When Larry and I became engaged we took a…different approach to our engagement rings. He bought me a solid, all-purpose band in white gold (upon my request!) that doubled as an engagement ring and as a wedding band – I just gave it back to him before the wedding ceremony so he could give it to me again!

That might sound odd, but we had a very, very frugal wedding – we spent around $800 for the entire thing – honey moon included!

In any case, there are times when I feel a twinge of remorse that I don’t have a classic-style engagement ring. The classic solitaire designs with a solid band and a sweet single diamond are really quite lovely. I do have simple tastes though, and personally, I don’t really like the ones with a whole bunch of diamonds along the band.

Whatever your tastes, Ritani has a great selection (290!) of engagement rings to suit any taste. From the elaborate to simple and classic – if you don’t like in person shopping like me, and are planning to wed, this might be a great way to shop for a ring with your betrothed (or without your betrothed if you want to surprise her!)

I know the difficulties of living without high speed internet well.  Wherever we live rurally we always seem to be right on the edge of access to high speed internet.  Radio – nope, too far away from existing towers.  Cable – hah, only if you live in the city.  Telus air cards – hmm, if we could get cell phone reception here we might be able to get those to work, but this is a dead zone.

So, apart from dial-up (ugh, it takes all day to get a download in), what’s a girl to do?  Thankfully, we finally found a high-speed satellite provider who services even strange in the boonie locations like ours.  Now we can download even large audio files (most of our downloading is homeschooling talks, audio books  on mp3 etc.) within fifteen minutes or so.

No, it’s still not as fast as my grandparents city based high-speed cable (man, that is smoking), but it is truly a couple hundred times faster than dial-up, and doesn’t tie up the phone line either.  After having experienced satellite broadband , I don’t think I can go back to slow internet speeds!  Lord willing, I hope that I won’t have to (yes, I do have strong internet dependence needs!)

Birthday week at our house continues with our celebration of my oldest daughter’s birth.  Kaelynn is 7 today, 7 – wow!  She’s on her way with reading, is printing well, loves to do art, makes jewelry, knits, helps bake, loves audio books, science DVDs, walks outside, and loves to play with her baby sister.

Happy birthday big girl!  You are so special, I’ll never forget the day you were born!

Sometimes it seems that everyone is trying to get in on the moving box market; even office supply stores are selling their empty paper boxes. Sometimes ones needs are greater than the local grocery store begging can supply, or you just run out of time – that’s when you need to buy moving boxes. U-Pack offers free shipping on orders over $150.00.

When my mom called to ask what I was planning to do for my birthday I replied, “I’d like to have a shower, and get dressed, and pluck my eyebrows. Maybe I’ll put on makeup. We’re going to have cake.”

This might sound silly, but after my first born was pretty high-needs I seem to have become trained NOT to take time for grooming. It’s not as gross as it sounds, but sometimes personal grooming just doesn’t happen as often as I’d like it to.

Other moms – I’m sure you can relate. How to consistently make time for personal grooming with multiple preschoolers is a challenge I’m sure many of us face – moms of 8, 9, and more – I stand in awe of how you ever find time for a shower!

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Alvin and the Chipmunks. All opinions are 100% mine.

I grew up watching Alvin and the Chipmunks on television as a child.  Their zany antics, and of course  their enthusiastic, high-speed singing made them a hit, and of course – there were the Chipettes!  As a little girl they were my favorites, of course.

When the new CG/live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise started I didn’t have a burning desire for my children  watch the new show, especially with the emphasis on hip-hop and rap style music, but when they did see it, they were quite captivated (they thought it was downright hilarious actually.)

Well, “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” is available on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital Download so you can buy it now; the Double DVD Pack includes both the film and “The Squeak Along” Bonus Disc, with more music, mayhem and all-new singalongs! Our kids love bonus features, and this sounds like the mother-load.

I haven’t seen “The Squeakquel” yet, and neither have my children.  If you have, drop me a note and let me know what you thought!

