One Long Month....

Oh my gosh has it really been one whole month since I last blogged?? Sorry things have gotten extremely hectic here on Fairview Avenue. Baby is on its way. She is in the lock down position, and I guess im having contractions but I can't feel any of them yet. Hubby keeps joking we'll be having her on Dec. 25th, I'm determined to not have the baby jesusette.

So here is some decorating i've been doing to keep myself from going insane in the mean time.

Last year we got a fake christmas tree at Walmart the day after Christmas for $50.00. Everyone on the Danforth side was completely against it. The Dupuis's have always had a fake tree, so they were use to it. I love it no mess, no watering, and it is prelit. Plus I can keep it up for as long as I possibly can! T.C.F.H still considers it real and bounces off the side of it and eats ornaments any chance he gets.

Here is my little village. I had it as a kid growing up and my mom and dad passed it on to me and the hubby. I love setting it up!


Here are our stockings hung by the chimney with care. Brynlee even has one up there!

I promise I'll try to blog more... I'm 36 weeks as of yesterday......... so my little one is on her way :)

Doggy Thrift Store Finds

Hubby and I have almost all of our Christmas shopping done! Can you believe it! I figured I would not want to be walking around some crowded stores at 9 mos. pregnant so we figured, why not get a jump on it!

In our travels we stopped at one of my favorite thrift shops.. Retails. All the proceeds go to the humane society and they usually have some great stuff.

Here is what I found:

• Gooseberry Patch Gift Mixes book $1.00. It has some great ideas that I can give this Christmas with my yard sale mugs and plates!
• Cute Metal earrings 1.00
• Brand new never read November Glamour -suppose to be .50 but the woman gave it to me for free!

A Few Last Yard Sales This Season

So hubby and I found two more yard sales to hit up last weekend. (I think we were just trying to get out of raking leaves longer)

The first yard sale we went to was an indoor yard sale to benefit a preschool. They had a ton of stuff that was unmarked and all they asked for were donations. They had a brand new car seat in the packaging! ( I considered buying it but felt bad for how much I would have offered $5.00 $10.00 max) I bought some plug in christmas lights for all of our windows, and a grey maternity cardigan. I got the lights home and NONE of them worked..... well good thing I only paid $2.00 for everything.

The second yard sale had a ton of baby girl stuff. Nice clothing and cute baby stuff. It was $5.00 a bag of clothes so i bought a bag here is some of the clothing I stuffed in my bag....

But our last find at the yard sale was my favorite.....

This cow puppet that moos.... how adorable!

My Hubby's Thrifty Find

So I am super impressed on how i've worn off on my hubby. My hubby found this shelving unit for free outside his work. It is going to go in one of our closets to help us organize (please ignore the mess behind the unit).
Now if only he'd pick the dump for me :)

Thrifty Weekend

I was lucky enough to do some thrifting this weekend. I went to the new store Savers in Portsmouth. Now you southern ladies have told me about savers but i've never been there, nor seen one for that matter. Well one came into a town near us and WAHOOO that is my new favorite! First of all I think the prices are better than Goodwill, ( I love goodwill don't get me wrong) and it is extremely organized. Sorry I didn't take pictures, but I bought a pair of pregnancy jeans for 2.95 and a pregnancy skirt for 2.95. What a deal!

I went to see my family on Sunday, we had a wonderful Sunday dinner! My mom and I made a stop at her local thrift store. I just looovee when thrift stores are open on Sundays :) Here is what I got:

• Ironing board/Iron holder 1.00 brand new
• Home Alone CD .50 (I'm always looking for xmas music to download to hubby's ipod)
• Super comfy shoes that look like they've never been worn 2.00

Total of 3.50... im a big spender!

My Favorite Place

So last Tuesday I had to take some time off to go to the Hospital and have my sugar levels checked for the baby. It was not a fun process, I had to fast (who makes a pregnant woman fast???) and get blood taken every hour on the hour for three hours. I guess I should stop my baking marathons and get my sugars in order.

I rewarded myself with going to my favorite place! THE DUMP!

Here are my great finds

• A hard cover James Patterson book (which my mom had not read, and said was fairly new)
• An adorable hanging heart
• Another basket for Brynlee's room
• 2 egg cups for my mom
• The Secret Life of Bees book
• A small plastic bat (for our halloween costume this year.. I can't tell you it's a surprise!)

Free Free Free

So on Sunday I got all of this stuff for free from Rite Aid... I love Free :)

• Sucrets Cough Drops
• Blistex Lip Balm
• Shea Butter Lip Balm
• Green Giant Frozen Meal
• Pedicare Gentle Vapors plug in
• Utterly Smooth Hand Cream

How I got this for free is. I bought all this stuff with money out of my pocket, then I signed up for Single Check Rebates at Riteaid.com and at the end of the month they'll send me a check for what I bought... Easy as that.

