There's a new cupcake in town...watch out everyone!

We welcomed a new bakery to Memphis this afternoon.

Gigi's Cupcakes

Here is the link to her website: http://www.gigiscupcakesusa.com/

The kids and I stopped by today for their "soft opening" mainly to score free cupcakes, who can turn down free cupcakes. After school we drove over to their new, sweet little store on Poplar Avenue close to Perkins. The cupcakes are $3 a piece, a little pricey but when you see the size of these decadent concoctions the cost just melts away.

My children were only able to eat 1/4 of their cupcake and the rest got saved in a Tupperware container for tomorrow. I ate half of mine and that was plenty of a sugar high for me. These could easy be shared between two people and would make a great after dinner dessert spot for a date-night.

3 Month photo shoot of Baby L

Look at this little girl, boy has she grown!

My personal assistant, who is great at making her smile!

Can you believe it has been three months since sweet Baby L was born. I went down to her house yesterday and took some updated photos.

How cute are those feet and perfect for Valentine Day, don't ya think?!?

Baby L and her Mommy

All images are property of CullenKidsMum and are copyrighted and can not be copied or used in any way.

Organizing stock pantry: Before and after pictures

I wanted to share a few pictures from this weekend's organizing.

This is the stock items I keep in the back closest:

Before After

This is the one cabinet in the kitchen I have for food:

Cleaning out

After

Spring Cleaning.........why not?

The weather outside is yucky and beautiful Spring weather is at least 3 months away and that is if the ground hog doesn't see his shadow in a few weeks. What better time than now to dive into my unorganized mess. I will say if you come over to my house it is very neat, tidy and most drawers are very organized, BUT dig just a little deeper and you will find the mess that lies beneath.

I think everyone, even the tidiest of people we know, have messy messes. For the most part my messes are small piles of magazines, coupons and weekly ad. I love to coupon and it doesn't always get filed away every week so the piles start growing. My husband, very lovingly, calls them 'Gypsy piles' because quite frankly they migrate around our home until they are gone through and filed away.

Another organizing task is the stock pantry. I didn't really see the benefit of 'stockpiling' large amounts of food items until about a year ago. I try and stock atleast a years worth of certain foods especially if they will be free after coupons or almost free. For example: dried pasta, rice, cake mixes, cereal, and juice. All of these items have a long shelf life, sometimes two years and can easy be stored and used for in your stock pantry.

Back to organizing, this weekend I started organizing my pantry/kitchen stock. I have very good intentions of organizing the pantry at the end of every month so older items don't get pushed to the back and forgotten about until after they have expired. I have a pretty good system to organize my food items. I keep a count right on the boxes or cans. I label them with 1/10 (which means that is 1 of 10 cans I have in my stock) I also date my items and pull the earliest expiring items up front so I use them first.

Here is an example of how I date and number my pantry stock:
I know we are all tired when we get home from a hard days work but pick a small drawer or cupboard in your kitchen and follow this simple plan:

1. Empty the drawer or cupboard completely

2. Check dates on everything and through out expired food, also make a donate bag of unexpired items you would like to bring to your local food pantry.

3. Wipe the drawer or cupboard and scrub any dirty spots

4. I organize items by likes:

a. Canned vegs. and canned fruits

b. Quick canned meals for my husband: Soup, canned pastas (I sure don't want him 'rearranging' looking for something after I take the time to organize it my way~)

c. Canned tomatoes, cooking soups, broth

d. Baking supplies

5. Wipe all cans and boxes (you would be surprised how may dirty things are on the outside of your canned green beans) I use Clorox anywhere spray, before I ever put a can or box in my stock pantry I wipe it down so it is clean going in. You will be shocked at how dirty your kitchen towel will be after you wipe everything down.

Note: I also wipe every container that goes into my refrigerator. You will see a huge improvement on how clean your shelves and frig. are if you just make that little extra step and wipe everything clean before you put it away.

6. Now place everything back in. Place the items you use the most at the easiest place in your drawer or cupboard. I place my canned vegs./fruit on the bottom shelf and my husband's 'quick meals' next to it. Next I work my way up to my cooking soups, canned tomatoes and broths, next I replace all the baking items and the top shelf is for the overflow of whatever I have stocked lately.

Every one's needs are different so it may take a few unpacks and reloading of the shelves to decided what arrangement works for you.

