Hi! Remember me?

I'm the girl that got 'restructured' and then had to hunt down a new job. While I was unemployed from a paying job, I had a full time job looking for work and was sort of surprised to find out, not all jobs are found by word of mouth. I also took advantage of the extra time (HA! Not sure there really was any!) to spend more time with the boys and trying to learn some new cost saving techniques.

Patch has been showing some interest in learning how to cook. He has been promoted from grasshopper to apprentice chef and wants to be my sous chef something fierce! I do appreciate the extra help in the kitchen. He can make eggs on his own and keeps trying to find new things to add to the eggs to make them yummy. He has also helped me make a bunch of dinners, laundry detergent and some chocolate covered candy canes today! Franklin does not seem to care to cook too much but he did help with the candy canes today. He doesn't like mint so we made some choc covered pretzel sticks for him. Franklin does seem to almost like school this year. I think it's dawning on him that he needs to know stuff but he really likes doing 8th grade math as a 7th grader.

Patch making soap

I'm trying to buy whole chickens and cut them up myself to save some money. I've done 4 so far and have 2 more in the fridge to work on - making them boneless and skinless, making stock. Saving the chicken wings to make hot wings is going to take a while - 4 chickens worth of wings will feed one of these guys - maybe... (I can hardly wait to see how they'll eat as teenagers!) And, of course, I'm trying to do some couponing. I think I only saved 20% last trip to the store but, I'm trying! I think the most I've saved is 35% but I'm not a crazy extreme couponer either ;-)

My new job is awesome! It's not community oriented like my last job but it's still very interesting and the people are GREAT! I'm working for JustAnswer.com where people get answers to their questions from verified experts. The answer everything from legal and medical, auto and appliance repairs to tarot and dream interpretation. They'll also help you with your homework - don't let the kids get any ideas though - you have to be 18 years old to be on the site ;-) They did open up an AskSanta site though - Patch asked if he'd get what he wanted for Christmas - Santa was non-committal on that answer ;-)  If your kids want to ask Santa a question, or just read what others have already asked, check this out :) http://www.justanswersanta.com  

Hope everyone is enjoying their holidays this year!!