My Wonderful Husband

So yesterday morning I woke up feeling like I got hit by a truck. Not so fun. So on his way home from work Daniel stopped at Pilgrims and got me:

Umcka ColdCare (in cherry rather than the yucky flavor we had at home)
Throat Lozenges
A new flavor of my favorite tea
My favorite apple cider that is only available a couple of months a year
A bunch of wonderfully smelly soaps

I cried. Fortunately I think he was able to interpret that as "thank you for being so wonderful and thoughtful and bringing all these great things home for me."

Today he woke up sick, so I guess now I'll have to share. Well, maybe not my soaps, those are just for me =)

Let It Shine

I'm sorry for the poor quality, but I had to compress it quite a bit =) MZ has spent the morning reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas and listening to his music. It was so cute I had to record it! Although he sings so quietly, you may need to turn up your speakers.

Wordless Wednesday

Our Pathetic Tree

See? Told you it was pathetic.



We bought it the first Christmas we were married. It was cheap and it was small enough to fit into our little living room. Now it has to sit on a coffee table to even be noticed in our new dining room that is about the size of our old living room.



Fortunately the kids don't care.



Well, MZ might. Granted, his shirt has a better Christmas tree on it...



See this?



It used to be in this. For the time being it's just extra sparkle. I'm avoiding having to clean it up.



K-Lou was the mastermind behind the tree's final look.



And she's quite proud of herself.





MZ managed to get in on some of the action as well.



We tried to get some cute, happy pictures of the kids in front of the tree. This was the best we managed though. Fortunately it makes me laugh.

And as I've been looking through pictures to use in my digital scrapbooking stuff, I've noticed that Daniel and I seem to be nonexistent. So, to prove that we were actually there and participated in the tree decorating I give you these:



Daniel's shoulder.



My Arm.

An Update

We now have fully working plumbing in both the kitchen and the bathroom! Our downstairs bathroom sink had stopped working a while ago, and before it got fixed, the kitchen sink died too! Turns out there is a pipe that is slightly exposed to the outside (a chunk of the wood had fallen out), plus it was leaking right at the same spot! Needless to say, the single digit temperatures did not go over well. It froze and cracked, somehow sending water back up and out of our sink and dishwasher and onto our floor. Now it is all fixed and working better than it ever has! We no longer have a garbage disposal though, which is fine because I didn't use it often anyway. It was apparently installed wrong originally and would cost a bunch to fix so the landlords decided to just take it out. So, there's our update. Oh, and the toilet flushes instantly now rather than having to hold down the handle for five minutes. Now the only thing left to do is three days worth of dishes. Oh fun.

Someone Doesn't Want Us Going to Home Group

We haven't been to our home group in forever. First there was our car being broken and not repaired for over two weeks. Now, it's our kitchen flooding. On Tuesday night we noticed a ton of water all over our kitchen floor. Apparently the plumbing was done wrong so the garbage disposal likes to get messed up and cause problems. And of course the only time we could get someone over here was last night. The night we would have been able to return to home group! I think it's a conspiracy.

$5 Photo Mug

I saw this today on another blog and figured I'd share it. If you go here, you can order a photo mug for only $5 with free shipping. Just use the coupon code 5DOLLARMUG. It's today only! It can make a nice, cheap Christmas gift =)

Just One More Thing...

...and then I'll be done! Since I figured some of you might get bored of me spamming my own blog with my latest digital scrapbooking adventures, I decided to make another blog =) If you're interested in seeing any more of my scrapbook pages, check it out. Don't forget to become a follower so that I know who's looking!

And There's More...

This is what I did tonight instead of dishes. I'm very productive.

To answer your questions, digital scrapbooking is where you download premade "paper","embellishments", even "eyelets". Then you put them all together however you want with your own photos and such. Just like you would with regular scrapbooking...only without the mess. And the cost. You need a program like Photoshop to be able to to it properly, but us cheap folk just use paint.net. It's not great, but it usually does the job. And it's free.
When you're done you can either print the pages yourself, have them professionally printed (Costco, Walgreens, etc.) or get a bunch of them printed into a book through a place like Snapfish. Most of the papers come preset at a 12x12 inch format, but I've been changing them to 8x10 to make them a more standard size for printing.

A few places to check out:
Shabby Princess (these are really cute kits!)
Free Digital Scrapbooking
Scrapbook Flair (They have a free software you can dowload and use)

Digital Scrapbooking

Because I need more hobbies to waste my time...





I'm just playing around, trying to figure out how it all works, but I figured I'd share my little experiments with you anyway =)

Frugal Friday - Free Audiobooks

Welcome to another Frugal Friday! I've been slacking the last couple of weeks, but I'm back =) So, I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite free audiobook sites. Most of the books on these sites are public domain, so if you like classic books, they're great! Also, keep in mind that many of these are recorded by volunteers, so don't expect a "professional" reader, and you sometimes have to download each individual chapter rather than the whole book at once.

