Tie Dye Cupcakes!!

These were a HUGE hit at my house this past weekend.

It is really a very simple recipe. Take a standard cake mix and make according to directions. Then divide the batter into 6 bowls (about 1 cup each) and mix to your desired colors. I used Red, Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue and Purple gel dye. Then you layer by the teaspoonful. I just dolloped the spoonfuls in rainbow order. I then Baked these for about 15 minutes until a clean toothpick inserted came out clean. While cooling, I mixed 2 tubs of white frosting with 3 different colors of dye - Red, Yellow and blue. In a pastry bag I put the frosting inside by the spoonful alternating colors until I got all of the frosting in the tube. Starting at 12 oclock I piped the frosting onto the cupcakes.

Here is where you can see the rainbow effect of the frosting on the cupcakes.

I love how vibrant the colors on the inside of the cupcakes came out!! I will definatly make these again.

I am thinking I will make some in badger colors for the girls...Purple and gold. The frosting I could do in Purple yellow and white to make sure the colors do not get too muddy.

This is one of my walmart clearance shopping trip. This order before coupons about about $70 and I walked spending about $10 it was a really great trip!

This was my Giant Eagle Stock up trip. Aprox $130 in items, my total out of pockets was $28 after coupons and sale items.

Lastly, These are the newest memebers of our chicken coop. We wanted a rooster and we got a hen along with him :) He is very 'Rooster-y' and doesn't seem to like me coming into the coop to collect eggs. I am trying to get him to see that I am not scared of him...but I am a little...my shin hurts from where he tried to get me out of the coop!

I am sure there will be more to post very soon, some birthday invites that I am doing for a friend of Madelyns, Madelyn's diorama, spring cleaning, more planting, hopefully the start of the green house...ahh the joys of a busy life! Until next time!

Stockpiling

A somewhat new term in our house. We have tried many times to stock up on food etc in the house...either by going to BJs wholesale or going to Aldi's - both place we spend a large chunk of money and then have to take the time to recover - especially if its BJs. We can easily walk out of there spending $400+. Aldi's was great for use when we had our apartment and it was myself, Matt, Madelyn and my brother. We could easily go there and buy a months worth of food and it was perfect financially. At that time - coupons were way too time consuming...

Now with 4 kids - and no time - I make the time to clip coupons. We are eatting all the foods we love, even some extras and I have saved nearly $1575!!

I took some time to take a few pictures of what I have been working on for the last few months.

This is the start of my stockpile - in the basement - we have a couple shelves that I have loaded up.

Here is the start of my Laundry stuff and the majority of the stuff that I canned.

This is the bottom half of my mother in law's freezer.

This is our freezer, I am out of room.

Canned foods.

Canned food, flour, ketsup, juice and cereal.

condiments in the pull outs.

More Dry food, Our H&B stuff is pictured below.

Thanks for checking our growing stockpile!!

Contest Alert!
If you are a memeber of WeUseCoupons.com or you are thinking of becoming a member - Now is the time!! They have reached their 1,000,000th post and are giving things away to celebrate - one of which is:

Go to Laura Williams Musings - there will be 4 different winners each winning 4 sets of Coupon Inserts!! Here is what she is giving away:

2/20/11 Red Plum insert
2/13/11 Red Plum insert (this has the HOT $3 Gain Coupon in it)
1/30/11 Red Plum
1/30/11 P&G

Also, if you go to The Coupon Posse' there will be 10 winners - each receiving over $1200 in coupons!

I wanted to take some time to tell what you I have been up to:

SICK- is the word in this house - for several weeks. We started with the sniffles, then strep, then the flu, then some more sniffles and now we are on strep again. Madelyn relapsed so if she gets these inflamed tonsils again she will require more testing - but she has tested negative for mono!! Thank goodness.

So in between doing loads of laundry and walking around the house with my lysol I have squeezed in some cupcakes, cookies, chocolate cover strawberries and grapes, a few shopping trips and I made a card!!
Wanna make some of your own? It's Easy!!

