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Chloe’s friend, Jaiden, had her birthday party on Saturday. This is her card. Chloe drew the Purple Birthday Penguin featured in the first photo (just in case you were wondering LOL). She also did most of the  gluing though I did the positioning

We seldom buy cards. I used to buy the ‘Home Made” type cards that came in a box at Costco but we no longer do that because we make our own. They look really cool too. I tried to find a picture of the Christmas cards we made last year but I guess I didn’t take a picture.

Anyway, last fall I stumbled across some quality linen card stock on ebay. The lots were 4000 linen paper envelopes, 2000 folding linen paper cards and 2000 flat announcement cards. Each lot started at 0.99. I watched it, bid last minute and won all three lots for 0.99/each. Shipping in the USA was very inexpensive but I live in Canada so it cost me $40.00. Still an amazing deal since it works out to A PENNY for both the card and envelope!  I think it was Pelican Paper Company.

Now I don’t scrap book as a hobby because I lack time, money as well as creativity. I did spend about $15 to buy stamp letters, an ink pad, a heart punch and some dollar store scrapbooking papers. Find that even the simplest things can look pretty amazing!

I have made some really, really cool cards that I was proud of but these are the only two cards I’ve ever taken pictures of. Too bad. For Jaiden’s card, I printed a handful of pictures at home on our printer but on John’s thank you card (because I sent out about 60+!), I little photos printed on a sheet at Costco. It was 1.19 per sheet of wallets and there was 16 or 18 per sheet. Still pretty economical I think! I cut them out and made the cards.

• Check out Ebay for discontinued bulk cardstock or watch for sales at your local office supply store. Cardstock is awesome and lends a professional look to your home made card but you know, construction paper is effective too! Use whatever you have.

• I also suggest investing a small amount in some basic tools to assist you in making a variety of cards. Walmart and Dollar Stores are usually cheaper than hobby/craft stores. Ebay is another great source. Try to pick items that will work for any kind of card.

So even if you aren’t really creative and don’t have a lot of money to spend, you can still make your own fabulous cards! Handmade cards work for me!

The thank-you cards I sent out for John’s baby shower last year.

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Jenn is wife to one, mother of three and above all, a humble servant seeking to honor the Lord with her life. Works for Me! Simple Home Made Cards is a post from Beautiful Calling.

After posting I Can, You Can? I took a week off. I froze raspberries, strawberries, canned peaches and I made pickles for the first time ever! I am so pleased with the fruits (or vegetables LOL) of my labor. The pickles taste wonderful and the peaches look great (haven’t tasted them yet) I made both dill pickles and a whole lot of sweet Gherkins.

Everyone in our family loves Gherkins but they are $2.99-$4.99/395ml here. At that price we don’t eat a lot of them. That is sad since they make a nice snack with cheese and crackers or as an addition to lunch for an extra vegetable serving. Yes, I know they have quite a big of sugar in them but since we eat very little processed foods or snacks, it isn’t an issue for our family.

With this recipe at the most it costs me $3.00/liter and with the discounted baby cucumbers I got this past weekend at the farmers market ($10/bushel!) they are costing about $1.00/liter!Amazing and so yummy. They are easy to make but a little time consuming as well.

Easy,  Week-Long Gherkin Pickles (Completely worth the time!!)

• 8lbs of baby Cucumbers
• Sugar
• Salt
• Vinegar
• Turmeric
• Pickling Spice (2 tsp)
• Cloves (1 tsp)
• Celery Seed (1 tsp)
• Cinnamon Sticks (1 or 2)
• All Spice (1/2 tsp)

Day one: Rinse cucumbers. Boil approx 24 liters of water, add 1/4 cup salt. Pour over cucumbers and let sit overnight.

Day two: Drain, rinse and repeat above.

Day three: Drain, rinse cucumbers. Boil 4 cups of vinegar with 3 1/2 cups of sugar and 1 tsp of turmeric. Put other spices into a spice bag (cheesecloth, whatever) and boil in the vinegar mixture. Prick cucumbers in many places, pour boiling mixture over top of the cucumbers and let sit overnight.

Day four: Drain, reserving liquid. Bring remaining liquid to a boil adding an additional 1 1/2 cups each of sugar and vinegar. Pour over cucumbers and let stand overnight.

Day five: Drain, reserve liquid. Bring liquid to a boil with an additional cup of vinegar and two of sugar. Pour over cucumbers and let stand 8 hours. Drain, reserve liquid, bring to a boil, adding an additional cup of sugar. Remove spice bag.  Pack cucumbers tightly into hot jars. Pour liquid over them leaving 1/4 inch headroom and process in a boiling water canner for approx 10 minutes.

