OUT With 2010. IN With 2011!

We cleared all the Christmas decorations and the huge dying tree out of our living room this morning. Feels good to have a bit more space and the holidays put away for another year so I can focus on the new year about to start! Out with 2010 and in with 2011. It's going to be a good one!

My husband also got busy in my 'box room' (where I store all my co-op boxes and other stuff I hoard need). I told him I was mad at him for doing that because I didn't have a before photo! I know some of you have seen its before 'look' at a certain birthday party this month...

So to keep the momentum going I think I should come up with some resolutions, huh? Though I am having a hard time separating them from ordinary goals and the million and one things on my 'to-do' list. I'll try.

1. Cut the clutter! Clutter makes me angry and stressed out. It also collects dust. Not that I dust. Going to make an effort to simplify and organize all areas; closets, kitchen, office, sewing room, playroom, bathrooms and bedrooms...

2. I'd like to lose a bit of weight before our vacation (doesn't everybody say that?!). The holidays helped me put on 5 or so pounds and I don't like that. I have been known to suffer from 'put-everything-edible-in-mouth' syndrome... I'd like to maybe lose 10-15lbs by April?

3. Pay for our vacation in cash! We're going to need somewhere between $8-10K depending on how well we budget and skimp for our trip to Australia and New Zealand that we are planning to go on in April (date is flexible). We are about half way there, I should get a ticker for that

4. Pay off some debt! Paying cash for our vacation will help a lot but before I moved here we were actually in a long distance relationship for a few years which did a number on the credit cards. I would like to end 2011 with less debt than we started with. 50% less, maybe? going to need to sit down with the hubby and crunch some numbers, I'll be back with a percentage.

5. Spend more time with the fam and focus on experiences and not things. We have had a lot of fun the last couple days just playing Candyland. P (and my husband) beat me every time! I didn't know it was possible to suck at Candyland.
(6. Finally get baby #2 in the works. We have been trying for over a year now and nothing. Shhh don't tell anyone)

What are your New Year's resolutions? Do you believe in them? Link me up if you have some! Or share :) I also have some goals and 'to-do's that go along with the resolutions, but those are lists for another time, I have to get ready to go to a party!

I Did It!

I just finished the last page of New Years Resolution #1 - that is, something I resolved to get done BEFORE the new year! Yerp, just flipped through P's scrapbook that covers his conception (not the gory details!), birth and first year and Christmas and all 37 pages are done! One for every month of his first year as well as special occasions, memories and just plain funny photos.

SO nice to get something accomplished!

The scrapbook(s) for years 1-2 and 2-3 should be a lot easier since I won't struggle as much to remember things.... as much.

Now, I guess I should decide what I want to do AFTER the new year starts, huh?

Got $13.35 Back With Mr. Rebates!

I've been a member of Mr. Rebates for a couple years now and my balance has remained at the sign up bonus $5 for those couple years, until this morning! I received two emails confirming cash back for two purchases I made yesterday;

Do you Groupon? I do!

~ My local Groupon had a great deal on something I thought J would love so I got it for him for our anniversary (married 4 years tomorrow!). It was $60, 52% off retail. I had a $10 Groupon credit that I had earned, making it $50. Now, I knew that nearly all my reward sites offer points for shopping with Groupon through them, Mr. Rebates won out though with 10% cash back. And I got the 10% on the original price NOT how much I paid so I ended up getting the gift for $44 after cash back from Mr. Rebates! I will receive that $6 back via PayPal once it has cleared. Not too shabby!

~ My second purchase yesterday was a new pair of shoes for the P-man. We stopped by the mall to exchange a gift at Land's End and had his feet measured while we were there, poor kid looked like he was outgrowing his shoes! He measured as needing a 10w to fit with a little growing room (his old shoes are a XW!). We tried a couple pairs on at the Stride Rite store then came home to find them online since I had a $40 gift card to Shoebuy that I had bought on Groupon a couple months ago (for $20 by the way!). Mr. Rebates gave me 15% back on that purchase, and once again, on the full price, not the $8.95 I paid after the gift card was applied. So another $7.35 back into my PayPal account! Spent a total of $21.60 on some new Stride Rites for Mr. Fat Feet.

