September Goals

This month I set two goals for myself. They are both difficult, but if I can pull them off, I think it will really help out our home.

1. No Sugar and 2. No spending.

The no spending one has a few really basic rules. 

1) Food, gas, and bills are fine.

2) Everything else can wait.

Unfortunately, I lost my memory card in Utah and I didn't buy a new one, so blog posts aren't going to have any photos. :( Oh well. On the upside, this should be the easier goal of the two. Actually the no spend is a small incentive for me not to buy any junk food. It will save me more money at the end of the month. (I'm aiming for $500ish of spending? I'm really just trying to save as much as possible, so I can reevaluate my half of the budget.)  

The no sugar goal I think is going to kill me. Yesterday was the longest day of my life. My energy levels were all over the place. As a mom, I guess I reach for the giant costco bag of chocolate chips a few too many times, because I'm definitely feeling the withdraws. I actually tried going off sugar last month and I didn't even make it to 48 hours. Oops. This time though I'm doing a lot better. It's a really weird thing though to define what's going off sugar. When I google it people have so many different definitions of what no sugar is. For some people, it's no fruits. Others it's no fruit or carbs. Some people it means no desserts. There are so many different opinions and I actually didn't define it for me before I started. I thought it would be pretty straight forward, but instead it's lead to a few head scratching moments. 

Like muffins. I love muffins. They are tasty and easy to make. I also know that they almost have as much sugar as a cupcake. Cupcakes do count as sugar, but do muffins? Bread isn't too different from a muffin, but I had already decided that carbs are definitely not disappearing from my life. We live naturally a bit more vegetarian and while carbs aren't a huge part of our diet, they definitely have a presence.  So where do I draw the line? 

I've kind of decided that if it's from a box I don't care, since I make most of what we eat from scratch. The things I actually buy in boxes are things that shave off hours of my time - like pasta, bread, and crackers. Fruit I also think is okay. I haven't had any yet, since the fruit in our kitchen isn't ripe. I always feel weird cutting out an entire food group from my diet. It makes me uncomfortable. 

Matt just informed me that the tiny bit of maple syrup I poured on my oatmeal was all sugar. Oops. I guess I really do need to make guidelines. Maple syrup comes from a tree (we pay extra for that kind). It's natural. It can't be that bad right? I guess we better trek over the library and find out.

Some questions about food

I'm starting to get in the swing of things with this new job. It only took a month. :) But I'm watching a two month old baby in my home every morning, so for now I have 2 small people in my home for half of the day. In a month, I'll have him full time.

 It's really different having them both. I forgot how demanding newborns are on my time, and Madeleine wants my attention still, so juggling them both has been a learning curve. Over the last week though I started getting into a routine. :) He comes usually asleep. Madeleine plays with me. At 10, he wakes up and plays with us. 11, Madeleine goes down for nap, then I feed him and he goes to sleep until his mom picks him up. 

Anyway, one of the big perks of having a little one in the house is more time to read and watch movies. I read two new books this month, Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson and We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler this month. They were both excellent reads, and I highly recommend them both.

As far as movies...I've watched plenty, but this last week I've been going through all of Amazon's food documentaries. Documentaries is a weird genre to begin with, since they are usually extremely biased. Ex. Matt and I watched one at the beginning of the month about the history of Britain's aerospace engineering...and we were chuckling about which planes they selected to make England look the best.

But back to the food documentaries, these are kind of disturbing and I can't get enough of them. For starters, I find any footage of animals being killed horrifying, but add the evil corporation stuff too and I am pretty upset by the end of the movie. The weird thing is I watch these documentaries already knowing a lot of what they are presenting. I know how bad animals are treated, and yet I consciously still eat meat. I know a lot of the organic food research. I've seen people struggle with feeding their families. Yet, I keep watching them, and for some reason...now it's actually changing a bit how I buy food.

For example, I'm making more of an effort to buy locally grown. We already eat vegetarian every other day. I'm passionately working on my garden. (We have small tomatoes and strawberries growing!) And just
yesterday I was making buttermilk pancakes, and on my buttermilk it said, "Go to upstatefarms.com for more information." So I did! And I found out about some farmers. I just want to add that it wasn't organic buttermilk, yet it was from grass fed cows that were treated humanely. Just saying.


