My “Extreme Couponing”

Have any of you seen the new TLC show called “Extreme Couponing”?  I love it!  Except there’s no way I would want to spend 20, 30, 40 hours a week couponing.  Still, I manage to get some good deals when I do.  We’ve been getting the Sunday paper for about 6 months and I tried clipping out all the coupons I thought I would use and filing them into categories.  WAY too much work!  I’ve discovered that if I leave my coupon inserts in tack and file them by date, I can scan the weekly sales, match it with a coupon, go to that insert, and just clip it then.  I LOVE the website Pinching Your Pennies for this!  It’s all done for me ahead of time!

Now, in all honestly, I don’t do this very often.  Sometimes I will take the time to look through the store ads and price match at Walmart.  And sometimes I will go all out and score big time like I did on Saturday.  This was a fluke actually because I had my grocery list done and just ran upstairs to see if I had a coupon for a couple of times.  30 minutes later I came out with a game plan to shop at Smith’s and also Walmart (my regular grocery store) and to get some stuff for FREE!!  I’ve never been able to get anything for free and that’s mainly because the stores in Utah (or at least up here and at least to my knowledge) don’t ‘double’ coupons.  That’s how those crazy people on the show save so much money.  Anyway…..the stars aligned on Saturday and I was able to get all of this for free:9 boxes/bag of pasta
2 bottles of men’s body wash

My full shopping order from Smith’sWith the 9 free boxes plus 10 bags of American Beauty pasta, I’d say we’re pretty well stocked up on pasta!  And you can’t see it, but I also bought some make-up remover for full price that I needed (and that Walmart was out of) so that skewed my ‘cheapness’ a little.

My total was $81.15 but with $37.76 in promo sales + $16.29 in coupons, plus tax, I only paid $27.10 for a total savings of 68%!!  It’s not 98% like the crazy people on “Extreme Couponing” but it’s my best savings ever and I’ll take it!

I also saved about $15 just by price matching a few items at Walmart.

So although it does take time, it can be worth it.  It’s motivated me to be better at it.  I don’t want to have to change my shopping habits drastically by going to multiple stores every week and spending hours preparing to shop, but if I can cut my grocery/household budget down by $50 a month and only spend an hour a week preparing, I’ll be happy.  I’d like to cut it down even more but I’m limited on space and to really save, you need to stockpile.  I’ve also learned a lot from the website Money Saving Mom.  Anyway, sorry for bragging but I’m excited! :)

Abby’s Big Girl Hair

I attempted pig tails today.  It took FOREVER but when they were finally done, I was pretty impressed!  She looks so grown up!

She has a very prominent natural part and her hair just doesn’t want to go the other way….hence the wacky part line.

Trying to get a picture of her is almost impossible.  I thought this one was funny.  She’s so serious.

Of course it lasted all of an hour before she threw a fit on the floor and messed it up.  Oh well.  I have some other ideas but they require precise parting and placement and she just won’t sit still! :)

Any suggestions of styles or tricks my fellow mom’s of little girls? 

Easter 2011

A little late, but here are some pictures from Easter this year.

Dying eggs with Aunt DeeDee.
Nat was out of town the week leading up to Easter, so we dyed eggs at my parents’ house one day.

The Easter Bunny visited our house on Saturday morning and Adam had fun finding his basket and the eggs hidden around.

Adam’s basket included a Boggle Jr. game, a book with a collection of old “Little Golden Books” stories, a little tiddlywinks frog jumping game, and of course, candy.

Abby’s basket had a book, a Hide & Squeak Eggs toy, bracelets, and candy.

Growing up, we always rolled our eggs down the driveway to crack the shells before eating them for breakfast.  No need for that this year.  Abby started banging eggs together and was quite intrigued when they smooshed and broke apart!

 

 

 

Saturday night we read a book about the Easter story and made Resurrection Rolls.  You place a butter/cinnamon sugar coated marshmallow in the middle of a crescent roll to represent the body of Christ in the tomb.  After they bake, you open up the roll and marvel that the marshmallow is gone, just like Christ’s body on Easter Sunday.  After that, Adam kept talking about how Jesus was like the marshmallow and how he disappeared from the tomb.  I wish I took some pictures!

Easter Sunday

I thought this was cute of Abby….Adam is making a weird face in the full picture, but it’s cute that he’s holding her hand!