I wish I had thought to check Mr. Rebates earlier; I could have gotten cash back on the initial Groupon purchase too (another $2 or so back!). If you're not already a Mr. Rebates member I strongly suggest checking it out! All you have to do is sign-up and click on their links to shop, you'll even get a sign-up bonus!

Just Like Pottery Barn

Well, almost. This piece of 'Noel' wall art is $149 on the Pottery Barn website. Well it was, it seems to be gone for the season now.

Photo from Pottery Barn

$149? it is solid iron, but still. I liked it but thought I could make my own:

and then I took another look at the picture above and realized I positioned the O 'wrong' oops lol

How did I do it? The wood letters are from Hobby Lobby and cost 1.99 a piece minus 40% off one of the letters so $7.16 for the four. I painted them using a foam paintbrush (for a super smooth finish) and black acrylic paint also from Hobby Lobby; I think it was 0.99 on sale when I bought it for P months ago.

I joined the E and L with some heavy canvas fabric and glue and then N, E and O using very small hinges we had laying around (they were too big for the E and L). Next time I will use small pieces of wood instead but DH liked how the hinges made it foldable. Either way, my sister-in-law seemed to like it! And we saved a good $130! Not too shabby.

Cardboard Christmas Trees

Couldn't blog about these before Christmas either because they were gifts to go along with other gifts. I know that doesn't help much now that Christmas is over and done with but you could add them to your to-do list for next year or make them for other holidays; I think glittery hearts and Easter eggs would be fun too!

I really like how these little trees came out. I grabbed a Christmas tree outline off the web, scaled it to fit the printer paper perfectly (bigger) and used it as a template for my cardboard Christmas trees (made from a box that came in the mail of course - reduce, reuse, recycle!)

P painted them green -- no photos of that, I was busy making sure everything else didn't get painted green too. After they dried we applied the glue for our glitter

Added some glitter

Shook it up to make sure it was all stuck and

then applied the 'ornaments'!

And we were done -- enough for everyone!

$10 for 10 Reviews at Viewpoints.com

I love Viewpoints! They run these promotions almost monthly! I have gotten two Amazon gift cards from them in the last 3 months or so; one for $10 and another for $25, as promised!

All you have to do is sign up for an account and leave reviews for 10 items in the following categories:
Home & Garden, Family & Pets, Health & Beauty, Kitchen (excluding Food and Beverages), Computers and Electronics - toys ARE included - perfect having just had Christmas!

"Reviews in the Auto, Books & Magazines, Food/Drink, Local, Music & Arts, Movies, Office, Travel, Miscellaneous and Websites categories are ineligible for payment under this Promotion."

Reviews need to be at least 900 characters, NOT words; full stops, commas, spaces etc all count towards the character count. Use the product name instead if 'this' or 'it' and spell out conjunctions completely if you're having issues writing a paragraph long review on a bar of soap lol

Official rules and instructions can be found here

Your amazon code will be emailed to you within 30 days of the promotion ending. You won't be notified before then. You also might want to do 11 reviews just to be sure you will get the $10!

My $10 is going towards grocery/household items to free up cash for our holiday or towards birthday/Christmas gifts :D what will you do with yours?

Christmas Shopping After Christmas

If you read this post about planning ahead you'll know where I am going with this. One of my goals for 2011 is to have birthdays and Christmas paid for completely by gift cards earned from various websites and cash from survey sites. This means saving everything and also shopping ahead, which is where Target comes in.

The boys and I headed to Target the day after Christmas in search of LED lights for next year. They were only 30% off but everything else was 50% off, it might even be 75% by now! (a lot of toys were 'clearanced' also) We weren't willing to pay that 'clearance' price for the lights but I did get some great glass jars for food organization and to use with homemade gifts next Christmas.

I'll use these two in the kitchen/pantry, they were only $2.50 each ($4.99 regular price) and they're all Anchor Hocking -- made in the US even! Score! I have another kind of jar for the kitchen also but it's already in the dishwasher.

If you want to see the others you'll have to stick around until Christmas 2011 -- they're a secret ;)

Total for the 8 jars I got was $15.15 with tax ($1.90 each!). Paid for using a Target gift card!

