Is it a tool box?

Is it a toolbox?



Nope!



It's my new coupon box! My last box was a simple plastic shoebox, but I disliked how I had to take the lid off and I always worried about it not being on tight enough. I would not want the lid to be loose. It would be dreadful to dump all the coupons! So tonight we looked through some aisles at Walmart and biglots trying to find me a plastic box which I could snap the lid shut and it would some how be hinged on. My amazing husband said..."Why don't you just use a toolbox?" So we headed over to the tool aisle and he was right! The tool box was the perfect size and had a hinged lid like I hoped for, but it also had a HANDLE! So it was a better idea than the one I had. I am so greatful for his little ways of thinking about things in a different light. I would have never thought of a toolbox!

This time I was sure to put my name and phone number on it should I happen to misplace it again.

Reminder to you fellow couponers, tomorrow there is suppose to be 4 inserts! Be sure and get your paper!

Super Savings Saturday

Well I hit the deals this week....despite losing my coupon box a few weeks back. With the great Kraft coupons and Krogers sales I scored some great deals!

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My total came to $34.96 for all the above! I saved $29.95 by using my coupons and sales. I had a coupon from Krogers for free cheerios and free eggs. I paid .50 cents for the bologna, 16 cents for the sauce, 66 cents for the dressing, $2.00 for each pack of kraft cheese, 1.20 for the Triscuit crackers, and $2.00 for the AI sauce. We love AI, so I was stoked to get such a good deal this week. The sales were so good and I was able to get so many of these coupons that I just had to go back for more!



This deal came to $20.92 and I walked out with a $2.00 catalina...so basically $18.92. Hope you were able to snag some deals this week with those awesome coupons!

Last night before yard sale!

Ohhh, my house feels so clean! I got busy yesterday and had my kitchen spotless and all my floors mopped. Bedrooms were all vacuumed and everything was dusted and or cleaned with windex. I had my candles burning and my house had a nice spring breeze blowing through it. I am so thankful to God for all he has blessed me with. My home may feel small at times, but I know it is a mansion compared to most people in this world.

Getting rid of clutter always makes it feel so much larger. I still have the boys toys to go through, but we have a plan for that!

The little ones are going to their grandmother's tonight. After they leave we are leaving the other boys with the other grandparents and we are heading out to Red Lobster for a date night. We have a gift card so it should cost us zilcho! When we get back we plan to make it an allnighter. Getting out the last few things we can find and going through the toys quickly. My husband has not gone through his clothes yet, but he will get that done tonight too. I am just hoping and praying it does not rain till tomorrow night. We have a 70% chance..ugh! I have so much furniture that I need to get rid of so raining would not be good. I may end up having my yard sale two weeks in a row if it rains too badly and nothing goes.

I will post and let you know how it all goes. In the meantime..think of me and my hubby on a much needed date night!

Rainy Day Activity

The rain just poured down tonight and the boys were a bit bored. So I pulled out our Origami books and the boys and I got busy. We had a fun time creating a ghost, a bat, a bird, a cup, and Timmy's favorite.....CLAWS! We also added into this paper folding madness the making of some homemade oatmeal cookies. It really turned out to be a nice evening at home!


I love discovering ways to make a fun night at home with the kids and the added bonus to all of this was the cost....NOTHING but my TIME which is what they desire the most anyway!

Decluttering Kitchen today

So far I have decluttered 80% of my cabinets and here is what I have pulled out all ready!



I am having a garage sale on Saturday and I have been meticulously going through all the rooms, closets, cabinets, and storage containers pulling out any all things that I no longer need. We are getting rid of a ton of furniture from our basement/rec room. A couch, lazyboy, tables, computers, cabinets, just about everything! This will probably be the biggest yard sale I have ever had. All the money we make will help off set the costs of the renovation and the purchasing of cabinets for the rec room.

I love getting rid of stuff....I am not a chockey kinda gal. If it is not a useful item, if it is not something I care to dust around or wipe off..it pretty much goes! I kept a corner in my basement dedicated to yard sale stuff for the past year. I would gradually fill a box up, tape it up, and mark "Garage Sale" on it. The pile was enormous to begin with, but I knew I could find more! I have purged all the bedroom closets, the dining room hutch and now my kitchen cabinets. I just can't wait till it is all outta here!

