My husband, M, and I have this nasty little habit of buying pumpkins and then procrastinating on carving them, so I had pumpkin carving on the agenda for tonight. Just as well because Evelyn wouldn’t have had it any other way. So, as soon as dinner was over, we broke out the steak knife and the pumpkin carving tools.  Since Evie is just three (and already upset that she wouldn’t be the one to wield the knife) we decided against any of the elaborate pumpkins that we have done in years past.

Like the first year we carved pumpkins together, on our first Halloween as a married couple.

M’s turned out so well that anyone could see the resemblance. Mine.. not so much, but I am going to blame  that on the photo I used as a template and not on my skill as a carver.

Five years later, we gave self-portraits another stab. I think mine is a tad more convincing in this batch, don’t you think?

Alright, who agreed with me? Agreers will be taken out and whipped directly following this post.

That is a sentence I have never used before.

Anyway, we didn’t want to get into the whole fancy pumpkin thing this year, due to the impatience of small girls.  I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out anyway.

One of them was drawn by Evie and implemented by M. The other was both designed and carved by M.

Can you guess which is which?

Yes, the happy one was designed by my budding artist. I love his little crooked mouth. And don’t you think the angry pumpkin sort of favors M in some way?  Another self-portrait in the media of pumpkins!

And, if you were wondering what I was doing when all this pumpkin carving was going on…. I was cleaning out the centers, of course.

Because moms always seem to get all the yucky jobs. :)

(That’s okay. We also get to skim the best candy from the trick-or-treat loot.)

Happy Halloween!

]]> http://morethanalittle.com/2010/10/27/pumpkiny-goodness/feed/ 0 http://morethanalittle.com/2010/10/24/happy-birthday/ http://morethanalittle.com/2010/10/24/happy-birthday/#comments Mon, 25 Oct 2010 03:18:58 +0000 Kisha http://morethanalittle.com/?p=992 Just a quick little note to say happy birthday to my most faithful reader… my daddy!  :)

Love you!

I’m (more than a little) happy with how it turned out, though!

My plan was to use this bookcase as a…well, bookcase. Evie’s plan is to use the dollhouse as a dollhouse. This is the first day that she’s had it in her room. Guess who won? :) Maybe when she gets bored with it, I can steal a few rooms for books and pretties.

A few notes on the Barbie action in the house. I tried to subtly point out that horses do not usually go IN the house, but Evie not-so-subtly pointed out that PIPPI’S horse is in the house, so that blonde Barbie therefore became Pippi. I put the couple in the yellow room, but to get them to stand up, I fear that girl is touching her friend inappropriately. I’m sorry for ruining what should be a G-rated photo. I gave Evie all of my Barbies from when I was little, and therefore, she has a huge collection of them… but unfortunately, most of them look as if they just stepped out of 1985. The Rockers were having a little reunion there in the pink room. The reindeer? It is apparently a kitchen table. Oh, to be three again!

Anyway, we’re also halfway done with building Evie a twin-sized bed, also with plans from that site (though that project was put on the back burner while we left the country for a while this summer and then started remodeling our bathroom).  I’ll post about it when it gets done, too.  :)

Oh, and I almost forgot. This is inspired by Pottery Barn’s dollhouse bookcase. It sells for $399.  I don’t have an exact estimate of how much this cost me, but if I recall correctly, I had about fifty or sixty dollars in materials. :)  Frugal and crafty. What’s not to love? :)

There are things other than health and beauty and overpriced junk foods at drugstores, you know. :)

The funny thing is that before I went shopping yesterday, I spent an hour sorting books in the sunroom.  We switched our bedroom with Evelyn’s and in our new room, we don’t have a logical place for the bookcase that used to be in there.  We were trying to figure out where to put it and couldn’t come up with a good place for it–that’s how it ended up in our room to begin with.  So, I suggested that we consolidate our books until they fit on two bookcases instead of three instead, and move the third bookcase to the basement and use it for general storage.  Most of these books won’t get read again anyway, so why are we holding on to them?  So I spent the morning looking at my books and thinking, “Can I justify the space in my home for this book?” and the afternoon buying two new books.  :)