Passionfruit Pulp

Remember this post?

Well, my pavlova was a flop. As in, read the instructions as saying it needed to bake for 11 1/2 hours, NOT 1 1/2 and didn't notice until 3 1/2 hours in. Duh. What WAS I thinking (11 hours, REALLY)!?!? It was Christmas Eve. That's my excuse.

Needless to say, the passionfruit pulp sits awaiting a purpose. Keep tuned.

How embarrassing.

Still tasted good lol

CDTC - Days 21-24

PHEW! Christmas is over. Now what? I kind of like having my husband at home to play with us. At least we get another long weekend this week!

Tuesday the 21st was so much fun. J took the afternoon off and we headed down to the mall and watched the craziness. I picked up a last minute gift for the hubster (from JCPenney, they sent me a $10 coupon so I got him some new khakis for $9.99!), we checked out all the fun gadgets in Brookstone, P played in the kid's area for a bit and J drooled over the remote control helicopters (we actually got one, for MUCH cheaper than that guy sells them in the mall, but we crashed it too much... it doesn't fly anymore lol). We had a yummy seafood dinner and then sat by the big Christmas tree in the outdoor shopping center, looked at all the lights, listening to the Christmas carols and ate.... icecream. HA! Yeah, it was like 72 degrees on December 21 after dark. We loved it!

We spent the 22nd preparing, finishing up gifts, sewing etc, wrapping.

On the 23rd J's sister and family came down from Dallas and we all had a yummy dinner together.

The 24th was fairly quiet, a bit of sewing in the morning (gifts, will make a new post for these!) and then church services in the evening. P was a star in the Christmas pagent and did a great job!

We had another yummy dinner over at MIL's after church and then came home to do the Santa thing. We watched a video from Santa on PNP, left some carrots out for him

(and ate some of them!)

and put our Santa sack out! It was a lovely, quiet Christmas Eve at home, it was cute to see P so excited!

Once P was in bed we finished wrapping and crafting and prepared the cinnamon rolls for the morning and ended up getting to bed WAY too late! (and we were up WAY to early! wouldn't be Christmas without sleep deprivation, right?)

Bread Machine Cinnamon Rolls

I made these for Christmas morning and everyone in the family LOVED them!

There are recipes for cinnamon rolls all over the internet but these claimed to be, and are, as good, if not better than Cinnabon cinnamon rolls, complete with deliciously sickening icing!

I made them on Christmas Eve in the breadmaker, rolled and stored them overnight in the fridge. In the morning all we had to do was slice them and bake. Easy Peasy. (and don't tell anyone; we're having them for dinner tonight too)

Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls

DOUGH
2 eggs -- room temperature
1 cup warm milk
1/3 cup melted margarine
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
4 1/2 cups bread flour
2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast
FILLING
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon (and a smidge of nutmeg too)
1/3 cup softened butter
CREAM CHEESE ICING
4 tablespoons softened butter
3 ounces cream cheese
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

DOUGH

Add ingredients in order listed to bread machine baking pan. Insert pan into bread machine and start "dough" cycle on machine. When dough is done, turn out onto floured rolling board and allow dough to rest for ten minutes. Roll dough out into a 16" wide and 21" long rectangle, with a dough thickness of about 1/4 inch.

FILLING

Combine brown sugar and cinnamon in a bowl until well mixed. Spread softened butter over the surface of the dough and sprinkle sugar-cinnamon mixture evenly over the dough surface.

Roll dough jelly-roll fashion along the 16" wide side of the rectangle. Cut dough roll into 12 slices. 

Wrapped to store in the fridge. We were out of wax paper which I would also use with a little tape to hold the roll closed.

Place 12 rolls into a 9" by 13" baking pan and bake at 400 degrees for approximately 15 minutes or until light brown on top. Remove baking pan and allow to cool.

Fresh out of the oven - this roll had more cinnamon than the above

ICING

Combine in a mixing bowl until well blended. Frost cinnamon rolls with icing while rolls are still in the baking pan.

We obviously like a lot of icing...

Eat!

CDTC - Days 17 - 20 - Birthday Time!

