No more goodbyes at the School Bus

It's official: he's too big for good byes.

I dreaded this day as soon as I heard the news. He was big enough to ride the bus and didn't want Mom to drive him. His excitement over his announcement became contagious all summer. Every family member laughed in celebration when he told them about his upcoming adventure. Every family member except me.

I still remember that chubby faced 3 year old that loved to play with toy buses but never left my side. The 2 year old that saw trips with Mom in the car as its own adventure. Now, at the ripe old age of 6, Mom's car rides just aren't enough.

Maybe its because I see him as 6 going on 16.
Maybe it's because I'm not only prohibited from saying goodbye, but I don't get a hug or kiss either.
Maybe I'm just super-sensitive because of my upcoming departure.

No matter the reason, it's still official....

He's growing up.

 

Good Morning Starshine (last week of freedom)

Happy Monday!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday and that you were able to enjoy your family.

Let's agree to start this week off right and positive. The week after thankgiving is notorious for being hectic, overwheming and all around gloomy. I've decided that I will MAKE this week be spectacular.

This is also my last full week at home, so being able to give my family a week of "positive mom" will not only help us transition into our big change easily, but it will help me leave in a high note.

This week all of the Christmas decorations will be put up, cookies will bake and Holiday stories will be read every night. I've even bought some special Christmas gifts just from Mom/Wife and I'll have the family open them the night before I go. I was going to wait and watch them open up the gifts on skype, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get online Christmas day.

I also can't wait to make these new cookies I have planned. Of course, I'll be sharing the recipe with you all because you can't have too many cookie recipes, right?

So, I hope you all will have a great week! If you start to feel a slump or those post Turkey Day blues creep up, feel free to shoot over to twitter and give me a shout out. I'll be your cheerleader!

Turkey leftovers: pot stickers!

Every year, more and more Americans suffer from the dreaded Thanksgiving leftovers. We have so many to deal with, but not enough ideas about how to use them. You can only have so many turkey sandwiches before you want to poke your eyes out. While making our pre-holiday turkey, a light bulb went off in my head: why not pot stickers?

Pot stickers are fairly easy to make. All you need are wonton wrappers from the refrigerated section of your grocery store, soy sauce, some green onion, garlic and ginger or ginger powder. The key to making turkey pot stickers is to use the dark meat. A great pot sticker has a perfectly cooked wonton and a juicy but smooth filling inside. That dark meat from the bottom of the turkey that you never know what to do with? Yup, that's the best meat for the job.

So, in your food processor, place about 2 cups of chopped up dark meat, sliced green onion, 2 cloves of garlic chopped, a tablespoon of chopped ginger or a teaspoon of ginger powder, and a tablespoon of soy sauce. But the top on and pulse the heck out of it. You want the mixture to be as smooth as possible. If you see that its staying chunky and not coming together, add a tablespoon of water to the mix.

Still not sure how to cook your pot stickers? Check out this video from Food Network Star Sunny Anderson: Shrimp Pot Stickers

Sunny makes shrimp pot stickers, but it the same concept. She also gives quick instructions on how to freeze them at the end!

Still need another idea for those leftovers? Check out my post last year on how to use up that stuffing and gravy.

Black Friday Rules

Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be a frugal shopper's dream: lots of deals on deep discount and all you have to do is wait in line. We're the masters of waiting in line! But, if you are new to Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping, or new to the frugal lifestyle, here are some tips that might help you before you go into battle.

Frugal Week in Review

Even when life is turned upside down, I still keep it frugal! Here are some of the best frugal things I did this week:

-On Sunday, we had a small celebration of my youngest cousin's 1st birthday and DH's 31st birthday!  I offered to cook for the party since my Mother was making the two cakes. Even though the guest list doubled the day before, I was still able to use my stockpile to create a meal of balsamic and herb marinated chicken, lots of brown rice, a whole heap of buttered string beans, and a big corn casserole.

