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The Trials of a Busy Mom

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Eating from the pantry challenge week 2

January 18, 2010 / / 1 Comment

This challenge is harder than I thought it would be. Even though I know I CAN eat strictly from my pantry and food storage, the hard part is making me DO it. This week Macey’s had captain crunch on sale 5 boxes for $5. I Really REALLY wanted to go and stock up on Captain crunch and granola bars, since that’s a very good price, but I didn’t do it. I also did NOT go to Walgreens, even though I had coupons for items that were on a buy one get one free sale, and I could have stocked up on the cheap.

We did have to go and buy some fresh food, though. Here’s what $25 will buy.


Ok, not TWICE that, but one of those pictures. ( I’m having some technical difficulties, but I don’t want to take the time to figure it out and fix it. Maybe my administrator can see to that later.)
Actually, as you can see by my receipt, I spent $26.

Saturday, however, we encountered a problem. We went to Costco. I know, I know, I said I wasn’t going to go to Costco while doing this challenge, but we were right there, and we needed milk. In total, I spent over $100 at Costco, but that wasn’t all food. As I add up the actual Groceries from my receipts, I see that I spent $20 on cheese, ham, clementines, bananas and milk. Ugh. But if I count that as this weeks shopping trip, then I’m still within my limit.

Saturday night Ryan and I went out on a date, and afterward we had to run to walmart for some paint for our little mudroom improvement project that’s going on. While there, we also picked up birdseed, and I realized we were almost out of bread, so we added two loaves of bread to the cart. Ryan was teasing me about “cheating” and that he was going to add that to the total for me, but I’m coming clean. We also bought some soda, but that was FOR A SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT, not just for drinking, so it doesn’t count.

So, there you have it, folks. As long as I don’t spend any money this week (ahem), I’ll still be on track.

Of course, I’m planning a birthday party for the end of the month, and I can’t possibly be expected to pull that off without spending additional money, can I?

So, we’ll eat from our freezer and pantry this week. I’ve got a turkey in the freezer I’ve got to thaw out so we can cook that on Sunday. Then we can have leftover from that for the whole next week! So, I think we can do it.

Every little bit helps

January 16, 2010 / / 4 Comments

Emergencies seem to bring out some of the best in people. Our hearts go out to those suffering in Haiti. They are enduring such loss. Loss we cannot even comprehend as we sit in our heated homes on our comfortable sofas with plenty of food to eat, with our families nearby. I’ve been impressed with the way the rest of the world is quick to react with offerings of love, prayers, support, and most importantly, money.

There are so many different ways to give, and give we must. Even if all we can give is one dollar, it’s a dollar that will help out in the rescue efforts. How should we donate?

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we give through our fast offerings. That money goes to help those in need in our own neighborhoods as well as throughout the world. A church news release on January 13 stated:

“Two planes, one departing from Denver as early as Thursday and another leaving from Miami later this week, will each include over 80,000 pounds of food and emergency resources such as tents, tarps, water filtration bottles and medical supplies donated by the Church. Transportation is being provided by Airline Ambassadors and Food for the Poor will aid with distribution in Haiti.

“We are constantly assessing needs to determine how our resources can directly help the people of Haiti,” said Nate Leishman, manager of the Church’s humanitarian emergency response efforts. “We are fully committed to this ongoing process and doing our best to help wherever we can.”

These new shipments are in addition to emergency supplies, including personal hygiene kits and supplies for newborns, being sent by truck from the Dominican Republic, as announced early Wednesday by the Church.”

Giving to the Red Cross is another great way to help. And they’ve made it so easy to donate. Just text “haiti” to 90999 to make a $10 donation. It’s been reported that over $3 million has been raised through this text campaign already. Isn’t that amazing. While I was at Costco today, they asked if I would like to donate to the American Red Cross. I did. And it was easy.

I didn’t give a LOT, but I did give. And I will continue to give through my fast offerings and other means. Because every donation helps.

There are a lot of bloggers who are committed to raising awareness of the need for money in Haiti. They are also committing to raise funds.