PHEW!

Friday and Saturday were spent preparing for P's birthday party on Sunday and Monday was spent recovering! Actually, in all honesty, the house is STILL recovering.

It was a construction themed party for my 3 year old little man and he loved it. We all had a great time and even had some special guests from Austin! Watch for my birthday party post in the new year!

CDTC - Day 16 - Santa Sack!

Growing up in New Zealand we didn't use stockings, in fact, I didn't know what a stocking was in relation to Christmas until I moved to the US!

Santa Sacks can be a simple pillow case, an embellished pillow case, a sack bought from the store specifically made to be a Santa Sack or homemade. 3 years ago when our son was born I couldn't find Santa Sacks in stores here so I made one for him (now I saw them at Michael's the other day!)

It's nice and simple, roughly the size of the largest pillow case we had at the time, and made out of fleece so I didn't have to worry about fraying edges or sergers. By folding an inch of fabric over at the top and leaving the edges of one side open you can easily add a drawstring.

The first year he used it it was just the sack with his name on it.

Now it has his name, a rocket for his first year, a train for the second and a digger for the third! The rocket and train are fleece while the digger is wool, which, I think I prefer for appliqueing over fleece, neither frays though!

Now, what do we do with it? Well, on Christmas Eve the Santa Sack is left empty, on the end of his bed waiting for Santa (you could also leave it under the Christmas tree too!). In the morning he wakes up to a sack full of presents from Santa at the foot of his bed! Some are wrapped, some aren't. As he gets older, and doesn't enjoy unwrapping so much I'm sure most will be unwrapped to save Santa some time, and some trees.

I wonder what it will be full of on Saturday morning? I can't wait to find out!

CDTC - Day 15 - Planning Ahead

November and December are very busy months in our house, as I'm sure they are in yours too! We have Thanksgiving, P's birthday the week before Christmas, our companies Christmas party that we help organize, Christmas, New Year's Eve and our anniversary to plan for.

Gift wise we tend to make as many things as possible, or we try give gifts that will help others MAKE something themselves; gift cards to craft stores, herbs and spices and other cooking ingredients. This year we have actually done really well spending wise, almost all of P's presents and most of J's were paid for by Swagbucks and other survey sites. Next year will be even better!

My goal for next year is to pay for birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas completely with either gift cards earned from Swagbucks, Shopping Sites or money made from survey sites so that no money spent is out of our pockets, but somebody else's ;) There are a bunch of mamas on Diaperswappers that are planning on doing the same thing, I'll link up to the blog they were talking about starting when it gets going.

Now, to make it even more interesting, we are also going to Australia and New Zealand in April of next year and will be paying cash for that trip. This means that gift cards and survey money earned up until April will be used for the trip, everything after that will go towards the holidays.

So far I have coming:
~ $50 Target gift card from E-rewards - will go towards groceries or items needed for our vacation, freeing up cash to go into the savings account
~ $20 check from Toluna - headed to the holiday fund
~ $50 Southwest.com gift card from Swagbucks - using towards our flight to Los Angeles
~ $20 check from Opinion Outpost - straight into the holiday fund

In the works - waiting on points/surveys to clear:
~ $20 Amazon gift card from Valued Opinions - will be used towards groceries to free up holiday cash or will be put aside for Christmas
~ $10 check from Mindfield Surveys - from a single survey!
~ a $50 gift card or Visa card of some kind from MyPoints - need to decide what will be the most useful for us
~ $10 Amazon gift card from Zoombucks

All of those were earned/redeemed in just the last couple weeks! Imagine what my list will look like come November 2011!

CDTC - Day 14 - Gingerbread Men!

And all sorts of other shapes!

All rolled out and ready to go

But first we should probably poke holes in it

Lots of fun shapes!

P enjoyed cutting out all the shapes and patting (and poking) the dough but what he REALLY loved was playing with the leftover dough. He must have played with that lump of goodness for almost an hour!

Patting his dough

Making a heart cookie for his mama <3

No decorated cookie photos because they are still sitting, waiting to be prettied up. The week got away from us! 

