Baby Shower

Last weekend some family members and I gave a baby shower for Dan's cousin Julie. She is soon to welcome a baby girl and we had a fun time planning things out for the party.  Of course pinterest gave us lots of neat and cute ideas to try.  We knew she already had an owl theme going on, so we ran with that!  

I found these cute cupcakes on pinterest and Julie's sister Janette did a great job with these! Oreos with m&m's for the eyes and nose. 

Also on pinterest I found a link where you could print out any letter already in the shape of a pennant. I waited for Hobby Lobby to have a half off scrapbook paper sale and bought some cute pink printed paper to put behind the while part. (I know you can't really see it from the picture) We hung it on some twine with clothespins. Easy!

As people came in they could predict baby Audrey's birthday.  I used a calendar template I found online and customized it.  I found some cute pink baby stickers at Hobby Lobby to put in the square and people wrote their name. I also found a cheap, cute pink basket at Hobby Lobby and made the sign to put on the front.  Guests used markers to write a funny or encouraging message for Julie to read during those late night diaper changes. Both ideas I found on pinterest, imagine that!

For the main table, Julie's mom and sister did all the finger foods and Julie's mother in law made the cute diaper cake.  I found a tutorial on pinterest to make the tissue paper flowers. Pretty cheap, easy and cute!  We found the owl accessories at Oriental Trading and bought them when we had a coupon for free shipping. We mixed in some dollar store pink to make sure we had enough.  

Overall it was a LOT of fun to plan things out and we had a great time showering Julie!

The Best Cucumbers!

Let me just start by saying that I've never been a fan of cucumbers. Ever. We decided to grow some this past spring, so I branched out and tried to find new ways to use them.  I ended up finding out that I actually DO like cucumbers!  I found this recipe on pinterest, found here http://www.ourbestbites.com/2010/08/sweet-and-spicy-cucumber-slices/ and tweaked it a little. 

Instead of boiling the liquid on the stove, I just throw it all in the bowl and substitute Splenda for the sugar, so it dissolves instantly.  Although it really is better when you let it sit for a day in the fridge before eating.  Try it, it's SO good! 

Deals of the Day

It's now the second week that I've gone to CVS and Walgreens to score some deals and I'm liking how this works! 

Here's what I got at CVS: 

• Starbucks Iced Coffee-free since you get $1.50 ECB
• All detergent-with sale and coupon it was $3.24 and I got $1 ECB
• Listerine-on sale with coupon for $2.99 (No ECB, but a good price for a Daniel essential)
• Schick razor refills-$9.49 on sale, I had a $4 off coupon and got back $4 ECB, so like paying $1.49! (These things are usually really expensive and I normally don't use them, but got a free razor in the mail that gave me the $4 coupon)

At Walgreens:

• Venus razor-$5.99, I had a $5 off coupon
• Nail polish-$1.49 on sale, I had a $1 off coupon
• Reach toothbrushes-$2.99 on sale, I had a $2 off coupon and got back $2 in Register Rewards

A little later I decided to go to Target for a few things they had on sale. Here's the best deals I got today.

• Gillette shave gel-$2.69 and I had a $2 off coupon
• 2 boxes of noodles-on sale for $.97, I used a mobile coupon for $1 off
• Planters peanuts-on sale 2/$6 and I had a $1/2 coupon (another Daniel essential)
• Lipton tea bags-on sale 2/$4.50, used a $1/2 coupon and a mobile coupon for $.75 off
• Markers- on sale for $.75 each, used a mobile coupon for $1 off of 4 school supplies (I'm getting these for our Operation Christmas Child boxes) 

Overall not a bad shopping day! :)

Savings!

Right now I am not working, so I consider it part of my job to save us as much money as we can on the things we need to buy.  I've been couponing and doing a pretty good job at the grocery stores to save money on food, but I wanted to try saving at the drug stores.  I've now become an addict at checking www.southernsavers.com daily and I love how she shows you the coupons to use with the deals that each store has to offer.  

Today I made a trip to Target, CVS and Walgreens. Luckily the two drug stores are right across the street from each other!  For everything I got today I paid about $29, but saved $24.  I know it's not the best savings trip ever, but I am proud of what I got for my first time at both stores.  Almost everything I got I had coupons for and I have some store bucks now for each store I can use. 

Any other coupon websites you use that help you save?

New TV Stand

Hi my name is Erica and I'm a Pinterest addict.  Among the many hours I've spent searching through the site, I've seen many dressers turned into tv stands.  So I started searching around on craigslist and our local Habitat for Humanity Restore.  I really didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for one either.  One day while on Facebook the Restore posted a picture of this bad boy, for pretty cheap too.  So naturally I raced down and loved it.  When I got Daniel to come and get it for me, he was definitely not seeing the vision I had in my head for it, but went along with it.  

It has taken a ton of time to sand everything down, some parts even had to be done twice.  We definitely put in a lot of sweat time doing this thing in the heat of summer in the garage!  I am so proud of how much work we had to put into this thing and am so pleased with how it turned out.  We're going to use the drawers to store all of our movies and stuff for the Wii, so now I get to reorganize closets and gain some more closet space back!  

Before, ugly color!

In the process of sanding

Daniel added the top shelf and stained the body

DONE! :)

New Storm Door

Continuing with our new windows and all, we decided to go ahead and replace the storm door on the front.  The old door wasn't in terrible condition, but it didn't seal up well so we couldn't just leave the door open with the air on.  Not to mention that when you "locked" the door you could push it open pretty easily. Mom's dog even pushed it open once and she's little!  

