Grocery Shopping

I was so excited to see the Kroger flyer in Sunday's paper. They are having one of their Mega sales again where if you buy 10 participating items you instantly get $5 off your total. I dropped Lily off at school this morning and Hannah and I headed to the store. I got:



5 Finish Dishwasher geltabs
3 boxes of Jell-o
5 kraft shredded cheese bags
2 Quaker boxes of granola bars
2 Rotel Tomatoes
4 Kraft Mac and cheese
4 Quaker Quakes rice snacks
4 boxes of Wheat Thins
2 boxes fruit snacks

I bought 30 participating items so $15 came off my total and then after my coupons I ended up paying $12.50 for all that.

And the Winner is....

True Random Number Generator

Min:
Max:
Result:
8
Powered by RANDOM.ORG

Looks like Karin is the winner! Congratulations and I will be sending you an email to get some info. from you.

Make sure to check back this week as I already have another giveaway planned.

My new obsession

I had recently seen a jacket dress that someone had sewn and it was love at first sight. I was really hoping it was made from a pattern that I could purchase so I could make my own for the girls and maybe save on the cost just a little bit. I turned to my friend April at Pinkebody and she happily pointed me in the right direction. I am now in love with Patty Young and modkid. I LOVE these patterns and her fabrics look absolutely beautiful. I am definately going to order the Sydney pattern and think I might get the Frida too. Then there's the fabric, I can't stop looking at the Flora & Fauna line and can't decide between the Turquoise, the Raspberry, and the Stone.

Every Girl Loves to Twirl

Lily has become obsessed with dresses and skirts lately and the frillyer (if that is even a word) the better. I had to put her Christmas dress away because she wanted to wear it every time she saw it. She has a patchwork twirl skirt in Cat In The Hat fabric that I just love and so does she. She loves to spin and twirl in it and insists on wearing it quite often. I loved it so much and I know she loved it so I thought it would be a great Christmas gift idea for my niece who is the same age. This is the one I made for her.

I was also able to make my other niece a skirt (different style) out of the same fabrics so they could match (I am a bit obsessed with matching outfits) and I got to see them this weekend in them and they were adorable. I have ordered some more fabric to make Lily a new one for this spring and summer and can't wait until Hannah gets a little bigger and is walking so I can make some for her, skirts and crawling don't seem to mix to well.

I got the pattern for the skirt from You Can Make This and I love this site. I have bought several patterns from there now and haven't been dispointed once. They have patterns for all kinds of things too, not just clothes.

Smoothies!

Lily is a big fan of smoothies and has been ever since I started making them for her about a year ago. If she even hears the sound of the blender she will come running from where ever she is expecting a smoothie. Normally I just throw together whatever we have, frozen fruit or fresh if we have it, whatever flavor yogurt is in the fridge and a little juice. Recently I had seen Yoplait's new Smoothie in a big in the freezer section of the grocery store. I had been wanting to give them a try and was excited to get a chance to do so for free. Yoplait and MyBlogSpark were kind enough to provide me with a Smoothie gift pack which included a coupon for a free Yoplait Smoothie bag and a Hamilton Beach Single-Serve Blender.

My grocery store carries three different flavors of the Smoothie, Triple Berry, Strawberry and Banana, and Strawberry Mango Pineapple. I chose the Triple Berry. It was so easy to make, you just add milk to the frozen and frozen yogurt chunks in the bag and blend.

Each bag holds two servings and each serving is equal to a whole serving of fruit. It was really good! I managed to sneak a few sips before handing the cup over to Lily.

She loved it too and finished it in a matter of minutes and was asking for more.

Now some good news, Yoplait and MyBlogSpark will provide a winner with the same gift pack that I received. Just leave a comment about your favorite Smoothie or which flavor you'd like to try and a winner will be chosen at random on Saturday the 23rd after 8 pm (est).

If you can't wait to see if you can win you can go here to print a coupon on Yoplait Smoothie.

Julie & Julia

Have you seen this movie? I went to see it this fall with my mom and we both liked it. Colin of course wanted nothing to do with it so while my parents were visiting Mom and I left the girls with the men and headed out. I thought it was a cute funny movie but think Colin made a wise decision to stay home, this was definately not his kind of movie. The only problem is I have a slight cook book obsession and now I really want Julia Child's cookbook. As much as I love to get a new cookbook and go through it page by page I rarely actually use them. So for now I shall continue to simply gaze longingly at Julia's book on Amazon.

The Princess

Lily has a new found love of anything princess. She watch The Little Mermaid for 10 hours straight on our drive back home from Connecticut. She can also sing parts of the songs from Cinderella and Snow White she has seen them so many times. I think that she is starting to believe that she actually is a princess. One of her Christmas presents was some dress up outfits that she immediately fell in love with. We had a hard time getting her to take off the princess dresses so that we could change her clothes. The other night we were going to go out to dinner but I wouldn't let her wear the princess dress so she voted for take out instead.

Opening presents on Christmas eve wearing one of her dresses already, it was one of the first things she opened so most of our pictures look like this. She is also opening the Disney Princess TV Uncle Drew got for her.

The next day wearing a different princess dress, same pajamas underneath.

Making Vanilla

I LOVE vanilla! In my opinion you can never have too much vanilla in a recipe. I always add extra in any recipe I am making that calls for it. I've read about making your own vanilla at home a couple times now and decide to give it a shot. I went online and ordered a half a pound of vanilla beans (much cheaper than buying at the grocery store) and they arrived yesterday. After dropping Lily off at preschool this morning Hannah and I made a little stop at the ABC store and picked up some vodka.

I figured if regular vodka was good for making vanilla then Vanilla vodka should make it even better. I got a bottle of each for my little experiment. The better the vodka the better it will taste, you don't want that cheap vodka after taste. I poured 6 ounces into each jar and added 4 beans to each. I cut the beans in half and then split them down the middle (don't scrape them) and dropped them in.

I gave each jar a little shake (shake every few days) and in a mere three months I should have some homemade vanilla. I can't wait to see how they turn out and if the Vanilla vodka one tastes any stronger/different.

I of course still have a ton of beans left and am excited to start using them too. I am going to try these waffles this weekend.

Blizzard '09

I am a little late on this one since this was a couple weeks ago but there is just a tiny bit of the snow left on the ground in some places so I think I am doing ok. This was our front yard right before we left for Connecticut before Christmas. Lily could not wait to get out in the snow and play. Colin on the other hand couldn't wait to come back inside. He was frozen and Lily was perfectly fine other than some red cheecks. The snow was 6-9 inches deep and she could barely move in it especially since she had A LOT of layers on. We don't buy snow pants let alone snow boots since events like this don't happen often around here so she had a pair of leggings and two pairs of fleece pants on and her green frog rain boots.