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Blink for their eye drops.  Blink has had several different promotions over the last couple of years that made them free, so I had a bottle in my storage area but had never tried them.  I woke up with a terrible eye irritation. I’ve been using Visine and eye washes and stuff all morning, and while the Visine helped a little bit, it stung like crazy and then finally I noticed that it was expired.  (Not sure if expiration dates on eye drops are that important? But I don’t know for sure.)  Anyway, I happened to see a bottle of Blink sitting around a little while later and thought I’d try it and it has helped IMMENSELY.  My eye feels better than it’s felt all day.  So, YAY BLINK.  And also, I would like to note that people used to ask me all the time why stores/companies do these sales that involve giving their product away for free.  This is why.  If this drop helped my eye this much, I would pay for it gladly.  If I run out and I am buying more eye drops, I will remember this and I will purchase accordingly.

With a coupon, of course.  I may have suddenly switched brand loyalties but I haven’t, you know, become a different person. ;)

Now, my apologies to those certain persons who have nagged me about not updating this blog.  It has occured to me, now that Evelyn is no longer napping and I don’t really have a good chunk of time in the afternoon to blog, that I don’t really enjoy making certain kinds of posts.  Although I’m thankful to the bloggers who do post daily deals and coupon matchups, I don’t like committing to that sort of posting schedule, and I don’t like feeling like I am just reposting every single thing I see online.  And, I do enjoy posting photos of my shopping trips, but I would enjoy it MUCH more if I didn’t feel like I should do it every time.  I don’t know, those things sort of stress me out and then I don’t post anything.

So, maybe now I will feel less stress about posting, now that I have officially given up on those things.  I mean, I wasn’t DOING them already so there’s no reason to feel guilty. :)

This picture makes me smile.  Out of curiousity today, I added up the load amounts on all 21 of the bottles (one not shown, as it’s in use)  I currently have 646 loads of laundry detergent–using their recommended amounts. I personally never use as much detergent as the bottle calls for, though, because–well, if half the recommended amount can clean poop out of diapers, then I think it can also handle normal laundry, don’t you?  Plus, I have about 2/3 of a giant 180 load box I bought at Sam’s Club before I had this stockpile of detergent–that’s an additional (estimated) 119 loads.  So, all together, I have enough detergent for 765 loads of laundry. I also have almost all the ingredients for countless batches of homemade detergent, which I was using to wash my diapers in before we phased out the diaper laundry. I probably won’t make much of that for a while… though now that I think about it, I have about one load worth of that detergent left, too. ;)

Anyway.  What you are looking at is about 2.5 years worth of laundry, (assuming I do six loads a week. That seems like a fair estimate. I do a lot of laundry for just the three of us.) or up to four and a half years if I use half the recommended amount every time.  I might have spent a dollar each for about three or four of those bottles back in the early days of my stockpile. The rest were free after coupons.

Also, that’s the new shelf my hubby added for me.  He is awesome that way.

In my house, taking out the trash is my husband’s job, but replacing the bag is mine.  (Some might say we are a touch co-dependent…)  It’s not much of a big deal in the kitchen, where I store my trash bags, but in the other rooms of the house, it’s kind of a hassle to go to the kitchen to get a bag every time I notice that the trash has been taken out.  This way, I can just reach in and grab one without stopping whatever I’m doing.   Quick and easy!