Thrifty Finds

I didn't do a lot of thrifting this weekend. I stopped at my favorite thrift store, they had been having a dollar a bag sale for quite a while so there was not much left. I did find these two brand new halloween dish towels for $.50 a piece.

I had just wiped my hands on them sorry they're wet!

I didn't go yard saling because there were just wayyy to many people out there. The traffic was backed up in every which direction. To all my engineering friends out there, anyway we can design a few roads around our little town to lessen the chaos???

Good Old Country Fair

I just love three day weekends, especially with beautiful fall days attached to them. This weekend was a busy one. We went to the Octoberfest up at Attash Ski Area on Saturday. We had a nice time, it was beautiful out and hubby got to drink some of their delicioius beers. Sunday we went to the Sandwich fair with both the Dupuis and Danforth families. This is the second year we've done this and we had fun!

Here are the men eating their fair goodies. My hubby is on the left, his dad in the middle, and my dad on the end.

This was the 100th year for the Sandwich Fair and I had to laugh at this booth.... I don't know about you ladies but I haven't used a scrunchie since 1985. Maybe this is where my old scrunchies went to live.

The last thing we did was watch the parade

I love the old carriages, and the paper mache person was wicked cool. My favorite parts of the parade were the over the hill climbers club ( I am extremely impressed how inshape all of these old time climbers are) and the float that had a local couple who had gotten married on 10/10/10 (they went as the ball and chain, she has alot to learn :) )

How Do You Save Money?

I consider myself quite a frugal gal. Here is how my hubby and I choose to save money

1. Many articles say to save money you should eat in instead of eating out all the time. Hubby and I love to eat out, but we buy alot of our certificates at restaurant.com a $25.00 gift certificate can cost only 1.75 or we get $50.00 gift certificates for $25.00 off the radio on 50/50 Fridays. We also have been eating in and only having drinks out.
2. I buy 85% of my clothes at the thrift store. I do have the occasional urge to go to the outlets. But overall most of my clothing comes from yard sales and thrift stores.
3. I make my lunch every day. Lunch at school has gotten over $2.50 for a teacher. If I bought lunch everyday I would spend $450 a year
4. I use coupons all the time! I think of a coupon as just money just sitting there.
5. I use the library alot! We rent movies and books for free!

So how do you save money??????

Fall is Here!

Sorry I haven't posted alot lately we've had alot of celebrating to do here on Fairview Ave. First to celebrate was a new baby in our circle of friends. Im so excited for the little guy to be here, he is absolutely adorable! Second to celebrate was hubby's 31st birthday this week, we enjoyed dinner, and spending time with families. And last but not least to celebrate is my parent's 35th wedding anniversary TODAY! Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

So i've been doing some Halloween decorating around here. All of my decorations were either given to me, found at the dump, or on extreme clearance

The wreath on the right hangs from our bathroom door and was $2.00 on clearance at Christmas Tree Shop last year. I found the metal web with the spider at the dump and decorated it with my free spider webbing. Last summer Shaw's had a free cart of Halloween decorations they couldn't sell. Most of it was just crap, but I did find 5 packages of free spider webbing. I may add it to my wreath.

My mom made the black cat hooked hanging on the left. It is absolutely adorable. I snagged it a few years ago as I was walking out her door. On the right is our front door and how it is decorated. Don't mind the cornstalks they've been hit by rain, but the cute little trick or treat sign was $1.00 at Christmas Tree Shop.

Im off to go digest my fair food from the Fryeburg Fair. I hate to admit it but I couldn't help but try the deep fried cheesecake... oh my god so good, but definitely heart attack material!

Oh the mall...

So I am definitely not a huge fan of the mall, but hubby and I had a few coupons to stores we dont have here, so we headed over to the portland mall on Sat. for an afternoon. We were trampled by droves of 16 year old girls, giggling and texting. I got a little overwhelmed with the prices of some of the clothing.

I had to laugh, my favorite parts of the day were:

• Enjoying our free hamburger at Ruby Tuesday (a coupon sent to your email during the month of your birthday when you sign up on their website).
• Spending my $10 gift certificate from Victoria Secret on their super soft t-shirts. When you have an angels credit card(which I never use!) they send you a $10 gift certificate on your birthay. I love that they wrap everything in ridiculous amounts of pink tissue paper. Immediately when I leave the store I take it out and fold all of it, and reuse it in gifts. I haven't bought tissue paper in a few years because I do that with every store that uses it.
• AND... Purusing pottery barn for decorating ideas, and scooping up their free magazines to look through.

