We are still doing some work on the home. Doors are being hung. Light fixtures are being replaced. Touch up caulking and painting. And the new kitchen sink still needs to be installed; the original one has a hole in it. But all in all, everything is coming together nicely. I’m still looking for a new living room set. Right now all I have in my large new space is one couch that I got from the Salvation Army for $10, and a chair that we got for $20. I’d really LOVE to get a nice set of living room furniture. I keep checking Craig’s list. I guess the Lord will send one my way when the right one is out there.

We’ve gotten a lot of good deals on the materials that we’ve used in the home. Here is how the Lord has blessed our frugal efforts in remodeling:

• I collected light fixtures at yard sales, the Salvation Army, and Habitat for very cheap (like $2 each!), including my dining room chandelier for $20 at a yard sale.
• I got a new-to-me sink for the kitchen for FREE! I saw it on a lady’s lawn, along with a bunch of other materials. She was remodeling her home. I asked her if she was going to be getting rid of it and she said yes, that Habitat was coming that day to pick it up. I asked her if she minded if I took it, cause I could really use it, and she said I was welcome to take it. I also got some nice decorative, wooden curtain rods from her pile.
• I bought a dishwasher off of Craigslist for $50! I talked the man down from $75. It works wonderfully!
• We had to replace four of the bedroom doors in the home because they had holes that had been punched in them. (I’m telling you, this place had been thrashed!) Fortunately, my grandparents just happened to be replacing their doors in their home, and they saved their old ones for me. Nothing was wrong with them, they just needed a paint job. Works for me!!
• I got some barstools for my new bar for $12 each off of Craigslist (after some haggling of course!). They are really nice too! This was an excellent deal; naturally I was very excited.
• My husband traded some chairs (which somebody had just given him) for a really nice, large capacity dryer.
• I bought my daughter’s new “big girl” bed off of Craigslist for $30! Mattress and all!
• I got my dining table off Craigslist too. It’s a nice oak pedestal table, with a leaf extension, and 6 chairs. I paid $50 for it. I’ll sell my old table for $40, so I won’t have much in the new one.
• My bedroom furniture was given to us. Awesome!
• We have an office desk waiting for us to pick it up at my grandma’s house. My aunt no longer needed it, and my smart Nana snatched it up before it could be donated away. It will be so nice to have an office desk!
• A twin bed and wooden vanity were given to us for our guest bedroom.
• But most of all, my Dad has been here to help us with all of the repairs and handy man work. We could not have done any of this without his help.

So, as you can see, we’ve been extremely blessed through this whole new chapter in our lives. We have done our best to be as frugal as we could be in the remodeling and decorating of this home. We may not get everything that we want all at once. And we may not get exactly what we had wanted. But the Lord has been so good to bring us what we need in good time, so we can only be thankful for everything that we have.

Anyways, I better go for now. I still have lots to do! Glad to be back though. I truly have appreciated all of my faithful readers for hanging in there with me through all of my absences!

In Christ,

Kendra

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Click HERE, to get your FREE Photo Book. Simply sign up or login to get a credit to your account. The offer is good until Friday; and you have until Sunday to complete your order… so don’t miss out!

*I thought I might add that you DO have to pay shipping ($6.99). Still not a bad deal!

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Okay, so here are a few more for ya:

Before: Master bedroom

See how nasty it was?! Obviously the carpet had to go! Lucky for you this blog doesn’t come with “smell-o-vision”… yuck!!

After:

Clean, new carpet. We pulled the strips off the walls, filled the holes, and painted them a nice neutral shade. Add some new trim, a fan, and it’s set!

Before: Bedroom #1

All I can say is “Blah”!

After:

This is going to be Titus’ new room. These colors might look crazy, but when I put in his bed set, with the pale yellow bedding, it will really look nice! My dad and I put up the chair rail and new baseboards (He cut; I nailed, caulked, and painted). Check me out:

You didn’t know I was so handy, did you

Before: Bedroom #2

Nasty, nasty, nasty!

After:

If you couldn’t tell by all of the girlyness, this is Jada’s new room. I free-hand painted butterflies and flowers around the boarder. It took me forever, but I love the outcome! And the fan I just adore. I had been eyeing it for months, and one day I went into Lowes to look for other things, and I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw the exact same fan on clearance for $40! I was so excited, and scooped it up immediately!

Here’s a closer shot of some of the detailing:

Jada loves her new room.

Before: Master Bath

Check out the floral wall paper!

It had potential…

After:

Much better. Though I still need a new mirror to hang there on the wall.

Nothing major. Just some new vinyl flooring, and paint on the walls. (Not to mention some elbow grease!)

