Childcraftbooks, my two love them.. I loved them as a kid, and most of the out of date stuff is funny or cute not to bad (like housecalls by drs!)

After my brother and I were done with them my Aunt used them with her kids for a time, and now I have them for mine!

They have short information about all kinds of things, just enough to whett the appetite, we go get more out of the library when we need to. I have no idea how much mom paid, but it seems well worth it now!

They now retail for 470, but ebay has lots of older sets for less than $100 (some down closer to $10)

I decided to skip Sunday school and church, becauae I wanted to sleep, yet here I am not sleeping!

I also wanted to escape the problem of my 'energetic' son, life is just easier when we don't go out and don't have to worry about what he did to whom and where.

I suppose I can chalk it up to saving on gas though

I tried the pizza thing as muffins and added spinache, worked great.

I treid bacon and cornbread, worked great

And I tried carrot (bit less sweet than DivaJens--I like sweet, but isn't so good for you)

All successes! I am on a role, 3 successes in one day (should make up for the near failures of yesterday)

I have spent the morning looking for a universal muffin recipe, with no success, they all call for whole wheat or bran, which I have none.... So I am left with no recipe and I am supposed to make muffins for church tomorrow.

If I hired myself as a housekeeper I would fire me! Not that the work is terrible, but common anyone putting in a 4 hour part time day could do a better job! Trouble is I spend my day putting out the proverbial fires instead of working! Well that and hiding in the proverbial broom closet for a 'break' (what break I have an infant I can't leave!)

Anyway I am working on it...


This is sort of how I treated finances before, so long as I put out the fires nothing got to bad and I could go back to the broom closet (or housekeeping) but now that things flare up less finances are easier and I don't mind facing them most days.

i tried to make blueberry muffins banana muffins and pizza loaf.

The muffins are to 'eggy' and don't come out of the paper, so that wont get repeated. I am not even sure if I will send them in to sunday school or not (they are that bad .)

The pizza loaf is still in the oven so we shall see on that one.

edit: the pizza stuff is good, but JC doesn't like it, 3 out of 4 ain't bad though!

On request I am posting the hockey chili recipie, such as it is...

Oh and a warning, I am lousy at recipies!

2 cans black beans
1 can white
some onion powder
some pepper
some garlic.
some grnd cumin

Mix in a pot and let simmer a bit.

(real onion, pepper and such would taste better I am sure. If you are any good with dried beans that works too, I am not!)

I prolly have to explain why on earth this is called hockey chili...We used black and white beans, like a penguin, DH loves the PGH penguins, so it was hockey do GMC. As to the chili part....well I guess curry didn't sound right? Not sure. Anything slightly spicy with beans is called chili around here.

The one good thing about paying thru the nose for healthcare, Drs well-checkups are free. Which means today was no cost...well for the checkups (both kids are doing great, UE=20lb, 28inches. GMC=38lb, 42inches. .)

The trip to the store to spend the kids easter/birthday money ont he other hand...

Actually we diodn't do so terribly, JC wanted shoes with her money and found sandles, so we spent an extra couple for her to be able to get both. (am I living my girlyness thru her?)

GMC wanted a lego that they didn't have, so he got a slightly less expensive one to play with now and put the rest of his cash away.

And we got a new booster for GMC, so that JC can have his, so that UE can have hers.. complicated but tons of fun fitting all that in the car.

The troubles was lunch! DH wanted Moe's...not quite as cheap as the pbnoj I had packed, but more fun since my BIL came. The kids really like time with him.

Desk that is, PFadvice does this picture share thing and I just figured why not, I am stuck indoors due to rain anyway!


Behind the keyboard is the thumnails of one of the kids work, so I know what I have done already.


You can see both cases underneath, Mine is the pretty one with the green light . Stacked on my husbands is all the kids schoolwork, and his crappy mouse.

It was an expirament that failed.

Sometimes not having the right ingredients works well though. I invented 'hockey chili' from substituting, but last night was not one of those successes.

Edison failed a bit before making the lightbulb. I recall penicillan was an accident after many failures. My kids all failed many times before they learned to crawl, my youngest is busy failing to walk (we call it trying though).

