I did want to take a minute out of my crazy busy schedule right now, to share with you all how proud I am of Ezra.

This semester in his music class, he was chosen to be one of the Didgeridoo players for the music program.

I had heard of the Didgeridoo before because one of my favorite musical artist plays them.  It is a wind instument from Australia, that makes a loud deep vibratory sound (almost bass like).

Here is my little Didgeridoo player getting ready to play for the program.  I wasn’t able to get a great video, but he was great.  The Didgeridoo players opened the show with thier long loud vibrations.  It was pretty cool.

Here is some more info on the Didgeridoo.

If you all are interested in hearing what a Didgeridoo sounds like, here is Xavier Rudd playing one.  Its pretty cool too.

xoxo

Game of Thrones.  Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones.

Any other fans out there?

If you have not seen the show, first of all you should, it is based on the book series by George RR Martin, which I have to admit I have not read and probably won’t.  I picked the first one up and grew bored.  The show however is delicious!  (Disclaimer: it is an HBO show, so if nudity, a bit of violence and you know basic human propriety are important to you, you may want to skip it)

Here are my two fave characters.

First up is Arya.  She is the daughter of the Stark family and is basically lost and left on her own when her father is murdered.  She is a girl after my own heart, chosing fencing classes instead of dance, she is one tough cookie and during the show she fights, hides, runs, tricks and all in all is quite brave!  Can’t wait to see what happens to her character.

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The second fave is Khaleesi.  Another strong woman, she also fights for good, and is the “mother of dragons”.

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There are so many strong female characters on the show, which really impresses me.  I love a show that can show the many facets to the female spirit, child, mother, warrior, healer, traitor, lover, daughter, confidant, leader… Oh the list could go on and on.

In celebration of the series beginning again, I thought I would share some fun and funny handmade fanlore products regarding the show!

I love these bracelets with the engraved words from Khaleesi and her husband.  (Paul often teases and calls me the moon of his life…silly)

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Who wouldn’t love a stark family crossstitch hanging over their mantel.  No?  Oh come on, its fun. haha.

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“Winter is coming” is a common phrase used throughout the show.  I would totally get a kick out of drinking coffee from this cup.

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 How about some Winterfell coasters?  Kinda silly, but kinda fun too.

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Beer glasses etched with the family emblems from the show?  I think hubby would think they were pretty cool.

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 These are replicas of Khaleesi’s dragon eggs.

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So, what do you think?  Are these fan items a bit overboard?  Do you ever by novelty items from your favorite shows?  Are you going to be watching the season premier?

xoxo

This time of year it seems everyone I know is fervently watching thier dollars.  We are among you!  This time of year we are always reminded that we NEED TO PAY ATTENTION!

Today, I want to share with you how we budget as a family and make our finances work.

It seems a lot of people struggle with this, and we did too, especially in the early stages of our marriage.  Me staying home forced us to look at our finances very closely on a regular basis.  Here are a few things I have learned and a few tips for those of you who want to get organized in your financial life.

1.  Communicate.  The first thing that greatly helped my husband and I get our finances on track a few years ago was to start talking about it… a lot.  We talked about our goals, we talked about our spending habits.  The most important thing we learned to communicate about was how and when we were spending. This isn’t just one conversation and then we were set.  This is a daily conversation.  This may seem tedious to some of you, but honestly in the beginning we spoke to eachother about every dollar we spent.  I would call my husband and tell him I needed to take our son for a haircut and that it would be $15.  He would call and tell me he needed to get his ice skates sharpened and it would be $5.  Was it because the $5 was going to break the bank, no.  It was because we were building those good communication habits.  If we both just went out and spent what we needed to without communicating we could easily blow through a few hundred dollars and niether of us would be aware of it.  That could be bad at certain times of the month, and early on in our marriage, it was bad.  We still talk about our expenditures every day.  We sit down every paycheck and discuss what bills we have to pay and how much will be left for groceries, clothes and activities.  We have gotten so good about discussing these things that it has become second nature.   We always seem to have a mental handle on what bills are coming and which weeks will be tighter than others.  So, my first advice to anyone who is trying to get thier finances in really good shape is to communicate constantly with your spouse about it.  Get anal about what you talk about.  Yep, I still tell my husband if I am going to spend $4 at Starbucks.  It helps.  Remember, it is not asking permission, it is getting on the same page.  He tells me about each of his expenditures as well.

