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The last couple months I've been feeling depressed whenever I leave the grocery store. I look at the food I purchased and ask myself, "How in the world did I just spent this much money on this little amount of food?" I have really wanted to get into couponing to start saving money on my grocery trips, but it seemed so involved and I didn't know where to start.

To my surprise, The Organized Parent recently sent me the 10th Anniversary version of The Couponizer, which is the #1 selling coupon organizing and shopping system in the US and Canada. First off, I was surprised at how compact it was. I expected to have to take some huge binder to the grocery store if I used coupons. I was wrong! The Couponizer fits perfectly in my purse.


As a newbie to couponing, I had no idea what to even expect when I opened The Couponizer. I learned quickly that it is more than just a place to store your coupons. You can write your grocery list, track your savings, and it even has a convenient place to carry your store loyalty cards. I can't tell you how annoying it is for me to fumble through my wallet and purse trying to find those loyalty cards at the checkout. It even comes with extras like the clear carrying bag and a small pair of scissors.

HERE IS HOW TO WIN: Please make sure your email is on your profile, or include it with your comment. Only U.S. residents are eligible for this giveaway. (Big apologies to all my International readers!)

1. Leave a comment on this post with a money saving tip.

For additional entries (Make sure you leave a separate comment for each additional entry):

1. Follow I Heart Crafty Things via Google Friend Connect, Linky Followers, Facebook or Twitter and leave a comment on this post telling me where you follow.
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We all know being a Mom isn't the easiest job in the World! Even though I often feel frustrated or discouraged most days, I take the time every Sunday to reflect on the small things that made me happy as a Mom that week. It's a great way for me to start the new week with love and gratitude.  :)

1. Big Brothers who entertained Lila with rides in the red wagon every single day.

2. The fact that a dirty bum means we've had lots and LOTS of fun!


3. Playful wrestling matches.


4. That silly look she likes to give me.


5. Getting my Easter pictures in the mail that included all three kids looking at the camera and smiling. Score!



6. The fact that when it comes to a week full of colds and coughs, God graces Mother's with Super Hero Powers to get through it all, even when she herself gets the worst of the illness. We somehow find the strength to not mind the wiped snot all over our shirt. It kind of becomes a badge of honor! Lol

What did you love about being a Mom this week?

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There are no rules to this blog hop. Just link up your blog's main page. Then have fun reading new blogs and making new blog friends. We would love for you to follow the hostesses in the first four spots and our guest host in the fifth spot.

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We braved the rain this past week and took a trip to the Tracy Aviary. This was our second time there and yet again, it exceeded our expectations. Since we went during the week, we were the only people at the Close Encounter Bird Show, so Luke was able to have 3 birds land on his arm. A very exciting adventure for a 5 year old.  :)

One of my favorite birds is the peacock. We got some really close up views of some during our visit and tried to pay close attention to all the details because I knew I wanted to do a peacock craft this week to go along with our visit.



Last year during our Bird Week we made a similar peacock craft out of a coffee filter, but we added a new twist to it this year and I'm delighted with how it turned out.


Here is the run down on how we created our Peacock:

1. Paint the top side of a paper plate with green water color paint. PS-I recently purchased some liquid watercolors from Oriental Trading. Could not be happier with them! They are going to last a billion years longer than the standard dry watercolors.


2. Once we were finished painting the paper plate green, we went back with blue paint and painted some random stripes all over the paper plate. The colors blended really nicely since the plate was still wet. Here is what our plate looked like when we were finished. Let it dry completely. We put ours on the front porch in the sun to hurry up the process since we are inpatient!


3. While the paper plate was drying, I drew the outline of a bowling ball shape on a half sheet of blue cardstock paper for Luke to cut out.


4. Next we added the details to the Peacock body. A yellow beak (which I cut out), some wiggly eyes, and we taped 4 cocktail toothpicks to the back of his head. I wish I could take credit for the brilliant toothpick idea, but I saw it over at Tippytoe Crafts when we did our craft last year. I had a hard time finding them last year but I finally found some at Zurchers, a local party store. After we were done adding the details to the peacock body, we glued it onto the paper plate.


