The Combo Pack

This post is buy-one-get-one-free! You're welcome.

Easter Recap
We were blessed with a wonderful Easter Sunday thanks to great weather, awesome new friends, and a pretty little girl who loved to hunt eggs.  Our Holy Week and Easter Triduum were less than stellar, due in large part to the fact that we spent almost every night butchering an animal. :::wait-what?? You butchered an animal for Holy Week??::: Oh yes we did, read on.

Back to Easter. The three of us were able to sit together for the entire 8:00 am Mass. Hannah didn't need to be taken to the back (which was good because there wasn't any room back there anyway). The strap of my dress broke in the middle of the homily but the top managed to stay up. No one was flashed on my way to Communion.

We ate breakfast at a cute cafe we've been eyeing and enjoyed every bite of our sweet potato pancakes and very berry crepes. Hannah enjoyed her banana and playing with the styrofoam cup full of coffee creamer.

Naptime was spent cooking like a madwoman. I made a delicious salsa with purple hull peas and one of my favorite desserts: chocolate coconut candy bars. Of the 19 people we celebrated with, four can't have dairy, one can't have gluten, and three can't have sugar. So I also slaved away at making not one, but two, carrot cakes. One gluten-free and one regular. Both sugar and dairy free. And they both failed miserably and I left them at home.

After nap our Rosie had her first Easter egg hunt.

Two books for for taking to Mass, chalk, stickers, a little bunny from her grandparents, and.....a toothbrush. Guess which one was her favorite?

A yard, a toddler, a sweet husband to share it with. It's too much.

"I just can't hold in my excitement!"

No, this wasn't the feature of Southern Living. It was just our friend's back porch. And it was even better.

Yum!

Pretty in pink. And oh so big.

Happy Easter! Alleluia!

Why I Love My Husband

Ted is a do-it-yourself kinda guy. Actually, he takes do-it-yourself to a whole 'nother level. Combine that with the fact that we are incredible tight wads and you get some pretty interesting results. Take, for example, our TV antenna. Why pay 12 dollars for something you can make for four? Am I right? And it looks so nice hanging in our front window. I bet our neighbors think it's welcoming and trendy.

He also built some giant raised beds for the garden we're planting. Obviously a do-it-yourself project, but Ted found a way to throw in some cheapness. He got all the boards completely free from craigslist. He is proof that if you look hard enough and have some patience, you can saved hundreds of dollars. Dollars we don't have to spend for stuff we really need. So free garden beds! Picture coming soon.

And we needed a hose, obviously. So he found one of those on craiglist too. For ten bucks. Ridiculous? Nope-he saved 20!

AND he found me a free bike helmet. I traded mine with a friend for some artwork when I wasn't able to ride because Hannah was so young. (Sorry Linds!) But now we're getting back into biking and I needed a helmet. So I met some random girl at the farmer's market last week and took her brand-new-never-even-opened helmet off her hands. Sweet.

But this past week, he kicked Cheapo's Guide to Do-it-Yourself up a notch. We bought a half pig and a quarter cow from two local farmers. We're so sick of paying ridiculous prices for meat that's filled with all kinds of nasty-this seems so much better. (First we needed a deep freeze....which he got off craigslist for 85% off retail.) Then we decided to process the meat ourselves to save the cost of paying a butcher. The animals were killed and hung at the butcher-we just cut and packaged the meat. We started with the pig on the Monday of Holy Week.

Since we actually split the whole pig with some friends, Ted and Daniel cut it up together. It was actually kind of fun. They were both trained in the art of pig butchering...from some guy on You Tube.

Who doesn't want 20 pounds of bacon?

Nothing a hack saw couldn't take care of.

It was a wonderful idea. No major hiccups. Delicious pork. Self-cured bacon. An Easter ham. No hormones, steriods, antibiotics, nitrates, or anything else other than good meat. Hundreds of dollars in savings.

Then, due to poor planning on my part, the cow came on Holy Thursday. So no, we didn't make it to any Triduum services. We cut up cow. For hours. For days. The cow's live weight was several hundred pounds more then expected.  We were up to our ears in beef and both felt like crying just a few hours in realizing what we had gotten ourselves into. It was not fun. No pictures were taken. It was a Holy Week miracle that we didn't kill each other.

Moral of this Why I Love My Husband story: Do-it-yourself saves lots of money. Craigslist is good. Never pay your butcher to process your pig. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS pay your butcher to process your cow!