Water

Apparently water is a crucial ingredient in cream puffs.

Disappearing Socks

Daniel has a knack for hiding things lately. Recently Jessica and I spent several minutes trying to locate a half-full bottle of Daniel's milk, not wanting to wait for a sour smell to eventually reveal the location. Turns out he had hidden it behind some furniture on a window sill.

Yesterday before church, as I was ready to put Daniel's shoes on I found that he had taken his socks off. I looked high. I looked low. Nowhere to be found. So I asked Daniel, "Daniel, where are your socks?" He went and stood near his dresser, holding his hands up. "Smart kid, he knows where his socks come from" I thought to myself. But on and on I searched, finally heading to the kitchen to look in the drawers and lower cabinets. Even though we've locked the lower cabinets, Daniel has found a way to open the drawers above and slide objects underneath to fall into the cabinet below. But still no socks. After twenty minutes of looking everywhere, they are simply gone. Maybe he ate them.

Finally, going back to his room and opening his top drawer, which is the sock drawer, low and behold there they were! Daniel had put his socks back in the sock drawer! He had even tried to tell me where he had put them! What a stinker :)

Texas Fried Fair

We really could just post this picture and it'd be enough.
















everyone was abuzz about this, one of the new foods for the year















Enjoying a Fletcher's famous corny dog. YUM!















Funnel Cake















Fried Cheesecake.















Fried Yam, highly disappointing.














Next year I'd like to have a lottery for trying the fried snickers, cookie dough, oreos, nutter butters, ice cream, pecan pie and honey bun.

Growing Boy

Daniel talks more and more these days. Tommy and I wonder if he's trying to say anything in particular or just learning how to make new sounds. Either way we love to hear him.


This video pretty much summarizes our day, but there's usually alot more throwing.

Frugal in the Kitchen

I checked out The Complete Tightwad Gazette from the library. WOW. This thing is like the frugal bible! At nearly 1,000 pages and tons of calculations for making the most of every penny I have found a renewed desire to save even more.

Amy Dacyczyn (pronounced decision) advocates the use of a Price Book, which is a concept I've seen all over frugal blogs. Basically you keep track of the items you buy and their cost to determine when and where is best to buy. I finally sucked it up and started. I am already surprised to find that the name brand applesauce sold at Central Market is less expensive than the store brand at Kroger!

Convenience foods are one of the biggest drains on a grocery budget and they can be pretty detrimental your health as well. While we really don't buy too much prepackaged, single serving stuff one of our weak spots has been granola bars. I made my first batch last week using a recipe for Playgroup Granola Bars. They were a big hit. This week I made Gobble Up Granola Bars. Tommy hasn't taste tested them yet, but I doubt I'll hear complaints.

But what's the cost? For the Gobble Up: Since I omitted one ingredient (raisins), got 4 for free (cereal, oats, sugar and peanut butter), the vanilla was super cheap and I've had the corn syrup so long I can't remember: cost 0.50? for 12 granola bars, that's about $0.04 each!
For the Playgroup Bars: About $1.00 for 12, which is about $0.08 each!

I also made some pancakes to put in the freezer to give Daniel for breakfast. I tripled the recipe and used The Happy Housewife's method for freezing them so all we have to do is pop it in the toaster in the morning and he's got breakfast. To the best I can figure they cost me about $2.00 for a batch of 30. Less than $0.07 for breakfast. Can't beat that.

Our next task is to renovate our drink situation. Tommy vowed to abstain from cola during October, but he requests something else "tasty" to drink. Any suggestions?