Love Weeks-Day 3

The love sign- surprise.

I had every intention of writing this on the mirror in the bathroom this morning while Mr. Dunbar was showering because it always gets foggy when I take a shower. (I forget to turn on the fan.) Mr. Dunbar always remembers to turn on the fan and so there was no condensation on the mirror.

This is my improvisation.

A small window in our kitchen, a picture taken, and e-mailed right to his work.

Love Weeks-Day 2

The frame.

I got this idea from Tatertots and Jello a few weeks ago. She created a Whimsical Valentine Wreath out of cupcake liners. She is uber creative and comes up with the best ideas ever. Now I don't have a huge need for wreaths, but I do like picture frames. So when I was at Target last week, I picked up one of their $1.99 frames and a package of mini cupcake liners for like $2.

It turned out pretty well. But I should have bought a white frame, I don't know what made me pick up this brown thing. Oh well, I just hot glued some pink ribbon around the frame.

This isn't the picture I'll keep in here, but until my Valentine's Day pictures of the boys arrive, Mr. Dunbar and I will have to do.

And now for our special project of the day:

I used the hot glue gun on the frame above, but the boys couldn't help me with that, so this morning we made another picture frame using Elmer's School Glue.

Monkey said it made him happy to make things.

If you do this, make sure you draw a long skinny heart, as the liners really fill it out.

Then I took a frame that is up most of the year in our house, took out the glass, figured out which way it looked best and then cut my 4x6 rectangle from there.

I like this becasue it's just a splash of pink and red. You know, with 3 men in my house there really isn't that much pink around. But sometime this week I'll show all of my little splashes of Valentine's Day.

So, we had an impromptu act of love.

Creating something together.

Love Weeks-Day 1

(UPDATED: At the end)
I love the month of February. The love month. Of course it is over commercialized and Hallmark will make a killing, but I've decided to do something everyday leading up to Valentine's Day. Everyday for the next two weeks I am going to do something special for my guys, either the little ones, Mr. Dunbar, or all three, or maybe even all four of us.

This morning the boys got the love. I made Banana Pancakes into hearts.

They were super excited. And now I'm off to go wash the mounds of dishes this breakfast created.

They had fruit bowls on the side.

Have anything special leading up to Valentine's Day?

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My friend Julie at Jam*n*Jilly is hosting a giveaway for a fabulous platter.

Go check it out and tell her Mrs. Dunbar sent you.

And I got three practically FREE personalized Valentine's Day cards from Shutterfly. I just had to pay the dollar for shipping. Hurry this ends tommorrow, Feb 2nd.  Details are HERE. Code is 3freecards.

Wine and a Good Time

We went to a wine pairing dinner on Friday night with some of our closest friends. I took a few shots to help us remember our good time.

Myself and Mrs. C.

Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Tibbetts

I made Mrs. Webb an apron as a hostess gift.

It was a twisted re-gift because she gave me the towel for my birthday

and I turned it into in apron for her.

I tried taking pictures of each couple but someone kept jumping into the background of the pictures.

And then he got closer so I wouldn't even be able to crop him out. Buster.

Mr. Dunbar was having a good time. He likes wine.

I was in charge of the appetizer.

So I made Mediterranean Bruschetta and Garlic Parmesan Olives

and it was paired with Chardonnay.

Good stuff.

This is Mr. Tibbetts.

This is a fuzzy Mr. Dunbar and Mr.Calhoun.

Funny guy Mr. Webb. It's his birthday today, he's now old.

This is Mrs. C. It was her birthday yesterday, she is not old.

We had Port and Creme Brulee for dessert.

Yum.

The End.

It's Friday

Whew!

Can you believe it? Another week has passed.

We spent some of our afternoons doing this; snuggling on the couch and reading.

Oh, how I love children's books.

Especially this Quack Quack book. Have you ever read it?

Going to a baby shower this year? Pick this book up, its a winner all the way around, little guys LOVE it.

Perhaps I'll put together a post on some of my favorite childrens books. Anyone interested? Got any that you simply adore?

