Wordless Wednesday

Together Tuesdays

This week is our second week of having our new feature: Frugal Wedding planning.

My thought for this week is almost as important as last week (har har), we are going to talk about location.

Your first step is to find out if your dream location is a reality. If you live in Wisconsin and you're thinking a cheap castle wedding, it probably isn't going to happen. Analyze reality vs fantasy.

There are also many, many things that go into the choosing of your venue. If you want to serve meals to your guests, do you want a specific company, will the venue work with said caterer or do they only use themselves or close friends?

Honestly, my aunt cooked our meal, but this is something to know: if you are going to an owned non residential sight, and desire to have the food done by your aunt, you have to check out your venue's licenses and requirements.

Meals can vary in cost. Our dinner was only about 60 to feed 150 people. But that was with my aunt's sacrifice to cook for us and my buying ingredients on sale.

So, really check around and see what your options are before you jump into a decision.

If you are open to it, try campgrounds, state/county parks, backyards, etc.

Monday's Recipes- Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip (Like Olive Garden's!)

My husband has what I have seen in my life as “expensive” tastes. You know the restaurants that serve the nice warm hot artichoke-spinach dip? He absolutely loves that. It’s not a favorite of mine, but I like to see him happy. I have made it for him. When we feel like splurging or being fun, I write in on our menu plans, our own special phrase: Bachelor Night.
There’s a story about this…when we got together and I moved in with DH, he lived with his best friend at the time. Paul, his friend, would go grocery shopping and come back with those little pizza bites, or hamburger helper “singles” or other little mini appetizer type things and microwave them and that was lunch and/or dinner. I am not kidding, he would even buy that microwavable bacon. I shudder just thinking about it! So after Paul’s apparently eternal bachelor-hood, we named it Bachelor Night.
So, without further ado…for Hot Artichoke-Spinach dip you need…
1 cup chopped artichoke hearts (canned, or frozen than thawed)
½ c frozen, chopped spinach, thawed
8 oz cream cheese
½ c grated parmesan cheese
½ t crushed red pepper flakes
¼ t salt
1/8 t garlic powder
Dash of pepper

Boil spinach and artichoke hearts in 1 cup of water over medium heat until tender. Drain.
Heat cream cheese in small bowl in microwave. Add vegetables to cream cheese, stir well. Combine rest of ingredients, serve with tortilla chips.

Enjoy!

Sunday Goals

Wow! What a week.
This week, I accomplished a milestone-I hit the marker of having lost 5 lbs. I almost cried that morning on the scale. See, aside from my pregnancy, I have always had a hard time losing or gaining weight, which sounds okay until you realize the much of that has been spent in the state of "overweight". Now that I am regularly exercising, eating well and all, I'm feeling better.

So anyhow, I'm supposed to be writing about my goals.

Last week:
Blog at least 6 days. Lets see...I got Sun-Thursday down...just gotta get either Friday or Saturday back in there
Work out each weekday. Wed, I wound up fighting hard on my depression. I could barely get myself to do anything. So, technically I didn't do so hot on this one.
Clean 15 min each day. I did this. I am still trying to catch up but I'm trying and that is what counts.

This Week:
Blog 5 days a week
Work out Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri
Attempt to not fight with my sister while I assist her in moving on Saturday
Not lose my patience with my toddler

ABC Get To Know Me!

This is called the ABC's of me. How could I possibly pass on the chance to answer questions about myself!

A. Addiction: Redline energy drinks or books...it's a hard choice.

B. Bed size: Queen, though some nights I wish it could adjust larger.

C. Chore I hate: worst? Cleaning in general.

D. Dog or Cat?: Cat. though I do also love Dogs.

E. Essential part of my day: Breakfast. Without it, I am lost.

F. Favorite Animal: I don't really have a favorite...when I was a kid though, I loved Zebras because they came at the end of the alphabet and I thought for sure that due to that, no one paid attention to them.

G. Gold or Silver: Silver, I tend to look sickly in gold.

H. Height: 5'3" Yup, I'm a shorty.

I. Instrument I wish I could play: Guitar, than our guitar sitting around wouldn't be so pointless.

J. Job: Wife and Mom extraordinaire

K. Kids: 1 little girl

L. Living Arrangements: Own home in a suburb (almost too far out to call it that)

M. Mom's Name: Pam

N. Nickname: Sapphire, was my name as a camp counselor

O. Overnight Hospital Stay: I think only with the birth of my child.

P. Pet Peeve: When my husband doesn't look around for something that is within 3 feet of him.

Q. Quote from a movie: can't think of one.

R. RIGHTY OR LEFTY?: righty

S. SIBLINGS: technically 2 brothers and 3 sisters, but only one of each are actually in my life.

T. TV Shows:Uh...I don't really get to watch tv.

U. Underwear: What about them?

V. Vacation I am dreaming of: Ireland

W. Why I am always late: I have a toddler.

X. X-ray: Had them on my back a few times.

Y. Yummiest food the hubby makes: Sweet and Sour Meatballs from scratch (I promise I will try to post that recipe soon)

Z. Zodiac sign: Libra

So now that we have established how much I rock, what are the ABC's of you?

