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Perhaps it’s an encouraging sign that recession-conscious families are doing better this year. Also, the NRF says parents are shopping smarter too by taking advantage of sales, reusing old supplies, and shopping online and in bargain bins. How much did you spend on back-to-school stuff this year?From MomLogic. Are Your Kids Picky Eaters? Here’s a Book You Might Be Interested In
In particular, I like the general message of the book. Instead of tricking them or bribing them with dessert, Piho’s goal is to get parents to nurture a love of food in their kids. Rather than falling into the trap of catering to what they want (like feeding them separately from adults), encouraging an adventurous spirit in them will make them less-picky in the long term. Of course, while it’s easy to blame parenting for picky eaters, research shows that it’s more of a hereditary trait than one that’s nurtured. According to that data, food aversion is 78% genetic and 22% environmental. Huh. Do you think parenting influences picky eating?From Strollerderby.
The study is based on numbers from 11,800 husband-wife families and 3,360 single-parent households. While education costs have risen over the past four decades, declining costs for housing, food, and clothing have kept that number down. Of course, these numbers don’t include college tuition, which is a lot higher than it used to be, and more necessary than ever. If you send your kid to a private college, you’re looking at least another 120k on top of that 222k. How much do you think it’ll cost to raise your kids? From Strollerderby. Photo by theritters. 
Chewy Nut Bars I must’ve been really hungry, because I started searching around the web for cute cupcakes. Check out some of these examples.
Muppets! More after the jump.
Facebook Docs should be familiar to anyone who’s ever used Google Docs, but theoretically sharing documents and presentations will be as easy as sharing photos on Facebook. They also promise to have really slick integration with the newest version of Microsoft Office. There’s an overview video after the jump. (Admittedly, it’s a little on the dry side.)
I know I sound kind of like a Bittman huckster right now, but I can’t really explain how important this cookbook has been to me. I’ve played around with the app for a few minutes, and I’m pretty impressed so far. Every recipe from the book is included, and there are some handy features like an automated grocery list and built-in recipe timers. It’s $1.99 in the App Store, which is a lot cheaper than the physical copy. More info on the App Store.
It’s also not difficult to switch to non-toxic cleaning agents. (The hardest part is actually disposing of your old cleaners.) And all you really want is an all-purpose cleaner, glass cleaner, and a handful of others, depending on your needs. Do you use non-toxic cleaners? Why not?? For Tsh’s all-purpose cleaner recipe, check out Simple Mom. Photo by Jstove.
I don’t wake up early nearly as often as I would like. But when I do I like spending a few hours doing things the things I don’t always get around to, like making a big breakfast or drinking four cups of coffee and reading a book. Why do you like waking up early? Three more great reasons at SimpleMom. Photo by H4NUM4N. (By the way, there are a bajillion sunrise photos on Flickr.) |
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According to the National Retail Federation, parents spent an average of $606 on back-to-school clothes and supplies, an increase over last year’s average of $549.
Paula at Strollerderby reviewed a parenting book that caught my attention: How to Get Your Two-Year-Old to Eat Octopus: Raising Children Who Love To Eat Everything by Nancy Trigali Piho. 
According to a new study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the cost of raising kids is 22% more expensive than it was in the ’60s, when adjusted for inflation. It took an average of $182,857 from birth to age 17 in the ’60s; now it’s $222,360. Not gonna lie — I was under the impression that raising modern kids was way more expensive!
So you’re throwing a barbecue, because the weather is finally nice out and you have a grill and you like barbecuing because it’s delicious. So you invite a lot of friends over. But then you remember that some of them are VEGETARIANS! What does that mean? What do you do? Don’t worry, 
I wouldn’t really call the time I spend on Facebook “productive,” at least until I can take care of a real farm from the comfort of my profile page. But Facebook has just announced Microsoft Office integration, allowing you to create and share Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents online. Hey, now I at least have the option of being productive on Facebook.
Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything is my go-to, jack-of-all-trades cookbook. It more or less taught me the basics, and I find myself constantly consulting it for recipe ideas and tips. And now I don’t even have to lug that 1,000-page book around because it’s an iPhone app, including all 2,000 recipes and 400 how-to illustrations.
Spring is both the season for love and cleaning (or perhaps they are the same thing?), and while we could give you romantic advice, I’m sure we could much better prepare you for spring cleaning. Or at least link to some. Tsh of SimpleMom is doing an entire series of posts this week about spring cleaning, but we wanted to highlight one post about why you should use non-toxic cleaners. Here are four good reasons:
As the saying goes, “the early bird gets the worm.” But there are a lot of reasons to wake up early that don’t involve worms. Tsh at SimpleMom has four reasons why you should drag yourself out of bed. Here’s my favorite:
