Successful ‘Summer Manifesto’ returns to help us savor simple pleasures

As I was tucking our 5-year-old son into bed a few nights ago, he looked me squarely in the eyes and declared, “Mom, we need to make our summer list. When will we do it?” Before I could answer him, he announced, “We never had balloons on a picnic last year, so we need to put that on our list. And camping should be on the list, too.” He rattled off a few more ideas as I tried to slip out the door.

It surprised me that the boy who can never remember where his dirty socks go should so passionately recall last year’s summer list, which we dubbed our “Summer Manifesto.” What began as simple way to ensure we were making the most of our summer months has already become a fixture in our household. Clearly, our children were invested in last year’s list and already have very specific ideas about ways to spend our time this summer.

After a little family brainstorming, we decided we’ll repeat some of last year’s highlights: having a water gun fight, flying kites, grilling peaches, roasting marshmallows in the our fire pit and going to the lake. We’ll also tackle a few activities that we didn’t manage to accomplish last year. Namely, camping in the back yard and making red popsicles. Along with these activities, we’ve added some new ones to our summer list.

At the top of my husband’s summer priorities is building a playhouse for our children. Though it’s a major undertaking that will require a significant amount of time and energy to complete, he’s anxious to start the project. He’s been gathering supplies reclaimed from various sources and has already been “building the structure in his mind.” While he’s thinking about building the structure, I’m dreaming about what color to paint the shutters on the playhouse and how wide to make the front porch.

Not surprisingly, playhouse chatter has been contagious, and our oldest daughter is already dreaming about a space to host sleepovers and make mud pies. A water balloon fight, an afternoon family hike, and oddly enough, gathering turkey feathers are her other contributions to the summer list.

Of course, we’ve added “balloons on a picnic” for our 5-year-old and “catch things with our butterfly nets.” (He’s hoping to net himself a bird.) Riding bikes, getting the privilege of staying with Grandma and Grandpa (where he wants to take a dip in the city pool) and gathering firewood are our 3-year-old’s contributions to the list.

My own summer aspirations center on learning a few new skills. I hope to make my own chamomile tea, become more adept at succession planting, and learn how to prepare fried zucchini blossoms. I’d also like to hunt for wild mushrooms and can my own applesauce, neither of which I have done before.

Like last year, our list largely involves simple pleasures that we can experience together and that cost very little. By declaring what we hope to do this summer, and posting our list in place where we see it often, we can be intentional with our time and money. Plus, doing things like hiking together and hanging around our back yard fire pit create a vacation-like feeling without us ever having to venture far from home.

Make the most of your summer by taking the time to make your own list, either on your own or with your family. You’ll be surprised to find how quickly you start realigning your priorities so that you can accomplish what’s on your list. And in the process, you’ll make many sweet summer memories.

Careful planning creates a more carefree vacation

Planning a vacation on a budget for two adults and four kids ages 6, 5, 3 and 1 is no easy feat, but it’s an endeavor my husband and I recently undertook. With or without small children, travel is often expensive and complicated.

One way to minimize expenses and keep complications at bay is to plan your vacation with a clear purpose in mind. What are your main priorities? How do you want your getaway to feel? Adventurous? Relaxing? How much are you willing to spend to achieve those priorities? Your answers will help to ensure that you make the most of your vacation.

In the case of our family, our upcoming trip is to celebrate my in-laws and their 40 years of marriage. Accordingly, we determined that our vacation priority was to spend time in a relaxing atmosphere, doing activities that we could enjoy together as family.

Determining our purpose was the easy part. It was a little trickier planning a vacation that would suit our budget and our small children. We knew our destination had to be family-friendly, and that we wanted to avoid harried airport transfers and rental car desks. Those guidelines narrowed our search tremendously.

We also needed to consider how luggage fees would influence the overall price of our trip. After all, we’re still toting things like diapers, sippy cups and ear thermometers, so we knew we wouldn’t be able to skate by with carry-ons, even for a short getaway. With the cost of one checked bag coming in near $40, we decided that we’ll be packing lighter than usual.

Once we had a destination in mind, we started looking for a hotel that could accommodate us. After searching multiple sites and comparing room rates, we found a two-bedroom suite—with a full kitchen—for $160 a night. (The suite sleeps eight, so we’ll be splitting the cost with my husband’s parents.) The hotel is outside the most popular part of our destination city, but it still has plenty of amenities. And with a full kitchen, we’ll be able to save money by preparing some meals in our suite.

