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!

A Good Monday Surprise!

OK-- I was hoping to be back today with a great party update, but... I got a little sidetracked.  Ya' see, today I got an AWESOME package in the mail.  It had this in it:

Do you KNOW what this is???

Here's another hint.

It is a crafter's DREAM tool.  The Silhouette Cameo-- it's a crazy awesome cutting machine.

Let's just say it would've shaved lots of time off this project.

I am DYING excited.  And in a cheapskate's dream-- I WON it during the last giveaway at Kara's Party Ideas, one of my absolute FAVORITE sites!  I'm still in shock.

I haven't taken it out of the box yet because I have so many things that I've put off for way too long.  I'm trying to make it my "treat" when I finish all the other crap that I have to do-- like get things from this weekend's party put away-- ugh.  This is the part of parties that I DON'T like.

And in other news...  I was sick on Sunday-- like in bed, not able to move my head hurt so bad sick (stupid migraines).  At one point Cole came into my room.  He came in just to tell me he loved me. :)  He came in looking like this:

Yep-- bike helmet, sunglasses AND binoculars, mittens, watch, striped sweater, striped pajama bottoms and Santa Claus socks.  Oh, and he had a Green Lantern ring on under his mittens.  This is what happens when my boys (my husband and my four year old) are left alone for too long.  :)

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!

Getting a good photo makes me happy.

OK-- let me start by saying that I know I am a NO photographer, but... getting a good photo makes me REALLY happy and I'm trying to practice a lot to improve my photo taking skills.  I also know that a 'good photograph' is subjective, but I just wanted to share a few photos that I took today that make me happy.  (and yes-- most of them are of my son)  :)

Perfect Fall football day.

My stepson is the QB of his varsity football team-- #12!

Can Transformers play with Barbies? 

Independence.

Pure fun.

Colors of Fall:

 All boy.

And he's off...

Little sneaks

Another big reveal!

Please allow me to interrupt our regularly scheduled cheapskate blog to give a quick personal update.  Because many of my readers are people who know me personally, I have to devote a post to a recent (like 2 hours ago) personal update that I did.   But if you get all the way to the end, I do have a cheapskate tip for you!

I FINALLY after 4+  years got a haircut.  A haircut?  This is the big reveal?  Yes.  A haircut.  And yes, this is the big reveal.  You see... when I started calculating in my head I realized that I have had long-- ridiculously long hair for probably ... gulp... 18 years.    In my defense, I haven't really seen my hair much in probably the last 6 or 7 years so I had totally lost track of it.

Everyday without fail my hair has gone directly from shower to tight bun and then down only for the next shower.  It was crazy, but it was easy-- no fuss.  Plus, I couldn't STAND having it down and I kinda liked my look when it was up.   After all these years though it was MORE than time for a change.

So today I went from looking like a hippie, old hag, horse lady with my hair down, to looking somewhat normal.  And I love it!

This is what I looked like EVERY. SINGLE. DAY for the last 7 years:

photo curtesy of an art museum kiddie section where you could change the background to different art prints and take your own photo... long story

Here's what I looked like this weekend when I took my hair down just long enough for it to dry naturally and allow me to take photos.  It went right back up into my "signature bun" (as one of my previous employers dubbed it) immediately after the last photo was taken.    Oh and ps-- I had NO good light or way to take these photos, so please don't critique my photo skills here. :)

yes, I had to squat to get it all in the photo

And here is how I looked this a.m. before leaving for work. I got up an extra hour early this a.m. to straighten it.  (kinda hard to gauge it's length here but if you look closely you can see its kinda pooled up in my lap- gross I know)

yes-- Cole dressed himself this a.m. :)

And.......................................

wait for it............................

Post haircut:  It's not terribly dramatic, but I love it.  I feel like I've lost 20 lbs.  (and I may have) :)

Do you hear the music?  I do.

 

And with a little wind blowing through the hair...

Oh and as promised, my cheapskate haircut tip.  Take say... 4 years or so, grow your hair as long as you can, then go into the salon and cut off about 2 feet (which is what I did today) and donate it to a charity like Locks of Love.  Your haircut will be FREE (at least mine was)!  :)  The best surprise of all today on my birthday!

So.... what do you think?  (be nice please!)

Still holding on to summer...

My poor blog friends... I've been neglecting you.  Sorry-- just trying to enjoy the last few weeks of summer! (FYI: posting may be sparse for the next couple of weeks). Stay tuned though-- I have something exciting planned for September!

Since we're not quite brave enough to try REAL camping with a 4 year old yet, (although I love camping and can't wait to make it a summer-time family tradition), we decided to try the next best thing.....

Indoor camping!  It's convenient (bathroom is down the hall and to the right), it's fun (s'mores, popcorn and flashlights), it's something different (well since it's the first time we'd done it it was different) and it's FREE!

So we pushed back the furniture, set up Cole's indoor play tent (it's a monster and it's super cute!!), grabbed our sleeping bags and hunkered down for the night.

 

Cole lasted about 2 hours of sleeping on the floor before he was ready to get back in his bed.  Glad we weren't out in the wilderness. :)