Raising All Kinds of Hale: February 2011

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

To Clip or Not to Clip

Your imagination might be going in a variety of directions, but this post is about coupons. I constantly hear people say they saved $30-40 or more on their grocery bill by clipping/printing coupons. When I look through the Sunday paper's coupons section, I rarely see food items we buy. I see a few for our toiletries and household items, but not food. I regularly get coupons to Borders, Babies R Us, and a few other places. I look up coupon codes when making an online purchase, but I don't save much on food. We're not the perfect model of healthy eating, but we do buy some organic products and we have been trying to move away from heavily processed and packaged foods. We've made good progress over the last few years and I don't want to backtrack for the sake of saving money. We're not really on a grocery budget, but if there's money to be saved, I'd like to save it! I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to have major savings on our shopping list. This is where you all help me :)

I always go to the grocery store with a list, and I meal plan. Our list doesn't vary too much. I eat oatmeal every weekday morning for breakfast, so that's a no-brainer for me. (Mr. Ryan needs to do better on his breakfast)! He usually takes leftovers for lunch, and I also eat leftovers or find something else at home. Lunch is my hardest meal to come up with if there are no dinner leftovers. Before I shop, we determine what we want for dinners that week, and I stick to the list. Several of our dinners are meatless, which saves money. I think Ryan would like meat with every dinner. I am fine without and grew up with some meatless dinners. I usually don't look at the mail flyer before making my list. Any savings I have are from things that happen to be on sale in the store. On some items I am flexible with the brand and fine with generic, and with some things I won't compromise, such as organic milk and eggs.

Here are some things I'm gathering:

I talked to my favorite cashier this week and she said they don't match coupons. We shop at a Kroger affiliate
Not all sales are listed in the weekly mailer. I shopped Tuesday and forgot something for dinner. I went back on Wednesday and several of the things I bought at full price Tuesday were on sale. None of them were in the ad.

Here's a typical shopping list. We don't need all of these items each week.

Naturally Preferred (NP) Organic milk

NP cage-free eggs

Stonyfield Yo Baby yogurt for Raegan

Private Selection (PS) organic oatmeal

PS organic peanut butter

PS organic beans, black or pinto

PS chicken broth

unsalted butter

Rotel

cream of mushroom soup

dry pasta

tomato sauce

half & half

bananas

apples

avocados

Oroweat bread

honey

Amy's organic frozen burritos for lunch

grilled chicken strips

variety of shredded cheeses

Athenos hummus

Morning Star Farms crumbles for tacos

chili or taco seasoning

beef tips

fresh salmon

fresh garlic

an onion

red cooking wine

a Stouffer's bake, usually the cheddar broccoli and chicken or Grandma's vegetable bake

other fresh vegetables for a specific soup

(Looks like we need to eat more veggies!)

** I would love to hear your methods, suggestions, thoughts, etc.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Lady Underpants

We had a nice week here with warm weather. Raegan played on the playground and took her baby for walks in the stroller. I do hover a little at the playground for her safety's sake. She doesn't seem to notice (or maybe she doesn't care) that she is little compared to the other kids. If she sees them doing something fun, she wants to try it. I would describe her as fearless but not reckless. She walked up to some high school girls playing volleyball and wanted to join their game. They were very sweet and patient and rolled the ball to her. She checked out some small dogs and helped a girl with her algebra at a picnic table. Overall, it was a very educational trip to the playground.

Monday night I tried a new recipe for salmon. Let me begin by saying that my idea of fish is Captain D's. We don't have any here, which is a good thing, actually - so greasy! The point is, I don't know what "good" fish is, and I don't eat other seafood. Ryan picked out the fresh salmon at the grocery store last weekend. I looked at it in the package and was relieved that the fillets didn't have skin to peel. Wrong. As I took them out, the skin was on the bottom side. I had to pull myself together and get them in the marinade. While they were cooking I had to pull the skin off, and I nailed it!. This is big for me. HUGE! Ryan loved it and has requested it again this week. The worst part about fish is that the whole house smelled for the rest of the night. But we got our Omega-3s and our skin should be glowing in no time.