- To add to the menu even more, I saved a Subway coupon from our local store that gave us 3 footlong subs for 13.99. I got a Subway gift card from Klout as a klout perk for 10.00. So, for 3.99 we got 3 subs. I cut them into smaller sandwiches and we ate them after dinner while watching the football game.

- I got a Kohls 10.00 coupon in the mail last week. I was told I needed to pack a pillow and linens for my deployment so I got a clearance twin sheet set and a new pillow for free.

- I'm still on a mission to create and freeze meals for the family to eat while I'm gone. My goal is to make 60 and I'm at 22 right now.

- I've been obsessed with figuring out how to incorporate more tofu into our diet. I made my vegan cream of broccoli soup recipe again this week and I made a chicken and tofu stir fry. I made a quadruple batch of the stir fry and 3 of the meal servings will be frozen for Dad and the kiddos to eat while I'm gone.

- I got my free turkey from ShopRite! I'll cook it on Tuesday, pull all the meat apart on Wednesday before we leave for Ohio. One breast will be sliced and used for lunch meat, the other will be sliced and frozen with gravy for a meal, and all the other meat will be separated into freezer bags and used while I'm gone for meals. I'm hoping to get about 6 meals frozen from the turkey and to make soup when we get back from vacation.

- DH's birthday is on Saturday! Tonight, we will be going to Red Robin to celebrate. We have a rewards card for Red Robin and there is a credit for a birthday burger on there. To sweet the celebration even more, I received a FREE 25.00 Red Robin gift card from our banks rewards program. We'll eat like burger kings.

- With a bag of lentils, 2 cups of cooked brown rice and 2 packets of pink salmon, I created 3 to 4 weeks worth of toddler meals for the Duchess. I stored them in some cleaned glass ragu jars and will take them over to my Mom's house for the little girl to have for her lunches. I'm going to blog about it next week.

- I hate to admit it, but I'm a Twiheart. Dearest husband has agreed to take me to go see it on his birthday night. I have a 50.00 AMC gift card. We're going to go to the AMC that has "fork and screen" movies and have food and drinks while watching the movie. We'll have a great time for free.

- I had 3 Target coupons that needed to be used before Saturday, so we ran up to our local store to cash in. I got a free loaf of wheat bread, .99 dozen eggs, and .99 lunchable. While we were there, I even grabbed a few of the items I still need for deployment and they were surprisingly cheap. We also saved on gas. Boom.

I'm sure we did more, but that's all I can think of right now.

Deployment

Brother Hilliard has gone on to be with Jesus.

He was killed while serving in Afghanistan.

He was 33 years old.

This is the latest bereavement notice sent out to the members of my Church. As I add onto my to-do list prior to deployment, I decided to quickly check my e-mail, and this is what greets me. I immediately start to break down and cry.

This isn't my first rodeo; I've been deployed before. The same dangers accompanied me then, as they will now: mortar attacks sent by Taliban sprinkling the base, putting our heads between our legs as our plane nose dives toward theater and hope that we don't get shot out of the sky. I was ready for the challenge. I anticipated the worst and I was tougher for it. But, I'm not the girl I was before. This time, I have something of my own to lose, besides my life.

The girl that deployed last time was a single, gung ho, ready for the world woman. Old enough to enlist and vote but barely old enough to drink. A whipper snapper, as they say, and had no problem seeking adventure. She saw deployments as a chance to say "I've been there, done that" and welcomed them willingly. That girl is now a Wife. That girl is now a Mother of 2. And that girl is now a very scared woman. She's been covering her fear with business as of late; planning meals for when she's gone, buying the kids more winter clothes so they'll have things to grow in while she's away, preparing her husband for the extra jobs he'll have to endure as a temporary single parent. Anything to get her mind off the fact that she's going to the most dangerous part of the world, and will be dropped right in the middle of an ongoing war. She's going from housewife to warrior, and she's having a rough time adjusting to the upcoming change.