While we were trying to decide if this suite was the right choice, the price increased from $160 to $195 a night. The increase wasn’t a deal breaker, but it was disappointing, nevertheless. We did learn a valuable travel lesson, though. If you find a deal that fits your budget, it’s best to book it, rather than hope that the price might go down.

Now that we have booked our hotel suite and paid for our tickets, we have turned our focus to planning our trip activities. We’re planning a loose itinerary that sketches out some specific places that we’d like to visit and restaurants where we’d like to dine. We won’t be scheduling every waking moment, but we’ll use our itinerary to help us anticipate expenses and to ensure that we’re making the most of our getaway. Of course, we’ll include plenty of downtime in our plan, too.

In the end, we plan to spend a total of $1,500 for a resort-style vacation for our family of six. While our vacation is an investment, we feel it’s one worth saving for. We’ll build precious memories as a family and enjoy a respite from our everyday routine.

As the summer months approach, I encourage you to consider your vacation priorities. Thinking about your vacation and carefully considering what activities you hope to do will help keep your budget intact. It’s much easier to return home feeling relaxed when you know your vacation is already paid for.

Healthful snacks can be good for you and your budget

At our house, it’s not uncommon for our children to be eating one meal and already asking about what I’m serving for the next one. And my family’s food-centric ways aren’t limited to meals. Snacks are supremely important, too—even for the baby who doesn’t yet talk but who pounds on her highchair when she’s hungry between meals.

With four children, who each eat at least two snacks a day, I’m serving up a minimum of 56 snacks a week. Providing this many snacks stretches my creativity—and my budget. An extra challenge is providing healthy snacks that don’t require a lot to time to prepare. (Serving 56 snacks over the course of a week already takes a significant amount of time.)

Though the kids moon over blue yogurt in tubes and little boxed lunches with cheese and crackers, we try to avoid prepackaged (and expensive) snacks like these. Instead, we try to focus on giving them whole foods—although to be honest, they aren’t exactly gobbling up celery and carrot sticks when I serve them.

To help us keep our budget in check and to encourage the kids to eat more healthy foods, popcorn has become our go-to snack. I simply heat a tablespoon or two of canola oil in my 8-quart stock pot and drop in a half-cup of popcorn kernels. I put the lid on and stick close to the stove, shaking the pan on the burner when the popping begins to slow.

In less than five minutes, I have a bowl of warm popcorn that costs about 25 cents to make. Even drizzled with butter and a little salt, homemade popcorn is far cheaper than any microwave popcorn—and much better for us.

Popcorn also lends itself to many easy additions. These include dried cranberries, a tablespoon of apple or pumpkin pie spice, a few tablespoons of powdered sugar mixed with a little cocoa, freshly grated parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning, cinnamon and sugar, mini chocolate chips and—our current favorite—a few handfuls of mini marshmallows. Dropping the marshmallows on warm popcorn makes it taste like a popcorn ball, without any of the work.

Fruit and yogurt smoothies are another household favorite that meet the criteria of inexpensive and healthy fare. I scoop up past-their-prime bananas when my local grocery store discounts them to 25 cents a pound and store them in the freezer in their skins until I’m ready to use them.

When I need to prepare a quick snack, I defrost a banana long enough so that I can remove its skin. I drop it, along with a few spoonfuls of plain yogurt, into the blender. Sometimes I add other frozen fruit or fruit that needs to be used up, with a little honey or raw sugar. Smoothies are flexible enough that I’m generally able to use what I have on hand. Last time I made them, in fact, I even dropped in some spinach, which was stealthily camouflaged by the blueberries I added.

When my own ideas for snacks run low, I can turn to sites online for a wealth of healthful snack ideas. The Mayo Clinic site, for example, suggests stringing chunks of fruit on wooden skewers to make fruit kebabs. Parents magazine’s site touts cheese as an excellent snack, and suggests serving chunks of it to children on “skewers” of pretzel sticks. Or, if your children are reluctant to eat fruits and vegetables, Parents’ site recommends preparing zucchini bread or carrot muffins.

With a little imagination, snack time can be fun, delicious and budget-friendly for you and your children.

