Peppermint Bark

So I was reading a few blogs that look interesting to me and saw that several of them were making peppermint bark with their children. It looked very easy and we already had all the items here on hand. It consists of chocolate chips and peppermint candies. I used one bag of semi sweet chocolate chips and one bag of the mint and dark chocolate chips. I microwaved these until they were smooth when stirred. I used some candy canes that we had laying around and broke them into little pieces. I mixed about 2/3 of the candy pieces in the melted chocolate and then poured it onto a cookie sheet with waxed paper on it. I spread it out the thickness I wanted, about a half inch. Then I sprinkled the rest of the candy pieces on top. Set it in the fridge til it was firm and then broke it into pieces. This is a super easy quick sweet tooth fix.

Homeschool Preschool w/ Hooked on Phonics deal

So my middle child just turned 3 and I started worrying that in a couple years he will go to kindergarten and not have a clue as to how to even spell his name. This frightened me even though I have been working with him on colors and counting already. I came across a deal for Hooked on Phonics to order some preschool learning material. I picked up several books on writing, colors, shapes, ABC's, and numbers. I used the code HOP50 to get 50% off my order and free shipping (woohoo they ship to an APO address). I managed to get 11 books, some with DVDs, for less than $35.00. I am very excited to have something to help me start my son out in the right direction. I am excited to watch him grow and learn. I really wish I had the knowledge to home school all 3 of my children all the way through high school but I am afraid I would not be capable of that so I will stick to the preschool learning.

Frustrated with mail order shopping!!!

So, as I am trying to stretch the dollars I have so that we may become debt free I keep hitting brick walls. I have seen some amazing deals that I would love to take part of for the holidays and just because they were great deals. The problem I am having is that because we live in England with an APO address a lot of places either will not ship at all to an APO or they want to make you pay a higher shipping charge. It is no more expensive to ship to me at an APO than it is to ship from Washington state to New York so why are we being penalized?? It is already way more expensive to live and shop here and then when I find a great deal online it would be nice to be able to take part in it. I really wish that online stores would reconsider their shipping policies and ship to the APO/FPO shipping address of people who are serving all over this world to help keep them safe in the land of the free.

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.

Laundry Detergent

Living here in the UK via the military has so far proven to be great fun but also a pain at times. The biggest issue to date is the availability of products that I am used to getting in the states. The commissary tends to carry only select few varieties of items and you have to adapt to the "if you see it you better buy it now" attitude. I was using Country Save laundry detergent in the states and loved it but they haven't carried it here at all so I bought Purex free and clear at almost $10.00 a bottle. I like it, but having a family of 5 we can go through lots of detergent very quickly. After going through a bottle in a very quick amount of time I decided to do some research to see if there was a cheaper way and possibly home made way of doing laundry detergent. There are many sites out there that are set up to help the frugal (or cheap as my 9 year old put it) people. I read lots of sites before determining that I was going to try to make the detergent myself at home. Most of the recipes were for a liquid version and made like 5 gallons of detergent. I don't have enough room to store that much so I found a few that had powder recipes. Of course they were all a little different so I just estimated and put together my own based on a conglomeration of them all. I used 1 bar of Fels Naptha grated then ran through the food processor, 1 cup washing soda (or soda crystals as they are called here), and 1 cup of Borax. I mixed them all together in a Tupperware type container and put an old 1 tablespoon measuring spoon in there. For each load I dissolve 2 tablespoons of this mixture in HOT water and then dump it in my washer for the load of clothes. I usually wash my clothes on the cold/cold cycle and this will not dissolve the mixture properly. I really like this detergent and it cost less than a bottle of stuff from the store. I still keep a bottle of the liquid detergent from the store in the cupboard in case we run out of hot water to dissolve the home made detergent in, but I am super impressed by the frugal, impressive because I did it at home detergent.