Can't believe its almost September Christmas shopping under way!

Looking at the calendar today I was awestruck that it was pretty much September already. I can't believe how fast this year has flown by. It's crazy!

The month September for us is our wedding anniversary. This year will be 4 years! September also means crunch time for Christmas shopping. You might think I'm crazy but I bought the first Christmas present in April! We live on a tight budget and have a HUGE family that keeps getting bigger. So I figured I would tell you how we afford Christmas on a really tight budget.

First and foremost we remember Christmas is not about gifts it's about our savior's birth! We love Christmas but don't believe in racking up credit card debt to achieve a "good" Christmas. We set price limits, certain amount of gifts, couples a get couple gift and I shop early and I mean EARLY! My hubby gets paid every Friday and gets a Christmas bonus (if it's a good year) so I count back the pay check before Christmas and count back Fridays for how many people we have to buy for. This year I counted back to the last week of June, but found some presents in early April and I was super excited. I also keep a list on me at all times of who we have to buy for, clothes sizes and throughout the year if I hear or get an idea of some stuff they might want I jot it down by their name.

This helps me when I'm running errands or shopping and if I see stuff on my list on sale or clearance than I get it cheap and usually way under the set price limit we set. We usually try to exchange gifts with friends but when they all start having kids it gets expensive so we set a $10 limit for the kids and don't exchange with the adults. We only have two sets of friends with out kids we exchange gifts with and I usually do a gift basket of goodies or odds in ends.

Ex: Last year I did a movie night on us! I put cokes, candy, pop corn, pop corn seasoning, a blockbuster gift card for $10 (good for two new releases or renting an expensive video game before purchasing it), gift card to an ice cream shop for $5, and various flavors of cappuccino. It was a great hit for less than $20. And, we were able to keep the extra cokes and candy (saved on groceries).

Our parents, friends, and sister-in-law and her husband get a couple gift of no more than $40 per gift. Kids we usually set a price limit of $10-$15. My aunt and her husband, who live in Baton Rouge, have two kids that are the same ages as our kids and we all exchanged gifts last year. They got the movie night on us gift bag and my cousin who is Punkin's age got a gift from us and this year my aunt will also have a 7 month old baby. On my mom's side we draw names and set the price limit of $10-$15 too.

At our house, we set a limit of 5 gifts and the girls get 5 gifts plus santa and stockings. Our dogs also have stocking, they get a new toy, bone, and collar (because they usually need a new one by the time Christmas gets here lol). This also helps because we give them their stockings first and they go far away and eat their bones, so they are out of the way while we open presents. We also set a price limit on how much we spend on ourselves, yes it is usually more but when you buy a gift a week it doesn't break the bank and I end up getting almost everything on clearance or on sale :) We are also able to sit at home during the crazy shopping season and enjoy our family and a nice fire. We are usually done shopping before Thanksgiving other than the last minute candy for stocking suffers or the last minute Christmas party secret santa gift.

My husband makes fun of me for doing this, but he loves it when everyone is going crazy and running around trying to finish their shopping at the last minute because we are done! LOL.

I usually do buy the girls their stuff first because if all else fails my kids will have a

"good" Christmas and will not go without. For our extended family I buy their Christmas after their birthday (which I do the same thing for birthdays). Doodle Bugs birthday is at the end of October and I'm done with her gifts with the exception of one and thats because the past couple of times I've gone to the store they have been sold out. So here are a couple of goodies I have stocked up on this year so far!

This is Doodle Bugs birthday gifts, I put clothes as one gift. Usually two outfits and pjs.

Here are my Christmas finds :)

Outfit for my aunts new little boy, was $16 and I paid $6

Something that Punkin has been wanting so bad but it was $24.99 I paid $7.25, it was also the last one.

