I am now a Lexington Examiner!

Hey guys I have been selected to be an Examiner for Lexington on Examiner.com. Basically I write articles on whatever category I represent. I am the Lexington Frugal Living Examiner (but I am throwing in a green twist as well). Please go check out my quick introduction and there will be more articles to come in the next few days. The more views I get the better off I am so....PUUUUHLEASE go read even if you are not from Lexington.

I feel old

I remember just a few years ago I could stay out all night or only get 2-3 hours of sleep and then get up go to work and do it all over again the next night. We have been staying up the past couple of weeks WAAAAAY past our bedtime and I am worn out. What happened to being able to go on very little sleep for days at a time? I feel so old!

Off to get some shots

Daniel has his 4 year old check up and shots today. He is going to love me later! Mean mommy! LOL I will post some more if I get a chance this weekend. Just been taking a bit of a break.

My husband wonders why I do not like him to cook....

Last night I stopped at Wal Mart on my way home to pick up a frozen pizza to go with the few leftovers we were going to have for dinner. We really did not have enough leftovers for all of us to eat so I thought with the pizza it would be plenty.

My wonderful husband offered to cook the pizza while I soaked in the tub. That would be great!

I am soaking, reading my book, when Jeff comes in:

J: "You are going to be mad at me."
N: "Why?"
J: "I ruined dinner."
N: "How did you ruin dinner?"
J: "I did not know there was cardboard under the pizza. The pizza is all stuck to the cardboard and not cooked in other places."
N: "All pizzas have cardboard under them."
J: "I was not thinking."
N: "Go get another one."

And he wonders why I don't like it when he cooks.

The man who also fixed oatmeal one morning and thought he grabbed the cinnamon, but it was cumin. So he added cinnamon to it and then ate it. NASTY!

MEN!

I scored an AMAZING deal

One of the money savnig blogs I read posted last week about a deal going on at Kroger. Kroger has Kraft BBQ sauce on sale for $1.08. There were several coupon sites that had $1 off one Kraft BBQ sauce coupons. When you bought 6 you got a Catalina for $3 off your next purchase at Kroger.

I decided to give it a try since Jeff had said we were out of BBQ sauce and we LOVE to grill. Like every day if I would let him. Seriously.

I printed off the coupons, which took me a while because a lot of the sites had already reached the max that could be printed. On my way home I stopped at the Kroger on Hartland. Theirs was marked down to $1.56. I decided to see if a Kroger in a less ritzy neighborhood had them any cheaper so I waited. Friday I checked the one on Tates Creek. SCORE! They had theirs for $1.08.

I ended up paying 42 cents for 6 bottles of Kraft BBQ sauce AND got the $3.00 Catalina. So I made $2.52!

We should have enough sauce for at least 2 months. Maybe. Or not.

A dilemma

Most of you who have been reading for a while know that my mom had a scare with ovarian cancer a few months back. She had to have a complete hysterectomy done and was supposed to take 6 weeks off work. She did not have any complications from the surgery itself, but has been in excrutiating intestinal and abdominal pain since the surgery.

She has been to several different doctors and had numerous tests done. The consensus has been that because her uterus was so swollen (like the size of a volleyball) that all of her internal organs got displaced. Now they are trying to get back to normal and all the moving and shifting has aggrevated her colon.

She was supposed to start back to work towards the end of April, but because of the severity of the pain, this has been her first week back to work. She has been on disability whike out of work, but when you go from making over a $1000 a week to $400 a week, it is a HUGE difference.

Money always seems to be tight for them anyway. I love my Mom but she does not always make wise financial decisions. Since the cut back in her wages things have gotten REALLY tight for them. It will be another week before she gets a normal paycheck.

I was talking to my Dad on the phone earlier and he told me he is $400 overdrawn at the bank and has no way to fix it until he gets his monthly check. (My dad is a disabled retired US Marine.)

