Summer Bucket List

Lulu made a summer bucket list.  We completed many of the things on the list, such as make our own frappucchinos, for example.

By the very last day of summer we had crossed everything off of our list except for "go to Alexandria."  Luckily, the stars were aligned and I woke her up on the very last day of summer and asked, "Hey, do you wanna go to Alexandria today?"  She jumped out of bed and raced to get ready!  She confessed to me later that she assumed we weren't going to get to go at all.

I very much want to be my teens best friend.  It is hard for me to see her laughing and giggling with her friends while I play the role of "homework enforcer."  I know that I am not here to be her friend... but to be her parent. I mean, let's face it, parents can be friends too but it's not the same thing.

However, the day we went to Alexandria was a day that we got to hang out and talk and relax... as friends.  It was chicken soup for this mom's soul to be honest.

She had a blast and she loved strolling down the streets of Alexandria.  Most of all, she loved sitting by this fountain with her Starbucks drink. 

Really -- it was a fabulous day!

We just chilled, and strolled, and talked... and hung out.  Can you see how happy she looks?  I will forever cherish this spontaneous trip with Lulu.  Moments like this cannot be planned.  They just happen!   

It was the perfect ending to an almost perfect summer!

I read that parents cannot create bonding moments with teens.

We can only make ourselves available ALL OF THE TIME

and wait for them to come to you. 

Do you agree?

Mr. Fix It

We all know that my Dear Husband and is also known as "helper man."  I love love love that Bro is a helper too.  He calls himself a "helper man" actually.

Our neighbor gave us a hand-me-down pedal tractor for kids.  It didn't work so Bro and Daddy set off to fix it.

I had the best time watching these two guys hard at work.

Play Dough

I'm not one to make cookies. They are way too time consuming in my opinion.

And I certainly do not make cookie cutter cookies.

So, I don't know what possessed me to make some bee, dinosaur, and apple cookies for back-to-school for my kids.  I did.

Bro really got into it.  He begs and begs to make cookies.

Instead of making cookies everyday, I remembered a play dough recipe that I saw online and we made some at home.

It turned out great. 

Since fall is here, I even added cinnamon to bring out the sense of apple pie.  It was such a hit -- it smells so good!

Every time we get out the play dough we have to get out all of the materials to go along with cookies.  Bro always asks for sprinkles and I always say "no" of course. 

Finally, I gave in.  Who cares?  Just let him add sprinkles!

See the large blue water bottle?  It is a "rolling pin," mkay?

Oh-oh.  What's going on here?

Oh - we are eating sprinkles now?  Hmmm... Don't you know that you are supposed to do that when Mommy isn't looking?

Ta-da!

What did we do with the play dough now that it has sprinkles in it?  Well, we balled it back up and put it in it's container. I'll let you know how it turns out when we take it out to play with it again.

Gift Idea:  You know, a play dough bin would be a great gift for a kid that is hard to buy for.  I found a play dough bin example here.  What do you think?

What would you do?

Do you let your kids put sprinkles in the play dough or not?

Bargain Bug!

Yay! More thrifty shopping! I have the thrifty shopping bug. I hope you don’t mind.


Keep in mind that when I thrifty shop I only buy things we need and already use.

Today’s find? Rash guard swim shirts from Land’s End. These are the swim shirts that the kids wear over their bathing suits to keep the sun off of their skin. Tip: Buy the shirt a size larger than necessary. Rash guard shirts seem to run small anyway and they are even harder to get on and off when they are both small and wet. Buy a larger size and you won’t be disappointed.

Here is what I ordered. The before and after prices are listed together.

1 rash guard shirt for Bri: $24.50 for $4.99
1 dress for Bri: $34.50 for $9.99
1 rash guard shirt for Bri: $24.50 for $4.99
1 rash guard shirt for Bro: $19.50 for $6.99
1 pants for me: $49.50 for $24.99

Total Price Could Have Been: 152.50 + 13.00 shipping = 165.50

Subtotal was: $51.95 + $13.00 Shipping = $64.95

However, I had a promo code for 25% off and Free shipping.  Thanks Money Saving Mom!

Final Price: $41.27 shipped CHA-CHING!

I found this deal from Money Saving Mom.  You can also follow her on facebook.
 

What blogs are you following to find deals?

Wings!

It's the start of football season.  You know what that means?  We will be eating lots of yummy football food!!!

