So total mea culpa on the meat thing. Especially after tonight when I made Orange Chipotle leg quarters and ate 1.5 pieces. Yup. That’s totally me though. I’m a trier. As in I’ll give darn near anything a whirl if it’s compelling enough. It won’t always work {or last}. But I’ll give it my all…. for awhile. Until I find even more compelling reasons to not do it. Like, gas and weight gain for instance. Three days of that and I become a confirmed carnivore, well, omnivore at least. Still, I absolutely L-O-V-E shopping at the farmers market. I love trying … Continue reading

Who doesn’t love Stonyfield Farm’s YoBaby banana yogurt?! I swear I bought that stuff for me before I had Camden. So I was more than glad to buy some for Camden as we started to get more adventurous in our food choices {hello avocado! strawberries? I kills them!}. Here’s the problem, okay, problems: 1. It’s more yogurt than Cam can eat in one sitting. 2. I already buy plain yogurt and YoKids for Tyler. How many freaking different kinds of yogurts are we going to have cluttering up my fridge?! 3. And they are pricey! Over $2 for 4 which isn’t … Continue reading

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week and I’m going to give you a few ideas on how to say “Thank You” without breaking the bank. Typically I like to send a small something everyday which usually isn’t too expensive except that Tyler has 2 teachers this year. {Some of you may have more than one school aged kiddo, so this week could get expensive/time-consuming, so read on!} They are both super awesome so I wanted to stick with the daily gift thing but I had to get creative so that it didn’t blow my budget. I apologize for the complete cheesiness you … Continue reading

I admit that I am in awe of those extreme couponers. I am also a little disgusted too {do you really need 20 bags of Doritos? I mean, for realsies, they do go bad…} but for the most part: awe. It always seemed so complicated though and my family doesn’t really use most of that stuff. Besides, I always felt like I saved more by buying the store brand than a name brand even with the coupon and most of those coupons were for processed crap that my family really doesn’t need anyways. So those were my excuses for not … Continue reading

So I finally did it! I made my own laundry soap folks! Hubby has been jokingly referring to it as my moonshine laundry soap whenever he would see the big 5 gallon bucket in the laundry room and although I didn’t make it in my bathtub, other bloggers have admitted to doing that, there’s nothing like stirring hot soap on your stove top to make you feel like you are doing something illegal or just really ancient. I should forget the soap and just go beat my laundry on rocks next to a stream or something. Anyhow, it was stupid easy … Continue reading

For the last 3 weeks we have been “meal planning”, that is, planning out our meals for the week BEFORE going grocery shopping. It’s an awesome budgeting tool because we have spent less than $200 in two weeks {$67 this week and $90 the week before}. This is a huge deal for me because I usually spend about $120 a week at Super Target {so it includes all of my household needs in addition to grocery}. Quick shout out to The Frugal Girl and The Frugalette for the idea! What does this have to do with Cajun Chicken Pasta? Well … Continue reading

With all of this money drama and life changing stuff going on, I have been reading, appropriately, God Wants You to Be Rich-The Christian Guide to Financial Freedom & Unlimited Wealth. Not because being rich is one of my goals, that’s not what this book is about anyway, but because I want to be more in control of my financial life. Now, I have a very expensive useless MBA, so intellectually, I know how to manage my money. But knowing and doing are two different things. And the dichotomy between knowing and doing is about as Christian as you can get. … Continue reading

So this may be a little off topic for a mom blog, but hey, this is my platform for expounding on things that quite frankly piss me off or at least give me pause.  This did a little of both. What is “this” you say? “This” is an email sent to me by an iTunes app developer after I reported a bug in the app that basically rendered it unusable. Was I nice in the complaint? No, not at all. Could I have been nice? Maybe, but who is when something they use daily and count on stops working? That’s … Continue reading

So some of you may already know that I won a set of Wean Green glass baby food containers when I posted it on the book of face. I’m so excited about these because they are hands down the best thing I have ever won. Okay, so maybe they are the only thing I have ever won, beside those fake contests where you win a trip to “preview” a timeshare {and oh by the way we will need to charge your credit card but you will be reimbursed when you show up}, but seriously these Wean Green containers have changed my life. … Continue reading

It’s a few days into the New Year and while many have already broken their New Year resolutions here I am talking about one that is probably even more important than losing those pesky 10 (okay 20) pounds: getting financially fit. For most of us, broke is the new normal and frugality is all the rage. Still, there ARE those pesky last 10 (ok, ok 20) pounds, so to speak. Maybe we’ve cut costs, done the extreme couponing thing, and hopefully eliminated debt (sometimes painfully) but for many of us when you are living pay-check-to-paycheck (or in the case of … Continue reading