He's doing it again!

Today I turned into the livingroom to find Andrew looking at scrapbooks again. Unprompted. By himself. He was on his third one. Keeps a momma going, let me tell ya!



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Free Again.

Last night I had a fun free evening with Mel. We went to the beautiful store Wonderment, made a needle felted ornament, which was super easy and super addictive, had some wine and cheese and then walked over to the coffee shop and Mel treated me to a cup of tea.

I also downloaded 20 free Holiday songs from Itunes. For free. Yep. Love that Itunes!

This after a very active day moving furniture. We are creating a playroom where my room used to be, Scott and I are moving into the master bedroom and Andrew is moving back into his previous room, sans all the toys. It's about half done and now I'm needing Scott to help with two VERY heavy beds.

It feels great to be able to do something useful and productive. My muscles liked it too!

Danger: Thin Ice

From our last decently warm run/walk.

More Free and Almost Free on this frigid morn.

Tuesday Scott and I went to our free movie, which was okay, but mainly nice to sit next to my honey for 100 minutes! Wednesday night I did some babysitting for a friend and took Andrew along, which means he got a free playdate at their house, and she also had dinner ready for me to make, so we got free dinner!

Yesterday, when I was supposed to be going away for scrapbooking with my mom at a friend's house outside of St. Cloud, I instead got to go scrapbook for 10 hours at Archiver's for free. The trip got cancelled due to my mom's cold and the weather, but Scott was awesome about helping me get to and from the mall. We had a great free walk together as a family (did we really ever think three reps of the mall was a long walk?) and saw some new fun things. Because of the weather, the mall was pretty dead, and I had the beautiful craft room at Archivers to myself! I brought a lunch, which I stored in their little fridge in the craft room, and refilled my water bottle from their cooler. In the cheap category I had a $1 sundae from McD's for dessert and took the time to dig through the tons of .34 paper at Archiver's. I got three pieces of paper that I used that day and another two for an idea I want to try with Andrew for Christmas cards. That and a new bronze ink pad and it was a cheap day with 24 pages completed! I took two more walk breaks throughout the day so I got more exercise, and it was balmy inside, let me tell you!

Tonight a friend is bringing me along to a free craft, wine and cheese night at a local toy store, so another free night out with the grown ups and Andrew gets another playdate.

Off to read our morning Christmas stories to Andrew!

More free and nearly free!

1. Free hot chocolate and cookies at Borders.
2. a Free gift for Andrew and a gift to give one of his friends or cousins!
3. $20 in high quality socks for Andrew, discounted down to $12 and then because I had a $10 off coupon, they cost me only $2
4. A coupon in the mail for $10 in free merchandise at J.C.Penney's with no minimum purchase amount
5. A coupon in the mail for $10 off a $16 purchase at ABC Zone.
6. A package from a scrapbook friend that contained about $10 worth of free paper and stickers from a line I LOVE! Just before I sit down to scrapbook for a week too! Perfect!
7. Tomorrow its a free classical music concert in the afternoon!

Feeling very blessed indeed today and I think its good for Andrew to see all of the bounty that can come in spite of the lack of funding!

More Free and almost free

Whew! The cool free and almost free stuff just keeps showing up at our house to help us get through this lean time. Here is the latest free or nearly free we are experiencing:

1. A free rental at Redbox. Andrew and I will be able to continue our Friday night movie night even though the bank account is at zero! Thanks Redbox!
2. Free photo printing. Last night before the photography class my mom took us to, I was able to pick up 10 free photo prints from National Camera Exchange. They do NICE work!
3. Yep, that's right, a free advanced digital photography class, it was great, thanks mom!
4. Scott got offered two free movie passes for Tuesday night. A date night!
5. Mom gave us her Advent Christmas mini tree. We sat at breakfast this morning and came up with 30 free activities and we made half of them things that we could do for someone else to brighten their holiday season...and they were all free!
6. Andrew got to go to his best friends family dinner last night, which ended with Make Your Own Sundaes and letters to Santa as well as watching some fun Christmas classics that they had recorded.
7. I picked up a handful of Christmas stories and picture books at the library, so that every night we can do a little family reading together (okay, well maybe that will have to be every morning, since we want Scott along for the fun!)
8. I had enough printer ink and paper to print out all of my pictures for christmas gifts this year, so now I'm ready for...
9. The FREE (okay, I have to pay for half a tank of gas) two day mini scrapbook retreat my mom and I are doing with our friend Kit at her lake house next Thursday and Friday
10. Also yesterday we went to the Hansel and Gretel concert at Orchestra Hall and we just paid for parking.
11. Got groceries for the week at Aldi tonight. $20 goes A LONG way at Aldi! So love that store!
12. Did a little comp work and a friend is taking me to the Walker for a film next weekend in payment. Nice grown up night out, cost: just a little elbow grease!
13. Next Sunday my sis-in-law invited Andrew and I over for dinner. She is a killer cook, so there will be a yummy dinner. Then aftewards we are going caroling, which is something Andrew had asked to do this year!

Feeling very blessed tonight indeed!

Love the Raw, Clean, Honesty of this Beat Box movement

Tree's Up.