Entries from July 2007 ↓

I’m a bag lady. I just adore bags. We’re not talking purses here, although I do think a great purse is a wonderful thing, but we’re talking bags. I never was one for a cutsey diaper bag, instead I carried all our stuff in bags. I love me a good bag. You can put in your purse, your keys, your diapers, changes of clothes, whatever, and you’re good to go!

I have about 10 bags. Some are big, some aren’t quite as big, some are plain (I usually use those to carry groceries), some are fancy. I just am in love with bags.

Here’s my favorite bag. I use this one for just about everything. It’s big. It’s kind of hippy. It’s cute. It’s all cloth so I just throw it in the washer every couple weeks, and it comes out good as new, despite the juice stains and cracker crumbs that were previously there!

So the other week I spotted a bag on www.amazon.com I had to have. It was actually a diaper bag. But it didn’t really look diaper baggish. It was one of those designer diaper bags that I’ve always coveted, but would never spend the money on (if I even had it). This diaper bag was originally $129, but was marked down to $26 (so it applied for free shipping), plus I had a $15 giftcard. So I used $10 of my Payu2blog money and bought it. For THREE flippin’ weeks it traveled the U.S. at a snail’s pace. I tracked it at www.usps.com, and I swear it went to every single state in the country! I was hoping it was as good as it looked online after all this anticipation waiting for it! Well, it finally arrived, and it is PERFECTO! I heart my new bag so much! Isn’t it perty?

And while I’m on the topic of shopping, our local Penney’s lowered their clearance prices to 70% off. The discount was big enough to woo me in, but not steep enough for me to actually buy anything. However I did hit the jackpot at their final clearance rack! I got 4 things:

black, v-neck,light-weight, mid-sleeve length sweater, with cuffs that roll up, and a gather at the bust.

tan, faux wrap around, light-weight, scoop neck sweater

aqua, v-neck, crocheted button up sweater

matching aqua, ribbed cami

The total bill? $5.79!! For 4 brand new pieces that retailed for between $28-39 each, that’s not bad!

My dryer broke about a month ago. Instead of getting a new one right away and pinching our pennies for a few weeks, we are saving slowly. I feel blessed that it happened during summer and I have the luxury of waiting. Since I already hang most of my stuff to dry on the line, it hasn’t been horrible. The only problem happens when I get behind, and I can’t play catch-up, because drying on the line takes a lot of time. On a great day I can do three loads per day, but the timing has to be exactly perfect (and the weather!). But there are days that I’m busy, or the weather isn’t cooperating, and I get zero done. Anyway, today I decided I would work my booty off and catch up on everything. I have done three loads, plus 2 loads of towels, which I took the the laundermat to dry (because come on, be honest, who likes to dry them self off with a crunchy towel??).  While I was at it, I decided to hit my ’stain pile’. You know, the piece of laundry that comes out and that spot didn’t quite come out, so you throw it to the side to come back to later, but later is a lot later than sooner (did that make sense?). So I got my pile, my  bleach pen, my blue spray oxy-clean and my Shout and went to work on the stains out on the picnic table while the boys played. I would scrub, scrub, on the table, then take it over to a cement slab we have near our water hose and spray it out and wring it dry, and try again. I kept getting dirt spots on them though from the picnic table and the water hitting the dirt and getting muddy. So I was working on spots that weren’t even there when I started. Anyway, I got about half of them clean. It broke my heart that there were 4 adorable TCP one piece outfits of Warrior’s that I will have to get rid of. It really irked me since all of  stains came from other people. Bizarre since he is in my care 98% of the time. But I always put a bib on him when he eats, and I don’t give him red Gatorade. Anyway, while I was scrubbing I realized that Warrior and Forest were happily playing a game of ‘Let’s see who can rip down the most laundry from the line in 10 seconds’. Just in case you ever play it, the score to beat is about 13 pieces each. As I was cleaning that up Warrior was playing with the hose, which was off, and pretending to water the flowers, and Forest was such a helpful brother and actually turned it on for him. Warrior was so startled that he just froze and it was aiming at me and doused me good, and then he dropped the hose and it soaked one half of both of the clothes lines, and their contents. While I was cleaning that up, Forest took all my clothes with bleach on them and laid them on top of the clean wet laundry that was waiting to be hung. They were darks and bleach is quite unfriendly to darks from my experience. Ack. About 30 minutes in total, and I feel like I just ran a marathon!!! A laundry marathon that is! So I’ve decided that not only would I have starved to death in pioneer days, but I probably would be running around with stained and ripped clothing as well, if I had to do laundry the old-fashioned way!

On the bright side, yesterday we had a family day. We took the boys to a lake with sand (a little faux beach thingamajig) at a state park near us. Neither of us like lakes, but a beach isn’t in our plans for this year, and the boys have been asking, so we did it. We stayed for about an hour, which was all we could take of the dirty water, and bribed them out with promises of the playground. After that we were pretty close to a local museum (a couple of hours from home), so we went. I was so proud of us, because we were trying to save money, and we spent hardly any. We packed our lunches, the state park was free, and the museum was only $10 altogether since we lived within a certain radius. So for an entire day of family fun we spent gas money (probably $15) and $10 for tix. Forest loved it, the little shows and demonstrations we watched especially, and on our way out he said "That was fun! I really enjoyed it! Thank you Mommy and Daddy!". He sounded so grown up and was so grateful I would have done anything for him that he asked at that moment. It was a great day, and I got some good pics at the ‘beach’ before my camera died. It’s just as well that it did — sometimes i get so busy taking photos that I forget to just have fun. So even though I have chaotic moments, like the laundry today, the good/fun moments more than make up for it!

Farmer’s Markets! I went yesterday and got:

plums

green leaf lettuce

a green pepper

4 ears of corn

1 onion

1  bag of sm. white potatoes

blueberries

And one more thing, but I can’t remember for the life of me what it is right now… Anyway, I got all of this fresh, locally grown, organic produce for $11.67! I love that! It maketh me happy!

(payu2blog assignment)

   Do people really use personalized novelties from places of business? They offer so many cool things these days… personalized pens, sweat shirts, mugs, calendars, food items, clocks, etc. While I don’t think that I would use a clock, or something that is prominently displayed in my house, I do think that pens come in handy (although how you would find them to find a phone number to the business, for example, would be beyond me). We do have a mug from FedEx that my dh got from his highschool job when he worked at a mailroom of a large company, that I love. It’s just kind of odd, and fun. I’m not a t-shirt or sweatshirt person, and if I did wear one, it wouldn’t be personalized.

(payu2blog assignment)

When searching for a home, did you shop around yourself, or did you get a real estate agent? I can imagine there are benefits to each option. When you have someone helping you search, you are probably more likely to find the piece of real estate that most closely matches your desire, simply because the agent knows each property, and has access to so many options. The upside to shopping yourself is probably saving money, since you can ‘wheel and deal’ yourself. Also, you may find a cheaper piece of real estate since the owner of the property may sell for less, seeing as how they don’t have to pay a fee to an agent. I imagine when we go to look for a house (many moons from now), we will look around ourselves for a while. Well, I guess that depends on our location. If it’s a small area, that would be easier. In a large area, you may have to find an agent, just because of the sheer number of options in properties.