ABCs of You & Me Book

This book was Scott's Valentine's Day gift, although it would make a great anniversary gift as well! (And it was a nice gift to myself to have an excuse to get my scrap on!) It probably took a total of 10 hours to complete. (Remember, I am a perfectionist.) And, I spent a lot of that time just choosing how I would design it, fonts, paper, etc... which are all things I can share with you! Below are the directions, templates, and everything you need to know to recreate this at home.

ABCs of You & Me Book
Materials

• Templates (Download here)
• DCWV 4.5" x 6.5" paper stack (Called "The Green Stack," I found it at Joanns.)
• Black ink pad
• Edge rounder (This is seriously my favorite scrapbooking tool. It was only a few dollars at a scrapbook store and I use it all the time.)
• 3 ring hole punch
• 2 metal rings (About 1" diameter. I had to go to 4 stores to find mine. Craft stores were the only ones that carried 2 in a pack but they were all out, office supply stores only had 40 - 60 in a pack, but I did find a small pack of these colored ones at Office Depot so that's what I ended up with.)

Directions

• To begin with, half the templates are PDFs ready to print and cut (title page, actual ABCs), but the other half need to be customized by you (what the letters stand for, captions). So, in order to open them and have the fonts show up, you need to download and install the following fonts: Geo Sans Light | Everytime I Miss You | Impervious
• Next, fill out what you want each of the letters to stand for. (Some are obviously more generic and could apply to you also.)
• Decide what pages from the paper stack are going to be the pages of your book. Glue every two together so the book will be back and front. (See my pictures if that's confusing!)
• Hole punch the top of the pages.
• Then it's just printing, cutting, and pasting time! I printed on some random beige resume paper we had, but plain white would have been fine too. I like to round my edges, ink them, border them, then glue everything on the pages.

One of My Favorite Places

My Job As A Circus Performer

Entertaining a toddler all day, every day can make you feel like a very exhausted circus performer. It's easy to get in a rut and perform the same "acts" over and over. So, another one of my New Year's resolutions was to have one new activity each day for Landon. Sometimes they are uber simple, others have a little more prep or clean-up involved. Some are a hit; some he's done in two minutes.

Toddler Activities this Week

• Shaving Cream Paint: Added some food coloring to shaving cream and painted on foil. Landon hates anything messing so it was fun until he got a little on his fingers.
• Masking Tape Car Track: My boy is obsessed with cars and trucks. We had fun chasing each other around the track with his cars.
• Tent Time: Landon loves tents. Everyday he comes up to me and asks for one. We read in them, eat in them, watch Signing Time or Cars in them, etc...Pretty much everything becomes ten times more fun when done in a tent.
• Ice Cube Play: This was a no-go. I froze some ice cubes with food coloring and dumped them out in a bowl with various tools to mix them around. We did this in the summer and he loved it. This time he was instantly turned off after he touched the blue ice cube and it stained his fingers.
• Ball Throw: NEW FAVORITE. Landon actually came up with this one. He asked to go in his crib with all his balls and started throwing them out to me. I threw them back. This exchange lasted an hour. An hour. In toddler time that is absolutely shocking. And he's wanted to do this every day since, for at least half an hour.

Don't leave the masking tape more than a day or it was get really hard to take out of the carpet.

I just had to include these cute picts of Landon reading. He used to read all kinds of books. Now the only ones he'll pick up are books about cars and trucks. (Of course.) We've pretty much cleaned out the library of all theirs. :)

Bring on the Coupons!

My name is Becca and I have a problem. I suck at following a budget. Now before you judge, it's not like I'm out buying everything that catches my eye. It's always the same thing. Food. Food is my downfall. We have to eat, right? And eating right can be expensive. And all those crazy coupon ladies just downright scare and intimidate me. And I don't have that kind of time. And Landon's a handful. And, and, and...

I was able to convince myself for a couple of years that couponing just "wasn't for me." But, my excuses were pathetic. Why pay more for something when you could pay less, or even *gasp* get it for free? So, one of my New Years resolutions was to learn how to stick to a budget and save money by using coupons.

I did a lot of research about how to get started and yada yada yada and was so excited that I'd be able to exercise my crafty side in putting together a coupon box. My coupon box alone makes couponing way more enticing. Details at the end of this post.

