Friday Favorites

It was a busy week kicking off December!  We had fun things going on at school and at home.  Let me tell you about my favorite moments of the week.

1. Christmas Squishmallow surprises under your pillow.  Kevin's signature dad move.

2. Elf Day at school.  The kids loved hearing our elf names.

3. Grinch bros.  The new Grinch merch was a huge hit.

Our elves brought new sweatshirts for all the kids and they loved them so much!

4. We're a real tree family for our family room.  Fletcher picked out the perfect tree at Menards.  It smells wonderful and so far the cats have yet to climb this tree.

5. I love getting hugs at lunch from this guy.  He gave me a big elf kiss.

6. Christmas sock day!

7. Pumpkin is the sweetest cat ever.  He wants to purr and snuggle all day long.  And look at his winter coat!  He's half fluff.

8. We got a Dutch Bros!  We tried their walk up window and all loved our coffee drinks.  The kids got hot gingerbread drinks and I got an iced caramel latte.  The line was a little crazy so we used the app to order.

9. I love this time of year with couch snuggles and blankets.  So does Pumpkin.

10. I popped in to visit Grandma in between some errands and a birthday party for Olive's friend.  I took her to ran some errands and caught up on life. I always enjoy hanging out with her.  Olive ice skated with her best buddies and had the best time.

11. I took the kids to see Zootopia 2 and we loved it! Cute animals, cute story and we can't wait to watch it again.  I bumped into some of my students, too!

12. Costco pizza is superior.  The best $1.99 you'll spend on a GIANT piece of pizza.  We picked up everything from groceries to Christmas gifts and lights to lunch at Costco.

13. This apple dijon salad mix was yummy from Costco!  I added in some fresh apples, cucumbers, purple onion and blueberries.  It was tasty!  The salad mix was $3.99 and I already had the fruits and veggies to add in.

14. Leo loves art!  He's a drawing machine these days.  He makes all these characters and then tells elloborate stories with them.  It's so sweet.

15. All 4 cats are so happy to hang out with me while I get ready every morning.  But Pumpkin is the sweetest.  He purrs, gets a drink and is so excited to see me.  Remember our cat Topher, he did the same thing and got ready with me every morning for 15 years.  We miss him, but are so thankful to have another sweet orange cat in the family.

16. We got our first snow!  It wasn't a ton, but it was enough to get us a 2 hour delay.  Our tree line looked so pretty.  I got to hurry to the kid's rooms at 5am to turn off their alarms and then hear their excitement when the ran downstairs to realize they had a 2 hour delay.

I hope you have the best weekend!  I need to finish up some shopping, relax a bit, work on Christmas cards and map out the month of December.

Linking up with Momfessionals

See you back here on Monday!

12 Ways to Save Money During the Holidays

I don't know about you, but it's an expensive time of year at our house!  The kids have been invited to lots of birthday parties, holiday events, work events, holiday food, parties and Christmas shopping.  It all adds up quickly.  I have some money saving ideas for you today.  I hope it helps save you a little money this month.

1. Clip fresh things from your yard to bring inside for holiday decor.  I have two beautiful holly bushes and I can't wait to trim some for Christmas.

2. If you go out to dinner, save your leftovers for lunch the next day.  I ordered the never ending pasta bowl meal at Olive Garden and couldn't finish my second bowl.  I boxed it up for an easy lunch the next day.

3. Teachers or room moms, if you need help, ask for it!  I know this won't apply to all teachers or won't work at all schools, but if you have parents who are willing to help, ask them for help.  We have snack time every day and my snack stash was running really low after passing out extra snacks to kids who forgot their snack.  I mentioned it in my weekly newsletter and parents were SO generous to restock my snacks.  It saved me tons of money and I was so thankful for the help.

4. Cash in your food rewards!  I have apps to all of our favorite food spots and instead of going to buy food, I'll shop my rewards.  I got a free coffee thanks to rewards points here!

5. Say YES to hand me downs.  Leo's current favorite slippers were a gift from a friend.  We don't get tons of hand me downs anymore, but I love when we do.  I also try to pass on favorite pieces to friends with younger kids.

6. Learn how to groom your pets to save money.  I'm the nail trimmer and cat groomer at our house.

This also applies to the people at our house.  I run my own family hair salon and it saves us at least $100 a month when I cut the boy's hair at home.

7. Pay attention to prices as you are checking out!

Walmart has been especially bad with this on clothing lately.  We got these snow boots for Fletcher.  They were marked $24.98 and rang up $29.98.  I was watching closesly, caught the error and my cashier was able to fix it right at the register.  I've noticed many clothing items at Walmart don't have prices on them so read the signs, scan in the app and know the prices you are paying.