This is something else Punkin has been wanting, didn't get that good of a deal but not paying full price is better than nothing right? $19.99 and I paid $14.99.
This was my favorite find and I wish I would have gotten two. This is for my Aunts little girls the same age as Punkin. On clearance at target was $27.99 and paid $6.25. I got this is April, I could not pass it up and now I see it everywhere for the $27.99 price and I can't make myself pay that when I got it for $6.25 :(

Punkin loves dress up so we added a dress! only $10.00

Doodle Bugs two outfits, $4 a piece

Punkin's outfits same price. Another place I get cheap but good clothes is our Children's place outlet. I go in there all the time and they have shirts, jackets, and all sorts of goodies for .99 or $1.99. Once I found jeans on sale for $1.99 and racked up.

My new niece gets this, its a plush turtle that opens up and you put the balls in it, perfect for a 4 month old.
Starter for Punkin's stocking stuffers
My new nieces clothes
my little sister (age 20) said she didn't know they really made pig piggy banks and her favorite color is purple so we will put money in it what college student wouldn't want that right?
My best friends little boy's birthday gift he has an October birthday too. I paid $2 for the pants that were originally $12 and the shirts I got on sale for $4 vs $8.

I hope you don't think I'm off my rocker here but it really does help a lot especially when you can come way under budget on the price limits. My closet is about to burst though, but hey Thanksgiving will be here before we know it and we will be buying a tree and I can get my closet back. HAHA.

Weekend projects

This weekend was great. We got some much needed rest, house clean, long awaited projects done and homework :)

Friday night I went and did a little shopping. I never buy myself anything because the girls stuff is so much cuter and hubby usually needs it more than me. This weekend though I did manage to go to areopostale' and get me some jeans (its the only place that has jeans that fit me perfectly, so perfectly in fact I don't even have to try them on). I got three pair because their $60 jeans were on sale of $19.99. I have needed to buy me some new jeans for about two years now...lol. Then we had some friends over after the girls went to bed and had a game night. We played the newlywed game, just like the old show, it was fun but the dvd was slow.

Saturday, my hubby got up with the girls and let me sleep in. After getting up and getting me and the girls ready we headed to lowes because my hubby has been wanting to buy some supplies to build a lift type thing (not sure what to call it) for his 4-runner top. He has an old '87 4-runner blacked out and jacked up and everybody loves it. The top comes off kind of like a jeep and for about a year he's wanted to build something so he would be able to take the top off my himself. He finally did and it looks amazing. I was really proud of him. I also got the house completely cleaned besides finishing laundry, but at this point I think I'm going to give up on trying to catch up on laundry because I'm starting to believe there is NO SUCH THING!

Today I woke up not feeling to well and because my hubby was having trouble sleeping he let me sleep in again. Next weekend I have to return the favor. LOL. He started working on one of our 4-wheelers that nobody has been able to fix and finally fixed it completely for $40 bucks v.s. $200+. He was on a roll this weekend and was so tickled it was too cute. I was not able to get much homework done but I'm ahead in all my classes so I'm not to worried about it, I'll be getting up early tomorrow to do school work. We also had my in-laws stop by for a while to check out the projects and say hi for a bit and then we relaxed and played games and watched movies with the girls. A great end to a great weekend!

Hope everyone had a good weekend! Now to finally sleep with no dogs barking ;)

Really small Kitchen equals creativity

Okay so I am finally getting around to my organizing posts. We have a decent size house of around 1200 sq ft. However, shortly after moving in for some reason it seemed like the house shrunk. Having a hubby with lots of toys (big ones), two small kids with lots of toys, three dogs ranging in all sizes and a me, all of our stuff made the walls seem like they were about to burst. The main part of my house I hate is my kitchen. It is way to small and only one person can comfortably fit in it. Our kitchen in our two bedroom apartment was bigger than this one.

So here goes, We have a galley size kitchen but we are lucky enough to have a lot of cabinets. We are also lucky that the previous owners took out the a.c. unit and put it in the attic and converted that closet into a utility pantry with slide out drawers. I use this as my pantry.

There is a rule in my house that the bottom shelf is the kid shelf. Punkin loves this because she can get snacks and juice as she wants. There is also a rule of, if it is not kid friendly or the kids are not allowed to have them it is not to be placed on the bottom shelf.

