The Tightwad Goes to an Amusement Park

The music has temporarily changed in honor of this post or shall I say because of the stroller? When we were there we heard so many comments about it, I stopped counting after about 30 people said "Wow, that's cool" or " Aww that's so adorable". I also heard lots of the typical comments: "you have your hands full, oh look triplets, a blonde-brunette-and a redhead!, are they twins, they aren't triplets are they-but that one is smaller etc..." so all in all the day was wonderful only 1 crappy "oh, I'd kill myself" and the rest was all positive.

We didn't get loaded up and ready to go until almost lunch time but I had planned it that way so we could eat our picnic lunch before we entered the park. Full kids=less whining for overpriced junk foods and drinks. We parked as far away from the other cars as possible so I wasn't worrying about them darting out in front of cars or a freak picking them up and taking them away. We were a good 100ft from the nearest car and there was a nice strip of grass and a big bush for shade. I brought the large cooler filled with foods I had cooked up the night before, I made 2 meals at supper time so we would have food to take. I made home made chicken nuggets from chicken breast, we like them dipped in egg and then cracker crumbs. They were yummy cold. We also had some very plain pasta salad, I left it a little on the dry side (to cut down on the messy hands of toddlers) and added some diced ham and that's about it, the pasta was little wagon wheels so the girls could fork them really easily. A big bowl of grapes and some of the meatloaf from the night before, and a big bowl of jello salad with oranges. Everyone ate the lunch and got full while we set up the strollers and Mommy packed up the diaper bag and filled sippies. We took crackers and dry cereal into the park as well as bottled water.

We had discussed the rides, looked online at them and we all knew our way around so each of the boys picked a couple rides that they really wanted to ride, we did those first so that if things went south we could make a run for it and still be ok with heading home. We managed to get in all the rides and let the girls ride some kiddy rides, we watched the Circus (kinda lame this year) and the kids all did wonderful. The girls ran around but stayed close to us and the area by the Raging River ride was nice and shady and they couldn't go too far. When it was time to get back in the stroller and move on they did it without fussing as long as we were moving. Piper spotted a seeing eye dog and spent a lot of time petting it and she also made friends with a little girl and a lady working at the tee shirt stand. We played no games-we bought nothing but a small bag of chips and a slush, 1 slush for Levi. The train ride that we went on is set up by a master mind. To get off the train and exit the ride you must go through a candy store! Guess what? Bizzarro Supermom just happened to have non-sticky sweet tart suckers in the diaper bag for everyone! They cost me a quarter on sale at the grocery store and I didn't have to hear anybody whine about not getting to buy that overpriced candy that we were forced to walk by. * (A side note here: Logan is 5 years old and just learned how to use a gumball machine at the store if that tells you anything about how I feel about my kids spending money on junk/trinkets and candy.)

After the park we stopped off at Hobby Lobby for a quick supply run and we ate at a buffet restaurant. The girls got more food on the table than in their tummies and the waitress gave us 4 helium balloons to take home. The van was packed full anyway but the added bonus of 4 balloons being squeezed and swatted made the trip home extra special. After 30 min.. Our trip home was just under 2 hours and we arrived home around 10pm, changed sleeping kids into pajamas and put them to bed. It was lots of fun for all of us.

40 Cups of Coffee, Thank you Ella Mae

I took Logan to his Kindergarten physical appointment today. He did really well. He is in the 25th percentile for weight following his own curve and at 43 inches tall he is pretty small but growing well. No shots, just a finger poke. He told the nurse he was in 2nd grade when she asked. Next we went to Walmart to get some groceries. For some reason I was stressed out during most of the trip. I think it's because I had left my list at home, so I worried about forgetting something and spending too much money. Could it have been Logan moving at a snail's pace directly in front of my cart the whole way or maybe that he was doing helicopter arms and knocking things off the shelves or that he was throwing items into the cart and getting in and out of the cart repeatedly? I don't know why, it should have been easier than dragging 4 under 5 year olds but it wasn't. I almost lost it when he took 2 styrofoam craft balls the size of softballs and shoved them up inside his shirt...yes they look like boobs and the other 3 ladies in the isle at the time thought it was funny, I wanted to crawl under the shelf and hide. My response was to tell him that we don't pick up things we are not going to purchase-I completely ignored the whole booby thing. We got through the check out line and went in to "pretend" to play the video games for about 10 minutes before going to the van and packing 2 carts full of groceries in there. We still had to go to another store because Wm was out of chocolate milk and plantains. I bought the plantains for making making a new recipe. We went to the drive thru and got a Happy Meal on the way home. We laughed and had some deep conversations about snacks and puppies and music class, I need to make more days like this minus the Walmart trip-or at least bring my list. Here is a link to a Youtube song, I like the oldies sometimes. This one is called 40 Cups of Coffee http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMcdzc1TkO4 Thank you Ella Mae Morse

Got a minute?