Wordless Wednesday With A Twist

It appears as though I was "Photo Tagged" by MN Small Town Mom.

So here are the rules to play along:

1) Go to your photo files, select the 8Th photo folder.

2) Select the 8Th photo in that folder.

3) Post that photo along with the story behind it

4) Then challenge 8 blogging friends to do the same!

Now, I don't have an 8th photo folder, in fact most of my photos are actually backed up on discs in my firebox. So, I did this by going to the 8th created album of mine on Facebook and chose the 8th photo, hope you don't mind.


This was my wedding day. This is my husband and Mother in law dancing for their "Mother-Son Dance". We chose the song "Than They Do" by Trace Adkins...I'm pretty sure this is just before MIL started tearing up.

Now to tag 8 people...
1. My Tots Exactly
2. Rational Mind of a Crazy Woman
3. How could You Not?
4. Piggy Bank Dating
5. The Happy Atheist Homemaker
6. Hearts Make Families
7. Work, Wife, Mom...life!
8. Loving and Living in TX

If I didn't tag you and you'd like to join, please, feel free to leave a comment and let me know to check out yours.

Together Tuesdays

I am working on a new feature, that I call Together Tuesdays.

I am looking at life, and so many are getting married, which is wonderful and exciting. When I was planning my wedding, it was not unheard of for weddings to breech the $10,000 mark after all said and done. So I would like to share with you how we kept our wedding down to about $2500 or less.

Our first feature is about the Dress.

Honestly...my dress was one of the most expensive parts of my wedding. My husband proposed 2 Octobers ago now, and we married last September. I began looking at dresses in February. I ended that same day. I went down to David's Bridal after hearing too many of their "$99 sale" ads.

I asked to see some of these dresses that were so cheap...but I am bigger, and they claimed that they didn't have any in my size...I still don't know to this day if they did. They brought me some truly ugly dresses. One had a giant bow on the butt and looked like they have been trying to sell it since the 1980's! Another looked fabulous-on the model in the picture of it-on me, however, it made me look even shorter than I am.

The manager than brought one and I fell in love. It was a $1200 dress marked down to $600.

We used layaway. One thing I will say is that everyone will offer you credit cards to pay for your wedding. DO NOT DO IT! Either save up, put it on layaway, or don't get it. I have never heard of someone that was happy still paying off their wedding years after the fact.

Try consignment shops and thrift stores-I have seen so many different dresses there. There is also a non profit, Brides Against Breast Cancer, if they come to your area with their donated dresses, please consider trying them. All their profits go to breast cancer research.

Also, a bit of advice from my sister is to start asking questions, how much to alter this; What is the designer and style number, etc. If they will not give you the information of the designer and style number/name-you can probably find it cheaper elsewhere!

What suggestions do you have for readers looking for wedding dresses?

Monday's Recipes- Cheese Balls

Have you ever been to a party and seen those awesome cute little cheese balls, then fell in love with the taste. Next you go to the grocery store and get all excited when you see them…and then looked at the price and put it back down. I have. Many a time. This last holiday season, despite the sales, I still could not bring myself to pay the price of those things, no matter how good it sounded.
So, I searched recipes and found this one. We all loved it, though it almost made TOO much for our small gathering of 5 adults and one toddler. It was my first time trying it though so we just used the leftovers through the week.
Here’s what I did:
2 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, softened(you can soften cream cheese either by leaving it out a few hours or microwaving it in small intervals)
1 (1 oz) package ranch dressing mix (dry)
2 ½ cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 ½ c chopped pecans
In medium size bowl, mash cream cheese. Mix dressing mix and cheddar cheese into cream cheese.
Shape into a ball.
Roll in nuts. Refrigerate covered for at least 2 hours, until ready to serve.
Don't forget about our SURPRISE Giveaway!

Sunday Goals

I am starting to get into a routine around here, which is nice, as it helps so much with getting things accomplished.

