I hate being sick...

I guess the title says it all. Faith and I are both sick, she's not as bad but plenty miserable. Not going to be a productive day at all. I will try and get some more apples processed or sort the fabric i've been wanting to sort since the weekend. Or maybe i'll just sit in the chair and be lazy...yeah that sounds more like it.

UGH Husbands!

Why is it they can empty something (say a cereal box and a milk container) and leave it sitting on the counter 2 feet from the trash can. I mean is it gonna kill them to take one more step and throw it out?? HELLO the trash is RIGHT THERE.
Then okay so i take care of that, go over to the sink, there is the bowl. Yes, grateful it made it to the sink today, most days it doesn't but it's got bits of cereal and a pool of milk in it still. Okay you came as far as the sink, can you not just rinse it for me so there's not crusted on cereal and stinky milk later?
Okay so i rinse that out as well as the baby's bowl and here he comes downstairs with a HUGE armfull of dirty socks and a few t-shirts. And i get "I have to start the washer cause i have NO SOCKS". See our dirty laundry is in 2 places, the bathroom or the laundry room, I wash what is in those 2 places pretty much every day. But you see, he wears his socks and t-shirts up and takes them off before he gets in bed. Well, when exactly should i gather them up, in the middle of the day when you are trying to sleep? Would it be horrible if you just took off your dirty clothes before you went to bed, or horror of horrors carried them downstairs with you when you get up?
So that's my frustration this morning, oh that and the car...but that's another story....

A Perfect Fall Day

Sunday we got up early and headed out to pick apples. It was so much fun, Faith really seemed to love it. I picked about 75 lbs of apples, so I am a canning queen this week. So far i've made applesauce but only a small batch, i've got a LONG way to go.

Here's some pictures.

She tasted some of course.

She was so funny pulling them off the tree, she was really pulling hard and grunting...totally hilarious!

After picking all our apples, we headed up to the store where they have pumpkins and all kinds of other items for sale, as well as a play area for the kiddos.


We have a "rule" that she can pick a pumpkin but she has to be able to pick it up and carry it herself...she tried many before she found one.

She ended up decided on a "pumpkin" that is actually a goard, at least i think it is, either that or it's a green & orange pumpkin, who knows she loves it anyway.

Then she saw this bin, peeked in and yelled "NANAS", meaning she thought the huge butternut squash were bananas LOL funny looking bananas huh...

We finally convinced her to look through one of the little cutout things, so funny -

Then we headed out with our purchases to lunch at Olive Garden, yummmy!
We decided we still had time so we stopped at the Salmon River Fish Hatchery to see the salmon. It's not at peak season yet but there were quite a few large salmon to watch as well as other fish and we even spied a blue heron down stream waiting to catch something to eat, can you imagine if he tried to catch one of those 25 lb huge salmon? LOL i got some other pictures of fish but they are kind hard to see, so just one, but trust me there were lots to see. We are probably going to go back on a day when they are collecting eggs and stuff so we can watch that part.
Daddy and Faith watching the stream for fishies to jump up.

Faith looking over the edge into the fish ladder, under the water you could see lots of fish packed in there.

A big ole salmon trying to get up enough strength to jump over the baracade they have to prevent the fish from swimming farther upstream (this forces them to go into the fish ladder).

Here is the blue heron, isn't that the coolest picture?

Good Ole Betty Crocker....

Okay so we are going apple picking tomorrow and I really really want to do some canning and what not. So i was searching online for recipes and tips etc. Then i got this bright idea to check my big ole Betty Crocker Cookbook (man do i love that thing) and sure enough an entire section on canning! WOOT! Why didn't i think of that to begin with.

And just cause it's cute a picture of Faith, and no I didn't make these PJ's in fact it's one of the very few items i've bought Faith in months, but they were SO CUTE and in our favorite color combo of pink/brown, plus they had one of our favorite animals the elephant...

Brrrr....and ramblings...

32 degrees....might have even been colder than that, we got up at about 6:30 and that was the temp. On a side note we got this cool new indoor/outdoor thermometer with some leftover LL Bean coupon dollars and I am just loving it :)
I honestly am not upset about it getting cool, i wanted a good hard freeze to kill off all the stuff that's been messing with my allergies for the past week or so. Hopefully i'll feel a bit more human now that my head isn't so stuffed up. Although since it's cold we'll have to start burning the pellet stove and that gives me a whole other kind of stuffed up, however that is usually cured by also running the humidifier.
This weekend is a busy one. Tonight I have a party to go to. Then tomorrow is my good friend Gabby's wedding (watch next week for a post on my sewing blog of her gifts, i didn't want to ruin the surprise, but i am very pleased with how they turned out). Then sunday we are planning to go apple picking, which is something i just love to do, it's kind of our fall tradition with Faith, she had fun last year and I bet will have a BLAST this year. Stay tuned for pics of that as well.

I love coupons!

Okay you all know my crazy coupon routine by now and if you don't, just ask, i love to share my incredible savings and bursting pantry.
Today i went to Price Chopper, before discounts the total would have been $82.86 and I paid 44.97 so a savings of $37.89.
Than I stopped at P&C, who had a better ad this week, some really great steals. The total before discounts was $116.21 and do you know what i paid???? ONLY $34.42 that's a huge savings of $81.79.
Total savings today at the 2 stores was $119.68.
So now you are probably thinking well what did you buy?
Well a few examples are 10 boxes of cereal (4 fruity cheerios, 2 kix, 2 cheerios, 2 total) for a TOTAL of $5.80. That's ONLY 58 cents per box averaged out. I admit that a lot of the stuff i get is "boxed" stuff like Hamburger Helper, taco dinner kits, packaged side dishes, but we don't eat it all, we are donating a bunch to the food pantry and i'm sorry but when pared with a good vegetable and lean hambuger, hamburger helper isn't really that horrible. I got 10 cans of soup (brand name Campbells tomato and chicken noodle) for 50 cents per can and yes I'm a snob and think the Campbell's soup is way way better than generic. I also never buy yogurt without a coupon and sale. Today we got a 6 pack of yogurt totally free on coupon ($3.19). Then i bought 12 Yoplait yogurts for 33 cents each (after sale & coupon) and got 1 Free. I got 4 loaves of Freihofer bread for $1.50 a loaf(the big loaves of whole grain white, and yes i should have gotten the wheat but Faith eats the white a lot better). Two things I was thrilled about were Snuggle fabric softener for $2.49 each (the bigger ones) and dishwasher tabs for $1.24 (regular price is 4.19).
The whole idea behind shopping this way is that you only have to buy your essentials and i do have to say that over the last few months I have really been saving a lot of money and there is ALWAYS something to eat in the house. Right now we are bursting at the seams again, though i do need some meat, hoping there are some good sales on that next week.
Stayed tuned for more crazy coupon updates :)

Ever think...

That there is something amiss but you just don't know what it is? Like little comments made but that don't add up to the total truth? Suddenly things seem very different and you feel "out of the loop", but then you wonder that maybe you are just being paranoid?
Oh well, i'm not gonna worry about it, i certainly have better things to do :)

Pushing a car is hard work...

Just ask Faith...
I took this picture last weekend when we were playing outside, doesn't it look like the car weighs at least 200 lbs or something...

French Onion Soup

In my new crocks....yumm-o as RR would say, however i used Paula Dean's recipe. It was okay but i think next time i'll try something different, wasn't as rich as i had hoped.