Christmas TV Schedule

hristmas time is upon us! One of my favorite things about this time of year is... CHRISTMAS TV! I LOVE LOVE LOVE those old Christmas cartoons, Ruldolph, Frosty, and my dear favorite, The Year Without a Santa Claus. Oh! And I just love it when they play A Christmas Story for 24 hours on Christmas eve!



Here I am to share the joy, this is the link to the 2008 Christmas TV Schedule!
Enjoy!

CLICK HERE FOR THE 2008 CHRISTMAS TV SCHEDULE!

Love,

Pack a Snack!

ith Christmas time upon us, we are all going to be spending a lot more time out and about. Whether we are at the mall shopping, walking the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights, or standing in the cold watching the Christmas Ships pass, we are bound to work up an appetite.


I am the ultimate sucker for the food court. After a couple of hours of shopping I get whisked away by the smell of deep fried everything and special sauce.

Things have changed since I've had Caleb. Before I leave somewhere I pack a lunch box for him. I fill it with animal crackers, apple sauce, fruit cups, and sometimes a PB & J sammie if we are going to be gone a long time. I've learned a valuable lesson... it is not illegal to bring a lunch sack to the mall.

Seriously though, I don't know why I never thought of it before, but the important thing is I am doing it now. Pack a food with protien and carbs and fiber so you feel nice and full and get lots of energy. A trail mix, or a package of almonds is perfect, inexpensive, and a lot less dangerous to your jean size than a hamburger or taco.

Another thing you can easily tote along is a water bottle. Water is the new air, everybody is doing it. A refillable water bottle is not just for the gym anymore, and a lot of food vendors will refill it for little or no money.

So, pack a snack to take with you while you Christmas shop. You'll feel a lot better about what you've eaten, and with all the money you save, you can get me a Christmas gift!





Love,

Frugal Friday

ere is another Frugal Friday tip for you! I noticed that when I buy dish soap, the container almost always says 2x's concentrated or something to that effect. I can only assume that this means I am supposed to use half as much of the soap, but since I transfer the soap into a pump dispenser, I am unable to control how much I squish out.

My solution? Brace yourself because it sounds kind of cheap. I dilute it. I mix it 3 parts soap, 1 part water. It works really well.

• My dishes get just as clean
• I use way less soap
• The soap lathers much quicker
• I've been using the same container of soap for over a year!

Trust me when I say that my dishes get just as clean. I am so anal retentive about my dishes. I can't stand it when were are little pieces of food left on dishes after the come out of the washer. One thing I refuse to ever ever ever do, is pick the food off with my fingernail. If for some insane reason I ever have a dish come out of the washer with a piece of anything stuck to it, I soak the dish in hot water and bleach and then rewash it in the next load.

There are a lot of things in life that I am relaxed about. There are a lot of times I will cut corners. Mark my words, I will never ever compromise the cleanliness of my dishes, and so if this dilution works for me, it will probably work for anyone out there who is within the realm of normal.

Love,

November is Almost Over

can't believe my little baby boy is 11 1/2 months old. We are only a little over 2 weeks away from his first birthday! This year has gone by so quickly. It really does seem like just yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital. Everyone told me that the first year goes by lightening fast. It isn't that I doubted anyone, it's just that you can't fully understand how true it is until you live through it.

It's interesting to me when I think that there are friends of mine, even friends living less than 30 minutes away, who have never seen Caleb. It doesn't even feel like it's been a long time since I have seen them. Now I have a child, which is a whole different way to gauge time. Oh my, now that I am thinking about it more closely, there are people I haven't even seen since before I was pregnant!

Kiddos just take up a lot of your time, I guess. I am busy all the time, but I wouldn't change it for the world.

Love,

Blogger Award! Spreading the Love!

ey! It's my first blog award. Thanks to Janell for thinking of me when it came to this one. Here are the rules... I am supposed to list 6 things I value, list 6 things I don't.

So here it goes:

I Value:
1. My God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
2. Shawn, of course.
3. Caleb, obviously.
4. Family
5. New mops
6. Bank Holidays

I Don't Value:
1. Foreign Currency
2. My Own Life (Acts 20:24)
3. The Views of an "ethical" Vegitarian.
4. Abortion proponents' views or anything they have to say on the matter.
5. Psychics
6. Socks With Holes

So there ya have it...
Love,

Frugal Friday

y mom and I are constantly giving each other our tips and tricks for shaving a little off of our everyday expenses. Today she exclaimed, "We should really start sharing this with people!" So, here it is, the first installment of Frugal Fridays.

Each week I will share a frugal living tip with you. These tips will be either something I actually do myself, or a tip that I receive from someone else. I will do my best to try out the advice before I pass it along and I will give you my thoughts on how well it worked.

Today's Frugal Friday tip is something I have been doing for the past year. I told my mom about it last week and she loves it. I tear my dryer sheets in half. It sounds simple because it is! I find that my laundry comes out just as fluffy soft when I use half a dryer sheet compared to when I use a whole sheet.

How much can you save by tearing your dryer sheets in half? My mom and I went to Costco where we bought the Kirkland brand of dryer sheets. The package cost us about $9.00 and came with two boxes. That equals around $4.50 for each of us to have a box of 246 sheets. That's a deal already! By tearing the sheets in half, we will get 492 loads of laundry dried and fluffed. That means we spent $4.50 for over a year's worth of laundry even if we do more than one load on some days!

Give it a try and let me know how you like it! My mom and I didn't even notice a difference in the laundry. Our towels were still fluffy, our sheets were still soft, and our clothes still smell like a fresh breeze!

If you have any tips for Froogle Fridays, email them to me at FrugalFridayTips@gmail.com. I might just try out your tip, and pass it along!

Love,

Blessing upon Blessing

have been doing some thinking this morning about how much the Lord has blessed me. I have sunch a wonderful husband. He is a godly man, a provider, a spiritual leader, and a great father to our son.

Our son, Caleb, is such a good boy. God says He will never give us more than we can handle, and the Good Lord must know I am weak, because Caleb is the easiest baby I have ever heard of. He was so spot on with everything developmentally that I used to tell his doctor that I thought he was a "training baby." I really felt like the Lord was making it easier on me by giving me training wheels or something. He was on a schedule early on and was sleeping 12 hours all night by about 8 1/2 weeks, and I still felt like I was at my wit's end when that time came around.

Now I have a beautiful, healthy baby boy, who is getting too big too fast. Caleb is almost a toddler now. He will be 11 months old in 2 weeks, and with his first birthday creeping up I can't help but think about how fast time is flying by. He has learned so much, and is so healthy and strong. I can truly look at him and know that I had nothing to do with it. The Lord blessed me with everything Caleb is, he is just one big ball of blessings.

Love,