Happily Blended Blog | Positive Lifestyle | NH Mom Blog

Happy 3rd Birthday AJ

Published on August 13, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, Featured

Today is a very special day, it is my middle born child’s birthday. Mister AJ is three years old today and oh how he has grown from the baby who drove me to tears nightly to a young boy who makes me smile and laugh more often than cry. My sweet AJ is certainly going to be one of two things in school:

The trouble maker having us in the principals office daily.
The comedian who makes the class laugh out loud.

No matter what direction my sweet AJ goes in he will know that Mommy and Daddy love him unconditionally because that is how parents are. Two years ago my husband adopted AJ legally on paper, three years ago my husband (then boyfriend) was by my side to “meet” and fall in love with AJ the day he was born.

2 Months Old

AJ you are a very loved little boy for you have a mother who couldn’t imagine life without you and a father who chose to be your Daddy. You have two siblings one who is not always so nice but she means well and just tries to tell you what to do because she loves you and wishes to guide you in the right direction. A baby brother who looks up to you and loves copying all your silly dinosaur and monster noises.

MVC-850F

AJ you truly are a joy to have around, you are just so caring, giving and kind. I used to see a lot of anger in your eyes but everyday I see more laughter, happiness and the anger is slowly disappearing. I still hope we can find out why you have trouble sleeping because I fear it will only decrease your ability to learn faster and be active but I do love you for who you are .. I love you my son because you are the best you can be and THAT my sweet AJ is all a Mommy and Daddy could ask for.

Happy Birthday My sweet AJ you are one year “bigger” as you told me in your own words! May you have the best day today because today is YOUR day.

Tags: Birthdays, family, Happy Birthday, holidays, home, Kids and Teens, Mommy and Daddy, parenting

5 Comments

WW: Once a Baby Now Turning 3

Published on August 12, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, Memes, wordless wednesday

AJ at 2 months of age:

2 Months Old

AJ at 3 months of age:

AJ in July 2009:

Tags: boys, challening, cute photos, family, fun, happy, parenting, three year old, wordless wednesday

12 Comments

Families Trying To Cut Costs

Published on August 12, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, Featured, Saving Money

Image by kimberlyfaye via Flickr

As the economy hits more and more families and businesses start laying off employees or even worse firing more employees every family in the world is looking for ways to cut costs. As a person who hasn’t really ever been a “big spender” I have been finding it hard to figure out where I can cut my already low cost life.

First I called Comcast because I do need the phone in our house which is VOIP and very affordable compared to other phone services and I do wish to have my local news stations as well as PBS Sprout (since I am on the Band Of Bloggers team). Of course I need to have the internet since that is how I make my income and am able to interact with adults, without the socializing I get to do online with adults my life would be all about my husband part time and my children full time. Every adult needs that adult interaction some how – the internet is how I get mine. Long story shorter, I was able to get my monthly bill with Comcast down from near $200 a month to just slightly over $100 a month and now that’s what I can say is a savings and a bit more affordable.

My husband and I were smart about our car situation because we have two 1995 vehicles that do not have any payments, we own them out right. My husband and I had to drive two hours for both our vehicles but we were able to pay cash in hand and own them without any car payments which is worth the two hour drive each way for two vehicles!

Next we have car insurance, an electric bill, mortgage and of course home owners insurance. None of those bills are really negotiable and so I moved on to our grocery bill.

I am famous for going daily to buy dinner for the night and when I do that I am too lazy to drive 20 minutes to Walmart or Market Basket in the next town over to get my dinner, rather I go downtown to McDonald’s (YUCK) or our local grocery store. This “local grocery store” is not always so affordable, they are nearly $1 more on any item I purchase and so it was easy to go spend $60 on items needed and one meal.

My mission to start cutting costs must be focused on ways to save money on groceries. I am not writing this to tell you I am becoming a frugal blogger, because I have no clue how to really be frugal but I am telling you that I want to share my journey to cut my grocery bill down a bit while still being able to fill my cabinets with healthy food choices.

I was talking on Twitter the other day about how I spent $137 this week on groceries for five and I had a huge response. One person asked if I have teens and that if I do she was coming over to “study”. Another mentioned she started meal planning and that has really worked for her. Well as I got to tweeting with this person who is known as @ashryel on twitter and has her own blog I found out that she started meal planning after watching the Food Network and although sticking to the “menu” is hard she has done well saving money with this “Menu Planning” idea.