5. To finish our craft, we used different sized sequins to make the spots on our peacock. First, we glued on an extra large gold sequin.


6. Then put a dab of glue on each gold sequin to add the next color. We ended up doing three colors, but you could totally get away with only doing two. We stuck with green and blue sequins to look like a peacock, but it would be fun to have a class choose whatever color they wanted to make the peacocks extra colorful.


The spots are shiny and beautiful just like on a peacock.


Here is Luke's completed peacock. So precious, right?!!


A great book to go along with this craft is Three Hens and a Peacock by Lester Laminack.
It's about a glamorous Peacock who comes to stay at the Tucker Farm and attracts all kind of attention from customers. The hens think it's not fair, and the Peacock doesn't feel like he's as much use as the chickens, so the farm dog suggests they switch roles. You'll have to read it to see how the chickens try to be glamorous and the Peacock tries to lay an egg. It's a really cute story!

Happy Crafting!!

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It's a very exciting day here at I Heart Crafty Things! I had the privilege of guest posting over at one of my favorite companies, The Organized Parent. I am sharing the Teacher Appreciation Gift we made for Andy's teacher this year and some great tips on teacher thank you's. I really hope you will take a couple minutes to stop by and read all about it!!

Thanks so much for your continued support! It's weird to think of all the friendships I've developed through blogging with people I've never even met in real life. Thank you for brightening my days with your visits and comments. Sending out a big bloggyland hug right now to all of you!  Hahaha!

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We all know being a Mom isn't the easiest job in the World! Even though I often feel frustrated or discouraged most days, I take the time every Sunday to reflect on the small things that made me happy as a Mom that week. It's a great way for me to start the new week with love and gratitude. :)


1. Lila's obsession with this itsy bitsy "Hush Little Baby" book found at the local thrift store. She refuses to go to sleep at night if the book is not in her crib. If she can't find it she will hold her arms up and say, "Where ma bou?"

2. The boys' current love for all things Lego Star Wars.


One night we read in Andy's Lego Star Wars Encyclopedia Book and Luke became entranced by this scene with Hans Solo and Greedo. He said, "I'm going to make that in the morning!"


First thing in the morning he recreated the scene from memory, without ever opening the book. I love how Lego's inspire children to be creative.


3. The few moments they actually got along with each other!  :)


4. Watching Lila play happily on the front porch.


5.  Capturing a picture of this cute Toucan at the Tracy Aviary.


6. Seeing the excitement on Lila's face when she gets freedom from her stroller.




8. A reminder that being the Mom to these 3 kids is the best job in the whole world!


Hope you had a great week!!

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Paper Plates are a staple at our house, not only for eating but also for creating. When Andy and Luke were 5 and 3, one of their favorite bedtime stories was Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae. I got it off their bookshelf the other night and as I dusted it off I reminisced for a moment of the sweet memories. Then I instantly thought, hey, this would be a fun book to make a giraffe craft with.  :)

Gerald was a tall giraffe whose neck was long and slim, but his knees were awfully bandy and his legs were rather thin. When the annual Jungle Dance comes around, all the animals perform their spectacular dances but when Gerald gets up all the animals laugh at him about his clumsiness and he walks off feeling sad that he can't dance. As he looks up at the moon a friendly cricket reminds him that everyone can dance once you find music that you love. Then as he finds his rhythm, all the other animals surround him in amazement and declare that he is the best dancer they have ever seen. This is a great read aloud story!


Our paper plate giraffe was so simple and fun to make.

1. Paint the bottom of a paper plate yellow and let it dry completely.

2. On a sheet of yellow paper (I used a different shade of yellow than what we painted the paper plate), draw two ears and a mouth. From the same sheet of paper I also cut a 1 1/4" strip for the horns and then cut the strip in half to make two horns.