1. A normal day-to-day stockpile  won’t look much like mine, I don’t think.  Mine is tiny compared to some other folks I’ve seen online, but I think it’s pretty serious compared to the average person. I am fully intending to sell most of this stuff this summer at a yard sale.  (I’ve already sold about $30 worth of merchandise without really trying, so I’m hopeful that it will go well.)  So, keep in mind that some of these things, I have no intention of using by the sell-by dates.  If I can’t sell my 44,382 tubes of toothpaste, I’ll start giving them away.  They were paying me to take them home half the time–no loss.  So, the time spent organizing and rotating the stock of a normal person is going to be much less than what I need to spend.
2. Make a plan.  Figure out what kind of space you’re alotting to a particular item and then figure out how to stack it to maximize the space and the convenience.  If at all possible, I must have everything stacked exactly the same way.  In most cases, the direction they’re stacked will show the expiration dates.  Every so often, if I add a bunch of new items to a stock of items that I use, I’ll spend a few minutes rearranging things, if necessary, to put the newest items on top, in front or on the correct side (depending on how it’s stacked.)  A few extra minutes now and then is a valuable expenditure because if I run in to grab something while I’m in a hurry, I probably won’t take the time to scan dates before I grab one.  For example, the Pepsi is stacked so that the soonest date is on the left.  We always grab the next case from the far left of the stacks.  If I bring more Pepsi in, I will tug the stacks over to the left and insert the new cases on the right.  Then I never have to think about it again.
3. Match your stock-up price to your stock-up needs.  I was originally going to say to only stock up on what you will use in a specified period of time, but it’s a little more complicated than that.  When you see something on sale, buy enough to last you through until the next cycle.  If it’s an item that will last for a longer period of time (canned goods, boxed items, toiletries, etc) then you have a little more leeway. If something is free, or cheaper than you generally ever see the item, then stock up past what you would normally purchase for one sales cycle.  If it’s free, by all means, get as much as you can!  Things you don’t pay for today are like money in your pocket tomorrow.  If it’s free and you begin running out of time to use it… give it away. Foster goodwill with friends and family.  If it’s just cheaper than regular price, you don’t want to get so many that you would
4. Incorporate your food stockpile into your meal planning.  When you make your list every week, check out what’s in your stockpile that is nearly expired.  Last month, I noticed a box of Stovetop stuffing in the pantry that expired in the next week or two, so I pulled it out and looked at the back of the box. Before I knew it, I had made dinner using that box of stuffing and random items in my pantry.  It was a bruschetta knock-off with chicken and basil and tomatoes… pretty tasty.

Once you begin thinking about it, you begin developing a better sense for when items are about to go bad.  I admit that I make mistakes now and then, and end up throwing something away. However, I make fewer mistakes now than I did before I started my stockpile, and the cost of those mistakes are still far less than if I were paying full price all the time.  Some organization, or imperfect organization, is better than no organization, which is the “system” that I used before.

We did a little organizational work out there tonight after Evelyn went to bed, and there’s plenty left to do, but I now have six more feet of shelf storage to play with!  We also bought a shelf for the remaining wall, but it will need to be done later. For one thing, it needs to be cut to fit. I’m pretty excited about it, as you can tell.  I love impromptu successful home improvement projects!  (Especially ones that cost so little money.)

And just so you know that I am not completely insane… a good deal of the room is not filled with my shopping spoils, but random knick-knacks, junk and things we can’t bear to part with (but apparently never use) for whatever reason.

Okay, disclaimer out of the way.  This room is off my laundry room, and when you come through the door, the far wall is what I affectionately call my cereal wall.   Most of the cereal cost between $1 and $1.50 a box.  That’s a lot more than many hardcore deal shoppers would pay but we both eat cereal for breakfast almost every day.  The dates are all good, and the boxes are stacked so that the dates are visible with a glance. I foresee no problem in eating these before they go bad–as a matter of fact, this stack has been greatly rotated from the original cereal wall already.  FYI: I eat Life cereal almost all of the time.  It’s by far my favorite.

I love my cereal wall, almost as much as I love the pop wall.  These are my two favorite areas right now because they just look so well stacked.  Please note that the expiration dates on the Pepsi are mostly September and October, so we have plenty of time to drink them (they’re also stacked so that the dates are visible, and we work through them from left to right in order of expiration.)  These were purchased for about $1.57 each–prices that low are really rare so I stocked up majorly.  I wish I’d bought more, of course, but at the time it seemed excessive.  The Fresca is M’s.  Coke products are even more expensive than Pepsi products, and worse yet, they don’t carry Fresca at the drugstores.  Terrible, really.

