Helen Hunt Falls 6-8-09

For my birthday last month we headed for a family day at Helen Hunt Falls. My goodness is it gorgeous out there! If you are in Colorado Springs and the surrounding area and have never been out there, you must must must take a trip out there. First of all the drive to Helen Hunt Falls is just gorgeous. You drive through Cheyenne Canon to get there. Cheyenne Canon is green and lush and beautiful. Jeff just loved the winding drive up there. He said that the park reminded him of being back in Oregon. He grew up off of a US forestry road so the smell of the trees and the towering pines took him back to his childhood. I REALLY need to take another trip up there.

Please Excuse Me

It's been a difficult 6 weeks for me so please excuse me for not updating my blog regularly.

I will start updating it again on a regular basis soon.

There are some family issues going on right now that have taken over my thoughts, dreams and every waking hour. My mind has been a blur and I haven't been myself. So as soon as I can get my head screwed on straight, posting will commence again.

Thank you all for your patience.

The Frugal Gourmet, Oh My!

I found a recipe this morning on The Pioneer Woman's website for homemade egg pasta.

You must must must try this recipe! It's easy. It does take a while though because you really have to knead the dough. I think next time I'll use my Kitchen Aid mixer. I'm sure it will make my life much easier. :)

To the basic dough recipe on the website, I did add just a little salt probably a 1/2 tsp full and a palm full of dried parsley flake (This was to 3 eggs and 1 1/2C of flour. If you read the original recipe, you'll see how you can gauge the ratios you need). Yes, I measure ala Rachel Ray. I really only use measuring spoons when I'm baking.

To go with this yummy yummy homemade pasta, I made a tomato cream sauce. Who says you have to spend a fortune to eat a gourmet meal!

Here is the recipe for my tomato cream sauce:

2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp garlic, minced <--- no that's not a typo! I like garlic.
3 tomatoes diced
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 C pasta cooking water
1/4 C half and half
1/4 C grated Parmesan Cheese

• Heat your pan to medium high heat.
  
• Add your olive oil and butter to the pan. When the butter starts to bubble add your garlic. Cook until the garlic is fragrant and lightly browned. Add your diced tomatoes and pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, basil, salt and sugar. Cook about 2 minutes so the tomatoes can soften.
  
• Add your pasta cooking water. Turn your heat down to medium low and simmer your sauce for about 5 minutes.
  
• Add the half and half and Parmesan cheese and simmer for another minute. Taste your sauce and adjust your seasonings as necessary.
  
• Toss with your cooked pasta and serve with additional grated Parmesan cheese.
  

ENJOY!

Note: Jeff even ate two servings of this and it has no meat! Ms. Picky Kaitlynn ate this with a declaration of "Num, Num" "Num, Num".

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Okay so a note on the frugality of this recipe. You know how I like to calculate how much something really cost me so here goes.

The homemade pasta:

1 C Flour is approximately $0.10 (1 5lb bag of flour is about $2.00. There are 18.75 C of flour in one bag. So to make it easier to calculate lets say 19C. So each cup is about $0.10)

1 egg is about $0.07 (I just bought eggs on sale for $0.88 a dozen)

Total for homemade pasta is: $0.46 (I ended up using about 2 1/2 C of flour total after kneading some in.)

The pasta sauce:

3 tomatoes, $1.00 (purchased in a 3 pk at Walmart)
garlic, nominal
butter, $0.06 (32 tbsp in a lb and I pay $2.00 for a lb of butter)
Olive Oil, $0.16 (I purchased a bottle of olive oil for $9.99, there are 133 Tbsp in the bottle)
Spices and water, nominal
Half and Half, $0.08 (there are 31 servings in the container of half and half I purchased for $1.12. I used 2 servings)
Parmesan cheese, $0.25 (I purchased a 24oz container of parm cheese for $3.00. I used probably about 2 oz)

Total for the pasta sauce: $1.55 (if you use fresh tomatoes from your garden, it would only cost $0.55! Can't beat that!!)

Total cost for the meal for 4 people, $2.01

SwagBucks!

Have you heard about this? You search online, you win points and you can redeem those points for things like gift cards, video games, even airline miles!

It's simple, you sign up and download their toolbar. In no time, you're searching the internet and earning points. Their search engine is powered by Google btw.

I have been using SwagBucks for a couple of months now and have racked up about 94 points. With those 94 points, I could get a ton of stuff, including MP3 downloads, gift cards, video games, books, etc but I'm saving up my points for the end of the year. I'm going to try to see if I can pay for most of my Christmas presents with SwagBucks. Wouldn't that be cool? To have a FREE Christmas?

There are other ways you can earn points on SwagBucks:

• You can send in your old cell phones, MP3 players, video games or consoles and earn more points. I just found a bunch of video games from Jeff's old PS1 that I'm going to send in to get more points.
  
• You can also get points when you shop online. There are partner sites like Hot Topic, Walmart, Lane Bryant and many others. For every $5.00 you spend, you get one SwagBuck.
  
