Happy Birthday Mom and Mother In Law

The first year The Man and I were married I called my mom to wish her happy birthday and as I was on the phone with my mom, my sister in law called to remind The Man to call his mom and wish her happy birthday as well. How cool is that? Both of our moms have the same birthday. This makes me a super awesome daughter in law since I will never forget The Man's mom's birthday.

Since two very special ladies share a birthday and we cannot be with them we celebrate in our house and share pictures via Facebook with them. The cupcakes above are what we had last year. They were homemade carrot cake cupcakes. This year we picked up a store bought cake. I must say while picking up a cake at the store is easy, homemade cupcakes were tons better.

I hope they both had a fabulous day. We had fun celebrating their birthdays with our own celebration.

Happy Valentine's Day

The Man and I had agreed to not buy gifts or do anything special for Valentine's Day but he didn't listen and went and did for me anyway. I do not like the over commercialized idea of Valentine's Day. Flowers that a week or two prior would have cost less than half the cost or random boxed chocolates just do not do it for me. I want to have the love shared with me but I do not want The Man to go out and spend crazy money that could go elsewhere more important on flowers. He went way above and beyond (even though we had agreed not to) and did for me what I would consider the best gift ever because it really shows how well he knows me. He did buy me a card but it wasn't some overly romantic dramatic card, it was a funny, witty card that shows his personality. He did buy me some chocolates and candies but not a prepackaged overpriced heart shaped one. He bought me Haribo gummy bears and Ritter Sport minis. These are two of my favorite candies and I love that it showed that he thought this one out. He also bought me a single serving coke. This is awesome because I wont have to share with anybody and it is the coke made here that is made with real sugar and not HFCS. I love coke but I wont drink it with the HFCS in it. Coke is also a treat as it is not healthy for us even with regular sugar and I do not like paying the prices very often. I am so glad that The Man was thrifty and thoughtful in his gift. I unfortunately am a bad wife because I never suspected he was going to do something and since we had agreed to do nothing I have to come up with something creative today to try to show him how much I care.

Happy Valentine's Day to all!

Cheap Christmas Stocking

I realized when we pulled out our Christmas stuff yesterday that H does not have a stocking yet. I should have known this but it totally slipped my mind. I was too busy trying to get through birthdays and buy Christmas gifts. I figured maybe I would try to make one for her instead of going out and buying an overpriced, cheaply made, stocking that I would not like. I used one of our other stockings and cut around it with a roller cutter. The pink and red part is a wool sweater that I paid $1.50 at a yard sale a while ago to make a diaper cover that I had not gotten around to yet. I used the middle of the sweater so I still have the arms of the sweater to use to make pants that can be used as a diaper cover. The white part is the hem of a skirt that I had picked up for free. I loved the fabric of the skirt but it was way too small. I love this stocking and am going to keep my eye out for some more wool sweaters to do this with as well. I would love for all of my kids to have a special stocking that I made for them.

Have you made your own stocking or some other Christmas craft? Please link in the comments so I can check out your homemade goodies too.

Christmas Party Update

*sorry for the horrible phone pic

This is the outfit I wore last night. I felt great. I got this dress on clearance at the store for less than $10. I paid 1 pound for the red belt at a local thrift store as well. It was very cold out so I wore a black jacket that matched the dress perfectly that I also paid less than $10 for.

They had a buffet meal and I did fabulous about my food choices. I only ate salad, turkey, carrots, green beans, and had a tiny spoon of cranberry sauce, and a half of a roll. I passed over the stuffing and mashed potatoes. I will say as nice as it was to go out for a night with The Man, our home cooked food tastes much better.

The kids did fabulously. S managed to help the babysitters by holding H at the beginning and helping her to be comfortable with one of the ladies. We were able to stay at the party until almost 10 p.m. and they didn't have to call us because she did so well. The little boys were great too. We got compliments on our children's behavior. This makes me proud. I love compliments on my children when they are being good. It makes me feel like I am not completely failing as a parent.

