The End of Summer

Tomorrow is the beginning of a new school year - and I must say I'm kinda glad!!  These two kids have had more than their fill of each other and are at each other's throats!  When they are only together a few hours a day, they seem to get along better.

We pretty much laid low here at home for the whole holiday weekend.  We finally moved in to the new addition on the house last weekend, so we spent this weekend working on little things around here.  Hubby moved a bunch of furniture around.  Our addition has a mudroom, half bathroom, and our new living room.  We will also have a new bedroom upstairs once the stairs get cut in.  Our old living room became our new dining room, and our old dining room is in the process of being converted into an office/craft room for me.  It will also be our classroom for homeschooling.

We had one super exciting thing happen today though.  Hubby found my wedding and engagement rings, which have been missing since before Baden was born!!  I swore he had put them somewhere, but he insisted he had given them to me.  When he was cleaning off the china hutch (which is too tall for me to reach), he found both of them, in the baggie, on top!  I was SO excited!!  I was positive they were lost forever!  It's still going to be 30 weeks until I can wear them, but at least now I know where it is.  I'm going to put them in my safety deposit box just so I don't have to worry about them until it's time to get them fixed.

I tried another new recipe today - made a low carb veggie cheese soup.  I'm working on a post with the diabetic-friendly recipes, so when I have a few, I'll post that :)  I was surprised, no one noticed the lack of potatoes or meat in the soup.  Hubby even went back for seconds!  Now THAT is a compliment!

I also spent quite a bit of time prepping food today.  We had picked up a box of snack sized baggies when we were at the store yesterday.  In addition to chopping veggies for stir fry tomorrow, I prepped snacks for the kids.  I measured out (a little less than a whole serving) of pretzel sticks into baggies, and Cheez-its.  I prepped bags of green and purple grapes and put into the freezer.  Grapes are great frozen, and if packed for lunch, should be thawed by lunchtime.  I sliced up strawberries for the fridge, and make our own pudding cups in Gladware containers.  The package said 6 servings, which I easily split into 8, and cost about the same to make as it would be to buy a 4 pack of pre-made cups.  Yogurt was on sale, so we picked up a bunch of those along with some string cheese.  I explained to the kids that these snacks are not just "whenever" snacks - they are for snack break, after school snacks, or to pack with lunches.  They need to ask before just helping themselves (which is the habit that Scrappy somehow got into lately and I'm trying to break!)  We'll see how it goes. 

I suppose I should get to bed early since the kids are in bed and will be needing to get up early.  Night!!

Pain Relief!

On Friday I had gone to the dentist.  I lost a filling in one of my back teeth, and then the tooth broke even more.  I had been playing phone tag with one of the dentists in town for a while, but they stopped returning my calls.  Of course whenever I tried calling them, I always got the answering machine.  After talking to hubby, we decided I should just take a little bit of money out of our construction fund to pay for my tooth since we don't have dental insurance.  Fortunately I was able to get into a different dental clinic a few towns away.  I had been there before and they are VERY good!!  I called Friday morning and was able to get in Friday afternoon.  Because of the break, the dentist recommended I have it pulled because a crown and root canal would not have been worth the expense.

As my luck has it, I ended up getting dry socket over the weekend :(  That made for a very crabby mom considering it acted up the worst at night, so I got very little sleep.  This morning I called at 8:02am and was able to get in at 9!!  I checked in and had literally just sat down when the nurse called me back.  Of course it hurt like crazy when the dentist stuck the packing in my socket - it's basically gauze with medication on it and a wire running through it.  But after a little bit, the pain started to dull.  Now I can barely feel it.  I have to go back on Wednesday to have the packing removed and to see if it needs to be repacked.  I was told it is possible the packing may fall out in the meantime, but hopefully it doesn't!!

I still can't believe the year is over!!!  In another month or so, hopefully the addition will be done.  A couple friends of mine said if I provide beverages, they would come over to help paint.  (I think that's why hubs said we should paint before we put the flooring or trim in! haha!)

There's not a lot to see on the inside yet.  The bathroom, closet, and half wall are framed, but I don't have pictures of all that yet.

I am also looking for more ways to save some money this year.  I have been reading a few blogs.  This one is by far my favorite for ideas and inspirations for everything and anything you can think of!  I also like what I've found on this one so far too.  It helps to break the daunting tasks associated with minimalizing into small steps to add into your daily routine.

Well, since it IS New Year's, I suppose I need to get ready to celebrate with my munchkins.  They just informed me they are having a slumber party in the living room :/  I told them they needed to clean up the living room before we do anything.  Daddy is on snack duty and is hitting up the store for some sparkling grape juice and chips for the kiddos, and hopefully bringing home a bottle of wine for us to share.

Have a safe and happy New Year!

Fair Week

I still haven't figured out why it's the "6 best days of summer" because honestly I could do with only 3 days, but  it is what it is.  I'm sitting out here, in the heat and humidity (which is actually kinda low on both aspects right now) trying to make contacts, trying to talk to people, trying to expand on my business.  


It's fun seeing some friends I haven't seen in a while.  Honestly there are a few people I've seen that I'd rather avoid, but that hasn't been too much of a problem either.  I had debated if it would be worth the expense of spending all week at the booth and paying out for it, but I'm at a point that I'm not sure what else to do to make new contacts.  So here I am!!!


My display actually looks pretty good

and my husband was pretty creative at setting up a display for my wall hangings.

Who would have thought some shelves set up on end would work to display pictures?  Just zip-tied them together and voila!


My hubby is bringing the kids out tonight.  We usually make the kids save up their own money to use at the fair, but this past year has been quite the exception to the rule.  I picked up some discounted wrist band passes for them.  Fortunately we don't have to worry about paying to get into the fair, though, because I get a couple Exhibitor passes that cover one adult admission plus parking.  They seem to cover the kids too, since we've never been charged for them.  Otherwise I'm not sure we'd be coming out this year.


It looks like we're going to be doing some demo in the very near future.  I talked to our contractor, and the trusses are ready (finally!), so he'll be starting soon.  I can't wait to finally have an office area!!  Beau is excited about her new room, of course.  And I'm sure Scraps is going to love all the new area to play in.


My homework is calling - I'm trying to take advantage of the quiet study time I have in between customers (it's pretty slow during the day).