My domestic tips for today.

1) If your husband (or you!) snores like a rusty chainsaw, go to IKEA and buy this pillow . You'll have the quietest night in your 10+ years of marriage.
Get one for yourself too and, for the first time in over a year, you won't wake up with your bad shoulder screaming in pain.
A quiet husband and shoulder? Definitely worth $40 plus tax.
2) Shave all their heads. All of them. Save yourself an hour of cleaning hair off the beater bars of your swivel sweeper and vacuum. If you own a set of clippers you'll save on haircuts too.

Where did I put those clippers?

Meal Plan and GC update.

Since we only have $13 left in the grocery envelope I am only meal planning to get us through to Thursday when we refill it.
We needed a couple things from the store for tonight's dinner and lucked across some marked down items that provided inspiration for the meals we need.
We spent the $13 ($12.45 but I usually just round up.)

Dinners
~Baked Potato Bar (Chili, broccoli, cheese, sour cream), Salad
~Sausage Strata, Salad
~Clam Chowder, Homemade Bread
~Chicken and Green chili casserole, chips, guac and salsa, corn
~BBQ ribs, baked beans and potato salad (leftover from last week's meal plan since we went out for a family date one night)

Breakfasts
~pancakes and eggs
~french toast and fruit
~apple muffins (need to find a recipe)
~eggs and toast

I stumbled upon our ornaments for this year!

Every year I make or buy special ornaments for each member of the family. You can see last year's HERE. I hadn't decided what to do this year since the budget is so tight. I toyed with the idea of vinyl lettering on glass or plastic balls. But I'd have to order the vinyl names which would take money and time.
Today I was checking out the blog of one of my PYP pals (I swear there's nothing I can't learn from these people!) and she had a link on her blog to another blog which had the instructions to make these cute little origami stars. I thought they would be PERFECT!!
So I grabbed a magazine and tore out a few pages with colorful images. And I went to work making stars. Then I turned those into a wreath and wrote my name and the year on it. I wish I was better at lettering but I think they'll do.
We'll have a family activity later and everyone else can make their own.
Total cost: $0

I've also decided to only make ornaments for those still living at home. I figured that the grown kids would like to have traditions of their own with their own children. Besides, the family is so big now with kids, kids in law and grandbabies that we'd have to rent space for our Christmas
tree pretty soon. LOL

Thena Bean's Christmas Present!

That is such a fun to put together quilt pattern! Now I'm onto the smaller, quicker projects.

Showing it off at Blue Cricket Design

527

The number of times I have spoken the words
"Don't touch the Christmas tree!"
in the past 72 hours.

I'm not sure if we'll even bother putting out the rest of the decorations till 2015.

Family Date Night

Last night we had a fun night out.
I won tickets to a sneak preview of a new movie, Nothing Like The Holidays.
We had take-out for dinner (paid for with the Date Night budget) and then we left Jaxon to play with Bobbie while Roger, Kenzie, Emily and I went to see the movie.
It was a good movie. Funny in parts. I was expecting it to be a comedy but there was a lot of drama in it too. I don't think it'll win any awards but we had a good time out as a family.
Thanks to PYP for helping out our budget in yet another way. :)

I'm almost done with the second big Christmas present. I'll finish it up today. Then it's time to crank out all the smaller projects.
How many days till Christmas? OY!!

GC Update

Had to buy more liquid water. As opposed to the semi solid stuff that comes from our tap. ;)
$3 spent
Here comes the hard part of the challenge. There's only ONE Diet Coke left.
So I'll be using this water to make some iced tea.
This will have to get me thru till at least next Thursday.
YIKES!
But, who knows, maybe I'll kick the DC habit. That wouldn't be so bad.
And this leaves $13 in my grocery envelope. Tight squeeze for the next week!