Wash and dry your grapes and strawberries. Melt Chocolate in a double boiler, I add about a teaspoon-ish of crisco to the mix to help smooth out the chocolate. Then I dip away...berries are much easier because you hold on to the enitre stem. The grapes - I just dropped them in and spooned them out - bringing them to the side of the pan so excess chocolate comes off. Then I took some white chocolate and melted it and add some food dye gel to get the colors - found out that it was very hard to make red chocolate - but the pink is super pretty. I then poured the colored chocolate into my wiltons piping back with a writing tip and drizzled away. Another sucessful Target Trip
8 boxes of Ronzoni Healthy Harvest Pasta 1.13 ea = .63 ea after Q
Glade Candle 2.99 = .99 after Q
2 Rimmel Eye Shadows 2.49 ea = .49 ea after Q
Maalox $3.79 = free with Q plus 1.21 overage ea
Ky 14.99 = 7.99 after Q
Card 2.99 = free w/ purchase of Ky
Garnier Facial Moisturizer 4.99 = .99 after Q

Total order $47.56 after Qs 15.99 minus overage 2.42 = 13.57 plus tax of 2.02 = 15.59 minus the $5 Gift card I earned with purchase of KY

Total for all: 10.59 a 78.5% savings

Cupcakes and Cookies!!

I made a lemon supreme cupcake and sugar cookies with a poured fondant frosting. I decorated the cupcakes by dipping them in yellow fondant allowing to set then I piped the pics/designs in green. For the cookies I spooned the frosting on the cookies allowing to set. Then I piped on the white hearts and Madelyn added all the fun sprinkles we had.

I also took a set of 12 cookies and used the wiltons cookies frosting and wrote I LOVE YOU in 12 different languages for Matt for valentines day. I also made a steak, crablegs, baked potatoes, green beans and salad for our Valentines Day dinner.

Lastly, I made Matt his Valentines day card:

This is a Gina K design's stamp set that I used to make this little card for Matt. I try not to get to frilly with his but it was Valentines Day - so Pink and Red it is!! You are not able to see in the pic but I used a clear irridecent gel pen around all the black edges on the card to give it a little sparkle.

He found the card after I set the following up: He had to follow a train of hershey kisses to the shower to where he found his cookies and the card hanging with a Rose from the shower nozzle. On the inside of the card it said - Now that I have kissed the ground you walked on, Showered you from Roses...Will you be My Valentine? He did say that was cute :)

Thanks for stopping by! Please wish for the germs to leave my house!!

My Target Shopping Trip!! Total out of my pocket I paid $55.78 ($230.22 before coupons)
Tide release: .99 each coupon
Motrin PM: .99 each after coupon
Lightbulbs - free after coupons
deoderant - free with purchase of soap (I wont stink for at least a year)
Rimmel mascara - $5.49 ea (target gave it to me for $2.24 because it was hung in the wrong spot - I was just not going to even buy it) - after coupon - .24 cents
Candy - BOGO with coupon
Scrubbing bubbles - 3.49 ec (all the other scrubbin bubbles on the right - free with coupon)

The other stuff I didn't have coupons for. I also used a $50 visa gift card that I earned doing a survey) - So basically - I paid for the diapers, wipes and part of the trash bags and got the rest free!!

For those of you interested on how I do this - I get most of my info from www.weusecoupons.com each store has a forum and everyone posts the deals they find etc. It's great for coupon matching etc. This is my second round at trying couponing...but I think I have found a way to stick to it!!

Freebie Alert
I wanted to share with you a few freebies that I have come across while I restart my couponing adventure: if you go to http://www.coupons.com/ and print the Reach Floss coupon (you can print twice per computer) and take that coupon to you walmart - they have A Reach Floss there for $.97 so you will get your floss for free!!


Also, there are some $1 off coupons floating around out there for Quaker Oatmeal. Giant Eagle is having a sale this week where they are 4 for $4 so you guessed it - if you have 4 coupons (I have 7: so I am only buying 1 because they add says you have to buy 4 to get that price) you will get them all for free!!