Summer Preserving

Our garden has been very good to us this year-way too good.  We have 3 cucumber plants, 3 zucchini plants, 3 green pepper plants, 4 plum tomato plants, 1 cheery tomato and 1 heirloom tomato.  Plus parsley and basil plants, sweet potatoes (which I will have NO clue how they do for another 6 weeks or so), and our apple tree which currently has half a dozen apples (hoping they grow and ripen this year-the tree is only 2 yrs old).  I have been spending HOURS every day trying to preserve the produce from the garden.  I have probably made a dozen dozen muffins and breads, a dozen meals of soup, half a dozen casseroles....all those have been frozen to eat later.  I have also made 11 jars worth of spaghetti sauce (2 have already been eaten and 9 are frozen) plus all that is shown below:

6 jars salsa
6 jars pizza sauce
6 jars sweet relish
7 jars sour dill relish (tastes like a cross between relish and sauerkraut)
5 jars bread and butter pickles
6 jars dill pickle slices (for sandwiches)

Not shown-5 jars refrigerator pickles

Seriously, I am so exhausted!  All the time! The house is a complete mess but I'm working more than ever before.  I can't wait for garden season to be over and start to reap the benefits of canning and freezing all this produce!

First Days Through the Years

I know, I know....I do this ALL the time!  But I can't help it!  I LOOOOVE looking back and seeing how my kids have grown!

3yr old Preschool

4 yr old Preschool

Kindergarten

1st Grade

2nd Grade

3rd Grade

Third Grade!

Anne started 3rd grade last week!  She is officially halfway through her elementary school experience and about to enter the world of real grades and harder school work.  Hard to believe how quickly time has passed by with her!  I hope she has a wonderful year, grows in her intelligence, makes lots of new friends, and maintains her confidence!  I love you Anne!

And she's off!

Three Years Old!

Libby is three years old now! I don't really have stats right now and her birthday is another post but I wanted to post pictures of her being three. These are the last pictures in this rocking chair. We don't have any more babies, we aren't sure if we'll have any more babies and we don't have storage room so off the rocking chair went! (For thirty bucks on craigslist). It's sad that we're getting rid of baby stuff but that door is not closed yet, so time will tell. As a side note, I included Libby's 2 yr old picture-can you believe how much she's grown??? WOW!

3 yrs old

2 yrs old

Woven Sun or Dream Catchers

We were supposed to have a park playdate this morning but it was raining pretty consistently.  My goal this summer is to be more involved with the kids-I tend to let them play by themselves and direct them but not be involved with their playing.  So this summer I'm trying to take time every single day to be involved with them in some way.  So with this morning being scheduled for the park that got rained out it was perfect to spend some time with them and cross off a bucket list item.  We made woven dream/sun catchers. It actually turned out pretty good.  Jamie is 5 and was able to do it mostly by himself with help every few steps.  Libby needed consistent help.  I think anyone younger than 3 might get too frustrated by this activity.  But it was perfect for my kiddos and I LOVE the outcome!

Summer Bucket List 2014

The kids and I made up our summer bucket list.  There's a LOT of things on here.  Probably too many things-we'd have to do one of these things every other day to accomplish them-but we'll see how we do.  I know at least some of these things will happen pretty naturally without much planning.  Hopefully we have a busy, fun summer!

1. Go to the pool 
2. Slip and Slide out back 
3. Sprinkler out back 
4. Pool out back 
5. Splash Pad at the park 
6. End of the year reading club pool party 
7. Go to all of Wesmere parks 
8. Sponge water fight **
9. Go to 5 new parks outside of Wesmere 
10. Saturday mornings at the pool 
11. Walks in the morning after breakfast 
12. Nature walk in the woods 
13. Blueberry picking
14. Starved Rock 
15. MI Beach 
16. Theater Hike 
17. See all the animals at the zoo 
18. Arboretum 
19. Children’s Museum 
20. Phillips Park Zoo 
21. Pirate’s Cove 
22. Blackberry Farm 
23. Willowbrook Wildlife Center 
24. Napersettlement 
25. Kline Creek Farm 
26.  William L Gregg House (only on Wed afternoons) 
27. Cosley Zoo 
28. Movies at the theater 
29. Storytime at the Library 
30. Summer reading club 
31. Library Activities 
32. Swim Lessons 
33. Great America 
34. Mini Golf 
35. Picnic 
36. Camping in the backyard 
37. Pearler beads 
38. Cereal box weaving 
39. Wax paper sun catcher ** 
40. Glue suncatcher ** 
41. Wine cork boats 
42. Frozen bugs/toys ** 
43. Plastic lid sewing card 
44. Easy bake oven 
45. Cereal box postcards 
46. Sun melted crayon candle 
47. Scavenger hunts 
48. Giant Ice cube with toys 
49. Carwash station out back

