Happy Friday Everyone!

I thought I would give you a couple of pictures that might make you giggle.

About three weeks ago in my sewing classes, we started our sewing unit. We have been cutting fabric, practicing sewing on paper, practicing sewing on small sqaures of fabric and sewing the correct the seam allowances. Whew! That took us over two weeks.  Now, we are REALLY sewing. Like in: cutting real patterns and making pj bottoms or pillowcases or tote bags and last but not least small quilts. Each of my kiddos need to finish two items. I don’t care which ones or if they even make two of the same thing.

Well….now that we are sewing, we are making mistakes. When you sew your legs together, or sew your pillowcase upside down or the straps on your totebag inside out, you have to have a seam ripper.

I could not find enough seam rippers. This is like a major catastrophe!

So, I went and bought all the seam rippers they had at our local fabric store.

For a few days all was well. Every student that made a mistake had a seam ripper to use.

Then…..

Suddenly half of them turned up missing.

So for the past week…..

I have been asking every student in my classes if they had the seam rippers.

Nope….

I have been searching every fabric bin for the MIA seam rippers.

Can’t find a single one.

UGH!

Today a student walked over to the smart board and asked why there was seam rippers in each of the marker compartments.

What?

Yep, here are the seam rippers right here.

REALLY?

The fun does not stop here yet.

Today, in my foods classes the students made yummy biscuits.

 Remember Miss Alaska, the student that taught me to make cracker toffeee? Her kitchen made these. I put apple butter on them and ate them right up.

Well, as I was walking around checking the kitchens and cleaning up I found an interesting sponge.

I looked at it, and then I did a double take. I thought for a minute the sponge had three legs……

Then the light bulb went on in my head.

What?????

Which little junior high munchkin did this??

I wish I knew!

This one looks a little more G rated version.

I threw the little purple pen in the trash.

It is OK to laugh!

Junior High munchkins….you got to love em.

Have a great weekend!

Becky

Whew, what a week last week was.

It was one party after another!

Oldest daughter, Baby College Girl and The Princess all celebrated birthdays last week. Plus, we have to add Easter in too

It was a great week…a little exhausting and I ended up with a super nasty sinus infection. (that is why you have not heard from me, it is hard to type when you are holding a kleenex to your nose). This is my second day on antibiotics, so the faucet attached to my nose should be down to a trickle soon.

Enough about me….

Did I surprise you with the picture of my Mom and her identical twin sister?

I remember growing up and going to the store with my Auntie Flo and people would think she was my mom. My Auntie never missed a beat and would not correct the person that was mixed up and just pretended she was my Mom….it was a hoot. The same thing would happen when I was with my Mom, The Princess, shopping. People would think she was Auntie and would just answer their  questions like she was.

That is what it was like growing up with identical twin sisters.

Anywho, did you make a guess which one was my real mom?

The one on the left is my Mom, who we call The Princess. MyAuntie Flo, pictured on the right, is a Princess too!

Here is The Princess on her big day. You notice we did not put her age on the cake.

Princesses never tell their real age.

Becky : )

Today is my Mom,”The Princess,” Birthday. Can you guess which Mom pictured above is my real Mom? I probably have forgotten to tell you that my Mom is an identical twin. So, I really grew up with two Moms. They are affectionately called by the family as, ” The Twins.” I took this picture of the two of them together at the Christmas party at The Old Home Place back in December. You can read about our fun day here at Christmas at The Old Home  Place. 

Anywho….today is both My Mom’s birthday.

Take a guess and see if you can guess the correct Princess.

Whew, this has been a busy week of birthdays. First I had Oldest Daughter, then Baby College Girl and now the Princess.

Good thing I love birthday cake.

Have a great Saturday!

Be on the look out for a bunny running around giving out chocolate tomorrow!

I am hoping the bunny stops here, I am all out of my chocolate marshmallow eggs.

Becky

Another post about my family you might enjoy.

The Stocking Tradition Continues

Yesterday was Oldest Daughter’s Birthday!

Hard to believe that the years have flown by so quickly!

She has blessed me with two little grand girls that keep me smiling every day.

Anywho, when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday dinner, she said, “Cheese Soup.”

You are probably wondering….really soup?

Now, you have to keep in mind that my spring break week off is full of birthdays.

Yesterday was Oldest Daughter’s, Friday is Baby College Girl’s and Saturday is the Princess’s.

Baby College girl is heading home on Saturday, so we are officially celebrating both birthdays on Saturday. While we are celebrating Easter and the Princess’s birthday on Sunday.

Whew!

