Halloween, Corn Maze & Pumpkins!

I love Halloween....the kids have a blast picking out their costumes, the family corn maze that has become a tradition, and carving pumpkins. Halloween decorations, the Family Fun Festival at the kids' school, and our trick or treating tradition. Ahhh....it just makes me smile!

So how did our October start? With Elli's Pumpkin Patch field trip to Wilson's Banner Ranch. The kids get to pick out a pumpkin, have an apple or pear, a glass of apple cider, and run through the maze. They love it!



Elli's pumpkin-she searched SUPER hard for the perfect one

Playing in the corn



She discovered she likes eating pears!





Our normal corn maze tradition hit a minor mishap when the big windstorms destroyed our corn maze in Lewiston. We had a last minute change in location and drove to Walla Walla for their corn maze. It was a fun change and their corn maze had lots of cool things ours doesn't...like tunnels, squishy ground, and bridges! The kids had a blast and we spent an hour wandering through the maze in the beautiful fall sunshine.

The middle of the maze

The kids were super excited about the tunnels



The middle of the maze...the barn is our destination

 

 

Then comes pumpkin carving day! The kids pick out their picture from the internet and Ray gets to be the artist to carve them. Elli's pumpkins this year were too small to actually carve so we got creative.....

 

 

Nicholas's Boo pumpkin

Sean's scary face



Elli's Snoopy Pumpkin-we found him at Goodwill!

 

Before we knew it, it was the end of the month and Halloween had arrived, we have a tradition of going to our friends house for dinner and then taking the kids throughout the neighborhood for Trick or Treating. Our neighborhood is pretty intense...one neighbor rents an outhouse, this year we had a neighbor with a DJ setup in their driveway, and very rarely do you knock on a door because people just sit in their driveways around firepits. The kids have a great time and it's a lot of fun. The kids get to pick out their costumes at the Goodwill Spooktacular sale and then we usually add onto them to make them more. This year, Elli picked hers out last year and was a Garden Fairy...we added some glitter to her hair and a glow-in-the-dark wand with a couple of flower barretts. The boys...we'll you will see for your self!

 

Our Garden Fairy

The Hulk

Mario

 

 

And now, thankfully we have a whole year to get ready for next year! (And to eat all of the candy!)













October Freebies

We'll not a very exciting month in the freebie world however, I'm already excited about November's Freebies! I also had a bummer of a freebie this month in the Christmas cards from Michael's...I was hoping that it wouldn't include a name on this inside sampler I recived yet....it had some weird randomness going on so, I will have to do some creative revamping to make a pretty "homemade" card with the ones that I recived for free.

So here's this month's picture!

 

25 4x6 picture prints - Walgreens $5.00

4 Christmas Card samples $12.50

Viscine-A eye drops $2.00

Vlasic Relish $0.98 ($0.02 MM)

Dove Conditioner $3.36

Colgate Total toothpaste $3.00

Schick disposable Razors $1.97 ($1.03 MM)

 

Samples by Mail

Snapple 16 K-Cup Lemon Iced Tea (won from a sweepstakes!)

Snapple 4 K-cup Peach Tea sample

Haircare sampler

 

 

That's a savings of $28.81 with a $1.05 moneymaker....not super exciting however, I did make some pretty good deals on groceries and am looking forward to starting with the Christmas/holiday shopping in November. The coupons have already started accumulating for our Spokane shopping weekend!

 

 

****Here's some tips to help you save money for those special treats! My ultimate goal at saving is another trip to Disney World. So far our savings have added up and I'm hoping that we'll be able to make it sometime in 2015.

     -Save your aluminum cans: I know that this sounds silly however, we've been doing this since we first started saving for our first Disney World trip in 2010. We go through A LOT of cans through a one year period. We save them and then on Earth Day we load up the car and take them to the recycling center where you get a little bit more for the aluminum during this time. We usually come home with close to an extra $30.00 and it feels good to help out the environment too!

     -Yearly yard sales: These do take some extra work however, you would be amazed at what you can collect by "recycling" your items in a good sale. Gather a couple of friends and make it extra big! We have a yearly tradition of our sale with some great friends and even our kids look forward to it. The important thing is to price everything...this takes time however, coming from somebody who loves sales, it sucks to pull up at a sale where nothing is marked and everything is just thrown in boxes or stacked on tables in piles. Take some pride, put all of the shoes in one area, give girl/women/boys/mens clothes their own sections, toys their own sections, housewares, etc...you get the idea. This makes it really easy for people to come in and shop. You will be pleastanly surprised at how much you can make in just a few hours. Another tip with yard sales is timing. Be prepared for early birds, they always show up. We've tried closing ours at different times and have discovered that a noon closing time is the best. After this time, your crowd will have dwindled and you don't really have any big sales. If you do have more than just yourself, give each of you a letter or your initials on your items (masking tape works great!) and make sure you have copy paper with columns for each of you. Easy to total up at the end. And don't forget to advertise your big items in your local communities most used paper for sales. Ours is the Moneysaver and we only advertise our bigger items and our name brand clothing. People watch for our sales and we try to word it similar every year so our "groupies" know that this is our sale! When our sale is done, I take any kids clothing of good quality to our local consignment shop and earn a little extra!

     -A spare change jar: We have our Mickey Mouse jar that we throw all of our spare change in. I also add rebates (yep, send in those rebates!), and a percentage of babysitting money that I may earn.

 

 

These may sound time consuming, the yard sale items and aluminum cans do take some spare room however, once you designate spots for these things you will be amazed at how much money you can earn. Good luck & if you have any tips please feel free to leave comments. I am always looking for tips to help save our way to Mickey Mouse!