First and Last Day of Preschool

Jamie graduated preschool this past week!  He is now officially a Kindergartner!  I can't believe it!  2 kids in elementary school now!  I thought for fun I'd see how much he had grown-the top is his first day of preschool in September and the bottom is his last day just 2 days ago. Congrats on graduating!  Now please stop growing up so fast!

First day of preschool Sept 13

Last day of preschool May 14

Libby's Meet and Greet

Libby-remember her?  The baby that I gave birth to-what?-yesterday?  Yeah her-she's starting preschool in less then 4 months!  Yep in 4 months all of my children will be in some form of school.  How is this possible?  I know I've said it a lot before but really, time is just going too fast.

It will be interesting to see how Libby does in preschool.  She is a WALL FLOWER in new situations.  She is SOOOOOOO shy!  Which is insane because at home she is the LIFE. OF. THE. PARTY.  For real.  She's hilarious and out going and just super fun.  But get her in a new situation and she won't speak a word or move for an hour.  In fact, my older sister, whom we see at least every month, hasn't heard Libby really talk until the past month or two.  (And she's been talking about a year at least).  Even though Libby is about 99% potty trained for peeing, when she's in a new situation she gets so nervous that she'll actually sit in a corner and wet her pants rather than tell a teacher she needs to go.  I really hope that trait ends in the next 4 months-I would hate to have her sent home or kicked out because she wasn't potty trained.  I hope she warms up to her teachers and classmates quickly and can enjoy herself.

Libby had her meet and greet the other day.  She got to see her classroom, meet her classmates and her teachers.  She actually had a lot of fun.  She wouldn't talk to *anyone* but she LOVED all the new toys.

Jamie and Libby hugging in the hallway of school.  I haven't mentioned it before but these 2 are the very very best of friends.

And I thought this was really cool-I have three pictures of each kid sitting at the same table at preschool  playing with the same play dough.  Incidentally all three kids have had the same teacher for 3 year old preschool in the same room too.  I love that!

What big milestones we have had and have coming this year!

Anne's EIGHT!

Anne turned 8 two weeks ago!  I can't believe she's 8 years old!  Nearly a tween.  Only 10 years left til she's an adult.  It seems so unreal that time has gone so fast.  Someone once told me-when she was a baby, I had post partum baby blues, she wouldn't sleep unless I held her-that person told me "the days are long but the years are short" and I thought "YEAH RIGHT!  You aren't sitting here with a baby that will not go to sleep unless I bounce her for 45 minutes and then when I put her down she wakes up after 30 seconds!"  But she was right!  These years have passed So. Very. Fast.  Unreal.

For her birthday we got her an MP3 player.  It's just a little $50 one but she loves it.  She's super into Katy Perry and while some lines and lyrics are questionable, I'm okay with her listening to it.  We downloaded a few songs for her from Katy and from Frozen.  I also surprised her and took her out of school for lunch and took her out to lunch.  She choose such a big girl place too-Subway.  I thought for sure we'd end up at McDonald's.  But she's really trying to embrace being a big kid.  Here's her 8 year old picture-and then a few from years past.  (As always!)

5 years old (What a baby!!)

6 years old (NO teeth!)

7 years old

8 years old (ugh...those bangs!)

No Spend Month Recap

I realize I am waaay behind on this blog (but again, pretty sure I maybe have 1 reader if I'm lucky!)  Anyway, we finished our no spend month.  We weren't nearly as strict as with January.  We cheated several times-signing Anne up for camp, buying stuff for the garden, going out to eat for Anne's birthday....but still, we came in at saving about $1500.  John would like to do this another 2 times this year so I'd be very interested to see how that affects end of year total on the Discover, in our bank account, paying off debt.  I'm proud of us for taking some really good, positive steps toward getting ahead on our finances.

