Penny Pinching Peach

For the semi crunchy, homeschool friendly and totally frugal!


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Frugally Fashionable

Her outfit came from this consignment visit, worn the day she found out the new baby is a SISTER! :)

Her outfit came from this consignment visit, worn the day she found out the new baby is a SISTER! 🙂

Soooo….my children were beginning to look like neglected waifs a lot of days, especially my long legged oldest with her floodwater pants and the many stains on my rough & tumble Bambam’s clothing. I am also finding myself scraping the barrel for clothing options for those times when short pants and stains were just not appropriate (like winter, for the former…LOL), since I wore out so many of my maternity items with my second pregnancy and prolonged recovery. I was pondering the horror of deciding what would actually fit into the budget, knowing I wouldn’t put myself in there, when the phone rang. *RING!!! RING!!!!* It was an auto call from a local consignment shop, informing me of half price days. Whoop, whoop!! Clothes shopping time, y’all!!! 😉

For just $31, at two consignment shops that are beside each other and run sales at the same time, we got a ton of very nice clothing in like new condition!!! For Princess Peachy: 4 pairs of pants, a ruffly skirt with a bow on it, a sparkly purple long sleeved top, a gymnastics/swimming suit and a short sleeved shirt. For Bambam: A jacket, 2 shirts, 2 pairs of pants, a pair of footie jammies. For Mommy: 2 shirts, a pair of pjs,  a dress, all of which will work through pregnancy and breastfeeding, both. Just the dress would have cost about $50-$60 new, and it looks brand new.

To save money on clothing while still looking fashionable and fresh, consignment shops and thrift stores are a terrific option! For me, I honestly don’t give a flip what is in style, but I don’t want to look like I got my outfit from a dumpster, either. Even if you care about the latest style, you can often find what you’d like at these places. Dumpster chic is not my thing, and consignment stores and thrift stores don’t leave me with that undesirable look. You can choose to consign your own clothing that is outgrown or just not worn often enough in exchange for money or credit toward clothing your family can actually wear. Half price days at these stores are a great way to save, as well as supporting local business and inadvertently being green in your choice of clothing. What’s not to love? 😉

Of course, this isn’t my only trick. I hit up online sales, piling coupon codes onto clearance and sales prices. I buy the next season’s clothing at the end of the season when everything is seriously marked down. There are countless little tricks that add up to serious savings!

What do you do to clothe your family on a tight budget? Another trick of mine is Schoola Discount Clothes!


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Black and Blue Butterfly Greetings From Heaven

Butterfly greetings from heaven

Butterfly greetings from heaven

Losing my mom to cancer changed so much about me.

It changed my personality, my perspective and even my life plans. Everything about myself was intertwined with her, and suddenly a huge part of the fabric of who I was, the life I had and my hopes for the future was ripped away. I was left feeling torn apart, broken and irreparable. Visiting her grave was no comfort to me, and I felt at a loss for any tangible way to feel that connection with my mom while she was gone. It hurt in such an achingly empty manner, I can’t even explain it in words.

One day as I was walking outside, praying & crying & wishing I could talk to Mom about whatever crisis I was coping with or just get another one of her warm, loving, mama hugs…it happened. God sent the comforting symbol I needed. I was randomly surrounded by fluttering blue and black butterflies! To most people, this would seem magical and beautiful. To me, it was a sign from Heaven of my mom’s continued love. You see, her favorite color combination was blue and black. One of my favorite things in the world is butterflies, and she would often give me little things to do with butterflies. The unique combination of those two things that were so special to each of us and personally significant between us was a symbol to me, and something I latched onto. Finally, something tangible to bring me comfort and help me to feel connected to my mom!

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These black and blue Butterfly Greetings from Heaven have recurred over the years many times, usually at moments when I was thinking of my mom or dealing with something difficult and feeling alone.

Sometimes it’s a lone butterfly, others an entire swarm of them, and at times they even land on me as I watch them and try to listen to whatever message may be whispered to me by God in that moment when He has my attention.

The butterfly hello has also become an unexpected and beautiful way for my daughter to feel connected to the grandma she was never blessed to get to know.