Date Night - Christmas Party

I am a bit nervous for tonight. It is The Man's work Christmas party and we are going. We do not get to go out as just adults hardly ever since we live where we have no family and friends to help with the kids. I also do not know how to go about finding someone to babysit because I would feel guilty asking someone else to give up their evening to watch my kids so I can go out and have fun. We are going to this party tonight and they have arranged babysitting for all of the kids of the people who are going to this party. I am a little nervous about how my children will act, especially the baby, but that is what cell phones are for, right? The Man says he knows the people who are watching the kids and feels comfortable with it so I am trying my best to try to not freak out about it. I am concerned that the baby will cry and not be able to be consoled. I know it is probably all in my own head but it is stressing me out. I will try to convince my oldest, S, to help keep an eye on his sister a little bit too since he will be a normal thing in her life and her little brothers are too young to hold her or cuddle her if need be.

I am also nervous about looking decent and making a good impression on these people that The Man works with. Unfortunately the one I am most concerned with is one of his bosses. This particular boss has had to come out and deal with my wrath when someone cannot do their job right and I got mad. (totally legitimate reasons but I am embarrassed anyway) Most of the rest of the people that The Man socializes with at work are several years younger than ourselves and most do not have children. Why does this make me nervous? Well, because I will feel old and fat compared to the other ladies around. Sure when I was 19 and had no kids I was skinny and young too, but now I am in my 30s and have had 4 kids which have not been too nice to my body. I am overweight and am afraid that whatever I wear will not look great on me. The Man thinks that I am totally crazy for caring what anybody thinks. He just doesn't get it.

Anyway wish me luck that the kids behave and that I can attempt to get over my insecurities enough to have a good night.

Weigh In Wednesday and Christmas

Today I weighed in at 196.6 pounds. It sucks, but it is what it is. It is my fault for not watching my portion sizes and eating after the kids go to bed. I had hoped to do better this week since we have a Christmas party to go to on Friday and I had hoped I could lose a couple of pounds to look a little better in my dress. Oh well. The dress will still fit and we will go and hopefully have fun. ( I am a little nervous about leaving the kids with babysitters)

On to the topic of Christmas:

Last year I was so organized with Christmas. I had my Christmas account money and did well with not going over the total for the kids. This year I have not done so well. I have spent too much on presents that I know my kids will love but I wish I had done a lot better about staying in the budget. They will only be getting one large gift from us and then they will get their stockings filled by Santa. I am going to try much harder next year to stay in the budget because this really stresses me out. I did not have this stress last year when I stayed in the budget so I really think choosing to spend more money than I had planned for is causing this issue for me.

Anyway, the kids will have a nice Christmas and the stress will be over soon. I will love the smiles and cheers when they open their gift.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

What are you or your kids dressing up as tonight. The Man and I are not dressing up but the kids will. We will have a big vampire, two little Buzz Lightyears, and a pretty little lady bug.

Have a safe night.

Cloth Gift Bags

I had a bright idea a few years back when wrapping a bunch of gifts for Christmas that wasting all that paper to wrap gifts was horrible for the environment and my wallet. I talked to my mom and asked her if she would be willing to make me some gift bags as a gift for Christmas. She did over the past couple years. I now have bags for Christmas in holiday/winter prints and birthday bags with birthday/party prints. I love them. They almost completely eliminate the waste of wrapping paper and tape. It helps keep our garbage can free for other household waste and I love all the different prints. The design is pretty simple. It is basically a pillow case with a drawstring. A little tip for keeping your bags though is to either make a special bag for the receiving person to keep or let them know before handing over their gift that you will need your bag to be able to reuse. I have found that adults are OK giving the bags back but children like to have a bag they can keep. Depending on the size the drawstring can be removed and used as a pillow case or the drawstring can be left in and the bag used for kids carrying around their prized possessions.

These are also a great money saver. If you buy your fabrics after the holidays when the prints go on sale or use a coupon you can get the fabrics for just a couple dollars a yard at most fabric stores. A yard of fabric can make a few different sized bags. Also watch for different types of yarn, ribbon, or cording to go on sale and pair it with your fabric. Right now is the perfect time to look for clearance holiday fabric to start on bags for next year.

I store all my bags in a Rubbermaid type container in the storage closet. This keeps them all together and makes for easy access. I haven't sorted mind into size differences yet but you could always do that inside your box as well.

