Thanks to this post on Money Saving Mom I made a quick run to Target this afternoon to see what frozen food deals I could get. I picked up a total of 28 items, pictured above, for a total of $7.96 out of pocket and was left with a $5 gift card at the end of the trip. {Note: At the beginning I had $3.26 on a GC, otherwise my out of pocket would have been that much higher.}
The deal works like this:
Buy any 7 freezer items and get a $5 Gift Card, good on your next transaction.
I did a total of 4 transactions.
Transaction 1 included 7 of these burritos. We aren’t ones that eat much prepared food, however they will make nice snacks on our weekly junk day and they were the least expensive item {.84 cents each} make the most sense to get the lowest out of pocket initially. {Note: There were several brands of burritos, the ones pictured above are the least expensive ones.}
Total: $5.88 {used $3.26 from a previous GC}
Received a $5 GC good for my next order.
Transaction 2
I picked up a combined 7 of the Market Pantry apple juice concentrate and lemonade concentrate priced at .97 cents and .87 cents respectively.
Total: $6.29 – $5 GC from transaction 1
Received a $5 GC good for my next order
Transaction 3 and 4
Transaction 3 and 4 were a combination of different frozen vegetables {14 in total}. Market Pantry brand frozen vegetables are already the least expensive frozen vegetable brand at .97 cents for 16 oz, but this deal made it smoking hot! We go through an enormous amount of vegetables and will probably head back to pick up more later in the week.
Total {per transaction} $6.79 – $5 GC from previous transaction
Received a $5 GC good for my next order
There were no coupons needed to perform these deals and the cashier was super friendly and helpful with each transaction.
It is really important to me that my children learn early on that the world does not revolve around them and one of the most efficient ways that I have stumbled upon in helping them learn that is by encouraging them to encourage others – when you are thankful for and are praising others it is rather difficult to be focused on yourself.
At 4 and 2 they are already exercising thoughtfulness towards other people and it is neat to see their ideas develop on how they want to encourage people. We work on exercises to help them, but what is truly beautiful is seeing their original ideas.
{Some of our exercises include taking them to sporting events and them writing thank you notes and other letters to people. We keep things organized in an ‘encouragement box’ that I will share about later.}
This past week the boys came up with one of their original encouragement ideas and I thought it was so beautiful.
As some of you know the house next door to us has been abandoned for 11 years. The owner mysteriously appeared a couple of weeks ago and with her appearance came a complete renovation on the house. Or at least the outside of the house.
At the beginning of this past week a tree removal company came in and worked for several hours cutting down enormous trees from the yard. The boys and I sat outside and watched them for four hours. At one point Judah turned to me and told me that we needed to give them something. I had very little in the house in terms of packaged goods {which is what I prefer to give to strangers so they know it’s safe to eat}, but at the boys earnest appeal I went hunting through the cupboards and found a package of Goldfish crackers, which was being saved as a special treat for them.
I explained to them that the package was intended to be a treat for them, but they were welcome to give it away if they wanted to. Their was no hesitation on their part – they both wanted to give it away.
A bag of Goldfish crackers to a half dozen grown up men.
But then there was more. “Mommy, we need to write them a letter.”
And so I asked them what they wanted to say, and wrote it down, word for word.
“We like your work.
Thank-you for working hard.
It’s fun to watch you.
We like your work so we are giving you our favorite snack.”
We took their love offering outside and waited for an opportunity to give it to the men.
My mommy heart was worried. I was worried that these grown men would crush the hearts of my boys. That they would see a bag of Goldfish as simply a bag of Goldfish – and who offers Goldfish crackers to grown men? It’s not that I thought they’d be nasty but I thought they might laugh, make a comment about how cute it was and then hand the bag back to them and tell them to enjoy the snack themselves.
It’s not that I want my boys to grow up with the expectation that everything thoughtful they do will be well received, but while they are still learning the value of encouragement I do want it to be positive experiences.
