A Very Cheap-o Christmas

There is a commonly expressed misconception that I hear all the time when people find out how many kids I have. It goes something like this, "How many kids do you have?" I answer, "I have 4." They respond, "Whoa! You're Christmas' must be really really expensive!" I'll briefly address my problem with this notion that our children need to get 81575642 gifts at Christmas and we need to break the bank to get the biggest and the best. What happened to quality instead of quantity? What happened to teaching appreciation instead of entitlement? What happened to the TRUE meaning of the season??? End rant, back to the topic at hand. In answer to the question: "is your Christmas really expensive?" I exclaim, "NAY!" (ok maybe I don't yell "nay" in the middle of the check out line at Jewel but you know what I mean.)

So why is Christmas not that expensive for me when I have so many people to buy for (because lets face it, its not just the kids. Its grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles too)? The answer is simple: DIY. I have found that the best way to save money, and really the most heartfelt gifts are DIY gifts. So for the next several weeks until the week before Christmas I will be posting some of my crafty Christmas creations. 

Just a couple things to consider when you go to make your Christmas DIY list:

1. Consider the recipient- You can find the cutest, easiest, most inexpensive beer mug makeover tutorial, but if the person you are giving it to doesn't drink beer it won't mean diddly. 

2. Consider the budget- The worst mistake you can make is to set a budget and then not stick to it. Trust me, I know this is hard. I am the person who walks into the Dollar Store for 3 items and ends up spending $20! 

3. Remember... QUALITY not QUANTITY- Focus on only making a couple of crafts per person. The more you make, the more you end up rushing, and the less cute/crafty/legit the item will look. 

4. Some things are better left un-crafted- Please, PLEASE, I admonish you. No-one needs a hand crocheted bikini, a coaster set of pictures of your dead pet, or pe**s shaped soap.

I would absolutely love for you to share your DIY Christmas ideas! I'm always on the hunt for inspiration! Also, be on the look out for my first DIY Christmas project this year! I'm working on it now and its PREEEETTTTY fantastical! 

Pre-Cooked Goodness

Well it seems like its been forever since I had a cooking day! Unfortunately it has been about a month! (Ridiculous) But we finally got around to it. This week was a bit of a challenge though because my family is completely and utterly sick of crock pot meals. We needed to change things up a bit and make "freezer to oven" meals. Going into this cooking day I have to admit I was nervous. What are the logistics of freezer-to-oven meals? Can I just do the same thing and throw them in the bag and then cook when ready? Do things need to be par-cooked? How will the things taste if I cook them first and then freeze them? But most importantly will I have tiiiiime???

Right off the bat I found a couple of great recipes and it made me feel so much better. I had a "meeting of the minds" via email with my cooking buddy and after a couple of days of deciding we were ready to take this different kind of cooking day. The result was 7 recipes, for roughly $45! (This time I saved my receipt to prove it haha)

About 4 of the recipes came from the same webpage which was SOOOO convenient! The website says "Freezer Marinades for Summer Grilling" but you don't NEED to grill this stuff... especially in the winter. Essentially what we did with these is make the marinade and add it to the meat of our choice.

Lemonade Marinade Chicken:
Bag of frozen chicken drumsticks
3 TBSP of Worcestershire Sauce (Why is it so difficult to say that word??)
2/3 cup of Lemonade Concentrate
1 TSP of Celery Seeds
2/4 TSP Salt
2/4 TSP Pepper
2 Clove Garlic- Minced

Mix all the ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Put the chicken in a foil pan and pour the marinade on top!

Mediterranean Rub Pork Tenderloin:
4 lbs Pork Tenderloin (We got 2 2lb Hormel tenderloins)
2 TSP Ground Sage
2 TSP Dry Thyme
2 TSP Pepper
1 TSP Salt
1 TSP Garlic Powder
1 TSP Dried Rosemary
1 TSP Olive Oil (We ended up using more of this to make the rub stretch a bit more)

Combine dry ingredients and olive oil in a mixing bowl. Put pork in a foil pan and spread mixture with a rubber spatula all over the pork.

