Binkies and Briefcases

SUBSCRIBE

  • About
    • Work With Me!
      • Blog & Small Business Consulting
    • Disclosures
  • Popular Posts
  • Adoption & Special Needs
  • Saving Money
  • Recipes
    • Breads
    • Breakfasts
    • Sides
    • Soups
    • Entrées
    • Desserts
  • For the Home
    • For the Home
    • Beauty
    • Crafts
      • For Kids
  • My Books

How to Prepare for An IEP Meeting as a Parent

February 15, 2021 By: Stephanie1 Comment

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my Email Newsletter. Thanks for visiting!

Welcome back! Be sure to check out my Email Newsletter. Thanks for visiting!

I have been in more IEP meetings than I can count.

If you do not know what I’m talking about, then consider yourself lucky.

IEP (which is short for “Individualized Educational Plan”) meetings take place between the parents, teachers, administration, and any specialists that need to be involved when a child qualifies for special services through the school system.

I’ve been on all sides of the table. I’ve been a classroom teacher, a gifted specialist with a caseload of about 90 students, and I’m also the mom of five. Three of our children have special needs. My oldest son qualified for his first IEP when he was only 2 years old.

So, in one form or another, I’ve spent the last sixteen years sitting in these meetings.

How to Prepare for an IEP Meeting

Every time another one comes up my husband, without fail, asks me to take the lead because it is just too overwhelming for some people without a background in education. (He is an involved dad and has been to the IEP meetings as well, but he feels intimidated and worries he will miss something important.) If you are new to the process, maybe you can relate to how Eddie feels.  That’s why we are here.  Today I want to share my Top 5 Tips for Parents at IEP meetings. 

  1. Have realistic expectations. The teachers and administrators are only human, and they are working within the constraints of the laws they have to follow. This can be frustrating for everyone involved and sometimes leads to emotions running high. It can be hard to separate your feelings and maintain a professional air when your child’s well-being is on the table, but you will get further if you are able to stick to the facts at hand. Do not insult the teachers personally. They really do want your child to succeed. If you are able to phrase your concerns to be child-centered and give reasons based on facts it will help the meeting go smoothly. State your concern, and then a fact, not an opinion, to back it up. Say things like, “My concern is that Susie struggles with the abstract concepts in math (concern), and right now she is able to use the hands-on manipulatives in class, but not on the tests (fact). I don’t feel like the assessments are giving us an accurate representation of what she knows.” That will help the school understand your position and give them actionable things to do moving forward. It will get you much further than accusatory statements like, “Ms. Smith only has two years of experience and my kid is failing because she isn’t a good teacher.” Even if you do feel that way, the IEP meeting is a time to set goals and make a plan for how to best help your child. When the adults spend the time insulting each other and not addressing the goals and solutions, it doesn’t do anything to help the student.    
  2. Be organized and come prepared. I recommend using a digital file storage like Dropbox and keeping electronic copies of all of your child’s test results, forms, and IEP’s. It is easy to label and organize electronic files in a way that makes sense to you, and you will have them available wherever you go, even beyond IEP meetings, like at the doctor’s office or therapy appointments. You could also use paper copies in a binder, but it will get very cumbersome as your child gets older and there is more and more paperwork to manage. Once, due to human error, we realized that my son had been mislabeled in the computer and the Supervisor of Special Education for our school district didn’t believe me at the meeting when I said our son had a certain diagnosis because that did not match the information in any of her files. I was able to go home and locate the test results and diagnosis and email it to the school, but if you have an app like Dropbox on your phone you may be able to even pull the paperwork up in the meeting to save everyone the time and frustration in those situations.  
  3. Know your rights. In the U.S. children have certain rights granted by federal law, but each state (and even the different counties and school districts within the state) interprets those laws differently and has unique policies of their own. At the beginning of every meeting, you should receive a document called “Procedural Safeguards” that outlines what to do if you feel that those rights have been violated. You also do have the right to call other people into the meeting and bring an advocate with you, but you will need to tell the school in advance. I have acted like an advocate for friends who wanted someone with more experience in their IEP meeting, and as a teacher I have had parents bring advocates or even attorneys into IEP meetings. If you are feeling overwhelmed, you can ask someone with more experience to go with you or reach out to a special education advocate. Having someone in your corner can help alleviate your worries, and advocates understand how to speak the language on both sides and help mediate concerns. 
  4. Bring a notebook, a pen, a water bottle, and a snack. And wear something that looks professional, but is also comfortable. You are probably going to need to bring your I.D. as well to sign in at the school office. I also recommend that you eat a granola bar in the car before you go in. You want to be as comfortable as possible and able to concentrate. The meeting may take quite a while. You do not want to be distracted by an uncomfortable waistband, sore feet in pinching shoes, or a rumbling tummy, but I do recommend that you dress in business casual clothing. A sweater and khakis is perfectly fine. Just remember, the school employees will be dressed in professional work attire, and you may feel intimidated and less likely to speak up if you are wearing something like stained sweatpants that makes you feel embarrassed if you find yourself walking into a conference room full of people wearing suits and dresses. Do not be afraid to take notes or ask questions. A lot is being said, and you want to remember it later. You will also have to sign a few documents and having your own pen readily available can just help the meeting go more smoothly.  (But don’t worry if you forget, there is nothing wrong with speaking up and asking for a few sheets of paper and a pen as the meeting starts so you can take notes.) 
  5. Sit down the night before and spend some time reviewing the paperwork and what you want to say. The school sent home paperwork in advance of the meeting. It is important to review it. (Also, make sure you always sign and return the meeting invitation by its due date!) You want to go into the meeting fully prepared, and this also gives you time to gather any other important information. You might want to gather some copies of graded schoolwork, write a list of your concerns, and just gather your thoughts. It may feel silly, but it can help to do a practice run with a friend, or even in the mirror, so you feel more comfortable speaking up in the meeting. 