2.  Budget. Budget. Budget.    Ok.  This is a no brainer.  You need to have a budget set up on what it takes to make your house run.  Calculate how much your bills cost you, how much you need to spend on groceries, how much you need to set aside for new shoes for the kids, how much you put away for retirement or savings, how much you want to spend on entertainment.  Then write it all down and see if it is what you actually spend.  If you don’t have an idea of what you bring in every month and where it goes, then you can’t make realistic changes and improvements.  You have to start somewhere, you have to set the framework for how you would like to spend.  Don’t forget to make sure it all adds up to less than what your income is!  Sure, ideally I would like to have $200 to spend at Sephora every month, but that just isn’t in the budget.

3.  Track it!  I think this is the hardest step.  It is easy to start talking about it and it is easy to set up an ideal budget.  The actual tracking is the not so fun, and really tough part.  One must get really organized with this step.  This is the follow through to  make it all start ticking.  Since I am the one in charge of paying our bills I have a spread sheet of all the things we way to companies every month.  I go through and write the amount we pay after we make the payment.  This way I make sure nothing is overlooked.  If I have  big open spot on my sheet I know we forgot to pay something.  I know that seems kind of silly to some, but I don’t know how many times in our early years of marriage we would get disconnect notices on one of our bills.  Not because we couldn’t afford it, but because we had put it aside and forgotten about it.  Bummer!  Here is the spreadsheet I use, feel free to download it and use it yourself.  There are plenty of spaces to write in extra items.

bill pay workbook

4.  Link it up.  This may not be for everyone, but we swear by it.  We use a free online program called Mint.  Once you are logged in, Mint will link up to each of your accounts and track your spending for you.  It links up to your mortgage, your bank account, any credit card accounts, your retirement or college savings accounts, your savings, anything you want it to really.  Then you can set up your budget and it will alert you when you have overspent. Bummer, you budgetted $100 for eating out this month, but you spent $120.  It brings that budget into reality and tells you where you are messing up. It is lik a virtual envelope system so to speak. This is helpful when you know your husband spends more than he thinks he does on something.  Those numbers don’t lie.  My husband swore he only spent a certain amount of money on lunches during the workweek, when he saw the number it was a wake up call that he couldn’t argue.   Mint will help you set up goals and tell you how much money you need to set aside each month to reach those goals.  For instance, when we wanted to update our floors with the Pergo.  Mint told us it would cost $155 a month for about 23 months to pay for it.  Then you can decide how much you can set aside each month for your goal.  If you have a vacation you are saving for you can set up a goal to meet.  It also gives you a month end pie chart that shows where your money goes.  Sometimes just seeing it visually is a real eye opener.  OMG- we pend $100 at DAIRY QUEEN!  If Mint sounds like something that would be helpful for you, check it out HERE.  We really love it.

5.  Cut it out.  Once you have a couple months spending under your belt and you have tracked it all, you can see what areas can be cut a bit.  For us, the biggest area that can be cut is always groceries.  We look at our spending at the end of every month and decide what we would like to do better. Or we applaud ourselves and say, YAY!

6.  Space it out.  This one may not work for everyone, it depends on when your bills are due.  For us we space out our large expenses to a bi monthly system.  The first of the month we pay our mortgage which is the biggest bill we have due.  We don’t pay any other “bills” until the second paycheck of the month.  At that point we pay EVERYTHING else.  We pay our electic bill, gas bill, cable bill, phone bill, everything on the same day.  That ensures we hit them all and we are not killed having to pay them all at the same time we pay our mortgage.  Again, this method may not be for everyone, but it works really well for us.  We pay our mortgage and we know that the rest of the money left in the paycheck goes toward food, activities, etc.  Then when the second paycheck comes about the middle of the month we pay all of the rest knowing that what is left over goes toward food, activities etc.  For us, it seemed the easiest way to find balance.

7.  A couple things people forget.  It is easy to track and budget for things you spend money on every month.  But what about things that come only once in awhile?  Make sure you have those in your budget too.  Christmas, how about set aside money every month for gifts so that you don’t have to use a credit card?  Or do like we do and buy Christmas gifts throughout the year so that your budget is spread out over 12 months instead of one.  Home repairs and improvement- we all have things we would like to do to our homes, why not set aside a few bucks every month for that new fancy shower head and eventually it will be yours.  Gifts for friends- birthdays sometimes sneak up on us.  I know I don’t know the exact birthday of each of my friends kiddos.  So, when we get invited to a birthday party I have to run out and get a gift.  We have a certain amount of money budgetted for gifting so that if this happens we are prepared.

