As Thanksgiving fades into the background, Christmas comes blaring in with lights, tensile, and bells.  Christmas so often becomes a whirlwind season as you get older.  There are presents to buy, decorations to put up, and many parties to attend.  Sadly that whirlwind quite often can steal all the joy out of the season.

Having young child can just make you want to do more to make it a magical time.  Parents cram more lights, more presents, and more festivities into the month.  In the shuffle we lose our minds and often our children lose the meaning of the whole season. 

This month we are stepping into the Christmas season with a two year old for the first time.  I'm excited for my daughter to experience many Christmas joys with new appreciation.   I am also excited to share the meaning of Christmas in more detail and more intentionality than before.  With my new found love for planning and scheduling, I started planning our Christmas goals in November.  I had a long bucket list of things to do and multiple options for family devotions for the month of December.  While I haven't narrowed down my bucket list yet, I have decided on a path for our devotions.

I started my search with Unwrapping the Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp, I moved on to the Jesse Tree, looked at The Jesus Story Book Bible Advent Guide, and settled on Jesse Tree reading from The Jesus Story Book Bible I found on pinterest coupled with Free printable Jesse Tree ornaments to color.  I plan to read the story each morning with my daughter and let her color the ornament during the day.  We will then read the story again at night as a family before going to bed and she will be able to hang the ornament on a small tree we put up in the playroom.

I am excited to use The Jesus Story Book Bible that I know my daughter likes and understand to do a devotional.  I also love the idea of the Jesse Tree, where it tells Jesus heritage and presents the gospel.  The fact that it has an easy craft that my daughter loves, but wont be a burden on me is fantastic.  Plus having an ornament for each story makes it possible for us to easily review what we have read. 

I am excited to see how the devotionals work and if we are starting a new tradition that will stick.  Do you do a family Christmas devotional as a family?  How do you keep Christ the center of your Christmas celebrations?  I would love to hear what has worked for you and your family.

It has been a little while since I have posted on the house.  I have been stressed and overwhelmed and didn't feel like blogging to be honest.  Today I have come to terms with the fact that my stress is silly and God is good all the time.  As things pop up and things look like we will never move in, never have the money to finish, or I can't move anymore God shows His faithfulness.

Since we have bought the house we have gotten the carpet and under-pad torn out.  Which turned out to be much harder than we expected because the pad was stuck to the floor hard.  Thankfully the nasty has been torn out though.  We bought the flooring and expect it to come in this week.

Josh was able to replace the ridge cap on the roof, since it was burnt to a crisp.  The weekend He did it he was blessed with cooler weather thankfully.  He still has the chimney to seal this week as well as roof vents to instal as well.  We are coming along though, which is a great thing.

This weekend My Uncle and Aunt from Kansas City came to town to help re-plumb the house.  My Uncle and Father were able to fix the leak we have and get water coming into the house.  The only thing not ready is the master bath that we are hoping to fully replace this weekend.  While my Dad and Uncle were working my Mother and Aunt were able to finish cleaning up the floors and walls, pull up tact board, and putty the walls to get ready for pant.  We were able to get the A/C turned on this weekend as well!  It was great to see my Aunt and Uncle as well as how far we got in the weekend.

This week my Mother-in-law and Sister-in-laws are in town to paint.  The doctor told me that I can not be in a room with wet paint, so I better find someone else to paint.  We are very grateful that Josh's family could come down to paint.  Today they got most of the house primed and are hoping they can get everything besides our bedroom and the paneling painted this week.

We Just purchased our first home, a nice little fixer upper.  The carpet is a mess.  There is literally a whole in the living room carpet that has just been cut out, so it has to go.  I mean look at this stuff.



There is no question we have to get rid of this stuff, if nothing but for health reasons.  The question is now what do we replace it with?  What is the most durable, beautiful, and cost effective option? Being the researcher I am I laid out all of the options for our home and did a pro con list.  Here were the options we considered.


1. Carpet

• Warm on the feet and reasonably priced, but not the most attractive or the most durable flooring

A baby girl is on the way.  I am officially 25 weeks pregnant and showing.  While we are sharing about our house we wanted to keep everyone updated on the bump as well, upon request. Now we just have to finish our remodel before the baby comes!

Thursday we officially became home owners.  For a celebration we went to house, sat outside with our NEW kitten, and Josh shot his bow.  I mean look at her, isn't she cute?  Who cares what we look like when you have the cutest kitten in the picture.



The front room of the house.  Not pictured is the huge whole they cut in the floor and replaced with vinyl.  Thankfully this flooring is coming out right now.  That stuff really smells.




Here we have the family room, dining room, and kitchen.  If you look closely you see a door in the back of the kitchen, that goes into our laundry room and out into the garage.  I am excited to have an open concept in this area.

In my journey on living frugally I learned about a few a lot of sites that make it easier to find the best deals when you need something.  Today I wanted to Share some of my favorite sites with you that I can find deals with anytime.


1. Retail Me Not

Before I go out to buy anything I always search the web for coupons.  I usually end up googling the store coupons and always seem to end up at retail me not.  They have coupons for everything and it can really help.

I have found coupons for BOGO entrees at restaurants, free shipping, and percentages off purchases.  I used to only use this when I was buying something online, but have found that it is a good place to check before we go out to eat as well.


2. Deal News

Deal News is a website that compiles top deals each day.  You can search by category, search bar, or just look around.  If you want something, but it doesn't need to be purchased right away this is a great site to look at frequently.


3. Camel Camel Camel

This site deems itself as an "Amazon Price Tracker."  It gives a list of the top price drops on Amazon for the day.  It also has a feature that will alert you if a certain product you want gets down to a certain product.  It gives you the Amazon price as well as a 3rd party price so that you can determine if it really is a good deal.

I recently found Camel Camel Camel, so I can't tell you everything about it.  The sites concept is really cool though and I'm excited to use it more.  You should look more into it yourself.



Do you have any deal sites you often frequent?  I would love to add some to my list to go to when looking for a great deal.  Leave a comment with all of your frugal sites.