Garlic Dijon Chicken
Package of Chicken Breasts
4 Cloves Minced Garlic
8 TBSP Dijon Mustard
4 TBSP Lime Juice (we just cut a lime in half and squeezed ;) )

Mix ingredients together in a bowl. Put chicken in foil and pour mixture over it. This was a little bit thicker so I used a marinade brush to make sure that it was even.

Lemon & Garlic Chicken
Bag of Chicken Thighs
4 Cloves Minced Garlic
1/4 cup Olive Oil
4 TBSP Chopped Parsley (we used fresh parsley... yummm!)
6 TBSP Lemon Juice (Cut a lemon in half and squeezed!)
1/4 TSP Pepper

Mixed all the ingredients together, put chicken in foil pan, pour mixture over the chicken. (Are you noticing a trend?)

Balsamic Glazed Chicken
About 20 Chicken Tenders (I used breasts and then cut them in half... for some reason that ends up being cheaper)
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 cup Balsamic Vinegar (we used balsamic vinaigrette dressing... that's all we had lol)
1 cup Honey
2 TBSP Rosemary
7 TSP Minced Garlic

Mix all together... put in foil pan.... pour mixture over it. OR you can put it all in a freezer bag and put them out on a pan when you are ready to cook it.

The picture is only with about half the chicken you need....

 

 

Ranch Burgers (there is no link for this)

Roughly 2 lbs of Ground Beef (you can use ground turkey too)

One Packet Ranch Dressing Mix

One bag of shredded cheddar cheese

 

Mix all together... form patties out of them... makes about 9 or 10. I put them in the foil pan and separated each one with wax paper. (We made these last night and they were seriously AMAZING)

 

Herbed Turkey Meatballs - this is a little bit more involved... I recommend doing this one first

Roughly 1.25 lbs of ground Turkey (we used 93/7)

1/4 cup freshly chopped parsley

1 TBSP dried basil

1 TBSP dried thyme

1-2 minced garlic cloves (I did 2... but I love garlic)

salt and pepper

 

Preheat oven to 375 and line baking sheet with parchment paper (oops just realized I didn't do this! lol). In a large bowl mix together all the ingredients. Then with your hands make walnut sized balls and put them on the baking sheet. Bake for 25 minutes. Then let cool and put them in a freezer bag.

 

I didn't get a picture of them but these are the perfect addition to pasta night!

 

Our grocery list was pretty simple. Some stuff we had at home so if you are going off of this list please make sure that you check the recipes too to make sure you have everything!

 

Meat:

Jenny O Ground Turkey 93/7- $4.30

Chicken Breasts- $10.25

Chicken Drumsticks-$3.99

Chicken Thighs- $3.99

1.5 lb Ground Beef- $7.25

Pork Loin- $7.75

 

Fruits and Veggies:

Parsley- $1.39

Lime- $0.50

Lemon- $0.50

 

Misc:

Dijon Mustard- $0.99

Ranch Dressing packet- $1.45

Shredded Cheese- $1.99 (we had a coupon for $0.40 off!)

Lemonade Concentrate- $0.75 (on sale!)

Celery seeds- $2.39

 

That's a grand total of $47.49!! And the things like the parsley, mustard and celery seeds were split between two of us. The great thing about this is that so many of the items in the recipes are things you probably already have in your pantry.

 

Happy cooking everyone!

Quiet Moments

I tend to believe that when you are faced with impending parenthood you often think that there will be a lot of sleepless nights, you gear up for a screaming baby, maybe you even anticipate some sort of frustration due to your typical schedule being thrown to the wind. (Although, I could just be projecting haha.) All these thoughts are completely normal (right??!!), and getting used to the changes associated with having a new baby is difficult.