Free Zoo Admission

For those in my area...I just saw a commerical from Krogers saying if you buy 3 milk/dairy projects from them at once you will get a voucher for one childs free admission to the colomus zoo. It said to go here for details. I will be trying this out and let you know if it works for me. I could not find information on this at the Kroger site.

Menu Monday!

Here is my quick menu for the week. We have a busy weekend...having a huge yard sale! We will be short 2 or possibly 3 kids this weekend so our menu will be geared light and tasty!

Monday: grilled chicken, chicken flavored rice, steamed veggies
Tuesday: hotdogs/hamburgers, pasta salad, chips
Wednesday: Shephards pie
Thursday: dinner at grandparents
Friday: Mexican bean casserole
Saturday: Yard Sale day! Soup and Sandwiches
Sunday: Porkchops, rice, and steamed veggies

My kids are so sad.

We are a very, very, very allergic family. All of my boys have had issues with allergies, ranging from pollen, cats, dogs, dust mites, grass, trees, to foods such as milk, wheat, peanuts, shellfish. My older children were really bad until they took shots for a few years. Over the past year the older ones have shown such an improvement.

Christian visits my aunt a lot and loves her dog Molly. He bathes the dog, plays a lot with the dog, and sleeps near the dog. His allergies to dogs seemed to have disappeared. Justin's allergies are not as severe to animals, but he does have them with many other things. He has improved after taking shots for the past few years along side his older brother.

Timmy seems to have some allergies to certain foods and dust mites, but he has not been officially tested. Nate has been tested for food allergies. He has severe eczema and is allergic to tons of food.....milk, wheat, peanuts, soy, corn, eggs. However, he has not shown to have any trouble with animals or pollen.

My aunt's dog just had puppies and the kids begged for us to take one. Since Christian (who was my worst child with allergies) has no problems with the mommy dog we thought we could finally get a pet dog. The puppies are now 3 weeks old and we went out today to visit. We were only there about 1 hour and I finally got Nate to hold the puppy. He was a little nervous around the little puppies. So he warmed up quite a bit and held and petted the puppy and kissed the puppy. We said our goodbyes and got in the Van. The ride home is about a 15 minute drive. As we were driving home Nate was fussing up a storm. I figured he was just tired. When we got home I started to get him out of the van when I realized why he was so fussy. He eyes were nearly swollen shut. He was rubbing and screaming and crying the whole time. I gave him a dose of benedryl and a bath. I called my aunt and told her what happened. She was understanding and knows how sensitive my kids are. Still this was heartbreaking news to my older ones. Once they saw Nate's eyes they totally knew we could not bring home the puppy. My kids feel so cheated. Some people might think we could just give him Zyrtec, but Nate already takes Zyrtec every single day. He had his nightly dose last night. So obviously that would not work for him.

My heart is breaking for my older boys. They were so looking forward to finally having a puppy. Here is a few photos of how swollen his little eyes were. These were taken within 15 minutes of being home from my aunts and the pics show how badly his allergies to the puppy would be. It least we found out before we brought her home, but still I was looking forward to having a little girl puppy. We were going to call her Mindy.



This was taken about 4 hours after our visit and he is still quite swollen.


If you can, please say a prayer for my children. There little hearts are broken. They took the news understandingly yet they are deeply upset. All this makes for a sad mother days weekend :( Tell your kids who have pets to know how lucky they are.

The Glorious Flight

We are nearly finished with our current Five In a Row read. Timmy chose to row The Glorious flight. This book is about perserverance! Louis Bleriout, a famous areronaut and his flight over the English Channel. The story was great about showing all his trials with making different planes and failing to get most of them to fly. Finally his persistance pays off and he the first to fly over the English Channel...a 20 mile stretch of water. I will show in other posts pics of other things we did with this fun Five in a Row book, but first check out our own plane building fun. We just happen to have a huge book on making paper airplanes. Yes, many of them were flops for us, but finally one worked!

Loving our abacus

I have to say this was a great purchase for our family. I know some might look at an abacus as an outdated teaching tool, but I love it compared to counting bears or rods. Why? Mainly because with counting bears and rods I would always be stuck hunting down the ones that the 2 year old took off with. I would have to get them all picked up and put back in their container. With the abacus, Timmy gets some help with visually seeing what he is adding/counting/subtracting and the mess is quite minimal! If you homeschool, you know what I mean about keeping the mess to a minimum.

