All posts by Megan Alton

air conditioning, carbon footprint, heat, save money, summer

Hot Child In The City

August 22, 2011 Megan Alton

Kids may be returning to school this week, but summer is making her presence known in Boise with temperatures in the high 90’s and it’s predicted to reach 100 degrees later this week. It’s HOT! Since we have an old house, there isn’t any air conditioning built in. If we were really desperate we could make some window units work, but after many summers in the high desert we’ve learned how to beat the heat, save some $$$ and lower our carbon footprint just a little. Here’s how we do it, so if you’re feeling adventurous you can try to stay cool on a budget too:

Shut all the windows and blinds during the day to keep the sun/heat out and any cool air in
Open your windows at night and work those fans to get maximum air flow during the coolest part of the night
Turn off appliances, computers and televisions while they’re not it use. I found that our computer and tv monitors put off enough heat to warm your hands in the winter.
During the hottest part of the day be still, like a lizard
Sometimes, it’s nicer in the shade of a tree during the hot part of the day and then your body heat isn’t heating the house
Get a portable evaporative cooler aka “swamp cooler”
When you really need to beat the heat and get out of the house, take a dip in the kiddie pool.

Cherish the heat while you can (unless you live on the coast and it’s not sunny until September!) soon the leaves will be dropping, temperatures chilling and the holidays will be upon us. Happy summer my fellow lizards!

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7

August 11, 2011 Megan Alton

Seven months ago, this week, we brought home a newborn baby boy. Well, he just keeps getting bigger! Here’s a smorgasbord of photos from the last week.

To beat the summer heat we spend the late afternoons in our front yard in the shade of our maple tree. I also found the rapid photo button on my camera and caught some interesting faces.

Who needs an African safari when you can watch the cats bask in the front yard?

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of spending some quality time with Porter, he’s a talker and often a yeller.

Thanks to Chelsea’s sister, Lissa, for the great bubble idea. Porter was entertained, or at least very curious for at least 20 minutes, and it helped clean off the tray, BONUS! He’s sticking out his tongue just like his dad, very focused.

Like I said, a yeller.

Then Olive came along. These day’s kitties are always the most interesting thing around.

That’s my boy!

He got me.

Red triangle, meet blue star.

Here’s a video of Misty getting some serious attention from Porter. She’s the only kitty that will come near him these days because his love is so, well, intense. Sorry the video is so dark, had to work with what I had in that moment.

challenger school, gardening, high country gardens, teacher, xeric garden

Garden: Revolution

August 8, 2011 Megan Alton 1 Comment

Before I really get into the gardening part of this post, let me give you a little background as to why I’m so pumped up about working on our ever expanding garden. As most of you know, before I was Porter’s mom I was a teacher at Challenger School. For me, teaching is a calling. It is what I was born to do and it comes very very easily. As someone who wasn’t an especially good student, I’m a great teacher. I knew I wanted to be a teacher from when I was in second grade, and moving to Idaho allowed me to fulfill that destiny.

I worked at Challenger for almost 5 school years. I taught preschool 3 year olds through first grade. The majority of my teaching was with kindergarteners. There were many things I loved about teaching but the top few reasons were:

while the routine stayed the same, everyday is different
I relate really well with young children
I love to sing and be silly
watching children learn to read, write and explore their growing world is an incredibly satisfying and rewarding experience

I stopped teaching in November 2010, not expecting that I would be pregnant for another 2.5 months. It was a glorious time to reflect on my past career and prepare for my next calling as Porter’s mom, which I embraced whole heartedly.

Since finishing at Challenger I have been asked by many people, in the last 9 months, if I missed working. My response was always no. I certainly couldn’t leave my new baby with anyone other than family, of which there is non in Idaho. I still wouldn’t change my answer today. I love getting to be with my baby to watch him grow and make sure that he receives the kind of attention that I think he deserves at this young age.