No Spend-Week 1 Recap

We just finished week one and it went well!  Our goal has always been to simply stop the hemorrhaging of money that is going on the credit card.  While other no-spenders might want or need to stick to the letter of the law of not only no spending but not acquiring new or unnecessary things, we are completely okay with using gift cards to go out or buy things, etc.  We simply want to stop physical money from leaving our bank account into others'.  So this week I used a gift card to help cover the balance of a great sale at Meijer and was able to not go over on our spending.  We have $100 for groceries and other non-forseens.  Like Anne needed sweat pants (can you believe she does not own even *one* pair??) for a running club she started at school.  I was able to use some of that $100 to get her a few pairs. Having $100 instead of $50 feels like I'm swimming in money.  Seriously, I did not stress all week about money because I knew I had a whole $100 to spend!  In the end I had about $5 leftover.  I still have some gift cards so that's even more buffer with the $100.

This week was our date night and we built in $100 to go out.  Babysitter was nearly $50, add dinner and we were nearly there.  It was good to get out though and since last year we've made it a priority to go on a date once a month.  We saw Noah and I LOVED it.  It was not a Biblical movie but it was never intended to be.  If you take it for what it is and don't try and put a Christian spin on it then it's just a great stand alone film.

So for this past week we did great.  I think we'll continue to do well.  Update in a week!

**Oh I just remembered-I did break the no spend to sign Anne up for Girl Scout camp.  I normally try and do a day camp every year for the kids.  It runs about $100 for 5 days, 4 hours a day.  This camp is a day camp 5 days, 8 hrs a day, and one overnight for only $85!!  That's a STEAL.  I had to get it before we missed our chance.  I don't feel bad about it.  It saved us some money and Anne will have SO much fun!

April No-Spend Month

So we're doing it again!  Another no spending month!  We had amazing success with January but in February and now March we've fallen immediately back into our old habits.  February's spending was right back up to average and March is already so much higher than average (spending $800 on new tires for a car will do that).  We'd like to get some ground underneath us in terms of savings and spending so it seemed doing another no spending month would be good.

The parameters are the same-no spending on anything except groceries and mandatory bills (mortgage, lights, etc.)  The biggest difference is I'm allowing us $100 cash each week for groceries and anything necessary that's unforeseen.  We absolutely want a successful month but we also don't want to feel completely deprived (so if John wants to take the kiddos to a movie-which at the cheapie theater is less than $10 for all the kids and him-we want to be able to do that.)  So we want a little wiggle room.  We're also allowing us $100 for a date.  We won't come close to spending that much but we want that buffer.  Our babysitter sometimes costs us close to $50 and once you throw in dinner and an activity we're right at $100.  So we want to be able to go out but again, reigning in any extra spending.

We're going to start as soon as the current Discover bill ends, which is April 7th.  Hopefully we can see just as much success with April as we did with January.

St. Patricks Day

There is a great post going around Facebook about bringing down the expectation for Holidays.  I love it.  I can't believe the hype that is going into every single holiday these days-made up holidays or real!  It is so much to keep up and most of the time I feel like I'm not even doing the bare minimum that others do.  However, yesterday I did plan an entire day of green food for the kids.  That was it.  No leprechaun visited our house, there was no treasure to be found.  Despite not doing those things I was pretty proud of myself for what I did do and the kids really had a good time w/ their nearly entirely green food day.

Here's what we had:

Apple Jacks with (food coloring) dyed green milk for breakfast

Key lime pie yogurt, green sandwich wrap, green veggie chips, kiwi and green grapes and a shamrock cookie compliments of our amazing babysitter.

Spaghetti with a garlic and olive oil sauce-added some sauteed spinach and pureed it to make it more green.  Broccoli and side salad (not shown)

A beautiful girl with a pretty smile and green lips

Leprechaun Float-sprite with lime sherbert

A goofy boy with a straw

Sweet girl just happy to be part of the group

Happy St. Patricks Day!

Happy brithday to my big FIVE YEAR OLD boy!