Warmth and better meals some rewards of cutting our food budget

Last summer, after my husband and I did some honest budget-crunching, I revealed that we were spending an average of $800 a month on food for our family of six, with approximately $200 of that amount going toward meals out. (Some months, we discovered, we spent close to a $1,000 on food. Ouch! )

At first when we realized what we were spending, we decided to cut our food budget in half. It was a drastic move that forced us to rethink how we were using our food dollars. We started using cash and reconsidered buying many of the items we thoughtlessly threw into our cart. While I’m glad we reached a new level of consciousness, we all ended up feeling deprived—and crabby.

We realized that, while we're capable of spending half as much as we once did, we honestly didn’t want to make such a sweeping change. Instead, we decided to slowly increase the amount we were spending on food, until we arrived at a level comfortable for us. As of now, we’ve determined that we’re comfortable with spending about $500 a month on groceries.

Two notable changes have taken place since our food budget revelation. First, by shopping more carefully, we have freed up cash to help us reach one of our financial goals, which was our original motivation for changing how we shopped. That goal was to install a source of backup heat, which we were able to accomplish in early fall. We now have a small gas stove in our living room, a place where we’ve been curling up and spending lots of time together on cold winter nights.

Second, as we’ve become more aware of how we’re spending, we have become more conscious of what we’re eating. We’re eating out less and preparing more satisfying and nutritious foods at home. We’ve also cut out most prepackaged foods, including things like frozen pizza and pudding cups, and we have switched to an almost all-organic diet.

Seeing our food budget through new eyes has definitely been a learning experience. Not only have I had to learn to shop differently, but I’ve also had to sharpen my skills in the kitchen. The first time I made cooked chocolate pudding from my mother’s old recipe, it was so runny that it was more like chocolate sauce than pudding.

To be honest, it’s taken some adjusting on the part of our children, as well. We don’t buy the super-sweet 8-ounce containers of yogurt or microwave popcorn anymore. But we do enjoy plain yogurt sweetened with a little honey, and popcorn made in a kettle on our cook stove. Finding suitable substitutes for the pricier convenience foods we once ate has helped with the transition. Getting my children more involved in meal preparation has helped, too.

Having my children work alongside me does take extra time (and patience), but when they’ve made an investment in what they’re preparing, I’ve found they’re much more likely to eat it. I suppose you could say buying and preparing wholesome food is the same for me: it takes time and a little bit of patience.

Still, even while I may be devoting more time to shopping or spending a few more minutes in the kitchen, we’ve enjoyed the tangible (our new gas stove) and intangible (increased energy, improved health) rewards in a way that makes this kind of conscious spending feel like a worthy pursuit.

Banish winter blues with flowers, friends and fun projects

When I pad down the stairs in the early morning light, l instinctively head to the thermostat. On this morning, it reads 11 below zero. I shiver and let the familiar sense of dread settle in, wondering how we’ll spend another day together indoors.

Faced with perpetual gray skies and freezing temperatures, I battle the impulse to hunker down and wait for winter to pass. It’s almost as if I am holding my breath, waiting for spring’s return. Despite these feelings, however, I know I don’t want to let one day blur into the next. I want to do my best to celebrate what I have right now.

In Calvin Coolidge’s words, “We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” So even if I can’t eradicate all my winter angst in a single swoop, I can make small, deliberate choices to find joy. It’s even possible to do so without breaking my budget.

One budget-friendly way to lift your spirits, according to research from Rutgers University, is with a bouquet of fresh flowers. According to a series of published reports from Professor Jeanette Haviland-Jones and her colleagues, flowers have an “immediate and long-term effect on emotional reactions and social behavior,” for both men and women. In other words, flowers are clinically proven to reduce stress and make people happier. Investing in a small supermarket bouquet can cost as little as $5, but it’s a simple and cost-effective way to improve your mood.

Similarly, making an effort to cultivate relationships is a low-cost way to beat the winter doldrums. Try gathering friends to share a meal or enjoy a game night together. You don’t have to put on a full spread for everyone; you can make a big pot of soup and ask guests to bring bread and dessert to share. Or you can gather after meal time and serve a light snack.

You can easily elevate simple, inexpensive fare to impressive party food. For example, a bowl of popcorn topped with crumbled bacon (and some of the pan drippings) makes a crowd-pleasing snack. Pair this with rich candy bar hot chocolate and gather around the fireplace or the coffee table for a game or good conversation.

