Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

Things I am thankful for...

Health and Happiness
Solid Marriage
Beautiful, healthy children
Church I love
Family that I adore
Great friendships
Part time job that allows me to be a full time mom.
My home

Thank you God, for the blessings in my life.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Super proud of my little guy!

http://www.lukesworld.me/2011/11/climbing-with-gideon.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LukesWorld+%28Luke%27s+World%29&m=1




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Friday, November 18, 2011

Recycled Christmas part 2

Part two-

Doing Shopping this way is not always easy and trust me I have learned that you have to weigh in your time & gas to even know if it's worth the deal.

But sometimes a little work and determination pays off. I love Pottery Barn stuff especially their kids stuff. I have received their catalogs for years even before I had kids. About 5 years ago they came out with a stainless steel kitchen that mirrored the Viking set. It sold for over a $1000 and was a limited edition. I found one on Cl earlier this year and they wanted 500.00 for it with a ton of accessories. So I thought if I bought it I could sell the accessories and only end up paying half that. Wrong. The set ended up getting in a bidding war and went for over a thousand dollars.

About two months after that I found the pink kidkraft set with a Pottery Barn dishwasher for 140.00. So we stowed it away for Christmas.

A couple months passed and we went to my sisters and G loved playing with their set so I told Josh that we should really start looking for a more gender neutral set.

So about a month later I found another set. She had just posted the listing but had included no pictures so I called her and she said that she would send pictures and that I we could pick it up that night. I about died when I saw the pictures and it was the limited edition for 300.00 plus dishes!




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So then we decided to sell the pink set we ended up getting 275.00 for the pb pink dishwasher alone and 100.00 for the sink set. Needless to say we paid less than 75.00 for this set !! It took some work, but I guarantee it would be worth all of it Christmas morning when they see it. FYI- the refrigerator & oven both have a light in them, dishwasher makes a running sound and stove burners light up! Yes I have been playing
with it :-)

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Recycled Christmas

Our children have been blessed to have many people in their lives that love them. We both come from big families and have lots of "adoptive" grandparents and Aunts/Uncles, with this being said they have been given lots of things, add having dual income parents, and a mom that loves bargains and the goodwill and garage sales... do I need to say more.

So they want for very little.

This year I wanted to keep Christmas on a budget, a tight budget, this is so simple to do when you are creative and plan ahead. I have a mental list of things we wanted to get them so I have been doing a ton of shopping on CL. I am happy to say that with the exception of a couple things that you cant find recycled, it have been a success. It has taken some work, Josh didnt necessary want to drive to Belleville after work to pick up some things, but when it saves you money my motto is you drive.

Needless to say I am super excited about Christmas. I cannot wait to see the looks on both of their faces.

We have several close friends having major health issues so the more we can save, the more we can help :-) One thing I have been reminded of lately is that life is really short and I never want to take things for granted.