Archive for the ‘Celebrations’ Category

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

I will be taking a break today to enjoy some wonderful time with my precious family. Our Notebook & Notebook Experiments will be on hiatus this week and I encourage you to really focus on all that you are thankful for this year!

I know I have so much to be thankful for. God has been so very good to our family. I am also thankful for you, my special readers, for helping our site grow by sharing it with your friends and loved ones. Without your continued support, I wouldn’t have this wonderful platform to share with you. Thank you for all you do and for continuing to make this a regular blogging read. It means the world to me!

I wanted to post this wonderful reminder for what this season is all about. I have been seeing it circulate on a few blogs and it just really resonated with me. I actually cried a little when I watched this because it was such an incredible reminder of what we are trying to do this year. A change in focus, a switch in attitude, a little love for those in need- I hope you can do the same this year.

Blessings to each of you!

xoxo,
Amy

(Photo Credit: Tom Olliver)

Halloween Fun

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008





This was a fun year for us as parents because both of our kids finally “got” all the trick-or-treating fun. We kept our costumes fun & frugal this year. Emily was a bumblebee, which was a costume hand-me-down from her big brother. Ethan also kept changing his mind until the very last minute so I waited until Target marked the Halloween costumes down to 30% off and got his super cool ninja costume at a little lower price than I would have gotten it normally.

We tried to keep Emily out of the candy, but she managed to get into and suck on a purple sucker while we went door to door. The evening ended with a sucker stuck to her hair & bumblebee costume so that will require a good washing this week.

We loved going around and seeing all of our great neighbors and showing off how big our children were. We have plans to put the costumes on again this week to go see all of the grandparents since we weren’t able to squeeze that in with me heading out of town in the morning. Any excuse to wear the costume again and get more of our money’s worth out of it seems like a smart plan to me!

I hope you enjoyed the festivities, whatever they may have been, with your families!

A Family Day at the Pumpkin Patch

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008






Our family decided to take a trip over to the pumpkin patch this weekend together. We decided to visit Amazing Acres in Edwardsburg, Michigan because we had heard so many great things about it. As soon as we pulled up and I saw the truly amazing varieties of pumpkins and gourds they had to offer, I just knew we made the right choice.

I loved that they had tons of wagons available so you could load your purchases right up into your car. The cobwebs gathering on a few of them just spoke of Halloween to me!

Can you see my favorite pumpkins peeking their heads out at me? I just loved all of these little pumpkins sitting in rows. I couldn’t resist getting inside to takes some shots of them sitting in on the ledge. Pumpkins have to be one of the greatest subjects for photography, don’t you think?

The first thing we had to do was take a hayride with the kids. For our family of four, the cost was $16 for a hayride and to visit the petting zoo.

They clang this old bell each hour to let you know that the ride is getting ready to start. We hurried over to make it for the very first ride of the day!



We were excited because our ride was the first one leaving so we got to stop and give the horses breakfast. The gentleman who gave us the ride turned and told us a little bit about each horse. “This horse is two years old and she likes to bite.” To which Ethan loudly replied, “Just like our Emily.” Everyone turned to our family and the guy asked who Emily was. “My sister,” he said with a little grin. I guess we have a little pony in our family.

The hayride pulled right up to the pumpkin patch where the kids could choose a pumpkin for one dollar. We were told if anyone picked a cell phone out of the patch, they would receive the biggest pumpkin in the whole place. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find the poor guy’s phone, but as frugal as I am, you can bet that I sure tried!

Some had an easier time finding their perfect pumpkin.

Others had to think and contemplate much longer before settling on the pumpkin of their dreams.

After our hayride, the kids loved spending time in the troughs filled with corn. Emily left with about four corn cobs in her diaper after they practiced making snow angels and jumping and swimming in the kernels.

We also couldn’t resist seeing all the beautiful animals and the creative places they lived.

This little storefront was just for the bunnies!

All in all, we had an amazing day at the pumpkin patch, that I don’t think our family will soon forget!