Hmmmm, as you look at our late breakfast bowls in the pic! If there is one thing I have learned about homeschooling it is that one cannot expect to have too neat of a house!

Field Trip!

Today we spent the ay at the only marble factory left in America. The Marble King is located in Paden City WV. I took Timmy, Justin and Christian. They all had a great time. Nate stayed home with his grandma. Unfortunately, my battery died in my camera and I could not even get one picture! I was so bummed. A friend took some for me with her camera, so I am hoping I will get some emailed to me soon.

On the way home, my 13 year old said something quite funny. He said "Mom, when you said we were going to a Marble factory, I thought you meant like a place that made marble countertops or floors, not actual toy marbles!" He was not looking forward to this trip because that was his expectation! I guess I should have explained what we were doing a little better. He said he was confused as to why I wanted them to be sure and bring their allowance money. All the boys left with buying themselves a nice little bag of marbles. They have been happily playing with their marbles all afternoon. After the tour and activites we went on a picnic at the park with the other homeschoolers. There were about 30 kids that went! If I get the pics from my friend I will share!

Cereal Stock Up!

I posted about how to get some cheapo cereal here. Our Krogers will limit you to 2 internet coupons per product, but right now you can print up to 4 coupons for each Kellog cereal I mentioned on my previous post. With the knowledge of Kroger's coupons policies I simply sent Christian through a different check out as I was checking out....I did not want to have to make another trip to Krogers for this deal!

He purchased 2 boxes each of Kellogs Raisin bran, Corn Pops, Frosted Flakes and Frosted Mini wheats. His total was $7.49!!!! But the deal got better! The machine spit out a coupon for a free bottle of Kraft Barbeque sauce. As we unloaded into our car I realized I forgot to pick up some saltine crackers (we are having chili today) So he gave me his change and I saw the coupon so I went in and picked up some saltines and a free bottle of Kraft Barbecue sauce.

I went through another line and picked up the exact same cereal that he did and a some Rice Milk. So check out my pic of 16 boxes of cereal and my free barbeque sacue for under $16.00! Yeah baby!

Get your Kellogs on!

Woo hoo! I love cheap cereal! Kellogs has coupons out here and here. Lots of $1.00 off coupons. Combine these coupons with Krogers deal this week of selected Krogers cereals priced at $1.88 and you are paying .88 cents a box!

Or head to CVS and buy 3 boxes for $10.00---minus 3 $1.00 off coupons...you will pay $7.00 out of pocket and get back $5.00 in ecbs! That's paying .67 cents a box!

Oh How I love yard sales!

I hit some great yard sales today with my boys grandmother and my 2nd son. I scored a ton of name brand clothing for next to nothing.

Here is a pic of 28 t-shirts I snagged for my family of 4 boys! Most are name brands! My 13 year old loves Hollister...even on ebay these shirts used go for $6-8 used! I read the add for a yard sale that had these shirts and I hit that one first thing this morning. I bought names brands such as: ambercrombie and fitch, american eagle, hollister, tommy hilfiger, and some off brands and old navy. Not all shirts came from that one yard sale, but all shirts combined I spent around $28.00!


Here is a pic of all the pants, shorts, and some capris that I picked up today...I think about 15 items. I spent less than $10.00 for all of these.


I bought some fun misc. stuff. I bought a thomas costume for Nate. He loves thomas! Actually he paid for this with some birthday money he recieved. A pair of binoculars for $5.00 for my husband and/or Christian. A mess kit for Justin for scouts. I also snagged some good children's books. I had a great day and now I am quite beat, but I am pleased with what we were lucky enough to get!

Our deck project

Here is a before photo of our backyard patio where we now have a nearly done deck.



The problem with the patio was the steps come right off the back door. Now a days this would not be up to code. When Timmy was a toddler he fell trying to come out the back patio door and cracked his head pretty hard on the concrete steps. With Nate being a topsy turvy two year old, we decided we did not want a repeat of that event with him so we built the deck. We hope to roof and screen most of it next year.

Deck in progress!


Nate will be turning 2 this week and for his birthday we purchased this nice little step 2 picnic table with an umbrella....the boys were testing it out together.


Here is the deck nearly done. We still need to finish the top part of the railing and hand rails and gates on the steps. I imagine it will be completely done with in a week. If the rain holds off!

Washington...are you listening?

I love this clip from Fox news...I hope big wigs in DC saw it!