The second, third, and fourth drawers pull out and I love this about the pantry. The cubby hole at the bottom is empty for now but I'm sure I will fill it sooner or later.

The previous owners used the long cabinet in the back of the kitchen as their pantry and I use it as over stock storage, small appliances, and tupperware.

The next cabinet on the top is where we keep plates and bowls. The bottom cabinet has my cake platter, punch bowl and deep soup pots in it. Under the sink I keep my toaster oven and deep fryer and cleaning products. Above the dishwasher I keep cups, glasses, and coffee filters.

Crossing over you have where I keep my microwave and the cabinets about keep our lunch sacks, foil and zip lock bags, paper plates, meds and vitamins etc. This cabinet stays messy. Under the microwave we keep our trash can and recycle can on a pull out shelf at the bottom as well.

1st drawer is our junk drawer, 2nd is emergency drawer, 3rd is kitchen towels and 4th is oven mits and pot holders.
This is my spice cabinet and where I keep all my juice mixes etc.

The cabinets above the stove is where my husband keeps all of his home made beef jerky supplies and my flower vases. Then next is my cooking ware and caserole dishes. Under that is my cooking utensil drawer and then going back to the left is where I keep my baking sheets and bake ware.

I do not know how or why the first two paragraphs are underlined like a link and I could not figure out how to take it off. Sorry!

Completely exhausted but moving forward

This morning when my alarm went off at 6am I had no energy to get out of the bed. My school work is caught up and I'm even ahead in two classes. Down fall is my house is a wreck and I haven't been to the grocery store besides to get necessities in about two months. So today was quite eventful.

The girls woke up at 8 am because our new neighbors dogs were barking at the air, I'm assuming, so I drug myself out of the bed and got breakfast ready and then let them eat breakfast while watching cartoons really dreading all the house work I had and school work. Our neighbors dogs start barking around two or three A.M. every morning and bark all day long. This is becoming really annoying especially since Punkin's windows to her room are facing our back yard and are closest to the fence along with our master bedroom windows. :( This bugs me so bad that I have gone out there at two o'clock in the morning and given them treats to get them to hush and it didn't work at all and the neighbors seem clueless and are never home to talk to them about it. One of my frustrating moments I had today.

My husband called and asked me to go grocery shopping early this morning because he was tired of grilled cheese and spaghetti o's. Never in the five years we have been together has he wanted me to spend a good bit of money so badly. Poor thing. I was however not wanting to make this trip with the girls for a few reasons; one, it was to close to snack and nap time and two, because I knew I was going to get a lot of stuff and wrestling with two kids and a buggy slap full of groceries was not going to be fun. Thankfully my sister came with me and she helped a lot so I cooked her lunch and got her a few things for her mini fridge. We came home got all the groceries unloaded, lunch cooked, Doodle Bug down for a nap and Punkin in her playroom eating and watching a new movie she got and I was to tired to do anything much less clean. I did however decided to do the dishes and cook my hubby a full meal. We had oven fried pork chops, fried okra and squash, home made mac and cheese, and rolls. He was a happy camper!

Girls are in bed, I checked my classes, still need to clean, did some homework and need to do some more but I'm just to tired. Six A.M. is calling here soon and I need to get up tomorrow to study and clean before the girls wake up. Hopefully I get get some rest this weekend though. I did have my first night class last night and my teacher is really nice and down to earth. She also said that we would probably never stay until 9:30pm. That was very exciting. This is my math class which is my worst subject and I don't know if my brain can handle three full hours of math.

Kind of a boring post I know hopefully tomorrow I can get a better one up. Hope everyone has a great night!

A Stay at Home Mom/Full time students family schedule!

Okay for those of you wondering how I am able to somewhat keep a clean house, kids safe and school done here is my schedule. This is also subject to change at any time! This is also a schedule that has been changed since I started school and it could possibly change. But so far its working for us and maybe it will work for you tweaked to fit your family's needs if need be.