Sad when I can even make the mall look thrifty :)

Back to Nature and Dump Finds

This was going to be a relaxing weekend for the hubby and I. We had no definite plans and we were excited to just spend time together. Our friends were out of town so we babysat their dog Abbey. We figured why not take the dogs around Pudding Pond. Pudding Pond is approx. a two mile nature walk around a pond, and is a great trail to let the dogs loose and enjoy the scenery.This is how the crew looked before our walk.
Our walk was going quite well, the dogs were running, and enjoying each other and hubby and I were chatting away... WELL.... the dogs found ran ahead of us and ran right through a ground nest of hornets, all of a sudden hundreds of hornets were swarming hubby and I. The dogs had at least 20-30 on them. We all started running, I was screaming for the dogs to go in the river, hubby was yelling at me to not exert myself and hurt the baby. WHAT A MESS. I've never been a nature girl and now I know why, I think hubby and I will stick to walking our poochies in the neighborhood from now on. I got stung once on the stomach and hubby a couple of times on the hand and neck.The poor dogs were covered. So being an emotional pregnant woman i started bawling about the dogs and hornets and hubby. I bawled the whole 1omin drive home from the trail.

Thankfully my Saturday started off with some great thrifty dump finds.
(Don't mind the messy house in the background)

Here is my loot:

Graco booster seat in great condition. Looks brand new and retails for $24.99 at Toys R. US

Wreath

Black plastic cauldron-great for halloween decorating

2 glass snowmen with tea light holders. One of them is broken so it is
headed back to the dump.

Plastic green tub-great to put my drinks in for our summer bbqs.

Not pictured-new baby book never used.

This is my favorite piece and it deserves a picture of its own

Isn't it so cute?? It is a shutter with a metal star hanging on it. It's from foreside company store, which is a store out of Gorham, Maine. It still has its' $28.00 price tag on it.

Craft Project From Hell

So I was reading my free Women's Day Magazine this weekend and saw some adorable halloween decorations to make. They were super cute so I ran out bought 2 styrafoam balls, and some candy corn. I thought this will be a breeze. WELLLL it was not a breeze, here is the finished project of ONE of them on my mantel. One ball took me an hour and a half.

After I had hot glued the candy corn on they started to randomly fall off. So after some crisis control I made it work. Now hubby and I are sitting in the living room and every few hours one will bounce off onto the rug. Bailey is sitting under it he thinks it's the greatest thing ever almost like it's raining candy corn. So when I find another hour and a half of my life to waste i'll make another one! I guess Martha Stewart will never have to worry about me taking her job! Sorry for the bad angle of my picture I was too lazy to get off the couch. A picture of my fallish theme mantel.

Dump Finds

Wahoo hubby and I made it to the dump today and let me tell you the dump store was packed with leftovers from the yardsale I had stopped at the day before. I was sorta excited, I haven't had some good dump finds in a while.

• A basket which im going to spray paint white and put in my little girl's room
• Children's Place purple sandals that look like they've never been worn
• Christmas material (at least 2 yards of it)
• Maroon sparkley beaded placemat for my table for the holidays
• Brand new cloth Old Navy bag with tags still on it
• Latern for candles
• Aeropostale tank top
• White metal candle holder which will be spray painted another color.

Oh the dump how i've missed you so!

Yard Sale Season Is Winding Down

So here in NH yard sale season is winding down. The air is getting crisp and no one really has any motivation to do anymore yardsales here.

Hubby spotted a huge yardsale today on the way to the thrift store and even turned around without me begging (dont you just love him). We found the deal of the day there! A lupine harness for Bailey that matches his leash exactly! Wahoo, i've wanted a harness but am not willing to shell out $25.99 for one. Lupine is an amazing brand that is made right here in N. Conway. If any of their stuff breaks or is chewed through they have a lifetime guarantee, you dont even need the receipt they will just replace it with a brand new one for free! So I thought $2.00 was a steal! It is in the bottom left hand corner of the picture.

We also hit up the thrift store today, and low and behold it was $1.oo bag day. This sale had been going on for a few days so there was not alot left to pick through but I did find some good stuff.

• Nine West High Heels Size 10-- definitely going on ebay
• 2 XL Greg Norman Golf Shirts that have never been worn-Also ebay
• A flat sheet for my mom's king size bed with a pretty lace detail
• A brand new white t-shirt --who doesn't use white tee shirts???
• Brand new button sandals still in the packaging
  A pair of capris pants and a skirt for post-pregnancy
• Pregnancy shorts--good for my pregancy clothes lot going on ebay after January :)
• A cute blue and white top that hopefully fits my pregnant belly!
• A cute cotton black dress a little short but it would like cute over leggings

That averages .10 cents an item. Wahoo

The leaves are starting to to turn beautiful shades of red and orange. I just love fall!

