Summer Break

School is out and summer break has officially started! Summer weather is here too. We've already had several hot, humid days and I've already turned the air conditioning on, which is way sooner in the year than I did last year.

I made our summer bucket list for this year. I didn't stray from from the layout I used for last year's summer list. 

I left some room at the bottom in case we want to add more. There are a lot of repeat activities from last year, as well as some new ones. I added new travel goals like "See the White House." My goal for Connor is to potty train him. We'll see how that goes.... My goal for Dallin is for him to recognize all 26 letters of the alphabet (his recognition right now is spotty, with about 10 letters regularly recognized). I also want to work on a few other things like writing to get him ready to start Kindergarten in August.

During this summer, we're going to have 20 minutes of "school" time each morning. It will really just be games or activities to help learn the letters. Yesterday, we started with the first letter of the alphabet: A. 

We practiced tracing and drawing the letter 'a' and then the boys got to cover the outline of the letter with cereal pieces. Dallin was the one who gave me the idea for this when he was playing with his Apple Jacks that morning said, "Look! I made a T!" Of course, they got to eat the cereal after they made the letter. Connor started eating his cereal right away.

I tried to take a second picture to give Connor another chance to smile.

He just grabbed more apple jacks to shove in his mouth.

The local zoo is open now, so I'm sure we'll go there a lot this summer. I love having a small, free zoo only ten minutes away. It's right in the middle of town and it's really easy to just stop by for a little bit after running errands.

The recently born baby goats were out so we got to play with them

Connor is so sweet with the goats. He would walk up to the big goats and say in his high, baby voice, "I'm just petting you, I'm not going to hurt you."

Our summer is off to a good start so far!

Money Saving Monday: Weekly Planner

You may have noticed I've been in a little of a blogging rut lately. The month of January was cold and miserable snowy, and I felt little motivation to blog. 

In an effort to blog more this year and to share some of the great ideas that I have, I'm going to start a series of posts on the same topic. This particular series is called "Money Saving Monday" in which I will blog on Mondays about some of my money saving habits and practices. Mckay has been a college student for all 5 1/2 years of our marriage, so I've learned how to keep to a budget and stretch our money. Now, this will not replace our regular child-cuteness posts or ones about our exciting adventures in Indiana. And I'm not going to promise any sort of weekly regularity with these posts, but occasionally, on a Monday, you might find some helpful tips here to save you some extra cash.

My first tip is to get a weekly planner. Planning ahead and writing things down can save you a lot of time and money. I'm mostly going to talk about how using a planner saves me money on groceries, but I also use it for other things as well.

I got this planner for $8. It doesn't have to be a super fancy, expensive planner. In years past, I've usually gotten cheaper planners around $4-5, but with this year's selection, I found this planner to fit my needs the best. You can easily find one at Target or any similar store. It's about 5x7 inches and fits easily in my purse/diaper bag.

What specifically do I look for in a planner? It needs to have a monthly view so I can see an entire month on one (well...two) page.

On this monthly calendar, I write down Dr. appointments, any activities or meetings, birthday parties, times I'm babysitting for friends, etc. Pretty much anything that varies from our regular daily routine is written on here. Many people have a big family calendar at home to keep track of such things. I like that I can take this with me on the go and write things down as they come up.

My planner must also have a weekly view. I chose this planner because I liked the way this weekly view was arranged. And the boxes are lined to keep my crooked writing on track. Very important.

Every week (usually on Monday), I sit down and plan our dinner menu for the week and write the menu in the "Saturday" box on this weekly page. I plan our menu around food we already have that needs to be used up and foods that are on sale that week that I plan to buy. I also plan it based on our activities that week. For instance, I'll plan a crock pot meal for a really busy day. Or you might notice "fondue" planned for this week pictured above because of Valentine's Day. Mmmmm, I'm excited about fondue. I write down the ingredients we need to purchase as well as any other items in the grocery sales ad that we need to stock up on. My grocery list goes in the "Monday" box. 

Then, because "Monday" is usually entirely full of groceries, I write down coupons I might use on this trip in the "Tuesday" box. I do almost all of my shopping at Kroger, and they have lots of great online coupons that load directly onto your shoppers card. Most of these coupons are the same as ones you would see for printable coupons on other couponing sites, so it saves me the trouble of printing out coupons. And the digital coupons are redeemed automatically when you scan your shopper card and purchase the qualifying product, so there's no chance of forgetting to hand over your coupons at check out. The downside is that because the coupons are digital, I don't have them all in front of my to verify product names of sizes, so I write down the digital coupon information to help me remember. If you can see in the picture above, one of my coupons is written as "$2/1 Bounty 6 roll big." This coupon was for $2 off 1 pack of Bounty paper towels, a 6 count package of big rolls.

