Kids Ain't Cheap

But They Sure Are Worth It

Archives for June 2011

Score! Dinosaur T-Shirts

| Leave a Comment

Never Forget Dinosaur T-ShirtMy youngest son is a big Batman fan and where I work, I can get him Batman t-shirts for half off so he has a bunch of them. His older brother, despite all of my attempts, is just not into superheros but he LOVES dinosaurs. He is completely obsessed with everything dinosaur related. Almost every morning, he is disappointed in the clothes I pick out for him because he only has one dinosaur t-shirt. He wears it the day it comes out of the wash and then it’s in his hamper for a week so he is happy with his clothing choice one day a week. Oh the troubles of a 5 year old.

Where to buy dinosaur t-shirts

Now that it’s getting hot out I am determined to increase his dinosaur wardrobe. I came across a pretty comprehensive list on another blog of Dinosaur T-Shirts for Kids and Adults. The first one is the one he already owns, Santa brought it for him this past Christmas but that’s it, he doesn’t have any of the others. We don’t have a lot of money as I have highlighted on this blog before and these shirts are more expensive than most of the clothes we buy for the boys (we go to consignment shops and big box stores mostly). However, he was so excited at the thought of getting a few of these that I just can’t deny him. We are going to get him 3. We were going to buy him one a month for the rest of the Summer but it’s cheaper to get all 3 now and save on shipping so that is what we are going to do. Once we get them I will do a review of a few of them.

P.S. – We ordered them today and Harrison has already asked me twice if they are here yet.

Where do you get themed clothing for your children?

The House is Finished, WooHoo

| Leave a Comment

Vintage Triang dolls house cleaning suppliesIf you’ve noticed, I’ve been a little quiet lately.  It’s  because we are finally done working on the house and as of this week it is officially on the market.  Our house has never looked this good and I have lived here for 9 years now.  It’s not to say we didn’t work on it in those 9 years but life always seemed to get in the way of this house realizing it’s full potential.

We worked our butts off over the last 2 months and we are very proud with what we have accomplished.  We worked together as a family and it really looks impressive.  Part of me regrets that it took us this long to get this house looking this way but a much bigger part of me is ready to move on to our next adventure.  We can feel good that we will be selling someone a starter home that is in wonderful condition.

The Realtor had a photographer come through and take pictures today so as soon as they are posted I will post them here.

Have you ever sold a house? What did you do to prepare?

Little Girl Can’t Let Go as Father Prepares for Deployment

| Leave a Comment

Wow, what a powerful and incredibly sweet picture.  The solder next to the little girl is a local.  He lives and raises his family in my part of the country.  When the local paper ran this picture, I just about cried.  It’s so sweet and powerful.  Having a little 4 year old girl in formation is against Army regulations but not a single man there was strong enough or heartless enough to tell that little girl she couldn’t stand by her fathers side as he prepared to deploy overseas.  You can read the full article in my local paper here

Salute.

Doesn’t a story like this just warm your heart? Do you know of any other examples like this?

My Mission if I Choose to Accept it… Couponing

| Leave a Comment

Couponing! I talked about it in my extreme couponing post. I mentioned how my husband and I have attempted to use coupons — and how we just haven’t been very good at it. BUT, something inside of me  keeps pushing me to really give a go. It could be all the episodes of Extreme Couponing that I’ve been watching,maybe it has something to do with the fact that my Mom hands me a stack of coupons every time I see her, maybe it’s the blogs I’ve been reading, or maybe it was my friend telling me how much she saved and how she did it.

My guess is that it is a combination of all of these things. So — I have now made the decision to really try this coupon thing and see where it takes me. Now, before you all start worrying about me — I’ll just say upfront that I won’t be stock piling a bunch of stuff, or buying things I know my family and I will not be able to use within a reasonable amount of time (unless of course I plan on donating it or something). My husband has clutter-phobia!