My quick and easy chili recipe

I love homemade soups, stews and chili. I decided to cook up some chili last weekend because it has been so cold and I have been so cold I wanted something that would warm me from the inside out! I picked chili to make. I made up the recipe 5 or 6 years ago and it is so easy with super easy ingredients.
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NOTE: You can cook dried beans in a crock pot the day before to save some money. I already had the canned beans in my stock pantry from a sale this past Fall. Canned beans are a great staple for your stock pantry. You can find them on sale for as low as .50 cents a can certain times of the year. Fall is a great time because many stores run winter food items on sale.

2 Cans Kidney Bean (rinsed)
2 Cans Pinto Beans (rinsed)
3 to 4 lbs of Ground Beef (no need for anything pricey, the cheap stuff works great)

1 medium yellow onion minced

Tbls spoon olive oil
1 large can 16oz diced tomatoes (I use Muir Glen Organic tomatoes)
4 8oz cans Hunt Tomato sauce
1 can tomato paste
2 packages of Chili seasoning
1 tsp fresh cracked pepper

Brown ground beef and break up any large chucks. Meanwhile, sweat the onions down in the olive oil but do not brown just cook until translucent. Add in all the canned tomatoes and one to two cans of water. Add the two packages of seasoning and pepper. Get that simmering while the ground beef finishes cooking in the other pan. Rinse & drain ground beef and add to tomato/chili mixture. Let simmer for an hour. Serves 12-15

Top with grated sharp cheddar cheese and a dollop of sour cream. We like to serve this with corn chips or homemade croutons.

Cost per serving: .66 cents (includes cost of corn chips)

Coffee, spaghetti & a movie! No really, I'm not kidding~

Coffee again, so soon? Yep just Saturday it was Starbucks at Kroger and now Dunkin Donuts at Target. In Target's ad this week they are running a promo if you buy 3 bags of DD coffee you get a $5 Target Gift Card. Not a bad deal and the DD coffee is marked down to $6.00 a bag. Walgreens has it priced at $8.98 a bag, craziness.

At http://www.coupons.com/ there are $1.00 off coupons for DD coffee. So each bag is down to $5 each, pretty good in my book and you get the $5GC to go shop again at a Target near you~

Also Classico my very favorite premade tomato sauce is marked down to $1.84 a jar at Target this week. Folks this is as close as you can get to homemade in my book. There are coupons $1.00 of two jars here: http://www.classico.com/ . BUT wait there are coupons stuck to the side of the jars that say: "Buy two jars of Classico Tomato Sauce get FREE pasta ($1.99 or less)" Be still my heart! Cheap sauce and free pasta to go with it, what a beautiful marriage of coupons to combine in one transaction.

The Healthy Harvest Ronzoni Whole Wheat Pasta was on price cut to $1.30, PERFECT. Grabbed two of those and the light bulb went off, that is the pasta I needed to complete a movie rebate for Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs I just bought the week before.

This day couldn't be better.

Patty Cake Patty Cake, bake me a cake~

The joys of cooking are even more joyful when one of your children loves it just as much if not more than you.

My sweet daughter loves to cook, she loves to look at cookbook, she loves to watch the food network and she loves to compete in cooking contest. Last year was the first year she was old enough to start competing in our local Mid-South Fair and she kicked butt.

Her Gammie Anne got her an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas and she loves being able to create taste treats. We went to price the EBO mixes at Target and about died when we saw they were $5.44 each! I mean really, are you kidding me, that is more than a regular Betty Crocker cake mix. I was not going to be defeated by this pricey obstacle so I decided we could (1) make our own recipe for mixes or (2) just use a Jiffy cake mix, Martha White muffin mix or a Betty Crocker cookie mix. And guess what the Betty Crocker pouch mixes work great! You get exactly 8 cookies out of the mix using the EBO cake pan.

My daughter served them last night with warm Carmel sauce drizzled over them and they were Yummo!!!!!

We also found a few recipes on line for making our own mixes and some that make a batch for 12 mixes and will keep of 6 months. Just do a google search for Easy Bake Oven Homemade recipes and you will find the.

Bon Appetit

I love deals on coffee, don't you?

Ok, I have only been a coffee drinker for the last few years, well almost 4 to be exact.

Insert a crazy, almost 4 year old here :

Yes, the one that is preparing to leap off the tree stump.

Anyway my husband has always been a coffee drinker and his influence has finally won me over, for the most part. I don't drink coffee ever day, maybe 3 days a week but it does help when my son decides to be a night owl like last night. We put him in bed at 8:00pm, only after five potty breaks, some water and finding a hot wheel under his bed did he settle down at 11:30pm. And he was up like clockwork at 6:15am.