Librivox
Lit2go
Free Audio Books
Storynory - Children stories, MZ loves these!
Project Gutenberg - Both audio and ebook format
Google Books - Just ebooks
Christian Audio - A new book for free every month

Add a link to your own Frugal Friday post:

Just In Case You Are Bored...

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Cooking, Life and Legos

Yesterday was my "cooking day" for all my freezer meals. I was a little smarter this time in my menu planning. Last month, I did a different meal for each day. It was rather chaotic. This time around, I did two of each meal. And actually, I only did enough for two weeks since our budget was a bit tighter due to car repairs. So, I did only 6 different meals for a total of 12. Much easier. I thought it would be fun to take pictures documenting my cooking day, but this is about as far as I got:



Pretty exciting, eh? It was a lot of veggies to chop, and I ended up having to chop up more later on! I did make two different kinds of soup because I had a ton of stock that I made last week from the Thanksgiving turkeys. For some reason I was the only one that wanted to snatch up the turkey carcass. Crazy, I know! It went well with my chicken feet though.

MZ spent the whole time (seriously, the whole time) playing Life. I decided recently that MZ was watching to much TV. This decision was mainly due to the fact the can pretty much reenact the whole movie Up. It's been pretty nice so far! He's kept himself pretty well amused with board games, I think he's enjoying being able to play them without K-Lou bossing him around. It's pretty funny to watch, because many of the games he actually knows how to play (Life is not one of them lol) so he plays against himself.



Today, however, is all about Legos. He can sit for hours playing with the Legos. The funny thing is, he will not touch is Mega Blocks anymore. He's all about the Legos.



And finally, my freezer stocked full of food:



It's a good thing I only did 2 weeks worth of food rather than the whole month! I went ahead and bought freezer containers rather than spending money on plastic bags that will just get throw away...requiring me to buy more! These ones are pretty fancy with their snap on lids and lack of bad plastic chemicals. Yep, they're that cool. I also used glass jars for the soups. Last time I used gallon freezer bags which I didn't take up much room, but finding a place for them to thaw in my fridge without them spilling all over was a pain. So, there you have it! And my menu for the next two weeks:

Turkey Noodle Soup (my own "recipe")
Chicken Enchilada Pie (with homemade sauce and homemade refried beans, yum!)
Garden Chowder (trying a new recipe, looks yummy!)
Spinach & Feta Quiche (without the crust)
Chicken and Rice Casserole (a recipe without any "cream of something", yay!)
Curry Chicken (another new recipe, but it's curry...you can't go wrong with curry)

Our grocery shopping total? Just under $100! For two weeks! Well, we'll still need to buy milk and yogurt, but still, I'm pretty happy about it =) Oh, and everything was organic/free range too!

First Step Photo Vinyl Wall Art $50 Gift Card GUEST GIVEAWAY

First Step Photo Vinyl Wall Art $50 Gift Card GUEST GIVEAWAY

Knock, Knock!

MZ: Can I tell you a knock, knock joke?
Me: Yep.
MZ: Knock, knock!
Me: Who's there?
MZ: Time to go to bed!
Me: Time to go to bed who?
MZ: Time to go to bed for me! Let's go!
Me: You don't have to tell me twice!

I think he wanted to go take a nap because I told him he could watch Up after he has lunch and takes a nap. But I'm not complaining ;)

Thanksgiving

Before



After



Before



After



And on a totally unrelated note, look at this beautiful set of china my grandma gave me!



I love these tea cups, I'm thinking a tea party might be in order!



But then again, do I want to take the chance that something gets broken? What to do, what to do?!

I Don't Get It...

With New Moon being released into theaters, Twilight mania is everywhere. The thing I don't get?

Why is he considered attractive? Now, I understand that every gal has her own personal preference, but really...he always looks like he's on drugs. Or, if you rather, there is this picture:

Yep, he's a cool one alright. And then there's my personal favorite:

Need I say more?

Christmas is Just Around the Corner...

Note: If you are not a member of my immediate family, feel free to disregard this post =)

I've decided I should get around to figuring out Christmas gifts. Because of recent car events, we won't have as much money as we'd planned for Christmas this year. So I want to make sure the gifts we make/buy for you all are things that you want and will use. I figured that I would give you guys some ideas of things that I can make and you can let me know what you'd like =) You can also throw in color or style preferences if you want. Or, if there is something else that you want/need that we can purchase, please let me know! Mom and Melissa, if you can give me some direction for the men and children, it'd be much appreciated!



A cute little purse


A fancy winter hat


A beret


A manly hat


iPod cozy


Reusable Swiffer covers


Hotpads


Washcloths


Slippers


Scarf


Cowl


Convertible gloves


Mittens (these ones were inspired by some gloves that Bella wore in Twilight lol)


Headband/ear warmer


Fingerless gloves


Legwarmers


Sackboy


Beer sweater


Sushi toilet paper cover

Ok, so maybe not those last ones ;)