Oldest Daughter just wanted her favorite cheese soup for dinner.  So, while I cleaned house, had a plummer come (ugh..major repair scheduled for next week) and cleaned the snow off my car so I could take her billfold to her job that she left at home, I made birthday girl her soup.

We also finished up the last of the cornbread.

You can find the Cheese Soup Recipe and the Honey Cornbread Recipe just by clicking on the link.

I offered to make her some brownies or another yummy goodie  to go with her soup. We are waiting to have real birthday cake on Saturday with Baby College Girl.

But, Oldest Daughter told me, “it was ok, she had it covered.”

This is the reason she needed her billfold. Oldest Girl saw a very large chocolate pie with sweet whipped cream and chocolate shavings on the top.

It had birthday pie written all over it.

Maybe I will make some brownies today….or should I wait till we finish the chocolate pie?

Do you celebrate birthdays with a normal birthday cake, or have you had something fun and out of the ordinary.

We do not have to be ordinary everyday.

Right!

Have a great Wednesday!

Becky

Do you have a secret hiding place?

Well, I do.

At least until my kiddos get around to ever to reading this post.

Everyone needs a secret hiding place.

Right?

It is getting harder and harder for me to find a place to hide things with my nosey little grand girls.

But I think I found the perfect place.

Way back in the dinosaur age, I bought a pressure cooker.

It had been stored away, literally for years and years. See that dust on top? That is dinosaur dust…..no lie.

Anywho, I brought it back from the brink of death and took it to a canning class I took last summer at the local Extention Office.

Beside showing us how to properly can and preserve food safely, they also checked out our pressure cookers to make sure they were safe to use. Mine almost passed inspection. I need a new rubber gasket and a new pressure valve. It will cost about $40 for parts which is way better than paying over $100 for the size of one I have now.

Sorry, I got off topic.

After the class was over, I carried the pressure cooker back into the house and sat it down by my china cabinet.

And there she be, for over a year now.

I am pathetic.

My Oldest Daughter who does not cook bought me one of my favorite Easter candies of all time. Those chocolate covered marshmallow eggs that come in those egg cartons. I love those things. I sat them by my computer, and ate one, then two, then three…..I was going for the fourth one, when it dawned on me I could hide them from my marshmallow egg loving self and they would last longer.

I looked around and saw my pressure cooker sitting innocently there on the floor.

Eureka! The perfect hiding place.

I went over to hide my eggs and a bag of malted eggs (also one of my favorites). I took off the lid and…..

SURPRISE!!! I found my Holloween candy I hid in there back in November.

See, I told you it was a great hiding place.

Now my eggs are inside the cooker all safe and sound.

Until I need to hid more candy.

MMMMM……. that snickers bar looks pretty good to me right now.

Have a great Monday!

I am off to the big city (St. Louis) to do some fabric shopping with a friend of mine. Wahoo!!!

Have a great Monday!

Becky

P.S. You can’t even tell there is candy in there can you?????

Here is a gander out my front door.

How does it look outside your front door?

Central Missouri got lucky again (not) and we are looking for totals of  6 to 9 inches of snow.

You can snow me over….

Doesn’t mother nature know it is the fifth day of spring.

Here is a little peek of spring flowers from my front yard.

I hope they like snow.

Anywho, I am watching movies, cleaning my kitchen, making chili, baking the best ever corn bread (I will share that recipe later on today) and trying to talk myself out of taking a nap.

How are you spending your Sunday?

Becky

My Aldi’s shopping trip. If you do not have the time to cut coupons, or coupons are not your bag, BUT you still want to save money, Aldi’s is a great place to shop for all your  staples. I  buy my flour, sugar, cooking spray and assorted fruits and veggies there all the time. Just don’t forget your quarter for the cart and bring your reusable grocery bags.

I spent a total of $27.48 at Aldi’s.

I stocked up on some ground steak that was on sale, so when it does stop snowing I can get my grill out and make these out of this world steak burgers. I also bought my point cut and flat cut corn beef for Saint Patrick’s Day.

I spent a total of $37.76 at my local family owned grocery store.

BOGO (buy one get one free). I also bought two turkey breast for the freezer. The local Gerbes had these on sale last week. These are great in my crock pot. I put them in, in the morning, and when I come home I have tender juicy turkey to eat all week.

I spent $30.10 for two turkey breast.

I went to my local Gerbes store and was able to buy all this pizza dough free plus I made .25 cents for each one I bought. Gerbes also had a deal if you bought 4 breakfast items you would get a gallon of milk free. I was able to score two free gallons of milk. I also had a e-coupon for a free bottle of Ragu and a Gerbes coupon for a free dozen of eggs.

