HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2013!!!

here is a snapshot of my little ones

a biker and a fairy.  We did not spend any money on the costumes, they are made from things our kids already had.  The helmet used in the biker outfit was given to us by our bike shop owner friend when Hubs got his bike so our kids would be safe when they rode.  My son already had the jacket.  The fairy costume  is a sweater the princess already owned, and a skirt and wings I bought for her last year after halloween was over at 2.50 each piece, i had put them away as a Christmas gift for her last year. ...a close family friend took them to a trunk or treat...well she said three of them actually while dad and I hit the DMV to start the motorcycle training course that we will complete over the weekend.

(its the last class of the year) I am SCARED! but hopefully being guided step by step will guide my fear and I will learn something new that in years past I could only ever fantasize about doing, but now it is becoming a reality that I can share with my husband.

So what did you do...did you pass out candy, have little ones that dressed up, participate in a fall festival or do you have some other type of fall tradition?  Hope everyone had a great and safe night!!!!

Tips and Tricks Tuesday!!!

Thank you to a wonderful reader for the nudge, I was just dragging my feet.......wanting to bury my head in the sand:

I have been trying to make sure I move for at least 15 minutes each day.  Sometimes it is at the YMCA sometimes it is using the Wii, and for the last two days we have been doing serious yard work too...trying to prepare for our daughters birthday celebration and a homemade photo shoot that we had to put off from our anniversary weekend because of the weather.

Here is my weekly weight check

Oh well. I am drinking more water now, i really really struggle with taking care of me. I am also considering joining a team beach body challenge with Kristen J over at seeinglessofkristin.blogspot.com

That is it for this weeks check in.  Go on over and check out this weeks links, get some tips, or give some too......  Today I exercised for a half hour and my son and I are still playing some more games, but my hips are unhappy. I am at 271 right now.  I am about to start doing one shake per day for a meal to use some health stuff a friend gave me, and it is part of the beach body challenge too. So maybe there will be more of a change next week...until then......

A Fall Treat Idea

I am not as in to decorating for the season etc as some, but we did come up with a treat for my son's class mates and one for his teacher to celebrate fall and give them a treat in light of the upcoming Halloween celebration.

Here is what we used for the class treats

what you see pictured here are some Utz pretzel wheels, some treat bags with witches on them, some wax paper, some ribbon, a bag of Hershey's milk chocolate chips, and some fall colored sprinkles along with a bowl for melting our chocolate chips in.  I also had a pair of tongs to get the pretzels out of the chocolate in hopes of not covering ourselves with chocolate. 

We emptied about half the bag of chocolate chips into our bowl, and I have a 700 watt microwave and heated up the chocolate chips for two minutes and then I was able to stir them into melted chocolate.  We then put our pretzels in.  We covered some completely with chocolate, and some only half in chocolate.  There really is no right or wrong way to do this. 

While the chocolate was still wet on the pretzels we sprinkled on our sprinkles.  We let them sit until the chocolate dried hard.  (I didn't time this part we just did some other family bonding while we waited) 

My son then bagged the pretzels in our witch treat bags.  We put about 8 pretzels in the bag to attempt to keep this a healthy snack (sort of) for his class.  We tied up the bags with the orange ribbon, and the little papers tucked in the ribbons are coupons for a free Jr. Frosty (one for each kid) at our local Wendy's restaurant.  (This time every year Wendy's sells a coupons book of 10 Jr Frosty coupons for 1.00 as a fundraiser for the Dave Thomas adoption foundation.)  So I bought two books.  It's a really inexpensive way to give someone a treat.

 There may have been an easier way to do this, but 20 kids are going to know today that they were thought of.  That makes the time and effort well worth it to me.  The pretzels were 2.50 the chocolate chips about 2.68 and I used most of the bag of each one, but there was a little left for us to snack on too.  The witch bags I found at a thrift store unopened for .50.  The ribbon I already had.  The sprinkles were 1.50, and the Frosty's coupons were 10 for 1.00.  I purchased 2 books.  I spent a little under 9.00 to let my Prince's class mates know they were thought of.  If you are a savvy shopper or a couponer, I bet you could make something like this to brighten someone's day for even less.

For his teacher we made a fall gift of Pumkin Spice Sugar Scrub.  I can't take credit for the idea, I got the recipe from another blog.

http://www.bystephanielynn.com/2010/11/make-your-own-pumpkin-spice-sugar-scrub-easy-thanksgiving-hostess-gifts.html

I couldn't get her labels to print though so here was our end result

 Our packaging for this was a recycled Pure Leaf tea bottle, I just cut the label off (of course the bottle has been completely washed with hot soapy water etc.)  This recipe filled the 18.5 oz bottle 3/4 of the way full.  We put ribbon around the top.  If I could do it over, I would design a better label.  But we didn't do bad in a pinch. 

Hope you enjoyed this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sharing what we saved on Sunday # 2

This week was not as good as last,

Unfortunately, we had to turn on the heat but it has begun dropping into the 30's at night, but so far, we set it at 62 when we are home and turn it down when we are gone.

I organized my craft cabinet with stuff we already had and took it from this

 to this

I don't if it looks any better but I used things I already had like crystal light containers, a quilt bag, and old easter and halloween buckets to group things together in there so I could find them.

I saved 12.00 off my BJ's shopping trip with instant rebate and club coupons.

a lunch that should have been 24.00 at pizza hut was only 14.00 they didn't charge us for the salad bar.

Despite desperately wanting to download a book or two to my kindle, we went to the library instead and checked some out for free.

That is about it.  What did you do this week for your family/household.  Every little bit counts! You are beautiful!!!!

