Baby Lucky Baby

Graduation time!

Yesterday was graduation day at Bemidji State University. Over 700 students graduated. Since we are involved with an organization that reaches out to the international students we usually know somebody that is graduating every year. I don't usually go to the graduation as it is in the afternoon and during kids nap times and it is pretty long and not something that I feel like taking kids too. This year however we figured out a way to see the graduates and wish them well without having to sit through the ceremony. We went afterwards when they were filing out. (Which if we hadn't told them, they would have thought we were there the whole time.)

It was fun to get to see them all dressed up and be able to wish them well, meet their parents (those that had come), give them a card and a little something and get our pictures with them.
It is so fun for us to get to know these students. We have been blessed to have them in our lives a little while. The above picture is of my parents, sisters, nieces, nephew and my kids with Ming and Patrick. Below I am with Ming, Phooi Man and Natalie.

An evening bike ride

On Thursday evenings we have our family night. That is one evening a week when we make sure to do fun things as a family (or occasionally as a couple). For the most part we do very simple, frugal activities but we have a lot of fun! This week we went on a bike ride. There was a trail that we had seen from the road but had never been on not far from our house (around a mile away) and so we decided to check it out. It was an old trail but paved, and it was quiet, we didn't have to worry about the kids riding out in front of a car. It was easy riding until we got to the train tracks!

There was no way to ride across the tracks so we had to drag our bikes over. With just a bike that wasn't hard but the bike and trailer together was a little bit of a trick. Ken and I had to work together.

The evening was quite beautiful, we were riding through a swampy area and it was fun to look a the new plants growing, the birds and the tiny leaves on the bushes. We also went by Lake Irving. We ended up riding all the way into town and then rode around in an old section of town. It was a fun family outing!

There goes Mara down the trail!

The making of slime and other green ways to save money.

This week I have been having fun trying out a couple of new ways to save money and live more environmentally friendly. One of the things I did was make my own laundry detergent. I had read about this quite some time ago on the Simple Dollar but just hadn't gotten around to trying it yet. With his recipe you can make over 3 gallons of liquid laundry soap for less than $1 (at least for me it was).

I have only been trying it on my laundry for the last couple of days but it seems to be working pretty well. Also the making of it was quite fun. At least I thought it was fun, I have always been one that loves to make messes and experiment (my mom will verify that statement) and so this was just up my alley. Thought it actually wasn't that messy. Basically you just shave a bar of soap into some hot water in a pan on the stove and dissolve it well.Then you add it to more hot water in a 5 gallon bucket, add the soda and stir well, add the borax and stir well and let it sit overnight and it is ready to use. My kids thought it looked like I was playing in water and they thought it looked like a very fun job too.

Even thought I have always bought inexpensive laundry soap (I am not a loyal Tide user) this will still be quite a money savings over time. Every little bit helps and this is not at all a hard way to save money.

~The other new thing that I am doing is brushing my teeth with baking soda. The reason I actually started doing this I because for years I have had problems with canker sores. If you have never experienced them just let me tell you they aren't fun! Lately I have been thinking that there is probably a reason I am getting them and I should do some research on it and try to find a solution for my problem. Well according to the things I read, they don't seem to truly know for sure, and it seems to vary from person to person, but a common problem with many people seems to be the Sodium Laurel Sulphate which is in many toothpastes. So I decided to check my toothpaste and sure enough it had it, then I thought I would check all the other toothpastes I had (I have gotten quite a stash from all the Walgreens deals) and they all had it in them. So I decided to try just plain soda, I know that this has been something that has been used for years and it does work, it just doesn't taste as good. Well when I switched the canker sores that I had healed up right away and so far I haven't gotten any more.

I would love to hear if anybody else has found a solution for canker sores (other than medicine) that works well. I will continue to try the baking soda and will try to remember to let you know in the future if I am still canker sore free.

~ The other thing is something I am actually just thinking about trying, I haven't tried it yet. It is where you use baking soda to wash your hair and then rinse in vinegar. It is called the no'poo method. Babyslime has a very in depth post about it explaining the benefits of the no'poo method and the problems with shampoo. I think it makes quite a bit of sense but I haven't made the switch yet. I will be sure to report if I do and how well it works. I am interested to know if any of you use this method and what you think.

For more frugal tips visit Biblical Womanhood.

Cheap Cereal!

I hardly ever used to buy cereal but I have to admit since I started doing a lot of couponing, I have been able to get it so cheaply that we have it a lot more than we used too(Though we only eat it around once a week). This week I found a couple of great deals on cereal and I thought I would share them.

Walgreens has Smart Start Cereal on sale (as well as Raisin Bran and some other Kellogg cereals) for 4/$10. That is not a very good deal in my book but you do also get a $2 Register Reward. And then I went here and found coupons for Smart Start Cereal and I was able to print of 2 coupons for $3 off 2 boxes of Smart Start. So after coupons I only had to pay $4 for 4 boxes and then I also got a RR. (And I payed the $4 with RR from last week.)

Also we were in our local Marketplace Foods and I happened to notice they had Malt-O-Meal cereal on sale (unadvertised) for 99 cents. I happened to have a $1 coupon and a $1.50 coupon so we got two bags (of unhealthy cereal!!!) for free plus 51 cents towards my other groceries.

For more Frugal Friday tips visit Biblical Womandhood.