A budding artist?

Last summer, when I was in Utah, I got Anna a drawing toy from DI. I think I paid $1 for it. Well, she loved it. She would draw on it all the time. Since it was used, the piece that slides across and erases the board broke a few times. Dan was able to glue it back together, but eventually he couldn't fix it anymore. I broke down and bought her a new one. Probably one of the few times I've actually bought her something new. But it was worth it to me because she seriously uses it all the time and really loves it.

Last week she wrote her name. The missionaries came over for dinner and while we were waiting for dinner to cook, Dan asked Anna to write her name and she did. It was the first time and she did it!

Pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

This one is a mountain.

A person

This one has a hat.

I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure this is a picture of Logan, and his mom and dad.

This one is a picture of an alien spaceship! There's a show she was watching, called Kipper. It's about a dog and his adventures. In one of them, some aliens come and this is what the spaceship looks like. A circle with three legs coming out from it.

Here's another shot. I had to add this one because I was able to capture a facial expression that she does a lot, that is so very Anna. :)

Then, later she drew the aliens. In the show they look like pigs with long snout like noses.

It's pretty good. She's so smart to be able to take something that she sees and then draw it.

This was a year ago. It's some flowers.

Not quite sure what this is supposed to be, but it looks cool!

I'm pretty sure this is her.

It will be interesting to see how her drawing develops as she gets older and if it will be a real talent.

Bathroom Redo Part 1

Well, our bathroom redoing has begun. We got our counters redone, new light fixture, new faucet and new knobs for the vanity, as well a paint job for the vanity. It would be nice if we were all done, but we're just beginning!

Here is the bathroom when we first moved in, 3 years ago.

(please excuse the post baby body. Haha)

We have a really old, ugly light fixture, old faucet with the plastic handles, oak cabinets, and the hardware is brass with plastic beige in the middle (classy!).

Here, you can see the counter a little better. It's a faux marble kind of thing going on. It had a crack on the side of the sink basin and is kind of a cream color.

After!

Muuuuuuch better!

Here is the painted vanity.

I'm not going to lie, this isn't the best paint job. I normally just do one coat of paint, but decided to do two. I must have used too much paint the second time round, because it just didn't look as good afterwards. It's not horrible, but it could have been better.

But the important thing is that it still looks nice and is better than the oak cabinets.

I decided to go with brushed nickel for the hardware. I got these knobs for 74 cents each at Lowes!

The handles were a little more. I think they were $2.38 or something like that for each one.

These hinges, I ended up buying some brushed nickel spray paint and just sprayed them. I didn't feel like taking them off and putting new ones on and the door not being able to hang right. It probably wouldn't have been a big deal, but I didn't feel like chancing it.

Another view of the hardware.

Here you can see the new light fixture a little better.

We had our counters glazed over, a nice white color. It was kind of a little ordeal. We got both bathroom counters done. They were a few spots that needed to be redone. The guy came and fixed them and ended up messing up our master bathroom counter even more. So another guy came and fixed it, but there were still a few mistakes. At that point, I was tired of them not being able to do it right the first time. So I told them not to come and fix it, but if we could get a discount. They gave us 25% off! Which saved us about $50. That was nice.

We decided to have them glazed over, rather than replacing them. We figured that would be the cheaper option. In the end, we paid about $70 per counter. Not too shabby.

The best part of all this is we didn't have to spend that much money. What I mean by this, is we had $100 in Lowes gift cards that we earned via MyPoints (LOVE MyPoints! Let me know if you want an invite!). Then, I had been saving money that I got from babysitting, as well as selling a few things on Craigslist. I think we paid about $15-20 for all this, out of our normal money. I got that soap dispenser at Goodwill for $2 or $3. I don't remember exactly.

I got big plans for our bathroom and it's going to look AWESOME when we're all done. If we ever finish it, that is. Haha. It's just been slooooow going over here. The main thing holding us up now is the walls. They need to be retextured and we don't really want to pay someone to do it, but we don't really know how to do it. We want to try, it's just a matter of figuring it all out. So once that is done, I'm going to paint the top half a really light blue, the bottom half white and add board and batten. I already made the shower curtain and bought a bathmat and hand towels. I have some wall decor all ready. We are also going to frame the mirror. That will make it look so much better. We have the trim for that already from a previous project.

Anyway, I'm really excited to beautify our bathrooms and make them look nice!

Double A update!

Well, it's that time again for a little Anna and Alex update!

Alex first.

He's now 11 months!

He's full out walking now and has been for a few weeks. He's been taking steps since he was 9 months old, but just finally ditched the crawling to devote himself to full time walker status.

He LOVES our garbage and recycling containers and is constantly pulling things out of them, though usually just the recycling.

He likes to pull Anna's hair and bite our toes.

He likes to growl-at church, the grocery store, etc.

He loves to see Anna in the morning and always smiles and is happy to see her.

He likes to wave and it's so cute!

He loves the aquaphor container and is constantly trying to get his little hands in it.

He likes music and almost instantly starts bouncing his little legs when he hears music.

He is REALLY good at imitating us. We'll move our arms a certain way or make a certain sound and he'll do the same.

He is a wiggle worm and it is always a struggle to change his diaper, lotion him after a bath, put his clothes on, etc.

He loves Anna's room and if we don't close the door, will go in and play with her toys.

He likes to strum his lips and then will try and strum our lips with his little fingers.

He has discovered kitchen cabinets and drawers and loves getting into them.

He nurses 4 times a day and loves finger foods! (I'll be weaning him in the next few weeks).

Here are some random pictures.

Dan thought it would be funny to fit him in his backpack. Who needs a baby carrier? :)

Alex loves to play with daddy and I think daddy likes to play with him too!

He has the sweetest little smile.

I can't believe he's getting so big!

We normally bathe him in the bathtub, but when we had our counters redone, we couldn't go in the bathroom, so he got a bath in the sink! He loves baths and would seriously crawl/fall in the bathtub if we didn't stop him.

This lamp is just a big hit with the kids. Anna would always grab it too when she was little.

Here is Anna, when she was maybe 9 months old. She just got done grabbing the lamp.

Anna is just her cute little self. Her conversational skills are getting better and better. One cute thing she says is laster time and yester time. Instead of last time or yesterday. It's really cute. She still has her little peculiarities. Like she HAS to open our security and front door. She gets REALLY mad if we do it. She has to touch the van door first, before I can open it. She has to put the waffle or bread in the microwave and will get mad if I do it.

She can be nice to Alex, but honestly she basically takes his toys, pushes him down and puts her blanket over his head-a lot-like, all day long. It can get really annoying. I try and be patient about it, but since it's a nonstop thing, I'm not always the most patient about it.

I let her watch a TV show when Alex naps and she knows it and is always very excited to do so.

She says All day a lot. For example, Alex will be eating pasta and she'll say, Alex likes to eat pasta...all day!

Here is a little craft project we did. We made her a hat. I know it's ugly, but she liked it!

She takes her blocks and makes a camera out of it and then takes our picture.

Dan made one too!

Here is an outfit I got at the thrift store for $1.60 !

Old Navy jeans and a Disney Pooh shirt. Score!

I'm so blessed to have such sweet little babies. And to have a wonderful husband and father who loves his little babies too!

He even shares his breakfast with them!

Oatmeal for everyone. :)

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! :)