Pink Elephants

We have a bazillion stuffed animals at our house, and I have been longing for a toy box to put them in. Lo, and behold, when we visited with my parents this past Christmas, I was able to bring home a box from my childhood (and my dinosaurs!). Hooray--problem solved!

Problem found.

The box was really showing its age. Not only that, but about two seconds after we brought it home, one of the cats decided that the box would make a perfect scratching post. The end results was a wildly unattractive box and shreds of wicker all over the house.



I thought that perhaps I would try my hand at refinishing the box with some fabric. After all, it couldn't look any worse, right?

The first step was dismantling the top and then stripping off all the old wicker so that the box was naked and less...pokey.



I had originally planned on simply using a staple gun to attach the fabric. Once I stripped the box down, though, I realized that it was made of thin chip board--too thin for staples alone. Instead, I applied wallpaper glue to the entire box and wrapped the fabric around it. (Jasmine, who loves everything elephants and everything pink, chose the fabric, of course.) Binder clips worked nicely to hold the fabric onto the box while the glue dried.



The bottom of the box had a wooden edge, and the top side panels were thick, so I was able to use staples there--this was really about the easiest part, and I got to use my staple gun. *ka-CHONK*



The trickiest part was securing the fabric to the inside of the box. I couldn't use staples of any sort, and the wallpaper glue didn't seem to grab on as well as I thought it would need to. I ended up using a generous amount of fabric glue along that inside lip of fabric.



I found that the hinges for the lid would not come off of the box, so I had to work around those. My solution wasn't the most elegant, but it worked.



The lid had two pieces. I thought about leaving the inside panel off entirely, but I wasn't satisfied with it--and the exposed inside of the lid wasn't all that nice next to the pink elephants. I used a spray adhesive for this part since I was working with a smaller (and probably less abused) section. I let Jazz pick out what kind of fabric to put inside. Can you guess what she chose?





These edges wouldn't be exposed, so I left them rough and used double-sided tape to hold them down long enough for me to flip it over and staple it to the top.





And the end result:



The project didn't take as long as I thought it might, and I was pleased with the results. If I ever do a similar project, I think I'll add some batting to soften it up so that it is a bit more forgiving if little faces fall into it. Not that Evie would know anything about that...

Swimming Seahorses

The girls and I have been up to quite a bit of crafting as of late. I found a lovely butterfly collage through Pinterest and decided to do an underwater version of it.

We started with 8x10 canvas panels and metallic paint.



Along with the canvas, the girls also used some basic water color paints on a plain piece of paper. Jasmine was enthusiastic about the directions to cover the entire page, but Evie needed much more coaxing to paint more than a couple of dabs fo color.



After the blue background dried, we added seaweed with the metallic green paint.



I used a seahorse punch to punch shapes out of the water color paper, and we affixed those to the canvas with some sticky mounting tabs to give them a bit of dimension.



Ta-da!



We will eventually add some fish to this, but for now, the girls are happy with their seahorses.

The Original Pancake Heart Attack

*cough cough* Hang on while I wipe the dust off of this thing... *sneeze*

Okay. That's a little better.

With the impending move, we've been eating out more often, partly because we're hitting some of our favorite restaurants one more time before we leave, partly because we're busy, and partly because we've been eating whatever we have on hand instead of buying more groceries, and there are only so many cobbled-together meals a person can eat. We usually eat out about twice a month, so it sounded like a good idea when we embarked on this feeding frenzy, but now...not so much. I am so sick of eating.

This morning, faced with indecision, cranky kids, and fatigue, we decided to visit a new restaurant for breakfast: The Original Pancake House. It sounded good; it had to be a better start to a day full of work than the donuts Jasmine asked for (but never eats); and it was packed when we got there. Almost fifty dollars later, we were thinking that those donuts wouldn't have been such a bad idea.

We didn't order anything fancy. I got a vegetarian omelette with homefries because I didn't want a heavy, meaty, sugary breakfast. Adam got their signature apple pancake. The girls shared an order of crepes with strawberries. Add on two cups of coffee, two cups of juice and a cup of milk, and the final total, after tip, was nearly fifty dollars for three orders of food. And it wasn't even very good food--at least, not that good. But what struck us most about everything was just how big the orders were, which explains the ridiculously high price we paid for breakfast. None of us finished our orders, and we barely ate any other meals the rest of the day. (We ended up eating just salads for supper because our bodies were going into shock from the lack of veggies that has come with all this eating out.) Out of curiosity, we poked around online for the nutrition information from our breakfast, and Hot Cal showed us exactly why none of us wanted to eat again for the rest of the day, or maybe ever, and why American has such a problem with obesity.