If I were to be totally honest, I was a little embarrassed that the boys were taking a childish snack out to grown, hard working men. I wished I had something nicer to offer, but upon reflection, the gift was not in the crackers themselves but in the sacrifice my kids made of a treat they love and rarely get. {And, as tempted as I was to buy them a dozen bags and drown them in goldfish crackers, I didn’t. I thought something would get lost in the translation of sacrifice.}
But my concern was in vain. The boys excitedly gave the bag and note to one of the younger workers, who was sweet and grateful for the boys kindness. And a while later the owner of the company came to our door to thank the boys personally for their kindness and to tell them how much the snack would be enjoyed. The owner of the company! I was impressed, but more then that the boys idea of thoughtful encouragement was strengthened and, I hope, will be a stepping stone so that they are encouraged to go further with their ideas of generosity and encouragement.
This is where we were yesterday.
In February. It’s in the mid 70′s.
And my living room that looked like this three weeks ago:
Has looked like this for the past two weeks:
They have had so much fun destroying the boxes and I swallowed my {clean house} pride and allowed them the great pleasure of attacking boxes. They spent hours destroying these boxes. Hours each day. The beginning of the destruction was documented on video and can be seen here.
Would you believe it – in the two weeks that these shredded boxes resided in our living room THREE surprise visitors showed up at my door? I pretended that living with boxes spread all over ones living room is entirely normal.
Anyways – my brother randomly showed up for a visit this week.
This brother, that pretends he doesn’t like children but is head over heels in love with his nephews:
One of the coolest things about growing up and having children is seeing your siblings love on your children. My brothers and sister love on my kids like crazy. I love it.
Anyways… inspired by a project I read about on Young House Love I had an idea for our cardboard box living room. At last! This room has seen a random selection of furniture and in two years we haven’t been able to settle on what the room should be…
Because they love me so my brother and Paul cleared out the boxes and are currently painting the walls and will soon rip up the carpeting and the room is going to be converted into our dining room. I am so excited because it suddenly makes the room make sense.
And because I am still reliving yesterday…
And for fun check this out – I was featured today on So You Think You’re Crafty and guest posted over at 5 Minutes For Mom.
They boys eat oatmeal for breakfast every.single.morning – ‘cept Saturdays when we all indulge in some sweet goodness that Paul dreams up once a week. Lately he’s been making delicious scones and once he did cinnamon rolls… but that’s an entirely different subject.
Oatmeal. It has saved my morning sanity.
Upon returning from Nigeria, where food selection was, well, not much of a selection, I realized the beauty in simplicity when it comes to food options. Especially food options given to little boys.
If I know what they’re going to eat and they know what they are going to eat and it’s always the same then that equals simplicity and peacefulness.
By always the same I don’t literally mean every bowl every morning is identical. I couldn’t do that to myself. Or to them. I have had so much fun coming up with new flavors of oatmeal each morning. {Up until 3 weeks ago Paul and I were eating it each morning with them, but then we knocked carbs out of our week day diet and our daily bowl of oatmeal was replaced with eggs.}
I keep an oatmeal bar permanently set up on our counter in the cute yellow tray I picked up at a yard sale. Having {most} everything all together makes it a breeze to put a bowl together.
The selection of items in the tray varies – mostly depending on sale items at the grocery store.
We have sunflower seeds.
Vanilla and Cinnamon.
Raw Almonds. {which we also roast and make into almond butter. *amazing*}
Other items that appear randomly in our Oatmeal Bar tray include; salt, coconut oil, raisins, other nuts and honey.
Other items that end up mixed into the oatmeal: jam, frothed milk, fruit and spices.
The possibilities are truly endless and it is fun combining ingredients trying to make new favorites.
Recent favorite bowls of oatmeal:
Peanut butter, sliced banana and jam.
Canned peaches, vanilla and frothed milk with stevia. {My favorite!}
Molasses, nutmeg, raisins and cinnamon.
Nuts, sunflower seeds and {homemade} applebutter.
Most of the items in the tray are stored in canning jars and the little jars for the vanilla and cinnamon are cleaned out maple syrup jars from Cracker Barrel. I loooove them and am slowly but surely growing my collection of them. They would make the perfect jar for holding homemade vanilla. {which I am currently out of. We’ve got cheap’o Dollar Store stuff in ours right now.}
We have had this Oatmeal bar up and running since December and, two and a half months into this, I am even more enthusiastic about this idea then when I started it. It works so well for us and our mornings are definitely a lot smoother without having to spend time thinking about what will be served for breakfast.