Hi everyone it's a busy Saturday morning here so I'm making this a quick post. I am gearing up to do a lot of redecorating and moving rooms here at home and I will be keeping you up to date with lots of pictures of that and I'm also going to start adding my cooking on a budget advice lol. I keep getting requests for that. People want to know how I feed this big family and I'm going to start sharing that information soon. I have lots of great tips and recipes.

 Although it's not my best looking picture it's truly my favorite one. It's in San Diego at the Marine Recruit Training Depot on Family day. It was the very first time we got to see him for 13 long weeks. I swear I thought the last 13 weeks of carrying triplets was hard but this was harder! Anyway we had just picked him up and we were sitting down to eat in the shade, he was starving and in the picture I think he had food in his mouth lol. I had been crying tears of joy so my eye make up was washed away and I was still in that moment of staring at him and being thrilled to death to see him! That's why it's my favorite, because it captured that moment in time.. Have a great Saturday! Take time to teach your children something today and hug your loved ones.

Play Kitchen from an Entertainment Center

BEFORE:scroll down to see the after pics, blogger photo is not working with me today.

What we did while mom wrapped presents in the other room...

We have 4 shopping carts now, my living room looks like a shopping center parking lot.

Piper, the reluctant princess. Chloe loves the bling.

Chloe, Ava, Piper and Logan

This is what I used for the curtains, I love this fabric! I thought about using my Michael Miller "Dick and Jane" fabric but it has more reds and blues so I went with this one and it matches perfect.

Yummy cookies baking in the oven! (this pic was taken before we touched up the paint around the hinges) AFTER:

So here are the pictures finally! We finished up the day after Christmas. We cut the holes for the sink and faucets and put on the door, moved the hinges from the side to the bottom for the oven door. Levi did 3 coats of the paint in record time, it's Cha-Cha Pink Dutch Boy. On Christmas day Grandpa Eissens helped cut out the knobs and burners. I painted the knobs and burners, sewed the curtains and gave instructions on how I wanted it done lol.

Cost: We already had the entertainment center in the basement and it was ready for the dump, we used scrap pieces of plywood to replace the back and for the knobs and burners, also to add the refrigerator door. We used the handles that were on the original but moved them to the new door and placed one on the top of the oven door. I bought 2 packages of hinges for around $2 each, 1 curtain rod $1.79, the sink is a bowl that we had, the faucet was on clearance for $6 (I would have preferred a kitchen faucet but would not pay full price), the paint was $13 minus a $5 rebate, the fabric came from my fabric stash so the whole thing only cost around $20.00! The picture on the oven door is an actual picture of gingersnaps baking in my oven, I just enlarged it and printed it off and slid it into a plastic sleeve before gluing it on. I am very happy with the way it turned out and I am sure that the girls will play with it for years to come. I plan on sewing them some aprons and a chef's hat for Logan soon and for the girl's birthday in August I want to sew up a bunch of play food. Right now they are mainly cooking and feeding the dollies but as they get older they will get into the play foods more. I hope you enjoyed this :) I'm going to blog a little less and craft a little more, I need to build up my inventory for my Etsy store so I can get it up and running full force. It's getting harder to do anything while the girls are awake, because the minute I'm not looking they are climbing or getting into something crazy, especially Piper. Right now she has on her brothers snow pants and is standing on top of the dog crate reaching for a shelf of Cherished Teddies! We are also making some progress in the area of potty training, Ava goes almost every time and Chloe is catching on too, Piper just says "no way" when I try to get her to go. We are far from cloth training pants but at least we are using less diapers ,Yay!! But as you can imagine the girls are really taking a lot of time and require lots of attention, this is nothing new but now that they are getting into more stuff I can't keep up as easily, so there may be fewer posts, we'll see. I can't wait until spring and playtime outside!!