Getting outside is another easy, inexpensive way to squeeze some joy out of winter – even if it’s difficult to find the motivation to do so. Take a brisk walk, go sledding, or build a snowman. When you’re engaged in physical activity, your brain is releasing endorphins. These chemical messengers reduce your perception of pain, boost your immune system, and generally promote physical and emotional well being.

Learning a new skill or reviving an old interest can have a similar positive effect on your mood, as I found out when I recently pulled out the pasta maker I inherited from my grandmother. The process of rolling out pasta dough, and then slowly turning the crank on the machine, was almost meditative. I stood in the kitchen and surveyed the long strands of pasta with great satisfaction.

If you’re looking for ways to banish winter doldrums, make a list of three things you’ve always wanted to do or that you haven’t been able to finish. Perhaps you have a craft or cleaning project that has gone undone; now may be the perfect time to finish that novel or reorganize your closet.

When you make it a point to enjoy what you have right now, you might find that, instead of the winter blues, you have a warm sense of satisfaction—and that’s something worth celebrating.

Comfort on the go makes traveling easier

I often joke that the key to parenting four young children is to always have food. A stick of gum or a piece of candy works wonders in the grocery store. A sucker is a little bit of magic when we’re on the homestretch of a long trip. A few crackers can stall before-lunch anarchy.

In other words, small comforts, made possible with just a little bit of planning, can make life easier, and generally more pleasant, for our busy family. Our wee ones are less apt to melt down, and we do a better job of keeping our budget intact when we’re prepared for outings. This is true whether we’re heading out for a day of running errands, or taking a trip across the state, such as the one we’re planning this holiday.

No matter what your personal situation, you’ll be better prepared to deal with the stress of holiday travel when you plan ahead. You’ll also save money when you take time to make some relatively small travel preparations. After all, who hasn’t been so desperate in an airport that you resort to eating a $6 pretzel, or been so famished that convenience store beef sticks, packaged alongside unrefrigerated cheese, suddenly look appealing?

While it’s impossible to account for every possible travel glitch—lost luggage or sketchy roads, for example—you can be ready to deal with two inevitable aspects of traveling: hunger and boredom. We’re able to deal with the former by picking up special food items in the days leading up to our trip. These include treats like juice boxes and crazy-long licorice ropes.

Just the sheer anticipation of something out of the ordinary helps our children deal with the seemingly endless prairie stretched out before us. And though the idea of a foot of licorice may not be appealing to you, you can plan for your own kind of travel indulgences.

For road travel, for example, you could brew your favorite coffee at home and take it along in an insulated Thermos. Or you can buy yourself candy you love, or pack your own boxed meal for an airline flight. Make homemade granola or simply stock up on your favorite energy bars. With preparations such as these, you’ll make a small upfront investment, but you’ll save money and feel more satisfied in the long run.

As for dealing with travel boredom, we have our own specialized coping mechanisms. Namely, these include new or favorite books and CDs, stickers, and pocket-size notebooks and crayons. When the situation gets really desperate, we break out press-on tattoos and the aforementioned suckers. We’ve even been known to stop at a park and brave subzero temperatures, just as a way to get everybody out of the car and break up the trip.

Again, press-on tattoos and wintery romps in the park probably won’t suit you, but getting a free download for your digital reader or checking out books or back issues of a magazine from the library could be an appropriate (and budget-friendly) substitute. An audio version of a book is yet another way you can pass the time during your travels – especially if the plot is a thriller guaranteed to keep you alert during long hours of driving. Or you could even write a few handwritten notes or finish a knitting or embroidery project, if these kinds of pursuits interest you.

Amid the busyness of the season, take time to pack a few comforts to pamper yourself and your family. A little planning goes a long way toward making us calmer and happier during stressful holiday travels.

Holiday Manifesto

I’ve confessed before that I have a knack for making things far more complicated than necessary. It’s a trait that often leaves me scrambling and my husband tearing out his hair. “Why can’t anything just be simple around here?” he’s been known to ask. Though I’ve balked at his question over the years, I have to admit that my husband is right: simple is better than complicated.

Yet it’s easy to make things complicated, without fully realizing I’m doing it. Perhaps this is no more the case than when it comes to the holidays. Holiday schedules fill up too quickly, the gift budget gets stretched, the dinner menu keeps growing and the days seem to morph into one another, sometimes becoming one frenetic blur.

