St. Patrick's Day Part II

Two posts in one day?! And on a Saturday?! What the...???

The funniest part about this is that we don't usually do much to celebrate St. Patrick's Day (being that we are not Irish) except maybe wear green.  Today, we did all kinds of celebratory things, but none of us actually wore green!  Ha ha!

First thing you should know for this post -- we were not wearing green because we were instead wearing ORANGE to cheer on our Syracuse Orange Men's basketball team in the NCAA Tournament.  Go 'Cuse!  (we won-- on to the 'Sweet 16'! Hooray!!)

Secondly-- green food coloring makes EVERYTHING look completely un-appealing. That and the fact that food photography is hard and I don't have any REAL photography skills so all the pictures of food below look gross, but I promise you everything tasted just fine. :)

So, as you saw earlier today, we had an overnight visit from a leprechaun.  I love finding new traditions-- I can't wait to do this EVERY St. Patrick's Day!

Does anyone else throw all "rules" out the window on holidays and special occasions?  Cole ate 2 chocolate coins before BREAKFAST-- awesome mom or bad mom?  I guess it probably depends on who you ask.  :)

Then we had breakfast.  Green shamrock shaped pancakes and sausage for Cole and I.  And Tom had what I'm calling 'eggs-a-la-pinterest'.  (seriously if you're not on pinterest yet, what are you waiting for?  It's so awesome! Need an invite, leave me your e-mail address and I'll invite you!)

source

I had the table set in green and white.  

plastic table cloth:  Big Lots $1 (ps-- I LOVE it!  Its cheap, but it was pretty)

12" white paper doily:  Dollar Tree $1 for 18

green paper plates:  iparty  $3.79 for 24 -- makes clean up easy :)

and just our regular white paper napkins for everyday use.

I also put out my new milk glass footed bowl that I got at Goodwill for $1.  I LOVE it!  

I put some green apples in it (unfortunately the apples had seen better days at this point) and a couple of oranges since our day was going to be about both green AND orange!  

We played outside for a while because it was a gorgeous day!  And we got a package from my parents.

which promptly turned into this...

note: the addresses have been blurred for privacy reasons

 For dinner we had meatloaf with green mashed potatoes and green beans:

(warning-- I probably shouldn't even have put this picture up because it looks so unappetizing, but it really was delicious)

And for dessert (the best part of today in my opinion)-- Shamrock Shakes (using a recipe I had saved on pinterest!)

FYI-- we just used mint chocolate chip ice cream and milk and it was sooo good!

And to top it all off, there was a fireworks display in our neighborhood that we watched from Cole's bedroom window-- he was VERY excited about it.

All in all, a pretty good holiday (that we don't usually celebrate)! 

Hope you all had a great St. Patty's Day too!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I'm just going to pretend that it hasn't been more than a MONTH since my last post and just carry on as if I've been blogging right along.  If I just pretend I haven't been ignoring my blog then maybe its not true.  Right? :)

Aaaannnyyyy waaayyy....


Look who came to our house last night!

This little guy snuck in last night and left Cole a pot o' gold!!

He left 5 clues around the house that led Cole to his surprise.

Thanks to a last minute decision to use these awesome FREE printables from One Charming Party and a late night hunt for supplies, we had a lot of fun this morning.  Cole was SO excited about the whole thing.  Thanks One Charming Party for ANOTHER great idea!

 Hopefully I'll be back later today with MORE St. Patrick's Day fun!

ps-- those stinkin' Gold coins were hard to track down at this time of year!

source list:
Chocolate Gold Coins:  iparty   If you're thinking of doing this next year, I would consider buying them  
                                                   around Christmas when they seem to be in abundance (and cheaper)
                                                   -- $4.83
Ice Cream Cups:  I couldn't find these anywhere so I bought a small white tin at Michael's (with a 40%        
                            off coupon of course!) -- $1.20
Paper Easter Grass:  Five Below -- $1.00
Free Printable:     from One Charming Party-- FREE
LEGO minifigure:  LEGO  these are "luck of the draw" surprise packets so you don't know which one
                               you've gotten until you open the package but it can CERTAINLY be done without
                               the minifigure guy $2.00

Happy Valentine's Day!

Cole's school Valentine's cards.  Idea and FREE printables from here. 

 Teacher gifts.  Idea/Inspiration from here.

Hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day!

Fancy on the cheap!

Another resolution of mine is to try to ENJOY life more - like try to make everyday life special.  For me that means making "movie night" a bit of an event as opposed to just pressing 'play' on the Blu-Ray player.  It means taking special occasions and making them, well... special-- more than just preparing a good meal-- making them really special-- get out the good dishes, set the table nicely, and let the meal linger.

