It has been a quiet week here. My sister in law stayed with us for a few days. She was a huge help. The kids have been a little ornery lately so yesterday she and I took them to the Science Center. Then we picked up Will and went and had a picnic lunch at Grays Lake. Sitting in the van of course. It was way to cold to be out yesterday.

Today Brodie is running a fever and is very quiet. I am not sure what that is all about. He just complains of a headache. He is sleeping now so hopefully he will be better after some rest. This morning we got some Valentine crafts in. No one was really in the mood so we ended up just playing most of the morning.

Other than that, not much else has been going on here recently.

We finally got the little boys outside for a bit this past weekend. It is going to be cold again for a couple days then be back up in the 40's. I am glad I will be able to take them out. The problem will be all the melting snow. It will be a sloppy mess in our backyard.
We had a nice weekend. Friday night was spent nice and quiet. We just hung out and Will messed on the computer while I got some reading done. We celebrated my sisters birthday at my moms house Saturday night. Then mom, Joel and Jen came over and we played some cards. Sunday of course was spent watching the Superbowl. Unfortunately I had to cash in early due to a migraine. I am really getting aggravated with my headaches. Anyway...

We finished the letter "J" last week. Here is a poster we made. I decided to take a break from starting "K" this week and we will do some Valentine activities instead.

Tonight we have Piano practice and then we are heading out to dinner to celebrate our accomplishing 30 days of nothing. I am pretty excited about that. Guess where we will go?

Hope everyone enjoys the game today. We are having some friends over. Should be a lot of fun with lots of good eats! Above are some of the cookies we made for game day!

Day 30

We did it! We made it through our 30 days of nothing! It really wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I am really proud of all of us. There was a few days where we struggled to stay focused but we never cheated. We achieved our goal of of spending $30 for the entire month on groceries. We spent only $5 on entertainment purposes for parking one day. We spent no money on clothes, books, movies or fast food! We only paid for our monthly bills. We kept our energy use down and we conserved our water.

It is going to be difficult to judge just how much money we saved on utilities but I know we have made a difference. We have learned new ideas and strategy's that will stick with us and become part of our everyday life.

As far as spending-it was actually really nice to be successful at not spending any money this month because now I know we can do it! It is going to be a challenge for me each month now to see what we can cut back on, what we can do with out and what we can save.

My goal is to stay living this frugal lifestyle. Maybe not to the extreme as this past month, but I am definitely going to be more aware of what is spent. I will constantly be looking for new ways to save. To help me with that I am actually going to be starting another blog. While I will still be updating this blog frequently, this blog will mostly revolve around our family life and what is going on with us. My new blog will be dedicated to frugal living. My goal is to post tips, coupons, bargains and other ideas to help spend less and save more. If this sounds like something you might be interested in then please join me at Learning The Frugal Life.

Day 28 and 29

We have almost made it!! Tomorrow will be our last day of "nothing". NO money has been spent at all these last couple of days. There is definitely going to be some things that we have changed around here that will stick with me. I will talk all about the experience when it is actually over. I have some exciting things planned.


On the home front things are ok. Everyone has been a little on edge. I am sure some of it is due to the weather and all of us being cooped up all the time. It could also be because we have an almost teenager in the house, and 3 very active other boys. There is never any down time. I don't really have anything interesting to write about so I won't bore you with nonsense. Have a good evening- hope your staying warm.

Day 27

Yesterday was a relatively quiet day for us. If you can really say that with 4 boys in the house. 5 actually because Jake had a friend over after school. I took the little boys to the library in the morning. Yes, by myself. This is the first time I have done it in awhile. I wouldn't say it went great but it was manageable. There was a little fighting and pouting over the train table.

After that we headed to the mall to play on the indoor play equipment there. That was not fun because there was some children in there that were completely loud and the parents were doing nothing. And to top it off the wonderful smelly goodness of Auntie Annies pretzels is right by the play thing. My favorite. We only stayed about 20 minutes and left. So that was kind of a waste but the boys seemed to have had a good time and it wore them out. I myself had a headache when we left. We are just so tired of being cooped up in the house. I really want it to get warm.

We didn't spend any money yesterday. We spent enough the day before to fix our heat :(
My fridge is looking pretty bare. This is going to be a tough couple days because we are running low on everything. Not that we will starve or anything. I know we still have lots of stuff to eat. There is just not so much variety.

New Tot Book

Here is the new Tot book I made Brodie. If you remember reading in the past I have made him a Cars book and Curious George. He really loves these. He always wants to get them out and look at them. This one is all about construction trucks, his favorite! If you are interested in making this one or any others this blog called 1+1+1=1 has them to download.

Also here is a picture of the new color game I made for the boys. I made one for each of them. I just matched up the paint with the colored pom poms I had and painted the egg holders. The boys have to put the pom poms in the correct color.

This week is the letter "J" Here are the jellyfish we made yesterday. Brodie loved watching the videos of jellyfish I found online. I couldn't break him away! And it was really funny listening to him trying to say tentacles!