First stop is wings!

Both Bro and Bri loved the wings!

See!

Okay.  Well, Bri didn't really eat wings.  She slurped the ranch dressing off of a celery stick.

Bro ate the wings.  He loved them.  He says they are "man food."

If you are looking for wings for your family to enjoy.  These honey bbq wings from the Greene Turtle are delicious. 

What is your go-to football food? 

Christmas in September

Maybe I don't handle this task of parenting several kids as well as some others do.  I often feel overwhelmed.  Nonetheless, I feel the need to start my Christmas shopping now so I am not unprepared for the season.  It happens!

My teen has not asked for any gifts yet and she is hardest to buy for.  She says that she is "strategically only putting a few key items" on her list to ensure that she gets exactly what she wants.  Since when does she not get exactly what she wants?  Nonetheless, she informs me that iPad and a new cell phone are on her wish list.  Wow!  I'm not sure that Santa has that kind of a budget.

Nonetheless, my toddler doesn't need anything but clothes.  I'm not sure what she will ask Santa for Christmas since she already has lots of toddler toys at home from her brother.

Bro, my preschooler, has lots of wants and.. ahem... NEEDS.  Plus, he needs Christmas gifts and then has a birthday right after the New Year.  So, this past week I started getting some stuff together for him.

The problem is that I am not one to keep secrets and surprises.

I fear that Christmas might go something like this... this is me talking... "Okay kids... I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that I bought you a boat load of gifts for Christmas.  The bad news is that... we already opened them and played with them... so hope you liked them."

Let's see how I am doing so far.

I preordered The LEGO Ideas book along with a LEGO Star Wars Minifig Catalog - for a 41% savings off of full price.  We opened the LEGO Ideas Book this weekend. We had a great time building with LEGO bricks.  Lulu and Bro are building houses.  Bro asked if I would build him a church, so I am working on it.

I bought Cars Squinkies and Marvel Super Hero Squinkies... of which we played with them... ate with them... and slept with them all weekend long.  They were a HUGE hit.  However, we've lost almost all of them at this point and we saw the family dog eat several.  Normally he does not go near our stuff.  I guess a small squinkie (the size of a grape) is too good to pass up.

I desperately want baby Bri to enjoy reading books.  So far, she still will NOT sit still for even the shortest book... no matter what.  So, I tried this little interactive selection by LeapFrog.  Yes, we read it.  Um... she kinda likes it more than other books.  She just has NO ability to sit still for any length of time.  It's totally frustrating.

Bro wants a pirate ship with "with a plank." I did some research and found two that seem to be great buys.  One is selling for $79.99 on Amazon and I snagged it (new in box) for $9.93 on ebay.  I might have to see if Fairy Grandmother will store it for me until Christmas, lest we play with this before Christmas too.  Argh!

Shopping early means that I have the wiggle room to look for and wait for deals to come along.  Money is not growing on trees at my house and we need to save as much as possible.  Ya know?

I found What's In the Bible Volume 1 on sale for 5 bucks at my local Christian bookstore.  Have we watched it already?  Of course we have.  That's okay.  We can still ask for volumes 2-6 for Christmas.  Right?

In the coming months, you will find that there are lots of religious items on our Christmas lists.  After 13 years of parenting, it has all of the suddenly occurred to me that since my kids are going to public school, I am chief-in-charge of spearheading their religious education.  We have some catching up to do but it is better to be late than never, right?

My hope is that my teen can get up to speed quickly about some basics of the Bible as we start to teach the basics to my preschooler.  That's the immediate plan anyway.  We'll see how it goes.

Oh - so... you want my opinion on What's in the Bible?  hahahahahaha!  Believe the hype!  It was fabulous!  We sat down and watched both parts of volume 1 as a Friday Family Movie Night.  We laughed... we all laughed... it was great.  My son asked to watch it again on Saturday.  My only tip is that it was a tad bit overwhelming to watch both parts in one night.  Next time, we will probably divide it up into two movie nights. Nonetheless, it is a great buy and we are looking forward to getting more episodes.

So... tell me...

do you open Christmas gifts early

or are you totally okay with hiding them 'til the big day?     

A Visit to a Famous Landmark

As many of you know, I live in the DC metropolitan area.

Recently, my mom, Lulu, and I took advantage of some down time to visit a famous DC landmark.

