One Day at a Time

In addictions counseling, we have a well-known saying: "One Day at a Time." The idea is that if you thought about being free from an addiction or not struggling with it for the rest of your life, that's a little too daunting to handle, so you just take each day and say that you will be free for that day. 

I'm a long term thinker and planner, which in some situations is a great thing, but in others my laundry list of "to-dos" can become somewhat overwhelming. So I just have to take my own advice and take the day that I am in and make the most of it.

Today was a fabulous day. I cleaned the carpets in two rooms this morning while Ev finished up some work and sorted out a bunch of stuff in Elliot's room. Then Beth got here and we all went to the mall and got free Lush cosmetics, a free carousel ride, and a free pretzel!

Ev and I then went on a date. When we got out we realized we picked prom night to go to Biaggi's...bad idea. So we went to Panera, Von Maur, and DeBrands instead. It was really nice to have a couple hours together! 

I have a lot to do tomorrow and this coming week, but for right now, I'm just going to take it one day at a time. :)

DIY TEA SHELF!

From Design * Sponge! I'm very excited to make this. It will take me a little while to get everything that I need around, and it will be slightly different, but how cool!

GS Strategies

This weekend there are a bunch of garage sales happening in the Fort. I am definitely going to a few of them tomorrow to check on baby stuff for Elliot and see if I spot any other unique finds. However, I'm realizing that I will have some staunch competition, and strategy in my bargain-treasure hunting will be key. I am so glad that I had last weekend to prepare. It was something of a canvasing expedition for me, and I learned a lot. I am going to pass on my top two lessons to you, so that if you desire to, you can be a superb garage saler by learning vicariously through my experiences.

#1: It is perfectly exceptable garage sale etiquette to negotiate pricing!

Now, some of you might be thinking, "DUH!" But let me tell you. I am still in the process of learning how to do this. For some reason, I think that the price on the item is already reduced so it would be somewhat rude to ask the seller to go any lower. Not so! I have learned this valuable lesson from my friend Kayla. No price is set in stone unless there is a barcode on it....and even then, there may be some way to compromise. If I remember correctly, this girl haggled a street salesman in Denver over a period of three days to get a Coach purse down to an acceptable price for her. When going to garage sales, she'll find what she wants and name her price. If her price is the same as the sticker, then great, but usually it's not and she'll say, "Can you take this for 75 cents instead of $3?" Now here's the kicker. The seller can either counter offer, say yes, or say no. If they counter offer, the ball is back in your court. If they say yes, you pay your astoundingly reduced price and walk away with a smile on your face. But if they say no....you do NOT just pay the previously requested price anyway! Instead, you take a last courtesy glance around say, "Thanks anyway!" and leave. Believe me, you'll be glad you did. 

#2: While quite comical, the Amish have it down! - Go forth in numbers and make sure you have extra storage space!

I just learned this lesson last weekend. Heather and I were going out to a really nice housing association's garage sales in torrential winds for her birthday. There were three 15 passenger vans full of Amish individuals pulling large white trailers. The van would pull up to a corner, let ALL the people out. The 14 people would go out with military-like preparedness and determination and disperse down the street a few to each home with a garage sale. Now, I know you're wondering what that 15th person was doing. Well, he was driving the trailer-pulling-van slowly down the street to the other end so the troops could come and drop off any finds before they moved on to the next treasure trove. They were there scoping out the streets before several of the garage sales even opened up. I seriously had to stop the car and just laugh. Then I realized something, I was laughing while they were strategically taking all the cool stuff!

I rushed to get Heather and we came back to take them on. Unfortunately, they had hit up almost everything by the time we got back and we dwarfed in comparison to their numbers. So this weekend, I'm heading out early with a cleaned out SUV with plenty of storage space. I'm not sure I'll have the numbers needed to be a threatening force, but at least I'll have Elliot....he's a great decoy and distraction!

