Bentley Dreams

This past Saturday the hubs and I got restless and decided that we should leave the house and go treasure hunting. This means we drive around and stop at whatever antique or unique stores we see. The mission was for curtains or a side table, but we rarely find what we are searching for. We most always find some sort of treasure though.

Well this trip was no exception. I saw a Bentley, and was really, really excited about that. No really, I was!!!

After some failed treasure hunting we decided to give the Goodwill we saw up the road a chance. Hubs whipped into a parking space and said, "Hey, there is a Bentley parked behind us." Now we were in Monterey, CA, so it might not be unusual to spot such a car, but really...parked in front of a Goodwill, on the side of the road. I got out of my car to go into Goodwill, but glanced back at the Bentley just to see what one looks like. The license plate did not say "fresh", but it did have dice in the mirror. I promise...there were fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror. NOW, I had to walk over to the car and for real check it out. The rims looked normal to me, the paint job looked normal, in fact, everything looked just normal. At that moment I made up my mind that no matter how much disposable income I had, I did NOT want a normal old Bentley.

After we left Goodwill I had Bentleys on my mind and I kept seeing them. I saw a blue one and a tan one, and then it hit me...these can not be Bentleys. After I pointed out yet another "Bentley", hubs FINALLY said he thought they were really Chrysler 350s. I am sure he mentioned it before, but I was not listening. So, I did a google search and sure enough, you can buy a Bentley emblem for your Chrysler 350, and I think this is really stupid. So, for $48, you can trick a gullible woman who knows and cares little for luxury cars for approximately 15 minutes. Winner! I may have been tricked, but I was never impressed. Not sure what people are going for with this, but I think those that care would recognize the car as a fake, and those that don't care would not be impressed by a normal old Bentley anyway. I guess I will have to give the real Bentley a chance to impress.

Now, regarding the Shelby Cobra kit cars, those are certainly impressive and not "fake" in any way. I still want one of those. Just saying and praying!

And the Disney Countdown Begins!!!

I am so excited about this Christmas because the hubs and I are giving the kids a Disney cruise for their "big" present. Well, we are not setting sail for a few months, so I wanted to come up with a way to keep their excitement up for the trip. By the way, we are sailing to Mexico and we have dear friends coming along with us! We are so blessed!!!

Anyway, I decided the little bits needed a countdown calendar to look at each day, and I wanted to incorporate some fun facts or questions about the trip. I scoured the web and mostly pinterest to find some great ideas for a Disney theme countdown. By the way, my friend that is coming on the trip is making a countdown too, so hopefully she will share about hers on her blog...I can't wait to see what she came up with.

There are tons of great ideas out there! I love the cookie sheet calendars that have coordinating magnets with them, but this would not work for me because we have quite a few days left and there just was not enough room on a cookie sheet. However, I do want to make one of these for Christmas next year! I also did not want a huge poster hanging in our house for months.

As it happens, I saw where someone else had used a clipboard and Mickey Mouse heads for a countdown, thus the idea was born. I would make a cruise theme clipboard with pull off "portholes" for each day and make sure to have special trivia questions printed on the back of each porthole. For those of you that want to make your own clipboard countdown and save some time, grab a bunch of the Disney paint chip cards from Lowe's and write numbers on them...plus it is free!

After a few sheets of special scrapbook paper, a clip board from Michael's, hours on the computer creating Minnie and Mickey portholes, some ribbon, and mod podge, I had a cute clipboard countdown. Now I just have to wrap it up and place it under the Christmas tree. I hope the kids have a great time counting down and answering all the questions about Mexico and Disney. Just Saying and Praying!

Awkward Family Photo

I am terrible at blogging. I recently got a job (will write about that another day) and my time to sit at the computer and write is just about gone. Today has been a quiet Saturday at home with zero activities planned, so I had to post about my lovely anniversary experience and how I scored my very own awkward family photo...with lasting memories to boot. Oh, and if you haven't checked out all the awkward family photos online here is the link: AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, and here our anniversary story:

Hubs and I celebrated our 8th anniversary last month. We are not the types to go all out for these kind of things (maybe we will for year 10 or something). Seriously, every day we spend with each other is a celebration (there! had to go a tiny bit mushy since it IS our anniversary I am writing about). Anyway, we decided that since this was a big day we should at least go out to eat. Since we are not the best planners in the world, we neglected to get a sitter. Next best thing...Benihana (Hibachi grill)! We thought that Benihana would keep the kids engaged while we talked about love stuff (not really, but sounds good for the occasion). Well this plan worked out well! Their behavior was as good as we could have hoped for. Everything was LOVELY, until it came to the end of the dinner. You see, at Benihana they ask you if you are celebrating anything specific. I should have just kept my mouth shut. Trying to redeem ourselves from our lazy attitude about the day, we (okay...I) let the server know that we were celebrating our anniversary. I really thought that I might get a free dessert or something, but what we got was an awkward balloon heart that the kids fought over and an even more awkward family photo.

Let me frame this awkward family photo in words: 8th anniversary, ugly balloon heart, happy couple in Tshirts, one kid refusing to get in the picture and one kid grabbing her mom's boob (she did not mean to).

Well, that is it...our 8th anniversary and life in one snap shot. Hey, at least they behaved!

Here's to many, many more years living just like this (because I love every minute of it)...just saying and praying!

There's a party in my tummy...

So yummy! So yummy! These are the words from a Yo Gabba Gabba tune that really gets stuck in your head. I wish that my kids would sing this every time I cooked for them, but meal times seem to be a hit or a miss. They have their favorites and I try to hide as many veggies in these favs as possible, but I really want them to appreciate food and learn to love the veggies. One vegetable they love is corn! They will eat it any way I serve it, so I love to try new ways to prepare corn and the other veggies they do love. The recipe below is for a corn souffle! This was a hit right away with them, and now I have yet another way to prepare one of their favs.