4 Pounds of Cinnamon?

Mom put the camera down and read to me!

Today's post is about a craft that I had planned that won't be happening and a Christmas project that I planned that isn't done (or started for that matter) but it better get done before Santa comes!! 

First the one that won't get done, I have roughly 4 lbs of Cinnamon that I bought at the Amish bulk foods store a few months ago to make some great smelling clay that was supposed to be made into adorable ornaments. Upon revisiting the web site I had bookmarked with the recipe I discovered that I didn't have enough white school glue to make it happen and unfortunately not enough days left to let them dry anyway, crap. You can find the recipe here. I am going to buy a gallon of school glue next time I see some, I have looked at Walmart and they don't carry it in huge containers. I also want some for making some Oobleck, I bought some liquid starch for making that already too. Click that link and you see some lesson plans for using "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" by Dr. Seuss. I don't home school but I like to do things like that for summer or weekend activities, the more they learn the better right. Ok let's get down to the business of the project that we have to get done. Here is a picture of our old entertainment center that we are making into a kitchen center for the girls.

It's shoved into the corner so I didn't get the best picture but you get the idea. It is going to be a kitchen center with a sink, refrigerator and oven. I need to cut the wood into the right size for the doors, it's already marked and I have the new hinges too so it should go quickly. I hope to get it cut soon so I can get busy on the painting.  I saw a pink "retro" kitchen center and it was only $300! What? I would like to have $300 to refurbish my own kitchen, are you kidding, I could replace my counter tops or get a new oven for that. This entertainment center was in the basement. It has scuff marks all over the front of it from somebody putting their feet up on the front of it while they watched TV. I am only guessing that they were sitting so close to the TV because they were trying to keep the volume down so they wouldn't get caught watching it late at night. The drawer that was in the middle was broken and is no longer there and there are water marks and scratches on it so it was going to be taken to the dump soon, but now it's getting a second chance as a kitchen center. Reduce, Re-use, Recycle! Photos to come....soon I hope.

Oops it's not in a can!

I woke up this morning extra tired. I think the late night grocery shopping from Sunday night has caught up with me. Not good considering it's going to be a very busy day. We are splitting up the kids tonight because we are supposed to be in two places at the same time "again". Daddy is taking 2 of the girls to the wrestling meet and I am taking Logan and 1 of the girls to the Christmas Program. If I get done in time I will go over to the wrestling meet when the program is over. Considering the program is at 7pm and that's what time Logan usually goes to bed on a school night this should be interesting. I will probably pay for it the rest of the week.
I cooked a turkey today, Levi brought it up from the freezer and put it in the fridge to thaw, we didn't get turkey on Thanksgiving so he was hungry for some. I put it in this morning and it was done around noon so the girls had some for lunch. For some reason the smell of the turkey in the oven made me want some pumpkin maple custard. I cracked the 4 eggs and added the maple syrup to the mixing bowl. After searching the small pantry and not finding the can of pumpkin that I was sure was in there, I moved the search to the hallway pantry. This pantry was originally a coat closet but Austin put up some shelves in it for me when we moved here because the kitchen is just too small for this big family. I had just cleaned the hallway pantry yesterday and didn't remember seeing a can of pumpkin but for some reason I was convinced that I had some pumpkin someplace. When I opened the door I realized my mistake, there sat a pie pumpkin but no canned pumpkin! Well I was not about to seed, bake and puree a pumpkin after baking a turkey all morning. After searching for recipes I decided to add some more eggs and some milk to the egg and syrup mixture pour it over some bread cubes and turn it into crockpot french toast. I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get out the small crockpot because it was about the last thing in the back of the cupboard underneath the picnic basket and the griddle. Why does it hurt so bad to crawl on my knees now? I don't understand that at all, my knees are fat now, why doesn't that work as a padding? So anyway I put the mixture into the crockpot and made room (crammed it in) in the fridge. I will plug it in tonight and we can have some French Toast for breakfast in the morning.

Snowed in and Sewing-How to Make Korkers- plus some coupon talk.