This is an almost gratuitous picture of my baby being “helpful” while I work on the room. :) She’s wearing her “My Heart Belongs to Grandpa” shirt–I’m sure he will approve.  However, it does show my four bags of dog food (free with coupon, but no dog) and a small stack of bottled water.  Non-stockpile storage stuff is in the far corner.

Above the water and dog food is a shelf with paper towels and diapers.  We go through paper towels very slowly.  The Sparkle I actually bought without using coupons before I got into this last year.  The diapers were all either free or insanely cheap, but not in Evelyn’s size.  Her current or future diapers are in her room, either in her closet, under the crib or more commonly, spread out over the floor so she can climb on them and stack them up like giant, weird blocks.

Turning around to face the wall the door is on, there’s a big black bookcase that I re-appropriated from my husband’s garage.  We have built-in bookcases in this house, so this bookcase was being under-used in the garage, so I took it back.  It’s kind of a mess, I fear, but there’s not much I can do about it right now.  The top two shelves are out of Evelyn’s easy reach, so they are dedicated to medicines and breakables.  I tend to just stack things anywhere they’ll fit because there is just no good way to display everything well.  We have everything from Tylenol to Ben Gay to Mylanta.  As soon as I find a large, sturdy box, I’m going to clean that top shelf out and pack the unwanted meds up for a yard sale.

The next three shelves are more random. I’m particularly fond of the aluminum foil column on the far right.  I feel like I should defend my procesed food choices on the next shelf.  Most of the boxed mashed potatoes were free, overage-producing or ridiculously cheap (like, twenty cents.)  I use them, but not nearly as often as I should to warrant the giant stack.  The mac and cheese belongs to M.  He’s a kid at heart.  And of course, the bottom shelf is full of wipes. Looks like seven tubs and six refill packages.  I’ve given a few away, even.  I am well-stocked on wipes.

On top of the bookcase, I have a tub full of Glade.  Lots of Glade.  Does anyone pay for Glade?

Wedged into the corner between the bookcase and the wall, there’s a plastic storage unit stacked with more stuff.  The clear tub is full of random papery products–only partially a stockpile item.  Above that, we have the diabetes testing kits (oh, nine of them at the moment, I think)  We also have a giant pile of toothpaste there.  I can’t even imagine how much toothpaste that is, and I gave most of it away at Christmas.  That entire bag is full of toothpaste, for one thing.  This section needs work but we’re planning on adding another shelf to the wall units (which were there when we moved in) so that should help.

Here you see the drawers open a little.  The top is over-full with razors.  Ideally, the second shelf is for makeup and that sort of thing, but right now, it’s collecting overflow from the top drawer.  The bottom shelf is baby-related items.

Now, the wall beside the door has a standing set of shelves attached to it.  I’ve taken over the bottom shelves for the stockpile. Actually, this was our original stockpile, period.  It has sort of outgrown this location a little bit, though!  This is where the shampoo, hair products, body wash, face cleansers, etc go.  I counted over twenty Garnier Fructis products the other day. Again, does anyone pay for that stuff?  So very often it’s free. Amusingly enough, I was using generic Garnier shampoo back when I started coupon shopping.

Now we have the canned soup type of products.  The corn box is full of chicken stock.  The two levels of cans are chicken stock. I actually do have more than I need but there was a sale…

This used to be in our pantry in the kitchen, but we removed it and put real wooden shelves back in intsead. It lives in our little room now as inefficent storage. I mainly put canned stuff in here, but it’s terribly inconvenient. I rarely remember where anything is. Still, here it is.

Cleaning the microwave can be a pain, since all the food is crusted on.  To clean it up fast, fill a coffe cup halfway with water and add a generous splash of lemon juice. Microwave the cup until the water begins to boil.  The steam and lemon juice will allow you to wipe everything off no trouble at all.  You may need to return the cup to the microwave and reheat it if it starts getting difficult again.  Be careful not to burn yourself with the cup! Been there, done that.

Oh, and I usually use bottled lemon juice for this, and the bottle I have in the fridge for this purpose is long expired and it still works fine.  Just make sure no one uses it for food! If you don’t have lemon juice, heating water by itself will work, too, but not quite as well.