So last week's check in:
Blog Daily- I missed Friday, because it was such a busy day for me.
Exercise in some fashion each day- Check! The only week day I didn't make it to the gym was Wed, in which Lorelei and I went walking. Pretty awesome.
15 minutes each day cleaning SOMETHING in my house- I did most days, and got the hosue mostly cleaned up, at least decent enough to have people over
Try my best to get my darling daughter to STOP crawling out of her bed and stay in bed when we put her down for the night!!-this is still sucking. I wind up laying in the bedroom for up to half hour each night. If anyone has ideas that work, feel free to pass them on :D

This week's Goals:
Blog at least 6 days.
Work out each weekday.
Clean 15 min each day

What do you hope to accomplish this week?

Saturday Fun

I take weekends off from working out. Some people go every other day, I like to go M-F, and spend weekends taking care of "business" with my husband.
That being said, I still am trying to watch what I eat and how much. I have never been so overweight as to really work hard to lose it all...and now I'm becoming almost obsessed. Ultimately, I want to lose a total of 50 lbs. I know that it will take a long time to do it the most healthy ways possible, but I'm okay with that, partially because I want to form healthy habits anyways.

Part of something I would like to do is to eat less red meat. We eat 3-5 red meats a week...usually ground beef. My eye opener is that my brother in law has been diagnosed with high cholesterol. I grew up primarily on ground beef though, so I ask you all, how do you eat frugally but healthy?

Sam's Club, A day Trip

Let me start off by saying that we do NOT have a membership to any of those member's warehouse style places, currently. We had one for awhile and didn't use it enough to justify it.

When we were younger, my stepdad and his brother had a falling out. At that point, I lost contact with my cousins. Recently, we have slowly come into contact with them again, and Friday, I even went to work out with one of them.

I am rather enjoying having a work out buddy in my cousin. Not only is she awesome, but it pushes me harder. So today, while we were panting away on the elliptical, I mentioned that I had promised Mr Scratch that I would pick up steaks and we could use the grill tonight (Super Target has steak on sale for $1.99/lb!) She asked if I just wanted to go to Sam's Club with her, since she has a membership.

Although she forgot what she wanted, we got plenty there! Soil for my veggies, Ink for the printer (it equals out to at least 1 free cartridge!!!), A dress for DD, workout shorts for Mr Scratch, Some of the girl's favorite breakfast foods (that are so expensive elsewhere) and our steak. The steaks I got are enough to make not one, not two, but 6 meals for Mr Scratch and I, and I only paid $11 for the package! That's cheaper than ground beef around here!

I am very excited to get going on my veggies and see DD in that fun summer dress (a variety of clothes that she has none for this year until now)

Do you belong to a club? What makes it worth it for you?

Wordless Wednesday

In honor of hearing about many recent births, I give you a photo of the day my daughter was born...that is my nephew with us, upon discovering that he couldn't be the "apple of Auntie's eye" anymore.

Container Gardens

I am majorly bummed about something.

Our plan for this year was to finish switching out appliances, as we have a nice stove and dryer in our back shed, than empty that shed and tear it down. Not only is this shed just worn out, but it is taking up precious space where I would like to put my garden in.

We're not going to make it. My very generous friend who will be helping Mr Scratch switch said appliances out, is extremely busy right now. Sucky, but understandable. So, our vegetables will cost a little more than I intended to grow, as we will have to do a container garden.

I would like to share our expenses and plans with you.

I would like to have 13 tomato plants, 6 jalepeno pepper plants and 6 bell pepper plants.

I was also given 4 cucumber plants by my neighbor.

We decided we didn't want to invest in expensive pots, just wanted the cheap nursery style pots.

I spent a night searching online for pots. It was beginning to look hopeless! Many of the websites, I would get excited, a 5 gallon pot would only be $1.50. So, I'd load up my 'basket' with everything we needed...and shipping would cost more than the products! The added shipping would make it more worthwhile to go to the hardware store or Walmart and just buy their cheapest pots and call it a day.

Than I found this website...Alternative Gardening

Their pots were cheap...and so was their shipping.

For a total of 28 pots, and shipping, we paid $57. Most other sites were around $100 or more!

So, we ordered them, and about 4 days later, they showed up.

Next was to figure out how much soil we needed...the answer? almost 400 gallons. I knew that was going to put a hole in my pocket!

After shopping around, we got it down to $38 for all that soil.

Everything else we need has been either given to us or reused from years past, so I don't tend to count those--afterall, if I use these 'new' pots next year for seedlings, I wouldn't count them towards my total spent towards gardening!

I will be lining the pots along my back fence, so they should be fun and decorative too!

How is your gardening coming along?