Money Saving Mom is one of my favorite blogs to check for deals and coupons. Now she’s committed to donate $10 for each blogger who donates, writes a post about their donation, and links back to her site. As I’m writing this, there are already 359 bloggers who have linked to her post. On her site she’s listed many other bloggers who are also matching funds, making donations, and really stepping it up for each comment they receive.

Mommy Snacks

The Diaper Diaries

Lamp Unto My Feet

Scrapbook of Sorts

Mom’s Toolbox

Cha-Ching on a Shoestring

Thrifty Northwest Mom

Saving Money Plan

The Happy Housewife

4 Hats and Frugal

Cincinnati Coupons

Baby GoodBuys

Another Mom’s View

The King’s Court

The Frugal Girl

Mrs. MoneySaver

SwagGrabber

Puget Sound Prudence

Saving Money in Missouri

Heavenly Homemakers

Pennies and Blessings

Faithful Provisions

She Saved

Saving with Amy

The Prudent Patron

I Heart Publix

Frugal Living and Having Fun

A High and Noble Calling

Sharpen Your Scissors

Cincinnati Cents

Coupon Lady Online

Common Sense with Money

The Homespun Heart

Ava’s Mom

Bargain Blessings

Coupon Geek

The Gothros

Saving Bits and Pieces

The Suburban Tree Hugger

My Litter of Six

“Deal”lightful Savings

Sixth Cents Saving

Really, Are You Serious?

Christian Frugal Mama

Sharpen Your Scissors

The Krazy Coupon Lady

The Stearns’ Weekly News

Making Time for Mommy

The Simple Life of the Boreings

The Frugal Find

The Coupon Basics

My Fave Deals

Thrifty on the Dollar

My Blessed Life

Kingdom First Mom

The Thrifty Couple

Frugal Living NW

My Pet Savings

Mama’s Laundry Talk

Frugal Follies

The Haney Life

Covenant Homemaking

Coupon Teacher

Mommie Cheapest

Won’t you commit to the challenge? Make a donation, blog about it, and then link up to one of these sites. I haven’t included all the links to these blogs (sorry), but if you go to here you’ll be able to click over to each one of those blogs. That will increase the amount of money going to help the people in Haiti. Every little bit helps.

What-cha do-in?

January 15, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Hey my sister just did a great post about our New Year’s Eve party here. Now I don’t have to write about it.

My husband bought and installed some upper cabinets for the mudroom. How great is that? It hides the hole from the last project. So, I’m organising the olde mudroom, but that in turn creates piles of mess all over the kitchen, as I try to get the things out of the mudroom that don’t belong.

I’ll post pictures when it looks nice. Or when I collapse from exhaustion. Whichever comes first.

What are YOU doing today?

Are you a lurker?

January 14, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Hey, do you know what today is? It’s National DeLurking Day.

I think I know most of you who do actually read here, but if you by chance are visiting and not ever leaving a comment to say hello, it’s your time to come clean. I’m just sayin.

So, have a great day! And if you’ll excuse me, I have to referee the children. One of them seems to be hogging the Wii.

I’m hoping for the big M

January 13, 2010 / / 5 Comments

It all started the week before Christmas. I was crabby and short tempered and wondered why in the world I would possibly be crabby right before CHRISTMAS! Oh, dang, it must be PMS. I looked at the calendar to see when the last occurrence of my “party” was.

Dang. I haven’t been writing these things down for quite some time. I tried to think back to the last time, and I figured out it was just after our vacation to San Diego. That was the end of November, so that would be about right. Darn. I HATE PMS, but the only way to get rid of the PMS is to experience the MS, and that’s no fun, either. Why did it have to be right during Christmas? Oh, well. I resigned myself to the inevitable, and stocked up on diet coke. The chocolate and candy were no problem, since it seemed with every ring of the doorbell some yummy sugar laden goodie was being delivered.