** If you want to see the whole set of pictures, you can see our Pumpkin Patch photos over at Flickr! Enjoy! **


Do you do have any special Fall family traditions? What is your favorite thing to do in the Fall as a family?

Celebrating Financial Milestones as a Family

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

This morning on WSBT, I discuss some ways that you can celebrate your financial milestones as a family. This topic is near and dear to my heart because I think it is so important to teach and share your financial victories and shortcomings in ways that your children can understand.

Here are two of our links to our past celebrations:

Debt-Free Party
Cars Party

We are now working on paying off our student loan debt so we can achieve our American Dream. I hope that all of this will inspire other families to start their own celebrations with their children!

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We are offering two exciting giveaways on our blog- don’t forget to put in your entry!

Last week, I provided a list of 35 Ways to Save on Your Grocery Budget that I hope will be really helpful for families. I want to add a #36 though that I know would make your day… how about free toilet paper and paper towels for an entire year from Scott’s? Head over right now and put in your entry at The MotherLoot today. Please do not enter here, only entries over here will qualify. The contest is open until Tuesday night and then I will draw our winner!

And our brand new giveaway has just begun! Enter today to win a 10th Anniversary Harry Potter prize pack. We are giving away beautiful boxed sets of the Harry Potter series and the new anniversary editions of, “Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone” Please do not enter here, only entries over here will qualify. The contest is open until October 13th and then I will draw our winner! The contest is open until Tuesday night and then I will draw our winners!

Good luck, everyone!

Ain’t No Party Like a LEGO Party

Monday, July 7th, 2008

What a busy holiday weekend this was for us! We celebrated Ethan’s sixth birthday with his dream party- a LEGO birthday party. I must say that I tried to put a lot of effort into this one and he was the happiest little boy I had ever seen!

What’s a LEGO party without a LEGO cake though? I had bookmarked a recipe in my notebook entry for a LEGO cake, but we were entertaining a lot of people and the cake would not cover the amount of people that I needed it to. I also did not want to try and cut and make shapes out of a sheet cake. I opted to prepare two cake mixes in loaf pans to create this cake. One cake mix per loaf pan, cooked as directed, but cooked for at least an hour (mine took approximately one hour and ten minutes to cook these cakes at the same time). I then froze the cake overnight which helped keep the crumbs at bay and made it easier to decorate. I did use the marshmallows, but opted for blue and yellow for colors. This cake was extremely difficult to frost around and on top of the marshmallows, but I think the results turned out great, even though it was not as smooth as I had aimed for. The cost to make these two cakes was $5.50.

We had the party outside so I kept the decorating simple. I made pinwheels out of my scrapbook paper. To make these, just fold your paper accordion-style. Then fold your accordion in half and fan these out. You can then staple these to one another (along the back side) to make your pinwheel. Each of these pinwheels had three pieces of paper on them each. You just want to make sure that the paper is very sturdy so it will hold the shape. I gave them a hole with a hole punch and then tied them on the underside of the umbrella with green raffia. They looked really lovely under the patio umbrella.

For the indoor food table, I did a big basket of LEGOS and I framed a letter that I wrote to Ethan about how special he was to us. This is the first year I have done this, and we read this to him as a bedtime story before bed the night before. He loved hearing about how much we loved him and how proud we were of him. The grandparents loved reading it too and seeing what cool things happened this year. Total spent on decorations and party supplies- $0

I did serve food at the party and opted for some take-and-bake pizzas to help save me some time. Our Papa Murphy’s is just down the road and I signed up for their e-club so that I could get a new batch of coupons. We printed these out and used these on four family size pizzas. Total cost for pizza for twenty $34 (with plenty of leftovers). We also served some fresh melon, spinach dip with carrot sticks, & tortilla chips with salsa, and soda. Overall, I spent about $50 on food (which includes the cost of the cake), but we also have a couple of dinners and plenty of snacks leftover to eat!