Monday’s Recipes: Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken

I absolutely love the concept of a slow cooker. I use mine as often as possible. When we know that we’re going to be out and busy most of the day, I usually try to plan a slow cooker meal. One of the favorites for my family is this salsa chicken. Even my toddler loves this.
So, how to make them…
4 chicken breasts
1 cup salsa (when I have my homemade, I prefer mine, but store bought will work)
1 package taco seasoning
1 can cream of mushroom soup
½ cup reduced fat sour cream
1 can black beans (drained)
Frozen corn
1 cup rice
2 cups water

Add chicken, salsa, taco seasoning, woup, sour cream, beans and corn to crock pot. Cook on low 6-8 hours.
Shred chicken (if you are looking for a product to make this easy, Pampered Chef sells a “Mix & Chop” for under $10, I have one and LOVE it), cook rice.
Add rice to crock pot when ready to serve.

Sunday Goals

I am sad to report back on my goals this week. Most of them, I didn't do as well as I wanted. But, I have very good reason.

I am a child abuse survivor. My abuser is my biological father. Until I was 18, I had a restraining order on him. I did not renew it, as I didn't have a "just" cause to do that. My half sister sent me a message on Tuesday. A friend of his was wondering if any of us kids wanted contact with him.

I went into a panic. I freaked about protecting my daughter. The abuse was so long ago now, that at least in my state, I would have to wait until he showed up and tried to do something to get a restraining order to protect my poor little girl. I started making phone calls and have the situation mostly resolved. Now I have to begin working on my end and heal mentally from the fear he unknowingly imposed on me. I also have found out that there is an apology letter sitting with his probation officer that he did in treatment. I haven't quite figured out if I want it for sure.

That being said, I am going to take it easy on myself these next few weeks, and mostly do some very basic goals, just to get my mental health up, stop looking over my shoulder and put myself back on track. I need my normalcy back!!!

So, Check in Time!!
Last Week's Goals:

Work out a minimum of 4 days-I made it to the YMCA only 2 days this week-Wednesday and Friday. However, I didn't sit idle, so I am also counting the vigorous Wii playing on Monday (seriously, I think my heart rate was higher than when I use the treadmill!!), Tuesday, DD and I played outside a lot. Thursday, I had appointments, and yesterday I gardened a ton, with a special event today-Highway Cleanup with a local group!

Start Cleaning one room- I totally missed out on this. My living room is cleaner, but it's my toddler's fault...and nothing is where it belongs that got "cleaned". She has a new obsession lately, to find bags, buckets or other containers and put things in them. And leave them there.

Blog Daily- I almost made this one! I missed yesterday because we were at my Mom's trying to fix the brakes...again!

More items out than in-consumables not included, 2 items came in- toilet cleaner and a broom (for outside), nothing but normal trash went out this week. However, this goal did prevent me at least from buying meaningless stuff.

Lay a minimum of 15 bricks for my garden's border- I slaughtered this goal. I not only laid 15 bricks-I laid the entire last 25 bricks, than went on to mulch the front garden!

This week's Goals:
Blog Daily
Exercise in some fashion each day
15 minutes each day cleaning SOMETHING in my house
Try my best to get my darling daughter to STOP crawling out of her bed and stay in bed when we put her down for the night!!


Also! Don't forget to enter the latest GIVEAWAY (for those that needed it, there has been a clarification made on the terminology of "Summer Foods" on the post itself!)

In a Rut-Giveaway.

DH is bathing DD tonight (he usually does), and I got to thinking.

I fell off the meal-planning wagon for the last few weeks. I need to get back on, it is only leading to too many times of "I forgot to thaw something for dinner."

However, here is my biggest issue right now. It is spring. Does anyone else have this thing that when the winter months are over they want "summer food"?

I don't have very many summer recipes...really, especially not "frugal" ones. Most of them are like Stuffed Green Peppers, which I don't like to do so often because it's so much meat!

So, I would like to challenge my readers. My husband will eat nearly anything, as will my daughter.

Using either Chicken or Ground Beef (or no meat), what are your favorite summer dinners?

In fact, I'm not quite sure what I'll give away yet, but we'll make this a giveaway.

So, it's a surprise giveaway. Maybe a gift card, maybe a cookbook...maybe a recipe box and/or recipe cards, I don't know yet!

Here are the rules:

Your first entry must have:
A recipe for a summer food, this means no comfort type foods (like soups or casseroles) and your email address.

Bonus entries:
Each entry must be made into a separate comment to count.

1. You may post up to 3 total recipes for my family to try and each will be considered one entry (if posted seperately)
2. Post about this on your blog. Leave a link to your post.
3. Have 2 friends come by and say "_____" sent me (and post at least the mandatory entry)
4. Followers get a bonus entry, new or old, but you must post that comment as well.
5. Comment on any Monday Recipe post (only comments made after today will count)


To be counted, your comment must be posted by May 1st, 12:00 AM CST.