Okay fine — maybe he’s not afraid of clutter but it drives him nuts and makes it makes him grumpy. So even if I wanted to store toilet paper under the beds, or soup in the fireplace — he would have none of it.

Let’s Get Started

After speaking with my friend – who has shared some of her couponing tips with me – I decided to see what I could do. Sunday morning, I headed to the store and bought two newspapers. I figured if I’m going to do this, I might as well make sure I had a good amount of coupons. I really wasn’t confident enough in my abilities to buy five papers — which I am told (by my mother-in-law who took a couponing class) is the amount of papers serious coupon experts purchase.

Got Coupons ~ Now What Do I do?

I spent some time comparing the coupons I had on hand (that my Mom had given me the week before) with the weekly ads. One store had double coupons. Sweet!

I was also elated to discover that there are wonderful people who do the coupon comparisons for you  — and it’s free. All you have to do is follow their blog. There are two ladies in my area – that I follow – who do this. I have “liked” their pages on Facebook and these fantastic coupon mavens post a LOT of great stuff. Not just grocery deals either. They post restaurant, department store, and internet deals as well.

If you do some research and I am sure you will find someone in your area who does this too. I would start by checking out Facebook and twitter — this will then link you directly to their blog.

An example of what I can find on my favorite coupon web sites is this:

American Beauty Pasta $1.25/$0.75
$0.55/1 Quick Cook coupon from 4/17 Smart Source (if included)
Bottom line: $0.20

She tells me the store, the coupon, and the date it was in the paper. Then she includes my most favorite part — the bottom line (how much I have to spend).

I don’t know all of the ins and outs of couponing and I don’t pretend to, but I am learning and as I do I’ll share some of my experience with you.

One thing I have learned, is that couponing people are super sweet and love to pass the savings on to others who love to save. My most recent example of this is happened when I was at the grocery store on Monday. I was feeling pretty good about myself because I found a fantastic deal on Raisin Bran Crunch cereal. I also had two coupons with doublers. As I was standing in line, the woman next to me saw that I had the coupons in my hot little hands. She ended up giving me 2 better coupons, telling me that if I bought four boxes of cereal — I would get an in-store coupon (aka Catalina) for a free milk. She even saved my place in line as I ran to get the other two boxes! THEN she made sure I had the doublers because she was going to offer me some of hers! I saved even more money, got even more cereal AND a free milk all because of her generosity. Very nice. She even apologized for all the coupons (she didn’t really have very many actually) and said that she and her husband were taking their kids to Disneyland because of the money she saves couponing. I say…sign me up! 🙂

Do you have a coupon story to share? Any tips or a favorite couponing web site?

Almost There…. Almost There…. I Hope!

| Leave a Comment

For Sale Sign for HouseFor the last couple of months my wife and I have been working very hard to get our house ready to sell. I mentioned in an earlier blog post that we are are buying my Mother-In-Law’s house. It’s where my wife grew up and it’s surrounded by her family and their family farm. I can’t wait. I love the property and get along with her family very well.

A lot of work involved in preparing a home for sale

Unfortunately, our house is old and had 30 different projects we either started or meant to start to improve it. We really felt like most of these projects needed to be done so the house was the best we could make it before we put it up for sale. Unfortunately, it seems like every time we finished a project, it created 5 more either because they needed to be done or fixing one thing broke another thing.

It’s been a real struggle with real challenges that needed to be overcome. We both work full time and want to make sure we get in as much quality family time as we can with the kids. I have 3 herniated discs, one of which is really bad, so I have to be very careful about what I lift and make sure I don’t overdue it. And of course, we needed to get all these projects done on a strict budget. We had some big ticket items that were unavoidable like a new roof and new gutters so we tried our best to do all of the work that we could do ourselves.

I am happy to say that we are almost done. Another good weekends worth of effort and I think we can finally call the realtor and get this house on the market. Let’s just hope that after all this hard work and money, it sells quickly and at a good price.

Have you ever prepared a home for sale? How much work did you have to do to get it ready?