My dilemma is this: I could send him the money to take care of that, but doing that would take most of the money we have saved for our emergency fund. If something happened to us in the next few weeks we would have nothing to fall back on. I could send them both a little money to help them out until Mom gets paid next week but not enough to bail them out or disrupt our financial security. (What little we have.) I could send them the full amount with the promise that when Mom gets paid I get our money back. The last option makes me feel bad though because my parents have done so much for me and have not asked for anything in return. Ok other than occasional monthly visits from their grandson now that we have moved so far away.

BLECH! I do not know what to do! Anyone have any thoughts?

Smoked Bison Rump Roast becomes yummy sandwiches

Before Jeff's family left on Sunday we all took a trip to the Lexington Farmer's Market out on Southland. We wanted to show them how awesome our local market is, especially when compared to the ones in AL.

We all enjoyed some fresh ice cream made with fresh from the farm milk. I picked up some smoked garlic powder that I was out of. Daniel wanted "A tree of broccoli." Jeff wanted me to make squash casserole for dinner so I picked up some squash. My sister in law picked up a few things to take back to AL for their dinner that night. Jeff and I were debating if we should get some ham for dinner when he saw the next stall over had roasts. I wanted a Boston butt but the only one they had left was WAY to much food for our small family. They did have a Bison rump roast though. We agreed on that not realizing it was going to be quite as expensive as it was. $18 expensive to be exact. YIKES! The way I justified it was if we had went out for Mothers Day it would have cost us more than the $25 it cost us to buy our dinners ingredients.

We decided to smoke the roast in Jeff's smoker. I thawed the roast in some warm water while Jeff got the smoker going. I made a marinade of some fresh rosemary from my herb garden, olive oil, the smoked garlic powder and a little minced garlic, and some cracked pepper.

It was pretty darn good. Maybe not quite $18 good but good nonetheless. Bison is also a very lean meat so their was very little fat on the cut of meat.

We still had quite a bit left over so I decided to make it into sandwiches last night for supper. Jeff shredded the meat and warmed in on the George Foreman grill (best appliance ever). I sauteed onions, mushrooms and garlic powder in a little bit of olive oil. Then we made up a brown gravy. Toasted some rye bread and added some slices of cheddar cheese. Place all the ingredients on the bread and man was it yummy! I had the last for leftovers in my lunch today.

In the end I guess our $18 roast was not too bad of a financial move as we were able to get 2 dinners and 1 lunch out of it. Next time I will definitely check the price before saying I will take it however!

Daniel's Birthday

It does not seem like 4 years ago I was taking care of a tiny little baby. He has gotten so big and grown up so fast. He had a wonderful time on Saturday and thank you to all of you who helped make his birthday special.

We were worried that the weather was not going to clear up in time but by 3:00 it was nice and sunny outside. The kids were all dying to get in the new pool and finally after it had time to warm up a little bit we relented.

When the hamburgers and hotdogs were done Daniel did not want to get out of the pool. Finally we bribed him with his cake and he agreed to get out and have cake and open presents. As soon as the presents were open they were back in the pool. With a few of his new toys.

After a few of the guests had left Jeff's mom brought out one of her gifts to Daniel. A Spongebob slip and slide. Of course my husband the "big kid" had to show the little kids how it was done. They all had a blast.

It was so nice to be able to have so many people over and have such a good time. We never could have done this in our old apartment. Plus Jeff's family that came up from AL were able to stay with us instead of getting a hotel, so we were able to spend more time with them.

It was a great weekend for all of us.

Here are a few pictures:

Daniel LOVED his cake.



They were whales and sharks!

Supervising lol!

Eating cake with Uncle Brian and Gigi.

Fun on the slip and slide.

Big kid fun on the slip and slide!

I am a bit under the weather today so I am taking another day off from blogging. I will get a post up about Daniel's birthday tomorrow hopefully.

Spongebob Cake

Daniel loves Spongebob so I got a burst of inspiration to make him a spongebob cake for his birthday. Cakes are square, Spongebob is square. Should not be that hard.

After one cake that exploded over the sides of the pan, I got the cake baked yesterday. I started on the frosting this morning.

