Movin on up!

On January 1st, Chad and I will be moving to Georgia! We are moving to be the youth pastors at Whitewater church in Fayetteville. We are super excited because we have known that God has wanted us in full time ministry since before we got married. And we have been out of full time ministry for 2 whole years now. Chad and I pretty much knew that we would end up moving away, but it is hard to see how many people are sad to see us go!

So, for the next few weeks we will not only be getting ready for Christmas, but getting ready to move. We will be packing,  looking for jobs, and of course, a place to live! Keep us in your prayers. 

The youth pastor position is part-time right now because the church is only two months old, so Chad will have to find another full time job as well. I am hoping to find something I can do from home (but I have been hoping that for several months now!) :). I know God will provide for us. He is pretty cool like that. ;0)

Lillian is about to cut her 7th tooth (crazy I know). She is not crawling, yet, but starting to pick up on all fours and scoot backwards. It won't be long!

I just put my headbands online today, so we'll see if I get any sales from them? I am hoping to get a sewing machine after christmas to hopefully fix my buttonhole issue. :)

Love ya

My newest headband

I finished this headband this morning! I am excited about putting these up for sale. I am thinking around $6.00 for a price, but it took me approximately 2 hours to finish it! At $6, that's only $3/hr not including materials. Lol. Not a very good money maker. I know I will get faster as I do it more, but they are a lot of work. Almost more work than they're worth. I'll see how they sell. If they don't sell very well, I will probably try to come up with a new design (because sewing button holes are really hard!). 

business business

      

Above are pictures of my first working sample headband and my second paid order for a baby wipes container. :)

FREE STARBUCKS

Free brewed coffee at starbucks tomorrow if you tell them you voted! I saw it on facebook. :) Just thought I would let you know!

Craziness!

Hmm.. Craziness! That word describes my life for the past week or two.. I am sad because I haven't had time to blog, though (or even time to read my favorite blogs)!

I feel like I have been going non-stop... and I still am!

Meal-planning?? Let's just say 'down the drain' if you will! This should be something that's easy and comes naturally... for some reason I find it more difficult and time consuming... BUT, yesterday I had a Pampered Chef party and learned something that might make things easier. Power cooking. Power cooking is when you prepare meals ahead of time to store in your freezer so they are a breeze when you go to cook them for dinner. Last night we put 3 meals in my freezer - all chicken recipes. Chicken stir-fry, chicken tortilla soup, and smokey black bean chicken roll ups. The recipes are really good and they serve 6 people (supposedly). We had the smokey black bean chicken roll ups tonight and they were really good. All I had to do was pull it out of the freezer and let it thaw, then warm it up on the stove with a few toppings. It was nice not having to worry about what was for dinner and wondering if I was going to have time to cook it because of Lilly's eating schedule. We had about half left over and we are going to eat it for lunch tomorrow! Yum.

Business news... I have my second paid order for the wipes, and a few people interested, but they are all local people. I haven't had any orders from the websites I've set up online. Any tips on how to get online orders???

Aside from that,  I have also started making baby headbands! I am trying to get all the kinks worked out right now, but as soon as I have my finished product I will put it up here for you guys to see. I decided to try to make headbands because I know it hard to find ones for babies that are not completely elastic. The elastic ones leave indentions in the babies head and look really awful when you take them off (and it has to be uncomfortable for them!). Soo.. I thought I might be able to make one with only small elastic in the back and adjustable with buttons, so they will fit the baby for than just a few weeks. :) Future items I am looking to make are personalized sippy cups. I am going to use the same idea as I did for the baby wipes container, but put them on the sippy cups! I think it will be cute. I am excited about it. 

Lillian news: Lillian has been sick with a cold for almost two weeks now! (Maybe that's why I've been so much more busy...!) She is much better today and seems to be getting better daily. Monday I took her to the doctor just to make sure, and she is doing well - just a minor cold. She weighed in at 18lb 8oz, though! 

New things with her: I have started using a sippy cup with her already (because she doesn't like a bottle), she is starting to sit up on her own, we are trying to introduce baby foods, and she is starting to be a lot more vocal. She makes the sounds 'ma-ma' and 'la-la' a lot now. Oh, and I can't forget that she has her first tooth! :) She gets cuter every day!