Raegan didn't sleep well Thursday night. She woke up 3 times, and we're not sure if she fell back to sleep after 3:30am. She was ready to go at 6:00, or so she thought. She was so delirious and laughed at everything. After breakfast I put her down to play while I cleaned up her dishes. I noticed she was very quiet, and I looked in the living room to find her asleep in the floor. She took a little cat nap and then we went to Little Gym. As soon as we pulled in the parking lot, she said, "Samp, samp!" She loves getting her hand stamped after class :) She runs out of the gym to get in line in the lobby. She gets stamped then waits patiently for everyone to clear out so she can get stamped again, and again.

With a cozy blanket like this who can blame her, really?

Her vocabulary continues to grow every day it seems. She studies her books and tries to repeat any word we ask her to say. Ryan was in the bathroom with the door closed; it's a must around here if you don't want to be on display. She called for him and I told her he was in the bathroom. "See! Look!" "Well, dad would like some privacy." For the next hour she kept repeating "pri-sees." "Yep, people want their privacies in the bathroom." She finally conquered her fear(?) of her new underwear and tried them on yesterday. I've been casually asking her for about 2 weeks if she wants to try them on. "No!" "I bet your baby wants to wear them." "No!" Ryan asked her once yesterday and she put them on immediately. She started with them over her pants and then put them under her pants at the next diaper change. We're still taking it slow. I think she would catch on quickly if we did away with diapers and potty trained. Finally agreeing to even try on the underwear was a big step, so maybe we'll get serious soon.

The printing for the banner turned out great! Laura said 59 of the 82 kids were matched with a sponsor yesterday after the services!

Sunday, February 13, 2011

100

I think we're emerging from the cold spell we've been experiencing. We had a very pretty snow and temperatures in single digits and the teens. We didn't venture out much on those days. We made lots of hot chocolate and oatmeal cookies.

Raegan has been very busy raising her baby. She's still breast feeding, and her supply is doing quite well, thank you for asking. She even fed her in the grocery store. She's very dedicated and in tune with the baby's needs. I decided several months ago to hold off on naming her friends and let her do it when she's older. For now, it's "baby" (actually, "BEE!!") and "pup." We've been swaddling the baby in a "beenk" (blanket) and pushing her in a doll stroller. She has been very concerned about a baby with a rash in one of our magazines. Several times a day she says, "Ash? Ash?" and wants to see him. I tell her he's okay and show her the picture of his healthy skin, but I don't think she's totally satisfied. She's getting to a point of wanting to do more things for herself. She wants to dress herself and does a decent job with the pants. She lets us help her after giving it a fair shot herself.

delivery truck

She is still having a great time at The Little Gym. I mentioned before that she loves swinging on the rings. One day last week I was getting dressed in the closet and she tried to swing from Ryan's pants bar. Clever idea, but it was too low. A boy in her class has been very taken by her the past 2 weeks. He means well (I think) but his hugs are more like sleeper holds and it gets awkward. His mom pries him away and I try to redirect Raegan somewhere else. After class I said, "I'm sorry that boy was all over you today at Little Gym." "Is okay" she said. "Well, not really, but you're very kind."

On a business note, I am happy to report that I made my 100th sale this week! That may not sound like much, but I've come a long way. I wasn't sure where it was headed when I first started, but it has definitely grown into what I was hoping. Here are some things I've been working on for Laura at Pitter Patter Art. She and her husband are coordinating a launch next Sunday at their church, Community Church in Hendersonville. They have partnered with Children's Hope Chest to sponsor children in Swaziland. She requested a coordinating sticker, Thank You card for her fellow volunteers, as well as a banner that will hang in their sanctuary. I am very honored to be asked to design these items!

Saturday, February 12, 2011

December Daily

I first heard about the December Daily on Lacy's blog and checked out Ali Edwards' site. She is a professional artist and designs scrapbook goodies as well as amazing personal minis of her family.

