24 Things I Love About My Husband

Sunday was my husbands birthday and I know I don't tell him often enough what I really appreciate about him. So I want to tell him  (Hi, Gary!) and I also want to tell everyone else in the world. So, without further ado (omg, someone actually spelled that right?? Yeah, I'm homeschooled.), 24 things that I love about my husband. (in no particular order!)

1. His Zeal. When my husband gets interested in something, there is no stopping him! Whether it's a new instrument or a new game, his passion is checked only by our bank account. (And me demanding he come to bed now!!) He learns everything there is to know about that thing. This also includes doctrine and theology, his passion for learning is inspiring. When I encouraged him to take the shortest route ("Baby, it's a 5 page paper, you're on the 5th page, it's done!"), he absolutely never took that route. ("But I'm only finished with the introduction! I still have 4 more points to make!")
2. His incredible love for family. This is not just Anastasia and me, but also his parents and siblings, his grandparents, his cousins, everyone! He loves his family. It's almost physically painful for him to leave Ana when he has to go to work. He is such a devoted and patient father that he unknowingly reminds me to be a better mom.
3. He knows me better than I know myself. When we started dating and I said "I hate jazz!" he didn't even answer! But when we had an opportunity to go to a jazz show with some friends, he jumped on it and dragged me along. And he quickly taught me that jazz is AWESOME!
4. He is generous. When we realized that we didn't have enough money to go on our annual anniversary trip to Myrtle Beach, he volunteered the gift money he had received from graduation so we could still go. And we had a blast!
5. He is varied. He isn't strictly a nerd (though believe me, he is!), nor is he strictly an outdoors guy, or a bassist, or a video-gamer, or any one thing. He loves a lot of stuff and (like I said in #1) he loves it A LOT. He loves to camp, He loves the mountains, He (almost...) loves the beach, he loves hot weather and snow, it doesn't matter. He loves it!
6. He is laid back. Sometimes this also bugs me, but most of the time laid back is great!
7. He loves absolutely anything I cook. Seriously. Or at least he doesn't tell me if he hates it. But I'm pretty sure he loves it.
8. He thinks I'm awesome. For real, he still makes me blush because he thinks I'm way more awesome than I am. (Not that I mind :D)
9. He lets me do all my weird crunchy things without question. (I just smashed some pinkeye that Ana caught with a couple doses of breastmilk and he didn't even second guess it!)
10. He loves wearing Anastasia! And not just wearing her, he loves wrapping her! That's kinda a big deal.
11. He is a master of thrift-shop finds. Some of his scores include a $100 wireless router for $10 and a whole plethora of board games ranging from $25-$85 for a mere $0.99. Most recently he found an awesome marble track for Ana to play with!
12. If he wants something, he makes sure it happens. He knew he wanted to take his family camping so before we even got engaged, he bought a tent for us. It was a great investment!
13. He takes pride in taking care of his family. I know this because he has worked hard at his job in order to make himself a valuable employee. I know he was out of his comfort zone when he first began but that makes him even more amazing to me! 
14. He wants to adopt. This is something we have very casually talked about doing in the future and it makes me so happy. I have always wanted to foster or adopt and I'm so grateful that God placed the same desire in my husbands heart!
15. He lights up every time he sees Ana and me walk through the door to visit him at work.
16. He is incredibly forgiving when I make mistakes, whether with our finances or our lunch. He doesn't even being it up again.
17. When I do crazy stuff, he just kind of takes it in stride. Blue hair? No problem. Water Birth? Go for it. Cloth Diapers? Sure thing. Tandem Bungee Jumping? Well.... lets just say I'm not even up for that!
18. He is a secret artist. He painted the most wonderful Ratatouille painting for me for my kitchen.
19. He is usually willing to try out the things I like. Take cooking for example. I really love to cook and since we got married he has learned to cook like a pro.
20. One of my very favorite things about my husband is his sense of humor! Granted he can be amused by some of the (cough*in my opinion*cough) dumbest stuff, but when he makes a joke, it makes me laugh out loud every single time! He is the funniest person I know.
 21. He brags about me. This sounds vain, but it's really nice to know that your husband things you're great at something. And not just great, but great enough to tell people about it!
22. He loves to learn. He is always learning something!
23. My husband is a fantastic iPhone photographer! He always surprises me with the precious pictures he gets of Ana. This is clearly related to his level of patience!
24. He is open to improvement. Many people refuse to be told about their own short comings. My husband listens when I suggest something and takes steps to fix the problem. 