8.  Don’t use credit.  Plan ahead, then you won’t have too.  That is pretty much it on that end.  Use your budget to make this happen by thinking of all of those things ahead of time.  It takes a bit more work, but it will save you so much in the end.  Credit is throwing money away.

Here are a couple financial goals we have for this year:

Cut our Grocery Bill by $200 per month

Make Lunches at home to bring to work more often (more leftover prone meals)

Add a couple hundred bucks a month to savings

Ok, that is it.  I don’t claim to be some financial guru, but we seem to make our finances work without using credit, and without terrible arguments.  I hope someone out there can benefit from our tips.

xoxo

Have I mentioned that his dream is to be a chef?

Here he is whipping up his Applesauce Cupcakes.  We chose this recipe because it looked easy, however, since it was egg free the batter was extremely dense and spongy.  The apple flavor was really good though.

We thought topping it with a Cinnamon Cream Cheese frosting would pair nicely with the apple flavor.

He had so much fun making these.  He did everything himself.  I showed him how to top the cupcakes with the frosting bag, but he did EVERYTHING else himself.

I was so proud of him, not only for taking part in the contest but for the moment he tried one of his creations.  When he took the first bite, he knew it wasn’t the yummiest cupcake we had ever eaten and his response was this: “Oh well, it isn’t about winning.  I had fun making them anyway!”  SO PROUD of this wonderful attitude!

Here are the two boys hanging out in the clubhouse of the Bridges Golf Course, where the contest was held, waiting for the judges to taste everything.  It was a great event and we cannot wait until the next one!

HERE is another article about the contest on San Juan Parent.

He already has a recipe picked out for the next contest!

Here is my wish list for said bag.  I want it to be something other than leather with leather embellishments. I want it to be under $100 (preferrably much under). I want it to be springy (meaning not dark browns and blacks like my Coach that I am curently carrying), I want it to be big enough to toss in a lot of stuff (I love the one I am using now because it has a ton of compartments).

Here are some of the ones I like.

First a couple of budget busters!

I am a bit madly in love with this Kate Spade bag.  I love the woven texture.  I love the black and white contrast.  I just love it.  Find it HERE for $328.

This one is T Tahari and is $228.  HERE.  Again, love the woven look.  The shape and style of this bag is very classic and simple but with that fun texture!  LOVE!

Ok… now for some more budget friendly bags…

This one is my absolute fave of the bunch!  It is from Anthropologie and is only  $78!  I love the nautical feel.  LOVE, love love.  HERE.

Feeling Feminine and Flirty this spring?  How about this soft and sweet handmade handbag?  I love how feminine it is, perfect for spring. It is $70.  This one can be dressed up or down, perfect for a mom who needs a bag that can do it all!  HERE.

Sometimes a nice POP of color is all you need to revive your wardrobe.  I love this simple bag by Big Buddha.  It is only $80.  Find it HERE.

Another Nautical inspired bag is this one from Aldo.  It is $85 and is simple and classic.  Find it HERE.

Here is a super budget friendly bag from Forever 21, HERE.  It is $30 and comes in a couple colors.  For a bag that you don’t need to stand the test of time, it is pretty cute.

Here is another handmade Etsy Find HERE, for $60.  Love the graphic pattern, and you know navy and white makes me so happy!

So, there you have it, some spendy bags and some cute not so spendy bags.  Which ones do you like?  I really love that Kate Spade…hmmmm.

Lucas’ basket:  This year we decided we wanted to get him a Leap Pad 2.  One of his buddies has one and her mom gives me rave reviews on it.  Since his preschool requires a solid amount of time for nap and he has outgrown napping, we and his teachers thought this might help him pass the quiet time and stay on his mat. So that is the main item but we will have a couple more little things in there.

1. The Leap Pad 2, as I said before is something we hope will help pass the quiet time at school.  I have heard such great things about it!  Find it HERE.  (Psst…we found ours new on Ebay for a bit less)

2.  We think giving him a case for it might help him take better care of it.  HERE.

3.  We always put in a chocolate bunny for Easter!  I feel like that is part of the tradition.  I love this handpainted bunny by MoonStruck Chocolate Company  HERE.

4.  Leap Pad Games are part of what makes the leap pad fun.  Although, I understand that you can download them off of the Leap Frog site as well.  This one is HERE.

Ezra’s basket:  Ezra is turning into one active dude.  This year he will be getting a sports themed Easter basket.

