Happy New Year!

Wow! What an original and creative post title huh? I am totally ashamed that I have neglected my blog for months and have not posted since September. Life has really just been crazy the past few months. The biggest news to report is that my husband and I bought our first home. We closed on the home November 24th. The few months proceeding that was spent getting the last few items on our credit reports paid and cleared off so that we owed no one anything and all creditors were reporting correctly. Then we began the process of finding a lender and house hunting. It took us about a month and about 50 houses to look at till we found our perfect home. The new house sports 5 bedrooms and 3 baths, a large living room, nice kitchen, a family room in the basement, a kitchenette in the basement, 2 car garage (stockpile!) and a nice fenced in backyard. It had everything we were looking for in a house (except a coat closet and the dining area is a bit on the small size). The day after we closed on our house we were off to California for a family vacation to visit my family (mom, dad, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews..the works), we had planned and paid for (cash) the vacation before we had even considered buying a house. We had a blast seeing the family, eating at all our favorite restaurants and visiting all our old haunts back in CA. We enjoyed the great weather, the beach, the mountains, Disneyland and all the great shopping. It was nice to visit, but alas California is not for me, too many people, too much traffic and it all just felt very overwhelming. We were in CA for a little over a week and came home to freezing Wyoming and had to get packing and moving.

I was not organized and ready for the move and couple that with not having any real time to re-coop from the vacation the house was a wreck, I did not have a chance to go though everything and weed stuff out before packing and so the moving process has been slow. We spend a weekend solid packing up all the necessities that we would need to live day to day at the new house (major furniture, clothing, kitchen stuff, TV's, computers, bath stuff etc. But we still had (have) stuff over at the house and we have slowly been bringing over stuff everyday a little at a time. Tomorrow Rusty and I are going over to pack up the last bits of stuff (we hope) and begin the cleaning process to get ready to turn over the keys.

Combine vacation+moving+Christmas+kids on vacation = crazy, hectic and chaotic life. The kids go back to school on Monday so maybe we can get back in the swing of things...

So theres my story on why I have not posted to my blog since September...and I am sticking to it!

On to the New Year!

Putting Food By

Yesterday it was a cool 56 degrees out up here in Wyoming. Which means that autumn is upon us. The garden season is almost over for us and that means harvesting and putting up for the winter months so that we can enjoy the bounty throughout the year. And while the grasshoppers have decimated my tomato crop this year I still have been able to get quite a bit of green beans, sugar snap peas, zucchini. The carrots this year have been lots of fun. I have a full crop out there now, but I cannot seem to get them out of the ground without them breaking off in the ground. I have tried digging them up with a shovel (cuts them off) and with a weed digger (bent my weed digger!) The watermelon and pumpkins we planted this year (a first time for us) have lots of leaves and vines but as of yet no fruit. Although the pumpkins have flowers so if the cold holds off we might get something...

This past weekend I spent a little time putting up food from both the garden and the grocery store too.

From the garden:

• Baked 2 batches of zucchini bread and froze (4 loafs total) - Great for snacks or a quick breakfast.
• Steamed green beans and froze (1 gallon sized freezer bag) - We like these sauteed in garlic and olive oil.
• Steamed snap peas and froze (1 gallon sized freezer bag) - Perfect for stir fries.

From the store:

• Raspberries! Albertsons had them on sale last week for $9.99 a flat (a flat is six 6 Oz. containers) and so I purchased 4 flats and frozen (1 gallon sized freezer bag plus 3 large Ziploc twist top containers) - I would have loved to freeze raspberries from my own raspberry bushes but alas my dog at the bushes, thorns and all!) - These will be used for yogurt and muffins.
• Vidalla onions. I had bought a big bag at Sam's club 2 months ago and hardly had made a dent in them so I chopped up the 6 I had left and froze them. - These are good in soups, casseroles, meat loaf etc...any dish where you are cooking the onion.

All of these items were flash frozen before putting in their respective containers. I flash freeze by getting out my two big baking sheets and lining them with my Silpat silicone pan liners (you can use plastic wrap, wax paper or even tin foil.) and putting the prepared fruits or veggies on the baking sheet and placing the sheet in the freezer for 5-6 hours till frozen solid. Then I put the frozen food into bags or containers. For the onions I tightly wrap the whole tray in plastic wrap before putting into the freezer so that my freezer does not smell like onions.

