Happy Halloween!

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

If your children are going out Trick or Treating tonight, please keep these safety hints in mind:

1) Plan costumes that are bright and reflective.  Make certain that costumes are short enough to prevent tripping, entanglement, or contact with flame.

2) Consider adding reflective tape or striping to costumes and trick or treat bags to increase visibility.

3) Because masks can block eyesight, consider non-toxic facepaint and decorative hats.  Hats should fit securely to keep them from falling over the eyes.

4) If a sword, cane, or stick is part of your child's costume, make sure it is not too sharp or too long.

5) Have a flashlight for all children and their adult escorts.

6) Do not use decorative contact lenses without an eye exam and a prescription from an eye care professional.   Decorative lenses will be sold with the words "No need to see an eye specialist" on the label.  These lenses can cause pain, inflammation, and serious eye disorders and infections which can lead to permanent vision loss.

7) A parent or responsible adult should accompany children

8) Only go to homes with the porch light on.  NEVER enter a home or car for a treat.

9) Stay in a group when Trick or Treating!!

10) Adults in the group should have cell phones.

source:http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/news-features-and-safety-tips/Pages/Halloween-Safety-Tips.aspx

Allergies and Halloween

Yesterday, I mentioned that my daughter and husband both have some pretty severe food allergies.  My husband grew up in an age when food allergies were largely ignored, or considered to be a "choice" or that he was a "picky eater".  My daughter has had issues throughout school, and has had to be vigilant and her own advocate since she started school, as many of her teachers and the cafeteria staff thought she was just being "picky".

Yep, the joys of having a milk allergy.  It doesn't get the press that peanut allergies do, but it is every bit as dangerous to her and her well being. 

Anyway, how do you safely celebrate Halloween when your child has food allergies without sucking the joy out of the occasion for every parent, child, and teacher around you?

It's all a matter of how vigilant you are willing to be.

Most schools no longer have Halloween Parties.  When my kids were in elementary school, they still did.  I made arrangements with my daughter's teachers to be in charge of snacks for all of the parties.  I got together with another mom who's child had peanut allergies.  Between us, we decided the most stress free way for us to handle this was to ask for a cash donation - at that time, it was $1/child, and we went out and bought the allergy free goodies ourselves.  We happily bought fresh pressed cider, apples, and brought in popcorn and other safe treats for our kids.   We had a blast shopping and cooking together over the years!  Oh, the year we got a donation of apple cider and pumpkin donuts (dairy and nut free) from one of the local bakeries was amazing!

Anyway, I found a list on the Food Allergy Research and Education Blog about how to have a safe Halloween when your child has food allergies.
http://blog.foodallergy.org/?s=how+to+have+a+safe+halloween.

Here is their list:

• Stock up on safe treats or inexpensive trinkets/toys to trade for any unsafe candies your child might receive while trick-or-treating. You can also use sorting through your child’s candy as an opportunity to teach him or her about hidden allergens and reading labels.
• Enforce a “no eating while trick-or-treating” rule, so that you have time to review all food labels.
• Avoid candy and treats that do not have an ingredient label.
• Always have an epinephrine auto-injector available, if prescribed.
• Keep in mind that the mini-size, fun-size, or bite-size version of candy may contain different ingredients than their full-size counterparts. Make no assumptions, and read all labels carefully.
• Keep the emphasis on the fun, rather than the candy.
• Consider starting a tradition by allowing their kids to leave their unsafe candies out for the “Good Witch” to collect and leave behind small gifts and safe treats.
• Consider making small and safe “goody bags” for neighbors to give to your child. Deliver the bags in advance and describe your child’s costume to your neighbors. Encourage your child to trick-or-treat at the houses in which you’ve delivered the bags.
• Consider skipping trick-or-treating, and have a Halloween party instead, featuring safe and delicious treats. Or, skip the treats altogether by replacing them with other fun Halloween toys, games, or party favors.
• Remember that a candy that has been safe for your child in the past may now have different ingredients. Read the label, every time.

Have a fun and safe Halloween!