To help keep us focused on the simple things we enjoy, we’ve revived our manifesto idea from last summer and created a Holiday Manifesto. Together, we’ve made a list that will help us to be intentional with our time and money and to savor the best of the season.

List suggestions for our manifesto run the gamut from traditional activities, such as sledding and making snow angels to more unique ideas that include making super hero ornaments and homemade peppermint ice cream. At the urging of our stick-obsessed four-year-old son, we plan to play broomball on a local pond. We’ll also work on building a snow fort and roast marshmallows in our backyard.

Like our summer list, the suggestions our children offered tended toward the simple (except making super hero ornaments, perhaps). And almost all of the ideas we compiled will cost virtually nothing.

When my husband suggested we add “have a slumber party by the gas stove” to the list, for example, the kids got so excited that I thought they’d jump out of their skin. Their excitement had me recalling my own childhood memories of camping out on the living room floor, of waking up and seeing the twinkling lights of our Christmas tree. Dragging out sleeping bags and sprawling out on the floor couldn’t be simpler, but it’s very likely that we’ll be making memories that last a lifetime.

My own contributions to our Holiday Manifesto include sending out Christmas cards (the first time I’ve done so in more than 11 years), making candy bar hot chocolate with real whipped cream, and decorating our home with natural elements we already have or that we can forage from our property.

Some other items that made the list include decorating cookies, singing Christmas carols, and baking an apple pie. Perhaps my favorite suggestion came from my six-year-old who thought we should make sleeping in one morning a priority. For parents who almost always get woken by the sound of four pairs of stampeding fit, sleeping in would indeed be a welcome treat.

The point of our list isn’t to put pressure on us, but to give us a visual reminder of how we really want to spend our time this holiday season. To make your own list, you might try taking stock of what you did last year. What did you truly enjoy? What activities seemed to cause chaos and stress? What did you want to do but didn’t?

With answers to these questions, you can craft a list that will help you to prioritize how you want to spend your time and your money this year.

Festive kids’ birthday parties start with colorful traditions

This is a busy month at our house; three of our four children were born in October. This means lots of celebrating and potentially lots of extra expenses. Our life is plenty complicated and our budget amply tight, even without hosting three birthday parties in one month. So we aim to keep things as simple as possible, while creating traditions and rituals to honor our children.

Drawing on tradition helps our children anticipate their birthday celebrations, giving them something to look forward to year after year. Our family’s traditions are designed to give our children a sense of stability and continuity. What’s more, creating traditions teaches them that, while gifts may be a part of their celebration, presents are not the focus of the entire day.

We’re still building these traditions, and we have plenty of room to embrace more as they grow older. Right now, the day of their birth starts with a special-request birthday breakfast, served on a special breakfast-in-bed tray. Anything goes, though they tend to stick to typical breakfast fare, with a few twists. Our soon-to-be 6-year-old asked for chocolate chip banana bread in the shape of a butterfly (easy enough to do by using a butterfly cookie cutter on an individual slice of bread) and not-from-concentrate juice, for example.

After breakfast, we’ll hang our birthday wreath on the front door (made with a straw form and 170 balloons—that haven’t been blown up) as a signal to all passersby that we’re celebrating a birthday.

As for the party itself, we let our children each choose a specific color theme that we weave into everything possible – tableware, clothing, gift wrap, decorations, the evening meal and cake. I wish I could say our children weren’t taken with licensed characters (everything from princesses to Spider-Man), but they are. We might include one or two character accessories, such as tattoos or party napkins. Otherwise, we draw on what we have on hand as much as possible and buy a few carefully chosen items.

Last year, my 2-year-old son requested an all-orange birthday, which worked particularly well because his birthday falls close to Halloween. I served orange Jell-O blocks and small cans of orange soda. We ate off orange plates and enjoyed cake frosted in the same hue. In fact, our children start talking about the shapes and colors of their cakes long before their birthdays arrive.

This is largely because my mother-in-law has introduced them to her tattered cake book, with bright pictures of dozens of different cakes. She used the same book to create cakes for her own children and now continues the tradition by making birthday cakes for her grandchildren. My mother, too, uses her talents to help build tradition; she creates a handmade card for each of our children every year. Lovingly rendered, these cards will become part of the archive of my children’s lives.