1.  Ezra likes to have a water bottle with him much of the time.  Some of his older ones are looking pretty bad, so a new sports bottle will be in his basket.  This Nalgene bottle is the one I bought because it clamps closed so I hope it prevents accidental spills.  HERE.

2. Soccer Balls take a beating around here too.  This glow in the dark one should be a hit!  HERE.

3.  Ezra is starting to take an interest in golf.  We are looking forward to him getting started playing more and more.  I found this cute little golf ball marker HERE.  I couldn’t believe how many cute ones there are out there for kids!

4.  He also likes the Under Armor style shirts these days too.  He has been begging for a new one.  I thought it would be fitting for a sports basket.  HERE.

5.  Of course, he must get a chocolate bunny too.  These from Dean and Deluca are adorable.  HERE.

What are you filling your kids baskets with this year?  Do you do themes or does the bunny just put in whatever sounds good?  What about chocolate?

As some of you may have noticed, I gave myself a little sabatical from the blog for almost THREE weeks.  I just needed a minute to breath, to sort out some priorities, and to give myself permission to slack a bit.

I am back feeling refreshed and ready to share!

Here is my wisdom for the day.

IF IT’S NOT A HELL YA, IT IS A NO!

I discovered this little snipped almost a year ago, and it has really driven my choices over the last year.  This simple little thought process has helped me narrow my focus, give more time to the things that I want to do, and given me some very cleear and peaceful perspective.

The gist is this… When faced with an opportunity, an offer, an invitation, or a favor do this:  Ask yourself is my internal response to this “Helly Yes!  I would love to do that!”?  If it is not, it means your heart isn’t in it and you should say no.  Saying no frees up your time from obligations that don’t make you happy so that you can fill your time with things that do make you happy.  The benefit is two fold because by having time for things you do feel the “Hell yes!” about, you bring your focus into just that!

It is a win/win actually.  For me it helped me eliminate obligations that I often felt resentful about, or at least helped me be realistic about the amount of time I was willing to give to such things.  The school PAC for instance, was something that I struggled with.

Isn’t being part of the PAC what a “good mother” does?  Shoudn’t this make me happy?  The answer for me was that it didn’t.  It made me frustrated and I felt like I had surrounded myself with small people who had personal agendas about the activities, that it was not about the school or making a difference (I know this isn’t true for every parents group, but at that particular time it was for that school).  So, when Ezra started his new school last fall, rather than join the PAC, I agreed to be the room parent, which works along side the PAC.  I figured then  my time would be spent benefitting Ezra’s classroom much more.  I am soooo happy with this decision!  The PAC at Ezra’s current school is very large and they have a ton of support so I have no guilt at all about not helping out.

There is just one way this “Hell ya!” philosophy has changed my life and my relationship to opportunities.

If you are a people pleaser like me, you have to give this a shot.  You can’t go around doing everything everyone wants you to do just so that they will be happy, or will be pleased with you.  One must think about where they really want to put thier energy!

Here is a short video about the idea to help illustrate a little more.  It is short and simple.  And it works!

When my internal excitement thermometer started turning down on blogging.  I realized, I was not feeling “Hell ya!” about it, so I gave myself a little break, hoping that I would miss it and my excitement would come back.  Thank goodness it did!

I hope you all are still in for the ride with me, I have more fun to share!

xoxo

One thing on our list is houses.  Yep, we are thinking about and looking at homes.

Here are some of my wishes for a new house (hopin and prayin everything falls into place).

Dining Room-  I have mentioned before that I would love to have a nice formal dining area to entertain.  I am picturing Christmas dinners, Easter Brunches and family birthdays around a nice large dinning table with plenty of room for friends and family alike.  We are the kind of people who have lots of friends who feel like part of the family and I like to have room at my table for everyone!

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Man/Boy Cave-  I also would like an area, whether it be a den or a bonus room above the garage where we can have a TV, a couch and a place for games and sports out of the main part of the house.  It would be very convenient as the boys get older and want to have friends over to play games.  I don’t necessarily want them all in my living room.

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Guest Room-  This one is a must.  Right now we only have three bedrooms.  A fourth bedroom would make it nice when company comes from out of town to visit.  Right now, our house is off limits for overnight guests (unless they are comfortable on the couch, which most people are not).