My friend Chelsea has recently taken a job teaching preschool at Challenger, and today is her first day of training. Up until today I was always sure that I wouldn’t miss working, but to my surprise I was wrong. Knowing that today is the first day for all of my co-teachers, and I’m not there, makes my heart ache in a way that I hadn’t expected. I’m realizing as the day progresses that I miss the anticipation of the new school year, the preparation, camaraderie and the feeling of beginning the school year anew. I think I am mourning the end of a really good relationship. One that I left to begin another amazing relationship, but it’s not until now that I realize how much I miss teaching.

Thankfully, there are a few things that are helping me improve my mood today. One is that I get to spend my days (and nights) with this cool cat,

Ready for our morning stroll to the store and to grab a latte. Gotta protect those baby blues!

Another is the knowledge that I will have many opportunities to go back to teaching once my kid(s) are older. It’s a profession that isn’t going anywhere. The final thing that is helping me move forward is a large project that has been ongoing since we bought our house 6 years ago, and that is the improvement of our large and majorly unlanscaped backyard. It is this project that gives me something to look forward to, and gives me the opportunity to dig my hands into the earth and make something grow. Not unlike teaching, watching a garden move from dry, parched earth to a fecund oasis is heart warming.

When we bought our home in Boise there was no landscaping and the two large trees in the front yard were dying and had to be removed. This left us with close to 1/4 acre of weeds, dirt and some crazy grass that grows in the spring and fall when it rains. For my birthday about 4 years ago I received a pre-designed low water garden from High Country Gardens. This was a great gift and it gave life to our sad front yard.

Our house when we first bought it. Those two trees had to be taken down immediately because they were threatening to fall on our house or our neighbors houses.

After getting most of the roots from the old trees removed we planted a Norwegian Maple in their place. As you can see, there was dead grass and weeds as a ground cover. Not as pretty as it could be in my opinion.

We also planted 3 hydrangeas in the planter directly in front of the house. They fit in the back seat of the Corolla.

This is what they look like today. They are taller than me and touch from side to side.

They bloom from mid-late summer when most of the other plants are finished blossoming.

The blooms start as a greenish white and in the fall they turn a lovely shade of light pink.

The next step was to put in our low water garden and we planted a plum tree on the left.

You can hardly see them, but all the plants are in the ground.

This is the view from the front step right before we mulched all the baby plants.

The garden is really at it’s most beautiful in the spring.

View from the front step in the spring. You can see the Thyme Lawn is in full bloom too. Follow the link for the post I did on this lawn specifically in It’s About Thyme.

“Moonshine” Yarrow

Rudbeckia

Pink Yarrow

A volunteer wildflower

Juniper berries, gin and tonic anyone?

This is what my yard looks like today, mid summer (mostly) weeded, dead headed and cut back. I’m hoping for second blooms on a lot of my plants when the temperature cools a bit.

It is because of the success of my front yard that I have high hopes for our backyard, which looks like this:

That’s our above ground pool. It cost $7.99, what a deal!

I also have plans to work on my square foot garden next spring. It will work!

We planted this maple in the backyard at the same time as the one in the front. It’s fall colors are beautiful.

We also planted this Russian Sage at the end of the cement patio. We’ll have more of this, please.

This is the view from the back of the yard towards the house. As you can see we have a lot of yard space and very little done. Here is the plan for the backyard,

With the exception of having a professional come to scrape off the grass and level the land we are going to install the garden ourselves. It’s going to be very water wise, including the Buffalo Grass lawn that will hopefully be installed next spring. This fall we will be installing the butterfly bushes around the back edges, more Russian Sage in the middle of the yard and a pre-planned Xeric Aroma Garden from High Country Gardens to the right of the grass area. I have high hopes for next summer when my family comes out to celebrate my mom’s birthday in July. It probably won’t be complete, but there should be major transformation by then. While my life as a teacher is on hold for a few years, stay tuned to find out how my life as a home gardener pans out!

And for those of you who made it to the end of this post, I reward you with these:

Porter looking like a Wilson baby…

…and 30 seconds later he looks like an Alton baby.

I’m under attack!

Gramma Mikie showing Porter her toes, pretty flexible for a gramma!

He’s smitten with her.

Coming soon: crawling.

