Money Saving Tips Part 1

• If you are in need of a five gallon bucket with a lid to store food in--I store bulk flour and popcorn so far--don't use the pickle buckets you can buy for $2 at Firehouse Subs as you can't get rid of the pickle smell and eventually your food starts to absorb it. But you can get free buckets with lids at Sams Club from the baking department if you ask--they get their icing in them.
• If you need a free 8x10 picture take up Walgreens on their "free collage" and just have one picture on it which makes it an 8x10 with a border. That's what I do to print my little ones pictures for the mantel. 
• Chik-Fil-A (which we love) has just released their 2012 calendars which cost $6 but for each month they have a coupon for a free food item. They are wonderful and more than pay for themselves--they have things like drinks, pairfait, chicken sandwich, chicken chef salad (which cost about what the calendar costs normally). You can really use the coupons anytime even though they say to use them during a particular month. These are so great to have in the car when you are riding around doing errands and need a snack! We have gone through two calendars this year!
• Watch your food receipts...at Moe's if you buy something then fill out an online survey they give you a free taco so that winds up being a whole free meal since they give you free chips and salsa as well. Joshua can make buying a $5.55 burrito and drink into three meals. Since the burrito is so big he splits in half and get chips for both meals, then fills out the survey and gets his taco meal as well. I also hear that Arbys does something similar if you buy anything on the back of the receipt you can fill out a survey and get a free sandwich...you can keep doing this with extra receipts that people throw away as well if you have another email address or phone number!

What we did with Apples

My sister came over a couple weeks ago for us to make applesauce and apple pie filling. We had bunches of fun being able to talk and get caught up on things. Gideon and Tirzah also helped us by taking bites out of lots of apples or Gideon putting McQueen and Mater into the apple strainer--quite surprised one of them didn't wind up in one of our applesauce jars. We made a bunch that day and I finished the rest of the apples a few days later. In all we had 31 jars of applesauce and 13 jars of apple pie filling out of 4 bushels!!!

We had 4 bushels of apples

Tirzah loved eating the apples

Bethie chopping the apples to be boiled

Apples softening

Gideon being a big help processing the apples into sauce

Transfering his applesauce into his cars bowl

Applesauce!!!

Apple pie filling

I'm addicted...to cloth diapers!

So it seems I was about a year ahead of the cloth diaper making crowd...I had to pretty much make my own pattern out of one that I bought and try to figure out the fabrics and then buy them online since I couldn't find any at joanns that I could get cheap...well not Joanns has made a deal with a company that has a book to tell you how to make adorable diapers and all the materials and supplies you can get with a 40% coupon...and I have to admit I am so in LOVE with the diapers! They are adorable, cute and way easier to make then I thought. So be prepared for some cute diapers in the near future. I have a few other projects I'm working on but then I'm planning on making some for Tirzah--they have one with ruffles one it and they show me how I can embroider their names on it or whatever I want. I cannot wait to start! And yes I'm strange but I'm reading the book cover to cover.  Maybe in the future I'll sell some! I never could understand the addiction of buying them I guess because they were so expensive but now that I can make them for cheaper, I totally understand!

Married over a 1000 Days!!!

The other day my sister was over and took some family pictures...my personal favorites were some of my beloved and I! Can you believe we've been married over 1000 days!!! We celebrated our 1000th day anniversary on September 29th!!! We had a special getaway right here in our own town! Anyways over two and half years and still very much in love!

Daddy's Little Girl

Fabric for Sale

My Mom and I went through some of our fabric that we just want to weed out and I decided to try and sell for really, really reduced cost. Pretty much its just a little cash back for us to buy some more fabric! :-) Anyway I put it all out on my blog but on my second page--there is a tab at the top that says "Fabric for Sale" with pictures and prices and yardage if you want to take a gander and let me know if you are interested. Some of it I am loathe to part with because I love it but I just don't know when I'll ever use it. So let me know if you have any questions!

Fall Table Runner

Being inspired to decorate my house with a little bit of fall I made a table runner out of "fallish" fabrics.  I found a tutorial at this site and had so much fun making one for my friendship swap and one for our own table. Now with Kym's decorations she sent me my table looks very fallish!!!