When she sees blue and black butterflies- after hearing my story of the time the black and blue butterflies swarmed me when I was feeling sad and missing my mama and how they always make me think of her when I see them now- she will say “Hi Grandma! I love you, too!”. It brings bittersweet tears to my eyes every time it happens, and is yet another thing that is special about these particular butterflies for me.

If you have lost anyone close to you, is there something special that makes you feel connected to them in particular, like they’re saying hello, or just plain brings you comfort when you see it? Read my Letter to My Mom.

Below are some beautifully touching products following the sentiment of butterfly inspiration:

Girl Nursery Quote – Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over,she became a butterfly – Wall Decal Sticker (Black, Medium)
DaisyJewel Azure Blue & Silvertone Butterfly Hoop Earrings
Vietsbay’s Butterfly Collection Necklace Pendants Pewter Silver


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My Cousin’s Fight

My cousin

My cousin

My cousin, Marquita, has been diagnosed with Stage 3 Cervical cancer. She is a hardworking, family oriented, sweetheart of a single mom of three beautiful children. With mounting expenses, another cousin started a fundraiser to help her. While I normally avoid using my blog for fundraising because there are so many needs out there that it could take over completely, I’m sharing for my cousin here in hopes of multiplying the prayers and goodwill sent up on her behalf and possibly inspire anyone who may want to donate any amount to help her and her children. Some people in my dad’s industry did a fundraiser for him to help offset her medical expenses, and I remember how much it meant to him monetarily and emotionally both. For more details, please click the link below. She is on the back left in the photo, pictured with her three children and her mom.

Thanks and God bless you all! http://www.gofundme.com/kkh8jg


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Happy Birthday, My Big Little Brother!

Brother & His Daughter A Few Years Ago

Brother & His Daughter A Few Years Ago

Today my big little brother turns 31.

Most of my childhood memories involve my brother one way or another.

I still remember him at 3, chasing our youngest uncle around practicing his ninja moves on him because someone thought it was a good idea to give him a karate costume. Watching that scene in my mind, it was pretty doggone cute and funny, but then I was just glad he was attacking our highly amused and much stronger than he was uncle rather than my scrawny little behind. 🙂

I recall my kid brother at 7, with that classic gap toothed grin, chattering up a storm at everyone who entered the pool hall and bouncing around the pool table whacking the balls in right and left, earning the nickname “Little Lightning” for both his prowess at the game of billiards and the fact he was always talking and moving at a rapid pace.

I can see in my mind’s eye my crazy 12 year old brother, soaring over fences, propane tanks and woodpiles he was jumping all over the farm with our Blue Heeler dog. He was all arms, legs, speed and energy…and guaranteed that dog would never make a good city pet.

Mom & Brother At a Family Reunion, 2005

Mom & Brother At a Family Reunion, 2005

I have memories of my bottomless pit of a growing brother at 16, sniffing around the kitchen to see where I hid the batch of cookies he smelled from all the way outside, then happily devouring all of them when he found the stash. That kid could (and still can, the brat! LOL) eat as much as he wanted and not gain an ounce.

I see my brother as a man, when he held his beautiful new daughter in his arms and beamed at her with pride and wonder. She opened a whole new part of his heart the moment he laid eyes on her, and it was amazing to watch.

My Brother Playing

My Brother Playing

I remember walking down the aisle to become my husband’s wife, to the sound of my talented brother strumming beautifully on his guitar exactly as I’d requested.

No matter the ups and downs life brings, I remember.

Life is a gift. Celebrate. Happy birthday, my one and only forever kid brother!


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Merry Firefighter’s Family Christmas!

Santa at the fire department

Santa at the fire department

When you marry someone in public safety, one of the quickest thing you need to learn is flexibility.

Holidays, anniversaries and birthdays may be celebrated on completely different days than they actually fall on, because someone in public safety has shifts that fall when they fall, regardless of the special days they might fall upon, and their services are necessary 365 days a year. If you can’t handle that, don’t marry someone in that field of work. It is the least of my gripes with being married to someone in public safety, honestly, because I wasn’t raised with holidays being a big deal (we didn’t celebrate Christmas at all), but it’s a huge issue for a lot of families.