There are many more things I love about Gary, but this is already a long post. Thanks for being my husband. I've loved the 4 years, 7 months, 3 weeks and 4 days we've spent together.

The day he asked me to be his girlfriend!

First Fields Family Camping Trip

How To Grow Your PayPal Tree

 I found this image here.

In the blissful world of Crunchy, money in your PayPal is twice as good as money in your hand.As much as I wish my funds were limitless, they are no where near that! However, I have found some creative ways to nourish my PayPal Tree and coax it into blooming some cash for me. If you want to help your PayPal Tree grow a bit too, here are some ways!

1. Surveys 
 I have worked with two survey companies: MindField and Pinecone Research. I much prefer Pinecone to MindField. Pinecone pays $3 per survey and each survey takes about 10-20 minutes. You'll be filling out questions about potential products and possibly testing them. I've never tested anything for Pinecone, but MindField is the same premise and I have tested many items for them, some of which are on the market now! (Pepsi Next and Round Saltine Crackers. Yummm.) However, you get paid less for MindField, sometimes only a dollar for a survey that takes 20 minutes, so if you have free time or really want to test new products, go for it! I have earned about $45 with Pinecone in 6 months-ish and $30 with MindField.

2. Ibotta
Ibotta ( http://ibotta.com/r/txseg )  is hands down my favorite way to grow my PayPal Tree! I have this in "app" form on my iphone and it is also available in the Android app store. Essentially, you purchase groceries from their featured list and receive a "coupon" for that item, anywhere from $.50-$5.00. But this coupon doesn't give you a discount off your total, instead it puts money into your PayPal account! You can also receive bonuses for the number of friends you refer. This month I earned $25 and I've earned $60.75 since I downloaded it in March. And even better, you get $10 right away just for signing up! I will mention that some of the stuff is..... not food I would buy. But, there is still some natural whole foods that you can buy, right now they have lettuce, eggs, and raspberries featured. And they're definitely moving towards natural, organic foods too. Yay! (It's not just foods, it's also hygiene products, medicine, DVD's, etc)

3. Buying Co-Op's
This is a new one for me and you have to have some money up front. I'm part of a Co-Op on Facebook that buys lots of baby stuff (cloth diapers, baby legs, amber necklaces, etc) and the last time I bought diapers I ended up getting more than I needed. So I posted them for sale on a Buy/Sell/Trade page at the "going rate" and was able to make back some of the money that I had spent on them. Actually, I spent $72 on 15 diapers and I sold 4 of them for $43, so that's pretty good. If I were to sell all of them at this rate, I would make (minus shipping) about $50-$70 profit.

4. Mystery Shopping
This one also requires a little money up front. I work with two companies to do mystery shops. It's not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. I've bought pizza, I've gone shopping at Hot Topic, I've browsed at Maui Nix, I've used a valet, and so on. It's random stuff, they ask a lot of questions, and sometimes you don't get paid to buy something. (You get paid for your time, usually $10 a shop, but not reimbursed if you make a purchase) It's not just easy and fun, BUT it is money! And they put it right into your PayPal! If you're interested in mystery shopping, leave a comment or email me and I'll share the companies with you.

So, there you have it. Four ways to grow your PayPal Tree so you can buy more diapers and wraps and sweet little wooden teethers and soap nuts and essential oils and whatever else your crunchy little heart desires. Go forth! Make money!

