Elijah's Birthday Cake

Elijah turned 4 yesterday! Happy birthday Elijah! This is the cake I made him and he loved it! Here is how I made it!

So first I made four round cakes, stacked them, and did a crumb coating and left them in the fridge over night to let it set up. If I had to do it over again, I would have trimmed the parts where the cakes met and made it look smoother instead of just putting then next to each other.

I then took the centers out of oreos and put the chocolate cookie part in the food processor to make them nice and fine.

Then, as you can see I used a glass to leave a center and put the oreos around the edge.

Then I just used a star tip and iced the rest of the cake and put the cars on (which I found at Fred Meyer) It was a big hit and Elijah loved it! Next cake I'll add more to it, like a checkered flag and that sort of thing, but for the first one, I think it turned out alright. :-)

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthdays!

I just noticed that I hadn't posted in awhile, sorry about that. The holidays have taken over in the Evans' house! Had a great time seeing family over the holidays and have had to awesome birthdays, mine and Elijah's! So, I'll just a few photos for you all to see. It will probably be after the first before I post again. So, everyone have a great holiday season and happy new year!

Santa came!

Happy 4th Birthday Elijah!

Coupon Binder!

I have redone my coupon binder. I was filing by insert and was running into issues with not knowing exactly what I had and I could not take it with me and shop clearance deals very effectively. Now, Terri's Coupon Tracker did make it easier to find what I was looking for and if you do file your coupons by insert, then definitely check it out. I decided to redo my binder and clip all the coupons. It will take more time, but I believe it will help me to find what I need much faster and I can bring it in with me and see what I have right away! Now for pics.

Just a regular 3 ring binder.

On the left: Current weeks sale ads, store coupon policies (always a great idea to keep them with you just in case you need to "educated" an employee), and receipts.

This is the right side of the page. As you can see it has a spot for this weeks coupons and coupons for checkout. On the next few pages I have spots for my stores for the on your next order (OYNO) Catalinas (cats) that print out and reward coupons I get in the mail.

I have:

• 5 divider tabs: Freezer, General (like for canned good, cereal, etc.), Health and Beauty, Household (batteries, toilet paper, etc.), and Refrigerator and Dairy. You can organize it by the order your store is laid out in, but I shop at several different stores which each decided it would be wise to have their stores laid out differently, so this layout was easiest for me.

• Many pages of photo sheet protectors which I use to hold the coupons. The spot that holds the coupons are 4x6. It is large enough I can easily put my hand in and pull out what I need and it can hold a lot of coupons in one pouch without ripping, but it's small enough that I'm not loosing coupons in a super large pouch.

•  I gave each section it's own color (to match the tabs). You do not have to do this, but I thought it added a bit of personality to it. Took much longer to do as I had to cut the construction paper that we had to fit into our printer, but if you had colored card stock it would be much faster, but I used what was on hand. 

That's about it. Nothing to difficult, but it did a bit of time. Easily can be done in one day or spread out of a weekend. I'm just happy to say that it is done and I love it :-)

Baking...

So, remember the new bread recipe I was going to try out? It was a fail! It just didn't rise like it should have (I did proof my yeast) and became very dense. It tasted just fine, so we are still eating, but it just isn't the way it should be. So, today I am going to play with it some more and see if I can get it to turn out like it should. If I can't get it to work this time, I will go back to my old recipe.

On another note, I got my Pampered Chef order yesterday that I placed on Monday. $5 for two day shipping to Alaska! Can't beat that. Thank you Patricia for letting me know about the special they were running! In that order I got my cookie press so I am excited to experiment with it! I may do that today as well. So I believe today is turning into a baking goodies day! Forget the laundry and the cleaning and lets bake some yummy treats!

Snow is falling and the tree is up!

Christmas is here in the Evans' house! Snow if falling outside, the tree is up, and the sugar cookie candles are out! Yumm...

I love this time of year! Bring on the hot chocolate and Christmas music! :-P On a side note, I have added a link on the left so you can always see up-to-date photos of my stockpile. It's always a work in progress... I did come across this website today (http://dehydrate2store.com/) and it has definitely inspired me to dehydrate more then I do. And I love the ideas of dehydrating soup ingredients and having them stored in the same bag together. I'm definitely going to be trying that out. Speaking of trying things out, I am trying out the bread recipe that is on that site. I'll let you all know how it goes!

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, I have totally slacked on posting to the blog because I have been busy. Thanksgiving was a blast. Definitely ate way to much food! I'm now busy trying to get all the Christmas decor out and get the tree done. I'll post pics when it's all done! So, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and I'll post again soon! :-)

Reorganized My Cabinets!

So, I completely reorganized my kitchen cabinets and I wanted to share with everyone! Things are much easier to get to now! Also, update on my monthly budget spending: Spent $57.46, so $42.54 left. Not to bad. :-)

*Sorry the pictures are so small. Hopefully this will kinda give you an idea.*

This cabinet has most of my cans, baking supplies, tea, peanut butter, etc.

Above the stove. Some more cans and broth and stove top.

Cabinet left of the stove and to the right is the fridge. This is where I keep home canned foods (which is small this year as the garden did not do well at all) and overflow of canned goods.

My spices. I love these glass jars!

My prep center. All sugars, potato flakes, cornmeal, oats, as well as salt and oils. And in the back left corner is where I store my wheat grinder. It was being used at the time. :-)

Health and Beauty storage in the hall closet. Kid specific items are kept in the kids bathroom and grown up razors are kept in our bathroom.

Garage soda and soy milk! What a combination, lol. I'm not sure if you can see in the pic, but to the left is our treadmill and to the right is our workout bike. On the top shelf is a TV and when we want to work out, we just take the xbox out there and play games or watch a movie. Makes working out a lot more fun to do! And, since the garage is heated, we are freezing while out there. :-)

Homemade Butter and Buttermilk!