5:30am- my hubby gets up to take a shower he takes a long one in the morning to wake up

6:00am- I get up and get coffee going so we can wake up and get dressed

6:30am- I get started on school and it usually gives me about two hours before the kids wake up

7:00am-my hubby leaves for work and Keep working on school

8:00am-Usually the girls start waking up and I prepare breakfast

(the past almost week the girls have been sleeping until about 10am)

8:30am-girls get dressed for the day (clothes depend on if we leave home play/nice)

9:30am-home schooling pre-school for the girls

(Punkin does pre-school work book pages and/preschool on comp and do flash cards with Doodle Bug of ABC's, 123's, and shapes)

10:00am-snack time and 30min tv time and I do some cleaning or picking up

10:30am- Bible story time for the girls

11:00am-Play time for the girls together while mommy does more picking up/cleaning

11:30am-Mom starts lunch

12:00pm-LUNCH TIME

12:30pm- Nap time for girls and mom works on school, bills, house paper work

3:00pm-Girls start waking up and gets a snack and 30 min of t.v. or movie time

3:30pm-Outside play time

5:30pm-Start dinner

6:15pm-Eat dinner

7:00pm-Doodle Bugs bath

7:15pm-Doodle Bugs bedtime routine (hair dried, teeth brushed, story, and lullaby)

7:15pm-Punkin's Bath

7:30pm-Punkins bed time routine (hair, teeth, story, prayers) Doodle Bugs bed time

8:00pm-Punkins bed time

8:15pm-MOMMY AND DADDY FREE TIME! (school work)

11:00pm- lights out!

Punkin Loves pre-school!

Please note that all of this is just a schedule we try to go by to make things easier to accomplish. We do not always stay on this schedule but we try to keep at least food and sleep at the same times, however Punkin is getting to where she doesn't take naps but will stay in her room for the alloted nap time. When she does not sleep bed time happens and hour early.

Here is how I am going to try to manage 5 classes 4 being internet and 1 being a night class and all of our family extra curricular activities.

• Sunday- we reserve for relaxing, family time, a little cleaning but not much
• Monday- I scrub bathrooms and for school I work on Economics class
• Tuesday- I dust, vacuum, work on physical Geography, Punkin has gymnastics, and my free night because the girls go to my parents from 5:20 to 8
• Wednesday- Sweep and scrub the floors, work on math 99, I have a night class from 6:30-9:30 pm for math
• Thursday-Catch up on any cleaning I didn't get done, work on English work
• Friday-Run all the errands left if I didn't do them Tuesday during my free time, Work on Political Science for school and usually have a game/movie night with friends (see my page on cheap entertainment)
• Saturday-FREE DAY, it varies and depends on what we want to do as a family or alone time.

Here are pics from a game night.

I hope this will help you it has helped me a ton. Please do not stress if you do make a schedule and you can't stick with it our schedule has changed many times. All that matters is you figure out works best for your family. With small kids the key is to figure out what causes melt downs and try to stick to that part of the schedule. For example my kids have to have meal times and nap times so we try to at least stick with those times and keep them on schedule. Happy kids equals a less stress parent :)

Soon I will post how I keep up with my grocery list, how I keep a very small kitchen organized and how I keep our family activities organized. Everything from doctor appointments, friend activities, church activities, and even our dogs vet and meds appointments.

Starting school!

So it has been very hectic here and on Thursday morning when I logged on to find out my assignments for my "first day" of school I started to doubt myself and panic.

Thursday morning both girls woke up extra extra cranky and not wanting to do anything. Neither of them took naps, so when I could get them entertained for a few short moments I was able to get a look at my classes. It got more depressing when I found I had to do a discusison board for each of the class by the end of the day, take two quizzes by Saturday, I have a total of 8 chapters to read, answer questions on, and then take a quiz or test on between all of my classes. I started freaking out! I was thinking this is only the first day and both kids are not cooperating, my hubby was busy working late and I was questioning on whether I could do this or not. THANK GOD for understand husbands, best friends and family!