The thing is I still have a lot of questions that these documentaries are missing. So if you know any of the answers...let me know. :) If not, I'm going to be researching a lot.

My list of questions
 I'm still not sure about all the farming companies being evil. Are there some good big guys right? They mentioned them during in this organic film. There are organic food being grown by very large corporate farms. Why does no one really talk about them?

GMOs aren't all evil right? That seems like a very broad term.

How is non-organic broccoli grown? All of the documentaries talk about soy, wheat and corn being evil, yet there is little mentioned about non-organic vegetable farms. This is a huge gap for me.
 
Are all other non-organic food being flown from other countries?

Should I be concerned that it comes from other countries? t sounds like many other countries have stricter rules on pesticides and GMOs than our country.

Organic doesn't equal humane animal treatment right? That seems to be a quiet secret.

Anyway, this is something that I'm looking into a lot. I've already decided that we aren't eating organic in our family. I think with our limited budget that it's better that we are eating more fruits and vegetables right now, than only one or two organic fruits or vegetables. I'll let you know what I find though as I research. You can be it will be done during nap times.

Cherry Grove Farm

This weekend we got to go on a tour to Cherry Grove farm. 

It's a local organic farm about 5 miles away from us.

Their main income comes from the cheese they make,

but they also sell eggs, pork, and some milk.

The tour started out with the tiniest of the cows.

When Matt saw this one he said that she looked like a cross between a dear and a cow.

She was so small and dainty compared to the huge cows in Logan, Utah and Texas

that we've seen in the last 2 months.

She's a little Jersey cow.

She decided she wanted to check at the tiny human, 

and trotted over to say hi.

Since she was part of the "petting zoo," Matt let Madeleine gently pet her.

Madeleine squealed when she got to touch the cow's wet nose.

Thankfully, she didn't try to bite the nose either.

The baby cows don't make the milk though.

Here is the heard of mama cows.

They still look pretty cute even when they are all grown up.

42 of them get milked twice a day, and each produces about 6 gallons.

That's just over 500 gallons of milk a day.

And this is the heard of teenagers.

They were all about 3 feet tall.

They all came up to the fence to look at us. 

They had a big barn where they milked the cows.

It was really neat to learn about how this farm works.

We saw how they milked the cows and then learned about the machinery to cool to the right temperature for making cheese.

While we were in there, 

the farmer also explained how they were an organic farm and different ways that they try to use everything that they make.

Apparently it pays off, because the farm is completely self-sufficient.

which is impressive.

As we left the milking area, I looked up and saw a bag of water with pennies in it.

I've seen this several times on pinterest.

It's supposed to keep flies out of the barn.

I was skeptical when I saw this on pinterest and after seeing the barn, 

I'd say at best it has little effect.

There were still tons of flies in the barn 

(so many that some of the girls wouldn't go in the barn),

but the farmer said the bags were working.

At the very end, we got to go inside the store and try some of their cheese.

It was SO good. 

I love the toma cheese and Matt really like the rosedale.

It was delicious, and our favorite part of the tour.

They offer cheese making classes too,

so maybe Matt and I will have to do that while we are out here.

It was a fun experience (even though we were living in a farm area 2 weeks ago), 

and I'm so glad that Princeton arranged the whole thing.

It was a great weekend activity for us.

"Gargoyles"

Tiny and I went on a tour on campus to learn about the different gargoyles on campus. 

I cannot say enough good things about this campus.

It is so beautiful, and this free tour was absolutely amazing!

Since I now strongly believe everyone who likes random things like this should experience this tour,

I'm going to take you on my own version of it.

It might not have quite as many details (like the names of most of the buildings), 

but hopefully you can enjoy some of the beauty of Princeton campus with me. :)

So for starts, I'm going to give you a disclaimer...

none of these are actually gargoyles.

I know. I was slightly thrown off by that, but you see a gargoyle is 

"A grotesque carved human or animal face or figure projecting from the gutter of a building, typically acting as a water spout."