These are my top two. I am still quite the novice, so I'm sure I will have more after this weekend's adventure, and I would love to learn vicariously through your experience, so feel free to comment and leave any strategic tips you think could help.

Cute and Easy Hanging Baskets

Check out this tutorial for making a cheap, easy and oh-so-cute hanging basket. Comments for uses on the forum range from collecting coupons to organizing office supplies to showing off flowers.

"Sand" Tray

When Elliot was about 2 months old I told Evan that we were going to get him a sand and water tray to keep in his room when he was about a year old. He protested because he thought it would be a mess, but I told him that he needed to read some literature about sand play and sand therapy with young children before we could come to some sort of compromise.
Well, this is the first week for Elliot without a bathseat or anything else restricting him during bath time and he LOVES playing in the water with toys and bubbles and everything. So I thought that maybe it was time to introduce some other things to play with. I've seen some people make mini-"sand" trays for their babies with dry oatmeal because you can easily vacuum it up, but we have a plethera of wheat berries and I thought that would work just as well. So we took two shallow tupperware containers and filled one with water and one with wheat berries and he loved playing with it. I also gave him a measuring cup and taught him how to fill it up and dump it out, which he was trying to do. Then he just started picking up handfuls of this wheat and dropping it into the water tray. What a smart kid! I just love him. Above are some pics from our play adventure.

Free KFC! - Seriously Now?!

So I'm sure by now you've all heard that Oprah gave away a free KFC lunch to "everyone in America" (or something like that). You can go to this website and print out coupons for a free 2 piece grilled chicken with two individual sides and a biscuit. Upon first thought I was like, "Wow Oprah! How cool. I'm going to go get me some chicken!" 

The coupon is good until May 16th, so naturally I thought I had some time to plan my free lunch for the best day. Well, that was the wrong thought. My husband went out and got his as soon as he heard about it yesterday (we're different that way).  So many people have gone in to redeem their Free KFC Grilled Chicken lunches that riots have started, lines have formed out to streets, and more. 

Now most KFCs are no longer redeeming the free lunch coupons (three days after they were released). WHY?! Well, the KFC lady employee says that if they were to fulfill all the coupons that are coming in all the chickens IN THE WORLD would be dead. You heard me right....there would be no more chickens.....anywhere. PETA activist Oprah Winfrey just strategized a worldwide chicken massacre. Yep!.....Appauling isn't?! 

Thank goodness the KFC administrators are on top of things! The KFC president released a statement saying apologizing that they cannot redeem all the coupons at this time (check it out!), but you can get a raincheck. The redemption timeslots for the rainchecks will vary, but this will give the chickens enough time to breed and reproduce. To thank their customers for waiting KFC is also throwing in a free Pepsi.

:)

Hunting for Houses and Churches!

Starting with churches...We've been looking for a church for about a year now, with obviously breaks for life transitions in between. We'd still like to visit one more, but we're thinking about settling ourselves down at Crossbridge Community Church. We've gone there about three times now and each time we are impressed by an additional aspect of the church's fellowship, worship, or ministry. They're working through a series right now on grace as we look at the book of Galatians. The only thing is...we don't want to miss a Sunday! :) So we don't know how soon we'll be visiting this one other church we were wanting to look at or if we will at all. 

Today one of the small groups hosted a small lunch called "Fusion," where newbies could come and meet some of the staff and members, ask questions and get connected. They are just a dynamic, Christ-loving group of people that really seem to have their priorities in the right place. Praise God! :)

On a slightly more interesting note, we went pretend house hunting today. Yes...that's right...PRETEND! We went to an open house on this amazing home that we simply will never be able to afford. It was SO fun!!! So we're probably going to do this more. You know, go on Sunday drives as a family and drive through nice neighborhoods until we find open houses and then walk through them and get the brochures and talk about what we would do with each room. 

Some might think this is an exercise in discontentment, but it's actually quite the opposite. We are so happy and content with our lives! And it's cool to pretend and find that even in our pretending to have cool stuff, it isn't the cool stuff that makes us happy and content.