Bluebonnets To Peaches

I’m not taking credit for this idea, I totally stole the idea from my neighbor Jill!  It is so cute that I just have to share it with all of you!

The idea is to have the kids spell out letters with their bodies and photograph each letter.  Next find a frame (I got mine at Michael’s for about $20, half off) and frame out a word.  I could only find a frame with 3 or 4 picture spots so I framed the word “LOVE.”  Other words you could frame are hope or joy.  If you can find a 5 picture frame you could do the words faith or peace.

Another mom and I took advantage of the teacher enjoying lunch for teacher appreciation week and were able to photograph the kids without the teacher knowing!  We are giving this gift to our first grade teacher as an end of the year gift and the best part is that she has no idea!  I think she will love it!

Another idea is to auction the picture at your schools silent auction – this is how Jill got her picture of her sons preschool class!  What parent wouldn’t want this framed art?

I have not posted about my Publix deals in some time, so I’ll share this weeks grocery trip.  I did score 2 free items this week! One free box of wheat thins (using a coupon for a free box when you purchase a box of Ritz crackers, which were BOGOF this week) and a free package of sister schubert rolls.  The rolls were marked on “clearance” for $1 (they are frozen rolls!) as an in store special and I had a .50 coupon that doubled making them FREE!

• Bag of Salad $1.99
• Tombstone Pizza BOGOF $2.90
• 3 Pilssbury Crescent Rolls, less .40 and .25 coupons, both doubled = $1.23 each
• Milk $2.00
• Sister Schubert Rolls (in store special) $1, less .50 coupon doubled = FREE
• 2 Yoplait Gogurt, less .75 coupon = $2.42 each
• Bread $2.00
• Eggs .99
• Doritos BOGOF = $2.00
• 2 Ritz Crackers BOGOF, less $1 coupon = $1.25 each
• Keebler Snack Sticks BOGOF = $1.99
• Nabisco Wheat Thins = FREE
• Wesson Oil = $2.00
• Publix Window Cleaner (mystery coupon item) = .01
• 2 BBQ sauce, less $1 coupon = .65 each
• Oilve Oil BOGOF = $3.50
• BIC Grill Lighter BOGOF less $1 coupon = .75
• Garlic Salt BOGOF, less .50 coupon doubled = .85
• 3 Lipton Tea, less $1.75 coupons = $1.40 each

TOTAL PURCHASED = $85.68

TOTAL SPENT = $38.73

TOTAL SAVED = $46.95

I mentioned to hubby a few days ago that we were down to only 5 dinner plates.  After 11 years some have broken, chipped, etc . . .   

On Saturday he came home with a box full of Pier One dinner plates, salad plates and bowls!  The kicker was the price - $1 for the whole set!  Unbelievable!

While my mom was here helping me make window treatments for our home, we talked about how her apron needed a magnetic spot for pins.  After she left, I decided I could make one for her for Mother’s Day!

Of course I needed to make myself one to “practice” the pattern!  Here’s mine:

Here’s mom’s:

The pockets can hold nails and other supplies needed while hanging window treatments and the black magnetic pad is a great spot to hold all the pins!

We finally turned on our air conditioning yesterday!  I’m still amazed that we made it into May before we felt the need to turn it on, of course having the basement to retreat to did help!  Even with all the rain we’ve had, it has started to heat up in the afternoons and become a little muggy.

One of the benefits of living in a new location is that I can “reuse” gift ideas!  Nick and I have been enjoying our Bible Study Fellowship(BSF) class this year and I have been really impressed with the children’s program!  Nick LOVES to go to Bible Study and his teachers have been terrific!  One of the things I love is that the children are taught the same class as the adults, but on their level.  For example, this year we have been studying the life of Moses by reading Genesis through Deuteronomy in detail and Nick has been studying the life of Moses by learning the basic facts, Bible verse memorization and singing songs about Moses.  I wanted to give his teachers a small gift to show our appreciation.

