Birthday Party Central!!

So Cordelia was really blessed to be invited to two birthday partys that were both taking place on Saturday. We started bright and early at 9.30am for the first party. This was held at her friend from church's house and had a princess theme. The girls started out in the salon with getting their nails painted. Then they moved on to the games...only after everyone's nails were dry, of course!

They played the following games:-

• Pin the tiara on Rapunzel
• Catch the glass slipper
• Don't eat beast
• Mermaid race
• Bobbing for "apples"

All the girls had a wonderful time and thoroughly enjoyed the cupcakes at the end of all the activities.

Pin the tiara on Rapunzel

 

Don't eat beast

Cordelia did great and didn't eat beast : )

enjoying her candy

Pass the glass slipper

Bobbing for "apples"

Get those ballons

Getting ready for the mermaid race

Ready, set, go!

Enjoying cup cakes.

 So after a brief intermission-we went home and had some lunch- it was on to party #2 which was a friend from schools party. This started at 1:45pm and was held at Pump it Up. Cordelia had attended a few parties here before so was very excited when we arrived...and off she went!

Stopping for a brief moment to get some balls through the "hoops"

Bounce, bounce, bounce

Happy Birthday Jadelyn!!

 Then everyone got ready to glow and the lights were turned out! This was fun-however-I had to keep a close eye on Cordelia as all the kids looked the same with their glow stick necklaces.

Ah, where did she go?

There she is!

Enjoying the birthday seat with the birthday girl.

Pizza and cake time.

Another friend from school!

Happy Birthday girls we had a great time celebrating your birthdays with you!

Movie Night @ Wegmans

Last night we had a wonderful movie night at Wegmans. I had seen notices up each time I was shopping and had just kept it in the back of my mind as something that would be fun to do as a family. Well it just worked out that Cordelia had two birthday parties to go to on Saturday (which will be another blog post) so her customary trip to Grammy and Pa-pap's had to be postponed for a week.  Well she was able to get the best of both worlds with Pa-pap joining us for the movie. So we arrived early as we had no idea how this thing worked. The lady at the customer service desk was wonderful and walked us through the whole thing.

I never realized that they had a second floor cafe area, but this is were the movie was going to be shown. We were very lucky that we were there 35 minutes early as the "doors" opened at 6pm and there were people waiting. Not many, but there are definitely prime seats which I took note of for next time. They had menu's which you could order off of, pizza and wings. They had a concession stand ( which we kept out of sight from Cordelia) and they also did prepackaged ice-creams. They had a mat in front of the big screen where the kids could hang out.
 

Enjoying ice-cream after the movie

 We really enjoyed ourselves and plan on doing this again. Oh and did I mention that the movie was free!

The Honest Company

Look what showed up at my house! I was so excited. I have tried several "green" products before but all seemed over priced for what I got. The honest company seemed to fit the profile for what I was looking for...natural cleaning and beauty products at reasonable prices.

You do have to sign up for monthly deliveries, which I was a little apprehensive about but once I looked at the budget I felt that I would truely be replacing my usual purchases with the membership. Also I can cancel at anytime so I figured the risk was minimal.

My package was coming from California but still arrived quickly. I placed my order on Friday and it arrived the following Wednesday. I was really happy with the service, when I order things on line I love the shipping confirmations that actually have tracking information which The Honest Company's e-mail did.

I used the shampoo, conditioner and lotion on Cordelia right away (I really got these for her) the verdict is still out as I really can't judge them on just a few uses but so far so good. I'll do a seperate post on there performance in the up coming weeks.

Have you found any "green" products you love?

Financial Peace University

So over 5 years ago one of the most amazing things happened in my life...I became a mother. For many when you experience a major life event, things fall into perspective. One of those things for me was my finances.

My precious pumpkin!!

So I have to back up a bit. Before Cordelia came along I thought it was okay to live paycheck to paycheck, to have a credit card with a recurring balance and only pay the minimum balance, to buy a house 100% financed and the last big financial mistake I made was when I got my last big pay raise I  brought a brand new car on finance (it only had something like 30 miles on it when I drove it off the lot). 