Before: Bath #2

Who puts carpet in bathrooms anyways?

After:

This green will look great with my beige and white dragonfly shower curtain. I’m kinda wishing I’d gone with a different vinyl flooring, but oh well…

Before: Dining Area (Sorry it’s so dark!)

Filthy carpets. Mud splattered walls. Dark and dingy.

After:

Much better!!

So, that’s all I have to share for now. I don’t have good pic’s of the kitchen or den yet. When they are done I’ll update this post to show them too. The kitchen is HUGE though, compared to my little trailer kitchen that is. Can’t wait to show it to you as well.

Anyways, I guess I better go now. I still have lots of packing to do for tomorrow. It will probably be another week or so before we are settled and I have my office space back together again. I’m so excited to finally be moving in!!

Yippee!!

Your blogging buddy,

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BEFORE:

Notice how NASTY it was?! Evidently the previous owners let a couple big dogs run in and out throughout the home and they tracked red mud everywhere. It was even splattered all over the walls! Along with who knows what else. Yuck! And that strange platform built underneath the windows… what was up with that?

AFTER: (well, almost done…)

Much better, right?! Yes, I painted those walls. And my dad pulled out that hideous platform thingy. But we did hire a professional to do the laminate floors. I wasn’t about to try to mess that up! So, it’s coming along. I’m very excited about finishing up, and finally being able to move in!

So, that’s a little taste of what’s been going on around here. I’ll share more with you guys later, when I can. Hopefully it won’t be much longer before I’m back at blogging again.

Miss you guys!

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1. Letting your child sleep in the bed with you.

Now, before I get a bunch of comments from all of you who co-sleep, let me explain myself. I don’t see anything wrong with responsibly sleeping with baby. I did it with both of mine for the first three months, and it was wonderful. It becomes a problem, however, when you allow baby to sleep with you for much longer than this. The longer baby sleeps with you, the harder it is for him/her to learn to sleep independently. I’ve seen it lots of times. And, sorry to say it, most of the time the co-sleeping continues because for Mom it’s easier, or it just feels good. This is selfish. You are developing insecurity in your child. And believe me, the longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be to stop the habit.

I had a single-mom friend who had her little girl in the bed with her from the time she was born. By the time her child was 3 years old, Mom was ready to have her bed back. But by then, the habit had been long nurtured, and wasn’t going to go away so easily. For many nights she tried laying her daughter down in her own bed, but by the middle of the night, the little girl had wandered back into Mommy’s bed where she stayed until morning. If Mom tried to put the girl back in her own bed, she cried and screamed and fought until her exhausted mother gave in. The frustrated Mom didn’t know what to do, and the poor little girl didn’t understand why all of a sudden she wasn’t allowed to sleep in the comforts of Mommy’s bed as she always had. Sleeping in a whole different room, in a cold and lonely bed (in her mind), was too intimidating for the toddler.

It is so unfair for you to do this to your child. So, start off right by forming good sleeping habits early. Co-sleeping for breastfeeding or whatever early on is great. But by 3 months a baby can sleep 8 hours through the night. Don’t make it harder for your child then it has to be. Teach them to be able to comfortably go to sleep on their own, in their own bed. Believe me, you’ll all get a better night’s sleep!

2. Using “White Noise” to help your child go to sleep.

When you put your baby to sleep, don’t debilitate him/her by creating a sleep crutch. Insisting that you turn on a fan, white noise machine, music, or some other sound in order to help your child go to sleep faster is only creating a bad habit. I’m not saying that you should NEVER do it. There are times, like when you have noisy guests over, or are at somebody else’s house, when using a pleasant sound is good for helping to drown out the background noise that would otherwise keep baby awake. But you should put your child to bed without a noise for the majority of the time, so that he learns to put himself to sleep in the silence of his own room.

My husband is a prime example of this. He simply cannot go to sleep without a fan or something creating a low humming sound. If we sleep somewhere away from home, where there is nothing to make a white noise, he tosses and turns and goes crazy in the silence.

My dad also told me of a man on his softball team who has this same problem. Every time they have a game out of town, this man brings a small fan with him, just so he can go to sleep. There is no reason to create this stumbling block in your own child’s life.

3. Using a baby wipes warmer.

Sure it sounds like a pleasant thing to wipe your new little baby’s soft tushy with a soft, warm baby wipe. And I’m sure that baby loves the feeling of it. But what happens when you are out to eat and you have to change baby in the bathroom using a little pack of room temperature travel wipes. I’ll tell you what happens. Baby is suddenly shocked at the cold thing wiping her bottom, and cries in protest wishing for the cozy warm wipes that she’s so used to.