There are quite a few chipmunk-related games and online activities up over at FoxFamilyFlicks.com, so if these are up your alley, don’t forget to stop by there for More Munk Mayhem.

Yesterday and today were one of our big ‘go to the city to visit and shop’ trips.  We had a great time, and God blessed us SO much through wonderful savings and deals.  Some of the things we purchased yesterday were things we’d been putting off.  Things we needed that we waited to buy.  In God’s timing, He made these items available to us at a huge savings.

Our digital camera has been on it’s last legs for over a year, and yesterday we bought one with nearly 5x the MP for only $60 (and it’s pink!)  We had some pencil crayons that were getting VERY short and I knew I’d need more for the girls for this school year, we bought a set of 55 for $2.75 (regularly $12).  I’ve been wanting to show the girls The Sound of Music, but don’t know anyone with DVDs that we could borrow – we found a NEW VHS set of 2 tapes that still had the manufacturers blue sticker holding the tapes into the box for $1.49.

I’ve been trying to collect all of Beatrix Potter’s little hardcover storybooks for the girls for …well, 4 years now, here and there as I’ve found the used books.  Today we found a set of all 23 hardcover books in like new condition that we were able to get for $19!

I’ve been looking for replacements to my favorite old purple shirt with NO success over the past month, and today I was able to buy 2 complete purple outfits for $30.

This isn’t all of it even!  He’s a God who likes to give good gifts to His children, and sometimes those gifts arrive by way of really, really, really good bargains.  Thanks Father for coming shopping with us!

Setting up a WordPress blog is really easy, flexible, and one of the best ways to blog (in my opinion!)   This blog uses WP, our business site, and my daughter and husbands largely defunct blogs do as well. Still, I’ve found that finding free wordpress themes can take a LOT of time and searching around.

The linked site – wprex.com is well organized with easy to navigate subject categories, color categories, column options etc.  There are some cute ones in the education category (crayons, books etc.) that would be easy to load on a new homeschooling blog and be up and running in no time.

I’m going to be 31 tomorrow .  A few years before I hit 30 I did start feeling …old.  Okay ladies, you know that pre-30 panic…but when it arrived, I was actually fine.  In all honesty I attribute some of that to the fact that I’d become a follower of the living God in the interval that passed.

In any case – it’s not a secret, I’ll be 31, and I’m okay with that .  I went shopping today to celebrate and bought a bunch of purple clothes at the Value Village for $30, what a deal!  I figure – who wants to wait to be old to wear purple?  I’m very, very happy to wear 3, 4, or even 5 slightly similar, but not exact shades of purple in one outfit (yes, I realize I’m breaking fashion rules!)  I only want to wear colors I love though, and that means purple!

Last year we were blessed to find out a ‘secret’ that we were previously unaware of – teacher supply stores!  We purchased so many neat things at great prices, that we just didn’t know how to source and couldn’t find in other places!  Like large, primary lined manuscript charts (you know the BIG classroom type ones?)

Though we haven’t purchased from this store in particular, we just recently came across one where teacher supplies orders over $99 ship for free.

Their top 10 teacher supplies are:

1) Bulletin Board Sets
2) Lesson Plans
3) Classroom Decorations
4) Educational Toys
5) Rugs for Kids
6) Math Activities
6) Foreign Language
6) Science Activities
7) Teacher Resources
Arts & Crafts
9) Music Supplies
10) Cheap Teacher supplies

Well, clearly most homeschoolers don’t use some of these – bulletin board supplies, classroom decorations, and typical classroom lesson plans are those I just skim by, but the ones I LOVE are the arts and crafts, cheap teacher supplies, and educational toys.  Truly, I’d love to get some educational-type rugs for kids (you know – the colorful math ones that have the multiplication tables on them?), but they’re not really a high-priority purchase for us if you know what I mean!

They even have some really neat Christian carpets that I’ve never seen for sale before!  Great for sunday schools I’d think.I know a lot of us are busy planning for our next school year (we’re already buying curric and readers!)  Do you have any great sources for cheap teachers supplies?