Next, I set a budget, told Scott to hide my debit and credit cards, converted to the envelope system, got my Sunday paper subscription, found a couponing site that I like (Savvy Sister Shops), and let the fun begin. I'm happy to report that on my first couponing trip to Walmart I got multiple items for free, paid under $0.50 for many others, and walked out of there with quite a bit of stuff for $17.70. I was so giddy with excitement! I can coupon! It's not too hard or time-consuming after all! Saving money is fun!

I must also share the couponing success behind my new kicks. I've been pumped for months waiting for the Toms ballet flats to come out. Well, they're finally here but with one slight downer - they're 80 bucks. 80 bucks! For one pair of shoes! Heck no, I would not spend that much on shoes. So, I've been eye-balling these red polka dot babies from Old Navy for a few weeks now. Saved a couple coupons and ended up only paying $5.27 for a $25 pair of shoes. Bring on the coupons!

Coupon Box
Materials

• Rubbermaid container
• Scrapbook paper (patterned and plain)
• Labels

Directions

• Measure and cut the patterned paper to fit in your box. Label each with your categories for coupons. Behind each divider put a folded piece of plain paper to act as an envelope to keep your coupons in. 
• My categories are: Baby, Baking, Batteries, Beverages, Bread, Candy, Canned, Crafts, Cereal, Cleaner, Clothing, Condiments, Dairy, Entertainment, Feminine, Frozen, Health Food, Hygiene, Jelly & Peanut Butter, Laundry, Meat, Office Supplies, Paper Products, Pasta, Produce, Restaurants, Salad Dressing, Sauces & Seasonings, Snacks, Expires Soon.

Saturday Morning Muffins

Scott's been on the new diet for a month now and we're happy to report, it's working SO WELL. Yesterday we were talking about how much better he feels and how drastically his health has improved. It's absolutely amazing. I made some gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate cupcakes last night. (My first attempt at gluten-free baking!) While they tasted a little strange to me (being the first gluten-free baked food I'd tried), Scott said they were perfectly delish. He's totally used to not having gluten and doesn't miss it anymore.

But, boy do I miss baking with it! I used to bake so many pies, cookies, muffins, etc... that I had to limit myself to not starting a new batch of something until the old was eaten. One day this past week Scott was gone on a film shoot. I jumped on the chance to bake and not feel guilty by filling the house up with tempting smells of off-limit foods.

So, Landon and I feasted on blueberry muffins. Mmmmm MMM! This is the best blueberry muffin recipe; try it and see for yourself!

Blueberry Muffins
Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
•  2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 Tbs butter

Directions 

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners. 
• Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture. 
• To make crumb topping: Mix together brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Cut in butter to form coarse crumbs, then sprinkle over muffins.
• Bake about 18 minutes.

Christmas in Washington (Part 2)

Holiday Highlights:

• The Hands on Children's Museum. Such a cool place for kids. I used to volunteer there in middle school and totally forgot how neat it is! Why doesn't Utah have something like this?!
• Christmas (x2). We loved being able to have Christmas with both our families this year. And Landon seriously had a ball chasing the cats around the house and under the tree. It was fun to span it out over a few days and collect a few new toys for Landon. :)
• Christmas Lights. We went with Scott's family on a light cruise on Lake Coeur d'Alene. Sooo fun! They have an insanely long boardwalk and it was decked out with millions of lights. You cross the lake and arrive at the North Pole where Santa names off all the kids on his good list. Of course, Landon was one of them!
• Riverfront Park. This is one of our favorite spots in Spokane. Carousal, giant wagon slide, ducks, ice skating. Not to mention, it's where Benny and Joon was filmed!

Christmas in Washington (Part 1)

My new goal is to stop procrastinating all the things I've been putting off for weeks or even months and just DO them. #1: Post our stinkin' Christmas break pictures.

We drove (gasp!) to Washington for the holidays. 16 hours (without stops, snow in passes, or a toddler on board.) Thankfully Landon did heaps better than I thought he would and we made it in a couple days. We spent the first week with my family and (as pictured below) went to the apple cider mill, a tree farm, the park, and just enjoyed playing with the little guy. Landon loved the park behind my parents house. We were surprised to find that all the toys had been replaced with crazy new ones. We also went to a super fun children's museum but I'll need to get those photos off my camera...