Materials:

I designed the numbers myself in Photoshop. I saw some I liked, but didn't want to pay $10. I downloaded a 2" circle template and used a variety of fun fonts. Then I used a 1 1/2" punch to cut them out. I tried cutting them out by hand and they didn't look so hot, so I used a 40% off coupon to Hobby Lobby and got the punch for $6. So much easier and neater, and I already have some other uses in mind for it.

I did order the journal tags from an etsy shop called ScrapBits. She sells all kinds of paper goodies, and I loved these lined tags. I have always had trouble writing on a straight line on unlined paper. However, I could have done these myself now that I think of it.

At the last minute I found these journal tags and incorporated several of them.

A Word document to serve as a journal

Receipts, coffee sleeves, business cards, etc. from daily events

12x12 pieces of coordinating scrapbook paper

1 1/2" book rings from itsalwaysfabulous

Photoshop templates from Sassy Designs. I love this site! They regularly have specials, sometimes up to 80% off. I got my templates for about $1 each. Some of their patterns are backgrounds on my digital pages.

Lots of photos - Thankfully we were home for most of December and my dad took tons of pictures. Otherwise, I probably would not be in any of them. Such is the fate of a mother.

Process:

Before I started, I read about Ali Edwards' process, and she likes to fully create and print a page each day. I don't think that would work for me. First of all, I don't think the photos would come out as good as I'd like them on our printer at home. Secondly, I don't like to feel like I'm winging a project, even though I often get impatient and rush it. I like to lay everything out and change things around instead of feeling locked in to something permanent. Here's what I did: Each day I tried to remember to take pictures of our ordinary moments. I saved receipts and memorabilia from errands. At night, I recorded our day's events in a running Word document. I tried to include funny comments, sweet moments, and any "firsts" for Raegan. For me, this was the most important thing to be diligent about. I knew I would not remember little things several days or weeks later if I did not write them down while they were fresh on my mind. There were a couple of days when I did not do a very detailed job of journaling, which left me with an uninspired page.

Some things I learned and will do differently next time:

For crying out loud, punch holes in the paper before attaching all the photos and goodies! Several photos and journal tags got punched through, and it was very difficult to punch through some of the pages that were already several layers thick.
4x6 was not enough room for most of my days. I chose 4x6 pages because the prints are much cheaper than a 5x7, but it might be worth the enlargement next time.
I might use more digital pages. I love type fonts, but I think there's also something really special about your own handwriting (even if you don't like the way it looks), so it's a tough call.
Take more pictures with Ryan! I don't think we have a single deliberate picture of us together from the holidays :( There are a few where we just happened to be together and you can see our legs in the background or something.
I might experiment with a wider variety of papers. I get a little overwhelmed when I try to coordinate too many colors and patterns, so I kept it simple this first time around. I might get a little more crazy next time and mix things up.

Monday, February 7, 2011

19 Months

loves her grocery cart and play food

I love Melissa and Doug products. She got the shopping cart from my parents and the fruits and veggies from her cousin for Christmas. I love how realistic they are in terms of color, size, and texture. She spends a lot of time taking them from her cart to the shopping bag, back and forth.

tries to put pants on by herself
asks for Pop and cousin Haley (Hay!) all day
favorite activities at Little Gym right now are the rings, parachute, and getting her hands (and anything else) stamped at the end
likes to wash her hands at the sink
wants to take her clothes and diaper off
doesn't like it when we wear jackets and tugs on them saying "off!"
new words: "shoot" (parachute), "atch" (watch), "ack" (walk, grabs our hand to walk with her), sit, see, "jink" (drink), "side" (slide), "cam" (the "camel on the ceiling" in the Dr. Seuss ABC book is upside down and she wants to see him), "cheh" (chair)
constantly asks to sit on the counters
still loves to look through picture books and magazines and point out what she knows ~ She wants us to ask "Do you see a lion? Do you see an apple?", etc. Now she says it all to herself sometimes. We hear her in the car and at home saying "You see a kite? He is." (here it is)
breast feeds her baby (and a dog once) She is so serious and focused on this task.

Yellow Gray