(This is a good time to tell you that I'll probably make $1 if you sign up with Ibotta or MindField via the links above. And I would appreciate it too. I'll write you a personal thank you note. Pinecone offers no incentive, but it's still great!)

Food Waste Friday: Dessert

My food waste this week:

1/3 of a pan of peanut butter dessert. I feel kinda bad about wasting this, but I would feel worse if I sat down and ate it all. So.... Lesser of two guilts. Also, 2 cups of White Chicken Chili (sans chicken). Gary doesn't like chicken in his chicken chili, so this is a super cheap no-prep dish that I always have the ingredients for. Yay! The biggest problem is that I always try to add dairy (this time it was sour cream) and it ALWAYS curdles. Not like "ew, I can't eat this" curdle, just a general "this stuff won't mix in, oh duh, because its curdled" curdle. Rats. 

Waste-O-Meter

$1.00 - peanut butter dessert

$0.25? - Soup

+____

$1.25 total waste

Clearly my best week! I'm thrilled to say I bought a head of lettuce and ate it before it went bad this week! Not just any lettuce either, hydroponic butter lettuce. I know. Amazing. I also bought a squash and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I'm thinking slice it into chips, bread it, and fry it. Yummy!

I also have a bag of spinach and some cooked chicken that i need to use up!

Also, an update on Get Real, we did awesome! My goal was to eat all REAL good while we were at home this week and we did with the exception if one item, fresh made sushi from Harris Teeter. It went well with our hydroponic butter lettuce salad. One thing I LOVED about this challenger was eating homemade bread all week! 

My breakfast almost every morning consisted of fried eggs, buttered (homemade!) toast and homemade peach jam. (And coffee, of course..) Real food is so great!

Project Get Real

I'm on a mission this week to make all our at-home meals 100% from scratch. NO PREMADE STUFF! This is because I want to eat real food; thus the blog title! Yesterday we had spicy blackened yellowfin tuna steaks with corn and rice on the side. It was awesome! I didn't take any pictures because we ate it too fast, but I promise it was pretty and delicious! All I got for you was a shot of the empty skillet!

Today, I made chicken Parmesan sandwiches, a recipe I got out of Kraft's Food & Family magazine. I started by thawing some chicken breasts. I also have a side quest to not use the microwave anymore, but I got a little pressed for time (I thought Gary worked at 3 instead of 2. Oops!) so I nuked them a bit to thaw them. While those thawed, I started on "The Hard Part."

The Hard Part

Nothing premade means me making  our bread. These sandwiches use rolls, something I've never made before, but I figured how hard can it be??

Not hard at all, it turns out! 

I did use one "premade" thing for this, spaghetti sauce. But, it was spaghetti made by my mother in law with ingredients straight out of her garden, so I'm not counting that. The point of this is to know what I'm feeding my family! And I know what's in that, so there ya go. 

Yumm! Gary approved!

Food Waste Friday (a bit late!)

This is my waste this week. Three wrinkly apples, half a cantaloupe, some moldy carrots, and about a quart of homemade yogurt. 

The apples came from a bag that was about $5/10 apples. They been in the fridge for, like.... 6 weeks. The cantaloupe was $3.50, and the carrots.... Probably $2? And this is about a 5th if a bag. I'm chalking the yogurt up to a learning curve. It was my first time making it and it turned out a bit soft. I made A gallon, though, and used most of it! 

This is some kombucha that has been sitting into fridge for about 2 months. My hubby discovered it and opened the bottle (it was REALLY bubbly!) and we remembered "This stuff is delicious!!" And quickly finished the bottle. So we have another batch fermenting now!

$1.50 - apples

$1.75 - cantaloupe 

$0.80 - carrots 

$1.10? - yogurt

+_____

$5.15 wasted this week. 

I'm bummed that I let this much produce go bad. 

I cleaned out my fridge, pantry, and cabinets this week, so next week should be great!!