After your meeting, it’s a good idea to send an email to the school employees who were present summarizing your understanding of what happened. Just a paragraph or two saying thank you for attending my child’s IEP meeting, just so we are on the same page, here is what I believe I heard today. That way if there was any confusion or misunderstanding, it can be cleared up right away, you have a chance to ask any questions you forgot in the moment, and you also have a record of your communication. 

You can even print or save this blogpost and put it in your files to refer back to later. If you have any other tips for fellow parents attending IEP meetings, please leave them in the comments, and I would love to connect with you on my Facebook page! 

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

My Honest Review of Daily Harvest

February 8, 2021 By: Stephaniecomment

Have you seen all the ads for Daily Harvest pop up on your feed? I see them all the time and was really curious to check it out. This is not a sponsored post, I paid for all of the products in this review. While most of my family eats a standard diet, I have been eating a primarily plant-based and mostly gluten-free diet since 2017 and was excited to try Daily Harvest. There aren’t a lot of convenience foods on the market that fit the way I eat, so this could have huge potential for me! (I mean, shout out to chips and salsa, but I can’t eat that for breakfast every single day.)

Daily Harvest Review

Daily Harvest (D.H.) is a mail-order food delivery subscription service that delivers frozen convenience foods to your door. They are made entirely from organic fruits and vegetables without additives or preservatives. All of their food is vegan and naturally gluten-free. They offer smoothies, oat bowls, flatbreads, soups, harvest bowls, and a few treats like lattes and all-natural, dairy-free ice cream. So, that is the first big checkmark in the pro column: Daily Harvest is, by far, the healthiest convenience food I’ve ever found. If you are interested in trying their products for yourself, you can use my referral link to get $25 off your first order.

However, be aware that all of that organic goodness comes with a steep price tag. Their food is EXPENSIVE. But we’ll get to that.

daily harvest food packaging

I’ll start with the smoothies because they are the thing I was most excited about when I placed my order. Here we go.

The Smoothies:

I love the ease of smoothies because it’s the fastest way to take a portable meal with you. I don’t have to cook anything, I can take it with me in the car, it’s healthy, what’s not to love?

Well, in this case there’s the price, for starters. The D.H. smoothies cost $8 each, which is almost twice what I could pay to go buy a larger smoothie from a place like Panera Bread or Tropical Smoothie Cafe, and about 4x more than it costs to make several servings of a smoothie at home with ingredients I already have. Plus, you still have to add your own liquid to the D.H. smoothies, which is an additional cost unless you are using tap water. But, granted, Daily Harvest is using organic and sometimes exotic ingredients, like dragon fruit, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Are they worth it?

daily harvest smoothie ingredients

The D.H. smoothies arrive frozen, packaged in these individual serving-sized cups. When you want one, you dump the contents of the cup into a blender with liquid (I used almond milk), blend it, and pour it back in the cup. The lid has a hole in it for your straw. I loved that the cup was able to be re-used in that way, although the lids and the disposable seals on the containers are plastic, which might be a concern to some customers. Most of the packaging for their other products is cardboard or other compostable material, but the smoothie packaging seemed the least sustainable to me.

