This Week's Best Garage-Sale-Haul

Last Friday, a bunch of my family members were out garage-saling for the morning.  They asked me and the boys to come meet them, so we ate breakfast and got in the car.  They were in the next town over, so we started to drive that way, but of course we kept hitting sales on the way!  We didn't find much at any of the sales, and considering we had to be somewhere at noon, we decided to give up on our own little quest and meet up with the rest of the gang...

...and then we stopped at one more sale.  As soon as we got out of the car, I could tell that it was little boy heaven! Every table was stacked high with action figures, games, books, movies, etc.  I was so happy that we had finally found a sale with some stuff for my boys...now if only the price was right!  I looked at some of the tags, and everything seemed pretty reasonable, so I started to make a pile by the lady's table.  The pile grew pretty fast...especially with little Cooper picking up things he liked and then throwing them onto our pile!

Anyhow, I finally stopped the madness and told her we were ready to pay.  She started adding up the total, and when she got close to halfway through the pile, the running total was $12.  I looked at the rest of the items, which included a $5 bag of Lincoln Logs a $6 or $7 Play-Dough Kit, and even more toys.  Then I looked at the money in my pocket--I had $17.  I asked her to stop adding the total, and I told her I would have to leave a few things behind because all I had on me was $17.  She looked at my adorable little boys, and my growing belly, and said "just take it all for $17. I need to get rid of it!"

So, that was our big haul for the week!  My boys were SO excited about all of their new things, and when we got home and started looking through them, I was even more impressed with our bargaining skills!  For example, the Play-Dough Kit came with a carrying case, approximately 25-30 cans of play-dough, and a ton of shaping, cutting, and stamping toys to use with the dough.  That kit alone would probably cost at least $20, and yet it was only one of MANY things that we got at that sale!

Here's the haul:

the Play-Dough Kit and Carrier
15 books (and not just books, but some of my boys' favorites: Scooby, Clifford, Legos, etc.)
8 action figures
1 bag of Lincoln Logs (also worth at least $20 at the store)
1 Lightning McQueen (Cars) board game...with EVERY piece still in the box!
1 big motorcycle (key word for the boys: it's a BIG one)
1 pair of flip flops
1 Batman and Joker movie (which has been playing non-stop in our house for the last 6 days)
1 Matchbox Prison (for them to lock up the "bad guys" they are always chasing)
1 little suitcase for Cooper, which matches the one that we got for Sam at a garage sale 4 years ago!

PS...I can't finish this post without being completely honest...one of our secrets to garage-saling is do NOT take all of your cash up to the sale with you, and always have small bills to offer.  So, when I said that I had $17 on me, I meant that literally.  In other words, I still had another $20 in my car...yikes, I feel so scandalous when I admit that! :)
PPS...We never did meet up with the rest of the family! We got on a roll of our own, and barely made it to my class by noon!

No matter what, the very best part of that garage sale was seeing my boys' eyes light up at the sight of all of their favorite toys being carried to their van.  Happy Bargain Thursday!

Adorable AND Delicious.

Adorable and delicious--what could be better?!  I'm talking about today's recipe:  Mini Pineapple Upside-down Cakes!  The last time I made these, our friends and family ate them up so fast that I had to make a second batch the next day!  I'm making them for a family dinner tonight, and I thought since it's Wednesday, I'd just share the yumminess with all of you!  This recipe is SO easy, and I'm sure it will be a hit in your house as well!  ENJOY!



Mini Pineapple Upside-down Cakes

(24 servings )

 Ingredients:

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/3 cup butter, melted

2 (20 ounce) cans sliced pineapple

1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix

3 eggs

1/3 cup vegetable oil

12 maraschino cherries, halved

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar and butter; mix well. Spoon into 24 greased muffin cups. Drain pineapple, reserving the juice. Trim pineapple to fit the muffin cups; place one ring in each cup.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the cake mix, eggs, oil and 1-1/4 cups of the reserved pineapple juice; mix well. Spoon over pineapple, filling each cup two-thirds full. Bake at 350 degrees  for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

3. Immediately invert onto wire racks to cool. Place a cherry in the center of each pineapple ring.

HAPPY WEDNESDAY EVERYONE!  HOPE IT'S DELICIOUS!

