check it out

A few weeks ago I talked to the owner of a local boutique called Healthy Baby Boutique about selling some of my items in her shop. Kendra, the owner, is super sweet and friendly and said she'd love to have some of my baby items. So this morning the boys and I loaded up some hats, headbands, bracelets and sNuggle Me Blankies and took them in to Healthy Baby Boutique! I'm so excited! Hopefully my items are well recieved by customers and I can start to earny a semi-regular paycheck.
For those of you that live close, be sure to stop by and check out all the goodies that Kendra has to offer!
Oh, and don't forget to "like" her on facebook.

Botanica with Friends

Last weekend we went to Botanica with some friends to visit the new Children's Garden. It is amazing! There are so many cool things for the kids to explore that I'm pretty sure it could have kept them entertained all day.
There are stepping stones to cross.

Water pumps with water toys.

 Musical instraments. This is one where you pour rocks into the hole and they hit little tines on the way down making fun tones.

 A cave with water and paint brushes.

 Dylan of course took a spill intot he river that runs through the cave.

 Bridges to play on.

 Bugs to sit on.

There are tons of other things to play on as well, and even dress up clothes! Hopefully in the spring we will make it back for another visit.

 And of course at the end we had to visit the butterfly house.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday to decorate for. (I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that my birthday is only a few days before). Someday I hope to have a beautiful mantel to decorate, but for now, I'll do what I can with what I've got.

My bats and garland were inspired by this post.  I love how they turned out!
(I had more photos, like of our Mr. Potato Head pumpkin, and the huge spider web, but I can't get blogger to load them. Maybe later)
We also had our anual kids Halloween party this past weekend. The kids were all adorable in their costumes. I look forward to this party every year.

 Isn't he the cutest puppy ever?

Collin wasn't happy about taking pictures.

Happy Halloween!

it's about to get random

A while back I joined a site called "Blogsvertise". This is a site in which they assign you blogging tasks and pay you for them. Some of the tasks are Guest Post tasks in which all I have to do is copy and past whatever this person has written and I get paid. Pretty easy and on my $0/year salary I figured, why not? So it's about to get random. I'll always tag my post with Guest Post when I post one, you can read them or not. It's my little way of contributing to the family budget and hopefully one day getting a bigger house!

date night

I'm always looking for a way to spend time with my husband without spending a lot of money. Being a stay-at-home mom living on a single (teacher's salary) income doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for fancy date nights out. A few weeks ago I came across a blog called The Dating Divas. The blog is dedicated to date nights and keeping the romance alive in your marriage, without having to leave the house and spend tons of money.
Last week they had several different ideas but the one that caught my eye was a Ghostbusters date night. I'm a huge fan of the 80's and Dan loves the Ghostbusters so it seemed like a fitting choice. I started off by sending Dan an "invitation" to our date in the form of a news article. It looked something like this:

BerryPage Fun Times 1 1 of 1 10/24/2011

Ghostbusters to Exterminate Local Residence

The Ghostbusters are scheduled to investigate a haunting at a local residence on Friday, October 21st. The investigation/extermination is set to take place around 8:30pm, after the children have gone to sleep. Home owners stated that the ghosts must not want to scare the children as they never make an appearance until after the children are in bed.

The team stated that the appointment could last anywhere from an hour and a half to 4 hours. “We have no doubt that we can take care of the problem” stated Dr. Raymond Stantz, a team member of the Ghostbusters.

The Ghostbusters encourage others to call immediately if there is any suspicious activity. The Ghostbusters can be reached at 1-800-GHOSTLY (1-800-446-7859).

So it's a little corny, but it was fun. The plan for the date was to watch the movie while snuggling and eating some not-so-spooky snacks. I didn't really want to eat lots of junk food so the first snack I prepared was veggies and dip.

The carrots are supposed to look like fingers in the dip with fingernails made out of slice almonds.

Next I made some swamp juice which was simply a green soda (watermelon kiwi) that I found for $0.89 with some gummy fish and gummy worms in it. I don't reccomend eating the fish and worms after they have st in the soda for too long. They got all bloated and the texture made me gag!

We also had some candy and loaded potato bites.

The date was simple, cheap and fun. It was nice to spend some quality time with my husband without worrying about whether or not the kids were behaving and if we should really be spending the money.