daily harvest review
daily harvest smoothie cup

The verdict: Some of the smoothies were really good. My favorites were the Chocolate + Blueberry and the Carrot + Cinnamon (which was a surprise hit). However, most of them truly weren’t great, I’m sorry to say. I ended up adding a teaspoon of maple syrup to all of them, and most of them I still didn’t love. If you aren’t big on sweet things, then they might be right up your alley. But I do love sweet things and I didn’t like most of them, which shocked me because I love smoothies. Some of the flavors I tried were actually kind of nasty, if I’m being honest. (I was the most excited to try the Chocolate Hazelnut, which my entire family typically loves, but the D.H. version was truly gross. I couldn’t even swallow it and literally ran to the sink to spit it out. None of my kids liked it either. I don’t know if the ingredients we received had gone rancid before being frozen or if it was just not a good flavor, but I certainly can’t recommend that one, which is unfortunate.)

Since the ones we ended up liking had very simple ingredients we can replicate at home, I would say they definitely weren’t worth $8 each. We can throw some of our own blueberries, banana, spinach, and chocolate in a blender. So far, I have tried the Chocolate Hazelnut, the Mint and Cacao, the Chai and Coconut, the Vanilla Bean and Cocao, the Carrot and Cinnamon, and Chocolate and Blueberry. My kids also tried a few of those, but so far we haven’t found any the kids enjoyed. Because none of the smoothies we tried were very sweet, I think they are more suitable for adult tastes.

On the plus side, after I added maple syrup, I loved the Chocolate and Blueberry and the Carrot and Cinnamon, and would order those flavors again. I’d also heard good things about the mint flavor from friends, so I know many people like that flavor as well, but I found it to be oddly savory and bitter. I was told it tastes like melted mint chocolate chip ice cream. I promise you, it certainly does not. I do think it’s fun to order a lot of different varieties and try them, but it is a pricey experiment. Another thing to consider is that the calorie count on the smoothies varies wildly, based on their individual ingredients. Some of the D.H. smoothies are only 280 calories for the entire container, and some are over 500 calories. Just something to keep in mind.

Will I order them again? I do think I will order smoothies in the flavors I liked from D.H. a few times per year to keep in our freezer. Or at the very least, I may be inspired to make my own individual smoothie packs to freeze. I do like to have a healthy option available in a pinch, and I appreciate the use of organic ingredients without preservatives or processed sugars, but I still don’t want to spend $8 per day on breakfast for one person when I can make breakfast for my entire family for a week for less money than that. (I have written about how to do that in my budget grocery posts.) So, I will not be continuing a weekly subscription unless the price comes down substantially.

The Oat Bowls

I ordered the Apple+Cinnamon and the Cherry + Dark Chocolate bowls. The oat bowls were my favorite product from D.H.

10/10, do recommend.

I expected them to be okay, but it’s oatmeal, so I was expecting oatmeal and not anything spectacular. They were the only product that far exceeded my expectations. I loved the Cherry +Dark chocolate flavor. She’s not a looker, but she tastes amazing.

Daily Harvest oat bowl

They cost $6 each, which, like all Daily Harvest products, is very expensive for what it is: one bowl of oatmeal that you still have to cook and could make at home in the same amount of time for much less money. But the cost in this case is probably on-par or just slightly more than you would pay in a restaurant for a bowl of oatmeal with whole fruit, chocolate, and other add-ins. And I will say that, as far as oatmeal goes, it was the best oatmeal I’ve ever had. I still think they are too expensive to justify eating every day, especially when it’s essentially just microwaved oats with frozen fruit, but they are very yummy. I would order them again to have on hand as an occasional treat.

The Flatbreads

Daily Harvest flatbread

Honestly, just say no to the flatbreads. Just…no.

I was really excited to have a quick dinner option made with healthy ingredients. The flatbreads look and sound amazing. I was ready to love them. I wanted to love them. I cooked them in my airfryer, which was quick and easy and gave the edges a nice crunch. But for me, the flatbreads fell, well, flat.

The flatbreads cost $9 each and are fairly small. I would liken them to the size of a kid-sized personal pizza at a restaurant. By comparison, Panera Bread offers flatbreads (although not vegan) for about $5. Do you really want to pay twice as much for something you still have to cook yourself? The small, pricey, D.H. flatbreads were enough for me for lunch, but would definitely not be enough food to make a larger person like my husband feel satisfied as a meal. I tried the Pear+Arugula, the Artichoke+Spinach, and the Tomato+Basil.

