Long time

So it's been a really long time since I have had time to post to this. It's important for me to say that I think I am crazy to be starting this up again since I am expecting a new little one in 3 days!!! AH!!! But, I have finally completed my degree and am now going to be going though the daunting task of paying all of those student loans back!! I am scared about this, but I know that I need to do whatever extra I can in order to make a little extra cash.

So the first question is, what is ehow.com and how can you make money doing it?! Over the next few months I plan to write about my experience getting started and if I actually make any money!!

Stay tuned!!

~Katie

Keeping the littleones busy!

Our babysitter was off both on Thursday and Friday, when I'm home with our two little girls I find that things go a lot smoother if I have something new and fun planned each day. To go along with Amy's Notebook experiments over at http://www.momadvice.com/ I decided to make some edible play-dough (peanut butter edition). Let me tell you that the girls had a blast, while eating snack and playing with play-dough. I did not have my camera handy to snap a shot of them, however let me see if I can paint you a picture.

I am about to the end of my rope separating the girls ages 2 1/2 and 1 1/2. The oldest one loves to be independent and boss the youngest around. The littlest likes to follow her big sis around and copy everything that she does....needless to say, a few hours of un-organized play is enough to do them both in.

As I stated above, I have decided that having a planned activity besides the typical going to the park, going out back on the swing set, going on a walk, etc.

So I was searching around Amy's notebook experiments earlier in the week trying to find something that would be fun for the girls. I came up with a simple recipe with powdered sugar (2 cups), peanut butter (1 cup), and honey (1/4 cup) I let the oldest help me mix it, she kept asking me if we were making cookies, when I told her it was play dough she looked at me like I was crazy!! I got out some old cookie cutters and they had a blast flattening it, eating it, shaping it, eating it, rolling it out, eating it.... :) So that's it for my experiment! It was great! The girls loved it! I had some moments of non-fighting...if you want to call it that!

~Katie

Home Improvements!

My husband and I have been contemplating upgrading our heating and adding a cooling system since we bought our house. Last year we were paying $400 a month during the winter for propane just to heat the house. We have had two estimates done, and it appears that it will be roughly $8000 to change our heating over from hot water heating, to forced air heating, add air conditioning, and then also change our hot water heater over to electric. The estimate that we chose to go with also is going to be upgrading our breaker box. My husband and I have $4000 that we have saved for this and my mom and dad have graciously decided that they would like to cover the other half! We are SOOO blessed! I will let you know more about this process as soon as we begin!! I hope everything goes well!

~Katie

Phone Call

So, I came home from work one day this week and on my answering machine was the manager of the Taco Bell that I talked about in a previous post. The manager proceeded to justify why they no longer carry milk and the best he could come up with was that they "had no way to properly store it so that it did not spoil before someone bought it and that they did not want to serve substandard items to their customers?! Have they never heard of a fridge? HA! I find it silly, however was impressed that he called within a few days of me submitting a complaint!

~Katie

Strangest Thing

So, my husband and I both had today off so we decided to do our once a month shopping at Walmart. The closest Walmart to us is about an hour away so we only make the trip once a month. The reason I am telling you this story is because this is also one of the times we go out to eat with our two little girls. Today we chose to eat at Taco John's and get this, when I asked for milk, the guy taking our order looked at me weird and said, "Um, we don't have milk." To that I said, "No milk?" He said, no, but we have water?!" Are you kidding me? What restaurant doesn't have milk??? I have gone to the website and put in a "complaint". Seriously! I would have never thought I would have had a problem getting milk anywhere!!

Have any of you had this problem?

~Katie

Saturday Snail Mail

I have decided to begin putting together a list of things to blog about on a weekly basis and have decided that the one day that I am going to start with is Saturday. I'm going to call it Saturday Snail Mail nice huh?! My goal for the Saturday Snail Mail edition is to keep track weekly of all of the "goodies" that I get in the mail. I am actually going to post the first edition today as my in laws will be here later in the day and will stay through the weekend.

This week in the mail I received:

• SunSilk Straight to Perfection Shampoo/Conditioner & $1 coupon x2
• Ponds Clean Sweep Cleansing towelette (Walmart)
• Huggies Size 3 diaper & Wipe (Walmart)

I know this week isn't very much, but I didn't keep track very well either, so we will see the list grow hopefully next week.

~ Katie

Cean Carpet? What's that?

So, I have officially gone off the deep end! My husband and I are preparing for his parents arrival this weekend. For some reason I got an itch this morning to steam clean the carpets?! What is wrong with me? It's 100 degrees out and I sure could have found something better to do with my time! It's been awhile since the in laws have been up from Kansas so I wanted to make sure things looked clean! Last year at Christmas my parents got us a steam cleaner for our carpets, I am embarrassed to say that before today I had only used it ONCE! I had told myself that I would use it all of the time when we actually got it. I had plans to get it out after every spill or when I saw the need. What was I thinking? I spent about an hour on our living room carpet and it looks GrEaT, just like new... I have now decided that it really wasn't as bad/hard/time consuming as I once thought it was and have put steam cleaning the carpets on my monthly "To Do" list. It's really amazing how many of the "spots" from sippys that leaked disappeared like magic!! Thanks mom and dad much cheaper than renting the equipment or hiring someone else to do it! All in all I spent approx. $6 on the solution

~Katie