• Recipe is adapted from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving which I purchased off eBay.
• This post links to Tasty Tuesday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Works for Me Wednesday, Finer Things Friday and Frugal Friday. It seems to fit well with all of them!

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Jenn is wife to one, mother of three and above all, a humble servant seeking to honor the Lord with her life. Oh, Pickles!! is a post from Beautiful Calling.

I guess I should have.

There are none available. Since Chloe is 2 and has only been camping once in her life (she was 6 months then) she won’t know the difference between the real deal and our special “back yard” campout that we are having instead.

Now instead of saving just the $10 reservation fee, I’ll also be saving the $30/night fee. We’ll have just as much fun in the back yard with the sprinkler, BBQ and sparkers I have lined up.

I am disappointed that we aren’t going to the campground but it certainly is a cost savings and given our tight budget right now…maybe this is an answer to prayer. We’re planning to try again in September so I guess this one will be our practice camping.

Do you have a great ‘camping with littles’  tip or fun camping activity? Love to hear it so please share!

See you on Wednesday for the next edition of Sizzling Summer where we will talk about camping!

• This post links to Family Friday and Frugal Friday

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Jenn is wife to one, mother of three and above all, a humble servant seeking to honor the Lord with her life. Frugal Camping: It wasn’t my choice! is a post from Beautiful Calling.

This is one of the last rock critters we have kicking around. I would say he’s about 20+/- years old. He resides in moms garden. His eyes are missing so he just has rocks propped up on him. We used to have dozens of them but when you move clear across the province (a 23+/- hour drive), you can only transport so many rocks, regardless of sentimental value. At least that is what they told us when we were packing…I personally would have left the furniture and brought more rocks

1. Choose your size rock and two smaller rocks for eyes. A rock about the size of a iron makes the best size I think but we made them smaller and larger and they looked fabulous set up as a little critter family!
2. Paint the body a light color (or leave it natural if it is a light colored rock to begin with)
3. Paint the spots a darker color (or use markers…not sure about crayons)
4. Paint the smaller rocks black and glue on
5. Paint on a mouth

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Jenn is wife to one, mother of three and above all, a humble servant seeking to honor the Lord with her life. Garden Rock Critters Rock! is a post from Beautiful Calling.

“ My daughter loves Yop, the yoghourt drink.  It’s pretty pricy for the minuscule bottle, so I checked the ingredients and found skim milk, sugar, vanilla, active bacteria and some other stuff.  Since this sounded like skim milk yoghourt with sugar and vanilla I decided to make my own by mixing these ingredients with enough milk to make it look like a thin milkshake.

She didn’t seem to mind the changeup but I was still a little price sensitive and thought to make my own yoghourt and then I’m really just using my own raw ingredients.  I described the plan to my wife and she took it the same way she does all my raw ingredient experiments: not saying much and I believe not expecting much.

Searching the web for recipes and techniques proved to be enlightening: yoghourt (or yogurt or yoghurt) is dead easy.  You need any kind of milk, a large pot, thermometer, a small amount of yoghourt and sterilized containers.

I had a box of mason jars in the garage so I measured them up (1 gallon each) and boiled two in my large pot for ten minutes then left them to dry.  I then poured two gallons of 3.25% fat milk (a little under two litres) into the pot and set it on medium high heat, checking for 195 degrees F.  When it reached that I took it off the heat and watched until it dropped to 115 degrees F and then poured it into the two mason jars.  Next I added a big tablespoon of yoghourt to each jar, stirred it up and sealed the jars.

From here the milk and yoghourt mixture needs to ferment so there were a few suggestions: put the jars in the oven with the light on or wrap in towels and put in a cooler.  Either method recommended 8-12 hours of fermentation so I went with the oven since it seemed easier and we weren’t using it.

The next morning I took the jars out and had a nice consistently of home made yoghourt: not too thick or thin.  For eating and sauces I would like a firmer yoghourt so I could add whole milk powder before the yoghourt or just strain out the yoghourt.  For my daughter’s drinking pleasure I still need to add milk but it just feels great knowing I made that, all by myself (and twenty or so websites I read first).”

For more of his fabulous tips, check out his blog eBabble!

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Jenn is wife to one, mother of three and above all, a humble servant seeking to honor the Lord with her life. Home Made Yogurt: It’s Easy! is a post from Beautiful Calling.

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Jenn is wife to one, mother of three and above all, a humble servant seeking to honor the Lord with her life. Frugal Friday: Free Diaper Sample is a post from Beautiful Calling.