What's the matter with that? it's normal right?? Well let me tell you normal sucks! I can't remember how but I came across Dave Ramsey when I was about 6 months pregnant and something inside of me clicked I think I was finally tired and fed up of working hard and not having a thing to show for it especially any money. After researching his teachings on-line I remembered a conversation I had had several years before with an acquaintance explaining to me that being debt free is the best and cash is king and I seriously thought they were crazy and argued that I needed my credit card. Wow how I was eating my words now!

Well I got as gazelle intense as I could before Cordelia was born, I even sold my car! I was blessed as it was a Honda and had kept its value so I only had to come out of pocket $500 to get out of that deal. I think that was the last $500 I saw for awhile as I remember it taking me forever to even get my mini emergency fund.  But I persevered! After my mini emergency fund was done I really wanted to go through Financial Peace University (FPU), when Cordelia was about 9 months I found that a local church was running the course and they provided free child care..Another blessing. I really enjoyed the course and the community that I felt when attending.  

This little box changes lives..well the content does!

The biggest things that have helped me through this journey and still do, is the budget (I'm a geek so love it ) and the envelope system. I would encourage everyone to either attend FPU or read one of Dave's books. You'll be glad you did..the worst thing that could happen is you save some money : )!

Wordless Wednesday-Juice anyone?

Happy Easter

So I was searching on-line today and came across a challenge on facebook to post one blogger post each day in the month of April. Having tried blogging previously and failing terribly I was up for this challenge. Well I already had a post in the works to count for my April 2nd post but didn't want to skimp on the challenge and I really wanted to post about Easter Sunday. So this is technically my April 1st post.

Well about a week ago Ben and I watched The Rise of the Guardians and got some inspiration, so we really got into the "Easter bunny" spirit this year. I had brought the eggs last year in the after easter sale so we just needed items to fill them. As I am currently on a health kick I didn't want to do all candy. So off to party city we went. Cordelia loves stamps so we got a bunch of pre-inked animal stamps, some silly putty, a rubber bracelet and a few other little things. She is also into "coins" so we raided the change jar to fill a few of the eggs.

Because Cordelia has a dairy sensitivity I didn't want to get her chocolate so instead I found these cute egg shaped bubble gum. Needless to say Cordelia was extremely thrilled with the Easter bunny.

Cheeky Easter bunny hiding her Easter basket on the ceiling fan!

Let's see what the Easter bunny brought.

I know these aren't healthy but its a step in the right direction : )

Look at all those eggs.

Happy Easter!

Day 1!!

So my husband (Ben) and I have spoken for awhile about doing a juice fast but just hadn't felt, before now, that the time was right. Well with us both enjoying the long holiday weekend we figured this would be the best time! We are doing a mix between Reboot with Joe and Juice Lovin Cleanse by The Belly Fit Club.

We started off our morning with hebal tea-I did peppermint and Ben did black cherry. We followed this up with (about 30min-an hour later) The Belly Fit Club's Master Cleanse Lemonade.

For breakfast Ben enjoyed carrot, apple, pineapple and ginger juice and I did Apples,Beets, sweet potato, lemon, cucumber, celery juice...it really is yummy!!

We had alot to do, including running to the farmers market for more supplies. The day unfortunately got away from us and we did chores around the house. Lunch time was upon us and we had enough supplies to make mean green juice for lunch. We had some more herbal tea as snacks and drank alot of water.

Well after we made the customary drop off of Cordelia to her Papa we made it to the farmers market...but by this time our will power was zero! So as soon as our cleanse started it was over sushi and donuts ensued!

These were bitter sweet.

Even though we didn't complete a 3 day "reboot"/"cleanse" we came away with some valuable information.  

• Prepare, prepare, prepare! We will definitely be making the trip to the farmers market before hand and even making up some juice ahead of time so we can sip on it throughout the day.
•  Don't do it over a holiday weekend. We were invited out for Easter dinner and the lure of ham, baked potatoes and dessert was too much for us to resist.

We haven't picked a future date just yet, but when we do I'll let you know how we get on!