Happy Valentines Day!
I had fabulous plans of romancing my little men on this day, in full masculine style with some fun manly gifts, but then Paul had a rather insightful observation and suggested I not. It was a wise decision.
Simple is good.
Romancing can be done with simple things.
And that’s what we’ve done.
We did a simple breakfast of heart shaped pancakes and chocolate milk. We said “Happy Valentines” to each other. They sang me “Happy Birthday” in honor of the day. They made me this fabulous video with Paul.
I painted this a few weeks ago as part of the fabulous day I was going to do for them, but instead I just slipped it into part of our normal day a couple weeks ago and we’ve been playing X&O’s with all the competitiveness a 4 year old can muster.
One day in the not too distant future they’ll get a part of the fabulousness that was going to happen today. Thanks to some stuff we’ve sold online we have money to buy hammocks for camping so we plan on taking them camping again, but this time sleeping in hammocks instead of a tent. So excited! And before the mosquitoes return I plan on making mosquito nets for our hammocks so we can do this year round.
The idea of camping without the effort of setting up a tent is very alluring. The hammocks aren’t the cheapest ones out there, but from the people we talked to and reviews we’ve read these are the very best ones out there for what we want – Eagles Nest Outfitters DoubleNest Hammock.
And some favorite pictures from our incredibly warm weekend:
And true love:
I love that man.
He couldn’t be any more wonderful.
I am most definitely not an expert on sprouts and everything I do know has come from the helpful people over at sproutpeople.org so if you have questions or want to learn more I’d suggest poking around over there. And while over there make sure to read the About section - specifically the History of Sproutpeople. It is inspiring. The story actually brought tears to my eyes. It’s a neat one and worth the time it takes to read.
With that important introduction out of the way let me tell you what I do know – sprouts both taste good and are good for you! And with just a couple of supplies you can easily and inexpensively make them for yourself in your kitchen.
You will need:
-a sprouting jar {we use wide mouth canning jars}
-something to sprout {we use lentils, from the grocery store, most of the time.}
*An alternative to sprouting lids, which we haven’t tried but I read about after purchasing our lids is to use a cut {ladies} nylon and rubber bands to hold it in place over the jar.
There are so many options when it comes to sprouting. We mostly use lentils because they are inexpensive to buy, almost fail-proof and taste good.
Most sprouts work the same way – give the beans/seeds an initial rinse and then soak for a period of time in water {lentils soak for 8-12 hours}.
Then you rinse liberally, drain and every few hours repeat the rinsing and draining.
This is where the sprouting lids come in so handy! They have little holes in the top that allow for easy rinsing and draining without the content spilling out.
It is recommended that each time you rinse and drain you taste test the sprouts so you can tell by taste how you like yours done.
The amount of days you spend rinsing and draining will depend entirely upon your taste preferences. I usually rinse/drain my lentils 2x a day and do so for 2-4 days. And I still taste them each time I rinse/drain because they taste good.
You can read more about each of those steps here.
Once you have sprouted your beans/seeds there are so many possibilities for them! I have barely begun to explore the options of using sprouts, but so far have tried salads, sandwiches and a stir fry. And of course eating them as is. I really enjoy them as a snack, as does Wesley {2 yrs old} who thinks they are fun to eat because “it’s like eating grass.” So refined in his food preferences.
I thought I would share the sprout stir fry recipe I made up this week as it was a huge hit.
In skillet add a bit of olive oil and a 12 oz bag of frozen stir fry veggie mix.
Once they have thawed add about equal amount of sprouted lentils.
Add soy sauce, ginger, salt and pepper.
Meanwhile in oven roast a couple pieces of garlic and sesame seeds.
Once garlic and sesame seeds are roasted toss over stir fry and serve hot.
We ate it as described above, but could be served over wild rice or couscous.
*12 oz bags of frozen stir fry veggies are on sale for .88 cents this week, making this dish cost a little bit more than $1 – which breaks down to little more than .25 cents a serving.
One of our long term goals for our boys is that they be able to effectively communicate with people – including expressing gratitude in a genuine and meaningful way.