Um…I’m trying to think of something kind to say here, I truly am.

As a big plus, the ingredients are clean and healthy, like all D.H. products. The Artichoke+Spinach and the Tomato+Basil flavors were salvageable when I added a lot of marinara from my pantry. The Pear+Arugula, which was actually the one I thought I would like the best, was not in any way edible at all. (Maybe my expectations are just too high?) Three of my kids tried it as well, and no one could stomach it. It ended up in the trash, which was really disappointing. The flatbreads, overall, somehow tasted like nothing but soggy broccoli and microwaved spinach, even when the crust was crispy and they had plenty of other ingredients like artichokes or tomatoes. Except the Pear +Arugula, which was in a class all its own, and not in a good way. That one had a vegan imitation goat cheese of sorts on top of it and was extremely bitter, yet somehow also too sweet, and tasted a little bit like an ashtray.

I will not order the flatbreads again. What I would recommend doing instead, if you’re looking for convenience and don’t have the time or inclination to make something homemade, is going to a place that builds individual pizzas, like MOD Pizza or Your Pie, and asking them to make you a few veggie pizzas without cheese. Go home, wrap them yourself, and put them in the freezer. Or better yet, have them delivered. The ingredients might not be organic, but you will have twice as much food for the same amount of money, and it will taste better.

The Lattes

Possibly my surprise favorite?

I tried the Changa+Chocolate Lattes. There are several other flavors as well, but I wanted to try something familiar to me. I have no idea what Ginger + Tumeric or Matcha+Lemongrass latte is supposed to taste like, so how could I tell you if the D.H. version was good? I was told that the Changa+Chocolate is the D.H. version of hot chocolate. I know hot chocolate, so I feel comfortable reporting to you about it.

This product is a paste that comes in single serving-sized pods. You stir the contents into a mug of hot liquid (I used almond milk). It’s made of mushrooms and raw cacao, which made me very nervous and did not sound delicious. I do not like mushrooms. At all. Also, who puts mushrooms in hot chocolate?

Ya’ll.

It’s really good. The best version of vegan hot chocolate I have come across in the past 4 years, and it does not taste anything like mushrooms. It just tastes like hot chocolate. Again, it’s not very sweet, which seems to be a theme here, but in this case it works.

It costs $8 for three servings, or $2.67 per latte. Definitely more expensive than if you made it from scratch at home by just adding cocoa powder and maple syrup to almond or coconut milk, but this is the only D.H. product I tried this month that I think is probably worth the cost. It is similar in taste to something you’d find at a restaurant, has healthier ingredients, and is cheaper than getting Starbucks.

The Ice Cream

Daily Harvest offers Scoops, their own brand of vegan ice cream. I tried the Mint + Dark, Melty Cacao Chips and the Chocolate+Ooey, Gooey Midnight Fudge flavors.

The mint chip flavor was my favorite. The mint base itself is delicious and the ingredients were the healthiest I’ve ever seen on packaged, dairy-free treats. The ingredients are: organic coconut cream, water, organic maple syrup, organic 100% unsweetened dark chocolate, dried citrus pulp, organic spirulina, organic peppermint extract, dried peppermint leaf, himalayan sea salt, and vanilla bean powder. That’s it. No additional sweeteners or preservatives. I think this is more what I was expecting the mint smoothie to taste like.

I will say that because there are no additional sweeteners, the chocolate chips are very, very bitter and there are quite a few of them. I wish it had half the amount of chocolate chips in it (which is a thing I never thought I would ever say about anything). But even so, it was one of my favorite D.H. products, and I would (and did) order it again. It’s more expensive than the dairy-free ice cream I can buy at the grocery store, but the much cleaner ingredients and the fact that I don’t like the hassle of making homemade ice cream do make this one worth it to me.

daily harvest ice cream

The Midnight Fudge flavor wasn’t as big of a hit for us, though. It tasted like coconut and icy water with chunks of fudge running throughout. It’s not bad if you like coconut, but I don’t think it’s worth $9 per pint. My oldest daughter tried both flavors as well. She also loved the mint chip and didn’t like the chocolate.

That’s everything we’ve tried so far. If you’ve tried Daily Harvest, especially the soups or harvest bowls, let me know what you thought in the comments. And if you’re interested in checking it out for yourself, be sure to use my link to get $25 off your first order.