  If you do not have a sewing machine or would just rather buy bags they sell these WrapSacks online for ease. You could also buy reusable shopping bags or tote bags to use as cute gift bags.

Frugal and Fun Holiday Ideas

I have noticed as an adult Christmas is different for me than it was when I was a child. I LOVE buying my children gifts and seeing their smiles when they open them. It just seems that some of the things I did as a child just are not the same for me. We are living far away from all of our family and we will not see any of them for the holidays so I have decided that we just have to create our own memories. Here are a few of the ideas that we have come up with so far to keep the children entertained and decorate our home for the holidays.

- Paper crafts. They are simple cheap and easy. We used cookie cutters to trace holiday shapes on construction paper, cut them out, and the kids colored them. I preserved them by laminating them and put them on our tree so they could see their work displayed. These will last for years and I can give them to them when they are adults if they want them.

- Popcorn or noodle garland. I do not like the metallic garland for the tree as it seems to get all over the place even when it is supposed to be on its own strand. Last year we had popcorn garland and this year we have dyed noodle garland. The noodles were much more child friendly as it was just noodles and yarn. We dyed the noodles red, blue and green and strung them on yarn. it was simple, fun and more decoration for our tree. This is safe for the children and the pets if it were to get on my floor on accident.

- Sugar cookies and frosting. This one is a bit messy but a fun way to spend a few hours. It also is a delicious treat at the end of a fun project. We are planning to do these this weekend as our fun holiday craft. We will make the sugar cookie dough and have the kids help cut the shapes out with our holiday cutters. After we bake them and they cool we will make several colors of frosting and let them help us decorate the cookies. We did this last year as well and the kids were so excited about getting to eat their own special treats.

- Glitter pine cones. We went outside and collected some pine cones. Ours were a bit wet so we put them in the oven at 200 degrees for a little while to dry them out. Then we painted them with cheap glitter glue. When they dried we strung them up in groups of 3-4 and hung them around the house.

What other fun, frugal holiday ideas do you have that are kid friendly?

Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours!!

This was the first year that The Man and I have been married that we cooked our own Thanksgiving dinner. The first two years The Man was deployed. The second two we ate at my mom's house. Last year my parents were here visiting and I didn't want to cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal. We chose to go to the local pub and have dinner and watch and Elvis impersonator. It was a great evening and the kids were amazing listening to the music. This year I finally decided that we were going to make our own Thanksgivng meal and it turned out great. We had a chicken breast, homemade jellied cranberry sauce, homemade hawaiian type bread, mashed potatoes, stuffing, broccoli, gravy, sweet potatoes, gravy and pumpkin pie. I did pretty well. I did make a few of the items homemade because their canned/store bought counterparts had high fructose corn syrup in them. I did cheat with the stuffing, potatoes and sweet potatoes due to the quality of the fresh items at the store and having to store them for more than a week before cooking. It all turned out great and we are all super stuffed now.

Happy 2nd Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday K!! Today is my sweet little guy, K's, birthday. I can't believe how fast time goes when you have kids. I love this little guy he is sweet and cuddly and most definately a mama's boy. He still is very needy of my time, attention, and affection but that is part of what makes him special. He makes me smile every day watching him learn new things. Tonight we will celebrate with some cake and his few presents from us and his grandparents after dinner. Maybe this weekend if the weather will cooperate we can go to a park or something fun. Happy Birthday K!!!!

Holiday Spending

Every year I hear how many people go in debt to buy their children/family gifts for the holidays. It is really sad knowing that they are going to be paying for months to come for just a day or two of happiness. I used to do this but about 3-4 years ago I had a brilliant idea. Instead of waiting until the last minute to buy gifts and spend money I opened a special savings account. We have $50 dollars a month deposited automatically so we do not miss the money from our spending/ bills money. This gives us a total of $600 for the year. Another nice part of having this account dedicated to this purpose is that if I find a great deal that one of my kids would love in June I have the extra money already set aside to buy the gift to put up.