On Friday, I relaxed a little bit after staying up late on Thrusday night to finish the things I had to get done that night. Then I got up at 6a.m. so I could get a two hour start before the girls woke up and they slept until 10 am and then I was able to get them to take a nap and get some more work done. Talk about some relief, however I was still paranoid because I was looking at all this and still concerned I couldn't get it done one time. I called my best friend, who thinks I'm supermom, I think she is CRAZY! almost in tears because I was so overwhelmed. She offered a mommy free play date that night and watched the girls for me Friday night. They had a blast and I was able to get completely organized, read all the introduction information on the net for my classes, get my binder organized (nerdy I know), and take two test and e-mail my first power point presentation. I felt so much better after this and was able to relax and re focus and got my confidence back. Thank you bestie I love you and owe you big time!

Today was nice because the girls had so much fun at their play date we all slept until 10:45 this morning and we relaxed pretty much all day. I was able to get the house clean (sadly cleaning is relaxing to me) and do some reading for school and some of my reading questions while my wonderful hubby entertained the kids.

Tomorrow we have church, swimming, and I have more homework. :) A nice relaxing weekend at our house. I hope everyone else has the same!

Being a young mommy!

I originally started this blog to help young moms see that being a mom sometimes is tough especially at a "young" age but you can still achieve you dreams and be what you always wanted to be. I might be 23 now but I still get looks that make me feel that they are judging me because I have two kids and have even had people tell me "your not old enough to have kids". Well age does not make a good mommy! Loving your kids and giving them your best and what you can makes a GREAT MOMMY! Kids do not need to have top notch everything just your love and they are happy.

No, I'm not a teen mom or in high school but I am still pretty young to have two small children at the ages of three and almost ten months old. I guess to help you understand what I mean a little better I should give you a little history of my life.

My mom and my dad were 17 years old when I came into the world. They did get married, although I know they were not in love, before I was born and my younger sister was born right before I turned three years old. My dad joined the Navy to support us and long story short it didn't work out. I do not believe if you are not in love do not get married just because of the baby. I KNOW from experience all it does is torture the child and makes its worse on them having parents who hate each other and can't be nice even for the child's sake. Two birthday days or awkward birthdays and being pushed back and forth from different houses (rushed) sucks on holidays. I vowed my children would never have to go through that. If you have to do that situation it is very important to co-parent and be nice to each other in front of the kid(s). I have seen parents do this and it's amazing to see how much a divided family can actually be happy and the parents be friends even when step parents get involved.

Because of this one of my sides of the family always told me I would be just like my mom and I have always resented this. So I spent my whole life proving them wrong. I graduated high school without being pregnant and "having" to get married. I did however get engaged to my wonderful husband about six months after graduating (age 18) and we moved in together. We were also engaged for six months before we were married. When we were married I was 19 years old and we got pregnant on our honey moon. We were excited, he is 4 years older than me and both of us knew we wanted kids soon, even though we were thinking a year after though. It turns out that my birth control failed and the sad thing is my doctor had to give written proof so that side of my family believed me because the response I got out of them when we announced our news was "well at least you got married." This crushed me! I was 20 years old when my oldest was born and we could not imagine our lives with out her.

I did put off college because after graduating I was going to save but instead I moved out, got engaged, got married, and had a baby. Then, well life happened and it kept getting put off. I did get registered for classes about a year and a half ago and then the finances didn't fall into place, so I decided to put it off again and just be mommy. I have been a stay at home mom since Punkin was 2 months old and we bought our first home. We are very blessed for my hubby to have a great job that was put in his lap and tripled our income the day we signed on our house. Money does still get really tight sometimes and thats when getting crafty and becoming really good and finding really great deals comes in real handy and now its like a second nature to me.

