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!!!

Fall Friendship Box!

I got my fall friendship box in the mail today! I was so excited. Kristen from Vignettes hosted this swap and I really enjoyed participating. It made me do some fall crafts and decorations myself which was fun! Kym was my swap partner and I got this beautiful box in the mail! Doesn't it just look fallish? It had lots of yummy treats inside and cute little notes to accompany it.  Below are pictures of the items in the box. Thanks Kym for all your hard work and everything is delightful! The kids enjoyed the rubber ducky in the bath tonight!!!

My box arrived!

Kym crafted this herself

I didn't even know they made these!

Tirzah split one of these with me

Yummy caramel apple cookies

Snoopy Fall globe

Hot Chocolate!

Rubber ducky for the kidos!

Smore kits!

Hand soap!

Tirzah and her Grandaddy and Pops

This past week Tirzah got some cute pictures with her Pops and Grandaddy!

Pops and Tirzah

Both have such beautiful eyes

She getting hard to keep looking at the camera

Tirzah and Grandaddy

Gideon is Two Years Old!!!

It's hard to believe but my little boy is two years old!!! It was quite a fun birthday as every time we talked about it he would do a little birthday dance and when we ask how old he is he says "two"! It was easy to get gifts for him as he loves Cars and Thomas the train. So he got different Thomas trains and the Cars movie. We made a Cars cake--with a little bit of help from Gideon helping make the cake, Joshua cutting the cake to make the ramp, Joshua's mom iced it, I did the cars and the road and Uncle Brandon did the fancy icing work. He LOVED the cake! He was overwhelmed by the different gifts wanting to play with each one instead of opening the next one. :-) He wants to watch cars all the time now and play with his trains. At one point during his little family party he wanted to watch "Cars", hold your trains, play with your fire engine and eat cake all at the same time! I love my little Gideon!!!

Birthday decorations!

He loves that cake!

Have an abundance of Peppers?

So thinking that our garden was done producing we haven't been down to it is quite a while. So imagine my surprise when I went down to mow our field and found out that our pepper plants were producing an abundance of green and red peppers! They were nice and big and oh so beautiful. So I brought them in the house and left some to keep growing. For those who don't know, you can chop up those peppers and place them in your freezer to use later in the year when you want them in stir fry, casseroles, etc. They freeze just fine. I did that to most of mine and then with a small portion I made a delicious recipe that my mother-in-law makes. Its called unstuffed pepper casserole and although I don't think I've ever had the stuffed peppers I really love this casserole! It is easy to make, you can freeze it for later and it uses up some peppers! Below is the recipe:

You can also use peppers as teethers as Tirzah is doing.

She didn't want mommy taking her supply!

I love when they change colors!

Unstuffed Pepper Casserole:

1lb. ground beef
1/3C chopped onion
1.5C diced peppers
2 cloves of garlic
Take all the above ingredients and saute them add 1/2t salt and pepper to taste. Then add to the mixture:
1 can 15oz. diced tomatoes
1.5C cooked rice
1t Worcester sauce
1t Italian seasonings
1C grated cheese
Then you put that in an ungreased 9x13 pan and then top it with:
15oz. tomato sauce
1C grated cheese
Bake for about 20 minutes or until cheese is melted on 375 degrees.

Picnic in the Park

So Joshua had a fall day on Friday and we decided to go to a nearby park and have a picnic. It was wonderful, we got a free pizza and brought some apples and goldfish...all kid friendly, though Gideon wasn't interested in the pizza like Tirzah was. She will eat anything these days, trying out those two little teeth she has. This was the first time she got to swing and she loved it! We also walked around with Joshua while he practiced his disc golfing...he gets to go with some guys to play next weekend. Fun family time!

I just adore my little girl

Joshua and his girl

Eating apples and walking around exploring

So happy!

Introducing Tom and Huck

So we are trying cats again...someone called us asking if we wanted two little boy kittens and we decided to give it a try, especially since Gideon is so interested in animals. So we now have Tom and Huck...they stay in our summer kitchen at night and go in and out during the day. Tom is by far the more adventurous...

Playing in the yard

Huck, living in my old doll house...

Tom