this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

Several years ago we took a quick weekend trip to Washington, D.C. and upon arrival realized that we had forgotten the bag I had packed for Bug. A trip to Target was in order, where we picked up a few outfits and some pajamas and after which I vowed to never forget someone's clothes.

But I never vowed to not forget the toiletries.

That's right, during last week's trip to visit my parents, I left the bag containing our toothbrushes, toothpaste, hairbrushes, my makeup and even The Tall One's electric razor on the counter in the bathroom.  TTO wanted to pack up the car the night before, so he made sure the duffel bag that would eventually house the toiletries was accesible so I could throw it in the next morning after using the contents to do things like brush our teeth and hair. But I forgot. And buying replacements wasn't cheap.

To prevent this from happening again, I took everything we bought and packed it away. Thus, the next time we take a trip I can pack that bag knowing it has everything we need. I won't have to worry about using my make-up before we leave and then potentially forgetting to pack it. Suddenly, the money we spent doesn't seem like such a waste after all.

I'm linking up this post to the DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land. Head over there for more great do it yourself projects.

I've always been on the lookout for lap desks for my boys to use while on car trips. I haven't had much luck in that everything I liked was more than I wanted to pay (considering I'd have to multiply times two). So I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I bought two cookie sheets thinking that the magnetic surface would come in handy (especially for this travel toy I made) and the rim would perhaps keep crayons and snacks from falling to the ground and out of reach. I imagine you could cover the surface with contact paper and use them as dry erase boards, but I'm not too keen on letting my kids use markers in the car.

I used some fabric I had lying around to sew a little pillow to attach to the back. I cut the fabric the same width as the cookie sheet and about twice as wide. I folded it over and stitched up the two long ends, then I turned it inside out, stuffed it, and stiched up the last edge. To stitch the final edge, I folded in the ends and then topstitched.



Attaching them to the cookie sheets proved to be a bit difficult. My first instinct was to use hot glue, but that peeled right off of the smooth cookie sheet. The Tall One suggested sanding the cookie sheet a bit to create a rough surface and then using the hot glue. I opted for duct tape.



I would have liked a slightly smaller sheet. Since their carseats are right next to each other, when they were using theirs at the same time it made things a bit cramped. Other than that, totally perfect! They were great when my boys wanted to eat snacks or when they wanted to color.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.

Four years ago while visiting my parents, Bug broke out in a horrible rash. We decided we needed to take him to a doctor to get it checked out. We wanted to be sure our insurance would cover such a visit so we called the insurance company to see where we needed to go. However, because it was a Saturday we were not able to speak to an actual person. Searching their website wasn't helping much either because the pages with the information we needed were down. We ended up taking him to a local urgent care place that in the end would not accept our insurance.

The lesson? Check such things before leaving home. Know what your co-pays would be for the ER or an urgent care facility. Learn if you can go anywhere or if you need to go to a specific office. Taking some time to do a bit of research beforehand can save you some hassle and headache later on.

The Tall One and I are both not so good at keeping track of where we spend our cash. Recently I was bugging TTO about this, because the money in his wallet was quite a bit lower than the amount that the computer said he should have. Where on earth could that money have gone?

A few days later, I was pulling some change from our change bowl to give to Bug for his allowance. I noticed an awful lot of quarters and decided to count the change in the bowl. There was nearly $10! This is where TTO empties his change each day, so things are starting to make sense. He doesn't keep any change in his wallet, it all goes into this bowl at some point, so twenty cents here and seventy cents there starts to add up after awhile and soon all of his cash is in that bowl in change form as opposed to being in dollar form in his wallet. I'll start rounding up when I enter any of his cash transactions and hopefully that will help the number on the computer match the number in his wallet.

On Monday, I posted a few updates regarding things I've written about on this blog. Here are some more.

Our Garden - I've written about how our garden is much more of a hobby than money-saver. While that is still true, the money spent on peat moss this year was definitely worth it! We had so many peas, they were always available for a snack or for meals.

Our corn is taller than it's ever been and is now just starting to tassel. The sunflowers are beautiful and the tomatoes, well we didn't even plant tomatoes this year, but look what we've got! 


Several tomato plants have come up as "volunteers", meaning that the tomatoes that didn't get picked and fell to the ground last year left some seeds around for this year - and they came up and are thriving! Now that's the ultimate in garden thriftiness.

The Budget - I rearranged the budget month so that it more closely follows our credit card billing cycle as opposed to the calendar month. Most of our transactions are paid for with our card, so this just gives us a better idea of how much extra money we saved in a given month, or, in the case of paying medical bills, how much we'll need to pull from savings in order to pay the card off in full. I'm liking it a lot.

