How does your garden grow?

I wanted to give an update on our veggies and the pergola pots.  The pots now look like this:

We're having to hold the vines up with clear zip ties.  Once they get completely established, I'll cut the zip ties off.  The vegetable garden is currently being eaten up by (I think) ants.  A lot of the leaves are gone, clearly munched away by something.  We have some spray, but our sprayer is broken AGAIN.  NOTE: Do not buy the sprayer from Big Lots.  We've had two, and they've both broken.

And I am IN LOVE with my hydrangea bush.  It's gotten huge, and the flowers at the bottom are a mix of pink and blue, where the rest of the bush has blue flowers.  Here's a picture of one of the flowers.

Now if these plants could only water themselves...

Little Laughs

I am so lucky to have a sweet little man in my life who makes me laugh everyday.  Yesterday we were watering the flowers, and he proceeds to run back and forth in front of the hose and give the cutest little laughs.  I ended up watering Emmett more than I did the flowers.

And today Greg dressed him in a shirt that was 6-9 months (Emmett is 16 months old) because I forgot to leave out the clothes for him this morning.  When we got home from daycare, I took him out of it because he looked rather uncomfortable and had baby wedgie.  I left him to run around in his diaper, which I never do.  But I'm certainly glad I did, because otherwise we wouldn't have gotten these stunning shots.  :)

I think that second one is one of my all-time favorite pictures of him.  He actually posed.  :)  I absolutely LOVE the little baby belly hanging over the diaper.  When he came in the room from eating dinner with that bare belly and the bib on, I laughed so hard I cried.  All of I could think of was Chris Farley in his little bowtie dancing.  :)  

Now that I've made you vomit, I'm going to go kiss my little man while he's sleeping and head to bed myself.  

Picnik!

No, I didn't spell that wrong.  The TDC talked about this neat website/app/whatever it's called that helps you edit pictures.  Enter PICNIK.  I am hooked!  I have been tinkering with pictures since I figured out how.  Here are a few before and afters.  Keep in mind, I'm sticking with the FREE version, because that's how I roll.  :)
Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Okay, so I still have some work to do, but I think they definitely look better than they did.  I am not yet to superstar status, but I'll keep at it!  It's www.picnik.com.  Have fun playing around with this!!

$100

Is that a little bit of money, or a LOT of money?  I guess it depends on who you ask and on what you're spending it.  That, my dear friends, is the amount of money we are given as teachers to spend on classroom supplies for the ENTIRE YEAR.  That includes paper clips, pens, folders, construction paper, handwriting paper, tape, staples, ETC.  You know as well as I do that that list goes on and on and on.  Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to get THAT much, as I'm sure some districts don't get anything.  However, when that goes to supplying 20+ kids for an entire year, it doesn't go very far.  You find yourself being SUPER stingy about when you break out the construction paper.  Do we really need to be artsy today?  Do I really need to have you write something down for this?  Each teacher gets this much, and I'm the person this year on our grade level who got to put all three of our lists today.  It came to $296.39.  HOLY CRAP, we have $3.61 left over!!  I scramble to get my list and find SOMETHING that we can use that is exactly $3.61!  I am not letting a PENNY of it go to waste!!  And don't you know I found something for that exact amount.  I'm good like that, I know.  :)

So somehow the county had surplus money this year.  I'm sure it's because they turn off the air conditioner/heat at 2:00, even though there are still people working in the building until 9:00 at night.  Somehow that doesn't seem quite right, but they didn't ask me.  So after we all sweat about 5 lbs or put on 5 lbs of extra clothes, depending on the season, we get that fabulous news that we EACH GET $100 MORE to spend on whatever we like (but it has to be from a certain company on a certain website).  So I bust out my mad shopping skills, and my total came to $99.44.  Don't you know I surfed the site until I found something that got me as close to my $100 as possible.  Here is the glorious 53-cent pen that I found.  :)


I think I hear singing again.  Isn't it the most spectacular pen you've ever seen??!  It has flowers on it.  :)  And it's ALL MINE!!  Well, once it comes in.  Anyway, there's my hundred dollars, I mean, two cents.  What office supplies would YOU buy with $100?

The Pergola!!

Well, the pergola is FINALLY DONE!  It only took about 3 times longer than they said it would take, but through Greg's tantrums perseverance and my supervising hard work, it's complete.  Here's some pictures of the process:

Do you notice that Molly is waiting for someone to throw her the ball?  They're not busy or anything, obviously.

Stiiiillllll waiting...Notice she's moved the ball for them in case they didn't notice it.

Here's the finished product!

 (She's still waiting for someone to throw her the ball.)

Those are moonflower and morning glory seed sprouts next to the post.  I'm hoping they grow enough this summer.  We will be having people over soon to enjoy it!

Couponing

Have you heard?  It's the IN thing! :)  I have been watching that Extreme Couponing show, and those people are incredible.  Ignore the hoarding part, but you have to admit they have dedication and drive.  I have been inspired to try this on a teeny tiny scale of my own, and it's been pretty productive.  Granted, I overbought on toothpaste this week, but when it's $0.67 per tube instead of the regular $3.99 or $4.99, why not get a few extra??  Now I'm not talking 100 extra, but 4 extra is okay, I think.

My CVS shopping trip tonight included:
2 bottles of soft scrub (reg. price: $3.99 each, I paid $0.49 each)
2 tubes of mascara (reg. price: about $17 for both, I paid $5)
3 boxes of cereal (reg. price: $4.19 a box, I paid $1.67 per box)
3 tubes of toothpaste (reg. price: $4.99/$3.99 each, I paid $0.67 each for 2 and $1.67 for one)

Regular price would have been around $50, and I paid about $13.  Not too bad!! :)  It really does take just a little bit of looking to find the good deals, and there are websites GALORE to help you out.  The one Jessica recommended to me and that I've found the most helpful is thekrazycouponlady.com.  She tells you where to find the coupons, where the great deals are, etc.  It really does change the way you shop.  I am hoping overall we'll see some savings in our grocery bill this year.  Since Greg keeps tons of spreadsheets on such things, perhaps I'll be able to accurately determine how much we've saved this year.  Someone please stop me if I start hoarding! :)

Updated Office: Almost Complete!

So we I have been working on the office the past few weeks because it was a DUMP.  We put everything in there that we didn't know what to do with.  Let's take a look at the BEFORE, shall we?

Awful, cluttered BEFORE:

And now......for the GLORIOUS almost-AFTER!!! (can you hear singing??  I hear singing...)

 (Do you notice Emmett checking out Austin Powers?) :)

It's SO MUCH CLEANER!!  I love love love it!  Emmett was helping me take the pictures.  He has not put that yellow stick down in the last 4 days, by the way.  Anyway, what's left to do is hang my diploma.  That's going to be a while, though, because when I went to hang it today, I found SPOTS on the INSIDE of the glass.  And since Michael's is the place that framed it, they should be the ones to remove the spots, as they are sealed inside.

So there's the office, almost done.  There's really no good place in there to put the elliptical machine, so I tried to hide it behind the shelf.  We'll see if it actually is usable back there.