The new door is pretty awesome! It's more of a heavy duty door and we both like that you can pull the top part down and it pulls out a retractable screen. So now when we have nice weather days we can open up the screens on all the windows and doors. I'm also not sad to see the frilly decorative stuff on the old door gone!

The old door

The new and improved door!

New Windows!

Since we have been in this house we have talked about replacing the windows.  They were single pane,and not so great.  You could stand in front of the patio door and just feel the heat from outside.  When it gets to be 100 degrees around here that's not so cool!  So we saved up and were finally able to do it.  I definitely can already tell a temperature and sound difference and I think it will make a difference to our electric bill this summer too.  The only stinker is that they ordered the patio door to open from the wrong direction.  So this one is just temporarily installed until the new one that opens correctly comes in. I didn't really take before pictures, but the old windows were all the same style, but had black frames. So here they are!

 A bad before picture of the patio door from the inside, with photobombing dogs. :)

The dining area and kitchen sink windows.

The patio door and bathroom window.

The front windows. I love that on these the panes are in the inside so they will be easier to clean!

What Can I Say?

It's been over a week now since I had emergency surgery to remove a tubal pregnancy.  I still at times feel like nothing ever happened and it just wasn't real.  I didn't have any pains that made me question anything wrong was going on.  The morning that it happened I knew something was wrong baby wise since I started bleeding.  I cried and cried before my appointment time because I just already knew that it was over.  Daniel tried to downplay it for me, but I knew.

I was ready for miscarriage news, but not ready to hear that I had to be rushed to another Dr. and then rush into surgery.  Other than having my wisdom teeth out this was my first real surgical experience.  There was so much going on so fast that I really didn't have time to be scared.  Thank goodness that Daniel was in his office that day and not out of town somewhere.  I would have for sure been scared to go into surgery all alone.

Even after a week I've still had lots of different emotions going on. It's been a lot to process.  Even through all of this, I am still hopeful and pray that in the future we can have healthy babies.  I know that the Lord gives us the desires of our hearts and he knows how badly I want this.  I am so thankful that he gave me such a wonderful and Godly husband that knows just how to take care of me. I could not have done all of this without him.

My Simple Valentine

Valentine's Day... a holiday I used to DRED as a single girl.  Watching everyone in the school where I worked have bouquets of flowers delivered to their rooms and me secretly envying them.  Now that I am married and will always have a Valentine it's a bit different.

It was fun watching everyone post pictures of their flowers on facebook yesterday, even knowing that I wouldn't be getting any.  I love flowers don't get me wrong, but I would rather Daniel give me flowers on a random day rather than on Valentine's.  We didn't go out to eat at a fancy restaurant either.  We do enjoy the occasional times that we do go out, but I wanted to make a special meal myself for my man.  I asked him what he wanted and he said something fried.  Big surprise.  I whipped out some chicken fried steak, baked potatoes, salad and a cherry pie, his fave.

Our gifts were more practical and we both agreed to spend no more than $20 on each other.  I gave him a tool bag filled with a few goodies.  He came up with a super sweet and thoughtful idea to treat me to special dates and things that I love all year long whenever I want.  And after I return from my women's retreat I am to expect a couple of things.  I love that he put the thought into that!

This isn't to hate on all the people who love the flowers, candy and wining and dining on V day, but to show a more simple side. Hope your Valentine's was special too!

Garage Projects

Our little garage is home to Dan's big truck, and by big I mean BIG, my car, washer and dryer, deep freezer and more.  We decided to try a couple of projects to help maximize what little leftover space we have.  Someone before us decided to paint this one wall a very ugly shade of brown. I call it doody brown.  The picture doesn't do it justice. I gave it a coat of white paint, which I will show on the next post along with the other shelving project.  

See the wooden frame with the bags? That was Dan's old solution for a recycling center and at one time worked ok.  Problem with it is that it's not big enough.  Our city makes us put everything out to recycle in bags.  We've had to put paper and glass on the shelf below until we had enough to put it out.  I saw an idea out of a book we have for a vertical recycling center and I knew that was what we needed!

Before shot

Ta da!!  Daniel built a wooden frame and we spent a kind of crazy amount of money for plastic trash cans to use.  We had to buy a bigger one for the plastic that will just have to sit on the floor alone. I love that I can just slip the bag out when it's full and it will take up less space than the old one.  Dan's going to have to anchor it to the wall so it doesn't get front heavy, but I can't tell you how excited I am over this thing!  

A thing of beauty, excuse the mess in the background

Organization

Well it's that time again to get things around the house more organized. It always seems like there's a closet, cabinet or room to organize doesn't it?  This is our hall coat closet and it was just a bit overdo for some help.  The bottom part wasn't bad, but the shelves needed something.  We had 3 empty boxes, old towels and a party favor gift from the housewarming party we had.  That party was almost 2 years ago!  And I'm not entirely sure why there is a closet rod so high up, not much room to hang anything with. 

Before

I got rid of most the stuff that was on the shelves and made my front door signs more tidy.  Daniel has some winter hats in there so I took one of the empty shoe boxes and wrapped it with cute wrapping paper to put the hats in. The other things I put in there were in our office closet and that closet is pretty full too. I'm glad that it now looks neater and we actually have extra room for the future!

After