My daughters are sharing a rainbow-themed party, complete with a rainbow cake with fluffy marshmallow clouds, a bunting banner in rainbow hues, a giant rainbow-colored number “6” piñata, a fruit tray arranged in rainbow succession, and the requisite Jell-O.

There will be another party later in the month—for a boy who is smitten with red, and Volkswagen Beetles, and hitches. We’ll marry these three loves into what he has dubbed his “red slug bug hitch birthday.” His grandmothers, I’m sure, are already thinking about how they’ll render a red slug bug with a hitch into a cake and a card.

Imagination-laden parties offer my entire family the gifts of shared fun and warm memories. And that’s the best birthday present I can give any of my children.

Bargains are good but memories are priceless

Last weekend, I stopped at an auction, edging my way into a garage packed full of boxes and piled high with almost anything you can imagine—a vintage cherry pitter, crumbling hat boxes, dusty books, lamps, tools, picture frames, and linens. Auction novice that I am, I could feel my pulse quicken and heat rising in my face as I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other buyers, clutching my bidder number in my clammy hands.
I bid on, and won, a number of items, at prices that made me inwardly congratulate myself. It wasn’t until hours after I got home and unloaded my things that my buying high started to dissipate.
I didn’t overspend, and I scored some interesting and useful finds, but now I had four full boxes of stuff that I had to sort through, clean, and find a place to put. More than that, it was strange to think about how it might feel someday to have all of my belongings laid out on a table for strangers to scoop up at the highest bid. And the initial novelty of buying something new can fade so quickly that it’s almost shocking.
The auction helped to remind me (again) that ultimately, it’s not possessions, but experiences I add to my life that give me the most pleasure. The contrast—between the short-lived buzz of spending money and the lasting satisfaction of rich experiences—seems that much more poignant when I reflect on how I spent the rest of that weekend with my family.
I watched as my children darted around a free kids’ carnival, with a face-painting booth and enough jumpy-type toys to leave them laughing and breathless. Later, my 4-year-old son got to indulge one of his truest loves: balloons. He stared in awe as he watched ballooners set up for an early-morning launch, literally squirming with excitement. I have a dozen photographs that capture the pure joy he felt in being so close to something that lives large in his world.
Amazingly, he still had enough energy to join the rest of the family on an afternoon hike on a trail near our house. He and his siblings rambled along uneven paths and collected sticks, shiny rocks, and brilliant, red rose hips. The baby bumped along happily in her stroller. We all collapsed into our beds, enjoying the kind of rest that only comes from this kind of tired.
We hit yet another nature trail the next day, where we navigated a bridge so high it made my stomach lurch and where we followed the path to the sounds of rushing water. The image of my ever-determined 2-year-old negotiating the slippery side hill by himself is still fresh in my mind. So is the feeling I had when we rounded the last bend of the path to see a cascading waterfall. We were close enough to feel the misty spray, offering cool relief on a warm fall day.
I reflect on these moments with such detail because they are etched into my mind, because they are already powerful memories, and because I want to remind myself that what I truly want is to invest my time and money in relationships and experiences.
As poet Carl Sandburg once quipped, “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent . . .” How do you want to spend yours?