Curious about going vegan or gluten-free? Check out what I learned after my first 100 days of eating a vegan and GF diet. Plus, type in Vegan or Gluten-Free on the search bar on the blog for tons of healthy, delicious recipes!

What I learned in 100 days of being vegan and gluten free

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

How to Get Your Kids to do Chores- the Easy Way

February 3, 2021 By: Stephaniecomment

I’m not going to claim I know any more than you do about parenting. We all have our strengths, right? And mine decidedly do not lie anywhere near the housework area. But one thing I do know is that I want to raise kids who understand responsibility and teamwork. And I don’t want to live in a pigsty.

Plus, chores are good for kids. They teach important lessons and life skills. That’s why the pediatrician asks about them and so do the therapists and special education teachers. But how do you get your kids to actually do them?

Simple Kids Chore Systen

I feel like I tried everything under the sun (like this homemade dinosaur chore chart) before we stumbled on a system that works for our family, and guess what? Like a lot of other things in life, we discovered that simple truly is best. This is the easiest chore system you are ever going to find. There are no charts, no checklists, no clipboards, nothing. It won’t make your house look perfect, but it will make the kids start taking responsibility for some of the annoying tasks around the house and make you feel a lot less like Cinderella, constantly being the only person doing all of the grunt work. Are you ready to learn my secret?

Assign every person in your family one daily after dinner chore, and three easy chores for Saturday morning. Make sure they are things that are easy and only take a few minutes. That’s it. I know. It’s so ridiculously simple it seems laughable. That’s the entire system, and it truly will change your entire family dynamic.

You may already be doing something similar, but it’s not working. That’s probably because the key to this system is that everyone does their one daily chore at the same time. There is less complaining when the kids know everyone is working and it just becomes part of the routine. The other secret is that the jobs need to be easy and age-appropriate. They shouldn’t take more than five minutes. This is not the time to tell a kid to dust the entire house or mop the kitchen floor. In our family, we use the 5 minutes immediately after dinner. We all get up from the table and do our one chore at the same time.

When we are finished, everyone takes another minute or two and puts away their own laundry. It never takes long because we do laundry every day, so it’s only the three or four things everyone wore yesterday. (I just wash everything together on cold with a high-quality detergent like Tide. I have been doing this for fifteen years and nothing bad has ever come of it.) This system has allowed us to keep up with both the dishes and the laundry without a ton of effort, which in itself is huge! (We have a large family. If you are a smaller family, consider assigning everyone two simple jobs.) Our daily jobs are:

  • Nicholas- wipe the kitchen counter
  • Abigail- unload the dishwasher
  • Donny-straighten the shoe closet
  • Ana-Wipe down the kids’ bathroom counter
  • Penny-Wipe down the dining table
  • Mom- start the washing machine and sort yesterday’s clothes from the dryer
  • Dad- Load the dishwasher

Then we each have three additional chores on Saturday morning. These take slightly longer, but can still be done in around 15 minutes for the kids and less than an hour for the adults. We expect the kids to have their bedroom straight enough to be vacuumed and do these three things. These chores need to be completed and rooms need to be straight before anyone turns on a screen on Saturday morning. The jobs can be anything you want, but should be things the kids can do independently. In our house this looks like:

  • Nicholas- clean off the steps, clear toys from the upstairs hallway, put away LEGOs
  • Abigail- Refill toilet paper in all bathrooms and replace hand towels, wash upstairs windows, carry everyone’s sheets to the laundry room
  • Donny- Sweep front porch, wash downstairs windows, take all stray kids’ toys to the person’s room
  • Ana- Dust, wipe down light switches, straighten the backpack area
  • Penny-Dust upstairs, wipe down doorknobs, straighten the shoe closet
  • Dad- Vacuum, Mop, yardwork (we have a small yard that takes about 20 minutes to mow)
  • Mom- Clean bathrooms, wash sheets, wipe down kitchen

We use allowance for motivation. Our kids earn $1/day, but on days that their chores are not done or their rooms aren’t clean they lose their chance to earn their dollar for that day. They get paid on Saturday mornings, but not until the Saturday chores are finished. We use a Google Doc spreadsheet to keep track of how much they’ve earned throughout the week. Eddie and I can both access it right from our phones. You don’t have to use money, you could do anything that works as motivation for your kids. Maybe a family movie or game night starts when the weekend chores are done?