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Back In Town

August 5, 2011 Megan Alton

Wow, time flies! We’ve been busy lately and my family came for a visit at the end of July. This makes for poor blogging habits on my part. Here are some pics to tide you over until an appropriate post can be written.

Porter managed to pull himself up to a squat this week. He then proceeded to beaver chew the table with his two new bottom teeth.

All gussied up for my mom’s birthday dinner at Cottonwood Grille.

Howler monkey status has resumed.

Introverted? Stranger danger? I don’t think so. At Baby and Me we had a guest speaker talking about baby sign language. Porter rolled right to the front and center, threw his leg up on hers and made himself at home for the rest of the hour. He’s going to be top of the class if he keeps this up.

AdSense, Amazon Associates Program, employment, jobs

Shake That Money Maker

July 16, 2011 Megan Alton

As I said in my first post ever, I wear many hats, it’s been this way since I started school as a wee child. Right now my main hat is being a stay at home mom and wife, followed by part time blogger. Of course there are the familial hats that don’t change, but as in the rest of my lifetime, wearing just a couple of hats isn’t enough. I like to have an entire rack of hats to rotate throughout the week. Now that Porter is a little older he is slightly more independent, and let’s be honest, my brain needs a little more stimulation than singing nursery rhymes and wiping up peach particulate matter from tiny nostrils and eyebrows.

I will say for the moment that there are a few really exciting opportunities on the horizon that would allow me to be diversify my collection of head attire. Since, however, they are all very preliminary I don’t want to jinx anything by exploring them in this post. What I do what to discuss is the direction of this blog. It’s not changing. I’m simply letting you, my devoted readers, in on an experiment that I’d like to try.

As I said in that first blog post, we are living on one income. That is money that my incredibly hard working husband earns at his day job in which he just got a promotion. Hurray! I will say that it has been easier than we had imagined to live on one income, and that is quite a relief to the both of us. With all that said, let me tell you a little story.

As a child, my dad had the opportunity to start a business, Heart Hugger. It was great for me because he got to work from home. Even though he worked his butt off for many hours for many years, he was always around. I remember, distinctly, parking my banana seat bike in the garage after school and getting to say hi to him in his office as I went inside. If I had a question or needed anything, he and my mom were always around. This lead to a couple of revelations for me. First, I felt really secure in home having both parents available. Second, I saw how much work it takes to make a buck. Third, if you have a goal, a plan, and you stick with it the payoff can be immeasurable in a plethora of ways.

Watching my dad’s business start as an idea and grow into the success that it is today created a strong work ethic and a level of persistence that has proven quite successful for me as an adult. In junior high I had a regular babysitting job for my dance teacher, and anyone else who would hire me. When I was 14, on summer vacation, I could have done anything I wanted. Gone to camps, taken classes, pursued hobbies. Did I chose to pursue any of these avenues? No. Much to the chagrin of my parents, I chose to get a job baking cookies in the Capitola Village.

Having worked so hard themselves they wanted it to be very clear that I had the rest of my adult life to work, and that I didn’t have to get a summer job. I was compelled to work, and why? I wanted financial freedom. My parents still gave me the world and supported all my interests, but there is nothing quite like have your own spending money lining your pockets. Saving money eluded me until I met my husband, but every summer through high school and much of college I had a job. Talk about hats! Here are the hats that have earned me money ever since that fated summer: babysitting, cookie baker/lotion pourer, ice cream wench, shoe sales, camp leader, camp director, tele-fundraiser, Jamba Juice smoothie maker, admin assistant at a charter school, Fur Trader, doula, debt collector, attempted Mary Kay lady, daycare-er, teacher, which leads me to my current job, mom. That’s a total of 16 different money making hats and gained life experiences.