Well, we've got a busy weekend planned so I am unplugging for today. 

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

~Mrs. Dunbar

Minutes and Tickets

Well since we no longer have the TV you'd think that screen time would have been reduced right? Wrong. It just pushed my boys towards their Leapsters and "websites" (aka Disney.com). So I came up with a system for tracking the minutes Monkey spends on the computer.
Actually I got the idea from AshleyAnn. Her clipboard rocked. She is awesome and creative and a fabulous photographer.
My clipboard seems pretty vague compared to hers. But it works for us and that's what counts. The first morning Monkey said to me, "Thank you for making me special tickets, Mommy." This morning he said, "When are you going to make me more tickets, I never have enough!"

Every morning Monkey changes all of his tickets to the "Available" pocket. He's got 20 minutes to start with each morning. As he wants to use them throughout the day he can, but he has to move them to the used pocket. Solid blue tickets are worth two minutes. To help us keep track, I tucked in the small timer, either he or I set it when the first game begins.

And good behavior or some added specialness to the day, allows me to move tickets back to "Available."

Mr. Dunbar told one of his co-workers about my clipboard and their reaction was

"She's such a teacher."

Ha. Old habits are hard to break. I had clipboards for lots of things in my classroom. Bathroom. Computer time. Library checkout. Organization people, organization, it can be a learned behavior.

It's Monday

Have a happy carefree jump-on-the-bed Monday everyone!

Walmart or Target?

So I'm a Target girl. I love going to Target. There are 3 Target's I frequent, quite frequently. But one day a few months ago I went to Walmart instead; I needed a few clipboards and I remembered that Walmart used to sell my favorite clipboards for $0.97, the cheapest one I could find at Target was $3.99. I also ended up picking up some diapers that were over a dollar cheaper than Targets price for Huggies. So it made me wonder if Walmart really was cheaper?

Last week I decided to do a price comparison on a few items. The first price is Walmart's price, the second is Target's. *** Prices vary from region to region.***

Baby  Department: 
Huggies Jumbo Pack: $8.97, $8.99 This JUST changed up until last Sunday they were $10.29
Huggies Mega Pack $18.97, 18.99

Toddler wipes Store brands (48 wipes) $.97, $1.27
Huggies Toddler wipes $1.51, $1.72

Store Brand wipes $1.88, $1.89
Huggies Wipes Natural Care (72 wipes) $2.37, $2.39

Aveeno baby products $4.54, $4.54 up to $6.99

Johnsons (Pink) Lotion 15oz. $3.12, $3.14

Graduate Puffs $2.00, $2.04
Store brand $1.72, $1.67

Graduate Yogurt Melts $2.48, $2.94

Food/Snacks:
Goldfish 33.5oz (large carton) $6.46, $6.49

Heinz Ketchup 36oz 2.56, 40 oz 2.44

French's Mustard 14oz $1.38,$ 1.29

Keebler 100 Calorie Packs (6) $1.98, 2.25 this week, reg 2.69

Cheez-It 11.5 oz $2.50, $2.54

Dole Pineapple 20oz $1.42/ Did not have this product???

Betty Crocker cake mix $1.16, $1.17
Frosting $1.76, $1.77

Ghiradelli Brownie Mix $2.00, $2.04

Stationary/Supplies Department:
Crayola colored pencils (12) $1.97, $1.97
Crayola markers (10) $2.84, were $2.89, now $2.74

Gift bags (10 pack) available in white, paper bag brown, and neon $5.00, (12) 5.99

Cleaning Supplies:
Clorox bleach (3qt) $1.86, $1.89
Store brand $1.52, $1.52

Tide liquid detergent (48 loads) $13.97, $13.99

Oxi 24oz $3.86, $3.89

All and all Walmart is cheaper. On almost every single item Walmart was at least a penny less per product. I pulled out my receipts and I almost always buy atleast 20 items. So over time the savings would grow. And the more frugal I am about certain parts of my life the more money I have to endeavor to others. (ie like helping the poor or getting my hair done, I'm just saying...)  You know that extra hundred bucks the Dunbar's are no longer spending per month on cable is going to be put aside for something else. What? Not sure yet, perhaps towards a trip to Spain, the boys need passports and those are about a hundred bucks each.