Here is the final result:

I am pleased with the way it turned out and Daniel LOVES it.

Sorry for the crappy picture quality I can't find my usb cable for my camera so had to take this with my camera phone.

Where does God live?

Daniel and I went to Meijer's today to get the stuff for me to make him a Spongebob cake. Meijers usually has some pretty good sale prices so I was looking around at all the clearance food items. We were looking at the spice isle for some yellow food coloring when Daniel asked me:

D: Where does God live?
M: Well he lives in Heaven but he is around us all the time.
D: Have you ever been to Heaven?
M: No not yet.
D: Are you going today?
M: Well I hope not!
D: Why?
M: Because when you go to heaven you are dead and I would like to see you turn 4 on Saturday.

Needless to say the other people in the isle were dying laughing at me and Daniel.

Fast forward to the area by the milk where they keep other markdowns:

D: Who works here?
M: Well there are a lot of people who work here.
D: What are there names?
M: Well I do not know.
D: I bet one of them are named God!
M: Um no I do not think so.
D: YES! One of them are God!!!!

More snickering and laughing from the people in the area.

He may not make it to 4.

Homemade croissant pockets

I found a recipe yesterday and just had to try it out last night. Man these things were good!

Ingredients:

2 cans of croissant dough
1/2 of an onion, chopped
1/2 cup diced cooked ham
1/2 cup ranch dressing
1 cup grated cheese of your choice
2 Tbsp butter or margarine
2 cups frozen hasbrowns
pepper and garlic to taste

Heat oven to 350. If ham is not already cooked, cook and dice and set aside. Defrost frozen hasbrowns in microwave safe bowl for about 2 minutes. Brown hashbrowns and onions in a pan with butter. Add garlic and pepper to taste. In small bowl mix dressing, cheese (I used cheddar and an asiago/parm blend and of course I used more than the 1 cup. I like my cheese!) and the ham. (I did not mix the ham with the dressing mix as I wanted half of mine to be meatless.) On a cookie sheet roll out the croissant dough. Take the first 2 triangles that roll out (that form a square when together) and pinch the seams together. Continue this process with both cans of croissant dough. Place a small amount of the potato mixture and a small amount of the cheese mixture at one end of the dough. Fold the other end over and pinch all the edges shut. Fill and seal all of the pockets and bake for 15 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

What I love about this is you can very easily change the stuffing ingredients. You could use spaghetti sauce, pepperoni, musrooms etc for a pizza pocket, or some of that wonderful pesto I love with chicken. The possibilities are endless!

I meant to take pictures, but well um they were eaten before I had the chance.

This is the awesomest!

Frugal Dad used me in one of his blogs and linked back to my page!!!!! SWEET!

Seriously though his blog is my favorite personal finance blog that I read. I have learned a ton since finding his site and his articles always put things in terms I can understand. (Not a big math/finance wiz here.) So if you have not checked out his site I recommend doing it.

A day of laziness I mean rest

I spent all my free time last week washing clothes and cleaning house. I did NOT want to spend all weekend doing those dreaded chores. Saturday we always have a bunch of running around to do. The Farmer's Market downtown, ALDI's for groceries, depending on what else I need a trip to Meijer's or Wal Mart.

We got everything done on Saturday.

Sunday we stayed in our PJ's ALL DAY LONG. Yep. We were lazy and it was sooooo nice.

We cooked breakfast. Then we pulled out our couch into a bed and all piled up and watched a movie. Then Daniel had lunch and took a nap while Jeff and I watched more movies and he also napped. Then at 5 I had to wake Daniel up and he did a flying leap on to Jeff who was napping on the couch. It was quite funny. Must have been the way he threw his hands up over his head like a cheerleader getting ready to jump off the top of the pyramid, and then jumped full force on Jeff. (And he did not get the idea to jump on Jeff and wake him up from me. Nope I would NEVER tell him to do that. Ever.)

Ok maybe he did.

Leftovers for supper. And then bed. It was a nice relaxing day. Can I do it again tomorrow?