I'm frightened. Yes, I've said it. It doesn't help that my military job is one of the most dangerous ones around, and that if the terrorists were smart, they'd wipe out my shop first. But, that's not what's keeping me up at night. That's not what causes me to cry for hours after everyone enters a deep slumber. I'm frightened that I may not make it back. That my son may grow up reminiscing over faded memories of us together. That my daughter will only know me from pictures and videos, and not from hugs and kisses.That my Husband will have to deal with life without his true love.Frightened of leaving him with the burden of keeping memories of mom fresh in our kids' minds for the rest of his life. I'm frightened that the bereavement notice above could be mine in just a few short months.

So, my mind is at a stand-still. The closer I get to leaving, the harder it is to keep positive. As I see parents prepare for the holidays, and making plans for Christmas, I fall deeper into my emotions. I know it's my turn to go. It's my turn to serve. My turn to have heart break during the holidays in the "sandbox." I just want to know that I'll be coming back. I just want to come back.

 

Thank You....

As time ticks down, the holidays start to creep up on us, and I become more and more busy, I keep forgetting to just give thanks.

The idea of thanksgiving being around the corner makes me sit back for at least 5 minutes and just think of all the things that are going right in life. I have to say, this blog is definitely one of them. For the past 4 years, I've used this outlet as a way share our struggles to become a frugal family, the ups of saving, the downs of learning expensive lessons, paying off bills and credit cards, and just sharing what we learn about each other as a young family. This blog, to me, is love. I could be talking just to myself with each post, but it still makes me feel like I'm doing something right. Something true. Something fun.

So, I just want to say thank you to all of you. Thanks to the new readers that have found me through conferences, twitter parties, or word of mouth. Thanks to the readers that have been with me since the beginning, cheering my family on as we ventured into a life we needed to conquer in order to survive. I also want to thank the ones that have left a mark on my heart but may not visit too much anymore. I hope they learned something from me in the short time they stayed, because I know that I learned lots from them.

I also wanted to say that I'm not going anywhere. Since my announcement that I was deploying, I saw a BIG dip in the amount of readers I get on the blog daily. Deployment is hard on everyone, and its something that lots don't like to hear, or read about, so I understood the drop. But, this blog isn't going anywhere! I'm still going to write and I have posts ready to go in the next few weeks while i'm traveling to get to my destination and adjusting to my new living situation. Guest bloggers are lined up too, and (thank goodness) I'll have awesome WiFi at my base and can post, and Vlog!, a few posts a week from me. You may have thought you were getting rid of me, but no such luck. :-)

Thank you. Thank you for popping in each week to see what I'm up to, for leaving comments, for laughing at my silliness and my crazy recipes, and for being supportive. Thank you for being you.

Betty Crocker Molasses cookies winner!

Sorry it took so long to get this done; im in the middle of packing. But....we do have a winner!

Congrats to Laura from Scotch Plains! Love that someone only 2 towns over from me won something, but I love you all! :)

Laura, I've given your information to MyBlogSpark and Betty Crocker and you prize should be on its way to you in a few days.

I hope to have one more giveaway before I leave, so stay tuned. Thanks to all of you for entering.

Make your own household cleaners

One of the easiest ways to save on your budget is to make your own cleaners. You can also use a plethora of coupons to get them cheap or free, but if you are looking to be frugal AND green, making your own products is the way to go. Here are a few recipes I've found over the years that are easy and inexpensive:

Toilet bowl cleaner
Once your dish detergent bottle is half full, fill it back up with water. You can squirt it once around the inside of your bowl and scrub with your toilet brush. Easy!

Hand soap
Grate a bar of Dove soap and place in an empty hand soap dispenser. Fill with water. Or...
Once your hand soap dispenser is half full, fill back up with water.

Disinfecting spray
Place 2 teaspoons bleach in an empty spray bottle and fill up with water. Or....
Place 1/4 cup vinegar in an empty spray bottle and fill up with water.