Christmas came and went. My period, however, did not. I kept thinking it would be here the next day. Then the next day, and the next. I started to wonder when it was going to come, and there began to be a nagging fear in the back of my mind–what if it didn’t? Every weird smell started to set me off. When I took the kids and cousins to Boondocks the week after Christmas, two of the kids picked out these squishy caterpillar things for their prizes. They smelled like gasoline and plastic. Not kidding. I had to crack the windows on the car on the way home, and I banished those squishy things to the basement. Was I overreacting? I don’t think so.

Could this be the beginning of “the big M”? or was it “the big P”? Is there another choice?
I started to think about how my life would change if we were to have another baby. For one thing, would it be healthy? I’m 42, now, for crying out loud. And crying out loud is just about what I did. I CAN’T be pregnant. Can !? But we’re so past that stage now. We don’t have kids waking up every three hours, we don’t have any of that STUFF it takes to have a baby. How would we do it? I would have to take a year off of my fabulous bell choir. I would have to “start over” with one more baby. The caboose. Every day, I waited. No period. The Monday after the New Year, I bought a pregnancy test. I waited until Tuesday to take it. I didn’t want to know. But I did want to know. The stress of not knowing was killing me. What would Ryan say? I know what he would say, he’d be thrilled to have another baby. But as a man, he’s not the one who has to go through all the changes, all the work, all the crap–of having a baby.

Tuesday, after the kids went to bed, I finally took the test. I read the directions twice, then I peed on the stick. And I waited. I brushed my teeth, and I waited. After the whole three minutes, I looked. That little test could change my life. Would it?

Negative. Not pregnant. I exhaled. While a tiny part of me was sad that there would be no baby, I was relieved. Good. I get to keep my life. I like my life. I like the kids and the fun ages they are, and I don’t want to miss all of that by having to focus all the attention on a baby. And I’ve already been blessed with 5 wonderful, healthy children. An embarrassment of riches, really. Relief. I had been going through all those scenarios in my mind, calculating that when this baby is 10, I’ll be 53. When this baby graduates from high school, I will be 60. Sixty! Ack! Both of my sisters are at the moment pregnant, and I wouldn’t want it to seem like I was just jumping on the bandwagon.

But if I wasn’t pregnant, where was the period? I waited. And waited. After three more days I wondered if I should take the second test (there are two in the box, you know). I didn’t. I waited. Friday, I finally had some light activity, and I was hopeful. Seriously–hopeful, that it was indeed the start of something. By Sunday, dear Aunt Flo had arrived. And I was indeed relieved.

In the coming months, as I get older and closer to the “Big M”, I’m sure this will happen again. I’ll just keep that back-up EPT test in the closet.

Don’t let your ponytail sag

January 12, 2010 / / 2 Comments

I was doing daughter’s hair this morning, (and by that I mean putting it into the standard ponytail) and I placed the ponytail 3/4 of an inch higher than she usually wears it.

Let the freaking out begin.

She HAS to wear her long blonde hair in a ponytail every. single. day. and she won’t let me vary that ponytail in the slightest. Even when I pointed out that her hair is starting to break off from the constant pressure of the ponytail. I calmly stated that we need to at least vary the height of the ponytail, either putting it slightly lower or slightly higher. Or perhaps a braid or two ponytails.

Not happening.

So, this morning, I put the ponytail slightly higher than normal, told her stop freaking out and I would give her a brownie for her lunch. Seriously. It looks the same. NO ONE is going to notice if the ponytail is the tiniest bit different!

As she was leaving (stomping out the door, actually), I called, “Don’t let your ponytail sag.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“You know, like it would sag if it weren’t happy. You want to stay happy, keep your ponytail nice and perky and happy. Don’t let your ponytail sag. It’s my new slogan.” I said.

She rolled her eyes at me. I had it coming.

So, there you go, folks. It’s my new catch phrase. “Don’t let your ponytail sag!”

Eat from the pantry challenge–week 1

January 11, 2010 / / 5 Comments

One week down, and I’m proud of how we’ve done. We’ve eaten soup, corn dogs, macaroni and cheese, spaghetti,meatball sandwiches, meat gravy over mashed potatoes, and some leftovers.