I had a vegetarian omelette with cheddar cheese. That can't be bad, right? It was 820 calories and 18 g of saturated fat. And that's just the omelette; it came with a side of fried potatoes. In trying to find out how on earth they packed that many calories into a vegetarian omelette with skimpy cheese, I found that they put six eggs into their omelettes. Six eggs. Six. That's half a dozen. For me, that's about a week's worth of what I usually eat. Who on earth eats six eggs for breakfast in one sitting? Predictably, the cholesterol count was shocking: It has 1120 mg of cholesterol--that's 373% of the daily recommendation. For breakfast. Seriously, who eats like that? All four of us probably could have ordered that omelette with a bit extra toast and been satisfied.

The girls had an order of crepes. That's just crepes with strawberries. That came it at 1040 calories. It had 33 g of saturated fat--that's 165% of the daily value. The plate had three crepes; Jasmine ate one and Evie at a half of one. No wonder the girls didn't eat that much the rest of the day.

Adam's apple pancake was huge. Not surprisingly, it came it at 1530 calories. In a pancake. It had 525 mg of cholesterol (in a pancake) and 13 g of fat (in a pancake).

One other item they offer is a bacon and cheese omelette. That monster comes in at a whopping 2190 calories. It has 159 g of fat (244%), 62 g of saturated fat (310%), and 1435 g of cholesterol (478%). In one omelette. Why? Why do they have to serve the food in such gigantic portions? Does an apple pancake need to be made with 1530 calories? Does an omelette need six eggs? Why couldn't they have just offered smaller portions and charged us less instead of giving us overpriced mounds of food that we ended up throwing away? Especially in light of the news about America's expanding waistline, you think they'd focus a bit more on reining in the out-of-control nutritional specs of their food, or perhaps suggest that people share these items instead of bringing out a giant meal for each person.

The Original Pancake House was, by all accounts, a big disappointment. We should have gone to Round Rock Donuts and waited in line for an hour instead. If you want a good breakfast, skip the artery-clogging OPH and go to First Watch. They know breakfast over there, and the OPH could learn a thing or two from them.

Frugal Tidbits

Someone recently asked me what coupon websites I follow. This is good timing, as I’ve been trying to get back into some money-saving habits. Since I don’t like to use one sentence when an entire post will work, here is my couponing advice, along with other frugal tips.

Follow Coupon Websites

The only site I currently follow is Money Saving Mom. She lists weekly deals for CVS, Walgreens, Rite-Aid, Wam-Mart, and Target. Her deals include coupon match-ups from Sunday inserts. She also posts links for freebies and sample requests. I've gotten lots of stuff in the mail through this--deodorant, soap/shampoo, lotion, snacks, even a tiny roll of toilet paper that motivated Jazz to use the potty. What I really like about the samples is that they often come with high value coupons that I can use later. She also has a series of posts about frugal living and some basic DIY links, like how to make your own laundry detergent. My advice in finding a coupon website is to find one that lists deals for the store(s) you already shop. I need to find one for Randall's match-ups; folks in AZ should look for Safeway and Kroger/Fry's.

Learn Coupon Policies

One thing I have done is looked into coupon policies for the stores around me. I have pretty limited grocery options here, unfortunately. My choices are H.E.B., which does not double coupons and seems to have high regular prices, so I don't shop there; Wal-Mart, which does not double coupons but has the lowest regular prices; and Randall's, which has high regular prices but triples manufacturer's coupons up to 39 cents and doubles manufacturer's coupons that are 40 cents to 50 cents. In fact, Randall's has the best coupon policy in this area. They publish their own coupons in the Sunday paper, and they allow you to stack coupons--you can use one store coupon and one manufacturer's coupon on a single item. They will also let you use an e-coupon (one you find online and load onto your shopper loyalty card) for the same item. This combo has let me get several items for free or even a few cents over. I have made my peace with getting paid to take home groceries!

Target also allows you to stack store and manufacturer coupons. Their website has a selection of printable coupons that you can print off at home. This week, for example, Target had 10.0 oz. Vaseline lotion (the preferred brand in this house) on sale for $2.50, down from $2.99. I printed off a Target coupon for $1/1 Vaseline lotion. I also had a manufacturer's coupon for $1/1. I used both to get a bottle for $0.50. Target will also run specials where you can get a $5 gift card for purchasing certain items together. If you can match these up with coupons, it's even better! Recently, they had the ginormous bottles of Vaseline lotion for $5 each, and you could get a $5 gift card if you purchased two at the same time. As it turns out, I had two Target coupons for $1/1 and two manufacturer's coupons for $1.50/1. I used the coupons and paid $5 for two bottles of lotion, plus I got a $5 Target gift card. I don't have one in reserve now because it came in handy for Christmas shopping, but I usually hang onto the gift card until I see another gift card deal for an item I use.

