mom
Life as a mom of 4
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Summer favorites
Today, I want to share some of my favorite summer purchases! #1 Instant pot Well, this is my top purchase even more than my favorite #2. My instant pot is my new favorite kitchen tool! I bought this one on sale for $50 and no regrets! My favorite things to make in it are rice (I never could make it right, now it is 2 cups of rice, 2 1/2 of water and voila, 12 min in the instant pot!), sweet potatoes, carrots, cooking chicken for recipes (10 min!!) and a few recipes such as crack chicken and hawaian chicken. I also use the crockpot function and got rid of…
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Chores and allowance
Has anyone figured out how to do allowance and chores in a fair manner? I change the way I do this with my kids every month or so because I haven’t found a perfect way to do it. I like to give my children money/allowance to help them learn several skills: saving (for something big or little) sharing (tithing for church or charities) planning (what will you use your money for) teach child that things are not free (they sometimes have to buy their own toys or treats) a little math (counting money and subtracting/counting up towards goal) Chores My children do not have a long list of chores: they…
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How we do screen time in our family
This summer, I definitely took a more laid back attitude towards screen time. While I did not let my children play electronics all day long, they did play more on their tablets that they usually do during the school year and watched a little more tv as well. When I noticed that my 20 month old’s favorite word was tv, and my oldest was being anti social, I decided to make some changes. We have all read about how to much time on devices affects children’s behavior, concentration and attitude. Today, I want to share what I do not limit that time when there are so many temptations to play…
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Stockpiling do’s and don’ts
Have you ever watched one of those tv shows that were popular for a while like “Extreme Couponing”? I was always amazed with the deals people would come across and impressed with their stock pile. However, the question is how much toothpaste do you actually go through in a year? Many of those deals were for toiletry and household items that either took lots of space or would last for a long while. These couponers also spent a lot of hours daily or weekly couponing. The following way is the way that I stockpile and my stockpile lasts about 2 months at the most. I do not stockpile on household…
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Budget friendly snacks
One of the easiest ways for me to trim my grocery budget is by making snacks instead of buying snacks. While I am stockpiling for the first couple months of school by buying store snacks (such as granola bars, fruit pouches, chips) as I come accross sales, I have turned to making snacks sereral times a week these past 2 months. The boys are home and the boys are hungry! When home in the summer, the boys have 2 snack times during the day, around 10 am and around 2 pm. These are the choices they typically have and I encourage them to limit themselves to two snacks: dairy: yogurt…
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Marietta Farmers Market outing
Last Saturday, our family took a quick drive to the Marietta Farmers Market. After our fun experience in France visiting a village outdoor market, I wanted to capture a little of that feeling (nothing can compare to a French outdoor market in my opinion but you can get close!). Our little town’s market is tiny and I heard good things about the Marietta’s market so away we went. Since summer in Georgia is always hot and humid I wore my breezy floral skirt with a tank top. It was perfect for the outing and even matched my bouquet! The skirt is on clearance for $14 at the time I am…
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Vacationing with extended family
While I do not typically consider visiting family a real vacation, going on vacation with some extended family can have many advantages. Our vacations typically only include ourselves and our children, but over the past last year or so, we have taken a couple of vacations with some extended family and I have changed my mind about not liking to spend my husband and our vacation time with others. I thought it would be interesting to look at the pros and cons of going on vacation with other members of your family. Pros: budget: sharing the cost of the rent and the food might allow you to afford a vacation…
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What self care looks like for this mom of 4
I love my children but in order to stay sane and have the patience required to be a good mom, I need to take care of myself. My 3 oldest go to school during the day and my youngest at 18 month old stays home with me. My husband travels out of town usually 4 days a week and my mom in law lives with us. So the way I take care of myself and recharge is by having some me time! Exercising At the beginning of the year, my husband visited several gyms in town and choose a membership to one close by. It is about a 5 minute…
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Summer Bucket List
With 2 months of summer time ahead of us the boys and I sat down to make a list of ideas of activities/places they would like to do. Of course, they came up with a list that could be quite hard on the budget so we will not do everything on their list but will try to hit one activity for each child. To save money we will use the Atlanta City pass because the zoo and the GA aquarium are included in it and we can visit the World of Coca Cola and maybe one more thing to get our money’s worth out of the pass. Our summer bucket…
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Blog update
So I have been writing this blog for 2 and 1/2 months now and wanted to share what I have learned and experienced so far. Writing I have truly enjoyed the writing process and coming up with post topics to share with my readers. I do like writing about our travels the most but we are not always on the go since we do have to save up for these trips. So I am learning to enjoy writing about other topics too. Fashion is probably the easiest to share about because I have always enjoyed clothes and buying them so taking pictures of what I typically wear or finding new…