I wonder how many failures, on average, it takes to make a success? I wonder if anyone keeps track (of their own failures, or of famous ones)?

And it has spare loot! I fibd that weird, and oddly a bit scary, what will we do with it? We waffle back and forth on what to do with the spare loot (I am using cloth diapers for a reason right?)

Some days we think it should go in the savings for the next car, some days we think it should go to pay off the house, some days we think we should get life insurance.

Right now we kindof decided to alternate pay extra on the house when they send a statement (quarterly) and put it into savings the rest of the time. This month is house, and I need to move it fast before we spend it!

Most parents tell their kids to turn off lights and close the fridge, but most of the time a kid can't see the difference in the electric bill.

I know when I was a kid I had no idea how much electricity cost, nor what benifit I would see in turning the heat down, or remembering a light.

Maybe if I got to keep the difference (or split it) I might have been interested. Makeing a game out of reducing the electric bill with tangible monthly rewards is a lot mroe fun than listening to moms dreaded lectures.

It would be a great math lesson to average a years electricity bills (or whatever you have handy) and then a nice fraction problem to share the savings (if any). Not to mention the pursuasion tactics of convincing younger siblings to join it!

Right now my kid is still young so I just tell him "more money spent on electricity is less for steaks" (his favorite meal) but as he grows I want him more in on the budget and looking at how much more expensive it is to run the AC, or leave a computer on.

Come to think of it mid June I might need to do this for myself to help keep the air off a few more days! (I'd use the ingredients for a nice bowl of icecream!)

I read this trick now that I have my third (I really could have used it for my first two!)

Take a banana, peal only one stripe, use a spoon to scoop out a hole and use it as a 'bowl' to mash up the banana for your baby.

Doesn't work for the first few meals when you might need to thin the banana, but once you are on to fork mash only, scrapping with a spoon works even better and no bowl to wash! (once the baby is done hand the rest of the banana over to an older eater.)

Last night my husband made the trip for yogurt and stopped at lowes for some bug killer. While at the grocery store he bought me roses, at lowes he bought me play sand (for the fossils, we missed doing it at the birthday party so we are going to do it in May-I think)

Later that evening he told me he used all cash, leftovers from gas money gifts (we buy gas with checkcard use cash for other things, but it all balances) and complained that all his hidden stash to buy me things was gone. I said "you did buy me something, you bought me sand" Now what kind of girl remembers the sand not the roses!!!!!

They are beautiful, and displayed in my kitchen, but apparently to me the sand for my kids is worth rememberiung in a pinch!

I actually discovered that my finances were a mess because of flylady.

Let me back up a bit. I am a disorganized person with a todo list a mile long, who always managed to pull it together for the occassion, just don't supprise me!

Well any parent will tell you kids are nothing but suprises! I discovered after having my first that my last minute ditch for paying bills or cleaning up the clutter were not going to work. Guranteed when I needed that 5 or 10 minutes of work, my son was going to need me. No matter that for the past week he took a nap at this time or played on the floor, whatever, today when I need the time that is when he would have a problem.

I tried to do it my way for months, Mostly I managed, but then I had my DD, now I had two kids needing me when I was supposed to be working, all my bandaid solutions were falling appart, I was paying overdraft fees and CC bills were piling up (using the CC to try and avoid the overdraft fees!)

I found Flylady and discovered I was not alone! I struggled with the idea that a routine is worthless when it is constantly interupted and finally hit uppon the perpetual todo list, when I am done fixing the kid 'emergency' (potty, sharing, booboos, whatever) I would go right back to wherever I was on my list. Simple right? but if my list wasn't written down, I would lose my place!

After I managed all that, life was much easier, and I again managed to get it all together err mostly. Then I discovered I had time for that dreaded thing I kept pushing further and further down the todo list in hopes it would disapear, the checkbook balancing! At first I tried dusting instead (another dreaded chore) but I discovered a calculator was still better than the duster, so I went back to the checkbook. I needed help! and Savingadvice was there for me, lots of little ideas, lots of encouragement, and best of all no telling me what an idiot I had been!

Now I have things mostly in order, but I am slipping I can't balance the checkbook a math error is escaping me, and the longer I avoid it the more hopeless I feel.

(BTW I still don't dust!)