I'll give you a scenario... it may or may not be true to life... and it may or may not have happened 3 nights ago. All of your kids are in bed by 7:30, you have the rest of the night to yourself. Your husband, who works afternoon/nights gets home at around 9 and you want to spend some time with him. Fast forward to 11 o'clock and you are finally pouring yourself into bed and excited for a good nights sleep. You snooze away until 12:30 when you are violently woken up by screaming coming through the baby monitor and in a fog you stumble to the kids room and pick up the owner of the scream: a teething baby. You nurse her (or him) and put them back to bed. Soon enough you are settling back into a deep slumber. All of a sudden you feel like someone is watching you. You open your eyes in the dark... AN APPARITION! No.... its a 4 year old and its 2:30am. She's scared and wants to cuddle. "Two seconds," you mutter. She crawls into bed with you and you count to two, after which she runs to her room, gets her pillow and blanket and makes a bed for herself on your floor. Sleep comes slightly easier this time, so you fade. 4:30am... screaming... hmmmm. Teething baby again. Its harder to get out of bed this time, but you manage. Boob, cuddle, rock/sway, back in bed. After what seems like 10 minutes you hear giggling, gurgling and the like over the stupid blessed baby monitor. Its 6am. Your angelic beings have decided that they want to get up with the sun this morning. So you roll yourself out of the warmth of your bed and embrace the day, tired but alive.

A night like this can be approached one of two ways. You can either be angry/frustrated/whatever or you can be thankful. "Thankful?" you ask. How in the world could one person be thankful for getting so few broken hours of sleep?? Perspective is how. It might come as a shock but you could possibly go through your entire day and not get a single moment of alone time with your children. It is easy to get caught up in the chaos and busy-ness of life and completely miss out on quiet moments with our babies.

Consider this: every time that one of your kids calls out to you in the night, they desire something. Lucky for you, what they desire is exactly what you have in the middle of the night: TIME. When I am cuddling with my baby girl at 2 in the morning I am able to gain important knowledge of her. I learn the curve of her cheek as I run my hand down her face to settle her. I bask in her baby smell. In the still of the night I hear her subtle hum while she breathes heavily and falls back into a deep sleep. When my 3 year old yells my name in the night I am able to do something almost noone else can. He lays on my chest, hugs me tightly and I make him feel safe. My precious 4 year old believes that the best place that she can sleep is nestled in the curve of my stomach. And my big 6 year old, even still, just wants to know that he will always be my baby.

This way of thinking isn't easy, and I need constant reminders of how precious this time is. However, it is so important to embrace these special opportunities, because they will be gone before we know it.

A Lost Sacredness

There is an epidemic attatcking America these days. It effects 50% of marriages outside of the church and just about 38% of marriages of regular church attenders. This epidemic cannot be cured by a medication, a shot or being put in quarantine. It effects everyone it touches and touches more people than you realize. This epidemic is divorce.

God created marriage. He created it to be a beautiful partnership in which two become one. Matthew 19:5-6 says, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." The vows that are taken when two people get married are intended to be a serious covenant, a joining of souls, a lifetime commitment. So my question is... what happened??

This is what happened....

We have become a society of immediate gradification. We want dinner, we go through a drive thru and in 2 minutes our bellies are full. We want to buy something but don't have the funds so we swipe a plastic card and walk out with our merchandise. We feel like our marriage is holding us back or things are harder than we had anticipated so we file some paperwork and our "freedom" is given to us. People think that this fast and easy way of getting exactly what we want when we want it has made our lives better, but I happen to believe quite the contrary.

There was a day not too terribly long ago when things had to be worked for, saved for and giving up just wasn't an option. The food on the dinner table was made from scratch and therefore had more value to us. Divorce was taboo and therefore giving up on your marriage was almost out of the question. (Let me be clear that I'm not talking about the very serious and real cases of abuse, neglect, or infidelity. In those situations I think you have to do what you feel is right for yourself with guidance from God. I'm referring to the "just don't get along" situations) Our spouses have become disposable to us and very easily replaceable. Our marriages hold very little value any more. People just don't want to do the hard work that it takes to sustain a marriage and counseling is seen as a sign of weakness.

What can we do?