(I'll write more about my couponing habits in another post.)

Now I'm organized and ready for a shopping trip! I always have at least one child with me at the store, so it helps to plan as much as possible ahead of time so my grocery trips can be faster and the kids don't get hungry/grumpy, need a bathroom, or get lost looking at toys and candy machines.

Throughout the week, as I'm cooking and run out of an ingredient or notice something we need, I write it down on the next week's Monday. Then when I go to shop the next week, the needed items are already on the list.

 Other features I like in a planner: tabs for each month.

It makes finding each day a lot easier.

 My planner for 2013 didn't have tabs. 

It got pretty beat up with all the thumbing through pages to find dates. And the kids touched it. And I'll often write recipes from online in the planner because it's easier to keep the planner by the stove while I cook than to bring the laptop into the kitchen to read the recipe. So yeah, my planners look well-loved by the end of the year.

 For non-grocery purposes, I often use my planner for writing down lists. 

It might be a list of things I need to do that week (pay water bill, schedule appt, mail birthday card, organize closet). When we're planning a trip, it helps to have all my lists in one place. I make lists for food/snacks to bring, clothes to pack, toys for the boys, things to do before we leave, odd items not to forget like phone chargers, etc.

Having a busy schedule and two kids/pregnancies that have sucked all my brain cells, I often forget things I need to do, so I really like to have my planner with me at home and away to quickly write something down when I think of it. If you don't already have a planner, get one! I bet they're discounted right now with it already being a month into the year.

Cost: $8 per year.

Money Saved: $52 per year

(Ok, so it's hard to measure so this is totally a guess, but I'd say I save at least a dollar a week by being organized and having a planner, whether that's money saved by less gas spent on driving to the store several times, or through saving me time.)

Mckay, the book lover, upon seeing my new planner purchase at the beginning of January, said, "I should get to buy a new book too if you got to buy one." I tried to explain how much money this planner saves us each year and that my purchase was really getting us money back. I don't think he believed me and he's been spending a lot of time at the bookstore...

Summer to-do List

Dallin is out of preschool, the weather is getting hotter and humid...er: it must be summer! These warm summer months mean a lot of playing outside, but it also means a lot of trying to stay cool inside during the miserable heat. And with Dallin being used to preschool every morning and a lot of structured play, I have a feeling he'll get bored pretty quickly. So I came up with a plan to keep us busy and also have some fun.

 

I made a list of fun things to do this summer.

Some of the things on our list are big family activities (Visit the Sand Dunes, Go to St. Louis, or a movie night). I also tried to come up with lots of smaller activities to do like a picnic lunch, catch bugs, or fly a kite.

 

Making the board was pretty easy. I used a big thrift store picture frame and put white poster board behind the glass, so now it's like a white board. I started writing with dry erase markers but the color wasn't very vibrant and hardly showed, so I used permanent marker in various colors. Did you know that permanent marker comes clean off glass with window cleaner? The fun things you learn being a teacher...

For a finishing touch, I cut out some sun shapes and taped them to the glass. Easy!

 

Since taking this picture, I've added a few more things to our list: Visit Minnesota, See the Mall of America, Meet Spongebob Squarepants, go the County Fair, and make ice cream.

 

I'm really happy with our list because I think it will give us a quick idea for fun activities when we're bored. And it will be cool at the end of the summer to see all the things we've accomplished.

 

Feel free to use our list to come up with ideas for your own family. And if have any more ideas for a summer fun list I'd love to hear!

2012 in review

I know we're well into the new year now, but I'm still catching up from being out of town.

2012 was a great year for us. It was a year of exploring and trying new things. We took a spring break trip to Cincinnati, bought a bike trailer and went on several bike rides, and went camping one and a half times (we were hit by a huge rain storm and went home early one time). We flew to California twice and Denver once and learned that as much as like living here in Indiana and doing our own thing, we miss our family. We had family members visit us here and took trips south to Indy and north to the Sand Dunes and Chicago.

Dallin started preschool this year and has loved every minute of it. He learned to talk so much this year and is actually putting his own thoughts into words rather than just mimicking others. He got to go on his first school field trip to the pumpkin patch. He discovered his love for pancakes and ate them for breakfast about 330 days last year. (As a result, I've gotten VERY good at making pancakes.)

Connor has probably changed the most over the year. He started it as a brand new baby and ended as a full blown toddler boy. He rolled once or twice before quickly moving right into crawling. He learned to laugh, walk, talk, eat solid foods, all with very little help. He is a busy, busy boy, always running around and playing with cars, and he is always hungry.