Summer’s budget-friendly wish list leaves warm memories

We’re still plugging away on our Summer Manifesto, the list our family made at the beginning of the summer that detailed what we wanted to accomplish during these fleeting days. I’m amazed by how the list shaped our days and helped us make priorities. I’m even more in awe of how this simple list gave us such a sense of joy and anticipation.
When I poked the tiny zinnia seeds in the garden this year, for example, I had my daughter alongside me, already talking about how we would pick the vibrant blooms and put them in a vase on her dresser. I always like to watch the garden grow and change, but this year we eagerly awaited the seedlings and watched as the buds turned into waves of riotous color: magenta and blazing orange, fire-engine red and dusty pink.
Before “pick zinnias” made it onto our list, I hesitated to pluck them from the garden because I never wanted to leave a gap in my flower beds. But this year, we have zinnias everywhere, including my bedside table and my daughter’s dresser. Even my boys wanted to pick their own flowers to have in their room. One small packet of seeds, costing just a few dollars, has brought the best kind of satisfaction.
Though the boys caught the enthusiasm of garden zinnias, they were even more tickled with the idea of a family squirt gun fight. When we were writing the list, my oldest son’s initial request was for “a war, with water and guns,” which I recall him saying ever so slowly and methodically. To fulfill this request, we picked up five guns in a single package for $5 and took them on one of our camping trips. When we busted out the guns, there were squeals of delight all around.
The duel went on for over an hour, while we dipped our guns in the river, bobbed and weaved, ran and giggled. It got even more interesting when my husband’s father brought out a pump-action squirt gun with a crazy, powerful spray. In fact, after having seen our manifesto posted on the mudroom wall, my in-laws brought kites along, too, to help us fulfill another item on our list. Luckily, they came across high quality kites that a teacher friend no longer wanted. It was fun to see other people become so invested in our summer goals.
We still have to squeeze in making red popsicles and pitching a tent in the backyard, having an outdoor tea party and going on a picnic with balloons before the last days of summer get away from us. The children behind these requests haven’t forgotten a thing on the list.
However, even if it turns out that we miss something, we know we have been able to savor the best of the season. It has occurred to us that there are just as many ways that we’d like to celebrate fall, so we’ll be making a new list soon. I already have a few contributions in mind that I’ll be certain to include in our Fall Manifesto.
These include making a pumpkin pie from scratch with the small golden fruit in our garden, jumping in a pile of leaves, visiting an apple orchard, and celebrating the first snow of the season with candy bar hot chocolate and popcorn.
What this manifesto-making has reminded me is that we can find pleasure and contentment in the simplest of things. With a little brainstorming, a piece of poster board, and permanent marker, we’re bound to continue making little moments into lasting memories.

Children never too young to learn value of frugality

Sometimes, living a frugal lifestyle means my husband and I go against the grain of modern society and its demands to have the shiniest, biggest and best of everything. We put value on making the most of our money and living within our means. We like simple pleasures that are richly rewarding but don’t break our budget. We live frugally, not as an end unto itself, but because our frugality allows us to have a life we desire. Frugality isn’t about deprivation (or about washing out plastic sandwich bags or reusing sheets of tinfoil). It’s about finding new, less expensive ways to get the things we need and afford more of the things we enjoy. It is a creative challenge.

We work hard to “walk the talk” of frugality with our children. We are teaching them to spend money wisely and carefully consider what they want. As our children learn thriftiness, they share the satisfaction and rewards of this kind of lifestyle. We have to consistently teach them how to live this way, so we’re dedicated to intentionally using our resources well.

For example, we have a 5-year-old daughter who desperately wants a scooter. I’ve seen them in retail stores for $30 to $50, but I’ve also seen them at rummage sales on occasion for half as much. We’ve told her that we will spend up to $20 on a scooter, so this means that she can contribute some of her own money, wait for a retail sale, or hold off buying a scooter until we stumble upon a secondhand one. Since we’ve set a budget, we don’t have to say “no” to the scooter when she asks. Instead, we can remind her to keep an eye out for what she wants at a price we can afford.

These types of conversations, when we discuss what we can and cannot afford, are common in our home. To us, it’s important to demonstrate to our children that we have a limited amount of money and that we need to make wise choices about how we spend it.

It’s also important to us that our children see how planning ahead can be a way to enjoy life and still keep a budget intact. Throughout the year, we pick up inexpensive gifts that we tuck away in our birthday box. Right now, we have cupcake kits, rolls of stickers, a floor puzzle, books, and sundry other items in our box. When one of our children receives an invitation to a birthday party, we can avoid an extra trip to the store and a last-minute scramble to buy a gift. We can choose a present from the box instead. And, by stocking up on gift wrap when it’s on sale, we also have paper and ribbons ready. Planning and buying ahead pays off for us with stress-free solutions when birthday parties roll around.

We’ve also discovered that planning fun activities close to home stretches our money and gives us many opportunities to spend family time together. In fact, we’ve found that the more often we’re away from home, the more we tend to spend. So we try to plan activities nearby that cost little or no money and that draw upon a child’s natural affinity for simple pleasures. We take picnics, blow bubbles, wade in the creek, go for walks, fly kites, and run through the sprinkler.

As they grow, we know our children’s likes and interests will change. We know they may want and need things more costly than a $20 scooter – but they don’t ever have to outgrow loving affordable, uncomplicated things.