I’ve never had a baby cry about being wiped with baby wipes right out of the box when that was all they had ever known. There is no need to create this habit of needing to have warmed up wipes. In my mind, it’s simply overindulgence, and when reality hits baby is confused and upset.

4. Allowing your child to carry around a special blanket or stuffed animal everywhere you go.

Limit it to bedtime only. If you allow your child to carry his special thing around with him everywhere you go, you create several problems: If you forget to bring it in the car with you, you will have to deal with your child being upset about not having it. If you accidentally leave it out wherever you were, your child will be devastated to have lost it. And, your child will become dependent on this thing to bring him comfort throughout the day. You want to teach your child to depend on the Lord, not on material things.

** Let me say it again; some of you seem to be misunderstanding, or just not completely reading what I’ve written. I’m not against a child having a comfort item. My own little one has a special blanket that he would carry everywhere if I let him. My suggestion is merely not to allow them to form the habit of carrying it around with him every single place he goes.

5. Feeing your child off your plate.

Seems innocent enough, right? But I promise you, if you begin feeding your child off of your own plate every now and then, you will soon create a little beggar. You will not be able to sit down for one little snack without your little one toddling over, climbing up in your lap, and begging for a bite of whatever you have. You will never be able to eat in peace again if you start this habit! If you think your child is hungry, sit him down at the table with his own plate of food to eat from.

6. Never making your child drink plain water.

For whatever reason, when we would run out of juice I would always find myself apologizing to my daughter as I handed her a cup of water saying, “I’m sorry baby. We don’t have any juice. We only have water.” When one day it dawned on me… what a terrible message I was sending her! I should never be apologizing for giving her such a wonderful drink as the one that the Lord intended to quench our thirst. After that revelation, I decided I was not going to buy juice any more. I started giving my children cups of ice water instead, and now they love it, and even ask for it! Drinking water is a wonderful habit to instill in your child, so don’t feel bad about it!

7. Cutting the crust off the bread; always peeling apple slices.

Just because you didn’t like eating the crust when you were a kid doesn’t mean that you should start this habit in your own kids! You are only creating picky eaters. If they don’t like it, they can eat around it. You have too much to do in a day, you don’t need to waste your time slicing the crust off a sandwich! The same goes for peeling apples. Unless it’s for your baby who can’t chew up the peeling yet, let them eat around it it they don’t like it.

These are just a few innocent mistakes that we all easily make with our children. I’m sure there are a billion more that I haven’t mentioned. But just keep in mind that it’s easier to create bad habits then to break them. The point of this post is to encourage you to avoid these problems, and fix them if they have already begun, before they get out of hand and become a nuisance.

If you want to share any tips or stories that you may have about creating bad habits in our children, I’d love to hear from you! I’m sure there is a lot that I can learn from you as well!

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It’s that time again! Time for another week of minimizing our homes… clearing out the clutter in order to free our homes from the burden of too much stuff!

I feel like I should take today’s post to explain the point of Minimizing Mondays for the newbies. This isn’t meant to simply be motivation to organize your things. What this is about is living with less! Not simply clearing out a junk drawer, but actually getting rid of things that are taking up space in your home but serving no real purpose, yes, even possibly things that you like but don’t necessarily need. I am here to inspire you to let go of the material things in your home that are cluttering up your life and taking valuable time away from your family.

Let me explain that. Having tons of clothes leads to piles and piles of dirty laundry to wash. Cabinets overloaded with cups, dishes, and tupperware containers cause you to waste time digging through them looking for one particular item. Shelves lined with doo-dads and whatchamacallit’s take plenty of time dusting and cleaning around. An excess of kid’s toys all over the floor… how many times do you clean them up every day? All of these things, when in overabundance, cause waste of time in our lives. I am urging you to rethink what you actually NEED in your home, not just what you like to be able to say you HAVE.

So, when I give a challenge, it is not merely to organize what you have (though it is wonderful to have your things nice and tidy and in their place), I am provoking you to rethink what you actually keep in your home and allow to take up space in your life. So don’t just rearrange the shirts in your closet… get rid of half of them! Don’t simply find a creative way to store the ridiculous amount of toys in your home… donate the majority of them, your kids won’t die, I promise!! Getting the gist of it? Less, less, less!

LIVING WITH LESS!! Free yourselves of the material burdens in your life! Give your time back to your family and kids and off of these things that distract you in little ways every day. Now, go for it!! I want to hear what you think and how you’re putting these thoughts into action in your own home! Let’s continue inspiring each other to have less and live more!!