I have invited @ashryel to guest blog for Happily Blended about her personal story because I am interested to hear more about how she manages to do meal planning and any other tips/advice she can share. I am not certain what day she will guest blog but I can not wait to learn from Ashlee.

Tags: Comcast, Food Network, Grocery store, home, Home insurance, Homemaking, McDonald, twitter, Vehicle insurance, Wal-Mart

9 Comments

Review: Busy Body Book

Published on August 11, 2009 by brandyellen in Product Reviews, Work At Home Support

I recently received a Busy Body Book for review. As a work at home professional who enjoys trying to find ways to stay organized with both family and running a business I am always on the look out for items that can help me keep attract of all items for family and business in one place. The Busy Body Book is a great way to get organized when you are a busy mommy or work at home professional.

The Busy Body Book has some great features, some I have enjoyed are:

Column for each family member to organize their schedules.
Columns for meal planning (something I am working on), notes, personal goals and more.
Removable shopping lists.
Months at a glance, helps planning for holiday events around a busy business schedule.

The Busy Body Book has many other features as well as other products such as a Busy Body Undated Weekly Grid Pad that you can place on the fridge to organize family and work events week by week. So many great organizational tools in one place.

As a mom I love being organized but find it hard to keep three kids and a husband on the same schedule every day. As a business owner I try to remain close to my clients and ensure i know their schedule as well as my own. The Busy Body Book has allowed me to better organize my personal and business life in one place.

Tags: Books, business, family, home office, Publications, shopping, Small business, Work at Home Parents

2 Comments

Project Giving Back 2009 Forms Ready

Published on August 11, 2009 by brandyellen in children, Featured, giving back

As stated I would update when I had all the forms ready for donating items, funds and nominating families. Please complete the appropriate form below if you are interested in donating a gift, money or nominating a NH family or NH organization that you feel could use some assistance this holiday season with gifts for children.

Donate a Gift – click here and complete the form.

Donate Money – click here and complete form.

Nominate a NH family or Organization – click here and complete the form.

Thank you for reading this and I hope we can all work together in one way or another to make a child smile this holiday season! This project will be an annual project hosted by Happily Blended every year in hopes to make the project go USA wide. Please subscribe to Happily Blended by email here or RSS feed here to keep up to date with the latest project giving back updates.

Tags: Child, Children Youth and Family, Donation, family, Free Donations, money, organization, Philanthropy

5 Comments

Family Memories – What A Vacation

Published on August 10, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, children, Featured, parenting

Now I head back into reality this week, so much to do since I took a semi-week off from the Internet world. You probably did see me on Twitter tweeting almost everyday and occasionally I was on Facebook not to mention I had some scheduled blog posts here at Happily Blended and a little bit of client work to do at Brandy Ellen’s Business Solutions, but where you did not see me was celebrating the 9 days of great times with my family which included my husband.

Vacation went by fast but it was fun. My family visited my mother in law on the first Sunday in Milford, MA where we ate a BBQ dinner, YUMMY! I can’t recall exactly what days we did what but one day we went to Maine where we walked around Old Orchard Beach and York Beach. Enjoyed a nice lunch at Surfside by the York Beach, ME area and purchased some buckets for the kids to play on the beach while Mommy tried finding sea shells all by herself. We also spent an afternoon at my Dad’s house where we enjoyed some fresh veggies at his farm stand and a nice swim in the pool with all three kids. Hubby did a cannon ball off the diving board and all the kids screamed with laughter while clapping their hands.

We took the kids to Lincoln, NH where we spent a couple hours at The Whales Tale Waterpark and we are hoping to go up to spend a weekend in that area at a cottage in the next month or so. It was a beautiful area and so much to do! After Whales Tale we took the kids to Friendly’s for dinner where we enjoyed some great food with sundaes for dessert! The kids had fun singing that “I wanna go to Friendly’s” song while we drove there.

I have some video coverage as well as pictures we took, but since we are still unable to find our digital camera Mister AJ hid in our home we used a disposable camera with 27 pictures taken during our day trip in Maine. As soon as I get the videos uploaded to my computer and edited down I will share and I am going to most certainly share some photos. Curious to see how well Miss Ki did taking a few pictures of Justin and I near the ocean – hopefully we have heads in the pictures

Looking forward to another successful week in blogging and tweeting! I am working on an exciting project that I can not wait to unveil to you all as well!!