The Car - Our jeep is still going strong and, though it's a tight fit, the three car seats fit in the back row just fine and it's not driving me crazy yet! Hopefully the car will still work for us for awhile so we can save some more for a new car. We just had it checked over (because it was making funny noises) and the mechanic says it's in great condition for its age. And we didn't end up making all the repairs that the other mechanic said we needed done. Funny how that goes.  Also, remember this post about my stubborness when it came to driving The Tall One's manual transmission Toyota? A few months after that, I had to suck it up and drive it to a doctor's appointment, and I had to do that again yesterday.  I feel a lot more confident about my abilities (so long as there are no hills on my drive!) though it definitely isn't my preferred car to drive.

Ever since I've needed to own wrapping paper, my stash has consisted of pretty much only Christmas paper because, first off, that's when I use wrapping paper the most and second, I purchase it at 75% off at Target the week after Christmas! Sometimes I'll wrap it backwards so the white side shows and sometimes I'll decorate the blank side.

Bug's birthday is today and I thought it would be fun to create some lego print wrapping paper (that I first saw on the craftzine.com blog. Since he's turning five and I happened to have purchased five gifts for him, I used a fun idea I saw in the August issue of Parents magazine and numbered each gift 1-5. He actually didn't recognize the fact that they were legos, (well some of them he thought looked like legos) but thought that the numbering was pretty cool.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.

From time to time, I post about things I'm going to try or dilemmas I've come across. I thought I'd dedicate a post to a few updates. I have three for today and a few more for later this week.

Bills from my son's delivery: I initially received some bills that didn't make a whole lot of sense. Eventually I did, for one moment at least, understand the explanation of benefits and accompaning bills so I went ahead and paid it. Apparently we were cutting it close when it came to adding my son to the insurance because we received several EOBs saying that the insurance wasn't going to cover anything. That appears to have been resolved, though we do perhaps need to resubmit some claims.

Bunkbeds: I mentioned that we purchased a nice set of bunkbeds for our older boys, not as cool as some that we saw, but they are doing the job thus far. When The Tall One went to pick up the beds, he was suprised to see an additional charge on the bill (we only initally put down a deposit). Apparently the ladder was not included and we were being charged extra for it. We felt this was deceptive seeing as the salesman never mentioned it and there was a ladder with all the display models. We put the bed together and decided we didn't need the ladder since there was more or less a ladder built in on the sides. TTO went to return the ladder two days later, but decided first to head to the beds section and look at the picture  of what we purchased to see if a ladder was pictured (our exact model was not on display, but pictured on a poster). Sure enough, there was the ladder with no notation that it cost extra. He asked to speak with a manager, who agreed that this was a bit deceptive and refunded the extra charge for the ladder but let us keep it.

Notepad Holder: The notepad holder I made a few months ago is still serving its purpose well. It is still more or less where I put it and has come in handy for taking phone messages. My plastic bag holder is still working as well.

This week I wanted to share the easiest thank you notes ever.

For thank yous for gifts my son received, I simply wrote "Thank You" on a piece paper and took a picture of him with the sign. I printed out the picture and glued it onto some card stock. Easy and very inexpensive. I uploaded the picture to Walgreens for printing and saw that for about 75 cents each, they'll print the picture straight onto a notecard for you. Not as cheap, but even easier.

For more What I Made Wednesday fun, visit Remodeling this Life for a great summertime kids' project.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.

Children are expensive, but subsequent children tend to be less so since you can re-use so many things. We thought we were pretty set when it came to bringing a third child into our family, and a third boy nonetheless. But of course, the baby would eventually evict Monkey from the crib and he'd need a bed of his own, so we factored in the cost of bunk beds




and we quickly realized that we'd also need another mattress

But it wasn't until we were actually setting up the bunkbeds that I realized what else we would need

sheets

and a comforter, too. But that can wait seeing as it's summertime and the two year old doesn't really sleep covered up with a blanket anyway.

Sometimes its the little things, the important little things, that you tend to forget about!

bunk bed photo by goldberg via flickr.com
mattress photo from amazon.com
sheets photo from amazon.com

I had something else in mind for today, but I love this garland that I made with my kids so much that I just had to share.

I cut stars out of paper and let the boys decorate them using crayons, stickers and colored paper. Bug decided he wanted to cut out some stars of his own. Then, he branched out to other shapes as well. I cut holes in the stars and strung them on some blue ribbon. So easy and I love it that I was able to just use things we had lying around the house (and in some cases, things that have been around for a long time!).

It's far from perfect, but the imperfections are what make it so wonderful.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.