Progress in the office.

It is coming along, but not even close to done.  My husband stuck in a helping hand to bring it where it is now, last night.  I had been plugging away and plugging away, and felt like I was not getting anywhere.  There is still alot of work to be done but here is the before:

This is what it looks like now:

We moved the book shelf and painted it and took it out of the office and put it in the reading/crafting nook in the great room.  We moved the stereo to where the book case used to be and it now holds photo books that were previously stored in a tote.  We gave away the big pile of things that used to be stored beside the desk, but I have some boxes of things left to go through.  So it will probably take me a while, and the other desk still needs to be cleaned up.    But it is functional at least.  I will keep working on it a little each day.  It is functional now though.  So it is definitely progress, and I love that the whole family is starting to pitch in. 

The stress level for me now is so greatly decreased.  I can have family time and not feel guilty, like I should be cleaning.  Soon everything will be in order and all i will have to do is maintenance and a little detail cleaning.  Coming up over the next week or so I will be crafting a little getting ready for my daughters bday party in a couple weeks, and my uncles wedding.  Hope everyone is having a great week!

Sharing what I saved for the week on Sunday #1

One of my favorite blogs....www.theprudenthomemaker.com

shares each week what her frugal accomplishments for the week are.  I thought it would be fun to do something similar here, and share what is is that each of us did to save money this week.  Let's face it, for me my hours are steadily declining, and I am always looking for new ideas on how to save.

Perhaps we can inspire each other.  Who knows.

So I will begin.

I shaved 10.00 off a monthly recurring bill.

I used left over marshmallows that have been in my fridge since we went camping to make rice krispy treats

I made home made granola bites

Our electric bill this month is down from 113.00 to 69.82 but it has been a month where we haven't really had to use air or heat

We were shopping at Walmart and our local one has a built in Subway restaurant, we had not eaten yet, and everyone wanted to go but despite the difficulty in doing so, we resisted, came home and cooked dinner.  My husband said he was so proud of us for doing that.

My husbands bike needed a repair but we work next to a bike shop and the guy fixed it for free and my husband even got a pair of chaps for free for riding in colder weather.

I paid .50 a pound for some potatoes.

I cancelled our monthly subscription to Netflix

And I forgot to mention, our son goes to public school, and this week, we opted not to purchase his school pictures but to take our own when we finally set up to take those annivesary pictures we were suppossed to take with our own camera.

We also got a last minute notice that we were going to have company Saturday night, and I was trying to figure out what to offer them to eat because it was dinner time, but everything was frozen, so we knew we could cook hamburgers from a frozen state or we offered breakfast for dinner.  Breakfast for dinner was selected.  This was a frugal event for us, because we really wanted to throw in the towel and order pizza (and normally that is what we would have done.)  Dinner turned out great, and my uncle brought his new girlfriend and her family to meet us and they announced they are getting married!  So we now have a wedding to plan in a little less than a month.

And that is what I was able to accomplish.  Please share what you have done no matter how big or small you may think it is, I would love to hear it and learn something new!!!

A Duct Tape fix

So back in September we went camping as a family, and they had a camp store that had some awesome stuff in it.  One of the sections of the camp store had a section with handbags and jewelry in it, and I went to the hubs like honey look our anniversary is coming (hint hint).  They had this really cute handbag that was covered in tiger striped material and gems etc (my friend and i have a joke that if I had a past life i must have been a mag pie....no we don't really believe in past lives it's just a joke because i like shiny things)

Anyway the bag was completely gorgeous but it had a sticker price of $50.00 and while the hubs was totally supportive and was like you should totally go back and get it....we knew the truth that 50.00 for a purse wasn't necessarily the best use of that 50.00 for us.  We already knew for our anniversary we wanted to have a nice dinner out with some friends.

So I had a thought, over the summer I had gotten some shoes off one of those facebook groups where you sell things locally...and with it came this purse but it looked like this:

The straps were broken like this on each side.  It was a gorgeous golden bag but how do you fix purse straps.  I had assumed it would just end up being something my daughter played with.  But with thoughts of the purse I had liked at the camp store, I got inspired and got some items together.

What I have here is a necklace form my jewelry box that I paid like a dollar for but decided I really didn't like it....the Goop stuff from my crafting project stash(it has a really really strong smell that lingers so if you are sensitive to smells, you might want to find a less smelly adhesive), and a plastic bracelet from my jewelry box (but i ended up not using the bracelet in this project.)  There is also some Duck Tape in a spotted leopard print that I picked up from Walmart for $3.50.  The idea to use Duck Tape for this project came from my hubby.  He was like why can't you fix the bag with some of that designer tape that I have seen kids  playing with.  I had found some tiger stripped tape, but decided that the spotted leopard print would look better.

This is what I did.  

I cut one strip of duct tape in half lengthwise, and pulled the broken straps together and taped the duct tape to the handles.  Then I cut lengths of tape in horizontal pieces and went around each handle.

I then used the goop and glued the cross from the chain onto a side of the purse.  The goop dried clear so it worked out great.  Sorry the pictures are a little glowy because of the golden color of the purse and it reflected the flash from my camera.  I recently read there is free photo editing software online so maybe I will try soon to learn how to use it.

Here is the finished project: 

So I wanted something new, but was able to fix something old and make something new out of it!!! And the total cost of the project was maybe $4.50 in materials, but I have a ton of the Duck Tape left over, I did a little handbag up for my daughter and will use some in another project for a gift for my daughters birthday coming up in three weeks.

Do you have a creative side.  In what ways do you express yourself.  Look around you house what can you do with something you already have?