I didn't know two kids could be so angry with each other one minute and then best friends and laughing the next. I guess that how brothers are.

I've loved watching these two play together and be so loving and kind to each other.

Mckay has played many sports this year. He played several ultimate frisbee pick up games. He started playing basketball weekly at the church and joined a volleyball league. And he played soccer alongside his classmates against the Chem.E. professors. The students won. Mckay landscaped some of the front yard and spent countless hours watering and trying to bring our grass back to life. He still says it need lots of work, but it looks better than our neighbor's grass!

I started teaching piano lessons and had my first student recital in November. I tried out countless new recipes (several of which I posted about here), learned to make yogurt, gingerbread houses from scratch, and kept our grocery budget between $250-$300 each month. I helped plan and host a walk for Williams Syndrome, and I got to write a guest post on a friend's blog about our life raising a child with WS. I did many crafts (a diaper baby, bow ties, crayon roll, necklace display and bathroom artwork,  finger puppets and an advent calendar), some less successful than others (like the Valentine's heart).

Here are my personal and family goals for 2012 and how we did with each one:

• Read scriptures daily as a family. We didn't read every day, but we did better in 2012 than the previous year, There is certainly room for improving this one. 
• Weekly Family Home Evening. Every Monday night, we set aside time to have a gospel lesson (about things like prayer, service, faith, etc.) and quality time as a family. We did very well with this goal and had family night almost every week.
• Watch less TV. Having started the year with a new baby, I was at a pretty low point as far as productivity. I pretty much spent all day feeding Connor. That on it's own is an important accomplishment, but the rest of the household duties were lacking. And watching TV all day didn't help things. We went through phases with this, but ultimately, we spent a lot less time watching TV.
• Less wasted time on the computer. This one kind of goes with the TV one. Same excuses: it's easy to waste time while you're stuck feeding a baby. I did pretty well with managing my computer time. It amazes me how much more I can get done in a day when I don't go near the computer.
• Read more books for entertainment. Part of having less screen time involved finding something to fill the absence because I still had to sit and feed a baby. I finished seven books this year (maybe more that I can't remember): The Picture of Dorian Gray, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Help, The Strangest Song, and Brave New World.
• Establish a daily cleaning routine. I kind of worked on this and was really good about it through the summer, but then got really busy as school started up again. We'll say I half accomplished this one. :)
• Plan a weekly Dinner Menu. It took some time but I got really good at this by the end of the year. It really helped me save time trying to figure out what to make for dinner each day, and I tried to plan dinners that would use similar ingredients so food didn't get wasted. Planning really helped me to keep our grocery budget down.

Overall, I'd say 2012 was a successful year for us. I'm looking forward to the new year. We're making more goals as a family, and I'm excited to see how we grow and change for the better this year.

Christmas Card Holder

I got my first Christmas cards in the mail the other day. It was so much fun to get mail and see how loved ones are doing. Then I realized that I didn't have anything to display the cards on. How would I be able to enjoy them all season long if they sat in their envelopes amongst a pile of bills? No no, this would not do at all. I decided to come up with some way to display them using things I already had at home.

Presenting my Christmas card line!

It was super simple and cheap to make. As a result, it's not the best looking thing but it's functional.

I took a piece of green ribbon (probably 2.5 or 3 feet long) and fastened it to the wall using two clear push pins. I positioned the pins so that the ribbon would sag a little, creating an arc.

Then I tied an extra bit of red ribbon into a bow on the middle of the line to give it a little extra holiday flair.

Using paper clips, clothespins and any similar devices, I attached the cards to the ribbon. I happened to have these adorable mini clothespins left over from another project, but they are not necessary for having a card line.

And there you have it! A beautiful, easy way to display Christmas cards.

Coupon Organizer

Since we're in the "poor college student" phase of our life, I've been trying to collect coupons and, more importantly, use them in an effort to save money. The problem is that I get all these coupons but I lose track of them or forget to take them to the store with me.

Solution:

A handy coupon organizer. It's small (about 5x7) and can easily fit into a purse or diaper bag. It's expandable and has 12 compartments and a zipper pocket. I got mine at Target for $4 and I saw a similar one at Roberts.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to organize things. Should I organize coupons according to categories, like food, diapers, baby supplies, cleaning products? Should I break "food" down into more categories like canned goods, cereal, frozen food, dairy, meat? Will it be confusing to have too many categories? How do I keep track of when coupons expire? Maybe I should organize according to the expiration date to make sure I get to use them. As you can see, I'm still far away from being organized, but I'm on my way. Do you guys have any ideas that would help me organize and use my coupons? How do you keep track of your coupons? Any money saving tips would be appreciated!