Which means thank you notes start now. {or technically a couple years ago – but now they suddenly *get* it.}
Which means figuring out a way to make thank you notes not a chore.
We just finished off the last of Judah’s thank you cards from his birthday party and it was really a rather fun experience – no tears, crying or complaints. We took about 8 days to complete about a dozen thank you cards.
Day 1 I gave him and Wesley blank cards to draw or paint on. They got bored before completing them all so the next day I gave them the rest to finish.
Once the cards were drawn the thank you cards were half way done! I spent the next week, at breakfast or lunch while we were all sitting around the table, asking him what he would like to say to {insert giver of gift} for {insert gift} and what he liked about {insert gift}.
While Judah dictated I wrote the 2 or 3 sentences on his card and we were done. It took a few minutes of my time each day to write and as Judah was only dictating 1 or 2 thank you’s a day he didn’t find it an overwhelming chore.
He did however wonder if people would send him a thank you card for the thank you’s he was writing them.
And because the cards are so cool, and because I asked, and in all his 4 year old wisdom he told me it most definitely was not an invasion of privacy to share his thank you notes with the world “if I could figure out how to get them on the computer” I am sharing them with you. And I hope they make your day brighter. I haven’t given them out yet because I keep reading over them – I just love his way with words.
Now… if only I would mail off the rest of their thank you notes from Christmas.
I found these fantastic solid white pigs at the Dollar Tree a couple of weeks ago and stashed them away for a rainy day project.
With a supply of paint brushes {to avoid color mixing} and napkins laid out to keep the table top clean the boys painted away.
The eyes were one of the first thing both boys covered. I am sure in some little boy world it makes perfect sense.
This is Wesley’s almost finished piggy.
Judah left half his pig unpainted. Modern art and all.
And because I couldn’t let them have all the fun I painted one for myself!
This was a super fun project to do together and if I had a use for lots of piggy banks I’d buy some more to paint! The boys spend a good deal of time and put quite a bit of effort {though you may not have noticed…} into painting their little pigs and they are so proud of their handiwork!
“Tell us all about when you were a little boy like us mommy!”
I smile. Because, beyond the obvious humor in such a statement, is the memory of a similar (though correctly gendered) plea to my own mother; “Tell us more stories. Tell us again about your pet monkey. Tell us about the footprints in the cement. Tell us about the eyebrows that got gum stuck in them. Tell us again… and again… and again.”
Stories are magnificent. They make the world a little bit more alive. And when it is parents telling their children stories from their own childhood it allows the child to enter into a very special place – a place of comfort, laughter, interest and realization. Stories are a way of connecting.
Our boys love stories. And, while I sometimes struggle with remembering specifics or thinking my stories interesting enough or worthy of retelling I am slowly realizing that they don’t care about those things. They don’t care how many details I have {or don’t have} to offer. They don’t care if the story is about a random memory of a favorite birthday gift as an 8 year old or if it is the twelfth time I have told them about my pets {all two of them}. What they love is that the story features me. In a world that revolved around me as a child, something they can relate to.
For the last couple of weeks we have snuggled in bed almost daily and I have told them stories about me as a child. Dozens of stories. Repeating favorite stories. Over and over. I have pulled out photo albums and they adore those too and I find inspiration in the memories triggered by a simple picture.
A few nights ago Paul was home and snuggled in with us. At the boys request he shared a few stories about himself and I shared more of my own stories.
Later that evening Paul said “Do you know you are drawing their little hearts closer to yours by telling them these stories?”
I hadn’t thought of it that way. I hadn’t considered that sharing my childhood with them was a way to romance them. But seeing how they treasure the little bits of our childhood that we have shared with them – our baby blankets that our mothers saved, my black baby doll, a couple of my stuffed animals, some books from my childhood – I can see how they value these items that were once their parents. Not because the blankets are fun colors or especially warm but because the worn edges, the faded pattern and the holes scattered throughout were put there by their mommy or daddy.
And like the treasured items from our childhood the stories we tell them from our youth are becoming favorites – beating out storybooks that they once begged to be read over and over, they now plead for “Just one more story about when you were a little boy mommy, just one more, then we’ll go to sleep!“