So I had some heavy whipping cream in the fridge and was trying to come up with something to make with it. I remembered reading a few months back that you could make butter from it, so I decided to give it a try. And guess what, it worked! Super easy too!

What you need:

1. A good mixer, I have a Kitchen Aid.
2. Wire whisk attachment and mixing paddle attachment
3. Mixing bowl
4. Spatula
5. Heavy whipping cream
6. Ice water
7. Jar for buttermilk and a jar for your butter

Pour in the heavy whipping cream into your mixing bowl and start mixing on high with your wire whisk.

It will start to separate, as you can see in the picture. At this point, take off the wire whisk and put on the mixing paddle. And keep mixing!

As you can see it has separated out. At this point, pour your buttermilk into a jar and leave your butter in the bowl.

Add in some ice water and mix some more. Pour off the water and repeat until you get clear water. Once you do,  use your spatula to press any extra water that might be in the butter out.

And here you are, homemade butter and buttermilk. It really was super easy and did not take long at all. I used a pint sized container of heavy whipping cream and was able to get a jelly jar size of butter.

Halloween and November Challenge

Happy November 1st! I hope everyone had a great and safe Halloween and didn't eat to much candy ;-) Ben and I took the kids to Northway mall and let them walk around and do their trick or treating. They seemed to enjoy it and we didn't get to much candy, which I'm happy about. :-)


Rozalynn is a kitty cat (Meeeowww!) and Elijah is Iron Man.

On to my November challenge. Because of the holidays coming up I thought I would challenge myself and try to only spend $100 on groceries for the month. I'm going to try and only really buy produce each week and try to use up some of the stockpiles I have. We'll see how it goes. It all really depends on the sales coming up later this month, as it's baking season and those supplies should be going on some good sales soon. I plan on keeping you all updated each week on my spending to help keep me on track. I just have to keep telling myself, "I think I can! I think I can! I think I can!"

The Grocery Game!

Ok, so lets get this ball rolling! I thought I would share the most wonderful money saving grocery website out there with you all. It has been our life saver. One of the things that really surprised us when we moved up here to Alaska was the price of everything! We had true sticker shock. About two and half years ago I came across the Grocery Game and fell in love. And, yes, I mean head over hills, seeing hearts, in LOVE. I'll just say, I will never, ever go grocery shopping without my grocery game lists ever again. We went from a budget of about $500 (with a family of three at the time!) to, drum roll please, $250 a month! For a family of four, one dog, and daycare kids! Ok, pick your jaw up off the floor and I will tell you about it.

 With the Grocery Game you get a list each week "of the lowest-priced products at your supermarket or drugstore matched with manufacturers' coupons and specials - advertised and unadvertised" Grocery Game FAQ

What this means is, your list will tell you exactly what items are on sale that week that are at their rock bottom price and what coupons to use (printable, paper, and e-coupons!) The idea is, when an items shows up on your list you stock up! You should get enough to last you roughly twelve weeks, as stores do a roughly twelve week rotation on sales. No more buying things at full price (or a crappy sale) when you run out of an item you need for dinner that night. All you have to do is go to the site, sign up, and try it FREE for four weeks. It really is free during the trial and if you don't like it, just cancel. That said, I know there are free sites out there that claim to give you the deals and such, well, they don't. From my experience, they are really confusing to navigate, missed coupons, and missed the unadvertised deals. So, I tell everyone, just try it for four weeks and if you don't like it just cancel and your not out any money at all. Also, try all the stores in your area during the trial as you can get them all for free during that time.

Oh! As I write this it is starting to snow outside! The kids are going to be so excited when they wake up from their nap!

First Post!

Well, it's my first ever blog post! Awesome. I'm still trying to get everything set up, so please bare with me. I was thinking that this post I would tell you all a little about myself and my family.

I grew up in Maryville, Tennessee. My husband, Bendigo (or Ben, as he likes to me called) and I dated in high school and got engaged right after graduation. He then joined the Army and got stationed up here in Alaska. Not long afterward, we were married (May 21, 2005) and I joined him up here. I did not know what I was getting myself into. I thought it would be some isolated village in the middle of no where, and boy was I wrong! Believe it or not, there are people here and stores and even a mall! :-) A few months into our marriage, I became pregnant with out first baby, but experienced a miscarriage a few months in. Boy was that devistating! I have never experienced such heartbreak. As soon as we got the ok from the doctor, we became pregnant again and got the news that Ben had to deploy to Iraq and while he was gone, I delivered our son, Elijah (December 27, 2006). After a long 13 month deployment, Ben came home! We decided to buy our home and soon after we were expecting our daughter, Rozalynn. She was born September 21, 2008. But Ben had to deploy again, this time to Afghanistan. He wasn't supposed to go at all, but he got stop-lossed by the Army. (What that means is the Army decided to extend his contract and make him deploy) While he was gone, I decided to open a daycare in my home to help keep me busy. The daycare has been so enjoyable! The kids I have watched have all been sweet hearts! Ben came back from his deployment in January 2010 and was able to finally be out of the Army in March 2010.  So, here we are at the end of October, me doing a daycare in our home and Ben in a new job (pushing paper at the D.A.'s office) and going school at night! Can you say "Crazy busy?" hahaha. I don't think we could have it any other way!

So this blog is going to have a little bit of everything, hence the name F.A.M.I.L.Y. -  Food, Accounting, Mothering, Interests, Learning, and You name it!  And if you ever have any question or requests, please don't hesitate to shoot me a message or post a comment. :-)