• Scrounge: Two of my favorite items in her room are from the garbage! The pictures don’t do them justice but her little desk and the chair are from 2 separate people’s garbage sitting on their curb on garbage day. With the desk, I was too embarrassed to get it from the garbage pile so my wonderful parents picked it up for me. A few weeks later my sister and I were out somewhere and I spotted the chair on top of a garbage pile. I threw all my inhibitions out and promptly put on my four-way flashers, pulled over and grabbed it up before someone else saw this fabulous find. Thanks to my talented parents, both items were sanded down and refinished and they are so beautiful. An antique white with the tiniest tinge of pink. Simple and feminine! The bulletin board was being thrown out at Scott’s work so he brought it home. We have her bedtime routine with pictures posted on there. We have baskets in the bathroom and bedroom – those we got from Nana, who was planning to drop them off at a charity place!
• Use what you have: I didn’t like the guest room furniture but didn’t want to buy more when we already had this set. It was my husbands before we got married. But you know, once I added all the pink to the room, the set actually looks very feminine and sweet. (I can assure you it looked neither when it was at my husbands apartment!) Chloe is also in a queen bed because we had just bought it when we got married and then decided to move into a king size for my king size man! (He’s 6’8″) My husband also had a bookshelf from his childhood. It was terribly ugly but my parents finished it to match the desk and chair and it looks beautiful! Rather than get a bed rail, my maternity pillow along the edge of the bed works perfectly.
• Ask for Help! I am not really that talented. I couldn’t have pulled off this wonderful room on my own. My parents were a huge part of this room. Without their help in finishing the desk, bookshelf and chair, the room wouldn’t be the same. My dad also built the little stairs to her bed so she can get up and down. Mom helped get the curtains up just right and my wonderful husband helped arrange (and rearrange!!) the room into the way it is. He also hung the bookshelf, curtain rods and put together the toy organizer. My grandparents gave us a few of the nylon butterflies and my sister found some of the Nemo stickers at the dollar store. Dad also made the little toy chest in the corner. Mom and dad sanded and refinished the baby cradle (thift store find) for her dolls and mom sewed a little crib skirt and bedding for it.
  
• Take Advantage of Deals: Dollar Stores are a great way to go. We purchased several nylon butterflies from the dollar store and hung them around the room from the ceiling. Chloe loves them. We got some Nemo removable wall stickers from ebay as well as the dollar store. The wall stickers I found on ebay were a couple bucks. They are removable and satisfy her love of Nemo while not being permanent. They can be removed at any time. This is a great way to add characters or themes to a room without it being permanent. After all, who has the time or the money to change room decor as they grow? We also got a few things off kijiji (similar to craigslist).
• Know when to splurge: The only thing for Chloe’s big girl room that I really bought was the quilt, shams and the curtains. I had them made by Quilted Heirlooms in St Jacobs. Everyone at the Log Cabin was so helpful and it was a delightful experience! While this was a significant investment, it is something that will last her a lifetime! It is a queen size and though it has pink in it, it also has green and cream. Because I have it paired with pink curtains it looks feminine. But by adding green as the main color of the room rather than pink, it could very well work in a master bedroom someday. I think that quilts are beautiful, welcoming and timeless. My husband and I have one on our bed which has been washed a number of times. It is a quality item and only gets better (softer) with age! Though I am a big fan of dollar stores, if it is in the budget, sometimes it is better to splurge.

And there you have it. My thoughts for Works for Me Wednesday and Frugal Friday!

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Jenn is wife to one, mother of three and above all, a humble servant seeking to honor the Lord with her life. The Makings of a Big Girl Room is a post from Beautiful Calling.

I have an amazing husband! Thanks to him we have never really had any ‘picture chaos’. I take pictures – lots of them. I have such adorable children – how can I not take their pictures?

Anyway, I take the pictures and once a month or so my wonderful, wonderful husband takes them and downloads them from the camera onto our server and puts them in the appropriate yearly folder. So the above is a print screen of what our photos look like. Within each folder is the photos for the year in the order they were taken. (We have only been married 3 years so that helps too. It’s not like we have years to go back). Looks sparse I know but we have a lot of photos, trust me!

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Jenn is wife to one, mother of three and above all, a humble servant seeking to honor the Lord with her life. My Beautiful FREE Photo Book! is a post from Beautiful Calling.

Aaron came with us in our van to keep Chloe and John company.
Chloe wondered if John might like some of her cheese (I’m sure he would lol)


Chloe spent a good amount of time trying to catch the geese. Good thing we have a membership for that You can’t find Canada Geese just anywhere in Canada!


Dont‘ forget to visit Life As Mom for more fruagl tips!

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Jenn is wife to one, mother of three and above all, a humble servant seeking to honor the Lord with her life. Membership Frugality: We Love the Zoo! is a post from Beautiful Calling.