Hebrews 13:4a says, "Let marriage be held in honor above all." It is our call to hold marriage as an honor, a holy gift and a blessing. As Christians (and even as non-Christians) divorce should be taken off the table and our vows should be taken seriously. "For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or health...as long as we both shall live," (I get that in modern ceremonies those aren't always the vows but I'm pretty sure that none of them feature an escape clause).

Probably the most important thing we can do to help our marriage is have a willingness to work hard at it. I talk to so many "soon to be married" couples and they say, "I just can't wait to be married, it's gonna be amazing" or, "I can't wait to be his/her wife/husband, it'll be the greatest job I have." And don't get me wrong, it will be amazing, and it will be the greatest job, but it will also be incredibly difficult. There will be days that you just want to cry. There will be times when this person you're living with hurts you more than anyone else ever has or ever could. And there will even be days when all you want to do is give up. (Call me overly psycho-babbled but) I truly believe that every relationship can benefit from counseling. Open up those lines of communication and let the conversation get messy sometimes. It's in that messiness that layers are peeled back, and wounds are opened to allow for a deeper healing and understanding of each other in your marriage.

I'll leave you with one last thought. How do you love your spouse? Ephesians 5:33 says, "each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife should respect her husband." What a great challenge that is for all of us!

The Mighty Quest for Skinnyhood

Four kids... five and a half years...109 pounds.

These are my stats. The last SHOCKING number is not what I weigh... unfortunately. Its the total amount I've gained while pregnant with each of my beautiful blessings from above. That number wouldn't at all be horrible if I lost all the weight with each one, but I didn't. The first two pregnancies I was able to lose all of it but 5 pounds. The next two... well that's a whole different story.

I always say that the third baby ruins your body. This is why. While pregnant with sweet baby Mason (who just turned 3 about a week ago) my stomach went from looking like a map of the farmlands of Indiana to looking like a map of Manhattan, I got spider veins, started finding an occasional gray, and the weight I gained simply refused to come off. It wasn't until he was about 8 months old... probably more like a year... that I was able to start losing some of the weight. I got down to about 5 pounds heavier then I was when I got pregnant with him! Whoop! Still not all off but I was happy with that! Then by some curse from the underground I started gaining.... and gaining..... and GAINING. I gained about 20 lbs in just shy of a year. WTH?!?!?!?!?!! Whyyyyyyy. To add insult to injury, I got pregnant with baby #4 after packing on these pounds. And then welcomed 27 more pounds into my life. I've now lost all of her baby weight... but I am still over where I want to be.

Since I delivered baby Eden I have been on an (occasionally) intense mission to lose it all! I want to go back down to where I was before I started having babies. I want to be that swimsuit model that my husband can show off. (Not the two piece models... one pieces.... remember... my stomach still looks like a map of Manhattan and I wouldn't wish seeing that on my worst enemy!)  I started to do Zumba, eating right, walking, (attempting) running, Jillian Michaels, even the latest Pinterest trend: The 3 day diet. And yet with all of that I'm still not much below where I have been (although with that 3 day diet I did drop about 4-5 lbs).

I have to admit... I've been feeling extremely defeated. Will I ever be able to make it where I want to? Am I ever gonna jump off this gigantic flippin' plateau that I'm on? And then I got to thinking. What is my motivation? Am I only wanting to get fit so I can boast of my fantastic bod despite giving birth to four babies? Do I just want to lose this weight so that I can be the envy of new mothers every where?? The answer is: Sadly, yes. I was in it for selfish and vain reasons only. Where I should have been health and wellness motivated, I was motivated out of a desire to be noticed for my accomplishments. And whats worse is that I was failing miserably at it!

Given my recent realization, I am standing at a cross roads. Of course I will continue to workout, eat healthy, etc. But I can either do it because a) I know that it'll get me skinny, might force me to buy a new wardrobe, and will prove to everyone that it doesn't matter how many kids I've had... I'm still hot or b) I know that taking care of my body, eating healthy, and exercising is just one way of treating my body like it is the temple that God designed it to be and by doing so I will be a better mother to my children. It really seems like the answer is obvious, but I am flawed and therefore torn. Don't forget... I want to be the trophy wife, and those feelings don't just go away over night.

