Me and Peanut Butter M&M's

I may or may not have eaten an entire medium sized bag of peanut butter M&M's all by myself in the last two days.  There are no other adults here at the moment though so who's to know for sure!:)

Nifty & Thrifty in 2012: Kid's Clothes

We are working hard on our budget.  I've been buying food when it's on sale and building our meals around what we have (that I bought on sale) not on what we need.  I'm still learning how to coupon and work the sales.  Today I bought another ham on sale (so cheap around Easter)!  I'm still working on budget dinners, but I'm also moving on...

So please share with me how you save money on children's clothes.  I have some tricks that I've been using for a while, but I'm hoping to find new ways too!  And are you one of those people who knows when all of the sales are?  Please share!  As always you can comment on here or on my Facebook page or at angiedcousins@yahoo.com.  This is a big thing for me right now because Eli REALLY needs clothes for the summer and they both are in need for clothes for next fall/winter (yes, I'm already thinking ahead)!



Spring?

Almost two weeks ago now we had some crazy warm weather here (as did much of the country)!  It was 70 and 80 degrees for a few days in a row...sunny and amazing for March!  And oh boy did we need it because it happened right at the time that Eli was diagnosed with strep and pink eye and we were quarantined to be by ourselves...so at least we could go outside and enjoy the sunshine by ourselves!:)  It felt like summer and we enjoyed every second of it!  You might remember that spring is my least favorite season.  I enjoy the snow of winter and the sun of summer and I simply love fall.  But spring?  Well quite honestly I could go straight from the snow of winter to the full on warmth and sun of summer and be perfectly happy.  And two weeks ago this dream seemed to become reality.  Then a week later is snowed... seriously it snowed.  And now we are sort of back to the chilly dampness that is Spring in Maine.  But I can look back on these couple of photos I captured during the glorious days of summer-spring...it was late afternoon and Lily had just been dropped off from gymnastics class by a friend (because I couldn't take Eli there to pick her up).  Eli and I had been playing outside for almost two hours at this point and we had happily been playing in the sandbox.  When Lily joined us somehow (and I'm not really even sure which of them started it) a lot more water got dumped into the sandbox and then more and more and more until the sandbox was pretty much flooded.  Then they wanted to stomp around in the flooded muck with their feet, which then turned into splashing, which then turned into throwing muck at one another, which then turned into full out rolling around in the flooded sandbox.  And I basically just watched and let it all happen (and grabbed my camera) because isn't this what being a child is about?  Maybe all 80 degree spring days should end soaked with water and covered in sand!:)

Nifty & Thrifty in 2012: Dinners

These days it's starting to feel like food prices go up every time I go to the grocery store!  We spend more money on food than anything else except our mortgage.  And thus I've been working really hard at saving money while still filling our bellies...my friend Kelly has been teaching me to coupon, I've been working the sales, and trying to gather ideas for budget dinners.  And speaking of dinners, here are a few cost saving ideas that I have come across:

•  Turkeys & Hams.  This is one of my very favorite ways to save money on dinners.  Every year around Thanksgiving our local grocery store has amazing sales on turkey.  I can usually pick up a whole turkey for around $6-$7.  And we stock up.  Usually you can only buy one at a time, but we pick up one every time we are at the grocery store.  We just cooked this one up last week...and so far I have gotten 5 dinners out of it!  We started with a traditional turkey dinner and we've also had turkey dinner pie, turkey and wild rice soup, and two dinners of turkey shortcakes.  We have also gotten many lunches from the left overs- LOVE it!  And I'm also starting to do the same thing with hams.  Right now ham is on sale for $.99/lb. and I've already picked one up and I'm expecting that I can get at least 3 dinners out of it!
• Breakfast.  We've been doing breakfast for dinner about once a week.  Made from scratch pancakes, waffles, or eggs make for a great cheap dinner.  Our favorite is adding frozen strawberries (that we picked last summer) with whipped cream to our pancakes or waffles.
• Homemade Pasta Sauce.  I've been making my mother-in-law's homemade sauce- it's delicious, cheaper than the store bought kind, and has less preservatives.  Here's the recipe:

Combine 1 can of tomato soup, 1 (6oz) can of tomato paste, 12oz water, 1tbsp sugar, 1tsp oregano, 1tsp basil, 1 bay leaf, 1tsp garlic powder, 1/2tsp salt, 1/4tsp pepper.  Add 1/2lb or more of hamburger and spaghetti noodles and you have a great budget dinner!