Since I started this holiday account I have also limited the number of gifts my children recieve. I cut this down to one gift per child from the parents and one gift from the jolly man in red. There might be a few extra gifts for the whole family like movies or games but limiting the gifts has made for a much more pleasureable experience for everybody in my family. Since limiting the gifts I find that we do not spend the $600 just on the holidays, now it even includes the kids birthdays. I am so glad that I started this gift fund so that I am not one of the people going into more debt just for the holidays. I have recommended this option to some of my friends who do stress about the money at the holiday times but none of them has yet to do it. I will continue to try to give my advice when they are complaining about how to pay for the holidays but, you know no body will listen until they are ready for the help.

I Like Candy..... A Lot

One thing I like about holidays is that after the holidays the candy goes on sale. Living overseas the candy doesn't get as cheap as it does in the states but it still goes on sale. My middle son and I took a little trip to the store today and bought a bunch of marked down Valentine's Day candies. They were all marked 50% or more off the original price. Now to figure out where to hide it so that the kids don't try to eat it all in one sitting.

I LOVE MY FAMILY!!!

Today is a day to celebrate the things you love in life. For me the most important, lovable things are not things at all but people. They are my wonderful family.

The Man- I married The Man almost 5 years ago. Our love has grown tons since we said I DO in Vegas. We had a rough first year trying to settle in to a new life together. After the first year life has been absolutely AMAZING. He is the most sweet, kind, caring, handsome husband I could have ever asked for. I LOVE THE MAN!!!

S- S is my oldest son. He is 9 years old and has been a great gift in my life. He was born to me, a poor, single mother at 20 years old. I had no clue what it would be like to be a mother. I was scared and lost in life. I chose to have him and figure it out anyway. We had some rough patches but he has been a great part of my life. We always made it out alive and ahead. I watch him grow and mature every day and cannot figure out where the time has gone. I am very proud of how well he does in school. He is also an awesome big brother. He begged for a brother or sister since he was about 2 or 3. I couldn't give him that luxury because I was alone. Once T was born he just immediately took to him and has watched over him since. I LOVE S!!!

T- T is the middle child. He is 3 years old. He is a love and joy and another one of the sweetest boys ever. He was the first child that The Man and I tried for. We tried many cycles to get pregnant with him. He is a bright child as well. He is doing well on learning his colors, numbers, and letters. He gets a little jealous of K sometimes but I am glad to have a big enough lap that I can cuddle them both and get lots of loves. I LOVE T!!!

K- K is the baby at the moment. He is almost 15 months old. He is by far my neediest child yet. He is very sweet in his own little way though. He needs to be held and cuddled a lot. He will give wide open mouth kisses and forehead. Forehead is where he gives this devilish look and then put his forehead to yours and then smile happily. I LOVE K!!!

My boys all make my life more complete. I am blessed everyday by the miracles I was given. I couldn't imagine my life with a better family. I am extremely happy and proud of my great little family. I LOVE MY FAMILY!!!

Happy Valentine's Day to my wonderful family!!!

December 1, 2009

This is the first day of December 2009 and while I am very happy to have another day I am feeling the holiday stress coming on very quickly. I am very torn on the idea of Christmas. I was blessed as a child to receive everything I always wanted but I feel sometimes maybe I should have been let down sometimes too. Being mom to 3 wonderful boys I struggle on whether I should give them everything they ask for or teach them there are more important things than a new toy or that there are people out there that need things more than they do. A couple years ago I watched them open their presents and toss them aside for the next beautifully wrapped gift and then put them away to never be seen again. It was at that point that I decided they didn't NEED all those gifts. I bought them each two gifts from us and 1 from Santa as well as a big family gift. It made it so much nicer to watch them play with their new gifts rather than toss them aside. I also had my oldest son pick a name off the angel tree so that I could try to teach him about giving to others who need more than he does. I struggle though with my mother and her desire to buy every age appropriate item they come out with for each of the boys. I tried to put a limit of 2 gifts per child and she managed to work around that. She did buy only 2 toys then a stack of books and clothes and coloring books too for each of them. I am almost certain she isn't done shopping either. I guess I should try to understand her desire to give, but my children have so many things they just get overwhelmed. I have tried to tell her she could pull more angel tree names or buy savings bonds if she didn't buy so many gifts but she doesn't listen. I know she does it because my 3 boys are her only grandchildren but these boys I fear will have a bunch of hard knocks when they realize life isn't always free or easy. Oh well I guess the fight isn't going to work this year I will try again next year.