What else is new? We had a yard sale saturday and made $120.00! We are looking to sell our dining room set, too, to make some extra money and get a smaller, more portable, new one. I think we are going to put it on craigslist. Also, In my deal finding last week, I got 12 Omaha steak burgers for $3.98 (including shipping)! We had some for lunch today and they were good. 

I think that's it for now! I hope to be blogging regularly again soon. I have some other things I'd like to tell you. :)

Love ya.

My first order!

                   
Here is the wipes container I designed for my first PAID order. Yay! 

Well, I haven't gotten paid, yet, but I know she's good for it. hehe. 

How do you like it? 

A Birthday Tea

This is a picture of me and Lillian from my birthday tea! :) For those of you who are following my pictures on flickr I wasn't able to upload all the pictures from the tea because I have used my 100mb of space per month already. Bummer. :( You can't see the rest of the pictures until November I guess. This is one of the ones that's not on there, though. 

Love ya!

Finished!

      

Yay! I am so excited I have finished my three samples! Here they are!

These were made for friends of mine; two baby boys and one girl.

Tell me what you think!

I would also like you to tell anyone you know that might want one that I am selling them. I think I have decided on a price of $9.00 each for them. If you are family, I will definitely give you a discount. 

In my previous blog, I posted all the fabrics I have right now, but if someone wants a specific color/design I will go out and find it. 

Thanks again!

Second Sample

Here is the backside of my second sample. I think this one is so cute. :) I can't put the other side on till this one dries... and I want to go out and get ribbon to decorate the front with!

Another Birthday Gift!

Thank you to Ryan and Stephanie for this birthday gift. It is so adorable. There are personalized notecards with envelopes as well as tags and stickers in the plastic envelope on the bottom. Stephanie sells stuff like this on etsy.  Check her out!

I love you guys and miss you, too. :)

Personalized Wipes Container

        

Here are two pictures of my first one. The first picture is of the back of the wipes container and the second is of the front. Think anyone will buy them? I hope so..

This one was obviously made for a boy, but I already have other fabrics to make different ones. I don't think I did too bad for my first try. I am going to work on two more samples before I start trying to sell them. I am thinking of doing some different detail around the edges of the large fabric piece on the front. I haven't figured out what yet, though. 

Here are the other fabrics I have. I can't wait to do some of them! I am all about the girl ones as you can tell. :)

          

If you know anyone who might want one, let me know! I haven't decided what I am going to charge yet either, though. 

Love ya. 

What's new with me

Check out this cute bracelet/watch I found while on vacation this week. Its a whole lot cuter than the 5lbs I found! lol :)

So, what else is new?

I am going to start selling (or trying to) personalized baby wipes containers. I am working on my first three samples for three of my friends with new babies. I will have some pictures up soon of my work. I bought all of my supplies and have been working diligently and excitedly since we got home from vacation. I am almost finished with my first one!

I can't wait to share these with you and see what you think. 

Free stuff

Since I have started requesting free samples, here are some of the things I have received in the mail:

Oprah magazine (Startsampling.com has lots of magazine subscriptions you can get for free)

Parents Magazine

TLC Kashi Cookie

Quaker Chewy granola bar

Vitamins

Decals for the Diaper Genie

Kotex

Huggies Diaper

Pampers training pants

I know there are more but right now I can't remember...

Getting back on track

Why is it that vacation gets you so off track? Maybe its because you have to pack your entire house (into your car) and live someplace different for a week. Or maybe it's because we are creatures of habit and getting us out of our routine causes chaos in our brains.

How is it that on vacation you have more time to do things and essentially less 'chores' to do but you can't find time to do the things that need to be done?

Whatever the case may be, I am totally messed up after this week!

Lillian has gone to bed at about 12am all week, opposed to her normal 'in bed by 10pm' that I could count on. I forgot about 3 (yes, three) bills while on vacation. We spent wayy more money than we had planned. I got 50 (ok 3) free magazines in the mail and didn't have the chance to read them. I only cooked one (yes, one) dinner while we were on vacation. (sad) 

I am not going to let it get me down, though! We have meals planned for all this week. I went grocery shopping yesterday and saved $12.00 on groceries by using coupons. Wow! I was so proud of myself. 