We didn't visit the type of famous DC landmark national monument that you might be envisioning.

We went to Georgetown Cupcake of TLC's DC Cupcake fame! 

You know???  The cupcake show from the tv station TLC. {{Work with me here folks!}}

We had such a great time!

Here is my list of what you should know before you visit Georgetown Cupcake:

1. Know where you are going. Navigating in and out of DC can be tricky. Luckily, my mom went with me and she knows her way around DC. You can also visit their Bethesda, MD location, however, I really wanted to go to the site that is actually on TV... just this once.

2. Dress for the weather and be prepared to wait in line outside of the bakery. This is not a bad thing. Everyone in line is super fun and super excited to be at Georgetown Cupcakes. For me, waiting with all of the fans and locals was part of the experience. Nonetheless, bring an umbrella or bring your coat if you need to because you will be waiting outside.

3. Check out their website and be aware of which cupcake flavors will be available during your visit. Seriously, this line moves fast. If you happen to arrive at a time that there is a short line, you need to know what you want.

Also, some cupcake flavors are available every day, but only by special order. You need to check the flavors menu, available online, to see which flavors need to be preordered.

You can find a complete list of Georgetown Cupcake flavors as well as their flavor schedule on their online menu.

4. Know the "secret flavor of the day." The "secret flavor of the day" is announced daily on Georgetown Cupcake's facebook page. It is a FREE (ahem... FREE) cupcake, one per customer, for the first 100 customers who ask for it by name. It is not a flavor that will be on the menu for the day. If you do not have access to facebook while you are standing in line, then ask an employee about it and they will probably tell you what the day's "secret flavor of the day" is.

5.  You can preorder your cupcakes and skip the line if you are in a hurry.  Check their website for details.

OK... and now for the highlights of the bakery.

After entering the bakery, we waited in line next to all of this yummy goodness.

Someone took our order. {{Yes, I did just take that picture right in front of her. Obvious???}}

And these guys filled our cupcake boxes.

We totally acted like tourists...

... as we checked out the proper way to ice a cupcake.

Best of all, we walked away with one dozen delicious cupcakes.

 Yummy!!!!

Item # 28 on my bucket list reads:

28.  Taste the food of a television food celebrity (either visit a restaurant or go to a show taping). 

I'm crossing off my bucket list items. 

How about you?

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Growing Mammoth Sunflowers reminds me of the phrase, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Allow me to introduce the good.  Look up to the top of the picture... waaaaaaay up there... do you see it?  Yep, that is a mammoth sunflower standing majestically tall!  Nice!  Right???

Allow me to introduce the bad and the ugly (apologies for the cell phone pic).

Do you see the brown heads drooping in the middle of the mammoth sunflowers and all along the dwarf sunflowers at the bottom?

After three months of coddling my sunflower babies, I went out of town for a week (while Dear Husband was at home) and I then arrived home to large, brown, droopy sunflower heads.

I was furious.  Deflated.  Frustrated.

I was sure that the droopy heads were due to lack of water... because maybe someone (my husband) didn't water them while I was away.  Perhaps!  Maybe???

However, I found this little tid bit about droopy sunflowers and it made me feel better (and got my husband out of trouble).

From a forum:

"If you are referring to the head drooping, that is normal, they are starting to make seed, you will see the inside of the head, sort of shedding small petals the head droops, the coating in the the inside fall off and the seed start to form. You need to feed it through out its life, until you harvest the heads. Simple blossom booster will work well. Miracle grow makes this but there are many brands. Once all the petals fall off and the lower leaves start to brown it is time to harvest your heads. Cut them off with enough stalk to be able to hang them to dry. Once dry the will easily fall from the blossom, and you can soak in salt and bake or harvest for your birds.
If you leave them on the stalk to dry with out cutting, you may loose your seeds to the wildlife.

If your leafs are what is drooping, this is caused by too much water, towards the end of the season the plant requires less water, the roots are actually slowing down. Pull back on the water and allow it to dry well in between.

I have these beautiful flowers all through out my garden. I am growing some to eat but most for the birds. Mine also have reached 12 feet and plus! are they just too awesome!"

The moral of the story is: when you see the heads turn brown and start drooping, do not put your husband in the dog house. This is not his fault.  This is nature's way of providing home grown sunflower seeds for the birds to feast on this winter.  mkay???

