Category: Movies and TV

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My Favorite Snack Craving

Everyone has a “go to” snack. Its the food – even if junk food – that you grab when you are just a bit hungry and don’t feel like cooking a whole meal. You want something to munch on while watching TV or working on the computer, or you’ve already had dinner and you just want something crunchy or salty or sweet to put a smile on your face before going to bed.

My favorite snack is a scoop of hummus with some dried pita chips with sea salt. The hummus has some mild spices and a scattering of pine nuts. I buy the big plastic container of hummus for only about $5 at Sam’s Club and a huge bag of dried pita chips with sea salt for only about $4, also at Sam’s. If I buy the same things at the local grocery store I end up paying the same money but getting containers with only about half of the servings. So it makes more sense to go to Sam’s and stock up.

If I don’t want hummus, I usually crave something sweet, like a cookie or a slice of pie. Lately I have been craving cakes, but I think I will try cake pops instead of a full size cake. I like the smaller serving size of a cake pop and I don’t need as much self control on portion size if I just grab a cake pop and don’t allow myself a second.

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What Would You Do If Today Was Your Last Day?

What would you do if today was your last day to live on the earth? Would you spend all of your money on frivolous things? Would you eat high calorie food and have have seconds and thirds and not care? Would you want to be all alone to meditate in your last moments alive? Who wold you want to spend your last moments of your life with? What would your last words be and who would you say them to?

If today is your last day how are you spending it? I’m spending today with my family. We’re having a family game night and movie night. We’re making homemade pizza and everyone is decorating their own pizzas and then we’re going to play a few board games. Finally we’ll finish up the night with a movie and some popcorn followed by nice warm mugs of hot cocoa.

I love spending time with my family, and if today really is my last day I’ll be happy to be spending it with those I love and hold most dear. What are your plans for the day today? Who are you spending it with?

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Family Movie Night Starring Tinkerbell

Woo hoo! We made it through the week. I can’t believe it’s Friday! I’m looking forward to having a nice relaxing weekend at home with the family. I noticed that the new Tinkerbell movie is on television. I added it to our queue while I ate my lunch today. I think we’ll do a family movie night tonight when I get home.

I’ve been wanting to see this movie ever since I found out that it was coming out. I found out by stumbling across videos on YouTube one day and then got hooked. I’m a huge Tinkerbell fan. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m a big kid at heart.

Anyway, family movie night tonight. I think it would be fun to order pizza and make banana splits. I’ll have to run by the grocery store really quick on my way home to get some ice cream and bananas but I think I can do it and still get home at a reasonable time.

What are your plans for the weekend? Do you have anything fun planned or are you just going to take it one day at a time and see what life brings your way? I’ll love to be inspired for plans next week. Share away.

 

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The Wizard of Oz, An Old Favorite

The Wizard Of Oz is a classic in my book. I remember watching it on television as a child with my parents in our living room. I thought it was completely amazing when I saw Dorothy walk out of her house into Oz when it was all in color. It seemed like magic to me.

I loved the Lollipop Kids too! I thought they were adorable and I asked my mom if I could visit them and play at their house. I saw their giant lollipops and fell in love.

The movie had its scary parts too. The flying monkeys creeped me out. I hid my face in my daddy’s chest and asked when they disappeared. I wasn’t only afraid of the monkeys; the talking trees also gave me the heebie jeebies. I could handle talking scarecrows but when the trees started talking I thought they were nuts.

Every time I see this movie on television now, I always stop changing the channel and enjoy the rest of the movie. It’s a wonderful movie to share with your family.

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How I Plan to Save Money This Year

This year I really need to work on saving some money.   I started using a new website to track all of my spending.  It shows me exactly where all of our money is going.  I was a little shocked to see how much money we really spend going out to eat or on fast food.  I’m setting a budget for everything.  I know we can’t cut everything off cold turkey so I’m going to have us do a step down method for our spending habits.

Right now we spend about $500 a month of groceries.  I would like to get that down closer to $300 or less but I know we need to work towards that.  To start I’m setting  a budget of $400 a month or roughly $100 a week on groceries.  I think we can manage to cut back by $25 a week to start with easily, especially if I really work to use up what we have in our pantry.  The following month I’ll move it to $75 a week.  If we do really well with that I might even be able to move it down a little further but I’m not going to go crazy.

We’re taking a closer look at television and cable services along with movie rentals.  We purchased a few pay per view movies on demand this month.  This is really silly considering we pay almost $20 a month for Netflix, we just need to send back our current DVD  to get the next one on our list.  My husband and I are thinking about turning off our cable television because just about everything we watch is available online and we do have Netflix.  We pay about $100 a month for cable so that’s more money we could save every month.

I know groceries and entertainment aren’t the only way we can save but at least it’s a start.  I was able to easily identify these ways to save and will do some digging into other ways to save that I might not be soo obvious to me.

 

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Commercial Volume is Too Loud

Watching live television is starting to drive me nuts.  I can’t stand how the volume of the commercials raises considerably during the commercial breaks.   I find it insulting!  I can’t fast forward through them on live television so I watch them or am forced to mute them.  Sometimes it’s soo loud it hurts my ears.  It’s especially annoying at night when the kids are sleeping and the volume blares through the roof on a commercial break.

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BIG Screen

We finally went out and got a fancy new big screen tv.  It’s an HDTV even has 3D.  I’ve never seen a tv with soo many ports on it to plug in various items.  I swear this thing could run our house it is soo darn high tech.  My husband is totally infatuated with the thing.  I bet there will be a permanent indent in the couch where he sits now.  I just hope he is willing to share with the rest of us.  He wanted to watch the big games and fights on it so we decided we could splurge a little since I made a little extra money with some of the junk I sold.  I feel like we finally belong in the 21st century now.

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Happy Endings

Have you ever noticed that all the children’s movies have happy endings? They seem to have a formula of introducing the main characters, then bringing in a bad guy, the heroes setting out to save the day, and the good guy gets the girl.

I don’t know if this is because people think children need to be protected from realities or if they are just an easy formula to write into a script. So many of the really old children’s shows were straight forward about who was bad and why. The hero always swooped in and with a few struggles, overcomes the bad guys. The people who suffer deserve it. True love always wins.

I wish real life was that easy.

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Kid Songs on VHS

We went to a yard sale last weekend and came across a bunch of rally nice kids toys and some old VHS tapes with kids shows and kids songs on them.

The toys were old wooden puzzles and a few My Little Pony dolls for only 50 cents each. The puzzles cost almost ten dollars brand new, so I grabbed up 6 of them like they were gold.

They only wanted 25 cents for each tape! I couldn’t believe it! I know everyone is using DVDs now, but the kids can play with an old VCR that we keep in the living room and I don’t have to worry about them scratching the expensive DVDs.

All together, it was a great day for bargains and we have some new things to do on the next rainy day.

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Summer Movies

There are so many movies out this summer that are made for kids. If I had little boys, I could take them to a different movie at the theater every week and they would have a great time!

But, I have a little girl and she is not old enough to appreciate most of the movies yet. We’ll have to wait a few more years. In the meantime, I know the good ones will come out on DVD and I can add them to her library of movies on special occasions.