Around Thanksgiving, I bought a HUGE bag of yukon gold potatoes, and I’m having a hard time eating them all. This week I noticed that they are starting to sprout, so I took action. I cooked up three big pots of potatoes, then mashed them, adding only chicken broth. Then I froze them in freezer bags so that I can have quick mashed potatoes later. I also made up a big batch of potato salad for Megan, my potato salad lover. I don’t know if we’ll be able to get through all of these potatoes before they go bad, but I’ll try. This week we’ll bake them up as fries, or maybe loaded potato skins.

I’ve also gotten some “help” in my challenge.My neighbor called and asked if I needed fresh eggs. I had JUST gone to the store, so I told him I could only afford 18 eggs, and he said, well, how about if I give you two dozen, but only charge you for one dozen? Well, that’s a good deal for me, so I got two dozen fresh eggs for only $2. Yes, it went over my $25, but I’ll try to cut back by $2 this week. My sister-in-law even gave us her leftover ham from Christmas! Hey, we’ll never turn down ham.

By Friday night I was kind of tired of cooking, and I told Cole he was in charge of thinking of something to have for dinner. He said How about Ramen noodles? Sounded great to me. I like it that the kids actually WANT to eat ramen noodles. And since Ryan was out of town, there was no need to make a “real” dinner. Although last night we did have a roast (from the freezer) with sweet potatoes, yukon gold potatoes, and carrots. So we’ll have some leftovers from that dinner to use up this week.

I only went to the grocery store one time this week, and I almost stayed within my $25 budget. I did go over by a couple bucks, but I actually put some things back, when I realised I hadn’t bought the right item that was on sale and went with the coupon I had.

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That’s not a whole lot of food, is it?

This week I’ll need more fruit, as I was getting tired of apples and canned fruit, but I guess that’s the point, right? We had bread in the freezer, but we’re almost out of that, so I’m going to have to make my own bread or buy some more this week. This week we also ran out of the cheese that the kids like. It’s the presliced American cheese that I buy in a huge block at Costco. But I don’t think I can go into Costco and ONLY spend $25, so that cheese might just be a no no.

We also did some baking. I brought out a bag of muffins I had stored in the freezer. The kids gobbled up those muffins and asked that we make some more. So on Sunday we made a bunch of two different kinds of muffins for the kids to grab and eat.

The hardest part for me is seeing the deals on cereal and other stock up items that I can’t buy right now. We do NOT need cereal, as I buy lots of it when it’s on sale, but I hate to pass up a deal. I’m also getting low on diet coke, so I’m going to have to add that to the list this week.

How are you doing? Did you eat from the pantry this week and avoid going to the grocery store? Well, if you didn’t, it’s not too late to try.

Home improvements?

January 9, 2010 / / 4 Comments

Last week I went out to dinner with some friends. It wasn’t a “birthday outing” exactly, but since it was in the week of my birthday, I counted it as such. Actually, one of my faraway friends was in town, so we used that as an excuse to get some friends together and go out to dinner.
new year 2

When I came home, I walked into our disaster of a mudroom (imagine coats, boots and shoes for not just the normal 7 people who live here, but for 13 people! All over the floor of the mudroom! Seriously, a disaster!) to see my brother-in-law standing on the counter in the mudroom, yelling into a hole in the wall. Yes, a HOLE in the wall. When I first walked in, I thought he was yelling at ME for coming into that room, but I quickly realized that was not the case.
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The kids were running around and when they saw me, they said, “Mom! Dad made a HUGE HOLE in your bathroom!!!” They were so excited to tell me, and all I could think was, “Oh, joy.” I went upstairs to the master bath to see my husband laying on the floor, yelling into the hole. Really, it wasn’t a hole, he’d just taken off the front piece of marble that usually hides the innards of the tub.
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Oh, and here’s another shot of the “hole” with my cute curtains in there. Since I’m showing you my bathroom and all. (Sorry I didn’t clean it for you.)

