We tried to make Turkey Oreos, but had one problem. . .
I couldn't find any candy corn ANYWHERE!
I attempted to use a substitute. . . 
It didn't look as good, but seemed to work.
Until they got ninja-ed.
Yep, they started to lose their wings.
I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of the wing-less Turkey Oreos. :)
Namaste.
Yeager-bomb seems to have lots of beds around our house.
Some cause issues for my housekeeping skills.
Namaste.
I have realized how much an ugly piece in our house makes me VERY happy!
"What is it?" you ask.
The wood burning stove in our basement!
Previously, we barely used the stove. . .
Mainly because the wood from the two trees we cut down in the summer of 2009 needed to season. And to be honest, I didn't think that we got much heat from it.
This year, though, I wanted to use it more in an attempt to keep our electric bill down. I DO NOT want $400 electric bills this winter!!! Yes, that is the frugal side of me. . .
After a night of being cold despite burning wood (and some smoky moments in our basement), MBB started investigating whether we had a bird's nest blocking our chimney or if there was anything else deciding that the smoke was our guest and needed to stick around.
What he found was a huge need for us to replace the fireplace's piping (safety is pretty important when it comes to fire!) and clean out as much of the fireplace / chimney as possible.
It was an all day affair and you wouldn't believe some of the stuff that we found when we pulled the stove out of the chimney.
Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of OB or MBB inside the chimney. . . :(
MBB did figure out during his search for bird's nests that our chimney was built in thirds. . .
We have one wood burning stove and one fireplace in the living room that does not have a stove.
Threeeeeeeeee???
He also found a hole in the chimney in my craft room (not in a fireplace area!!!) that was letting in LOTS of cold air.
Yep, we are burning wood to warm the house and there is a hole letting cold air in!
A cap on the hole stopped the cold air, the pipes were replaced and suddenly, there was smoke coming out of our chimney. . .Success!
I'm realizing that this post is getting really long, so I'll shorten the story very quickly to say that later that night, I found another hole inside the living room chimney (remember the THREE chimney sections???). We quickly got that one covered to and you wouldn't believe how WARM our house has become from using the wood burning stove!
You might have noticed that the title of this post was "Making US Happy", but I was talking about our stove making ME happy.
Well, there is a new toy in our house that has made MBB happy as he doesn't have to get as many blisters on his hands while chopping big logs into small logs.
This is the non-frugal side of us coming out. . .We bought it brand new, BUT with a coupon!! lol
Introducing our log splitter.
The only bad thing. . .The logs have to be pretty short to fit in it. :(
Namaste.
You are probably expecting a cake that I "tried" to make or paid to have baked. . .
Nope! :)
Some friends of MBB's had a baby very soon after our wedding and we wanted to get them something. I don't like doing "what everyone else does", so I searched for something different that was quick and easy (no time to make a baby quilt right now!).
I saw this great idea of making a baby cake out of diapers and using some baby stuff as decoration.
I think it turned out okay for my first try, though I will admit that using small diapers was a bit much for only two hands!
Goodbye Oscar - you will be missed!