Not a very good picture but it's really hard to even get everybody to look at the same time! These were from one of our "snow days". We had blizzard conditions and no school for 4 days, I think it was 4 days but it seemed like 2 weeks lol. I was trying to sew with all the kids home and that doesn't work very well! We are really missing our Expedition this year! We are without any 4x4 at all.  The road had drifted completely shut on both ends by evening, ah country life in Iowa.

Yay, I finished the dresses in time for the work Christmas party. I had been planning them since summer but didn't start on them until a couple of weeks ago...I was going to try my own design and see if I could skip putting in 3 zippers. Well it worked out ok for Chloe's dress when I made the *yellow sample dress but unfortunately the "homemade" dressmaker's dummy I have doesn't have arms and I didn't take that into account when making that dress. What does that mean you ask? Well Chloe can wear the yellow dress because she is a little skinny mini, Piper or Ava cannot get their arms into it! the waist is too small so it would require a zipper to get it to fit them and that defeats the whole purpose of trying to make up my own pattern! Geesh! So the fabric sat and sat while I debated on what to do with it. I wasn't happy with the pattern I had and when I tried to buy one that I liked at 2 different stores they were both out of the one I wanted, so I took that as a sign that I wasn't supposed to make that one. So I ended up using a pattern I already had and just tweaking it a bit to my liking, I ended up putting in 3 zippers anyway ugh. I started cutting out the dresses on Monday for the party that was Saturday. I finished hemming them on Sat. morning and made some korkers that day too. I made little snowmen from polymer clay and made myself a little snowman pin so I could match. The gorgeous blue fabric was given to me through Freecycle. I used to be the moderator for our county but gave it up this past summer because I had too many irons in the fire. If I remember correctly the fabric was used for making bridesmaids dresses and there was quite a bit left over and I was the lucky duck who got it! By the way I know you've heard of Leigh Michaels and that's the pen name for the wonderful lady who gifted the fabric to me! Is that cool or what? Here is a link so you can check out some of her books, I really want to read her books on writing soon. http://home.mchsi.com/~leighmichaels/

Here are some tips on how to make your own korker bows.

To make the korker bows just wrap some ribbon around some dowels and secure with a clothespin. I used 1/4 inch ribbon and dowels on these. Cut them down to fit into your oven. Bake them on a cookie sheet at 250 degrees for about an hour or so. Take them out and let them cool before taking them off the dowel and they will be all curly when you are done. Cut them into strips about 4 inches long and just group them how you want as far as colors, I like to use 18 to 20 little strips for a full bow, you can use more or less as you wish. Just tie them together and glue onto an empty barrette of your choice. I bought the ribbon at Walmart and the barrettes in bulk from Ebay. The snowmen are made from Polymer clay, buy it when it's on sale for $1.00 per square otherwise you will be paying around $1.75 per square. I don't have a bunch of fancy tools for it either, I just use what I have around the house. The stores want you to buy a fancy little rolling pin and all these gadgets, whatever, I used an ink pin to roll out the blue clay for the scarves.

11:30pm Sunday: I just got back from a grocery trip, I saved over $60.00 all together tonight. Levi (14) went with me and was embarrassed about my big coupon binder! I started carrying it with me so I don't ever miss out on a good deal, if I see a product on clearance or a sale I didn't know about and I have the coupon in my binder where it's categorized and easy to find then I can just whip it out and use it. He threatened to take a picture of me and my binder and my fistful of coupons and send it to the "Hillbilly Corner" for the picture of the week in our local shopper. I pointed out that saving money isn't a Hillbilly thing to do, it's a smart thing to do. He responded with a comment about how every time I put an item in the cart I flipped through 50 coupons. Yea, well I used almost 50 coupons at Hy-Vee and my cart was so full they almost had to get a second cart for me for only $189.00 I have certainly done better but hey I saved a lot of money and I got everything on my list plus I got items that will qualify for another $20 back in mail in rebates. Most importantly I have enough things to put together for meals for a couple of weeks if not more and also snacks and even a lot of frozen foods that are easy to fix in a hurry! My favorites this trip were the Huggies for $4.99 from Walgreens (sale $8.99-$2 coupon and get a $2 Register Reward) and the 2 boxes of Special K/All Bran crackers for .22 cents each after $1.50 coupons. Here is a goofy picture of my receipt from Hy-Vee, it's almost 5 feet long!

*I can't find the picture of the yellow dress, I will look in the closet and try to get a good picture of it today if it's in there.