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In my case, my husband is a firefighter paramedic. We often have ornaments like this Firefighters Courage Under Fire Christmas Ornament
on our tree, read our children this kind of book Firefighter’s Night Before Christmas, and you’re likely to get something like this Firemen to the Rescue Christmas Cards from us in the mail. He works 24 hour shifts, often pulling 48s between two different fire departments. This year he won’t be home from a 48 hour shift until probably 10am Christmas Eve, and has to be back early Christmas morning, so those days just don’t work for us to celebrate Christmas on. Our Christmas is officially December 26, when he actually can get home early enough to enjoy the sleepy eyed wonderment of our munchkins.

So….today is Christmas in this firefighter household. Merry Christmas and God bless from our family to yours, especially those who are also shifting those holidays around for similar reasons! Any other firefighter families out there?

Need gift ideas for your active guy? Look at my budget friendly gifts for active men!


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Get Amazon Prime FREE!!

Amazon Prime Free Trial

Amazon Prime Free Trial

Did you know that you can get a 30 day free trail of Amazon Prime? This is the perfect time to take advantage of this deal, with all of the online shopping we are all doing during the crunch for Christmas gifts. Some of the perks you can enjoy with Amazon Prime membership include not only FREE two day shipping with no minimum order size, but unlimited, ad-free streaming of over a million songs, you can watch over 40,000 movies and TV episodes, borrow Kindle books, etc. If you do any of these things regularly, it’s worth the $99, anyway, but the free trial is beyond worthwhile & affordable even for the dead broke among us. 🙂

Please follow my referral link below and take advantage of this terrific offer! If you don’t want to continue the membership by paying, simply cancel within 30 days (if you join today, Christmas is a good reminder that it’s time to go ahead and cancel if you don’t want to pay up). Easy peasy! 🙂

Shop Amazon – Give the Gift of Amazon Prime
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Thanksgiving Turkey Craft

 

Upcycled Thanksgiving Turkey

Upcycled Thanksgiving Turkey

For our preschool the other day I decided to make it all about Thanksgiving.

First, I told my daughter the 4 year old comprehensible version of the first Thanksgiving and we had a discussion about the things we are thankful for.

She was especially thankful for her mommy, daddy, baby brudder, all her animals and food. 🙂

Next, I sent her into the yard to gather leaves while I got together craft supplies for her project of the day!

I like re-using random items in our crafts, so I grabbed part of a thing cardboard insert I’d been saving from a box of drinks  (an old cereal box would work) and cut pieces to make a turkey body and head, cut a slit in the neck and chest to be able to stick them together, trimmed an old Reeses’ candy eggs box, then laid them out with her crayons and markers so that she could decorate her turkey however she wanted, and got some googly eyes to glue on when she was finished decorating. She had a blast! When she was through, I couldn’t find any clear tape, so I just used masking tape to tape the cardboard pieces around the box “stand”, put the head on and helped her tape the leaf tail on the backside. It would’ve been prettier with clear, obviously, but Princess Peach is pleased as punch, and that’s what counts. 🙂

Thanks for Turkey?

Thanks for Turkey?

Once the turkey was proudly perched on our windowsill, I wrote out THANKS and TURKEY on two pages, had her point out all of the letters and we talked about the words. Then she did her best to copy the words out. She also made a picture with her two hands traced and the word THANKS at the top later that day, because she enjoyed her Thanksgiving theme so much and didn’t want to be finished with it. 🙂

What kind of fun Thanksgiving themed things do you do with your little ones? Try my Free Printable Thanksgiving Turkey Craft!



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The Crazy Kingdom of Kiddos

Muddy Munchkin Man

Muddy Munchkin Man

I’m a stay at home mom, married to a firefighter paramedic who is literally gone over half the time just for work. I spend a lot of time alone in the crazy kingdom of kiddos….and it’s definitely a craaaaaaazzzzzzyyyyy place to be.

Want some examples? Happy to oblige! Maybe it’ll make someone else feel less alone in their own personal kingdom of kookiness. 🙂

Just the other day, my 4 year old decided that it would be a good idea to use a cooler and the counter to climb up and get the candy Mommy has safely stashed on top of the fridge to prevent the candy coma inducing binges she is so wonderfully prone to. My intervention was met with howls of indignation, instead of appreciation for the fact she didn’t break her stubborn little neck.