Jamie turned FIVE last week!  FIVE!!!  How can that be??  He is getting so old!  In less than 6 months he starts KINDERGARTEN!  Wow, time is flying with him!

He's my big boy!  He's about 40 lbs and 44 inches.  That means he's right at 50% for weight and close to 70% for height!  He's smart as a whip too!  He knows all his letters by sight, he knows all the sounds they make, he can write most letters, he can count to 40, recognize 1-20 by sight, and of course knows all his shapes and colors.  He is beyond ready for kindergarten.  His preschool teachers-and me too-think he is gonna excel when he starts in the fall.  (I think he is quite smart and I'm interested to see if it's a phase or if he will continue to be ahead of his peers in school.)

He's the sweetest guy I know. He is always willing to give and share, even at the expense of himself.  He'd rather give his sisters the last cookie and go without.  He's just so sweet.  He's a protector of his siblings.  He loves his mommy.  And he's daddy's guy and is into all things superhero, Star Wars and generally BOY!

This year we look forward to Jamie playing T-Ball, learning to swim, riding a bike without training wheels and learning to read!  It's gonna be a big year for him!  Happy birthday Buddy!  I love you SO SO much!

Potty training

A few weeks ago Libby had a rash and I took off her diaper.  I also took down the yucky, dusty potty (wiped it out) and told her to go potty there instead of peeing on the floor.  She's barely even seen the potty let alone sat on one and never gone in one.  I fully expected to be mopping up pee in 5 minutes but, hey the tushy needed air.  Well 5 minutes later she came to me all non-nonchalant and said "I went pee pee on the potty."  And wouldn't you know-she DID!  Wow!

Last night the same thing happened.  She had a rash and ran naked and when she had to go willingly went on the potty!  So I decided today to start training her.  She starts preschool in September and has to be potty trained to go so the goal was always to start right around now.  I thought since we had 2 good, recent experiences we better use them.

So far, half a day in, she's doing near PERFECT!  I have barely had to tell her to try and go potty.  She has gone on her own 100% of the time!  Mind you she has also gotten about 20 M&Ms (because she goes every. five. minutes.) but she's doing it!  The one and only accident came when she threw a tantrum at being naked.  So I put a pair of underwear on her.  She couldn't get them off in time and sat on the potty with them on and still went in the potty.  After that I told her we'd go commando and she was okay with it.

I can't believe I might actually have an easy time training one of my children!  Anne took to peeing pretty quickly but refused to poop for 2.5 months.  And she wasn't wearing diapers or pull ups then.  Yuck.  Jamie had consistent accidents for about 6 months (and we started him at age 3).  He also was wearing underwear which made for quite the frustrating time.  So we'll see how Libby does.  I can't believe how well day one is going so far!

Final Tally

We were on vacation this week so I wasn't able to post the final tally.  But here it is!!

Made: $560 selling things on a combination of craigslist, neighborhood online garage sale and ebay
Saved:  $2040 (Nope, not a typo-two thousand forty dollars!)

The savings comes from our average Discover bill the past 2 years.  That average is pretty typical and accurate (I calculated it a bunch of different ways-median, average, throwing out the highs and lows, etc-and it was always the same).  We put about 90% of our spending on the Discover.  About the only thing that never goes on there is mortgage and shopping at Aldis (because they don't take credit cards).  So that savings is based on what I typically spend versus what we did spend.

So that grand total is $2600!  Wow!  That is incredible!  Who knew we spent so much cash we didn't need to!  That's over $30,000 a year!  Granted we could never keep this pace up because I simply could not not spend on food, but we certainly could cut down significantly.

The plan from here on out is to spend the next week or two stocking up (we almost literally have NO food in the house-I am serious man-zero!) and "treating" ourselves to things we didn't have this past month (like pizza tonight after traveling 8 hrs to get home and zero food.....we hope to spend the last two weeks of the month in another no spending pattern and perhaps get a second significantly low Discover bill.  It'd be nice to get our savings back up (from zero), get ahead on some bills (like student and car loans), and put some into getting a few necessities worked on in the house (mainly having Libby's floor checked for stability before we switch up rooms and paint walls, etc.)

It feels VERY good to have completed this goal and to have done so well on it.