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And I have no idea why this picture turned itself sideways as I put it in there. Ugh.

We had talked about doing this little project, I just didn’t know beforehand that this was the night to do it. You see, our hot water has always been kind of sluggish in getting to our bathroom. It is, after all, two floors up from the water heater to the bathroom. So, they installed some kind of direct circulation line from the water heater right to the bathroom.

It’s NICE. I mean, we have this nice shower with two shower heads, but it’s taken so long for the hot water to get up there, I hardly ever used the second shower head.

In other home improvement news, my husband finally ordered our boiler! I know, you’re wondering why we need a boiler when we have a water heater, but the boiler is for the radiant floor heating.
When we built the house, we installed all the pipe and everything for our warm floors, but we didn’t have the money to buy the boiler at that time.

We’ve decided it was time to order the boiler. There’s a tax rebate, so we got that ordered by the end of last year. Hooray! I’m not sure when that’s going to be installed, but I’m looking forward to some WARM cozy floors.

Ryan is out of town this week. He’s in Vegas at CES. He’s schmoozing, and explaining, and **EEK– a big spider just ran by. I tried to smoosh him but I missed. I may have to leave the room**

Ahem. Ok, I’m back. I’ve regained my composure.

While Ryan’s out of town, I usually like to tackle one organizational project. Last year I did the closet. This week I’ve been rearranging the bedroom. Because I’m kind of a rearranger. When I get bored or dissatisfied with my furnishings and start to wish for new stuff, it helps if I just clean and organize everything, sometime rearranging it in the process. Because of all the windows in our bedroom (3 of them, on two different walls), it makes it a little difficult to arrange the furniture in there. I don’t have a decorator’s eye, and I wish I knew someone who did, because I just arrange and rearrange the same furniture trying to find the right fit.

Before Ryan even left, I had him help me move the bed from one wall to another. It’s kind of hard to move a California King by myself. I got the bed settled in it’s new place, then during the week I got the dressers and other stuff moved around. But once I got things in place, I realized that I couldn’t put the dresser and mirror over by the window. I singlehandedly moved the BED, the heavy dresser, AND the nightstands.
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It turns out one person CAN move a big bed by themselves. Just imagine me on the floor, pushing at the bed frame with my feet. No, it wasn’t graceful, and it wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. It feels nice to get the clutter out, all the clothes put away and the room cleaned. The baseboards are dusted (it was VERY scary to see the amount of dust that had collected on those baseboards behind the bed after 5 years of neglect), and the silly pink garage sale curtains even got taken down and washed. Ick. There was a lot of dust on those curtains.

Now I’ve got the room cleaned organized, and rearranged. I even went shopping yesterday for fabric for new curtains. I don’t know how long it will take to get new curtains made and hung, but I’m excited about it.
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I also like this little corner over here. I moved my tiny bookshelf and a chair to make a cozy reading corner. Isn’t that great?
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The only thing I haven’t moved yet is the dresser with the tv on it. For one thing, it’s a heavy beast, and I don’t want to break anything in the process. And, if I unhook my tv, I’m not sure I would be getting it hooked back up again. And I do enjoy having a tv in my room.
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So now I need to figure out what kind of curtains I want to make, sew them, hang them, and then find some decor for the walls. Piece of cake, right?

Big plans

January 7, 2010 / / 2 Comments

It’s a Thursday morning, and I have NO plans for the day. Seriously, NO PLANS! No meetings, no volunteer time at the school scheduled, no pressing grocery shopping needs (since I’ve already spent my $25 for the week –sigh–), and no sick children home. No parties to plan, no rehearsals to go to, no house guests, nothing! I’m still in my pjs and it’s almost 9:00. Woo-Hoo! I’m thrilled. I think I’m going to work on cleaning up my room, maybe bake some whole wheat bread, or start working on this disaster I call my office. Or maybe not. MAYBE (evil laugh) I’ll crawl back into bed! How would THAT be? Oh, the excitement is overwhelming!

I’ll check in later and let you know what I actually did with my “free time” from now until noon, when John comes home from school.

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