A Big Night

Last night was a full night. I hosted a freedom party at my house with a friend. A freedom party is a party where the guests learn about human trafficking and then are given the opportunity to purchase things (jewelry, pajamas, bags, scarves, books, etc) made by former slaves from around the world. I was a great night and I am so excited about how it all went.

Last night was also the last night of John and Kate Plus 8. This is the one show that I truly watch. I will work to be able to see it. Last night, I said up way late past my party to be able to record it (I was using the TV during the party so I couldn't record then). I can't believe it is over. I know there are a lot of opinions about this family, but I loved watching the kids. I am very sad to see it go. I hope to hear updates down the road as to how they are doing.

101 Bulbs in the Ground

I am so happy to announce that we now have 101 daffodil bulbs lining our driveway. Zach gave me 100 (ended up being 101) daffodil bulbs for my birthday/anniversary. Over the last 2 weeks, Zach and I have put 101 bulbs in the ground. Right now, I have a broken trowel and very sore hands to show for it. Hopefully in the Spring, we will have a yard of flowers (my favorite flowers) to show for it.

This is not all that has happened in our yard over the past 2 weeks. Zach has been very busy saving multiple trees and destroying one small tree. As you see in the picture below, he has pulled endless vines off of trees. Notice the tree on the right vs the tree on the left. The pile on the ground is from the tree on the right only. The tree he took out of the ground was one that was growing out of another tree and looked a little ugly. The 60-70 degree weather has made this work a little easier to do.

Quelf

For my birthday, I got the game Quelf. I had heard from a friend how fun of a game it was. It is a difficult game to describe, but I will try. Imagine Cranium on crack. There are 6 different types of cards you draw from. You might have to act, answer a trivia question, be given a strange action you will have to continue to do through out the game, etc. None of these are what you think they would be though. You might have to sing "I'm a Little Tea Pot". No one else has to guess anything, you just have to act it out. Other times, you might need people to guess what you are doing but you can't tell them that. On some cards, other players get to move ahead if they assist you in your act. Once again, you don't know when that will be. The trivia questions are more like brain teasers than trivia. Such as, "what was the tallest mountain before Mt. Everest was discovered?" After much guessing, the answer is Mt. Everest. Are you getting the idea. It was really fun and really crazy. What a game!

Zach had to put the game box under his shirt for the rest of the game.

Lisa let everyone play with her hair to move forward on the game board.

Grocery Game

I have become a value grocery shopper. I have always loved grocery shopping until I had a budget to hit every month. Then I became a half excited and half frustrated grocery shopping. That is until I discovered how to use coupons. Now it has become a game or a challenge for me.

I now stock pile a lot of foods and only buy certain foods when I can get them on a good sale. Currently, all our kitchen cabinets are full and this is our extra pantry.

I dream of having an extra freezer out in the garage one day to be able to stock pile more refrigerated/frozen items.

An example of my current ability to save is that I paid $8.95 for $39.62 worth of food. That is a 78% savings! Here is what I got.

You can't really see, but that is 4 boxes of graham crackers (a regular in my lunch), 7 boxes of potatoes (2 servings each), OJ, cookie dough, and 3 things of Dr. Pepper (a major rarity but for 55 cents each, I thought Zach would be so excited...he was:D). That makes 16 items for $9.

For those who are worried, that is just what was on sale this week. This week I will be stocking up on frozen veggies (mostly for Zach).

Four Eyes

So, for 6 weeks or so, I have been four eyed. I have done everything in glasses. This was hard to begin with, but then I became more used to it. There were some negatives and some positives.

The times that I really missed my contacts were when driving in the sun, which I coped with by wearing sunglasses over my glasses, and exercising. The sunglasses was difficult because I would forget that I had both on and end up with sunglasses on my head and glasses on as well. Not really a big deal, more just funny. But exercising on the other hand, was little more difficult to tolerate. I would end up taking them on and off throughout my exercises. Another little annoyance was wearing glasses in the rain. If you have done this, you understand what I am talking about.

The major positive is that my eyes did not hurt every day. I have quickly been reminded of the regular pain that contacts cause me. Another positive of wearing glasses is simply not having the take the time to put them in, take them out, clean them, etc.

The Halloween Mess Up

So, I saw this picture on the front of a magazine in my grandmother's room when I was visiting her and decided I could do it.

Side Note: There is a Halloween party at our house every year. We were told when buying the house that our yard (fire pit) is used for the Halloween party. It is pretty fun. We just provide the space and the party shows up. We are talking food, table, chairs, candy, etc. Perfect occasion for the cake.

Because of my crazy life, I did not begin to attempt this cake until Halloween day. I went on a shopping spree to try to find the perfect bowl to make the cake in, candy, sprinkles (because I didn't think I had time for that many Reese's Pieces), and who knows what else.

I got home and started baking. Things were going fairly well. I had two nice half globes come out of the oven. And then everything quickly went down hill. I wanted to have plenty of icing on the cake since that is the best part of the cake. I didn't see the point in having a pretty cake that didn't taste amazing. Little did I know this was a bad mistake. The cake quickly began crumble before my eyes. I later figured out that all the icing and many layers weakened the structure of the cake. It ended up looking like this.

I decided that I could rescue it and I turned it into this. Definitely not what I had in mind, but it did taste amazing thankfully.