Entertainment consisted of dragging out every outdoor game and toy we could imagine to keep the kiddos busy. The kids also spent lots of time coloring on free LEGO coloring pages that I printed up from the LEGO website. They could take these pages home with them to color too so that filled in for those goody bags. Total cost spent on entertainment and goody bags- $0


All of that effort for this perfect moment right here. Ethan wished for a hundred kisses from his mom & dad. I think we can do that! How I wish he was always this innocent and that I could freeze this perfect moment forever. Perfect moment…oh, you know it… PRICELESS!

Total Amount Spent on LEGO Party for Twenty: $50

Kentucky Derby Bunco

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Good cheap fun…that’s what Bunco is!

I blogged about our fabulous wedding party and my retro housewife themed Bunco that turned out to be a blast.

This month’s Bunco theme was the Kentucky Derby so we all donned our fabulous hats and our high heels for a fun time.

I had to borrow a hat from girlfriend so here are some pictures before I got my hat on.

Ethan & Emily think it so cool when mommy dresses up for these events so they wanted to get some pictures with me before I left.

The kids kept touching my dress and smelling me….hmm…I wonder what they are trying to tell me?


Just call me Sandra Lee, as I was running short on time with a ton of appointments and events going on that day.

I found a Suddenly Salad in my pantry and used up what was left in our fridge to make my dish.

This is their classic pasta salad flavor with a few of my own additions- romaine hearts, tomatoes, sliced black olives, and narrow slivers of pepperoni to dust the top.

Despite it being convenience food (bought deeply discounted, of course!), I thought it turned out really good.

This was our lovely hostess, my friend Jessica.

Jessica is also the one who taught me how to knit so I especially love her right now!

She has been to the real Kentucky Derby so she wanted us all to have a taste of the food that we would eat there.

She served us Kentucky Hot Browns, Cheesy Grits, Derby Pie, Mint Juleps & Mimosas.

We all agreed that the food was great, but the Mint Juleps were extremely um…refreshing, but tasted horrible.

Here we all are with our hats on!

We are all wearing our very best summer dresses and it is about fifty degrees outside.

We all wished we were in Kentucky for this shot, but we were enjoying some derby fun in Indiana!

Gotta love a good Bunco theme and this one was GREAT!

 

Retro Housewife Bunco

Monday, April 28th, 2008

This month, I got to host our Bunco group, and I was so excited about my retro housewife theme. The best part about this theme was that I could display my apron collection and I could make all my friends wear aprons too.

The downfall with entertaining is that my home is a smaller space. It just means that I have to be a little more purposeful with clearing the home of clutter and finding more inventive ways to display and share all of our good food, but I did my best.

I cleared all of the shoes and coats from our entryway and replaced them with a handful of my favorite aprons from my collection. A couple of the girls said that they didn’t have an apron (I know, *gasp*) so I thought they could borrow one of mine from one of our hooks when they walked in. It also helped to tie in the theme!
I love to look for benches for my house because it makes great instant seating in any room. Even an old and ugly bench can be recovered and made to look more modern with a new fabric or coat of paint. I pulled my benches into a seating arrangement that I thought would make it easy for groups to sit together and would make it easier for people to chat. These are also narrow enough that they make good seating for homes with smaller spaces.

We had a delicious retro supper prepared. I made my favorite Sloppy Joe recipe and I got mini-kaiser rolls to make it easier to eat while we played. These were served with tater tots and Rice Krispie treats for dessert. I could prepare everything ahead of time and just had to throw the tater tots in the oven before everyone arrived. I planned to serve slushies, but everyone brought a beverage to share instead so this made it easier for me.

I love to serve our food on cake stands and the covered ones are great for keeping bread from drying out and they help to create a display. If you are short on space, elevating the food can make more room for lower dishes to rest. If you don’t have cake stands, you can use an inverted bowl and rest a plate on top to create a cute cake stand. Hunt at the thrift stores and you can find elegant china plates and cups or bowls to create cute little cake stands.

