This brings new meaning to the phrase “bucket of chicken.”

We have 14 chicks now from the hatch that I posted about a couple weeks ago. We put them outside about a week ago, but had some pretty cold weather so we brought them back inside for a couple days. This is how Stephen carried them:

They’re back outside now. We needed to move them back outside partly because there are 28 quail eggs in the incubator that are due to hatch this coming week. We’ll need the brood box for the new babies, and the other chicks are big enough to go outside now anyway.

Pictures to come soon (I hope) of the quail eggs!

One of my Hannah Girls posted this on her blog yesterday. I thought it was fascinating.

Have you ever?

Bold the things you’ve done.

1. Started your own blog

2. Slept under the stars – at camp

3. Played in a band – high school. I played clarinet.

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower – again, at camp

6. Given more than you can afford to charity

7. Been to Disneyland/world – Disneyworld with my family when I was in high school

8. Climbed a mountain – a church youth group missions trip to Wyoming

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sang/played a solo – frequently at church. Mostly piano, and sometimes voice. I played a clarinet solo a time or two in high school too.

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch

15. Adopted a child – YES! And I would do it again in a heartbeat if God ever led us to do so again!

16. Had food poisoning – on Valentine’s Day the year S was born. It was our last “big date” before he arrived, and we both got food poisoning.

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown your own vegetables – yummy.

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train

21. Had a pillow fight – too many times to count

22. Hitch hiked

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill

24. Built a snow fort – my brothers and I used to do this all the time in Michigan. I miss being able to do things like that.

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping

27. Run a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse – again, in high school.

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset – many times. God’s creation never ceases to amaze me.

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise – a one-day one with my family when I was in high school

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person – again, with my family. I’d love to go again and take my boys this time.

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing – well, more rapelling than climbing. It was a BLAST.

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance

47. Had your portrait painted

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling – playing as a child in a lake. Does that count?

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business – Hope of My Heart Designs, of course. My private piano studio too. We’ve also started a couple that were total flops, lol.

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies

62. Gone whale watching

63. Gotten flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma – I used to donate regularly. Since we’ve moved here, I just never found a place to do it. I need to though.

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Pieced a quilt – you can see pictures here and here

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades – again, with my family in high school. We took one HUGE vacation to Florida my junior year. My parents’ reasoning was to have one last family vacation with all the kids together since I was going off to college soon. It really was the last trip we took together. I now live 850 miles from my family and really wish we could do more together, so I treasure the memories from trips like this one.

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person

80. Published a book – no, but thinking about it. I submitted some of my music for publication years ago, and dropped it when life got busy. I’ve been considering pursuing this again, but just haven’t actually followed through with it yet.

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible – I try to do this every year. I don’t always make it, but it’s my goal.

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating – frequently. Chickens quite a bit, but other animals too. And we just got quail so we’ll be eating those soon-ish too. I should have known what was coming when Stephen handed me a trout he caught on our honeymoon and sent me inside the cabin to clean it, lol!

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous – Christ VanAllsburg, author of Jumanji and Polar Express

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Made a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit

98. Owned a cell phone

99. Been stung by a bee

A lady from church brought me a package of Gevalia Royal Vinter Spice Coffee last night. I just brewed a cup of it. It smells SO good, and the flavor is every bit as good as the aroma. Mmm.

The boys are down for naps, and I just sat down to work on some scrapbook layouts for Christmas gifts. The house is quiet, and I have a good cup of coffee in front of me.

Wow. This is almost too good to be true!

Michele posted earlier today, showing her love addiction for coffee. Actually, it was left over from her MOPS meeting, but I have no room to criticize. She showed five bottles of creamer in her frig. There are eight bottles in mine.

I thought I’d show her the inside of my frig, so she wouldn’t feel bad. This is the top shelf in the frig door.

We normally only have one bottle of liquid creamer in the house. But last week was triple coupons, and the creamer was on sale, making it very cheap. So I stocked up. Stephen asked that I buy him some plain, so I did. Then I bought my favorite (French vanilla), and some caramel and white chocolate macadamia. The caramel is GREAT! I think it and the vanilla are tied for my favorite now. There’s also two more bottles in the back of the frig that aren’t in the picture.

I believe we’re set for a while now. This should last us until, oh, Christmas or so. Just kidding! We don’t drink THAT much coffee. We do drink quite a bit, but not THAT much. Although Annie would say differently, lol.

Though Stephen came home from work today with a HUGE container of decaf. Now I can drink coffee later in the day! Yay!

Here’s a picture of the finished chicken jammies for little C. Ok, so they’re a little, um, loud, but hey. I like them.

These are made with the same Habitual kimono pattern I posted about the other day. This time I attached snaps, but used a hammer to do it instead of my snap setting pliers. They went in beautifully. I have just enough snaps left to do C’s John Deere pajamas. For S I will probably use buttons.

Somehow this kimono was a bit bigger than the first one, but that’s good, considering we still have 6 weeks or so until Christmas.

We’re cracking back down on South Beach again. I guess you could say we’re somewhere in phase 2, but we’re not as strict as we probably should be.

We do have pizza on Friday nights – we spend time with Stephen’s mom, and we eat whatever she has there. Usually it’s pizza. We allow ourselves one “cheat night” a week. It’s a good way to not feel deprived (and still be able to eat some “junk food”), and knowing that we’re not quitting SB for good helps too.