Happy Easter!

Tot School–Easter Theme

- Adam is 41 months and Abby is 14 months old -

The last 2 weeks were spent on a few Easter themed activities.  We’ve been really busy so Tot School has been very infrequent but I’m hoping to get back to “full time” this coming week.  It’s always a trade-off, one week I’m gung-ho about it and wind up exhausted, the next week I slack off and am driven crazy by a boy who obviously needs some structure in the day other than just playing.  Either way….I’m tired!  I have a sneaking suspicion that that will not change any time soon. :)

Lowercase/Uppercase Letter Match
from Musings of Me

Missing Number from Musings of Me
Adam had a hard time figuring out which number was missing unless he started counting from number 1.

Letter Ee Sort, also from Musings of Me

Jelly Bean Counting from Confessions of a Homeschooler 

Easter Egg and Flower dots pages from Mama to 4 Blessings

Sound Matching game
I got this idea from a couple of blogs.  I put pennies, bells, beads, and nothing in 2 eggs and then Adam had to match which eggs sounded the same.  I didn’t expect this to be hard for him, but it was.  I think he really just didn’t get why I was asking him to listen to them!  He just wanted to open them up and see what was inside!  Maybe we’ll try this again next year.

The kids had fun tossing, dropping, and chucking plastic eggs around the house….for days.

Water Colored Easter Eggs
We did this a few months ago and I thought it’d be a great Easter art project.  I cut coffee filters in egg shapes and then we dropped colored water on them with droppers.

Mostly Adam just likes playing with the water!

The finished product up in our window

Marshmallow Egg
Again, this idea came from somewhere in the blogosphere (I really need to be better at giving credit for art ideas!)
I made the shape of an egg with glue and we stuck white marshmallows on the outside, then colored marshmallows to decorate the egg.

Adam’s free-form art.
I was visiting with a friend and didn’t see just how much glue he dumped onto the page!

Here are just a few things Abby has done for Tot School lately.

Laugh & Learn Piggy Bank

Magneatos

Coloring

And the ever-present Baby Signing Time.Every time we walk downstairs she signs baby and says “Bee-bee…..bee-bee!” to let me know she wants to watch Baby Signing Time.  She is picking signs up like crazy though!  Just today she saw a doll in a book and signed doll.  Another new favorite is wind and rain.  Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE sign language for babies?  And how much I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Baby Signing Time to help teach them?  Here’s a link if you’ve never checked them out.

We didn’t get to a few other spring/Easter related activities so I may try and sneak those in this week before moving on to the Transportation Preschool Pack from Carisa at 1+1+1=1 and Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations. 

Stop by 1+1+1=1 for other great Tot Schoolers!

“Mine is the Night” Book Review

A friend of mine started getting books for free from WaterBrook Multnomah’s Blogging for Books program.  I thought it sounded like a great way to read books that I might not normally come in contact with and to get them for free!  So here is my first review.

From the back cover of “Mine is the Night” by Liz Curtis Higgs:

SHE LOST EVERYTHING SHE LOVED.
HE HAD EVERYTHING SHE NEEDED.
BUT COULD SHE FIND THE COURAGE TO TRUST HIM?

Stepping from a battered coach on a rainy April eve, newly widowed Elisabeth Kerr must begin again, without husband or title, property or fortune. She is unafraid of work and gifted with a needle, but how will she stitch together the tattered remnants of her life? And who will mend her heart, torn asunder by betrayal and deception?
   Elisabeth has not come to Selkirk alone. Her mother-in-law, Marjory Kerr, is a woman undone, having buried her husband, her sons, and any promise of grandchildren. Dependent upon a distant cousin with meager resources, Marjory dreads the future almost as much as she regrets the past. Yet joy still comes knocking, and hope is often found in unexpected places.
  Then a worthy hero steps forward, rekindling a spark of hope. Will he risk his reputation to defend two women labeled as traitors to the Crown? Or will a wealthy beauty, untainted by scandal, capture his affections?
   The heartrending journey of the Kerr women comes to a glorious finish in Mine Is the Night, a sparkling gem of redemption and restoration set in eighteenth-century Scotland.

I guess I didn’t read the back very closely because I had NO IDEA this was a sequel until after I was finished!  That speaks a lot about the author because I didn’t feel like I was lost in the storyline.  It felt like natural background info on the characters lives as I read.