Some stores will allow you to use a buy one, get one free coupon with a buy one, get one free sale. I honestly felt sketchy doing that the first time, but the folks over at CVS don't bat an eye when I use those coupons. Hello, free deodorant!

Get Organized

Clipping coupons is...boring, at best. I try to sit down on Sunday or Monday and get rid of expired coupons and clip new coupons that I think I might use. I used to clip everything, but that started to make things too cluttered and difficult to use. I also used to try to save expired coupons to send to military bases overseas--they can use coupons up to six months past the expiration date. This is a great way to support our troops and their families, but I just couldn't find time to haul the kids down to the post office and get it taken care of. When the expired coupons started to take over the entire living room, I made a command decision to table that idea for now. If you have the time, though, it's something to keep in mind.

I'm still working on getting my coupons organized so that I can actually use them at the store. I have one of these small, plastic, expanding file folders. It has built-in plastic dividers, but I also cut out pieces of construction paper that divide my categories into more specific sections. My main sections are cold, freezer, canned goods, boxed food/cereal, hygiene, snacks, paper, snacks, dessert/baking, drinks, cats, paper products, cleaning supplies, and miscellaneous. The cold section is further divided into yogurt, cheese, biscuits, and meat. This allows me to find coupon quickly when I come across a good but unexpected deal. Some people don't bother with clipping and just stick the whole insert into a binder, but this doesn't work for me. In one example I saw recently (and cannot find again to save my life), someone used a binder with baseball card sheets. She organized the sheets into categories like mine and put one coupon into each little slot, and put the rest of the insert in the back of the file. This allowed her to see each coupon quickly, but she also had the other coupons she probably wouldn't use in case she came across a great deal.

I have a separate index card box for my store coupons. I keep Target, Randall's and CVS coupons in that box, as well as my CVS ExtraCare Bucks. Since I don't need those when I hit Wal-Mart, I can leave it in the car and have less stuff taking up space in my purse.

My system isn't perfect, and I'm always looking for improvements. Some people organize by category, like I do, and some people organize by expiration date. Some people even organize by expiration date within categories, but I'm not that organized yet. I'm intrigued by the baseball card sheet idea above, but I don't think I want to spend that much money getting organized right now. The important thing is to find a system that works best for how you operate--and not to let the organizational aspect of couponing take over your life and give you coupon burn out.

Learn the CVS Game

CVS has such high prices that I would never, ever buy anything there at regular price. However, I started playing the CVS game last year, and it has been a huge money saver for me. They have deals where you can get ExtraCare Bucks (ECB) on items that you purchase. They key is only to use ECB when you are going to get about the same amount of ECB back on that purchase. I've essentially been spending the same $10 at CVS since last April. This week, for example, they had some good deals on diapers and mouthwash. Huggies were on sale for $8.99 with $1 ECB. Listerine Zero was $2.99 with $1 ECB, and Crest ProHealth Rinse was $3.99 with $3.99 ECB. I had a CVS coupon for $2/1 Huggies, plus a manufacturer's coupon for $2/1. I also had two $1/1 manufacturer's coupons for Listerine Zero. I got one pack of Huggies ($8.99), two bottles of Listerine ($2.99 each), and one bottle of Crest ProHealth ($3.99), for a total of $18.96. I used $4 in coupons for the Huggies and $2 in coupons for the Listerine, bringing the total down to $12.96. I used $10 in ECB that I already had, bringing it down to $2.96 before tax. I got back $7.99 in ECB--$1 from the Huggies, $1 for each of the Listerine bottles, $3.99 for the Crest, and $1 from my green bag tag. (The green bag tag is a little tag that they scan every time you use a cloth bag on your purchase. On every fourth scan, you get $1 in ECB. I've gotten $10 in ECB from this from this.) I lost some money on this one because of how my ECBs were divided--I had a $10, a $2, and a $1, but was willing to lose $2 because I still have $10 in ECB total. It sounds complicated, but you can get the hang of after just one or two trips.