So I'm going to go ahead and do something that I very very rarely do. I'm going to ask for help. I need help in the way of prayer. Will you all join me in prayer that the heart behind my quest for health would be pure? That my motives would be for God's glory? And that it positively impact my children's lives?

I want to be the best mom I can, so I need to be as healthy as I can.

A Bully Begins at Home

This post is probably not going to make me any friends. I'd love to believe that it wouldn't make me any enemies either... but who knows.

For the past week or so I've been dealing with a parents worst nightmare. My baby boy Cameron has been getting bullied at school. He is in first grade and is truly one of the sweetest boys you will ever meet. He is quiet and tries so hard to follow the rules in school. At home he can be rough and tumble but he is just a genuinely good boy. That being said... my son is not being verbally bullied... he is being PHYSICALLY bullied (punching, kicking, hair pulling, face slapping... the works). Now normally with mild verbal bullying I wouldn't make a big stink about it. I'd talk to Cameron, tell him what to say to the boy, explain that this boy's words can't hurt him... blah blah blah. But nobody, I repeat NOBODY, lays a hand on my son. Oh boy, mama bear is about to break out of her cage. When I heard what had been occurring and (whats worse) how LONG it had been going on I immediately called the school and made it clear that I was someone to reckon with and meant serious business. I have been in steady contact with the school nearly every day since and the situation is slowly getting resolved, the little boy is getting the help he needs, and Cameron has been informed of the appropriate course of action should it happen again.

However, this whole situation got me thinking (I know... dangerous). This is happening in first grade... FIRST GRADE! What is going to happen when my children get older? High school was a vicious place for me. I wasn't necessarily the best kid, got in some significant trouble (gigantic fricken cry for help). I tried, but I don't think I ever felt like I truly fit in with the "cool crowd." I didn't live in the right place, I didn't go to the right church, I hadn't known these people since I was 5, the list goes on. There were a couple "kids" in middle school and high school (same school... it was a k-12... brilliant, right?) that, looking back, made me hurt more than I could possibly describe. These people would call me friends and then laugh at me behind my back (but not quite out of earshot). And sometimes I even wonder if the "bullying," along with a couple other major life events, led me to make some of the choices that I did further down the line.

This was roughly 10 years ago, and kids are so much more vindictive than they used to be. What kind of world will my own kids walk into when they enter through those high school doors for the very first time? I guarantee it'll be a much different, more painful world then I lived in.

So this leads me to the title of this blog, "A Bully Begins at Home." Now of course I am no child psychologist (although I play one on TV ::wink wink::), however, I truly believe that so many of the actions from bullies stem from their home life. There is a saying that says, "hurt people hurt people" and bullying is not the exception to this but is the rule. Being a bully is a learned behavior. A baby doesn't emerge from the womb looking for their first victim. A 2 year old doesn't naturally go up to another child, push them over and take all their stuff. It isn't typical for a 6 year old to go up to his class mate and slap him in the face "just because." Instead, these things are shown to them, one way or another. Perhaps some can be given the benefit of the doubt. They learned it on TV, or witnessed something similar from a different child on the play ground. Or maybe they could be a victim themselves.

Parents have a very important job. We hold the health, both emotional and physical, of our children in the palm of our hands. What we do, how we treat them, even what we allow them to watch on TV and listen to on the radio, shapes them into the people that they will become whether we like it or not. Bullying is defined as aggressive behavior against someone else that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. A scary question is, do we bully our own children? Are they learning this behavior from the very people who are supposed to guard them against it?

Whether we choose to believe it or not, bullying is a real danger now a-days. Tormented youth are killing themselves because their peers just won't let up. Girls are bulimic and anorexic because the other girls have been calling them fat. Hurting teens are bringing guns and knives to school because they've reached their breaking point.

Just like bullying starts at home, so does prevention. Engage, encourage and love your children. But most importantly be a living example for them. I am going to work harder at this in my own home, because I know without a doubt that actions speak louder than words.

My Little Pirate is 3!