I have goals to set up new budget and spending tracking worksheets. You would think I would already have that sort of thing in place considering my degree and anal personality, but many things change when you have a child. Like not having the time, energy, or brain power to do things that you did with ease before. :o)

I also want to set up a master meal-plan list that we can post on the refrigerator and use it to choose our meals for the next week. New recipes can be added as they are discovered, but this will just be an easy way to decide at the beginning of the week what we want. And I need easy.

I would also like to organize my coupons better... and start getting the sunday paper to get more. Right now I am using a pink portfolio that my aunt got me to store them in while shopping. I used it for the first time yesterday and I think I liked it. 

That's it for now. I have many other goals, but I'll share those later. :)

To all my family who read this,  I love you and miss you (especially today for some reason). 

P.S.

Here is what I have been drinking as I post this. :)

Vacation

This vacation was different than others we have taken in the past... and not really what I would call "better". 

The place we stayed at was gorgeous! It was huge, very clean, very spacious. It had a full kitchen, washer/dryer.. all the amenities of home (and more - whirlpool tub big enough for 4!). But, it wasn't home - and Lilly knew that. 

We tried to make it as much like home as we could - packing literally everything we could fit into the car. It was pretty scary. lol. There were some things we had to roll down the window to get access to, because if we opened the door things would fall out. In order to get to Lilly we would have to open the door and unload several things before being able to retrieve her.

Another thing that made this vacation different is that we are used to visiting people. This time, were pretty much by ourselves. Not that that's bad or anything, we just love being around people. 

Plus, we have been trying to not spend money.. and that kind of doesn't work when you're on vacation. Sure, we could have cooked every single meal there, and gone to the pool... but what else is there to do without spending money??.. not a whole lot!

Greg and Kathy stayed with us Saturday night, and we went out to dinner Sunday. That was fun. Kathy also stayed Sunday night and Monday we went to the outlet mall and shopped all day - literally. That was fun, too. 

Tuesday we listened to a timeshare sales pitch and got $100 to the spa. :) I got a facial and it was lovely. (Btw.. we didn't buy a timeshare!)

Wednesday, I got sick. :( I was extremely tired, with a headache and muscle aches. We tried to go putt putt golfing (free at the facility), but it was too hot and I couldn't handle it not feeling well and all. Lillian was fussy, too. We bought some board games and played for the afternoon. For dinner, we decided we wanted to do our 'nice dinner out'. So, we picked the Melting Pot. Prepared to spend $130 on dinner (ouch!) we set out to the melting pot. BUT, Lillian was soooo fussy that we had to leave after our appetizer! A screaming baby in a nice restaurant like that is not cool...I even got some dirty stares. :(  Wednesday will mark our second failed attempt at eating at the Melting Pot. We have vowed never to take Lillian again! lol. I have to admit, though, what we ate was excellent! We had spinach artichoke cheese dip and salad; mine was a cobb salad, Chad's was a caesar. 

Thursday, I was feeling better and we went to the Florida mall and had more fun shopping. :) BUT, Chad got sick thursday night (same thing I had on Wednesday) and has been sick ever since! We went to dinner at Cattleman's steakhouse, but my steak was gross (had the texture of hamburger) so we got that taken off our bill. We probably won't ever go there again. 

Yesterday (Friday), we tried to go to Old Town in Orlando... but it was lamer than we remembered and Chad was feeling so lousy that he didn't want to stay. So, we got something to eat and headed back to the resort to pack up. To make things even more interesting, Lillian has revolted at every meal we have tried to eat out since Wednesday which resulted in us having to pack up early and take to-go boxes of dinner just to get out of the restaurant. Not to mention the stares from other people...

Needless to say, today I was happy to be coming home. Chad still feels terrible, but at least we are home now. Lillian seems to be acting better but she was sooo upset on the car ride home. I am wondering if she might be sick too??? 

Oh, and did I mention that I was without internet all week!? We are at this big fancy resort and they charge you $24.95 per computer to use the internet for a week. Well, we weren't going to pay that because it costs us $14.95 per month for wireless in our entire house. But, I was able to get on the internet for a few minutes daily by connecting the bluetooth on Chad's phone to the computer and using the internet from his phone. Thank goodness we have unlimited data use. 