• You can also get your friends to sign up. When your friends earn SwagBucks you do to!

So yes, if you sign up I will earn some SwagBucks. But the main bonus to you, would be to earn your own SwagBucks and invite your friends to earn SwagBucks. How great will you feel when you can get yourself something nice FOR FREE all for searching and shopping online!

If you are interested in signing up for SwagBucks just click on the image above and get yourself signed up!

Confessions: Why I Don't Like Mother's Day

Mother's Day is always a day where I try to keep my expectations low. After all, I try to tell myself, it's just another day. Another day in this mad and crazy house. I tell myself that if things don't go the way I want to, that's okay. I tell myself that I don't need to be celebrated...again it's just another day. It's just another day, an ordinary day. Nothing special about this day. I build myself up to think that way every year. And every year...When I wake up on Mother's Day...I'm still upset and disappointed.

People say that if you keep your expectations low, you'll never be disappointed. I think for me, I try to keep my expectations low but there is something at the back of my mind tugging at my heart saying, "what if..." What if this year it will be different. What if this year I will have my ideal Mother's Day. It is that very thought that raises up my expectations and then brings my world crashing down upon me every single Mother's Day.

This morning I wake up to a filthy kitchen and a filthy living room. I have been so busy the past couple of weeks. I have been working extra hours, shuffling the kids back and forth, drafting patterns, preparing and opening my girls boutique, stocking us back up on groceries and trying to do enough around the house so that we don't get too far behind on things. But no matter how much I do around here, I never seem to get caught up. While I'm running around trying to be super mom on 4 hours of sleep, my husband sits on his computer and plays games or looks for jobs. Sometimes he'll clean the living room. Sometimes he'll do a half load of dishes and sometimes, he'll actually pay attention to the kids like he's supposed to. Most of the time, I'm hurrying to do a load of dishes while I'm trying to cook dinner or yelling at the kids to pick up the living room when it's not all their mess or walking into the house after a day at work and then errands to find that Kaitlynn has marked her entire body with Kylie's pens and is drinking of of a cup that only God knows where she found.

I'm tired, I'm exhausted and I desperately need a break. More than that, I need a clean house. My mind is so unfocused because I'm thinking of all the 50 million things that need to get done around here on top of what I have to do for work (I still need to write this month's newsletter article). I just deep cleaned the kitchen 2 weeks ago and now it's trashed again. I go to work and come home and the dishes are piled to the faucet (one of my biggest pet peeves) and I know that it didn't look like that before I left...

So I guess this rant is really about two things:not feeling very appreciated and a husband who is being awfully self centered right now.

So now I'm off to do a load of dishes, make the girls breakfast, get them ready for church and head out the door. And when I come home, I know that the house will look exactly the way I left it. And when I come home, I know that I'm not going to want to be here. And when I come home, I know that I'll probably have to start making my own Mother's Day dinner or we will be eating at 10 o'clock tonight.

Yes, I Have Been MIA.

Okay so I bet you're wondering what happened to me and where I have been right. Well I have been a busy busy bee! I have been working on two other blogs as well as being a guest blogger on a third. I have been drafting all kinds of new clothing patterns and on top of all that I have just launched my new little girls clothing line.

Are you tired yet? I know I am.

So if you don't see me posting here, please check around... You never know where I'm going to pop up!

If you want to see my other blogs:

Future Homeowner Online is the blog I created for work. So far I haven't had too many reviews on it. So if you visit it, tell me what you think! BTW if you are in the Colorado Springs area, I post weekly grocery deals there.

KyLynn Designs is my new little girls clothing boutique. Custom clothes for your unique little princess. If you find something you love, drop me a line!

And my guest blogger spot appeared here. This blog is mostly geared toward Hawaii Moms. It's authored by my dear friend from high school Andrea.

I'm telling you I have been a busy busy...bee? beaver? duck? horse? Okay I'm strange and I need to have some coffee! :)

Another Great Recycling Project

Recycling, re-purposing. Whatever you call it, this project is super easy and quick.

Not to long ago I purchased a copy of Amanda Soule's "The Creative Family." In it, she describes the idea of re-purposing clothing. Her book details how to take an adult shirt and turn it into a pair of kidlet pants. This idea of clothing re-purposing intrigued me so I started to google it and I found a ton of information. But the best one was a tutorial on how to turn a man's t-shirt into yoga pants.

I filed this tutorial on my to do list and forgot about it for a while until I was in Goodwill the other day. It was military discount day, 15% off so I figured that if I could find a plain black shirt in decent condition, I would give it a go. I found a shirt and checked out for all of $.90, went home washed the shirt and started to cut it up. Really from start to finish this project took me about 45 minutes. The extra 15 minutes were for seam ripping and restitching when I sewed a seam on the wrong side.

This is a must try! It comes together quickly and easily. And once you're done no one is going to know that your new yoga pants used to be a man's t-shirt!

I would take a picture but I'm kinda wearing the pants now and I need to shave my legs. You're welcome for the visual. :)