On Wednesday my little man... my handsome third born turned three! I don't know why but he just seems so much like a baby to me! Maybe it's because of the slightly delayed speech or the fact that he is still in 24 month clothing. Either way, he still seems little and I don't think I was quite emotionally ready for him to move from toddler-hood to technically being a preschooler.

In true cheap-o mama fashion (some people call it frugal, I call it cheap), I started looking for sales to give me some direction for his birthday MONTHS ago. I was extremely thankful that my husband's aunt sent me a link back in June for pirate costumes that were on sale at Little Tykes for $0.94 a piece! I was immediately sold. I bought 6 and Mason was going to have a pirate party!! 

If you have a lot of kids or if your birthday budgets just aren't as huge as you'd like them, I completely understand. We just don't have the money for a fancy place like Chuck E Cheese or Pump It Up or any of those other money sucking party venues. We have at home birthday parties and I try my best to make them as fantabulous as I can. So, on the never ending quest for creative ways to save I started hitting up my fave site.... PINTEREST (seriously... you should follow me... I pin the best, most amazing stuff and your life will become a little bit brighter just by doing so)... for some pirate themed party ideas and I actually was able to find some super cute stuff! 

This leads me to the week before his birthday party. Not only do I like to save but I have been blessed with the gift of procrastination as well! (I know... I'm pretty lucky) So... cue mad scramble and intense mood swings. I was fortunate enough to be able to borrow my friends Cricut machine and I think I might have found the love of my life.... next to my husband of course. The Cricut works great with card stock but I just couldn't justify spending $15 on a pack of multicolored card stock (most of which I wasn't going to use anyway) for one simple project. This led me to the dollar store. (If you know me, you know that I'm extremely attracted to things that are a dollar. I don't know why, it just is what it is. Embrace it.) I was able to find poster board... POSTER BOARD... for only 0.66 a sheet. I got 3 sheets of black and 3 sheets of red for my pirate-y project. That's a whopping $3.96 for the Cricut paper as opposed to the $15 I would have spent on colors I didn't even want!

Here is what my friend's Cricut and my dollar store poster board was able to do! (minus some very cute food signs that I forgot to take individual pictures of)

The paper decor was complete but I just wasn't happy, there needed to be more. I remembered back to another project I saw on Pinterest. Making your own serving dishes! This would allow me to custom make reusable party stuff in exactly the colors I wanted! The project was simple for my purposes... a regular sized black plate, a candle stick holder, and a glass bowl . All of these items are found at the dollar store. That is correct, three things, $3. The result? 

Perfection......

I just gotta say... sometimes I really do rock my own socks off.... (also... I made two) 

After I got the typical paper plates, napkins and plastic table cloths I decided to round it all out by getting a reusable square plastic plate and reusable square plastic bowl. I glued them together and used it as a cupcake serving plate. Simple... cheap... cute. 

So a quick run down of my costs thus far:

Paper Decorations- $3.96

Two serving plate/bowl combos- $6

One cupcake server- $2

Plates/napkins/table cloths- $8

I've found that the food component of the party tends to be among the most expensive and I just couldn't swing it this year so I went simple. For the "main course" I made taco chili in the crock pot ($10) and it was a huge hit! For snacks I had fruits (strawberries, grapes, and pineapple) and blue corn chips and salsa ($20) as well as small water bottles for the kids ($4). And then as opposed to a big cake that can cost about $20-40 I made cupcakes from scratch. Super delicious and 1/4 of the cost, and best of all everyone was happy and full! Awesome. 

In the end I ended up spending about $63 (including the costumes I purchased back in June) but my son and all of his friends had as much fun as they would have if we'd spent triple that amount. 

Just some fun pictures from the party: 

The birthday boy!

All of his little pirate friends... plus older brother and sister

Full Pirate Garb!

The table before the food was added to it...

My son had an amazing time. His friends had an amazing time. And I was truly proud of how it all turned out. So as a summary, there is no shame in borrowing, the dollar store is your friend, and don't be afraid of DIY! You'll be thoroughly surprised with what you can come up with when you open your mind and allow yourself to be creative!