So, what was once lost is now found again... and I am now thrilled (proud actually) with my bold and brown drooping sunflower heads.  Aren't you?

Did you know that the sunflower heads would turn brown and sag?

Why didn't anyone tell me this?

Carrots

This is the summer of the carrots, of course.

I might have mentioned a certain little boy...

who happily announces every night that The Carrot Seed is his favorite book.

Have I mentioned this little boy before?

Well, he finally pulled up a carrot.  I wish that I had taken video, but the pictures might be even better.

You see, here is the correct way to pull up a carrot... if, you are a preschooler.

Check your carrots to see if they have grown. 

When you notice some growth, try to be patient and leave the carrot to grow some more.

If that doesn't work, pull the carrot with all of your might.

Give it every bit of muscle that you have.

Announce, "That's a BIG carrot, as you fall back into the grass!"

Examine your carrot with all of the seriousness of a great scientist.

Yes, growing carrots is very serious business in my house.

He immediately ran into the house and washed his carrot himself.

Later, Mommy was reprimanded for cutting the carrot into sticks.  Apparently, someone wanted to eat it whole. Oh -- now I know.

This post is part of the KinderGARDENS series.

Click here to join or for more information.

What do you see?

Someone sent me a message on facebook, it said, "Napmom? Where are you?"

I'm here! I promise. I. am. here.

Lookie Lookie!

So, my mom kinda got me to dip my toe in the water of the crazy couponing world. Seriously, not to offend any crazy couponers out there, but the women on those tv shows are not people I would be friends with. I see them as pushy and abrasive... and even sometimes rude and snooty. Disclaimer: This is only my opinion and I haven't watched that many shows, to be honest. I am sure that some of them are sweet, demure, and... ahem... humble.

Nonetheless, I am following a couple of coupon blogs and I made my first run to Target (coupons in hand) and came out with some FREE or almost free back-to-school stuff.  My loot?  10 papermate pens for 2 cents, 3 free rolls of scotch tape, and a free sharpie.  Plus, I saved half off of some facial products that I needed and earned a $5 Target gift card towards my next purchase.  Admittedly, it was time consuming to chase down the coupons and I had to work with the cashier because everything didn't ring up correctly at the register, but in the end, it was a great trip.

Also, I found this 20 Page Photo Flipbook for $5.00 Shipped deal.  I get great information spam mail about similar deals all of the time.  So, this is not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  However, I have been thinking about doing a book for one of the kids and since (1) I had all of the pictures I needed and (2) the price is right (only $5 including shipping -- wowser!), I ordered a flip book. 

Where have I been?  I could have been blogging, but I created a flip book instead.

Brody is so so so super excited about his book, The Carrot Seed and gardening in general.  He is the proudest gardener you could ever meet.

So, I made a gardening book based on the book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?"  Most of you are familiar with the book.  Here is my version.

Note:  All of the pages have the same border, text size, and text font.  I included the cover as an example.

Brody, Brody, what do you see?

I see a shovel looking at me.

Shovel , shovel what do you see?

I see a wheelbarrow looking at me.

Wheelbarrow, wheelbarrow, what do you see?

I see dirt looking at me.

Dirt, dirt, what do you see?

I see a tiny seed looking at me.

Tiny seed, tiny seed, what do you see?

I see the sun looking at me.

Sun, sun, what do you see?

I see a sister looking at me.

Sister, sister, what do you see?

I see a sprinkler looking at me.

Sprinkler, sprinkler, what do you see?

I see bug poison a watering can looking at me.

Watering can, watering can, what do you see?

{okay, I left out the part about the bug poison mixture}

I see weeds looking at me.

Weed, weed, what do you see?

I see a little tomato looking at me.

Little tomato, little tomato, what do you see?

I see a big tomato looking at me.

Big tomato, big tomato, what do you see?

I see a green pepper looking at me.

Green pepper, green pepper, what do you see?

I see cabbage looking at me.

Cabbage, cabbage, what do you see?



I see a carrot looking at me.

Carrot, carrot, what do you see?

I see a sunflower looking at me.

Sunflower, sunflower, what do you see?

I see a great vegetable gardener looking at me.

The end.

I can't wait to get the book. 

It's small -- only 4 x 6. 

But, I'll take it for only five bucks.  Right?

Gather up 20 pictures and

head on over and make your own little book.

Won't ya?

This post is part of the KinderGARDENS series.

Click here to join or for more information.