Christmas 2011

It's been a full year since I've added anything here! Sheesh. I may go back and add some stuff in retrospect, but I don't want to miss out on sharing these pictures.

This year Santa brought the girls a doll house and a horse that both girls are super excited about.

Our Yard Transformation

This summer we finally got to start the backyard landscaping/fence project. We've wanted a privacy fence for quite some time as our yard runs along a very busy street. We've been lacking the funds to do it up til now, but we're proud to say it's finally done!

I'll give you a quick run down via pictures of the project from start to finish.

Here is our yard December 27th, 2006. Just a short week or so after we moved in. You can see that there are still trees in the yard at that point, that eventually came down either from weather or when we cut them down (they were dead either way).


This is the yard right after it was leveled out a bit and graded.










Here are some shots of the grass growing a few weeks later:





Here is a pile of rocks... a pile of rocks that I pulled out of the yard by hand. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about the rocks. Well, when we had the yard leveled and graded, we did not have a layer of topsoil brought in (don't get me started) and all of the crap dirt from that gigantic pile I had dumped last summer was just spread out over our yard! I was soooo upset. Here we are trying to make a better yard for our kids to play in and instead I've made a rocky, debris filled, death trap! I spent several nights out in the yard just pulling up rocks and tossing them into a bucket, only to dump them later. Unfortunately the grass came in too fast and too well because I didn't even get to canvass the whole yard. If you notice in some of the previous pictures, you'll see where I had sectioned off the yard with string to try and get it all picked up. Seriously, I was pissed and very determined to make our yard great.


Next up on the list was the fence! (The best part in my opinion.) The guys who put it up were very quick and I thought it looked great.

New Furniture!

After saving up for a few years (and then re-saving after tough times!), we finally got our new couch. It's HUGE! It does take up quite a bit of room, but frankly we are just so darned excited to have a comfy place to relax, watch tv, and play video games. Plus it's comfy enough for people to sleep on if we have guests, which our old couches were definitely not. And it has recliners!

The girls testing out the different seats.


Our old craptastic sofas on the curb for free pick-up!

Couponing for Kids

Over the past 11 months or so, I've been couponing off and on when I find good deals and can find the time. This past week I heard of an awesome deal for board games where if you price matched the games at Wal-Mart and then used coupons found on the Hasbro website, you could get games for free or even better! (Better because Wal-Mart actually pays you an overage if your coupon value is more than the item you're buying.)

I had to drive all the way down to Des Moines to pick up a Big Lots ad, and then to a Wal-Mart down there before I was able to get the deal to work, but after a little effort I was able to walk away from Wal-Mart with 36 board games for $32 plus tax. I was so friggin' excited to pull off this deal, as the games cost somewhere around $490 before the coupons and price matching. I plan on donating 28 of them and keeping 4 for us and 4 for the neighbor who watched the girls while I tried out this super deal.

Edit in a few weeks later:
My whole intent was to wait for the Toys For Tots boxes to pop up in town and then the girls and I would go and take pictures of an empty box getting fuller and fuller with our board games. However, after a bout of serious cleaning, I couldn't stand looking at the wall of games in my dining room any longer. So I called up the Marines Corps recruiters in Ames and asked if I could just drop them by. They were totally ok with that and I was super happy to empty the dining room. So sadly, I have only this picture to share with you and none of the box getting fuller and fuller! (If it makes it any better, I did get to talk with some pretty hot Marines though!)


2 Chutes & Ladders
2 Game of Life
2 Monopoly Electronic Banking
2 Candyland
1 Memory Toy Story
1 Memory Ni Hao Kai Lan
2 Scrabble Turbo
1 Scrabble Flash
1 Simon Flash
1 Bop It
1 Bounce It
2 Scrabbel Alphabet Scoop
2 Connect 4 Launchers
2 Connect 4
2 Scrabble
2 Toy Story Operation
2 Battleship
2 Guess Who
2 Monopoly
2 Cootie
2 Sorry

Total pre-tax OOP - $32.00 Total worth - $488.86 Savings - 93%

Christmas Pictures