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So, I thought I’d throw the question out there for you, my faithful friends. If any of you have homeschooled, or are homeschooling K-1st grade, do you have any advice for me? I’ve been just printing stuff off the internet, using worksheets from activity books, and pretty much just making up her lesson time as I go. I’d like to have a consistent curriculum for her, one that I know will be thorough.

She is already reading, writing her letters and short words, counting to 100 and doing simple addition. I’m just not sure where to go from here.

Can anyone tell me what I need to be teaching her for K-1st grade?

Do any of you have any suggestions on which books are the best for each subject? I’ve heard that some publishers are better in one subject than another.

Any good websites for printable worksheets??

Hopefully some of you might be able to help guide me along!! Thanks so much for any advice you can offer!

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The Invitations:

Be creative in making your party announcement. You could purchase one like the Princess Party Invitation shown above, and add a little pop to it with glitter puffy paint, or by gluing on small rhinestones. Or you could make your own from scratch! For a princess party, you can make it in the shape of Cinderella’s shoe, a castle, like a rolled up scroll, anything like that! I thought it would be cute to send out the invitation like I was inviting each child to a royal ball. Here is what my invitations read:

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Princesses of all the land… Her Royal Highness, Princess Jada, is turning four years old! In celebration of this joyous occasion, the Princess requests the honor of your presence at a royal gala marking her fourth year.

Come One, Come All, in your finest princess attire, to insert place on insert date from insert time. Princess Jada and her royal Court will eagerly be awaiting your arrival! Please ring Queen Kendra to announce if you will be in attendance…

For some printable invitations, see the links at the bottom of this post. I’ve listed several good sites to visit for more Princess Party ideas.

(Me and Princess Jada)

Playing The Part:

Princess parties are so exciting for little girls, because they get a chance to dress up and have fun! Make sure that your little princess has a beautiful dress to wear. Also ask your guests to wear their own princess dress if they have one. Make sure that you have extra dresses and accessories on hand in case one of your guests doesn’t have their own. I had a dress up “station” where there was a little dress up trunk full of outfits, shoes, and jewelry for the girls to play with. What I didn’t have, I borrowed! If you have friends or family with little girls, see if they might have dress up stuff that you can borrow for the party and save yourself some money!

Don’t be afraid to play along too. Any little girl would love to have Mommy dress up along with her. I bought a Cinderella dress to wear as the host of the party. (It was like $30 at Party City, and I actually got my money back out of it by selling it close to Halloween time on ebay!) All of the girls loved that I was dressed up too! And I have to admit, I enjoyed it as well! Jada especially was in awe. She said, “Mommy, you really are Cinderella!” She was so excited!

Make A Cardboard Castle:

Last year I came across this site which showed how to make an awesome castle out of boxes, for under $10! We decided to make one for our daughter’s 4th birthday. She was having a princess party, and we thought this would be an awesome addition to the decor. And since we are all about frugal parties, this came within budget.

It requires several refrigerator boxes, which actually took a little while to track down. We went to Home Depot and spoke with a man in the appliances. We asked him if he had any big boxes like these that we could have. He told us that they break them down and get rid of them as soon as they come in. But, he would hold some for us from the next shipment. We had to keep checking back, but after a couple of days he had some ready for us. We ended up getting several refrigerator boxes, along with stove boxes, which worked out fine.

We didn’t follow the directions exactly. I thought it would be more frugal to just use duct tape instead of the rivets that they suggest you buy from the website. I was wrong. Buy the rivets, seriously. They aren’t that expensive, and after trying the duct tape, and several tubes of liquid nails, and using a staple gun, it FINALLY held together. Next time, I will definitely just buy the rivets. So, anyways, it came out really cute. I happened to have a can of gray paint leftover from a project, so I used it to paint the castle. Really you could paint it whatever color though. It took quite a few hours putting this thing together (doing it the hard way), but when it was finished we were very pleased. (Though I could have spent days detail painting it to look like real bricks!)

The kids LOVED the castle! They were in it for most of the party. We filled it with balloons, and they had a blast throwing them, kicking them around, and peaking out of the tower windows. The castle was the hit of the party!

A Throne For The Birthday Princess:

All I did was decorate one of our dining room chairs. I went to Walmart and bought a big sheet of stiff foam board. I also bought an inexpensive decorative stencil, and some glittery gold acrylic paint. I went home and cut the board to be the right size to make the back of the throne. Before I attached it, I used the stencil and the paint to create a really nice decorative scroll-like boarder. I also added a sparkly gold monogram by simply creating the lettering I wanted in Word on the computer, then printing it onto cardstock (thicker paper is better). I then cut it out to create a stencil, then traced it onto my board and filled in the lines with paint.