We used a recipe from allrecipes and while they taste OK, they're kinda bland. And a note for those who don't do shortening; butter worked just fine. Next time we will try this 'spicy' recipe as both J and I prefer more spice to our gingerbread.

Do you have a favorite, more flavorful gingerbread man recipe that you can share?

CDTC - Days 12 and 13 - Yo Gabba Gabba Live!

Day 12
Yo Gabba Gabba Live! concert in Dallas; one of P's birthday gifts and he loved it! It was worth the drive, we all really enjoyed the show and it was lovely to visit with family since we were unable to make it to the show in Houston

We got DJ Lance glasses

A balloon and the ultimate - a Yo Gabba Gabba glow stick that changes colors!

Day 13
Was spent recovering from our weekend out of town.

CDTC - Day 11 - Easy Peasy Christmas Banner

I found this idea over at eighteen25

They actually have a PDF available for download that has three triangles of different holiday themed papers you can use for your banner if you don't have your own stash of scrapbook paper. I used a little of both. I also ended up using ribbon instead of bias tape because our store didn't have any!!?!

The finished product

Sorry, awful photo. Here is said banner on the new shelves I built. I love how crap has already made it over from other flat spaces to my new shelves I have been defending from that very thing happening. My husband put most of it there :| Most of it will be relocating :)

Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce

This was really good. I mean, REALLY good. Even J was impressed. It's sweet, but savory and SO good with Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.

Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce

1 to 1 1/2lb butternut squash, peeled, deseeded, and cubed
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup of olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 teaspoon basil - we used oregano and rosemary instead
salt and pepper
1 cup of chicken broth
A few dashes of white wine (optional)
Grated Parmesan cheese to serve

~ Cook onions over med-high heat in olive oil, until soft and translucent (about 5 minutes).
~ Add the garlic and cook for a minute or two, just until the garlic is releasing it’s flavor, but don’t brown (it can make it bitter). If you are using the white wine, add at this point (cook for about 30 seconds to a minute).
~ Add butternut squash, the basil (and other herbs), the chicken broth, and lightly sprinkle with salt and pepper.
~ Cover, bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for about 10-20, until the squash is fork tender and stock has reduced.
~ Using a potato masher mash until desired thickness/chunkiness is reached or you could use a blender or food processor if you feel like cleaning it. I didn't. 

We ate ours on whole wheat pasta with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. Delicious.

CDTC - Day 10 - Pipecleaner Christmas Trees!

This was another decoration made by my husband and a couple of his work colleagues for our company Christmas party. I love them!

He cut blocks of wood and dowels to certain sizes then drilled lots of little holes in the dowels. He spray painted them all silver (wasn't coming into my house so I *allowed* it) The pipecleaner wires goes into the little holes, sequins/jewels were added to the ends of them and voila!

Counting Down To Christmas - Day 9 - Passionfruit Pulp

Not a whole lot Christmasy to report for Thursday. We had our Australian playgroup downtown which is always fun. P played SO well with the other kids, I was very impressed with his sharing and not screaming, he has come a long way since we started! One of my mummy friends did give me a little container of passionfruit pulp (and a packet of yummy biscuits... already eaten) that her hubby had brought back from Australia, she's awesome.

Passionfruit pulp, you asked? yep, pulp of passionfruit. What does one use that for? well, I guess you'll just have to wait and see!

Counting Down To Christmas - Day 8 - Copper & Sea Glass Christmas Tree

It's my husband's turn to show off! He works with stained glass, sea glass, copper wire etc and makes some really neat things. I saw him making a huge triangle the other night and asked if it was a Christmas tree?

I don't think it was. But, it is now, isn't it awesome? The sea glass came all the way from New Zealand, hand picked by us <3

Counting Down To Christmas - Day 7

We had a pretty quiet day on Tuesday, pretty much just hung around the house, snuggled, read books, watched a new Bob the Builder on Netflix (the best ever by the way!)

We did do a family craft together once J got home from work, yerp, more ornaments! These were fairly easy for all of us, P need a little extra instruction but was interested once he figured it out. Though I think he spent more time using them as rocks for his diggers than he did actually *crafting*. Boys.