Glass Cleaner
Place half a cup vinegar and 1 cup warm water in an empty spray bottle. Clean mirrors and glass with cleaner and newspaper for best results.

Powdered laundry detergent
Grate a bar of dove soap into a large container. Add in 1/2 cup baking soda and 1/2 cup borax cleaning powder and mix well. You should use only 1 tablespoon of the mixture for a regular load of clothes, and 2 tablespoons for a large or really dirty load.

I've written before about how to make your own homemade Oxi-clean and homemade fabric softener, so be sure to check those out as well.

Layaway is back

Lately, I've been seeing a word pop up all over the TV and internet that I haven't seen since the early 90s: Layaway.  I remember my Grandmother used to take advantage of the layaway program at her local stores and was able to get all of her grandkids presents for their birthdays....all 13 of us.  She was also a big fan of the Christmas Club at her bank. I always think I got this frugal bug from her and remember things like this convinces me even more. But, when it comes to Layaway, is it really something that benefits those of us that are already frugal?

Big stores like Walmart and Kmart are bringing retro back by offering layaway to their customers, creating an option for parents to get their kids those "must have" gifts by paying it off weekly. I'm assuming this is in response to the somewhat lackluster sales they had last holiday season. It looks like they are finally realizing that most households are trying to stay away from paying for Christmas and Hanukkah with the credit cards and if they can't pay cash, they won't get it.

This seems to be the way to go if you don't save, or shop, all year for the holidays. I see the stores participating in layaway acheiving a great increase in profit this year, just by offering this to their customers. Also, those responsible shoppers that do use it, just may leave the store with not only their layaway purchase, but with some great stocking stuffers they'll see on the way out. Again, a big plus for the companies.

Are any of you taking advantage of the layaway programs? Do you have family members that are excited about this new option?

Betty Crocker Molasses cookies (giveaway)

It's cookie season. Yup, you better believe it.

I have an obsession with cookies, so when it starts to turn cold, I get so excited to pull out my cookie sheets, my recipes and go to town. I've gone a little crazy over making holiday treats before, so the fact that i'm eagar to bake goodies the whole month of November shouldn't be surprised.

I've never had pork chops

Last week, I did a really fun writing prompt about the 22 things I've never done. I was so surprised at how many people were shocked that I've never had pork chops. Yup, never. Never Ever Ever had them. Well, did any of your ever wonder why? Wonder no more, because I'm gonna share the big secret with you.

In my parent's household, we followed a diet of no pork, no gelatin and all halal/kosher. Both of my parents are muslim and this is the religion and lifestyle we followed. I grew up with turkey and beef bacon, turkey and beef sausage, pizza with no pepperoni, and no gummy bears, skittles or starburst. Feel sorry for me yet? Don't!

It was one of those lifestyles where you never missed what you never had. I didn't know what I was missing in pork; I'd never had it and didn't realize how great it was. When I was a kid, it was upsetting to see all of my friends chowing down on skittles and marshmallows, but I got over it.

Then came the day when I smelled the most rancid smell in life: pork chops and mustard greens. My Paternal Grandmother was in no way a muslim. We would go to visit her a few times a month and every once in a while she would make mustard greens and pork chops for my Uncles to eat. I can still remember the unctuous smell of the southern meal match up; the mustard greens made my eyes water while the frying pork chops made my stomach turn. Just thinking about it makes me want to sit down somewhere and put a cold cloth on my temples. Isn't it funny how a childhood experience can effect you in your adult life? Until this day, I haven't tried pork chops, and I don't think I ever will.

Of course, there's also the fact that I am allergic to pork now. Yes, its unfortunately true. One day soon, I'll share my "pepperoni story" with you all. It involves an intense craving, a surplus of money, Dominoes and  nearby bathroom.

Thanks to Mama Kat for this week's writing prompt. It was fun!