Who wants a cup of coffee with me?



I was at Kroger this morning and my last stop is the clearance aisle and there they were Starbucks coffee, and I am thinking to myself, how much can they really discount that stuff? It sales for $8.99 a bag, way to steep for me to fork out.

They were marked $4.49 and I just happen to have $1.50 coupons so I scored two bags for $3.00 each. Great buy for great coffee. And on top of that they do not expire until June 2010 and each have a Free coffee coupon attached to them!

Ahhhhhhhh the glorious Target Toy Clearance sale is upon us....

What a beautiful month for Christmas shopping. And how I ever went without it for such a long time. I mean really the last thing on any ones mind in January is buying more toys for the kids right! Who in their right mind could even wrap their head around such an absurd thing.

We just spent how much on those kids and most of those Christmas toys are thrown in the closet or under the bed by now, right?

Two years ago I found a fabulous website that had the answer to my long, long wish list. The tip top of that wish list being how to save like a crazy woman and spend as little out of pocket on the best groceries, bath and body, toys and whatever else I could find for my family.

This year Target's toy sale has begun most items are 30% to 50% off right now. But there are a few items already 75% off starting today. Of course our first and possibly only snow for this year decides to fall today and my husband banned me from going to Target to scope out what treasures I could find. About 10 minutes after he left he called and said I could GO!!!!!! I got the kids dressed and out the door in 15 minutes. Called my mom and told her to meet us there.

We started at the newest Target and yes they had lots for 50% off but the savy shopper that I am I really wanted to hold out until 75%. There were a few items I didn't want to chance missing out on so I decided to go ahead and purchase them and hope they have them next week 75% off and I can just buy those and return the 50% off items (Make sense???)

I got two of the Wow Wee Sleeping Beagle Puppies for 50% off, I would love to score these at 75% but I really wanted these for both children and didn't want to miss out on them next week, because there is no way I would ever pay full retail for them. So, so cute but so, so pricey.

Target also has the Tag Reader Books on sale for 9.99 this week and I have lots of $5.00 coupons I got off the Wendy's Kid's Meal bags a few month back, they do not expire until 2/9/2010 and I have used them for every book I have bought. I was able to get the Tag Reader regular price 49.99 for 19.99 back in November. I priced matched the game with Aldi's ad ($39.99) and had a $10 Target coupon and a $10 manufacturer coupon (which you can use together at target) to use. The way I figure it, I have saved well over $80.00 on this GREAT reading system and books.

The best deal today was the Our Generation Kitchen Set regular price 59.99. I found it at the first target for 50% off still too high of me but at the second Target I found it for 75%, that's right $14.98 for the great set and now I have one of my daughter big Christmas items already for this year Santa stash.

A great tip for those of us that have to bring our kids along. I told my daughter that I was going to help Santa out this year and ship him some toys to bring to her. She thought it was a great idea and so sweet of me to be such a good shopper and help Santa save some money~ Love it!

Besides not many kids will remember 11 months from now that those great clearance items were even bought~

Bring on the new year~

Where O Where did the last 10 years go????

Ten years ago I was:
Enjoying being married to my husband for two year
Living in Midtown Memphis in a small studio apartment, midtown being the meca of art and cool
Enjoying photography and working in that field
Going to art opening and sipping on wine
Graduation from college (Oh wait that was 1999) LOL

Thinking how much I really enjoyed being an adult, that is all I ever wanted to be, an adult, living in my very own place doing whatever I wanted, eating whatever I wanted, living my life. I loved pretending when I was a kid that my room in my parent's house was an apartment and I lived in a building with other people and I wanted nothing more than to decorate and design my personal space, to etch out my place in this world.

Ten years later:
Married to the same man 12 years later (not many folks can say that)
Add in two kids, one girl, one boy (let the craziness of motherhood begin) Funny because I never saw myself having kids.
Work for my family and enjoying photography as a hobby
Living in East Memphis in my own home (but on the other side of the rail road tracks) so pretty in pink don't ya think~
Can't remember the last art opening I attending (the man child might break something)

All in all I am very happy but very busy and it isn't my sechedule making me busy it is everyone elses. I really don't mind but I sure would like a little time to myself.

Maybe this year will be the year for change, heart change. Reconnections to what has been lost along the way, finding where we left ourselves in the dust of that speeding truck...