For the seat of the throne, I used a flower girl dress that my daughter had outgrown. I first cut the skirt away from the bodice of the dress. Since the seats of my dining room chairs are removable, I unscrewed the seat and removed it. I then duct taped the skirt onto the chair, on the inside of the frame where it wouldn’t be seen. I used the sash that came with the dress to cover the seat and then placed it back onto the chair frame.

Voila! A throne fit for a princess! And it cost me under $10. If you don’t have a pretty dress to destroy on hand, I’d suggest hitting up a Goodwill. They always have stuff like that for cheap!

Jada sat on her throne as each of her guest presented her with her gifts to open. This really made her feel extra special on her day!

Music:

You really do need to have some music playing to make your party lively and fun for the children. A great CD that we enjoyed for Jada’s party was Disney Princess Tea Party. We hooked up the stereo to play it continuously throughout the party. The girls loved dancing along with the fun tunes! The whole CD cost me $12, but you can also purchase individual songs and download only the ones you want, for $.99 each! If you Go Here and scroll down, you can listen to samples of each song, and purchase only those which you like.

Activities & Games:

Dress Up: As each girl arrived, I’d lead her to the dress up station, where she would get a dress (if she didn’t have one) and accessories. Then I would sit her down at a vanity to apply a little eye shadow, lip stick, blush, and stick on earrings if her ears weren’t pierced.

I really lucked up when I found an old vanity on the side of the road a week before the party. I had been wanting to use one, but didn’t want to buy one. I grabbed it up, took it home, and painted it, adding the same gold and glitter stenciling as was on the throne. What a blessing that was to find, it was perfect! (And I actually was able to sell it at a yard sale after the party after it was all painted and pretty!)

Kiss The Frog: It’s like Pin The Tail On The Donkey, but with a frog and lips. Draw a picture of a Frog Prince on a large piece of paper. Next create paper lips for the children to stick onto the frog. Blind fold each child, spin the around a few times, then let them see who can get their kiss closest to the frog’s mouth.

As a prize I let each child chose a Disney Princess Lip gloss.

Princess & The Pea: I like to precede this game by telling a short, paraphrased version of the story The Princess and The Pea, using a book mainly for visual interest. If you read it word for word, you’ll probably lose the attention of the kids pretty quickly, depending on their age of course, so try to keep it fairly short.

Now, you’ll need three or four small pillows and a marble or small rubber ball (for younger kids) to hide underneath one of the pillows. Have the girls line up sitting on the floor in front of the pillows. Let each girl have a turn to sit on each pillow and try to figure out which one has the “pea” under it. Once they have determined the correct pillow, announce to that girl, “You’re right! You must be a real princess!” And as their reward I gave each of our princesses a crown of her own (each was only $1.00 at Target!).

Karaoke: Having an open mike is so much fun for the little ones! Not to mention a crack up for the parents to watch! If you have access to a music player and a microphone or a karaoke machine, this is a wonderful, and inexpensive activity for your party goers to enjoy! My husband happened to have a PA system for his business, so we were fortunate to have that to use!

Decorations:

As if the huge castle wasn’t enough, right?

Besides the usual streamers and balloons, something that I got and loved was a Palace Scene Setter. It’s that faux palace backdrop that you see in the pictures. It was super easy to tack up, and really made a huge difference in creating a magical place for the kids. For $18, it’s so worth it!

(Not quite as perfect as the picture I was trying to replicate, but oh well, it was still a hit!)

The Cake:

Want to save some money, and still have an awesome birthday cake for your little princess? You don’t have to have any cake decorating skills to make this adorable castle cake! Believe me, if I can do it, I’m sure you can too! There’s even an instructional video that you can watch. Not only will it save you money by doing it yourself, it will be much cuter than a store bought cake and tastier too!

(*Notice the flags are missing from the tops of the cones? Here’s a little tip: don’t refrigerate the cake with the cones on it before you put the flags in the top! The cones get hard, and the toothpicks will cause the tips of the cones to break when inserted. Keep them room temp.)

After hours of searching for more Princess Party ideas, here is a list of the BEST places that I have found for some great ideas online!

Familyfun.com- Invitation idea, games, craft

Princess Paper Dolls- Printable Activity

Princess Castle Maze- Printable Activity

A Ton of Great Princess Party Ideas

Total Guide to Princess Party- Printable Invitations, printable crafts (including crowns to decorate), lots more!

Hope this has been helpful for you! If anybody has any other neat and frugal ideas for a Princess Party, or if you’d like to share how you did yours, I’d love to hear from you!

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