Daily notes

Every day when I pick up DQ from school I get a little note from her teacher on how the day went - what they did that day, how well the child ate, and any problems they had. Yesterday this is what my note said:

DQ loves the dress up clothes, especially the princess dresses.

When I dropped her off yesterday she noticed right away the dresses were out. She ran to the dress up clothes and dug out the purple (her favorite color) dress and put it on immediately. She is definitely following in her sister's footsteps - the only difference is the Princess would have picked up the pink dress.

Hot Chocolate Mix

I made an awesome hot chocolate mix last night. Here is the recipe:

Hot Chocolate Mix
1.5 cups instant nonfat dry milk powder
1 cup white chocolate chips (you could also use milk chocolate chis or semi-sweet)

Place chips in food processor (I suppose a blender would work also) until finely ground. Do not over process - you will get clumps. Add dry milk powder and process until well mixed.
To make the hot chocolate: Add 3 tablespoons in a mug of boiling water. Add marshmallows.

I think next time I will add a candy cane while I am grinding the chips for peppermint hot chocolate.

If you can't trust your family...

The girls are finally playing well together (most of the time). DQ adores playing with her big sister and is pretty much willing to do almost anything with her. However... this is where the bad decisions happen. Yesterday, Princess had DQ strapped into the doll stroller. DQ obviously completly trusted her sister to push her around the house. The King caught them at the edge of the steps. Princess was telling DQ not to move and had the front wheels of the stroller in the air. She was going for a ride. Thankfully the King caught them in time or we would have another 'owie' to add to DQ's list.

The royal cuties

Just playing with photoshop...

The reason for my madness...

I have been called a tightwad, cheapskate, cheap-ass, mooch and any other adjective you could possibly think of. Guess what? It doesn't bother me a bit!

And this is why:

1. Our car loan is now paid off. Granted, I only got it paid off a year early, but that is still 1 less year interest I am going to have to pay.
2. Our gas bill has been lowered from $92 to $59. On top of that, I have a nearly $200 credit on my gas bill so I do not have to pay Alliant again until February 2008. This dramatic decrease does concern me a bit, so I think I will save a little extra just in case I get stuck with big gas bill next year.
3. Our electric and water bill has been lowered from $130 to $115. I am still wondering why this is so dang high. We have insulated our house, installed CFL light bulbs, use an energy star washing machine... Maybe next year I can get it down to under $100 - all we need to do is take less showers and baths, sit in the dark and not use the AC during the summer. Who wants to come over to my house? It will be lots of fun!

The three changes above have added $558 to my monthly budget that I did not have 1 month ago. Unfortunately I can't just use this money willy-nilly because I have other goals for this money, but it is still very cool to finally see results