I really liked this book!  I usually like historical fiction and period pieces and this was no exception.  I love reading about period clothes, customs, ways of life, etc.  And it was a great love story (even if I could spot the romance the second the male character was introduced)!  I also enjoyed the strong female characters and their willingness to adapt and find joy in a situation far different from the one they knew before.  My only complaint is that the author wrote many characters with a strong Scottish dialect and I was bothered with having to stumble over the words to decipher them.  I felt like it disrupted the flow of my reading too much.  However, I got a little used to by the end of the book.

I would give this book 4 stars and recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction and love stories. 

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Abigail at 14 Months

 
Abby is now 14.5 months old and is much more like a toddler than a baby.  It’s quite sad!  But it’s also a lot of fun!

Sometimes she looks so grown up….

But sometimes she still looks like my baby.

Here are the signs she knows, along with how she verbally says some of them:

milk (me), eat/food, drink, sleep, diaper change, cat (ca-ca-ca), dog (dah-dah), bird (bee), fish, cracker (ca-cuh), please, bath, more (meh), all done, baby (buh-bee), hat (ha), ball (bah), car (cah) mom (mama or mah-mee), dad (dada), jacket, banana, leaf, bear (beh), and her versions of balloon (reaching up in the air and saying boowa), stinky/poopy (waving hand in front of her face) and lotion (wiping her hand around her mouth).  I think there are several others that I can’t recall at the moment.

Here are the words she says (what I can think of right now anyway):

thank-you (keh-kee), brother (bruh-buh or buh-buh), papa, socks on (sah-ah), Wubby…her binky…(wuh-buh), uh-oh (uh-ah), book (buh), bye (bah-bye), beep (bee), num-num, amen (ah-mee)…she has also started to fold her arms during prayers.

Recently, as Nat was reading her “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” she chimed right in with “uh-ah" after the line, “we’re not scared”, just like in the book.  Adam and I read that book 2 weeks ago for Tot School and she must have heard it enough to remember the prose….or verse….or whatever technical term it is.

Every morning as I open her drawer to get her clothes I sing, “Oh what should we wear today, today, day today, day today….” and with the “day today” parts she says, “day day day” (just like Adam did at this age).

She loves to march around like a one-legged Nazi (you know, sticking just her right leg straight out) and dance by spinning in a circle or bopping up and down.

She currently only has 3 teeth but I swear the second top tooth, as well as what looks like her bottom canines, are coming soon.  Somehow she manages to eat just about everything.  When she wants to.  She sometimes flat out refuses to eat food I know she likes.  Sigh.

I just like this picture

This is pretty typical….fussing that she wants someone to read to her.
(I was trying to get a picture of her in my favorite dress before church…didn’t work out too well)

She loves to drive this part of a little train in circuits around the house.  Sometimes, like in this picture, she takes something for a ride.  This is her Sleepy Dog and, along with her Wubby, is her most favorite possession.

She likes to color!  Especially if she can sit at Adam’s little table.

And she loves to be anywhere her big brother is.
She is physically fearless and loves walking, running, climbing, and now sliding.
This is her new trick….she likes to reach under her legs and grab stuff.

But, she is still my sweet baby girl and I love her to pieces!

Just some fun with Daddy

Head Shaving Party!!

This is the Shurtleff Family saying “Take that cancer!”

First up….Heath who had been waiting to cut his hair until this moment.

Of course we had to have fun with it!

Second….Tommy.
He was the most sad about doing this because he loves his shaggy hair.

We were laughing hysterically at his old man ‘do!

Third….Adam!
He was a little unsure about it but I didn’t give him a choice.  He needed a haircut either way so we buzzed him!

Cute little guy!

Fourth….Dad.
He’s getting more and more sick with each treatment (which are now weekly, so he doesn’t get much of a break before having to go back in).

Having fun.  You gotta laugh right? :)

And last but not least…..Nat!
I didn’t know if he’d do it, especially because he just flew out this morning for a business trip with a bunch of other Real Estate people.  Bald.
I got to do the honors here.

Not too bad huh?

All the guys pre-razor.

Post-razor.

Oh. boy.
Nat definitely wins the most-hair-per-square-inch award and also the darkest-hair award.

We had a fun night filled with lots of laughs.  Afterward we had dessert and played a game while Dad hung out like this….

It was a good night.