I bought all of this for $28.79.

I don’t have a picture of my grocery store shopping from last night, because I have not brought it up from down stairs yet. Plus I did not pick up my receipt..pooo. But I was able to buy 7 two liter bottles of soda, the new liquid crystal lights (5 of them), one can of Marie Callander soup (free with e-coupon) 1 box of Kashi cereal for just $1.00, one protein bar (free with coupon) and maybe a couple of more things that I can’t remember.

I spent a total of $14.04. Not too bad since those Crystal lights were $1.79 a piece and I bought 5 of them. (normally the price is $3.79)

As of March 11th I had $355.68 in my grocery fund.

I spent:

$27.79 at Aldi’s

$28.79 at Gerbes

$30.10 at Gerbes

$14.04 at Gerbes

$37.76 at Mosers

That is a total of $108.07

That leaves me a budget of $247.61

Today is Sunday so I get to add another $75.00

This gives me a total of $320.61 as of March 24.

Woohoo….not too bad.

I think I have this all updated now for the last two weeks…whew….

How is your budget going? Are you couponing or find it easier to use the sale adds? Which ever way works for you, you know it is a great feeling saving money at the grocery store. I love having the extra money for other things that I love to do.

What do you do with your extra money?

Becky

I could not help myself.

It started about Wednesday.

Please forgive me.

But, I started counting the days until Spring Break!

I have the whole week off next week and I am ready.

I do not want you to think that I do not love teaching. I really do! But this last week has been a hard, long week.

We had a death in our school community.

Our fabulous custodian had a freak motorcycle accident and was killed last week.

We cried. The students cried. We asked, why? The students asked, why?

It was hard to walk past the cafeteria and not look for him, talking to the kids, laughing, working hard, and doing it all with a smile.

He was only 40 years old.

He would crank up the music in the cafeteria after lunch and move tables, sweep, mop and take out the mounds and mounds of trash left over by, around 800, constantly starving students.

He was excited about getting a new snow blower next year.

He was fabulous.

His funeral is today.

It will be held at school.

He loved our school.

We loved him.

Please think of our kiddos, while they struggle to say goodbye to a young vibrant man, that was more than just a custodian. He was a father, a grandfather, a man not afraid to break up a fight at school, play basketball in the gym with the kids, come to every teachers rescue when we had leaking pipes, freezing trailers, wet floors, cold water and broken chairs.

Now we have broken hearts.

Thank you for letting me share about a man that our school will not soon forget.

Becky

I have been a total slacker when it came to going to the grocery store this week.

It is great that I have not spent a lot of money on groceries.

BUT, what it meant was, I ate out way too much last week.

Let’s see if I can remember everything.

Wed…Pizza Place, Thursday at home…Friday…Mexican Place….Sat breakfast at home…Sat lunch pizza delivery….Sat night Chili’s….Sun morning at home…Sun after church a Japenese Grill place…sun night TGIF…..

How embrassing!!!!

Mama said I would have days like that……….

n the bright side, I do have a bunch of yummy left overs in the fridge though…..

Anywho….here is what I did manage to buy.

Toilet Paper, 6 boxes of Mac and Cheese and 3 bags of the new flavored Lays Potato Chips.

I spent $4.70 at Gerbes for the chips. They were on sale for 2 for $5.00 and I had $1.00 off coupons for each one.

I spent $2.98 at Schnucks for the mac and cheese.

I spent $5.00 for the Cottonell toilet paper, but I had a credit of $7 and something from a previous mistake and I used the credit, so I did not spend anything out of pocket.

Total for the last 8 days, I have spent $7.12 UOP

I had a balance of $288.80

Now I have a balance of $281.68.

I can add another $75.00 for my Sunday update.

This gives me a grand total of $356.68 in my grocery budget.

The new sales add start tomorrow, which means this total might not stay this high for long.

How is your budget going? Have you ever blowned your budget by eating out? Did it make you feel guilty?

Here’s to a better week for me eating at home.

Do I have to count the Subway sandwich I had for dinner?????

I am not off to a very good start.

Blame it on Monday and the time change.

Becky

Whew….where did the weekend go?

How was your weekend?

Did the time change put you in a bad mood?

I am still recovering from the time change.

It usually takes me a few weeks for it to sink in that I really do have to get up an hour earlier each day.

Photo credit

Anywho, it is Monday! Yippee….

I left for work when it was dark and I came home from work when it was dark.

So where did the Daylight Savings go?

Photo Credit

Did any of you have this problem : D.

Happy Monday!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Becky