Birthdays and Tightwads

Miss Kelsey turned a year on July 19th. It was a great day. My mom and my gram came to visit. We had the perfect sized group of little girls here and friends and family. Kelsey received a water table for her birthday and proceeded to get soaked!

I made the froggy cupcakes. The theme was a froggy in a pink tutu.

I cannot believe a year has gone by. Each day she makes me smile and laugh more and more.

My mom took this picture of us. The dress/shirt Kelsey is wearing was mine! We were opposite seasons as babies, so my mom had to shorten the straps for it to fit her. She looked so cute in it!
Currently she is in that not sure if she's going to have one nap or two stage, but today we are on the 2nd one and mama is getting stuff done. check, check, check of the to do list. I love that!
Is it just me or is everyone else with a near empty wallet thinking about Christmas and starting to cringe while turning blue? I decided to be proavtive and went through the trendy, cool and of course expensive toy store around here yesterday and wrote down all of the things I know the girls would like and will then proceed to find them less expensive.

So Julia is on a must have an American Girl kick. I personally wanted one so so so badly when I was 10 and never got one. NOTE: to any mom in this same predicament... don't assume ebay has the best price and know the retail price. The american girl dolls are priced better on the american girl site than on ebay!

So on that note.. I have been reading the Tightwad Gazette for several months and truly have learned so much from it. I was already starting to think differently, but I've learned to apply a lot of it. I have been finding more resourceful ways to package things I sell on my site on etsy. I made a big batch of pumpkin, raisin and walnut muffins and froze them. I then take one out and wrap it and put it in Julia's lunch box so it's thawed enough to eat by lunch time.

I highly reccomend it for anyone pinching pennies and even if you're not just making what you have stretch.

Stay tuned... I want to share pics of our awesome week down at the beach just 15 minutes away.