 (sorry about the bad photo; we have awful photo lighting in our living room anytime after 11am or so)

We got the kits from Oriental Trading but you could easily buy your own buttons and pipe cleaners - the smaller/skinner kind, unless your buttons have bigger holes. There is a ribbon that needs to be glued to the top of the wreath too. I love them, I think they're really cute!

Counting Down To Christmas - Days 5 and 6 - Homemade ornaments

Day 5
Sunday was filled with cookie baking, cake frosting and eating. We had a Christmas party for my Australian playgroup complete with mince pies, sausage rolls, beetroot and Anzac biscuits. None of which are easy to find in the US so you should all be very impressed. An Australian version of Santa made an (hilarious) apprearance and P got a great story of an old, rusty, trusty tractor written by a kiwi author. How did Santa know the boy loves tractors? ;)

Day 6
A quiet day at home. We made ornaments together after breakfast and P put them on the tree

 

They always look best all clustered together, it's a foam Santa party!

We got the kits through an Oriental Trading Company co-op. They're made in China of course but he only ate a couple pieces so we're good, right?

And an ornament I made all by myself, these would make cute little gifts

They're really very easy to make, a tutorial can be found at the Purl Bee

Counting Down To Christmas - Days 3 and 4

Day 3
We had a pizza picnic the living room floor and watched Shrek the Halls. We attempted to put up and decorate the Christmas tree. It kept tipping over.

P only wanted to electrocute himself and hit and throw things.

Bedtime for everyone

Day 4
Saturday night -- Christmas tree decorating take two. The tree is lop sided. It would require extensive surgery and messing with the thing to get it straight. We will just squint and turn our heads a little to the right instead. Tonight was a success, P really got into putting the ornaments on the tree and himself in the stockings. Merry Christmas! He's better than a lump of coal if I do say so myself!

while J put the star on top -- he made it years ago, he works with stained glass. Husbands can be crafty too!

and then was really excited to read his dad's old pop-up version of The Night Before Christmas. Santa still has a pipe in this one ;) And he dances. Hilarious.

Counting Down To Christmas - Day 1 and 2 - Peppermint Bark!

2 days in one post, aren't you lucky?

Day 1
We did a little cutting and pasting for a Christmas banner, details to come

Day 2
Took the P man to choose a Christmas tree! I LOVE the smell, my house smells TOO good, it's delicious. Also made Peppermint Bark for an upcoming Christmas party

Peppermint Bark

1lb dark or milk chocolate - baking chocolate, not chips

1lb white chocolate

5 or so candy canes

1/2 tsp peppermint extract

Let me start out by saying that I hate that this isn't a healthy recipe. The candy canes have corn syrup and red dyes in them, both big no nos in our house. BUT, most of it went to work with my husband for a marketing thing he is doing and the rest is headed to a Christmas party. Wait, am I trying to justify poisoning OTHERS? HA! It's a once a year thing, J LOVES William Sonoma's Peppermint Bark but it is almost $30 a tin! I was going to buy him some, but that wouldn't be 'thrifty' would it? No way. He puts up with my other restrictions I figured he'd like this. So there ya go, I feel pretty bad about it actually lol you might not though, so I bet you'd love the instructions, huh?

~ Prepare a cookie sheet with wax paper

~ Melt dark chocolate slowly using a double boiler or just a pot, if you're careful.

~ Once melted pour the dark chocolate onto the wax paper and spread to a desired thickness

~ Pop it in the fridge UNCOVERED (prevents condensation) and let set for 20-30 minutes

~ Unwrap candy canes, put them in a ziploc if you're into that, we wrapped them in the wax paper and crush; not to a dust/powder but just into chunks

~ Melt white chocolate, adding peppermint extract when you feel like it and allow to cool slightly; prevents the dark chocolate melting so much

~ Pour (or spoon) white chocolate onto dark chocolate layer and spread carefully

~ Sprinkle candy cane chunks on top of the white chocolate and refrigerate, once again, uncovered please

~ When set cut/break into pieces and individually wrap them and keep in the refrigerator. The wrap will prevent condensation and they'll keep for 2 weeks or so in the fridge. If it lasts that long ;) Or, you can cut the sheet into pieces and stored uncovered for a short while in the fridge if it will be eaten fairly quickly