I will continue to look for deals at the grocery stores for items that I can freeze and there might be more from the garden...only time shall tell!

In other notes while I had the kitchen and freezer in work mode this weekend I went ahead and made up some meatballs, baked them in the oven, drained the fat off and flash froze them too. I had some ground turkey in the freezer and hamburger meat was on sale thanks to Labor Day sales. Pre-made meatballs are great to have on hand for quick spaghetti & meatball dinner, meatball sandwiches, or even my kids favorite...meatballs and mac-n-cheese!

So readers...did you garden this year? What are you putting up for the winter?

Halloween Costume Ideas/New Desk/Back to School

OK so the title of this facinating entry in my blog pretty much sums it up.

Halloween Costume Ideas: So I was reading over on Confessions of a Coupon Junkie that she is already working on a paid Halloween costume. Which made me think that I really need to think about what the kids are going to dress up as this year. The best part about Halloween is that my twins (Liam & Carly) birthday is on Halloween. So it is pretty fun to think of twin outfits for them. Last year they were Thing 1 and Thing 2 with their older brother Parker playing The Cat In The Hat.

Below is a rare rare picture of my children. I don't make it a habit of posting pictures of them online because there are some crazy stalker people out there. But if they have something bad to say about my cute Trick & Treat they can kiss my...you know what.

So now I need to start thinking about something cute and fun for this year. Since their birthday is Halloween we don't do a big party. We figure dressing up, eating candy and staying up late is party enough.

So I am looking for suggestions from any one that still happens to read my boring blog. LOL. Some ideas I have had is "Super Twins" (they have dubbed themselves this), Raggedy Ann & Andy, and Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum. That is all I have come up with yet.

New Desk: I ordered a new desk today from Office Depot. I get most of my office supplies there and they gave me a rewards card the other day in the mail, plus you know I had a coupon. And I was really in the market for a new desk. Looking forward to getting it delivered and set up. My old desk is starting to look pretty junky and really no matter if I declutter it once a week it gets pretty clutterd with all the coupon stuff, buisness stuff, and just STUFF! The new desk is an armoire type so that I can close it all up and contain the clutter. I will post before and after picture in a future post. Fun fact: Did you know that the smallest Office Depot location is in Gillette, Wyoming? Yeah that is what they told me today at the Gillette Office Depot. LOL

Back to School: Kids go back to school on Tuesday! Can we say ParTAY at my house! I am going to be running around tomarrow getting the last few things the kids need. Mostly stuff for Hannah since we just got her school supply list on Friday. I think we are just about stocked but there were a few things we need like 3 inch binders instead of the 1 1/2 inch ones I got on sale. And then I am debating on if I am going to get Parkers hair cut or not. He has mad curly blonde hair and I just love them. And am wondering what it would look like if I just let it grow long. Probably NOT going to cut it. But am debating it.

So that is about it in my life. Been working like a dog on behind the scenes stuff at HCW but it never feels like I am going to get caught up. PM's are crazy and I am way behind on them. But I love my work and wouldn't change for a million bucks....well maybe for 5 million. LOL

Bath & Body Works: FREE Lip Item With Any Purchase

Bath & Body Works: FREE Lip Item With Any Purchase

New coupon clipping service - The Coupon Cutters

Just a quick blog post about a new coupon clipping service on the block that you may want to give a try.

The Coupon Cutters is located out of Charlotte NC and offers a nice variety of clipped coupons and it looks like they charge about 10% of the face value of the coupon. So a $1.00 coupon is $0.10. This is pretty much the going rate if you were going to pay a handling fee at any of the coupon forums like Hotcouponworld. They do require a minimum purchase of $4.00 and shipping is $0.50 for all orders. I don't think that ordering $4.00 worth of coupons is too bad although I must admit that I am not really a big fan of them. I understand the reasoning behind the need for a minimum order. They also offer a nice VIP Gold membership for $6.95 a month or $14.95 quarterly which will you give you 50% off their handling fee, which looks like a good deal if you are one to order a lot of coupons.

Anyways..feel free to check them out and if you need a referrer when you join you can use me CouponGirls as your referrer. And you can find a link to them in my left side bar. Nice people to work with!