Coolers can get in the way when you are trying to entertain and can be difficult to hunt for just the right drink. I plugged one side of our double sink and filled it with ice. I tucked the drinks inside of there and then took a ribbon and looped a bottle opener through the ribbon and around the spout. It made it much easier to drain (just have to unplug the sink) and it also saved on space in my fridge and freezer.

What retro housewife would ever serve her guests dinner on paper plates? We kept our party green and wallet-friendly by using cloth napkins and my favorite white dishes to serve on. I had seven guests so it only equaled one fast load of dishes and everything was cleaned.

Isn’t this scorekeeper so handsome? Ethan got home from grandma and grandpa’s and was immediately intrigued by what all these crazy women were doing. He was so good to help keep score and even got to throw dice a few times with us.

Thank you to all my Bunco Babes who allowed me to live out one of my little fantasies. It was so fun to have a retro night with all of you!

Our Debt-Free Party

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008


We finally celebrated our debt-free party, after making the final payment on our credit cards today. I wanted to make sure that it was really special and that the kids would be an active participant in our joy and elation of all we did to work towards this day.

Above is our centerpiece for the event. As cheesy as it was, it was symbolic of the fruits of our labor. I put the amount of money that we paid off into the basket to show Ethan what a big sum it was and how excited we were that we didn’t have to pay this anymore. The money came from our Monopoly game and we were able to let him count it out and also used it to show how borrowing money works. This made things more tangible for him and we tried to make this a great teaching opportunity for why debt it so bad.

What should a debt-free family eat for their celebration dinner? Steak, of course! I used this marinade recipe and marinated the steaks while I prepared the rest of the ingredients for the meal. I got a big loaf of crusty bread with oil to dip it in, I made this Creamy Spinach Ravioli (minus the dill and prepared with half & half instead of milk), and I made a big batch of brownies for dessert.

Even Emily seemed to appreciate my modest culinary efforts. Most of the ingredients came right from the pantry so it was still an affordable dinner. The writing didn’t turn out on the brownies, but we devoured them anyway. That will teach me to get anxious and pipe before they are throughly cooled.

What’s a party without a good toast? I got a bottle of wine for our celebration and used our cut up credit card as an accent to our wine glasses. I poured pink lemonade for Ethan in the fancy wine glass so he could celebrate a toast with us.

We clinked glasses several times to get the best shot for you! Ethan loved clinking the glasses so he didn’t mind the extra takes.

I finished the evening by reading my entry that I wrote about our happy return to the land of no credit cards. It actually was quite emotional for me to read it out loud to my husband because we went through so much to get to this point.

Thank you all for sharing in our journey with us and for supporting our efforts on the site. Cheers to you!

WSBT-TV: Easter on a Budget

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Today on WSBT, I shared some tips and ideas for making Easter special on a budget. You can even get a sneak peek at what our kids will be wearing and how we manage to dress them well on a budget. This discussion goes along with our article, “Budget-Minded Easter Celebrations.”

Thank you for all your great comments today. I have been out of town since 5:30 this morning (a business trip to Chicago for the day) and just got home this evening. I can’t wait to catch up on all of my blog reading tomorrow and share more tips and ideas for our spring cleaning too!

Frugal Hacks: Fun Valentine’s Day Ideas for Families

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

Continuing with my theme earlier today, I wanted to share some linkage to some really great sites and ideas for celebrating Valentine’s Day in a fun way with your family. You can find me sharing on the “entertainment” category each week on Frugal Hacks. All of the contributers do such a great job so I hope you will take a look around while you are over there reading it!

In this entry there are tons of great links to printables, crafts, and ideas for making your Valentine’s Day extra special with your family. I hope it will inspire you to create and share a new tradition for the holiday.

Ethan and I will be spending time working on making our Valentines together this weekend and I look forward to sharing what we come up with. He is finally at the age where he has the attention span to really enjoy doing things like this so we are getting to a fun stage for doing some serious crafting. It will be great to have a partner in crafting crime, but hopefully he is better at it than me!

Please head over to Frugal Hacks and read my ideas for enjoying a fun & frugal Valentine’s Day!