I thought of these flower pots that I had made several years ago.  The “flowers” are actually pens and the “soil” is coffee beans.

They are super easy to make and inexpensive.  I use to have one sitting on my desk in Texas and we used the pens when our church team met at our house – the guys really loved using the flower pens!

First you need to gather your supplies:

I found the above pots and bunch of flowers at Hobby Lobby for 50% off.  The pots were $1.50 each and the bunch of flowers were $3.50.  I got the pens out of my supply closet – I bought these for cheap when school supplies were on sale.  I also already had the flower tape and wire cutters.  I did purchase one bag of whole coffee beans (I picked vanilla flavor) from Publix for $4.99.  You could choose to use pinto or  black beans instead of coffee beans for a less expensive option.

I first cut 6 flowers (3 for each pot) from the bunch using the wire cutters leaving about 2 inches of the stem.

Next, line up the stem next to one of the pens and wrap the stem to the pen (leaving the flower above the pen) using flower tape.

The end result will look like this:

Repeat for all your pens.

Next, pour coffee beans into your pot and stick inside!  Enjoy!

As promised, here are some more pictures of our garden!

We planted green, yellow and red bell peppers:

Cucumbers:

Onions:

 Carrotts:

The boys really wanted to plant some strawberries, so we got this hanging basket kit and planted a few strawberry seeds.

I also planted some cilantro and basil in container pots on the deck.

Publix sent us a free wildflower kit, so we planted those in this container and they’ve already started to sprout!

I’m still not completely sure how this happen . . . we took a trip to Lowe’s and the next thing I know we are planting a garden!

I had been thinking about planting a small garden, but I don’t really have a “green thumb” so I wasn’t too sure about my idea.  We have a 2-tier flower bed in our backyard and the builder had put some simple bushes in the bottom tier and left the top tier empty.  While my sister and her family were here visiting, my brother in law suggested we move the bushes to the top tier and then plant something in the bottom tier so that we could easily reach whatever we planted.

We decided that sounded like a great idea, so the boys dug up the bushes and moved them to the top tier.  Next, we cleaned out the bottom tier (it was full of rocks), put in some new soil and planted a few veggies. 

Here are my boys hard at work:

This was a really fun family day!  We spent the whole day in the backyard working together as a family.  I can’t wait to talk about sowing and reaping with the boys when it’s time to harvest our veggies!

Here’s our finished tiers, ready for some veggies to be planted:

On Wednesday I’ll share some more pictures and what we planted!

We made it to May 1st without turning on our air conditioning!  Whoo Hooo!!!  It has been in the low 80’s outside here and we’ve kept the windows open and it really creates a nice breeze through the house.  There has really only been one day at about 4:30 in the afternoon that I thought it was getting a little too warm in the house.  I thought to myself that I had made it through most of the day and I didn’t want to cave in at the end of the day!  The kids and I headed down to the basement to play some Wii.  I cooked dinner out on the grill that night to keep from turning on the oven and heating up the house.  By bedtime the house was cooling off and we were all comfortable again. 

From looking at the forecast, I think we will be able to continue to leave the air off for a little while longer!  I’m going to love our electric bill this month!

Do you see all that chicken?  I paid $49 for ALL of it!  We live near a Tyson chicken plant and my neighbor recently told me that you can buy chicken directly from the plant.  I decided to check it out!  The catch is that they take cash only (no big deal since we are Dave Ramsey fans I pay with cash for all our groceries) you also never know what they will have, could be legs, thighs, nuggets, tenders . . .  The day I went I was able to get 20 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breast for $29 and 20 pounds of breaded chicken nuggets for $20!  The nuggets are lightly breaded, but the kids seem to like them and haven’t complained!  The chicken breast are great for cooking in the crock pot or shredding for casseroles, they do vary in size so it’s not exactly the same as buying it from the store but the quality seems to be good.  Forty pounds is A LOT of chicken, we have finally plugged in our big freezer in the basement! Yeah!