We do also keep a list of ways they can earn more money by doing additional chores. In our house small tasks like sorting laundry are worth 50 cents, and larger tasks like mowing the lawn are worth $10. A few examples from that list are cleaning the car (inside or outside), picking up the dog mess from the yard, and weeding the garden. Basically, anything I don’t particularly like to do. We have some kids who are very motivated to earn extra money and some who couldn’t care less. If you don’t want to use money as a motivational tool, I find earning time on electronics works just as well. Maybe weeding the garden could earn and extra 30 minutes of screen time?

I am a much happier mom since we started this system, about a year ago. Before that I would try to implement these complicated systems and then get frustrated and feel defeated when they didn’t work. Sure, with this system our house is not perfectly clean all the time (or ever) because kids do kid-level work, but I don’t constantly feel underappreciated and worn out and that is priceless. The division of labor is much better. I no longer spend every day doing chores, just to feel defeated when everything is a wreck an hour later. I do try to do two additional things as part of my morning routine to keep up with the house, but I find that if I add just two small things in combination to our daily chores, that is usually enough. So I might clean the mirrors and the stovetop on Monday, and dust the ceiling fans and clean out the refrigerator on Tuesday. You get the idea. I don’t have a schedule, I just look around and chose two things I can accomplish in less than ten minutes. I try to be finished whatever two things I chose by the time I drop the kids off for school in the morning, so I don’t have to think about housework for the rest of the day. It’s freed up so much time for me to do things I enjoy, like read a book or do some writing.

The one caveat I will add is that this system works much better if you declutter your house first. If your bathroom counters are cluttered with a hundred beauty products, then it is going to be hard for a kid to wipe them down quickly. Spend some time getting your flat surfaces like countertops and dining tables clear, then this system works amazingly well!

Please comment below with more examples of easy, kid-friendly chores. Let me know if you try this system at your house, and don’t forget to pin and share!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • …
  • 268
  • Next Page »
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Welcome! I’m Steph.

This is a little corner of the internet we like to fill with honesty, heart, and humor. Read More…

Cover for Binkies and Briefcases with Stephanie Giese
20,128
Binkies and Briefcases with Stephanie Giese

Binkies and Briefcases with Stephanie Giese

That work/life balance must be hiding here somewhere, between the binkies and the briefcases.

Binkies and Briefcases with Stephanie Giese

8 months ago

Binkies and Briefcases with Stephanie Giese
Very proud of my friend Meredith Ethington for her new book! Motherhood as it relates to mental health and the mental load is a topic that I wish there had been more people talking about when I was a young mom. I’m thankful for those who are writing boldly and bravely about it now, with the vulnerability and candor this topic needs. You can pre-order your copy of The Mother Load now and it will arrive this spring. ... See MoreSee Less

This content isn't available right now

When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted.
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Binkies and Briefcases with Stephanie Giese

8 months ago

Binkies and Briefcases with Stephanie Giese
Let’s support Jimmy! ... See MoreSee Less

This content isn't available right now

When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted.
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Reader’s Choice

Image HTML map generator

Follow Me on Pinterest

featured-on

What You’re Saying

  • Wellshop Store on Dressing Our Daughters: How Target Responded to My Last Blog Post
  • Lucy on Dressing Our Daughters: How Target Responded to My Last Blog Post
  • 15 Low-cost Rest room Cleansing Hacks That’ll Make You WANT To Clear Your Rest room – Personal Finance Blog on I Clean Our Toilet With Toothpaste
  • Hannah Carter on Dressing Our Daughters: How Target Responded to My Last Blog Post
  • Stephanie on EASY Homemade Chocolate Pudding

Latest Posts

ALL I Never Knowed: The Book Is Here!

It’s finally here, in my hands. It has been a loooong time in the making, but our book, All I Never Knowed: Mental Illness, a Mother’s Love, and a Broken System, is available now. The official launch date is next Tuesday, Oct. 5th. But starting now, you can order from all major retailers. Here’s where […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Save Money with Fetch

Hey everyone! This is Chelsea, Steph’s asistant, back with the simplest app for getting cash back on things you’re already buying! We’ve covered Ibotta, Shopkick, Coupons.com, Swagbucks and we’re all saving hundreds of dollars by now, right? RIGHT!? I’m really hoping you guys have jumped on the rebate app savings train because it’s just so […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Splendid Spoon Review

I was excited to receive a box of products to try from Splendid Spoon this summer! They invited me to try their line of plant-based, ready-to-eat foods and delivered them right to my door. Check one in the pro column for convenience. I did receive these products free of charge in order to rate them […]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

My Networks

#BlogHer15: Experts Among Us Voices of the Year Honoree

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.