8. I mentioned above to get all the food apps to your local favorite spots.  I love earning rewards to places we go to regularly.  One of my favorite money saving apps that I've been using since 2020 is Fetch.  It's the easist way to save.  You link your email, connect your Amazon account and it'll scan your emails for receipts.  You earn points from grocery purchases, Amazon purchsaes and more.  The rewards add up pretty quickly.  I always cash them in for Amazon gift cards or Starbucks gift cards.  It's a free app and you can upload your receipts one at a time with a simple photo or link your email accounts.  Either way works to earn rewards points.

I have a referral code if you are interested.

Turn basically anything you do into gift cards with Fetch. Earn at stores, restaurants and shopping online. Even playing free games. Download Fetch with my link or use code C8K71 to get a bonus when you submit your first receipt.
https://referral.fetch.com/vvv3/referralqr?code=C8K71

9. Splurge on fun things at Costco for dinner instead of going out to eat.  We grabbed these Crab Cake Minis at Costco for $19.99, made $5 worth of sides at home and ate a nicer meal for $25.  Going out to eat costs us about $25/plate so this Costco dinner splurge still saved us tons of money.  We really enjoyed these crab cakes in the air fryer.  I assumed they came with the dipping sauce, but they didn't.  Next time I'll make sure to make my own sauce to go with the crab cakes.

10. Compare prices.  If you are tempted to grab something in store, check the price at Amazon, Walmart or Target to see if you are getting a good deal.

For example, Fletcher loves these funny food socks.  They are $1.25/pair at Dollar Tree.  I looked for some more options on Amazon and I could get a six pack of food brand socks for $30.  That's much higher than Dollar Tree.  I just stopped in a couple different Dollar Trees to collect some socks for his stocking instead of overspending on the Amazon ones.

11. Read your credit card statements very carefully this time of year!  We just finished resolving a scam issue on one of our credit cards.  It looked like we were buying a lot of things - 45 different things - on itunes when we had only authorized 2 itunes purchases.  We caught it about the same time our credit card company did, but we had to double check accounts and call to dispute those charges.  They were all under $10 so it took a bit to flag our account as getting scammed.  Especially since it was listed as a shop that we purchase from.

12. Shop your closet first!  I know the matching family Christmas pjs are darling, but do you need them?  This year, two people in our family did not need any new Christmas pjs so we only bought pjs for the people who needed them.  Same thing with dress up days at school - we have elf day, candy cane striped day, Christmas sweater day, etc.  I'm shopping our Christmas closet first and will fill in the gaps as needed.  Try not to get pressured into buying holiday apparel to wear for the next 3 weeks.  I bought the kids each one new holiday sweatshirt and then we are using what we already have on hand for the other holiday things that pop up.

Happy Shopping!  I hope you find some great deals this season!

Thanksgiving Break Recap

Our Thanksgiving break was just what we needed - relaxing, restful, productive and fun.  We spent a lot of time at home in our comfy clothes playing and baking.  Got to see family and friends.  And were so thankful to have five days at home together.

We ordered Parlor Donuts to be delivered to our door.  Yum!  Do you have Parlor?  We love their lemon, cinnamon roll and carnival donuts.

Remember when Find Mom. Sit on Mom was a daily thing??  It rarely happens anymore so I'm extra thankful when Leo wants to snuggle.

The weather was beautiful enough for some kite flying.  It was chilly so everyone is bundled up, but we'll take any day that's nice enough to play outside at this point in the year.

I baked a lot of Monster Cookies and pies.

I said yes to things I'd normally say no to - like making Ooblek.  Cornstarch ant water.  The big kids were thrilled.  They are also pretty good at helping clean up their own messes these days.

I cooked a mini Thanksgiving feast just for us on Thanksgiving Eve.

Leo learned a new trick - folding towels.  They're a little messy, but he is so thrilled to have learned a new skill.  Enjoy my wonky towel drawer.  I'm so thankful for the team work with household jobs.

Slow mornings and quiet evenings.  I'm thankful for the time to move at our own pace.  That meant extra time to play after baths.

My pies turned out perfectly!  Minus the fact that I slightly burned one pie and somehow misplaced two pie plates during the year.  I made it work and ended up with some lovely pies.

We made turkey cinnamon rolls.

Texted Thanksgiving messages.

I was happy to not be hosting.  It was nice to just show up for friends and family with desserts.

We celebrated lunch with Kevin's family and dinner with my family.

We got turkey dinners for the cats.  Pumpkin's first Thanksgiving was a blast.

Fletcher learned how to make his own PSL at home.

Mr. Mittens isn't the snuggliest cat, but since getting Pumpkin, we're seeing his more loving side come out.  He joined me for a cat nap which was lovely.

Gobble Gobble!  Pumpkin's first Thanksgiving was a good one!  He looked so handsome in his turkey hat.  The other cats were not as amused.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving with your loved ones!