Hmm.. I think that's enough ranting for now. I am just happy to be back on my couch. Lillian is sleeping in her swing and chad is sleeping on the bed. Sure, I am dreading unpacking everything, but right now I am in my happy place. 

I should have some pictures up on flickr soon. Probably today. 

Blog Love

Some of my favorite blogs...

I wanted to let you know some of the blogs I am currently following. These have helped me to get lots of free samples, like feminine products, yummy food, and even magazine subscriptions. If you are in to coupons, too, these are excellent resources. Also, many of these blogs have giveaways and links to other blogs with giveaways. 

1.Sage and Savvy  This blog is currently doing a giveaway for 16 bottles of  Glow Mama .

2.Money Saving Mom

3.My Precious Pennies

4.Moneysavingmethods.com

5.Freebies 4 Mom

Enjoy!

Happy early Birthday to me...

My birthday isn't until the 15th, but I got some early presents! :)

Thanks, mom, for these cute shoes! The buckles on each have a cute design. 

Update on Week 1

Dinner last night was great. :) I almost took a picture... but then I got sidetracked. lol. Babies do that.

It was beef tips, fresh garlic, brown gravy mix, water, potatoes, and carrorts in the crockpot. Corn cooked on the stove and whole wheat rolls in the oven. It put everything in the crockpot at about 10am and cooked it on high until I left for work (about 1:30). Then I put it on low and let it cook until 6:30pm when we ate dinner.

It was so easy and delicious. I sent the leftovers home with our friend Stephanie that came over and she was excited because her husband is out of town this week so she is cooking for one. 

Tonight's dinner: Sonny's. :) My dad has been trying to take Chad out for his birthday since September 4th (lol), and he offered tonight, so we took him up on the offer. Free meal. Sweetness. 

Pray for Lillian. She has had a cold this week because I had one last week and gave it to her. :( But, it's all Chad's fault because he was sick the week before that and gave it to me! Anyway, she has had a stuffy nose and been sneezing a lot with lots of snot (yuck!). Babies can't have any kind of cold medicine, so they just kind of have to rough it out... not fun. 

Anyway, thanks for reading. 

Free Samples

Did you know that walmart.com gives away free samples of products? And, they change what products they offer samples for weekly (I think). 

Check it out.   http://instoresnow.walmart.com/In-Stores-Now-Free-Samples-And-Trials.aspx

I have received several free samples already!

My First Attempt

Before I get in to that, I wanted to share something I read today in my bible reading. I have a leadership Bible and it had an interesting quote in one of the side notes:

    "Adversity makes a person choose one of two paths: character or compromise" Now, that's a different way to look at adversity!

Ok, back to my first attempt at menu-planning. Keeping it simple: Tonight we went out to eat! Now, before you think I have gone all crazy against my new goal, this dinner out was, in fact, on the menu. :) Planning for those nights out not only gives you relief from cooking, but also gives you something to look forward to when you have a weak moment. That is, if your like me and cooking is not your favorite thing to do. 

Saturday starts our vacation, so here's our menu plan for Tuesday through Friday:

     Tuesday: Beef stew in the crock-pot with whole wheat dinner rolls. 

     Wednesday: Spaghetti and caesar salad, whole wheat rolls

     Thursday: Dinner w/ Dad (Happy Birthday '50') 

     Friday: Chicken, Scalloped potatoes, Broccoli

In case you were wondering, for our vacation we're going to spend a week in Orlando at a resort; from Saturday Oct. 4th to Saturday, Oct. 11th. My in-laws are letting us use one of their time share weeks. It should be really fun. The room we will have does have a full kitchen so I AM planning on bringing down groceries to deter us from going out for every meal. 

Along with my attempts to change our budget, I am working to change our eating habits, too. We are trying to eat more whole wheat instead of white pastas/breads and I am going to try to incorporate a vegetable with every meal. (Now, I am really trying to be super mom, huh?)

I bet you are wondering how I did on my first shopping trip for this week's menu..

I stuck to the plan and bought very few items that were not on our list. One of the extra items was because I needed to use a coupon that was about to expire in a few days. It was for baby wipes, an item we use all the time and can never really have too many of. Plus, they were already on sale and I got to use the coupon. Go me. :)

Sounds like I did pretty good... but as I was writing this, I realized that I don't think we have any brown gravy mix, and I forgot to buy ground beef for the spaghetti. Oopsie!