3. Have your child cut out all the giraffe pieces, then glue them onto the giraffe.

4. Next we glued on some large wiggly eyes and some brown pom-poms for the brown hair at the top of the horns.

5. Draw a nose and mouth on your giraffe. We used pencil first and then traced it with black marker. It took Luke a couple trys to get his nose how he wanted it so I'm glad we did it this way.  :)

6. We used a circular sponge brush for Luke to dab the brown spots on his giraffe. Luke looked at the picture of Gerald in the book and saw that he had some brown at the bottoms of his ears, so he added that too.

Happy Crafting!!

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It's that time of the year folks...The time when my boys are finally able to replace their winter coats with soccer jerseys and shin guards several times a week. Soccer season is in session and with two boys playing this year, I could not be ANY busier!!

I am really good about keeping Dr. Appts and such on my cell phone calendar since I can set an alarm to remind me at least 24 hrs in advance of the appointment; however, when it comes to keeping track of every day tasks and responsibilities and making sure my husband also knows what's going on around this crazy house, we have been slacking! There have been several times the last couple months when my husband accidentally scheduled things when I needed him home to help watch the kids. Oops! It is evident that we have been in need of a better system.

When The Organized Parent sent me a Donovan Designs Weekly Schedule Notepad I felt a HUGE relief fall off my shoulders. It is the perfect system for my family, and if your family schedule looks anything like ours, I know your family can benefit from it too!

Donovan Designs has also created more products to help ease stress and add organization in your life. Check out their To Market Notepad and What's for Dinner Notepad. They both come in a couple different patterns and colors to match your taste.
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Now I know we can all use more organization in our lives so you don't want to miss out on this awesome giveaway!

1. Leave a comment on this post.

1. Visit The Organized Parent and come back and leave a comment telling me which Donovan Designs product would help organize your life the most.
2. Follow I Heart Crafty Things via Google Friend Connect, Linky Followers, Facebook or Twitter and leave a comment on this post telling me where you follow.
3. Like The Organized Parent on Facebook.

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After reading books about Earth Day this week we decided to make a piece of art using recyclable materials. (ok, really I decided, but the kids went along with it)  Since trees are so good for our Earth, it became our inspiration.

These are the books we read this week about Earth Day.
Fun non-fiction book about different ways we can all take care of the plants, the animals and the planet. I really liked the pictures and illustrations in this book and it gave some really good inspiration for some activities and crafts you can do for Earth Day.
After watching a film about climate changes at school, Little Critter decides to do his part to slow down global warming to help save the Polar Bears. With the help of his family and friends, Little Critter begins to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

To make our tree craft, I started by cutting up an old cardboard box to look like a science project board. I wanted it to be able to stand freely on it's own, that's why I cut it this way. My boys painted it a good coat of blue paint. (It was one of those "doing your hair is optional" days and Andy choose not to do his. haha!)


Once the paint was completely dry, we cut an empty paper towel roll in half to make our tree trunk. You will have to use a lot of school glue to secure it in place. You can see in the picture below how the toilet paper roll makes the tree pop out of the cardboard.


For our tree branches we used a brown lunch sack. We cut it into strips and then crinkled and twisted the strips to make them into branches. Then glued them onto the cardboard to make the tree. At this point we let the project dry over night.


For the life of me, I could not figure out why this picture below keeps uploading rotated the wrong direction. (Grrrrr!) The next morning, we went through some old magazines I had around the house and ripped out pages that had lots of green on them. Then I got out a black marker and drew leafs over the green areas. I did try to use ares with different colors mixed in the greens to make the tree more colorful.


Luke helped me cut them all out which was quite the tedious process.


Then we glued the leaves all over our tree. It looks so pretty with all the different greens and colors from the magazine pages.


We also found a page that had a picture of soil on it, so we ripped it into strips and glued it along the bottom of the tree to make the ground.


We are really excited about how turned out. It was a great way to finish up our Earth Day week.


Happy Earth Day!!

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