Good Luck!

****A clarification on "summer foods": In the summer, I tend to try to use my stove as little as possible, so I love to do salads (that can count as a dinner), and tend to gravitate towards a lot more "fresh" items. To me, soups and casseroles and "heavy foods" are great-for winter.

Mary, Mary How does your garden grow

Spring is springing in my area. As a child, this meant playing, as an adult, this is something totally different. I don't believe I ever noticed just how incredibly much green is out there!

We started today taking "death" out of my garden beds...and some life, in the form of weeds. So in the spirit, I wanted to take you on a small tour of the life I have planted in my yard since we have lived here...

Below are the iris bulbs I planted last fall. My neighbor showed up one day and said "do you want some Iris bulbs?" At the time, my MIL was in the process of losing her home-which she had spent 20 years landscaping. Purple irises are her favorite and she always planted them. So, I said yes, and planted them around for her.
This is just a SMALL amount, which borders my shed.

We also took much of her favorite and our favorite plants from the yard. Around the time my sister in law was born, she bought a hydrangea. Traditionally, these bloom either blue or pink. Last summer, we had balls of flowers in both colors on the same bush, we also had some that were half and half and even purple. So, of course, this bush had to come. If you look closely, the buds are starting. It was cut down for winter, as I was told to do, and I can't wait for it to start shooting up and get big again!


And here is a rosebush. I absolutely love roses, they are amongst my favorites. This is for my daughter though, whose middle name is Rose.

She also had a few fun hostas, here are a couple different varieties. I didn't know much about Hostas, and this is my first time experiencing them coming up. The more purple one we didn't think made it through the winter. However, we removed some dead leaves and there it was!

This is just a pile of SOME of the "branch-like" death we pulled out. We intend to set them aside for kindling for some fires this summer.

As you are about to notice, I rather like lilies. This is one of my five "Happy Return Lilies". They bloom all summer and just keep going.

We were given some Oriental Lilies as well, and those are shooting up, despite the fact that we had a hard time keeping them going last year.

One of my housewarming gifts was a few mint plants. I excitedly planted them...than learned they take over quickly. As each vine grows out, it roots down! These will be replaced in the garden with something else and moved into pots because I just don't want to fight them this year.

Day Lilies. I am not hugely fond of Day Lilies as they take a lot of space and each bloom only blooms for one day, I just haven't figured out what I would like there instead so they're staying for now.

And, last but not least, these are the seedlings I have started and am starting. Since the beginning of March, I have been rotating seedlings through that little greenhouse flat (which works awesome, it was only $5 at Wal-Mart too!) until they get too big for it, than they go in a larger pot with friends, and will be moved into the gardens when it's time.

Off the top of my head, there are marigolds, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, daisies, squash, canterbury bells, lavender and so much more!


What's sprouting up in your gardens?

Wordless Wednesday

I have a confession...

I was not very frugal the other day.

My husband and I have been tossing back and forth the idea of purchasing a Wii, for about 6 months. We are not very big on gaming, like some are, but as an occasional form of entertainment, we love to game. We have 2 old Playstation 2s. But it just wasn't doing it for us anymore.

We did do it in the most frugal manner possible-we purchased used/refurbished from the gaming store.

I feel like I should explain...When we got our tax return, we bought a few things we needed-like a safety rail to convert our daughter's crib to a toddler bed. We bought a car recently, being as the need came up for it. Aside from that, our return was sitting in savings. My husband was unemployed at that time and has now been at his new job 2 weeks and is doing great there.

However, I won't pay $45 for a game. I limit myself to sub-$20 games only, or save up for awhile and purchase the expensive ones out of my fun money (which usually goes to "fun" necessities like if I find a shirt for my daughter that I absolutely love)

I will hang my head in shame now ;) and go play my Wii.

Monday's Recipes-Sausage N Peppers

This is another slow cooker favorite. It can be done as a very spicy dinner or very mild.
3 lbs Italian Sausage in casings (we buy it very hot)
3 cloves crushed garlic
2-3 red bell peppers and 2-3 yellow peppers (green, if cheaper or more in your budget are also acceptable to cover all peppers)
2 cans tomato sauce
1 can tomato paste
Italian seasonings
Salt
Cut links into approximate 3 inch chunks.
Brown in pan with olive oil, turn heat down, add rest of ingredients, slow cook at least 2 ½ hours (I have been known to just toss it all into the slow cooker uncooked and let it cook all day)
We usually serve this with noodles or rice.