Happy Mommy, Happy Home

My boys were going through a rough time sleeping-wise.  Sam, who is 3, was getting too big for his little toddler bed, and was coming into our room pretty much every night.  Cooper, who was still 1, was not out-growing his crib in size, but he was rolling around all night long and beating himself up on the bars of the crib, hence causing him to also come to our bed.  Every night.  At this point, I was in the early weeks of my third pregnancy, and suffering terrible “morning” (AKA “all day”) sickness, and really needed some sleep.  I mentioned to Matt that we should think about moving them to their new bedroom, since we would be doing it in a few months anyway, to prepare for the baby coming.  I brought up the idea of getting them twin beds, and some people laughed, since Cooper is so tiny, but I just needed a solution!  After weeks of talking about it, and not sleeping, we finally went out and got them their twin beds and started moving their things to their new room.  That was almost 4 months ago. The results were amazing—they slept all night, almost every single night!

Until Summer hit….we have a really old house, and even though we do have central air, it really does us no good on the second floor.  Matt and I already have a window unit in our room (purchased at a garage sale…of course!), but the rest of the rooms are nearly unbearable in this heat…including Sam and Cooper’s room.  As soon as the temperatures spiked, we were back to the same old story…Sam would come in our room, and an hour later we would hear Cooper crying on the monitor.  As soon as they got into our room with the air conditioning, they were out like lights until the morning.  The solution was obvious:  we needed another window unit!  However, if you know my husband (whom I love dearly!!), anything that costs more than $3 requires contemplation. J

Until today! This past week has been terribly hot, and I’m not enjoying one minute of the old routine.  The boys are bigger, my stomach is bigger, and our bed is still a Queen size bed.  Not a good combination.  I’ve been nagging Matt to no end—I’ve even been recruiting family members to yell at him about buying a new unit!  So today, we head over to my in-laws’ house to see Matt’s aunt and uncle, who came in from Texas last night.  After a mere mention of our hot and sticky situation, Aunt Susie and Uncle David say “Matt, we are taking you tonight to get an air-conditioner”.  I can honestly say that I could hear the “Hallelujah Chorus” in my head.  Finally!

Boys helping Uncle David

As I write this post, Matt and his Uncle David are working hard at getting the unit in the window.  My boys are in their jammies, and I am practically drooling at the thought of a good night’s sleep.  On Tuesdays we look for the good in our homes…on this Tuesday, the good in my home is sitting on the boys’ windowsill, and I am very, very grateful.

Thank goodness for the sweet-talking family from Texas.  I don’t know their secret for talking my husband into things, but I will find it out…it could come in very handy!

Hallelujah.

Life is funny.

It is now 12:33 AM.  The truth is, most of the posts that you read are written after 12:30 AM...I guess I just work well when everyone is sleeping.  But tonight was different.  I had some time this afternoon to organize some of my plans for the blog, and I felt so accomplished after sorting through my stacks of ideas and getting them into the right compartments in my folders (yes, I have already admitted to an obsession with office supplies).  So, around 10:30 I come upstairs to take a shower, then I'm about to lay down in my bed and turn my laptop on.  Matt is laying in the boys' room, and I assume he will be going back downstairs to play his video game while I write tomorrow's post (we are lame...I know!).  I go in to check on him, and we end up sitting in our room talking for the next two hours.  It's one of those conversations where you feel like you are talking about everything and nothing all at once.  We talked about our past, we talked about our kids, we laughed...sometimes when I look at him it's like I remember every single moment I've had with him, all in one instance.  And, as everyone always says, sometimes we just say nothing at all.  If you don't have someone in your life that you can do that with, then I hope you find someone soon.  I could lay here with him all day, not saying a thing...not promising that we wouldn't fall asleep, but still! And so, after all of my work this afternoon and all of my planning, when Matt finally got up and said he's going back downstairs to play his game, all I wanted to do was write about this, about these last two hours with my husband, my best friend, the father of my children.  Ironic that today just happens to be Father's Day. He ran downstairs to get me a glass of water (and let's be honest...a candy bar, too), and when he came back, the baby girl was going crazy.  He put his hand on my stomach, and we could both feel her foot--yes, you can actually tell that it's her foot!  It is both the weirdest and most wonderful thing all at once.
Tonight's "date night" with my husband was not planned.  We did not get dressed up, we did not go out to dinner, and in fact we didn't even know we were on a date while it was happening.  But, to me, tonight was perfect.  Life is funny sometimes, the way we fuss around about how we look and what we should do for fun, and then in the end some of our most memorable times happen when we get out of the shower and sit down on the bed--no make up, in our pajamas, with no agenda.  I love him so much.  And that is looking for the good in life.

