be replaced. Also, the electric scooters I got secondhand weren’t running properly. I am pretty handy and will probably be able to fix them, but as I have been incapacitated the past few weeks, that did not happen before Christmas, so dh went out and bought some things for the kids. So that was extra expense, but I guess we already have the main birthday gift for the three older kids for next year. All told, I was pleasantly surprised that we were able to just cover everything without carrying a credit card balance (except the surgery bill which has not come yet). Hopefully we will be able to pay that off fairly quickly in the new year and get back to trying to save up a down payment for a house.

Neat, I can’t seem to find that by searching.

When I started this homeschooling journey, I thought that we would spend a lot more time on practical, hands-on life skills than most kids. We haven’t thus far, but lately my girls are in love with the Great British Baking Show, and I’ve had a fun idea. We could do baking challenges like in the show, but without the strict stressful time limits—so rather than three related challenges on breads or pastries or whatever over the course of a single weekend, we’d do them over a month, with a whole week to do each challenge. That would also give them chances for redos, let us keep up with eating their creations, and allow for break weeks so it doesn’t start to feel too much like work. We would do “judging” where we taste it, discuss how well it fits the description of what they were supposed to make, and video or take pictures, but we won’t compare between kids and pick winners. I ordered this book to use for recipes: ‘The Great British Bake Off: Everyday: Over 100 Foolproof Bakes’. (There are tons of books from that show, but this seemed like a good place to start for kids). Does anyone else want to play with us? I thought it would be really fun to do it with other homeschoolers and have a thread where we could share and kids could see each other’s creations.

Grin and bear it, then think of how kind and loving he was to give it to you and genuinely tell him how grateful you are for his kindness and generosity to you. And you never know; he may have actually found it within the budget. And you may wind up loving it way more than you think you will. Years ago, I was shocked when dh gave me an iPad we could no way afford, which I figured I would mostly use for the kids. Turns out, it was a return to the store with a torn box which they couldn’t put back out for normal sale again, and it was about $250 off. And I loved it. This Christmas I’m pretty sure my dh got me an ottoman which cost twice what I would have preferred the max for my gift be, we don’t have room for, and doesn’t have storage in it like I would really have liked. But if I’m right, then oh well, it was really thoughtful—and he has all the essentials of husbanding right; what does it really matter if he struggles on the gift-giving front?