• Tuna Melts
• Pasta Salad
• Fried Rice
• Nachos with beans and 1/4lb hamburger
• Whole Chicken
• Stuffed Baked Potatoes
• Fried Egg Sandwiches
• Black Beans & Rice
• Beef Stroganoff
• Chili
• Vegetable & Beef Soup:  Combine a bottle of V8, a large bag of frozen mixed veggies, and 1/2lb of browned hamburger and cook in a crock pot.
• Chicken & Rice:  Combine 1 can of cream of chicken soup, 1 can cream of mushroom soup, 2 cans of rice, 2 cans of water, and 1 stick of butter.  Top with 3-4 chicken breasts and cook for an hour and a half at 375.  You can also add mixed veggies.

These are just a few ideas.  Thanks so much to those of you who shared your ideas and recipes...and please feel free to share more!  I've also been collecting recipes and ideas for budget dinners on Pinterest (I have a whole board for it)...so check me out there if you are on Pinterest (and if you aren't then maybe you should be...but beware...it's crazy addicting)!:)        



 

St. Patty's

More and more I am enjoying St. Patricks Day every year.  It's just a simple little fun holiday without lots of plans or expectations.  Just fun.  This year on St. Patricks Day we started the day off with Lucky Charms (a first for my kids) and green milk.  Eli wasn't feeling well that day so he wasn't impressed with breakfast (as you can see from the picture)- but he perked up after his medicine kicked in!  And later in the afternoon we did our 2nd annual St. Patricks Day clover hunt in our living room.  Once again Lily loved this (and remembered, with great excitement, doing it last year) and Eli was also quite excited to hunt for clovers this year!  I hid one of the clovers on top of the ceiling fan in our living room and it didn't take long for the kids to realize how fun it would be to put all of the clovers on top of the ceiling fan and then turn it on!  Over the next two days we did this over and over again enjoying "showers" of clovers!
After the clover hunt the kids enjoyed a rainbow of rice that I made in the sensory table.  It didn't stay a rainbow for long, but even I have to admit that the rice was fun to play with!  What a fun little St. Patricks Day...and it case there was any doubt you can be assured that there is in fact Irish blood flowing through my sweet fair skinned, strawberry blond haired babies!

You Are My Shelter

"Complexity haunts me for I am two men

Entrenched in a battle that I'll never win

My discipline fails me, my knowledge it fools me

But You are my shelter, all the strength that I need."

The hits just keep coming...

I've mentioned that I'm an optimist.  But I think I'm past the laughable stage right now and I just sort of want to cry-really.  Eli is thankfully doing better...sleeping has mostly returned to normal and his eyes look so much better this morning. Though yesterday he rubbed his eye with his hand that was covered in sand from playing in the sand box.  Now, sand in the eye is never fun, but I can only conclude from the prolonged full out screaming that getting sand in your eye when you already have pink eye is AWFUL!  I tried to get it all out, but eventually the only thing that would calm him down was me laying with him pressing a cold, wet washcloth on his eye.  He fell asleep, out of sheer exhaustion I'm sure, that way.  When he woke up Joe and I had to flush his eye...which he responded to with sheer terror, but it seems to have worked.  Now today Eli seems to be doing quite well.  But in what's turning out to be true Cousins fashion, just as Eli started to get better I started to get sick.  Yesterday I woke up feeling a bit crummy and by today I feel flat out sick...with pink eye in one eye and some sort of virus(?) that's making my head and throat hurt and my body ache all over.  If the throat gets any worse I'll head to the doctor to be tested for strep (which would make sense since Eli had it).  And then at dinner last night Lily threw up.  And that's when I just wanted to throw my hands up in the air in surrender and cry.  Instead I comforted my baby, cleaned up the mess (Joe was on a climbing trip), put on Lady and The Tramp and waited to let my husband take over when he got home.  Please pray for our family, we are exhausted.  We've had as much sickness in the last three months as we usually do in years and it's wearing us down.  Thanks for lifting us up in prayer.  And one of these days (hopefully soon) I'll get back to posting regular pictures and stories!