She doesn’t come with the biting cold or bright glittering snows of winter.

She doesn’t come with the bursting blossoms of flowers and bright yellow green of spring.

She doesn’t come with languid days and firefly lit nights and bright sunny skies.

She comes as herself.

She always looks on the bright side.  She could be winter. Hardly ANYONE likes that sister.  But she wishes people wouldn’t feel so sad that she’s shown up.  She knows that once her act closes her other sister that hardly anyone likes takes over and that tends to color people’s opinion of her, but you can’t help who you’re related to.  And, besides, she thinks Winter is plenty pretty.

But she’s always glad when she hears someone say that someone loves her best.

When they call her their favorite.

When they get giddy over crisp air and pumpkins and wool sweaters and boots.

She loves the people who get a spring in their step when the first crispness comes into the air.  She loves how their pour over their favorite soup recipes, waiting for that first cold day.  She loves how they inhale deeply to smell her smells.  Not clear like winter, or fresh like spring or bright like summer, but old and earthy.  Time worn.  Like a book whose pages you’ve touched so many times that they bear the imprint of you.

She checks her watch.  Summer continues to dance.    But soon, she’ll be dancing too.

And I can’t wait.

Don’t hate me.  I freaking love fall!!

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The Princess started school this morning.

Leaving me lamenting where the time has gone. This little girl seems like she was only here yesterday…

But, I still go to to walk her to the bus stop and kiss her goodbye.  And tell her I love her without her being embarrassed.  I’ll take what I can get.

And since Monday came anyway, first day of school or not…

(her link up isn’t posted yet, but I will link to it as soon as it is)

Can I take a minute and tell you about the great app I downloaded for my iPhone last week?  It’s the All Recipes.com Dinner Spinner.  It’s pretty much awesome!  You put in the course, main ingredient and the time you ant to spin and it spits out recipes.

It’s even FREE!!

Monday

Princess’s Choice

Homemade Macaroni and cheese, chicken drumettes and corn

Tuesday

White Cheese Chicken Lasagna with garlic bread and salad

Wednesday

CSA pickup day

fragrant Lemon chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and veggies

Thursday

Creole Chicken and veggies

We’ll be busy this weekend, so nothing planned.  Not even our usual pizza.

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So, I was all about hiking this past weekend.  We loaded up the backpack with water and drive about thirty minutes to our desitiation.  A lovely little place named Hell’s Hollow.

Really?  I mean, there were butterflies and rainbows.  Seriously.

We weren’t sure what the trail would be like.  It was only a half a mile and was denoted as “easy” but we’ve found that easy is in the eye of the beholder and some easy trails are NOT easy at ALL.  But this one WAS easy and was perfect for Littlebit’s first solo hike and Baby Bee’s first hike in the backpack.

The water was obviously low, so we felt safe letting the Princess and Littlebit play in the water under the falls.  I wouldn’t normally do that, but you could see and touch the bottom easily.  It was literally ankle deep.

We can’t wait to get out and hike more.

As an aside, the World Wildlife Foundation listed 10 great reasons kids need fresh air.  It’s a compelling list.   Also, check out trails.com for trail listings near you.  You can search by zipcode and the trail finder feature is free

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At the same time, I stumbled across a blog by a woman who was doing Family Movie Night too, but she had themes.  THEMES.  Desserts to go along with the movie the movie they were watching.  I loved that idea, but life changed and things changed and it never got off the ground.

After Big Daddy shared with me how much money we’d spent the last few months, I knew that it was time to tighten the belt a little bit, so Family Movie Night Fridays seemed like the answer.  But this time?  I was bringing it!

Curious George Family Movie Night

For dinner, we basically had fondue.  I made this basic cheese fondue recipe,  a basic hot dog chili dip and some herbs in olive oil for bread dipping.

I cubed up bread, put out veggies and cut up some hot dogs.  I gave everyone a shish kabob skewer and we pretended they were jungle spears and we dipped our way through dinner. The kids really liked this.