My Dad.

Normally, my Sunday posts are about surprises, but today is Father’s Day and, to no one’s surprise, I’m going to tell you about my dad.

Smiling at my dad before walking down the aisle

As my mom would tell you, I have always been a Daddy’s Girl.  And if you had my dad, you would be too!  I have the best dad in the whole world.  By far.  He has loved me, taken care of me, played with me, and basically lived his life to make me happy every day of my life.  I have enough happy childhood memories to fill a blog every day of the year…and that’s something to be truly grateful for.

If you know my dad, you know that he truly is a kid at heart.  Well, not just at heart…he can usually be found playing with the kids and acting like a crazy person!  When I was little, he would literally drag the hose inside and we would have water-fights in the house.  One time he filled our entire living room with bubbles.  He used to let my cousin and I fix his hair, put make-up on him, basically whatever we wanted!  He was always ready to play, and he was always there for me.  He never missed a single school event, and I swear he was the proudest daddy in the room.

SO happy.

As I grew up, he continued to be by my side.  I’ll never forget the night I was laying in my room crying because we had to climb the rope the next day in gym class, and I knew that I couldn’t do it.  I was afraid of being embarrassed in front of my class, and I didn’t want to go to school.  The next thing I know, my dad is up in the attic, tying a rope to the rafters and letting it hang down into our hallway.  He was ready to teach me, right then and right there.  What a lucky girl I am.

I think it was around high school that I started to realize just how lucky I truly was…I started to learn more about the world around me, and I started to see that a lot of my friends were not as lucky in the dad-area.  I know that many of my guy friends came to look up to my dad, to see him as the type of dad that they didn’t have in their lives, but that maybe they could be for their own kids.  When I started dating my future-husband, I saw right away that my dad would love him as his own son.  And even though my husband has a good dad of his own, I know that he and my dad have formed a very strong bond, and that is another thing that I hope I never take for granted.

I don’t know who dreaded my first day of college more—me or my dad.  Even though I was only an hour away, it’s more of a symbolic “leaving home”.  He and my mom came to the over-night orientation with me, and in the morning just the two of us walked downtown Iowa City for my Spanish placement exam.  We got breakfast at Bruegger’s Bagels, and he told me about how that very building was where he lived when he went to school there.  Then we sat on a bench together outside…it wasn’t a momentous occasion, but it is one I will never forget. And throughout my five years at Iowa, when I missed my dad I would just walk over to Bruegger’s and think about him living there, going to college there like I did.



Our fancy dance moves!

I wish I could have been there when my husband asked my dad if he could propose to me.  Of course that would defeat the purpose!  When I came home with that ring on my finger, I ran down the stairs to greet my dad at the front door, just like I always had when I lived at home, and he gave me the biggest hug, along with the biggest smile on his face.  As we prepared for the wedding, he surprised me by getting us dance lessons for the Father-Daughter dance.  I know a lot of people do that, but coming from my dad, who had never danced that I could remember, it meant so much.  We had so much fun at the classes…neither of us is a good dancer, so we were difficult students!  In the end, it turned out wonderful, just as I had expected.  And I don’t think there is a girl in this world who was happier to walk down the aisle with her dad than I was that day.  As you can tell from the pictures, I just couldn’t stop smiling!

When I found out I was pregnant with my first son, I was most excited to tell my dad. (sorry Mom!) He just loves babies so much, and obviously when it was my baby he would love it even more!  For my first doctor’s appointment to hear the heartbeat, my husband had to work, so my dad went with me.  My doctor said “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grandpa so excited before!”  Boy, was she right.  We decided to name our son after my dad, but we kept it a secret.  After he was born, when all of the grandparents came in to meet him, the nurse said “Samuel Roark is such a beautiful name”…she didn’t know we hadn’t told him yet!  For a split second I wanted to be mad at her, but then I turned and saw my dad’s face, with a tear in his eye and the biggest smile ever on his face.  And then nothing else mattered.  From that day, my son, and now my other son too, have been the light of my dad’s eyes, just like I was when I was a little girl.  To see him with them is like seeing my own childhood all over again, but even better. 