Finishing strong

As you know, we've been doing great.  This week-well this weekend-has been really tough.  Meijer had a really great sale and, while I stayed in budget, I bought things that weren't immediate essentials.  While it saves money in the long run to buy in bulk while on sale I don't want to make an excuse for why I over spent only 6 days before my challenge was over.  Like I said, I still haven't gone over budget but I only have $10 left for the week and I have a feeling I'll be spending every last penny and making sacrifices of things we actually do *need* this week to do it.

Also, I desperately want to buy my kids a little gift.  We're going on vacation soon and I really want to give them something new to play with on the plane.  I have a few gift cards still to amazon so if one more can come through before tomorrow I will go ahead and get them what I want.  It will mean putting $5 on the credit card but I'm going to be okay with that.  After all, I've been wanting to get them these toys since I knew we were going on vacation and I've been really really patient.  So I will spend the $5 and be okay with it.

In other news, we are about 3/4 of the way through with the fast (our Discover bill ends the first week of the month so we're counting from there) so with the numbers in we have currently saved $1500 and we are on track to come in at a grand total of $2000 worth of savings.  Even if you count in the cash grocery money I have made more selling on ebay then I have spent at the grocery store this month so that $2000 savings is accurate.  I can't wait to see that final Discover bill number and know that all our hard work paid off big time!

Almost there!

Wow, I still can't believe how well we're doing.  Still haven't had to really spend any extra money this month except the garage door, renewing the license plate and replenishing IPass.  Right now if we keep going the rate we're going we stand to save $1850 this month!  Holy cow!  Over the course of a year that's a full time job!  If we can do better the rest of the month-which I think we can since more than half the charges were the ones mentioned above, we could come in closer to $2000+ savings!   As of right now I have made $275 selling things on ebay and through a local online garage sale.  These things are almost exclusively toys and miscellaneous things I found around the house while doing a good purge.  I'd like to continue on this saving and making money route we're on and we have some big things coming up in a few weeks.  We're moving Libby to a big girl bed and potty training her.  I still don't know if we are having another kid but right now we're not pregnant nor do we have any immediate plans to get pregnant.  So I will probably have a few crib and changing table things to sell.  And like I said, I think John and I plan to continue the no spending into February-with maybe a week break to stock up on essentials (like paper towels, cleaning supplies, vitamins, etc).  We'd love to see a good few months of savings since we were hit hard this past year in expenses.

This past week for dinner we had a:

-Slow cooker pork roast.  I had one in the freezer.  Put it (frozen) in the crock.  Salt, pepper and that's it.  It let out its own juices and cooked for 9 hrs on low.  Then I drained the juices, picked off all the fat I could and smothered it in BBQ sauce.  We had that with a bag of frozen veggies (freezer) and twice baked potatoes.  I had the potatoes and needed about $1 of extra ingredients.

-Took half the leftover meat and put it on a pizza crust ($2), sprinkled with cheese ($1) and BBQ sauce.  We had  a side salad with that incredibly good pizza!

-Tonight the rest of the meat with some condiments (like soy sauce, BBQ sauce, etc.) served over noodles and some frozen peas and carrots (from the freezer).  BBQ pork noodle bowl.  Only had to buy one box of pasta ($1).

-This weekend I have some frozen waffles (homemade whole wheat pumpkin) that we'll have with scrabbled eggs.  Our eggs are pretty expensive but still only about $2 worth of extra ingredients.

-Finally I'll make a soup with the rest of my frozen pumpkin (which was completely free-remember my rotten pumpkin from Halloween '12?  Threw it in the garden as compost and the next summer had 3 plants grow!  Got 4 big pumpkins out of it and made the equivalent of 20 cans of pumpkin!), can of black beans, veggie stock (that I make free from scraps-like carrot peelings, onion ends, etc-in the slow cooker).  I only had to buy a can of tomatoes.  A huge pot of soup for less than $1 in extra ingredients!

I'm so glad this month has gone so well.  I do have to admit that cold weather, snow and a germaphobic mom (me) has made it easier since we really haven't gone anywhere this month.

Updates and Necessities

We continue to do great.  I almost feel like I'm on a weight loss diet.  We're seeing the pounds come off and it's so encouraging to keep going!  I think we are even going to extend this fast into February because it's been so effortless and we're seeing such huge results.

