Affording Such A Large Family Fun Edition

Feeding ducks at the duck pond.

I actually got them in order by age too!

That NEVER happens.

What do we do for fun? You name it! No, we don't have a lot of money but we are super creative. I love researching and finding free events in our area. Facebook has made this much easier.

We attend a bunch of free activities. Barnes and Nobel does story and craft times on Saturdays. Lowes and Home Depot offers building workshops. The gyms sometimes do family swim and movie night. There is always some kind of free festival going on downtown.

We go into nature. We live near the lake so we love to go swimming. We will go hiking and do a picnic. We feed the ducks (PSA: Bread is bad for them). We go on bike rides. Shaving cream fights out side. Side walk chalk. Bubbles. Races. Trampoline. We have even done backyard Olympics. Camping. Bon fires.

Family Movie Night. We have Netflix movie night with popcorn or we will go to the drive-in ($30) when they are having a double or triple feature. We look for Redbox codes. Our will just pull out an old favorite or a movie from our extensive collection. We buy movies by the box at yard sales. Unfortunately, we get a lot of scratched movies due to little hands.

Family cooking night. We will do ice cream sundae bars. We will do build your own taco bars or make your own pizza.

Game Night. We will do this as a family or with friends. We have even found an organization that will allow you to do a game (video, board or card) as a marathon fundraiser. You get donations just like you would if you were running a 5K and that money goes to our local children's hospital. We taught the kids chess, which is actually apart of their third grade curriculum, and they have excelled and kick our hind ends.

We are even go on vacations. We are currently planning a trip across country. We will travel the upper US to the west coast to visit family. Go down through California to Disneyland. Come home via the lower half of the US and visit the Grand Canyon, The Alamo and New Orleans and end with a weekend at the beach. We are saving for this trip and couponing. We will be tent camping at KOAs across the country to save on lodging. We will cook our own food, except at Disney, well because DISNEY (everyone needs a Dole Whip in their life). We are actually looking at taking a train from east to west and then renting a car to drive back (but I feel like we will miss out on stuff that way)!

In February, I took the three younger guys to the beach. Though it was to visit a dying family member, so not really a vacation or happy time, but we still made some great memories.

Check out more from this series:
Affording so many kids: school edition

DIY Planter Boxes

Brad has spent the weekend building planter boxes for our deck. Where we are renting we certainly do not have the room to put out a garden... so we are doing an urban garden. We are really strapped for cash so we are going about this the cheapest way that we know how. This past week we have been blessed with being able to gather supplies for free.

Brad was able to get lumber out of the throw away pile at work and a 3 gallon bucket. He is going to fashion the lumber into a vertical garden. I was able to get some planter pots from bushes that my parents had purchased for their flower bed.

My mom just purchased some plants for her garden and there were multiple plants in the pots. She is going to give me clipping and extra plants to start our garden.

I am so excited to save money on our grocery bill and not to mention teach the children new skills and have a little more control over what we put in our bodies. I feel so blessed that we have some skills that will allow us to do extra things that we otherwise wouldn't be able to afford.

Refurbished Patio Furniture

So I got a sewing machine for Christmas. Between kids, moving and life in general I haven't had a chance to use it until recently. My mom is trying to salvage her patio furniture and make it last one more year... that is when the brilliant idea was born. She bought sturdy table clothes at the dollar store and we used the tattered cushions that were already on her patio furniture and we refurbished them back to life and now they are water proof.

So we measured the cushions to make a pattern. Since each of the cushions were slightly different in shape and size we could not use a standard pattern.

After we cut the fabric to match our needs. We folded them inside out and sewed them with a straight stitch leaving one open wide side. *Double stitching was used for durability.

We then turned the covers right side out and stuffed the cushion in. Once we had placed the cushion in and made the material smooth. We made it too tight to be reasonably stitched on the remaining open side. We used gorilla glue to seal it shut.

This was a fun and simple project that was relatively inexpensive. Cushions for her patio furniture was pricing out around $20-$30 per cushion. The total project cost $20. That's a huge win!

Manicure

My nails were a mess! I really want to feel better about myself, and if I'm being truthful, I want to be amazing for Brad. I want to everything he's ever dreamed of. So I kind of want to model myself after June Cleaver. She was always stunning, upbeat and Suzy homemakery! Now, I'm a tomboy and that's not going to change. I'm just me...take it or leave it! With that being said I'm a lipstick tomboy. I want to get dirty and sweaty with the boys, but I want to look pretty doing it.

So another Pinterest trick of two was tried tonight. I wanted to do my nails, because I refuse to pay salon prices this month. So here are the pins and results:

Elmers Glue: So it worked well. I did not have any polish that I couldn't get easily off of my cuticles. So basically, you put Elmer's glue around you nails at the cuticle. Paint. Dry. Peel off glue and perfect nails!

Listerine Foot Soak: It smelled and felt great! However, it did not work for me the way that Pinterest suggested. I ended up using my PedEgg because I know it makes me smooth. In all fairness, I don't have a lot of dead skin on my feet due to regular maintenance. I might work better for someone with flakey skin.

Polish in the Fridge: I didn't really notice a difference to be honest. I know that it is supposed to make it thicker and therefore smoother. I did not notice a difference. However, I am cheap and refuse to pay out the ying yang for polish! I buy mine at the dollar store, but I use an Avon Top Coat. I will buy more expensive products if I have a coupon for it.

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