A good laugh.

My mom says when this little girl arrives in August, we are all doomed—and I’m afraid she’s right.  Judging from how my dad has loved me, and now loves my boys, once he lays eyes on my little girl no one else will ever have a chance in her heart.  And to be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way.  My children are lucky enough to have the best grandpa in the whole wide world.

So here’s to you, Dad.  Thank you for always taking care of me, still to this day, and for loving me in a way that many people are never lucky enough to be loved.  You will never know how much you truly mean to me, but I hope that these words are a start.  And I will always be Daddy’s Girl, no matter what.  I love you.

Pollyanna Had the Right Idea...

If you have never seen the movie Pollyanna, then you might have been wondering what I was talking about in some of my posts this last month or so.  In this movie, which has many versions (all of which came from the 1913 novel of the same name), we meet a young girl (Pollyanna) who has become orphaned and must go to live with her aunt Polly.  Throughout the film, we see Pollyanna playing what she calls “the glad game”, a game that her father taught her—to look for the good, or “the glad” in every situation. Like I’ve said before, if you haven’t seen it, you should.  Sure, it’s an “old movie” now, but it’s still good—and the message will never get old.  Look for the good.

It’s the basis of my whole blog. And on the Saturdays that we have spent together, me and all of you who have been so faithful in reading my words, we have been looking for the good in people.  I’ve realized that lately a lot of my posts have been about my family, about my friends, about me, me, me—my personal life.   Of course that’s going to happen when I’m writing every day, and specifically when I’m writing about what makes me happy.  But I guess what I’m trying to say is that we all need to be doing this in our lives—even though you may read about my family when you click on my blog, I hope that my writings make you reflect on your own family, or your own group of friends, etc. That is my intent.

And another thing…as I just said, it’s very easy to write about my loved ones, because they make me happy and they inspire me to write these little pieces that you have been reading.  However, going back to my initial post on day one of “The Good”, I’m trying to reflect on the idea of looking for the good in everyone—that clerk at the grocery store I mentioned, or just anyone you might meet on the street in a given day.  That is another goal of mine with this blog—like I’ve said in an earlier post, it is my “Happiness Project”.  I’d like to think that in some small way, my words can make you all happier when you read them, and then in turn you will pay it forward, both to your friends and family and to the strangers you meet each day.

And so, without any further rambling from me, please look for the good in people today.  In everyone.  Make it a personal challenge to find something good in every person that you come in contact with today.  Believe me, that’s not an easy challenge!  And when you are out doing it, I will be out doing it as well, and in the end maybe we can make this world a little happier, day by day.

Here’s to a happy Saturday, filled with smiles and happy thoughts! J Thank you all for reading my blog.

Don't Miss Out!

If you live in the Quad-City area, don't miss today's post!

A reminder about the Quad City Moms Blog's Yard Sale TOMORROW morning (8am-1pm) in Centennial Park in downtown Davenport.  This is going to be a GREAT event!  Not only can you shop tons of garage sales in one place and check out some great vendors as well, but you can also bring the kids and make a day of it!  There will be family-friendly activities going on all morning, and refreshments available, too!  Cost of admission is only $1 per person!



If you can't make it to the big Yard Sale event, but you are still in search of some good bargains in the Quad-City area, you should check out QC Bargains.  It's a website sharing local grocery deals, good coupon finds, restaurant offers, family friendly events, and more!  Some features of the site include an Event Calendar, Diaper Dollars, Milk Money, Print Coupons, Cooking with Sale Items, Grocery Stores, and Kids Eat Free!  This site is definitely worth checking out...and it just happens to be run by my friend and co-founder of the Moms Blog, Miss Camye and her husband David.  Great job guys!

What a great weekend to be a part of this community...the weather is going to be great, and the deals will be even greater downtown tomorrow morning! Bring the kids, let them enjoy the activities, and get your bargaining on!  Hope to see you there!