Anna's new picture wall

So a few months ago, I blogged about how I finally got up some cute pictures of Anna. Well, after a while, the placement of the pictures was really bugging me. I thought it would look good, with all the pictures above the bookcase. However, I realized that they just looked crowded and all squished together. But I didn't feel like moving them, because it was a big hassle. Two of them have two hanging hooks, rather than one, so you really have to measure and make sure you know where you're putting your nails, otherwise it would be crooked.

Before

Well, I finally got around to it and switched them to another wall. I first made paper cut outs of the frames, so I could see where I should put them. This really helped me with nailing and deciding what looked good. I wanted to put some vinyl up with a cute phrase. One finally came to me yesterday, Pretty in Pink. So I cut it out last night and put it up this morning. I kind of wanted to make the word Pink, the color pink. But since the walls are pink, it would look kind of funny.

After

I think it looks so much better on this wall, spread out. I'm considering cutting out brown flowers and putting one on either side of the white frame. We'll see...

These frames were originally on the other wall. They too, look much better over here. I found a cute idea for some painted frames that had polka dots and a harlequin patter on it. Here is the link. I may do that to these frames.

Now, I just need to find something to put on top of the bookcase.

The New Grocery Shopping Plan

So, I was inspired by my friend Kirsten's blog post, about how they got out of debt, thanks to Dave Ramsey's advice. I actually ordered the book and am anxiously awaiting. It better be here tomorrow, because it's been over a week since I ordered it. Anyway, we're really good with saving money, but lately haven't been so good with our outgoing expenses. We only have a mortgage and a car loan. We've decided we want to pay off our car loan as fast as we can. Well, it's actually been our goal since the beginning, but we've yet to really implement it. :)

One area that seems to be problematic lately, has been food. So this month, I've have been EXTREMELY careful with how much we're spending on food. I decided that all we could spend is $300. Theoretically, I wanted to spend $100 at Costco, then $50 a week. The Costco trip covers a lot of the substance to our meals, that will last all month. At Costco we bought a large bag of chicken breasts, 5 lbs of hamburger, cheddar cheese, string cheese, mozzarella cheese, organic strawberry jam, and pure maple syrup. Dan did the Costco trip and bought some beef jerky and a few other things, so our total was actually $137. When it comes to food, there are some things worth paying more money for. We buy the pure maple syrup and it's around $12. Yes, it's expensive, but we use syrup a lot and it's not worth it to me to buy the fake stuff that is basically just high fructose corn syrup. The organic jam comes in a really large jar and is about $6. And it's SO good.

It would have been easy to say, oh well, we'll still just spend $50 each week. But I'm sticking to my guns and that left us with $163. But I had actually already made some grocery purchases at the beginning of the month, before I made this decision. So basically that left us with $28 a week for food. Basically, we just buy produce and dairy. We have food storage of pasta, flour, etc.

So I'm proud to say that we've been able to do it! It's been a little hard and I really had to be careful about what I bought. It was helpful that my phone has a calculator on it, so I could keep track of how much I was spending (until I dropped it halfway through my shopping trip today and the battery fell out!) as I put each item in my cart. Doing it that way really kept me in check and made me think about what I really needed. I also really shopped the sales. I normally do so anyways, but this month I've been better about it. Luckily, Vallarta (grocery store) has some amazing sales on produce, so that's been very helpful.

What probably made this whole goal really feasible, was we made a menu for the whole month. We normally do a weekly menu, but Dan wanted to do a monthly menu, so we did. Planning out the whole month was actually a good thing, because we could incorporate the beef and chicken we bought (sometimes the chicken stays in the freezer for a long time) and have a good look at what meals we wanted for the month. Then, each week I went shopping, I just looked at what was on the menu for the week and wrote down what I needed for each meal, which usually wasn't a lot, then added produce and dairy items.

Because we over spent early on, it's been a "necessity only items" each week. My goals for next month is to stock up on food storage items. We've gotten really low on our canned goods. What I'd like to do next month is again, $100 at Costco for bulk/staple items, then $50 each week. Since I've realized that we can actually live on about $30 a week, I'd like to buy food storage items every week. For now it would be canned goods, pasta, crackers, oil, etc. Stuff that I usually have stocked up and don't buy on a weekly basis.

What I've learned so far, is:
A. I really like this whole minimum amount of money to spend on food each week.
B. It gives me a guideline and honestly, it makes me feel more in control of the money I spend.
C. It's a great way to make sure you're not putting money in one place, when it could be going to another place. i.e. car loan.
D. With the money amount I've chosen for our food, I haven't starved and still eat well!

Are there any tips that you use for grocery shopping to save money and not over spend? Heaven knows it's so easy to grab this item and that item and before you know it, you've spent more than you mean to! Any methods that you use? I'd love to hear them!

Some useful information

One of the blogs I follow how some helpful uses for toothpaste. Here is the link. One of them is cleaning jewelry with non-gel toothpaste. I tried it and it works! Like a charm! I cleaned my wedding ring, which hasn't been cleaned in years and I noticed a difference. I was given a really nice silver bracelet for my college graduation. I was supposed to keep it in an air tight bag, but didn't and it got really tarnished. It was also too big for me, so I never wore it. Lately, I've been wanting to resize it and clean it, but didn't have anything to clean it with. I used the toothpaste on it and now it's sparkly clean! Dan helped me resize it and now I have a nice, new bracelet to wear.

Before.

Notice the black on the middle links.

I had started cleaning part of it at this point.

Never would have guessed that it was ever dirty!

The other helpful info I wanted to share was about calcium. Yes, I'm still on my calcium kick. Lol. I wanted to know exactly how much calcium I was getting from the foods I was eating. Well, if you look at a food label, the calcium content is given in a percentage amount. This was kind of confusing to me because the amount you need is given in milligrams. For example, adults need 1,000 mg of calcium every day (nursing/pregnant women need more, around 1200-1500). I looked at my yogurt container and it tells me I'm getting 20% of calcium if I eat it all. But that doesn't really tell me much. I wanted to know how much I was getting.

Well, it's actually really easy to figure out. I did some online research and all you have to do is add a zero to the percent given on a food label and that is how many milligrams of calcium is in the container/per serving. So my yogurt is 20% calcium, that means I'm getting 200 mg of calcium from that yogurt. Do that to all your foods and you got it figure out. Easy, peasy.

I just wish we were taught this at a younger age. Who knew it was so easy to figure out?

Well, I hope this information has been helpful. :)

Easy and cute fabric flowers!

One of my favorite sewing blogs, Make It and Love It, made the cutest little fabric flowers. As soon as I saw them, I knew I wanted to make them. Here is the link to the tutorial.

Aren't these so cute?

They are made out of cotton. I had some pants that I was going to get rid of, so I decided to use them for material.

Here are the pants.

And here is the new flower.

Woo-hoo for repurposing!

I made another one out of the leftover material from Anna's dress I made for her.

This one turned out much better, because the cotton was thinner and not as heavy as the white material, so it's a little more fluffy and fuller.

I think they're so cute and they were really easy!

All you do is cut out a bunch of circles, scrunch each one and sew them on in layers around a felt circle. Just click on the tutorial link. It's really easy.

I sewed barrett clips on the back, so I can put them in Anna's hair. I was thinking of making a headband and putting on one there. I need to make more, so hopefully I'll get around to that.

Anna's hair isn't fixed here, I just kind of put the flower on for demonstration purposes.

These would look cute in an adults hair as well, or pinned on a shirt or whatever. Lots of possibilities! :)