That's how our New Year's Day dinner came to life.  By all means, it wasn't the fanciest of meals, but it was tasty, it was inexpensive and it felt pretty special.  

I present to you, New Year's Day dinner-- cheapskate style.

Centerpieces:  2 Dollar Store Hurricanes = $4

                       8 Silver Glitter Ornaments = $.25 for all (post holiday sale at Target last year.)

                       Total:  $4.50

Drink Flags:  FREE printable from the TomKat Studio

and a cloudy glass-- should've hand-washed.   Would love a new dishwasher in the new year too.  Gross.

The black dishes and flatware are our everyday dishes.  The white dishes are our "good" dishes.  A little mix and match and setting out more silverware/dishes than we'd normally used makes the place setting a bit more substantial = FREE.

We don't usually have a tablecloth on our table either, so a simple white tablecloth made the meal a bit more luxurious.  FREE.

And a quick tip -- a tablecloth with a subtle pattern or "grain" allows you to easily line up your flatware with precision.

Grandma's hand-me-down salt and pepper shakers (below), worked perfectly with our sparkly theme and also mimicked the New Year's Eve ball.  FREE.

I had planned to purchase some simple black ribbon to tie around the napkins as a simple napkin ring, but #1. I forgot to stop at Michael's while I was out getting the groceries for dinner and #2. I've also made a resolution to "use what I have"-- as a carry over from last year's resolutions, so.... since our dinner was going to be for 6 and the drink flags printable produced 12 flags, I decided to use the extra flags as napkin rings.  FREE again.

Totally works!

Then using the designs of the printable, I made my own menu cards.  I have just enough knowledge in Photoshop to be dangerous, but definitely no real skill so it took me much longer than it should've, but, I think they came out OK.  Plus a menu card makes the meal more special right?  Free.

more spotty dishes-- that flatware- ugh!  Should've paid more attention before taking photos.

We did four courses, served one at a time.    Most of the items on the menu included ingredients that we already had so there was very little that we actually had to spend money on for the menu.  I think the whole meal cost less than $30 for the six of us.  I even made artisan bread from scratch from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day website-- it was SOOO good!!  There was wine for the adults and grape bubbly for those not of age.  The wine was a gift-- so we remembered good friends while drinking the wine and it saved us some money too!

Guests were welcomed with a Happy New Year sign also from the TomKat New Year's printable collection.  FREE.

because I was in a big hurry at this point I just slapped it up on the wall with scotch tape.  Classy right?

 I had some white string with gold sparkly threads in it -- perfect for a sparkly New Year's party.

All in all-- dinner was a success and the New Year is off to a good start!  I have a good feeling about 2012!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Here's to 2012!  

We started the year off right... with a fancy (yet reasonable) 4 course meal.  And we've got fun (and cheap) plans for tomorrow too.  I can't wait to share all the details!

I've made LOTS of resolutions (again this year)-- many of them the same as last year, but I've got a good feeling about 2012!   

My #1 resolution-- get back to blogging.  I miss you little blog -- and YOU, my readers too!  

2012.  The year of the cheapskate.  Let's do this!  :)

Halloween party

With Halloween just 10 days away I am TOTALLY unprepared this year.  We don't have a costume for Cole (although he knows what he wants to be).  We don't have a "plan" for Halloween night.  We haven't decided if we'll do a Halloween party or not this year...  So while I figure this all out, I'll leave you with images from last year's Halloween party lunch (turned out to not be so much of a party afterall).

Last year my step-son just happened to have a football game down the street from our house the day before Halloween so I got all psyched for a small Halloween party for our family.  Just the hubs, myself and the 4 kids.  Long story short, he ended up having to go back to his school on the bus (an hour away)  and the girls were freezing so they went home to their mom's house too so.... no party.  But since I had all the food ready I set it out anyway-- for the three of us.

So what does a small Halloween party lunch for 2 adults and a 3 year old (at the time) look like.   Well, in my world it looks like this:


Homemade soup, warm and toasty....

Hot out of the oven bone breadsticks with spooky dipping sauce

 

Cheese and Crackers (and a bowl with no soup)

Crunchy Veggies and Dip

And LOTS of desserts!


Ghost lollipops (devoid of ANY artistic ability)

Festive Marshmellow pops:

And the pièce de résistance...


These ADORABLE Owl Cupcakes

FYI:  separating oreos in an aesthetically pleasing manor is very hard. :)   I know they are a little wonky looking, but I think it gives them "character"... right?

 

 

 So... do I do a little Halloween "party" this year for the 3 of us or not... that is the question...  Stay tuned to find out.