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Craft Room-  This is really a dream.  I would love to have a designated craft room where my sewing machine and any projects can be left out so that I may work on them without having to pack it all away from the kitchen table before dinner.  It would make it much easier to finish things.  It could double as an offce as well and have storage for all of our documents and important office type things.

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Upstairs Kids Rooms- We are really hoping that the kids rooms can be upstairs and out of clear site.  That way we can keep all the toy clutter up there!

Yard- One thing we have always struggled with is being happy with our yard.  A huge part of the reason is that there is not any mature trees in our yard.  It is a fairly new nieghborhood and it has not matured as far as landscaping and trees go.  I would really love to find a home that has lots of mature landscaping and most importantly trees!

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 You know what I am learning?  In the great words of the Rolling Stones, You can’t always get what you want.  We will see how this all pans out.  Sigh.

As Mr. Murphy and his law would have it, right after I posted that I broke out in a horrible case of stinging painful acne around my chin.  Ugh!

I remembered, I left something out of my acne solution.  I left it out, because I had forgotten about it.

We try not to eat processed food very often.  Don’t get me wrong, there is Chex cereal in our pantry, and Progresso soup.  I definately don’t buy everything organic.  We had been, however, doing really well not eating things with a lot of additional crap in it.  The usual suspects are on our list food coloring, msg, high fructose corn syrup, and citric acid.

The key ingredient for me happens to be Citric Acid.

I don’t really know why.  I have googled around, and have never really found any solid reason why citric acid would make my face break out.  Only thing I can think of is that I have some sort of intolerance to it.  I did find some information about it throwing off the natural PH of your body.

I can eat a whole orange and not get a pimple, but if I drink a cup of jarred orange juice, HOLY COW.  Its not pretty.  All because the juice has a citric acid additive.

I went on a bit of a junk food bender a couple weeks ago and dove face first into a bag of Pop Chips, bbq flavored.  OMG… those things are the devil.

Guess what?  When I looked at the ingredient list, citric acid is added to it.

You know what happened?  Yep.  A face full of acne.  I was kicking myself for sure.

I thought I would share this little tidbit with anyone else who cannot seem to figure thier acne issues out.  Try cutting out artificially added citric acid and see if it helps.  I have found a little ketchup won’t hurt anything, but if I overindulge in something it will definately show in my skin.

Here are some things I have to limit or steer completely clear of:

Ketchup

Bottled or Concentrated Juices- any type but especially orange

Lemonade (homemade seems to be ok)

Bottled Marinades

BBQ sauces- some more than others

Any sort of chip that has flavoring added to it. (Esp BBQ)  Plain ol tortilla chips seem to be ok, thank goodness.

My favorite Raspberry Chipoltle Sauce (so sad)

Canned or jarred fruit

Tomato Soup and some other canned soups

Candies that taste like fruit- Runtz, Gobstoppers,etc.  

Tomato Juice

Thera Flu- the lemon flavored kind

Smoothies made in restaurants

To be perfectly honest I have gotten pretty good at paying attention to labels.  Most things are not from jars/cans, and if they are I make sure there is not a ton of citric acid added.

Good Luck Ladies!

Not exactly sure why.  Probably something to do with being extremely busy with the kids school events, being hit with sickness, and just plain needing a little break from it all.

Since my life has been a little all over the place for the past few weeks, I thought my things post should also be a bit random.

So here are some random things that have been on my mind…

We are making some big life decisions lately on things like where we want to live and this little bit has struck me…

Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith.  Source.

I have been eyeballing swimsuits, I love the shabby apple designs.  This one imparticular is beautiful.

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We decided not to take a family trip to Cape Cod this year.   It was a family decision, since we are making big ol life changes, we thought it best to lay low and close to home to see how things pan out.  However, the ocean is calling me and I am wishing I could run to her.

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I am very curious to see how the 90′s fashion revival is going to present itself in the fashion world.  I have been reading articles about how flannel and combat boots are going to be overtaking all of the 80′s neon colors soon.  I am a bit excited as neon colors aren’t really my thing, but I don’t know if I can go back to my flannel and combat boot days…hmmm.  It will be interesting.

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I have been a bit all over the place emotionally.  Stressed, excited, nervous…. like I said, big changes.  Good changes, but big.

Ani Difranco always is my go to during times like this for some calming womanly strenght and she has not disappointed.  She is crazy talented.

This is one of my faves of all time,  sort of the main track on my lifes soundtrack really.  Seriously, one of the most motivational songs on the planet for me.  Wierd, I know.

Anyone else feeling random these days?

xoxo