On the same aforementioned day, my potty training 2 year old came running up to me with a huge smile saying “Mama, me pee! Me pee!”. When I asked where, he proudly pointed under the kitchen table to the spreading yellow puddle. “Me pee!”. Yep, you pee… but don’t expect a treat for this one, baby boy!!

Some days my 4 year old doesn’t want to get dressed, because she thinks her jammies are the coolest outfits in the world. You know what? Sometimes I let her. Hey, a mommy gets tired! Ever heard the phrase “Choose your battles”? It seriously applies with small children of the strong willed variety. If I’m not doing a daggum thing other than puttering around the house, and the kid wants to wear her princess jammies all day, who am I to fight? I’ll fight when she wants to jump off the deck railing because it looks like fun or when she doesn’t want to brush her teeth because the toothpaste makes her milk taste funny, but wearing clean jammies all day now & then doesn’t hurt anything.

My munchkins were both playing happily with their water table recently as I watched out the kitchen window while doing the dishes. What I didn’t know was that the little stinkers had dumped a bunch of dirt into the table, and my little guy was smearing the resulting mud all over himself. By the time I did realize what they were doing, he was a pretty mess. In fact, the face in the photo came just before he started hollering “Bath!” and running for the house. You know a boy is filthy when he’s actually begging to be cleaned up! 😉

My 2 year old is all boy, no doubt about that. What he doesn’t yet know is that allowing your big sister to deck you out in her sparkly purple princess dress Disney Princess Sparkle Dress – Rapunzel 4-6Xand outgrown white Mary Jane shoes does not a macho man make. Gotta give the kid credit: He can almost make that get-up look masculine, as he struts around making superhero sound effects and rolls up the front of the dress to make it easier to charge around on his little red fire truck “saving the world” one stuffed animal at a time.

Yep, this kingdom of kiddos is completely crazy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. 🙂 What craziness has happened at your house recently?
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Decorate Your Own Box Home

Peekaboo!!

Peekaboo!!

My children are like any other child I’ve known: fascinated by the worlds in their own imaginations. I am always looking to find things that keep their busy little hands and imaginations occupied without a lot of expense or mess. Something they’ve been having fun with lately is a huge box. I have given it to them as their own home within our home, to decorate as they please and have altered at whim.

They scribble on it at whim. I’ve put in window flaps and ceiling flaps and little eye shaped peepholes galore. They think it is awesome, and have spent hours and hours pretending it’s their castle, house, doctor’s office, art center, restaurant and who knows what all else. It’s their creative corner. I am thinking I should give them stickers to put on it, but I’ll have to supervise that one pretty well. 🙂

This is a simple, free activity that brings them endless fun. I’d encourage you to try it with your kiddos. 🙂

Decorate Your Own Box Home

Decorate Your Own Box Home


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Kids Eat Free

Kids Eat Free

Kids Eat Free

Ideally, we’d all have time to cook a balanced and delicious dinner every single night. Since we don’t live in an ideal world, and many of us just plain enjoy going out to eat at a restaurant with our family now and then, I’ve scoured the web for resources for finding those infamous kids eat free specials that make eating out with children so much more affordable. I’m sharing a few of my favorite links here.

Kids Eat Free This site lets you search for your state and city, giving you a list of restaurants who have any sort of free kids meals, including details about times and eligibility. Really great site!

Kids Eat 4 Free Super duper user friendly, this site allows you to either search by city & state or by zip code and distance. It also gives clear details about the when, where and how of all the bargains listed.

Kids Meal Deals Not only listing free kids meals, but also places with super special bargains, this site has a simple search engine where you type in your zip code, select a day of the week (or all days) and there you have your results. Click for details of each. 🙂

Out to Eat With Kids This site has a similar search system to Kids Eat 4 Free, but each of these sites seem to have slightly different lists of restaurants where munchkins can eat free. It’s worth doing a quick search of each to see which you can take advantage of.

What restaurant do you wish had free kids meals? Which are you happy is participating? What is just plain your favorite restaurant to eat at with your kiddos?