Frugal (as in free) TV

We had a wonderful Christmas and hope that you did too!
My dear husband went a few weeks ago and bought a digital antenna for $38 from Wal-Mart. It goes outside and is mounted to our fence. It is only about 6 inches by 10 inches or so and is one solid gray piece. With that we were getting 5 channels and were fairly happy. This week we went to Sam's and used the coupon we ordered online to purchase a digital converter box so that when all stations begin broadcasting in digital our TV can receive the signals. That cost us a whopping $4 after the coupon and once installed we now get a ton of channels!
So, for a grand total of $42 we now get 20 channels, with PERFECT reception for $0 per month!
Here is our line-up:
ABC
Nashville Weather
NBC
NBC en espanol
CBS
PBS1
PBS2
FOX1
FOX2
ION
IONLife
Qubo (kids shows - Veggie Tales, 123 Penguins, etc)
Kids Worship
MY30
5 Channels of Christian Programming including JCTV Videos
CW58

We are happy to be enjoying a little bit of TV all for FREE!!!
For other frugal ideas feel free to type the word "frugal" into the box at the top left of this blog.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

SNOW!!!

I love snow. I love everything about snow, the ways it feels, the way it smells, and they way it sounds under my feet.

Last night I forgot all of those things as I made my way home from Franklin in the snow. Normally, it is a 25 minute drive. Last night, 2 and a half hours. TWO AND A HALF HOURS! People were either driving 50 miles an hour on the wrong side of the road or 2 miles an hour causing everyone to stop and go, stop and go. Some people were sliding off the road while others, it appeared, just randomly drove off the road on purpose. There was a lady behind me at a stop sign. I turned right and stopped because all of the traffic in front of me had stopped. All she had to do to turn right was follow my tire tracks in the snow. But no, she decides to make a really sharp right turn immediately after the stop sign (maybe thinking there was a shoulder there?) and she bails off into the ditch. Her car is at a 45 degree angle, in the ditch! I have no idea what some of these people were thinking last night, we only had an INCH and a half of snow!

Anyway, this morning I woke up with a much better attitude and my renewed love of the snow. The girls have been outside already, throwing snowballs, ice skating in the coul-de-sac, making snow angels and a tiny little snowman. We laughed and played and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the snow crunch under my shoes. It is beautiful, the sun is shining on the snow and it is perfect!

Spiced Tea

Today the girls made spiced tea to give as gifts, they also decorated the tops of the jars by hot-gluing beads onto some padded fabric. I think they came out really cute!

Here is the recipe:

1 cup instant tea

1 cup Tang

1 cup lemonade mix (w/sugar already added)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

Add 2 spoons of mix to a coffee cup of hot water & enjoy!

Birthday

Monday was Casey's 11th Birthday and it was a really good day! We had cake and ice cream and she received gifts that she absolutely loved! A digital planner, a Nerf Target game, $50, a gift card to Target, and a gift card to Marble Slab.
What more could an eleven year old want? (Other than a cell phone which is not happening quite yet!).
I am excited to see her grow and mature, she is such a cool kid! And I am a little sad to see her grow up so fast, she is already looking forward to driving and college - slow down a little!
Most of all we thank God for giving her to us and all of the special times we get to spend with her.
Happy Birthday Casey!

New Ornaments!

One of the girls' favorite Christmas traditions is getting to pick out a new ornament each year. They tend to choose ornaments that reflect their interests or activities for the current year. Casey's have gone from frogs to soccer to photography. Cody's have gone from princesses to Rudolph.

I love having that history of their interests hanging on our tree each year, even more so this year as we hear our dear friends talk about losing every ornament they owned in a fire. They lost every keepsake and each child's hand-made ornaments. Our homeschool group rallied together and got them a tree and each family placed a special ornament on it so that they would not have a bare tree this year. It was a really neat idea.

This year Casey chose a silver picture frame with 2008 on it since she loves photography. Cody chose a Rudolph ornament that lights up, she absolutely loves it! It will be neat for them to have lots of ornaments to hang on their own trees at some point in the future, I may need to start buying doubles so that I can hang onto those treaured memories when that day comes!

We also made the wonderful smelling cinnamon ornaments last week, you can see how they turned out!

On The First Day of Christmas!

As you may have read on an earlier posting, the girls and I are trying to do a different Christmas activity each day this month. We actually started early and evidently I did not pick out enough stuff for them to do because they keep asking, "What are we doing next!?"

So far we have made Cinnamon Ornaments, decorated the tree, made a Christmas Town out of boxes we would normally recycle, and made our own (frugal) decorative soap! For the soap all we did was grate a bar of soap - please use caution as I almost grated the tip of my finger off! :( Then we added 1/4 of water, stirred it well and pressed the mixture, tightly, into cookie cutters. Oh yeah, be sure to do this on waxed paper or cling wrap. It is not too messy and cleans up with water, it already has soap.

We are looking forward to many more activities and hope to add "Playing in the Snow" to our list as it is flurrying right now!

Today we will be letting the girls each pick out an ornament to buy. Casey wants one with a camera or at least a Christmas photo frame since she is so into photography this year. Only Cody knows which one she will choose this year!

Looking forward to posting new pictures tomorrow!