I love a good deal.

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE A GOOD DEAL.  Yes people, that’s one more thing I will yell from the rooftops.  I. LOVE. A. GOOD. DEAL!!!!!!!!!!

I will brag about it, tell everyone I know about it, tell my family over and over about it, take photos of it, post on social media about it, and write about it.  I even have favorite stores that are solely based on the fact that I get good deals there.  And after I’m done shopping there I love comparing what I would have spent to what I actually spent, which is exactly what I did on Wednesday.

We got home from picking stuff up at an auction house that I love and I had armloads of clothing.  Not just any old clothing, but a lot of Carhart gear that would help us out at work, on our little farm, or with our 4H activities.  **DISCLAIMER:  I am in no way affiliated with Carhart or any other brand I might mention in this post  and they aren’t paying me or supplying me with product.  It just happens to be a brand that we have found to be good quality. ***    Did we NEED this stuff?  Well no, we didn’t need any of it, except for the work pants that Hubby is in need of.   Everything I picked up would have cost me well over $600 if I went to any other store. But I paid $142 for:

• two Gildan Mens heavy cotton t-shirts
• a Champion Men’s Powerblend Fleece Hoodie
• Carhart Womens Force Stretch Utility Leggings
• Carhart Midweight Mens Hoodie
• Carhart Mens Big and Tall Signature Long Sleeve t-shirt
• Carhart Womans Weathered Duck Wildwood Bib Overall
• Mens Firm Duck Double-Front Work Dungaree

I feel like I’m forgetting something, but nevertheless, I got some great deals.  I was shocked when I looked up the retail price on the leggings.  Over $100 a pair.  Hell, I would never have paid more than $25 for a pair of leggings.  And I can’t afford to spend more than $80/pair for work pants or almost $200 for overalls…or $60 for a hoodie just because it has the word Champion on it.    That’s just the way it is.

Now don’t get me wrong, these are very good quality items and will last longer than some other things that we could have gotten, but their regular prices are just outside our budget on a regular basis.   Thankfully I’m not shy about looking around for a deal.

We go to a discount grocery store all the time too and my son keeps reminding me of my savings from a trip we did a few weeks ago.  I spent about $30 and my savings was more than $120.  Not bad hey?  I know there are extreme couponers out there who spend pennies for big hauls and I’m not interested or able to spend that kind of time to try to get that kind of savings, but I am pretty jazzed when I can save 75%  or more on things that we use on a regular basis.

For now though, I don’t have to worry about my daughter being cold in the winter when she is working in the barns with the goats and cows, or ruining a good pair of snowpants.  Her leggings are rugged and great for warmer weather and they just fit her like a glove. (I also found a pink Carhart winter coat for her at a thrift store for $20 a few months ago!  Oh and I got a brand new hooded Carhart barn coat for my son over Christmas for $25!)   Hubby can finally throw out a pair of work pants that should have been replaced ages ago along with his old Carhart hoodie that is probably 6-7 years old and full of holes.   For $142, I call it a win.

Now to find a great deal on some home renovation materials.  Mama needs some stuff done around here in the next few months.

If you’re a bargain hunter too I’d love to hear about some of your great finds.

 

To write or not to write

I seem to get in a mood to write and then for whatever reason I step away from it for months and months and months…..

Lately there’s been more of a desire to write but I Just don’t know where to start some days. I have drafts of things saved but the flow of it seems off or the time isn’t right and so there it sits in the drafts folder gathering digital dust and feeling less and less relevant.

Today seems like a good time to update readers on what’s been going on in the past…year?!  Actually, I think it’s been more than a year.  Were to start.

Well, lets start with my darling little man.  He’s had a hell of a year…or two.

As a bit of back story with him, he was a November baby and right from the get go I was hesitant about sending him to school.  He would be one of the youngest in his class ALWAYS and how would he deal with that.  Honestly, he’s a mamas boy (in a good way) and in the end the only reason I let him go to school when I did was because I knew his teacher and had a good relationship with her.

So off he went to school.  Excited to take the bus with his sister and pick out his lunches.  He would come home at the end of the day and was still my happy go lucky little boy.  There were no issues and he was thriving until he hit grade 3.   There was nothing serious that year but I could tell he was starting to struggle a bit.  His teacher talked to us about him getting distracted in class so we made a plan for him when that happens and things were ok again.

The next year things were a bit more serious and this is when the violence started.  A few kids began to notice his frustration in class and would taunt him at first.  Then that progressed into pushing him into lockers and walls in the hallway, always when there were no teachers around to see it happening. It got worse on the playground.  I didn’t find out about the violence until months after it started. Even though we asked him about school every day, he waited so long to tell us what was happening.  We tried to go through the proper channels and work it out that way.

It didn’t go well!

I contacted the school board and asked for help.  We were assured that this is not something that should be tolerated and it would be dealt with.  It took more than a month to finally get a meeting and then 9 people from the school and school board sat in a conference room with me and my husband blaming us and our son for his outbursts when he was being physically assaulted.

How were we supposed to process this?  How would this environment ever change enough so that it would be a safe place for our son or other kids who were being bullied?  With these people running things, it would never change.  And so the thing that had to change was how our son was getting his education.

HOMESCHOOL

Before his grade 5 year was finished I I took him out of school and sent paperwork off to the NS Department of Education registering him for homeschooling.  It was like a weight was lifted off my chest.  I could breathe again.  I can’t even imagine how much of a relief it was for my son when he realized he wouldn’t have to go back into that school to be assaulted or taunted by these kids ever again.  Even sending him to another school wasn’t an option at that point.  He had been so on edge and so tightly wound on a daily basis that he couldn’t deal with even the smallest trigger.  So we spent several weeks just hanging out and having fun.  No stress, no schedules.  It was glorious.

I did worry a bit over the summer how we were going to make sure he was still learning things he should, according to dept of ed guidelines, but then I realized we can do these things when and where we wanted to.  AND how we wanted to.  If I wanted to teach him about clouds or erosion, or wind, we could head to the beach and play and talk and have fun.  I didn’t have to sit him at the dining room table with a book or computer and lecture him on these things.  If I wanted to work on percentages in math we could go shopping and talk about taxes and discounts.    When it’s time to talk about fractions we do baking or woodworking.  Every time we care for our animals we talk about biology When grow food we talk about what nutrients and environmental science.  A fishing trip becomes a lesson in erosion.  Even renovations around the house become a lesson in geometry.

In the past several months I’ve seen my stressed out child start to relax and become the funny crazy boy he had been.  We’ve both learned a lot since we started this homeschool journey and my only regret is that we didn’t start sooner.   The past few years has provided a lot of hard lessons for all of us.

We have connected with a local homeschool group and being a part of a group of like minded people is more than refreshing, it’s validating.  The group meets up at least once a week and it’s been a great chance for us to get to know some other homeschoolers in the area.  There are kids there from infants to teenagers and aside from when we started going to our new church, we have never been welcomed so warmly to a group before.  The kids all play together and if there is a disagreement they work it out themselves by talking about the problem and coming up with a solution.   There is a great love of NERF guns with the older kids and they have even devised a system of how to share them equally during their time together.   The best part of this group is that no one is questioning weather or not the kids are being socialized enough.  The first time I mentioned that as a pet peeve, I was regaled with a dozen stories from other parents experiences with this topic.  We all had a great laugh about what most people think that means.   For heaven sakes we are homeschooling the kids, not locking them in closets!

I love this life though, and I don’t think I want to change too much about it!