A few updates:

1. I have gotten a really good average of what our spending would normally be each month.  It's disgustingly high considering almost all of it is non-necessities.  But as of right now, we are about $500 less than where we would normally be.  We are 1/3 of the way through the month (our Discover month which starts a week into the month).  If we can keep this up, we can expect to see about a minimum of $1500 savings this month.  Neither John nor I expect to jump into February spending like crazy so we are fairly certain this is a savings we can see sticking around.

2.  We had a few things pop up we didn't expect.  The I Pass needed replenishing and it's automatic.  John takes toll ways to work so there is no way around it.  We also had our vehicle registration due.  Another no way around it expense.  Finally yesterday our garage door broke.  Like it might fall on our heads broken and we can shut it so go ahead and rob and murder us in our sleep broken.  Thankfully we got it fixed this morning and thankfully it was so affordable.  We thought we might be in the hole several hundred for a new door entirely but he was able to adjust a few things so our total bill was only $80.  So while all those things were completely necessary to pay it was still $230 we were not expecting to put on the Discover.  We are hoping we can make the rest of the month without anything popping up so we can end on the best possible note.

3.  Finally I went off budget yesterday and had my first break of not spending.  Now it's small but it was still a cheat.  I bought $4.50 food that wasn't on the list and wasn't instantly needed.  There was a huge bag of frozen strawberries for $3.50 on sale.  Libby hate eating.  She is the embodiment of the little boy in A Christmas Story. So I've been making her smoothies for breakfast because that's about the only thing I can get her to eat without a fight.  I got the strawberries as a treat for her but in all honesty didn't *need* them.  There were also 2 cans of sauerkraut I bought.  They were on clearance for $.50 each.  I know I want to make a soup with one can and use the other can in sandwiches.  The price was SO cheap and they don't expire for well over a year I justified it.  Now I know both purchases were good ones.  I didn't go over the $50 cash to buy them.  So I don't feel horrible about cheating.  I just know how easy it would be to continue to cheat and justify it so I'm hoping that was my one and only this month.

Day 12

There isn't too much to post-we are doing AMAZING!  I'm actually shocked that we haven't broken this fast even once!  So far I have allowed myself $85 for groceries and only spend $60.  We have both filled up one time each.  One of my goals was to stay at 100 miles a week on my car.  (To avoid extra fill ups).  The first full week I was at 60 miles and this week 140.  So even with the extra it still winds up evening out.  I realized when I filled up that due to the winter my gas mileage average is very low.  Normally I can get 18-20 mpg but this last fill up I only got 16.5.  All the idling to warm up the car, extra traffic and sometimes leaving the car (and heat) on while I wait to pick up kids is taking a toll.  To fix that I'm hoping to only put 75 miles a week the rest of the month.  Not sure how I'll do but I'll try.

I am starting to find some creative ways to get what I want.  Remember that essential oil I wanted?  Well Amazon had it.  I combined our Discover cash back and a gift card and was able to get the oil!  Now some might say I cheated and I can certainly see their point.  But out point, this whole time, was to not put money on the discover, not withdraw or put money on the debit card and only spend $50 in cash a week.  I did that so I'm okay buying the oil.

I realized this week that I might need to buy more vinegar (we use it for SO MUCH cleaning).  While I was trying to figure out if it was in the budget I realized I had a bottle of all purpose cleaner that I could use for at least a few cleaning things.  Pretty excited to find something that will work the same but I already own.  (I'll still need to buy the vinegar but hopefully not as much).

I also have been buying some chips to eat for lunch.  Big $1.50 bags from Alidi's.  Last week we had sandwiches or leftovers for lunch and I wanted chips to go with it.  This week we're doing the same but again, I am not sure we have the budget to buy another bag.  After a bit of thinking I realized I have some popcorn and that serves the purpose just as well.  (Un-popped kernels).  It's been fun and interesting to see what alternatives I can find instead of running to the store every time.

I just checked the Discover bill and right now I know where our average would be for our normal spending month.  We have already saved $400!  That is so exciting to see it in black and white paid off!

I also have been continuing the selling on ebay and craigslist.  My total for the month is up to about $110.  So we've actually saved $500 already and we're only 1/3 of the way through.  Amazing!