The downside to this is that you are, on occasion, forced to use or lose your ECB. They expire one month after you get them. There have been a few times where they didn't have anything on sale that I really needed, but I had ECB that expired that week, so I got something anyway. I usually get personal care products on weeks like this--I might not need any toothpaste since I already have ten bottles at home, but we can either add it to the stash or donate it to a food pantry, and I get to keep my ECB from expiring. The plus side is that having a stash allows me to lower my base price for hygiene items. Since I don't need anything right now, I can hold off on buying it till I find a rock-bottom sale price. I will not pay more than $1 for a tube of toothpaste--in fact, I have gotten several tubes for free over the past year by pairing coupons with ECB deals. My base price for bar soap is now $0.25/bar, my base price for body wash is $1, and my base for shampoo/condition is $1 to $1.50, depending on the brand (I LOVE Dove's shampoo, but I refuse to pay full price for it.).

Wal-greens has a similar deal, but they are kind of stingy with using multiple coupons on one item, and the store "cash" expires in two weeks instead of a month, so I was not able to save much money at all with their system. Rite-Aide also has a similar deal, but there are no locations near me, so I can't speak to how well it works.

Shop Clearance

This is one type of deal that is resistant to planning. If you have the time to check out the clearance sections, you can find some awesome deals. It helps if you can figure out a store's clearancing pattern. As far as I have determined, on Mondays, the Randall's near my gathers all of the dairy items that are going to expire that week and puts them at 50% off. I have no idea what types of items will get set aside--sometimes milk, sometimes cheese, sometimes yogurt--but I have scored some free or nearly free items this way. Remember, too, that you can pair coupons with clearance items. Yogurt is something that we eat a ton of, so I always look for it on clearance. Here's how the deal works out sometimes: Yoplait cups are $.50 each. I usually have a coupon for $0.40/6. At regular price, this works out to $3 with $0.40 off, so it's $2.60 for 6 cups of yogurt at Walmart, which is where I do my regular shopping. I sometimes find it in the clearance section of Randall's though, so I get 6 cups for $1.50. Since Randall's doubles the coupon, the coupon is for $0.80, so the final cost is $0.70 for 6 cups. Obviously, this is a much better deal--but I have no way of knowing if I can get it unless I actually go to the store and look. (I've made this deal really sweet before when I happened to have an e-coupon loaded onto my Randall's card--that gave me an additional $0.40 off, so I paid $0.30 for 6 cups of yogurt!)

I've learned where Target has clearance sections in personal care and grocery areas, and this has given me some pretty good deals, too. Just this week, I found two boxes of Celestial Seasonings green tea for $1.28 each. I had two coupons for $1/1, so I got each box for $0.28. Do we need green tea at the moment? No--I just bought a box recently. But for that price, we can just add it to the pantry stash.

It can be a pain to scope out clearance sections on each trip, and it can be a pain to get to more than one store with the kids, but I've gotten enough good deals to make it worth it. My ideal routine is to hit Randall's first on Monday to get sale/clearance items for the week, and then I hit Walmart for everything else either on Monday, if the kids are patient enough, or, more likely, Tuesday. CVS is about half a mile from the house, so we stop there on the way home after we are out for play dates or walks or other errands. I try to stay out of Target and only go once or twice a month when I know there is at least one good sale waiting for me.

I hope you found some helpful tips here! I'm trying to get into the mindset of making saving money my "job" so that I can justify staying home with the kids. If I can't bring much money into the house, then I can at least find ways to save it!

Pigs in Blankets

Parenting, particularly parenting toddlers, is hard in unexpected ways. Who knew that kids would enjoy standing on Mom's back while she's lying down, jumping in the air, and landing with her knees between Mom's shoulder blades? Who knew that a three-year-old would hold her hand up when she's being reprimanded and say, "Cover you face so I don't look at you"? Who knew that a toddler would suck on one end of a power cord while the other was still plugged into the wall? (Okay, maybe that last one isn't that much of a surprise, but since the oldest child never put anything in her mouth, the second child makes me feel like I live with a billy goat. Or a mountain goat, depending on whether she's eating or climbing.)

Parenting is also delightful in unexpected ways. The girls like to take nature walks, so I spend my afternoons walking through a small park, picking up interesting leaves and rocks, and playing in a little stream. That's not a bad way to pass the time. They also like to feed the ducks, so we try to go out and walk around a large pond and look at the ducks regularly. These are activities that I enjoy, but I probably wouldn't do them as an adult without prompting from the little people.

One of our greatest recent discoveries is that the kids give us permission to do things that would not normally be socially acceptable for adults. Jasmine has found a love of chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream on top. So, we've been eating chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast almost every day. Oh...darn. Tonight, we're eating piglets (li'l smokies) in a blanket for supper because the kids will love them. I don't think that other adults would approve of a woman in her thirties making pigs in a blanket for supper--unless there are kids around to justify it. And you know what? I'd eat pigs in a blanket any time--and now I can do it without anyone judging me. Ah, parenthood!