Back to the topic at hand;
I still like shopping at Target. And if you don't make it to Walmart by 9am in these parts, Walmart has some scary scary clientele walking through their doors.

So I think for the Dunbar family we will be doing both. Essentials bought from Walmart and everything else; Target.

This was a lot of work, but at least now I know. Hope it helps you.

Have a nice weekend everyone.

The Dunbar's are out the door to enjoy some sunshine!

Mrs. Dunbar

Rained In and some other stuff

We are so spoiled over here in our neck of the woods.
I mean who can wear shorts and flips on Christmas, New Years and practically half of January?
The peeps who live in Southern California, that's who. And I'm laughing as I write this post because of good handful of bloggers that I know, who also live in this region of the state have also written about the weather we are experiencing this week.

RAIN. Rain. And some more rain.

We are just spoiled weather wimps who are rained in.

This was my driveway about 20 minutes ago.
I went through every single setting on my camera because I have NO idea how to shoot rain. Seriously.

But now on to more intersting news.
I am the world's worst seamstress. Seriously.  If you ask my mom she'll tell how she paid hundreds of dollars when I was twelve for sewing lessons and I walked away not knowing how to do anything. Seriously- nothing. Last year for my birthday she signed me up for more sewing lessons, per my request. I was supposed to make a vest with a zipper.  The class was supposed to be 4 hours long, meaning the average student could finish this project in that amount of time. It took me twelve hours. YUP- three times as long as the average student, and the last 6 hours were with an instructor and myself only. Then this Christmas I did Julie's Scarf Along and just about chopped off my thumb. She laughed when I told her and said I wasn't the only one who did that. Great.  It took me like 5 trips to JoAnn's, thirty phone calls to my mom, two trips for her to come over and save me and finally I finished.

So why this long saga of my sewing history? Because I just completed a simple sewing project on my own. Whew!!  I made Baby Grace some burp cloths. In one afternoon.  Now if you know anything about sewing you know exactly how simple these were and if you have a daughter who's over the age of 7 I'm sure she would be perfectly capable of completing this project by herself. But still, I'm pretty stoked on the whole endeavor.

The sewing machine I've hijacked from my mom has some pretty fancy stitches.

And just a few shots of our morning.

Monkey had the Share Bag today and since he is in the Bunnies class at school Baby made an appearance.

Yes, she really does have a leash on.

All of the children were so excited, Baby was a hit.

Mrs. Dunbar

Cancelled

Do you see all of those wires hanging out below? 

That's where my cable box used to go. All of my glorious cooking channels, time-wasting kid's channels, and money coveting home/decorating channels; have been cancelled.

Cancelled?

Yup.

They're gone.

Our cable company doubled our bill last month, Mr. Dunbar nearly had a coronary. He shopped around found another company we thought would be as capable. They weren't. We had a cable box that would only change channels. It wouldn't turn the TV on or control the volume. It worked like that for a month. And Mr. Dunbar made numerous phone calls to have them fix it. After the fifth phone call he told the company to come get their box, we were cancelling.

So now us Dunbar's that stay home all the time. Are doing a lot of this:

And putting a lot of these together...

And we've played a hundred games of this:  

 

Yup. Uno. Remember that game?

It's actually fitting well with my "efficiency". I finally got my thank you's out for all of our Christmas gifts. I can't wait until my boys are able to write their own, my hand hurts. Mr. Dunbar has cousin, upon cousin that gets the boys something every year.

It's really nice; until I have to write out thank you cards.

I feel like we are living in a bubble. A nice bubble. One without the rush and horrible news  that actually makes the news.

And of  course in that moment when I need to get something done, we always have a few DVD's they can watch. (Only the kid friendly ones, of course.)

My bet is we'll make it without cable until baseball season. 

Then I'm demanding it comes back on.

ha.

Mrs. Dunbar