I will get the hang of this eventually. I guess another grocery trip is in my future.

How I got started

How I decided to start Menu-Planning

I started by reading a short ebook called "Menu Planning Made Easy". After reading it, I felt like most of the information was generalized and basic... and it didn't give me too many new ideas. BUT, I have wanted to start implementing menu planning for a while now and it gave me the initiative to start it.

Here's what I did learn from the book : 

 1. Make a list of your family's favorite foods :breakfast, lunch, and dinner (that is, if you plan to cook all those). We only cook dinner, really, so I made a list of our favorite dinners. Having an extensive list makes it easy to pick new recipes and not get bored of the same few. 

 2. Check your pantry to see what items you already have before you go grocery shopping. If you already know what you're eating, then you should know what ingredients are needed to make your meals and you should be able to check what you already have before you go to the store.

It sounds simple, right? Well, it just might be... A normal trip to the store for us would have gone something like this: I would have a list made of all the items that week that we had run out of already. When we get to the store, we would pick up the items we need and browse every single aisle for things we might want to eat during the week. (Not a good idea!) So, we would come home with all kinds of odd and end items that looked tasty while we were at the store, or better yet we would have dreamed up some dinner ideas while at the store - buying ingredients that we may or may not have already at home... and hoping that we remember what we wanted to eat when it comes to dinnertime the upcoming week. :)

Thus, the reason why we need to change. 

This week I decided to keep it simple as to not talk myself out of this whole menu planning thing. As I get better at it, I will start doing more complex dinner recipes and hopefully turn our dinners into something delectable instead of something I dread.

Here are some other tips from the book that might help make things easier for you:

1. Cook in bulk and freeze part of it (for instance, beef) so it makes dinnertime quicker and less stressful.

2. Plan meals a month at a time.  (How can anyone do this? hehe)

Organization...

So, all this new blog reading has inspired me to get organized. How am I going to do it? Well, I purchased this calendar to start. It is a post-it calendar that I got at Target. Isn't it beautiful? It is set up to be a weekly calendar, but I modified it to be monthly to fit our needs. 

Some may call me old-school for not going digital, but using this helps for me to visualize things as I walk around the house. And, it so colorful and pretty... it makes me want to use it. :) Not to mention I am a sucker for (ok, semi-obsessed with) post-it notes. 

What do I want to organize? 1. Bill paying, 2. Upcoming events/birthdays, etc., 3. Meal planning.

Number one and two have been slipping my mind way too easily lately and I need to make a change if I am going to get them in order! Number three is really my new venture. We have always been the kind of people that decide what we are going to eat at 6:00 in the evening when I'm supposed to be cooking dinner already. Many times that has ended up in "I don't feel like cooking tonight, want to eat out?" and lots of money spent and food in the refrigerator/pantry wasted. I want to eliminate this. I have read lately about how meal-planning can help you save money because you already know what you are going to eat during the week, so you already have a plan - and don't get sucked in to dining out. Aside from that, my husband gets frustrated when I ask him 'what do you want to eat?' at dinner time -- after he's spent a long day at work. He's like 'you don't already have that figured out?' So, I am going to try to be a good wife and get on the ball. hehe

Why are we trying to save money? Other than being like every other American who is suffering from the way the economy is right now, we have another challenge. My husband and I had our first baby girl on April 23rd of this year, and I am trying to do my best to stay home with her. Cutting our budget is key to meet that goal!

Back to menu planning: So September 29th marks the beginning of week one on our menu-planning venture and we are looking forward to roast, spaghetti, tacos, and chicken. Yum. The stinky part of starting this week, though, is that next week we are going on vacation. BUT, better to start now than never, right? At least I am telling myself that. 

About Me

On a whim, I decided to start reading blogs... now I am addicted! Thanks to some of the blogs I have started reading, I have been inspired to get more organized and find more ways to save us money. The Lord knows we need it! 

I have also been inspired to start my own blog. Weird - for me, anyway, but I am going to give it a shot! 

So, I am Danielle, 23. Christian -first, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, bookkeeper, mac user, etc, etc. Enjoy!