We also did a few rounds of who could make the best jungle animal noise.

• Littlebit was the best monkey
• Big Daddy was the best lion (even though we concluded that lions don’t live in the jungle and it was ironic because they are the kings of it.)
• The Princess was the best elephant
• I was the best bird
• Baby Bee was the best adorable small baby throwing her food to the dog.

After dinner (boy, are cupcakes an incentive to get kids to help you clean up) we made monkey cupcakes.  Normally, the monkey cupcakes I’ve seen have called for Nutter Butter cookies (which are a no-no in our house due to the Princess’s peanut allergy), but we improvised…

We made yellow cupcakes and frosted them with chocolate ice cream.

We used Vanilla Wafers for the monkey’s muzzle, chocolate chips for their eyes and rolos for their ears.  However, we found that the rolos were a bit heavy and the monkeys that had half vanilla wafer ears worked better and looked cuter.

Some red gel icing made monkey mouths.

The girls were super proud of their creations.  They even acted like monkeys in honor of them.

We capped off our nights by eating our monkey cupcakes while watching Curious George.  The movie.  Not the PBS series, even though I like that too (but I liked it better with William H. Macy as the narrator, if anyone’s asking).

More Monkey Activities

Want more monkey activities for your own monkey themed movie night? Check out DLTK’s monkey crafts page,  PBS Kids’ Curious George Parent-Child activity page, or for older kids, these adorable pipe cleaner monkeys.

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I remember when I was first married and my grandma would send me coupons. I was always a little perplexed why she would mail me a coupon. Then, when I had my first child, she would mail more of them. She once told me that throwing coupons away was like throwing money away. I scoffed. I didn’t think it was worth the effort put in to it. I never saved much money and my “system” for organizing them consisted of carrying them around in a #10 envelope. I always forgot what I had and I could never remember to buy a Sunday paper. I ended up abandoning the whole idea.

Fast forward to a few years ago. I became a stay at home mom and we needed to do some serious reducing in our grocery budget. I knew that we had a lot of potential to save, but how? I started researching on-line and found a whole new world of couponing. This is now a serious business. There are many, many, many blogs dedicated to clipping coupons, finding the best deals, internet coupons, and more. It can be overwhelming!

There is also more to saving on your grocery bill than just clipping coupons. If you want to be the person that spends $20 on $200 worth of groceries, you have to do it strategically. I, for one, am not yet that person. However, I do see significant savings each month on my grocery bill with careful planning and yes, clipping. I have gone from spending $300 every two weeks on groceries to spending less than $175 every two weeks. Here are some tips to help you get started:

DECIDE ON AN ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEM: It is hard to keep track of coupons, especially if you are not organized. There are several different methods of organization out there, I personally use a Coupon Binder. See my post on how to set up and effectively use your coupon binder here.

MENU PLAN OFF OF YOUR STORE’S SALE AD: I find that basing all or even part of my menu around what is on sale for the week brings significant savings.

ONCE YOUR LIST IS READY, MATCH UP YOUR COUPONS: There are several databases out there that list all coupons from the internet and coupon inserts from the paper. Coupon Mom is one of my favorites. I simply go to the database each week and see if the product I am buying has a coupon. If it does I either clip it or print it.

STOCKPILE!!! The key to this is to stock up on items that you use a lot of when the item is on sale. Even better if you have a coupon to go with it.

I also highly suggest finding a blogger that does coupon match ups for your local store. If you are unsure about how to go about finding one, Money Saving Mom has a great list of stores across the country, with bloggers who submit the match ups.

My last piece of advice is this: Don’t get frustrated right off the bat. It can take at least a month to figure out your stores sales cycles and to really start seeing the savings. But, once you get the hang of it, you will wonder what took you so long to start!

I want to thank The Millennial Housewife, again, for stopping by and writing such a helpful post. If you want more information on saving some coin, please check out her blog. It’s chock full of great information.