9 Sunday – cheese soup
10 Monday – venison cubed steak, mixed veggies
11 Tuesday – ground beef and peppers
12 Wednesday – baked salmon
13 Thursday – turkey pot pie (might make this without a crust or biscuit topping – not sure yet)
14 Friday – pizza
15 Saturday – tossed salads

You can read more menu plans over at I’m an Organizing Junkie.

Every year, our entire family gets new pajamas for Christmas. This year, our boys will be getting matching John Deere pajamas. I’ve only made them pajama pants before, but this year I wanted to make them matching shirts as well. There’s a picture of S wearing last year’s pajama pants here – that’s the same fabric I bought this year as well.

I’ve seen the Habitual kimono pattern around the internet before, so thought I’d use it for the boys pj’s. Yesterday, I decided to try it on some practice fabric first. That John Deere fabric is not cheap and I didn’t want to have to throw any of it away.

It’s a good thing I tried it first. One modification I made to the pattern was that I decided to use snaps instead of ties. My little guy would have found a way to undo ties. So, snaps it was. But then I couldn’t get them to set in right. The fabric ripped when I tried to take them off, so I trimmed it down and put on buttons instead.

I also used ready made seam binding instead of making it myself. Everything in these jammies is something that was already in my stash – so that was good. The binding has tiny little yellow, white, and red stars on it, and the buttons have letters of the alphabet on them.

It just barely fits over his nighttime diaper. These will not fit long at all, but at least it was a practice run and I know how to adjust for the next time. If I had left the ties on them, it would have fit fine, but oh well. ;O)

This particular set is also really thin, so I’ve been trying to think if I have enough flannel in my stash to make him up another practice set.

I do have quite a bit of chicken fabric – and there’s very likely enough to make him an entire set out of it. That might be a bit much though, if I dress my boy head to toe in chickens. LOL. What a sight!

Overall, I’m pleased. The kimono top was really easy – in fact, the hardest part was figuring out the right measurements from the chart and cutting it right. I had this completely made (buttons included) in less than an hour and a half. It would have been under an hour if the snaps would have worked right. I don’t like the buttons as well as the full crossover front with the tie – and I do think the snaps would have still looked nice. I guess I need to practice setting them. The set is cute, but I liked it better before the buttons.

Now – finding time when S is sleeping to sew the John Deere ones!

First of all, let me just say that I am immensely grateful for coupons and the stores that multiply them. That helps our grocery budget so much.

This week, Harris Teeter is doing a triple coupons promotion. I usually find out about these a week or so in advance, thanks to coupon forums like www.hotcouponworld.com and www.afullcup.com (I subscribe to the forums in a feed reader – so it doesn’t take long at all to skim post titles to read if a great event is coming). Harris Teeter’s rules are pretty simple. 20 coupons a day, and no more than 3 like coupons.

As usual, I ordered several batches of coupons off ebay. I get lots of 10 to 20 of the same coupon, and choose items that we either need, really like, or stockpile well. This time, I got coupons for meats, bread, sugar, etc.

I walked into the store this morning around 7:15. It had been my understanding that triples started at 7, so I thought the timing was pretty good. I passed some pretty upset-looking ladies on my way in. I could tell they were couponers because of part of the conversation I heard and the giant file box one of them was holding.

Once inside, I headed for the items I figured would sell out the fastest. To my surprise, the shelf was already almost empty! There were a couple left for me, so I went on.

A few minutes later, I heard a manager talking to some other employees about “we’ll beat them at their own game.” Great. . .trouble was brewing.

When I went to check out, I could see several carts full of coupon items and the really upset ladies were up front, and still just as upset. I’m not too sure what happened – it looked like they were trying to break the rules and got caught or something. Maybe they tried to do multiple trips and got stopped. Who knows. But they were MAD and it was plenty obvious.

It added fuel to something I’ve been pondering for a while now anyway. Just why do we coupon in the first place? Is it to have the biggest stockpile ever, and brag about it on the internet? Is it to see just how many of the same item we can get for free? Is it to see if we really can get $300 worth of merchandise for just $.02?

There’s nothing wrong with stockpiling – we’re getting more into that a little bit ourselves. We buy what we can when things go on sale, to hopefully last us until the next sale. It’s a great way to buy the things we usually use at the lowest price possible. But really, what average family can really eat 47 boxes of oatmeal before it goes bad? Or brownie mixes? Or sausage? Why do people feel the need to completely clean the grocery store shelves, just so they say they got a bargain? Whatever happened to being a considerate person?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not upset. But after what I saw today, I can’t help but wonder how many couponers are motivated by greed. I know it’s tempting when grabbing the best deals to get them all, but on the other hand, I want to be considerate. How many other moms are out there, hoping to get some good deals just to stretch their small grocery budget? If that’s MY motivation for going – surely I’m not the only one. It’s not like those stores are obligated to offer triples.

And about how I did – ring sausage for $.25, popcorn shrimp for just over $1 a box, 100% whole wheat bread for $.40 – made my trip totally worth it. I even got to get a couple new flavors of coffee creamer I’ve wanted to try. :O) Some of the things went right to stock the freezer a little bit, and some of the others were just a treat.

So tomorrow I’m hoping to head back up there for another run. I might be joining a lady from church. We’ll see. Showing someone how to do triple coupons is always fun!

Here comes trouble! This impish little grin means that I now have TWO mischievous boys on my hands!

I went this morning to vote, and arrived there shortly after 8. It was strange to see the parking lot full – the last time we went, we walked right in and voted. This morning, I waited for about 45 minutes. It still wasn’t bad though.

Have you voted yet?