Now I’d like to add another job to that long list, and that is as a blogger. As you may see on your screen, there are advertisements. I chose to use Google’s AdSense to monetize my site. Check out their website for information on how anyone can make some extra money using AdSense. Another way that I’ve decided to monetize my site is by becoming part of the Amazon Associates Program. You may recall that I occasionally include products in my posts that I really like and use. I often have a link to those specific products. Well, Amazon has made it easy for me and you to check out those products. The really neat part about that is, if you follow a link from my blog to the Amazon site and then decide to purchase ANY product, I will make a commission. For example, I really love the Deuter hiking backpack, I’ve mentioned it in a few other posts. If you wanted to check it out or buy it you just click on this link Deuter Kid Comfort II (Titan/Anthracite). Or if you plan on buying anything else on Amazon, you could go through any link on my blog and when you purchase something, they’ll pay me a commission. It’s pretty basic, but that is how I intend on making a little extra on the side through my blog. Now isn’t that a nifty hat to add to the collection?

It may seem that the blatant promotion of my money making would put readers off, but I’m hoping that you trust me enough to keep reading. Here is my promise to you. I promise not to change the content or format of my blog posts. If I do mention a product, it’s because I really like it and want to share the wonders of it with you.

I’m putting this out there for everyone to read, and I’m sure I will be judged by a few too. That’s fine, I’m ready for that. Really there is nothing worse than being a Mary Kay rep trying to get random strangers to give you their numbers in a Walmart. Now that is the meaning of judgement and rejection. Those hardened Mary Kay ladies that have made real success through that company have put themselves in a lot more uncomfortable situations than I am with this post. So, most of all please just keep reading my blog. If you see a link you like, click it. If you’re not into it then just ignore them altogether and keep checking back for meaningful posts and tender pictures of my life and family. Thanks again for your loyalty and readership.

“Hey look! I’ve got a blue block.”

“Peek a boo!”

“Mmmm block gooooood.”

“You wanna try a little nibble?”

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6 Months

July 13, 2011 Megan Alton

In the name of all things tender! I thought it would be cute if I taught Porter how to give kisses, and cute it is. What I hadn’t intended was the amount of slobber that would end up on my nose or in my mouth, hmm. We were able to catch a couple of kisses on film, and it’s pretty cute if I do say so myself.

According to just about everyone, when a baby is 6 months old they should be introduced to solid foods. I thought Porter would start with sweet potatoes, but when I tried that he gave such an adverse reaction that I thought I should start with something a little more tame. Otherwise I feared that I may be nursing him forever. That was a serious moment of panic in my mind, but when I gave him some rice cereal with breast milk things went a lot smoother, phew. I’d say it was a success.

He’s also teething, which leads to some basic gnawing on anything he can get his gums on.

That’s my tender boy!

El Gallo Giro, Lavender Festival Kuna, The Lavender Merchant

Lavender Festival

July 9, 2011 Megan Alton

I’m still in the process of writing about our big trip to California. In the meantime, here is a quick post about our lovely summer Saturday here in Idaho. Porter and I started the day by taking a walk to the store for Saturday morning bagels and coffee. Then it was off to the Lavender Festival, hosted by The Lavender Merchant, in Kuna with our friends Danny and Sarah, followed by a tasty lunch at El Gallo Giro, the best Mexican food in Idaho.

When we got home it was pretty hot outside. Luckily I filled up the small pool yesterday so it was the perfect temperature for Porter and I to take a dip. The best part was his hysterical laughter when I sprayed him with squirt toys. The funniest was when I shot him square in the face by accident, he thought it was awesome…phew! Now I’m chillin’ in front of our Ultra Cool Evaporative Cooler, aka swamp cooler, and munching on watermelon. Life is pretty sweet!

Our friend Amy, working The Lavender Merchant booth at the festival. Her mom is the actual lavender gardener and merchant. It was great to go and support a local gardener and business person.

U-pick lavender $5 a bunch

This lavender plant was HUGE, I’d say about 4-5 feet in diameter.

Rows and rows of lavender.

You can see the festival going on behind us and the lavender fields. It could have been very hot out in Kuna, but we were lucky and got lovely weather.

Picking lavender!

There were many fabulous vendors and lavender oriented goodies. I, however, only managed to get pictures of the food. Here is the delightful mint iced tea and lavender lemonade. I believe the lemonade made the trip worth it for Luke.