Corn Souffle

Ingredients: 1 can cream style corn, 1 egg beaten, 3 T butter, 1/2 cup milk, 2 T flour, 3 T sugar

Combine all ingredients. Pour into a greased baking dish. Bake at 350 for 1 hour +, or until knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

We are having this tonight, and I hope that they gobble it down and ask for seconds. Just saying and praying!

You Get What You Pay For

Yesterday the whole family (we have two family visitors in town this week) went out to the beach. We went to Fort Ord Dunes State Park. It was so beautiful out there and I love the walk to the beach. You have to walk through a valley between two big sand dunes. There are plenty of pieces of driftwood out there to sit on and get comfortable. The kids wore bathing suits and tried to brave the cold water, but mainly played in the sand and enjoyed trying to dig to China.

The adults had the most fun. We had bought an awesome kite from REI before heading out. I was a little hesitant about the price of the kite. The most I have ever paid for a kite is probably $10, but I wanted a really cool kite like you see all the other people flying. REI is awesome about returns, so I was willing to take a chance on the kite. We ended up paying $57 for the Jazz stunt kite...not the most expensive one, but not the cheapest.

I am sure you can find this kite online or somewhere else cheaper, but we are fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of people and we wanted to fly a kite THAT day. All you planners out there can do some price comparisons. Anyway, I had an awesome time flipping and zooming this kite at the beach. It would make all these great noises as it zoomed through the air. It had two lines and was for beginners, so it was very fun to learn how to control it in the air. It was a kite dream come true. I have always hassled with kites and run as fast as I could to make them get air, but this one was so easy. I guess you really do get what you pay for. Now I am thinking about the more expensive one for the next trip. Just saying and praying!

Celebrating Your Travels with Home Decor

You can share and celebrate all the places you have been and seen in unique ways. I like to use wall art and creative home decor. There are so many options and ways to get creative, but here are a few of my favorite.

I love my grouping of vintage postcard prints for all the states we have lived in. Still need to add a California print, but then that would mess up the symmetry. Some say "Greetings from" and some are the states with interesting landmarks marked. I ordered the foam backed prints from art.com and framed them myself.

One of my dear friends in Alaska had a map that she put different colored pins in marking their travels. You could have a different color pin for each person in your family. It was a great conversation piece and one that everyone talked about. I love, love, love this one from Frontgate. It is magnetic and even has an engravable magnetic plaque. I would rather my kids use the magnets to mark the places we have been.

Speaking of magnets, buying state magnets and arranging them on the fridge is a wonderful thing for the kids to do. It would be fun to search for and collect them on each trip.

There are some really great pillow options out there too! The felt state shaped ones on the end are customizable. You can get different colors and have the heart placed anywhere you want. I bought one of these for my Sis-in-law from http://www.alwaysfits.com/, but you can purchase them from a seller on etsy as well. Better yet, make your own! The first pillow is the cheapest of the three, and has a vintage feel, and the middle pillow is hand embroidered and can be found at http://www.uncommongoods.com/. All of these would make great gifts!

Another different home decor idea are lampshades. Below are two that I found online while shopping around. The first shade is covered with vintage California postcards. The second ones from uncommon goods have the "greetings from" motif. Not sure if these would go in my house, but they interesting none the less.

I try to pick things up as I go. If I can make a sled work in California, I am sure anyone can make any treasure work in their home.

I think the best home decor ideas to help me celebrate and remember all the places I have been are the ones I pick up on my travels. Oftentimes they are the most inexpensive (or free) but precious things I have. So I will try not to be afraid to display those things that help me remember and see where I have been and where I am going.

Just saying and praying!

Extreme Couponing

Today I tried my version of the extreme couponing thing. The best I have ever done before is clip a coupon and hope I remember to use it, so this time I wanted to take it a step further and shop the ads and print online coupons. I wanted to give this couponing thing a real good effort. Well here is how my one stop couponing shop went.

My grocery store had a special where I could buy 3 boxes of cereal and get 3 free, then I stacked on two manufacturers $1 off coupons (printed from the internet). So, my 6 boxes of cereal cost $9.28. Not bad considering I got three different kinds.

I used a store coupon I had for some beans, an internet coupon for fruit snacks, and really studied the weekly ad to make sure I was buying the right things at the right price.

I did find one surprising coupon online. It was from KC Masterpiece. They had a coupon for $2 off pork ribs when you bought one bottle of their BBQ sauce. That sounded like something I might enjoy for dinner tonight, so I printed the coupon and hoped it would work on the pork ribs. I had no idea you could use coupons on meat, but low and behold my pork ribs ended up being $2 less. When I asked an associate where the BBQ sauce was, she said I had just missed a buy one get two free on KC masterpiece products. That would have been an awesome thing considering there is also a KC Masterpiece coupon in the sunday stuffer (I was just too lazy to go looking for the paper). So if I had bought that stuff 2 days ago I could have gotten 3 bottles of BBQ sauce for around $1.69 and have still gotten my $2 off the pork ribs. Can you see how this could be addicting?

All in all, I spent 63.08, and thanks to coupons and buying store specials I saved $42.75. That is 41%! Not bad for my first time. Downside, I spent the WHOLE morning looking at the weekly ads and scouring the internet. Not sure if it is worth it, but I will definitely try it again. Today I am happy I saved a little money on things we buy anyway. Just saying and praying!