Aubrey's First Birthday: Birthday Banner Craft

Well, I did it. I managed to distract myself with tons of party planning so that I didn't spend a week crying about the fact that my daughter is now a year old. Oh, and I did it well! So now, I will begin to share my birthday crafts with all of you!

To start, I made a birthday banner following the tutorial linked but with a few alterations that I will share so that you do not have to spend as much time going through the trial and error phase of party planning.
1.  I cut my cardstock into 5 X 7 rectangles and my scrapbook paper was cut into 4 X 6 rectangles.
2.  I used double-sided tape to adhere the papers and letters to each other because it gives a smoother look.
3.  After numerous issues, I bought a ribbon punch and used it to make slits long enough for the ribbon to slide through.
4. I used one piece of ribbon instead of tying each letter individually which allowed me to adjust spacing and gives me the option of using individual letters for other banners in the future without lots of tying and untying.

And that is the first of many birthday crafts that I will continue to share. Let me know if you have any questions or if you do the project and would like to share pictures, that would be wonderful!

Some of My Favorite Money Savers

1.www.surfthechannel.com  or www.sidereel.com 
 These two websites are my favorite way to watch some of my shows. As a mom, I can't always sit down to watch my shows and without these two websites, I would rarely get to enjoy my shows. Also, I like to watch shows that I can't get without cable and I hate to wait until things are out on video so for those of you that wait for the next season of Weeds, Big Love, or The Tudors, you can stream them each week at one of these websites! Oh, and if you can't afford to rent a movie, most new releases will be available at these addresses as well!

2. Meatless Meals
 You would be amazed at how much people spend on meat. I constantly hear my parents and my brother mention what a deal they got on this, that, or the other that is still astronomical and would most definitely blow my budget out of the water. So if you are wanting to live a long, healthy life and/or you have a small food budget, cut out the meat!

3. Breastfeeding
 Nothing is better for your child or your budget than breastfeeding. The only cost that people always try to bring up for breastfeeding is the extra food that you must consume to do it. However, most of us that have recently had a child are not very interested in keeping on weight so adding calories is not as common as some people think. I prefer to burn the 300-500 calories a day while eating as much as I did pre-pregnancy.
  Breastfeeding is also linked to less cost in the future. Children that are breastfed are less likely to have medical issues of all kinds. They have also been shown to have less chance of obesity throughout life which saves your food budget even after they eat solids!

4. Cloth Diapering
 By using cloth diapers, I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars a month on diapers. I have a one time expense of a few hundred dollars that I can use on all of my subsequent children. In addition, I use cloth wipes and a water-filled spray bottle to clean my daughter; therefore, avoiding any routine costs while diapering. (Another option which we use part-time is Elimination Communication)

5. Child Friendly Cleaners
 Before our daughter was born, my husband and I decided to get rid of all the chemicals in the house.  I looked into buying all sorts of safe cleaning products and then decided that the best thing to do was stick with baking soda and vinegar. Baking soda is my basic scrubing product for any built up nastiness and vinegar covers everything else. The only thing I still buy is dish soap(which I also use to mop tile floors and get rid of fleas) and Murphy's oil soap (which is98% natural). However, in the future I would like to switch those too!

Well, I hope that I've thrown out some ideas that some of my viewers haven't thought of and if anyone would like to give more suggestions, please leave me a comment. Also, if any of you have purchased supersized boxes of baking soda, I'd like to know where!

Environmental Party Decorating

Recently, I watched the new movie, Motherhood, starring Uma Thurman. Now I know that it probably isn't something that most of you have seen since it got such horrible reviews but it definitely hit the spot for stay-at-home-moms.

It also got me thinking about party decorations. In the movie, there is a scene were Uma's character debates doing goody bags for what reason, I'm not positive but my hypothesis is that it had to do with being environmentally unfriendly.

I told my husband that I had never really thought about the waste that is caused by always sending people home with junk that they will never use again and now I was torn between wanting to throw the best parties ever and wanting to protect the environment as much as possible.

My conflicting views were then put to the test when I began to plan my sister-in-law's baby shower. How was I going to make centerpieces and goody bags without buying a bunch of stuff that I would never use again?

Well, it turns out that I was up for the challenge! Although not completely successful(due to a small budget and the need to supply tablecloths and other misc. decorating items), I did manage to create fun centerpieces that would be used over and over again!

The basic idea of these was to use baby pictures of both parents-to-be and add baby items that could be used after the shower. Also, the buckets that I used were dumped of sand and sent home with all of the attendees that had children!

I then decided that the goody bags would contain only edible goodies which went over really well. Each bag contained cookies and an assortment of candy.

Not only were the decorations and goodies reusable, they were also purchased on a shoestring budget! All the tablecloths, candy, picture frames, and buckets were found at Dollar Tree; and all of the baby items were purchased at a consignment sale. I did however purchase sand (pretty cheap)which I could have avoided with a little more time and ingenuity.

All in all, I'd say that it was a pretty big success without being a giant failure for the environment! Now if only I could make sure that my brother and his wife start cloth diapering!