Ira's Birthday Party

Ira's Birthday party was such a BLAST! We pulled it together well. Here are some pics from the BIG Day!

I cannot BELIEVE my baby is now 4! I am so proud of him. Thank you Jesus for my cutie pie!

Amazing Journey Begins

I am so thrilled. I know I haven't posted much..it's been an amazing couple weeks with ups and downs all around. Let's start with the downs:

1) I haven't menu planned in two weeks. Yup, after 2 weeks of perfection, I slipped. I ran dry of ideas and just couldn't come up with any more within me so we gave in to eating out a total of 5 nights in the past couple weeks. Maybe more.. I don't know I just don't wanna count! After Ira's birthday party tomorrow, I hope I will come back around again. I sure miss home cooked meals now!

2) My mama went to the ER last night and was admitted :-( I cried my eyes out and then went to visit her. I seem strong around my sisters and brothers but really, I am a mess. I just don't know how to be. I know I have faith but the thought of my mama suffering or even getting close to a heart attack freaks me out. I LOVE MY MOM. She is the world to me. I know I am who I am because of her and I NEED her. I so look forward to our Wednesday and Friday morning conversations where we talk about anything. I can't wait for her to get out of the hospital and be home. I am going to plan a girls' day out soon. I'll talk to my sisters and see what we can come up with. Mama needs her pampering, she works sooo hard.

Now the ups:

1) My honey and I decided after 10 years of a promise that it's time to move forward with the adoption process. I am so excited! 10 years ago before we got married, we stared in each other's eyes and made a pact with our Lord that we would do everything possible to adopt a child. As child advocates and working with children I can't tell you enough how many children are so hurting and longing for a family to belong to. So here begins our journey for a princess to join our home. We are hoping for a girl that we can spoil and the boys can protect. Lil Geovanni and Ira understand and are believing that we will bring home a new baby soon. I know there is a chica out there who will be our new addition. Lord, I pray that you protect her and send our precious angel Gianna to comfort her right now and let her know that she will be joining us soon.
In Jesus mighty mighty name, Amen!

2) Ira's birthday! Well if you know us, you know we do these birthday parties up BIG. We have a saying in our household... "We asked for our babies, they didn't ask for us." And therefore, we look at birthday parties as a way to show our babies how special they are to us. They love being part of the planning. We plan for months ahead... while nothing gets down on paper because I am just not THAT organized, we plan things like where we are thinking of having it and the theme. Then we start dreaming up the games and envisioning the whole thing. I will post pictures up after tomorrow's BIG day.

Well that's all for now... I've gotta run and get the last items for the party tomorrow.

In Jesus,

More found money!

After yesterday's success, I thought I would try TMobile today and see if there was anything we can do. I was able to lower my bill down by $10! Yes! That's right! I am soo psyched. That's $120 savings in a year! The best part of the whole thing is that I didn't even sacrifice any of my cool features. I still have my Instant Messaging, my email, and my web surfing. .. I've come a LONG way from my cheapie phone, I know!

I love being able to live a frugal life but still living it large LOL ;-)

If you have done anything to help cut costs in small places, I want to hear about it. Just jot me an email or leave a comment below...

Thanks!

In Him,

Cutting corners whereever I can!

So I made a phone call to Cox cable/internet/phone to see what they can do. I am afraid to give up our DVR (I just love that thing!) but I figured there HAS to be somewhere in that bill where I can cut corners and find some $$. After much persistance they found that I don't even use their long distance enough to compensate for the Unlimited Long Distance and further, they charge a whopping $5 just for voicemail. Hey, isn't that what answering machines are for anyway? So I was able to lower my bill by $11.08 per month. Let's see, if I multiply that by 12, I've managed to get almost $133 MORE for next year! Hey, those pennies add up and well... now that's got me all pumped up to find myself some more money!

Woo HOO!

Menu Planning Monday

Menu Planning this week:

Last week was sooo successful! Though I didn't make what I had planned every single night, (i.e. we had pasta carbonara on Wednesday night and burgers on Thursday night) we had all the ingredients and I had my ideas already on what I was going to make that we didn't eat out ONCE! Did you hear this? NOT EVEN ONCE! I even thought we were going to eat out on HomeTeam night on Thursday, but here was my thought process... all we were going to do was buy some burgers and no way would we eat take out burgers when I had all the ingredients at home so I made the burgers in a flash, wrapped them up like take-out and had them in the car! Whew! Amazing!

So here we go again! I am pretty psyched becuase they have chicken tenders for 1.67 pound at Fry's this week and we are going to try our this chicken tender recipe this week. It's going to be sooo much fun!

Monday - Free Pizza that my girlfriend Katrina gave me :-) Thanks girl no cooking tonight!

Tuesday - Picadillo with Rice

Wednesday - Home Team night, Chicken Tenders and Pasta Salad with veggies


Thursday- SteakFajitas

Friday - Pizza Night (Boys are going to have a sleepover so this will be fun!)

As always, for more inspiration and menu planning ideas visit: www.orgjunkie.com

Swagbucks

I learned about Swagbucks from other coupon blogs so I thought I might give it a try. I think the most inspirational posting about swagbucks is when Trina from http://fabulouslyfrugalicious.blogspot.com/ talked about getting this fabulous purse for free using swagbucks she earned. Mama wants herself a new purse too, so of course I had to give it a try too!

So here is the deal, you can sign up for swagbucks by clicking the above link (you and I will BOTH receive swagbucks for doing so!), then do your normal "google" searches by using the swagbucks toolbar or their homepage...it's powered by google anyway, so it's worth a try! You will need only 45 swagbucks for a $10 Amazon GC or even 50 Swagbucks for a $10 starbucks GC. So far I've earned 6 swagbucks in a couple days, so let's see how this goes!

Happy searching (and getting paid to do so anyway)!

Old Navy Shopping

I scored! Though I didn't get the $75 off $100 coupon, I did manage to score a few of those $50 off $100 coupons! If you ever think of shopping for clothes, make sure to check out www.oldnavyweekly.com first and go coupon hunting first. You might score some nice discounts before heading to the store.

Now let me tell you, everytime I walk into a store to shop for myself, I always walk out empty handed, sad and depressed. Nothing fits, or it turns out I am just one size bigger than I anticipated. But at Old Navy, their clothes run a little big so this time was totally different! I walked out with over $200 worth of clothes and spent $100. Not bad! Especially since most of the items were on sale! So it felt like the money was nicely stretched. I am dying to go again, but I know I must be careful... that store is DANGEROUS!

Here are a few things I managed to snag... aren't they cool?

Menu Planning Monday

After my record savings trip to Basha's this weekend, I got inspired to start Menu planning!

Here goes this week's Menu:

Monday: Pasta Carbonara

Tuesday: Pineapple shrimp kebabs with couscous (recipe with pics to come later!)

Wednesday: Cream Cheese Chicken with a side of summer veggies and rice (I'll post recipe and picture on this night... if successful!)

Thursday: This is our Home Team meeting night with our Palm Valley Church so we'll probably have a big lunch and do take out or something...

Friday: Orozco Favorite Burgers (burgers with Swiss cheese, caramelized onions and mushrooms) YUM!

To see more inspiring Menu Plan Mondays and to learn more check out: www.orgjunkie.com