None of these have water coming out.

Kind of lame, but whatever. These carvings are amazing.

(By the way, if you click on the photos, they should get bigger)

So lets get started at the Pyne building named after Moses Pyne.

It is partly because of him that there are gargoyles all over campus.

He liked the gothic look and when he donated tons of money to campus,

he told that them that he would like some gothic architecture on campus.

Pyne Building Gargoyles

The middle gargoyle on this build is a person blindfolded reading a book.

The tour guide ask us what it meant, and one of the little boys said,

"Because, you know, sometimes I read books and I don't know anything that I read."

He basically got it right.

It's supposed to symbolize how Princeton tries to open "the eyes of those who seek understanding and casting aside the obstructions of prejudice."

The two characters on either side are supposed to represent the architects that built these buildings. Despite the skill level required to make these buildings, Princeton does not know who actually made and designed many of these buildings.

(Which I think is really sad)

Throughout campus there are many different animals reading books.

Apparently near this guy, there is Mother Goose reading a book!

I couldn't find her, but I sure thought he was cute.

That is one thing I really loved about this tour, many of the gargoyles are fun!

Like this guy is one of the more popular ones.

He's a little monkey holding a camera.

The monkey gargoyles (and there is quite a few of them) represent the undergraduates.

In the one above, the monkeys are attacking a tiger's head (tiger is Princeton's mascot).

This is at the Woodrow Wilson building, who was actually president of Princeton for a while (oh and the US).

The guide said that he just imagined that as Woodrow Wilson prepared for his political campaign while he was a professor that he probably often felt like the "monkeys" were distracting him.

I love that visual image in my mind.

Student gargoyles show up in other places too.

Back in the day Princeton was pretty good at football apparently,

so they celebrated by putting this football player up.

(I think this was on the old gym?)

Here's another example of playful gargoyles was these two on the geology building.

Aren't they cute?  I think they were my favorite.

They are two little pterodactyls. 

This guy was on the corner of the the same building.

And guess what?

They actually know who made some of these.

The same guy who later carved Mt. Rushmore.

Pretty cool, eh?

Some of the other buildings are similarly decorated with hints of what is/was taught in there.

At the old science building, Mr. Benjamin Franklin was gargolye-fied. 

I guess they felt a bit bad for making him look weird, because there was a full size statue of him on the building too.

One thing thing I thought was neat is that they had a Yale bulldog on the library.

Apparently one of the designers was from Yale (they don't know who) and paid tribute to his school by putting this guy there. 

Don't worry though...Princeton's Tiger way out numbers the other animals.

We're just about done..so here is one of my favorites.

This little bat I found on the side of the cathedral.

Again, so cute!

The artwork on the cathedral is amazing.

Here is an arch on it. 

If you look right under the branch, there is a dragon on the arch.

 It supposed to represent the Legend of La Gargouille.

It's a cool legend about how gargoyles started.

And while you look for it, you should check out the rest of the arch too. 

Here's a cheat sheet they gave us of sketching of several the different gargoyles.

Well, that's all folks!

I hope you enjoyed it, because I'm planning on more of these.

I'd love feed back on it, so I could make other ones more interesting.

Love from Princeton,

Michele

The Icebreaker

Has anyone heard of toastmasters?

Yes, no, maybe so?

According to Wikipedia it is... 

a nonprofit educational organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members improve their communication, public speaking, and leadership skills.

Basically, it's a club to help public speaking skills. You have different workbooks you go through and when you finish different goals, they send your workplace a certificate saying what you have accomplished. (Apparently you can get raises and stuff for doing this, pretty cool right?) They also help you work on being interesting, using visual aids, proper use of notes, body language, etc. while you speak. It's actually really cool. They hold speech competitions on area, regional, national, and international levels, and on top of that, they are really nice and encouraging. 

So anyway, I joined a few weeks ago, and on Tuesday I gave my first speech. I was so nervous, even though all I had to do was give a 4-6 min speech on myself. The lady that evaluated my speech was very nice and helpful. I'm so glad that one is over. :)

My speech was on being a princess, and afterwards I got this ribbon!

It is an awesome book mark