Reindeer Noses

CVS had some leftover plush reindeer from Christmas for fifty cents today, so I picked up a couple for the girls. Naturally, we had to watch, as E put it, “Reindeer Nose” this afternoon. I looked forward to watching Rudolph every Christmas as a kid, but it’s been a few years since I’ve watched it. Once you remove the veneer of nostalgia, though, that is an awful movie.

The overall intended “moral” of Rudolph is one of acceptance, I suppose, but upon close inspection, that message is so clumsily and incompletely delivered that I found myself cringing through much of it today. It will serve as a good conversation starter on how not to behave as the kids get older. Even with the girls as young as they are now, I still found myself stepping in with comments about how inappropriate some of the behaviors are.

I do realize that films and books reflect society’s views at the time of publication and that these ideas evolve over time. The thing with Rudolph, though, is that the original story wasn’t about misfits. I have not read it yet, but the summaries I’ve read point to a story where Rudolph grows up in a loving home and is discovered by Santa Claus by chance. There are still some jokes made at his expense by others, but his parents are not ashamed of his red nose. The original author apparently had the right idea in mind when he wrote a story about a character who was born with an obvious difference, but this was lost when the song and movie came about.

Some of the obvious eye-rolling moments were general gender issues. The reindeer games, for example, serve to “make [bucks] out of” the male fawns and give them a chance to show off in front of the does. And don’t get me started on the scene after the abominable snow monster gets taken care of; the assertion that they must “get the women” home is a ridiculous nod to the idea that women are fragile, flighty things who cannot handle the pressures of the “real” world. Even if these ideas were generally accepted at the time the movie was made, I still find them annoying and condescending now in 2011. And honestly, when Yukon Cornelius goes over the edge with the Bumble, I wasn’t all that broken up about it. He makes the decision to harass the creature after it was subdued for no other reason than that he can; if he were a more gracious winner, he wouldn’t have found himself in that position.

Santa himself is not exactly an icon of goodness, either. He is crabby and curmudgeonly throughout most of the film. He gripes at Mrs. Claus, he is discourteous when the elves sing for him at the beginning, and he is unforgivably rude when he first sees Rudolph’s nose. This is not a “jolly old elf” by any means; this is a cranky old man who does not appear to like music, the differently abled, or his own wife.

The Island of Misfit Toys is just depressing. The Charlie-in-the-box is particularly sad. In addition to a reindeer with a birth defect and an elf with an offbeat career path, they have to throw in a character who gets picked on because of his name, like he had any say in the matter? The litany of flaws that make these toys misfits is bad enough, but then they are presented in a way that is supposed to make the audience laugh a little—so that our kids become part of the group that laughs at those who are different from the idea of “normal.” Really, the whole movie is presented this way—it is supposed to teach acceptance, but the differences are designed to elicit laughter from the audience so that we are laughing at the “misfits” along with the other characters who chase them off to begin with. I mean, laughing at someone because of his name? This actually happens, every day, on playgrounds across America, and it’s…not funny.

Rudolph’s father, Donner, presents the most depressing character of all, though. I find it unacceptable that Rudolph’s own parents don’t have his back in the movie. Got a kid who is different? Don’t encourage him to be himself or try to educate others—cover it up instead! At one point, when Rudolph goes for flying lessons, Donner says, “Remember: you’re my son,” as if Rudolph’s lineage is more important than Rudolph’s own identity. Yes, he does go out in search of Rudolph, but it should not take a child running away for his father to seek him out; his father should be on his side from the beginning. I think it would have been a better story if Donner had championed Rudolph’s nose instead of being ashamed of it.

Finally, I think the stated moral at the end of the story completely missed the mark. Burl Ives says, in his voiceover, “Maybe misfits have a place, too.” Or maybe, Sam the Snowman, they weren’t really misfits to begin with. That’s what I’d like my kids to learn from the movie. I don’t want them to learn that people who are different are misfits who have to find a way to make their differences work in ways that are acceptable to the mainstream. I’d rather they learn that people who are different are just…people. They aren’t weird or freaky or otherwise undesirable; they shouldn’t be chased out of town until they can make their difference useful; they aren’t deserving of their parents’ scorn for not being little clones of said parents; they shouldn’t be banished to some remote island where an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality takes over. Differences should be embraced, but we shouldn’t view them as a person’s primary characteristic. Imagine if we all had names like Rudolph’s that highlighted our differences or flaws, like Jen the Clumsy. What would your Rudolph-esque name be—and would you really want to be known by it?