We decided to add to our family right before Punkin turned two years old and it was because we wanted them close for school age. We figured we would be able to plan it perfectly because of how soon we were able to get pregnant with Punkin without trying. HAHAHA! It took us five months to get pregnant with Doodle Bug. Then because that didn't pan out Doodle Bug was born in October and Punkin was born in June so all of Punkins old clothes before 2T wouldn't fit Doodle big because of the different seasons. :( Thankfully my Aunt who has a little girl one year older than Punkin and shares a birthday with Doodle Bug still had lots of old baby clothes.

Now finally that Punkin will be starting pre-school next year and Doodle Bug is almost one I am finally going to school and starting Thursday. I am taking on a lot of classes especially to two little ones at home. I am taking four internet classes and one night class.

I just want people to know that young moms are still good moms and can still accomplish their dreams and goals. It will take lots of hard work, stressful days, and no sleep sometimes but it is STILL possible with hard work and dedication. I will be trying to post a new post everyday on how to keep up with school, house work, and the kids and a busy husband while partially keeping your sanity. Organization is KEY!

Have a great week! and I hope some of this helps!

Catching up

Things have been very crazy around here but things are finally calmed down and so I figured before I get to bed early I would catch everyone up.

This weekend we had a home improvement project going on but a simple one just re-arranging. It made an amazing difference!

Thursday my hubby took me to dinner at Olive Garden as a congrats your finally starting school dinner. Friday, our couple friend that was having trouble (they worked it out) cooked us steaks, homemade pasta salad and a pie and they brought it over to our home and we enjoyed dinner and a movie with them. Saturday I was able to catch up on all of my cleaning while hubby was keeping the kiddos entertained. After my cleaning was done he worked on his project truck and I entertained the kiddos. Sunday, we made it back to church we have missed the previous 4 Sundays, and we enjoyed the service and Punkin was excited to get back to her class. For the rest of the day we have been relaxing and just enjoying our family time. I did cook a "big" dinner. Well a whole chicken, I rarely ever cook a whole chicken, stuffed with onions and potatoes, noodles and some tomatoes. It was my husbands idea to use the onions. It turned out pretty good so I was kind of excited.

We also finally got our family schedule back on track. The girls had dinner, baths, and bedtimes on time last night. The house was clean which makes it easy to get out the door on time on Sunday mornings. I let the Hubby sleep in until 10 am (church starts at 11 and it is maybe 3 minutes from home). I got up started the coffee, cooked breakfast, straightened my hair, got the girls up fed and dressed and we were out the door in the nick of time.

We were also blessed to welcome two new precious baby girls into our lives this past week. The first Miss Thang, our new neice who lives in a different state. We are very thankful though that one year for Christmas my dad bought all of us web cams so we could keep in touch with his sister (my aunt) and my grandmother. When my sis in law and her husband got transfered to a different state shortly after Punkin was born they bought a web cam so we can still see them too. We got to do a web chat with them and see our precious new niece and introduce all of our girls to each other and it was so great. My inlaws are there with my sister in law for about another week to visit with their new grandbaby and then they will be coming home. Our second baby girl we got to welcome into this world was our couple friends third addition to their family. We went to see her at the hospital after church today and I can't believe that only 9 almost 10 short months ago my Doodle Bug was that size of those two precious babies, they grow up so fast. We have had a very good end of the week and weekend and it was very refreshing. Especially since things were so hectic and crazy the past few weeks although it feels like months.

This is my wonderful sis in law and her great hubby and our new precious niece!

The funny thing is Miss Thang, Doodle Bug, and Punkin all look exactly alike in their first pictures.

This Thursday I start my first day of college in 5 years. I am really nervous and excited all at the same time. I have all but one of my books with the exception on one and I should have that one one Tuesday. I'm taking on a huge load 15 credit hours and so I'm hoping I can keep us on our schedule so that way I can study and get all of my school work done and make good grades. I will probably have to tweak our family schedules a few times before I am able to get it to where it works great for us.

English 101

Political Science

BADM

Math 99 (my worst subject) so I figured that I should take a review class 1st.

I hope everyone had a great weekend and has a great week!