Today was the first of three Easter egg hunts that Frugal Boy can participate in.
I have vivid memories of going to the local Easter egg hunt when I was a kid. My dad would have my siblings and I practice in the side yard beforehand. We would go over drills of scooping up eggs without stopping and he would give us strategies to go where the other kids weren’t. Then after the big event where my brothers and I would pick our noses and pick up a paltry amount of eggs he would throw his hands up in the air and tell us how lousy we were at picking up eggs with good candy inside.
Naturally, I would be a better father to Frugal Boy. So training started yesterday.
The town’s egg hunt was divided into age groups. Frugal Boy was in the 2 and under (and aggressive parents) category. We saw some friends there as well.
It was difficult to contain his excitement while we waited for the start. There may have been a small tantrum thrown because we kept telling him he had to wait. But finally, the countdown was initiated and he ran, er moseyed, onto the field.
This kid was faster on the draw. It also helped that he was able to distract Frugal Boy with his fancy police car basket.
All in all, he did pretty well. He ended up with 9 eggs after he gave one to his one year old daycare pal.
We asked him if he had fun and he gave a very enthusiastic “YESS”. Next year we’ll have to step up the training. I mean C’mon kid, stickers and gummies is the best you can come home with?
and not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse because I just bought eight more mouse traps. If you recall, we have a bit of a mouse problem in our house as they have set up shop in the drop ceiling above our bed. Ewwww. Anyway, while I was at the store I perused their selection of 50% off Christmas decorations. This year our various strands of decorative lights had all given up the ghost and I am way to frugal to pay retail. At 50% off though I caved and bought a few strands of Christmas lights to do some last minute decorating. I figure in two days everything will be at 75% off so that would be the ideal time to stock up for next year.
Today, with Shae’s help I also finished making our homemade ravioli that we are giving away to friends and neighbors.
So far we have made a basic spinach & ricotta, butternut squash & gorgonzola, butternut squash & goat cheese cranberry, and our final most refined one was sweet potato & gorgonzola ravioli. We experimented with different dough recipes, rest times, rolling thickness, and cut out diameters before finding what we considered to be a tasty ravioli. I’ve made over 250 ravioli and at 2 minutes a piece it has definitely been a gift from the heart. Next year it may be back to easy and quick sugar cookie cutouts. Now that’s a sentence I’d never thought I would hear!
Here is one last frugal tip before I sign off and enjoy our traditional Christmas duck. If you are driving, make sure that your car tires are fully inflated. Under inflated tires reduces gas mileage and prematurely wears the tire. I checked all four tires on our car and found that they all needed some topping off.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night (except for those damn mice).
Yowza! Where did the time go?! Last weekend we visited Santa and that involved getting dressed up in actual clothes (something of an obscurity in these parts).
Frugal Boy wasn’t entirely thrilled with the idea, but I thought he looked mighty handsome.
While we waited in line for Santa I tried to get him excited. I explained what the other boys and girls were doing. “He’s sitting in Santa’s lap”, “She’s telling Santa what a good girl she’s been.” Ever since the yard decorations have started going up around town Frugal Boy has been on a Santa babble. I thought there might be hope for a great photo this year.
Hmmm… He’s not too sure about this. Maybe if we had let him wear his snow boots like he wanted he would have felt better about the whole situation.
Shae got a couple of photos before it turned into a “SAVE ME DADA”.
Oh well. The whole process is rather creepy. Hey, go sit on that strangers lap while everyone looks at you and takes pictures. There was another pair of parents with a similar aged girl and she noped right out of there.
We took a few more photos with the props, but we could tell his heart wasn’t in it, so we called it a morning.
A week later, this afternoon, his Christmas present arrived in the mail. He has been glued to the Duplo block table that we built him a month ago.
Duplo is the Lego brand building block for ages 1.5-5. They are compatible with the smaller Lego pieces and unsurprising are expensive. I used to think that Lego was expensive, but Duplo is even worse! At retail, it costs about $1 per block! ¡Aye caramba!
With a little shopping though, it is possible to find good deals on building sets. I purchased a 123 piece lot from eBay for $20 with shipping. That comes to about 16¢/block.
If you have the patience you could also find good deals at yard sales or on your local Craigslist. Finally, if you are concerned about the cleanliness of used bricks, you can put them in a mesh bag in the top rack of the dishwasher. Just make sure not to use high heat otherwise you might melt them!
Happy Mother’s Day! If you are looking for an exemplary mother, besides your own of course, then the book and movie, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio is a great place to start. We just watched the film on Netflix and it was truly remarkable the amount of love, perseverance, and frugality that the mother possessed.