Allergy Free Treats

My daughter and husband have pretty serious food allergies to milk and chocolate.  For this reason, I've always given out allergy free treats for Halloween.  (Non-Food treats)

source: http://preview.tinyurl.com/p4t8gcs

Our house has always been the "interesting" house.  While I never went so far as to hand out toothbrushes and toothpaste, (I left that to the dentist who lives next door), or free passes to the gym (The personal trainer down the street), I have always handed out something a little bit different.

I would hit up the Back to School sales and put together a bundle of stuff for kids. Anything I had left over at the end of the night was always donated to our local homeless shelter the following weekend.

You must understand - I begin searching for these goodies the day after Halloween.  I have my storage boxes of Halloween stuff in the basement.  As I find goodies on sale, I pick them up and add them to the box.  I usually hand out pencils.  Sometimes, if I find an amazing deal on crayons or funky pens or those little packs of play dough, I'll hand those out.  I've found cute little erasers that I've held onto for an entire year. They were big and chunky, and they had some fun shapes to them.  Another year, we had a stash of books from cereal boxes that I handed out.  (The older kids who roamed through got the pencils, pens, and erasers that year.)

Use your imagination.  Kids enjoy candy, I know.  BUT, other treats are also fun to find in the trick or treat bags.  A few years back, one of our neighbors gave out packets of pumpkin seeds!

In our community, we get candy overload.  Almost every church holds a Harvest Festival or Trunk or Treating.  The high school's homecoming game and parade are held on Halloween.  The kids on the floats throw candy to the little kids, and then the little kids go Trick or Treating.  So much candy!

In light of the number of food allergies that are out there, Food Allergy Research and Education, FARE for short, has been asking for a new tradition to begin.  An allergy free tradition.  http://www.foodallergy.org/teal-pumpkin-project#.VFDmbRYT1OI

If you are handing out allergy free treats, paint a pumpkin teal and place it out in front of your house, along with a free FARE printable sign so that parents and children know that you have allergy free treats to hand out.

What a great way to keep Halloween fun for everyone!


*The teal pumpkin picture above was taken from this post on the Michigan Radio website: http://michiganradio.org/post/kids-food-allergies-will-be-looking-teal-pumpkins-halloween.
The Tiny URL above will take you directly to their website, but I wanted to make certain that I gave them full credit! 

Spreadsheet

So, after years of keeping a haphazard composition notebook where I tracked expenses, I have decided to keep a spreadsheet of our expenses.

I've been working on this for the past week.  As of right now, it looks a lot like our composition notebook, and I've got much of the same details in the spreadsheet that I had in the composition book.

Here is a quick glance at some parts of my spreadsheet as it stands right now:

 This is the expenses portion of the spreadsheet.  I have listed the bills, in order down the side of the page.  The November expenses will go in this column.  We do have dairy delivered to our door weekly- hence the separate listings for milk by week.  Each week will be added in as a separate column.

But then, we get to the groceries column.  How do I do this?  I end up at the grocery store every few days.  Years ago, I used to go to the store once a month.  It's been a while since I've done that.  So, I have a column to track just the expenses by date.

That leads me to this:  one giant column of nothing but the grocery expenses by date and by the amount.  I will keep a running total as the month goes on, and hopefully, I'll be a little bit better able to track where the money is going out.

I've added a separate table just for our mortgage.  If you remember,  one of my goals this year was to get out of debt.  That included paying off our mortgage.  While we won't get the mortgage paid off this year- or next - I really enjoy watching the bottom line on the mortgage sink.  So, I've created a table with the balance, and deductions for the payments that we make.  (We pay our mortgage twice a month, on each of husbands' paydays.)


Finally, I am working on setting up the budget for our Christmas presents.  I have the initial table set up.  I'm still working out how much I am going to spend.  Those are some numbers that I really do need to run before I set up the budget - especially considering that I still will have some tuition and books that I will have to pay for come January!

I am beginning to work on the spreadsheet for tuition and books for each one of the kids.  I've got to figure out how to budget that and how much money I need to be setting aside in advance.  Again, I'm going to have to play a numbers game.  Time to drag out the calculator!

How do you keep track of your monthly expenses?