Another Year Older

Happy Birthday To Me

Today I turn the ripe old age of 27. For some reason this birthday has not been as exciting to me as other birthdays. Maybe because im pregnant or maybe I just feel old.. who knows.

I love taking time on my birthday to look back to the year, I had.

My parents came up yesterday to celebrate with hubbster and I. It was a rainy nasty day, but we had a great time sitting around drinking tea and hot chocolate and chatting. We had a delicious lunch complete with homemade mac and cheese, hot dogs, and teriyaki chicken AND my mom made a delicious red velvet cake for me. yummmmm.

My parents surprised me with a WONDERFUL birthday gift.

I absoultely love it! They took an old dresser painted it black, put wheels on it and made the top of it a cutting board! I can wheel it around my kitchen and use it as a butcher's block, and have storage for all my linens and holiday plates. I absolutely love it, and the black goes perfectly with our kitchen.

What's in My Mailbox Today

So usually my mail is very boring. Bills, junk mail, and more bills. I occasionally get the free magazine, but this week my mail was very exciting.

This is what my mail consisted of (not including the junk mail and the bills)

• $200 gift card to Lowes. Remember all those shingles we bought well if you bought so many shingles you got a $200 gift card, and yes we qualified for the $200 gift card


• $20 check for Chase Rewards. Hubby doesn't really use his Chase card but he is enrolled in the rewards program so every once in a while one of these babies shows up.


• A $23.00 check from the consignment store in North Conway. I buy 99% of my clothes at second hand shops, and when im sick of them, or they dont fit due to pregnancy I sometimes (when I dont donate them) sell them to the consignment store in North Conway. The woman that runs the store is extremely sweet, and I usually get back 100% (sometimes more) for what I paid for the clothes.

It's a nice change to see all this money taking up space in my mailbox rather than bills :)

Retail Shopping

So Fairview Ave. is located 10 minutes from some great outlet shopping. I try to stay away from there as much as possible because it is very dangerous! I did stop by Stonewall Kitchen last weekend and scored some great deals! They were having 25% off all of their already clearenced items.

I picked up some Mocha Expresso Sauce that sounds extremely yummy on ice cream, two boxes of peanut butter cookie mix, and a champagne mustard all for $6.69 what a deal!

Oh I almost forgot here are the items I bought the other day from the doggie store, my mom finally coughed them up :)

ebay power sellers book .50 Coach baby changing pad 2.00

The Cat From Hell Finally Gets It

As you all know I am a step mom to The 15lb.Cat From Hell (T.C.F.H.), unfortunately this little beast came with my husband and I really liked him so the cat had to stay too. Well, Bailey and the cat have a decent relationship, they snuggle and are civil (I think Baily just puts up with him). Well the cat finally showed Bailey his true colors and Bailey showed him who was boss.


I had already left for work one morning and the hubby noticed the animals acting strange, he pulled out the video camera and got this on tape. (Don't worry nobody was hurt, you can even hear hubby yelling at them to stop in the background).

Well T.C.F.H. hid his fat behind under the bed all day. I think that taught him not to be a jerk, to the dog. (I love the look on the Cat's face before he jumps Bailey, and afterwards how Bailey just wags his tail and walks off.)

Small Town Girl Yard Sale Finds

Happy Labor Day To All!
I hope you had a wonderful weekend and was able to enjoy it with friends and family. Hubby and I spent the day in Boston on Saturday with his family. We did alot of eating, shopping, and chatting. Hubby and his sister had bought his dad tickets to the Red Sox for his dad's last birthday, so the men enjoyed the game while the women shopped and went out to dinner. It was fun, but it reminded me why I only like to visit the city and not live there. Here is a picture of me and my sister in law out to eat in Boston!

I did get to hit up some yard sales on Sunday and Monday. There were not a ton of them around Fairview Ave. but I managed to get some good loot.

11 Do It Yourself Magazines from Better Homes and Gardens. My mother at http://acornhollow.blogspot.com/ is obsessed with books, I got that obsession but for some reason it went towards magazines not to books. $1.00. (approx. 9 cents a magazines)

White V-Neck T-shirt, the teenage girl at the sale said she bought it and never wore it $1.25.

3 smencils- these will be great for school, these are smelly pencils and the kids love them, Apple, Rootbeer, and bananas. $.25 a piece

Decorative latern with a candle inside $1.00

Cute decorative christmasy plate $1.00

1 pair of mittens $1.00- I was so excited when I found these gloves they are brand new never worn and very snuggly. I got them home and was showing them to hubby and realized one is quite a bit larger than the other. Jeez.... well they'll still be good for recess duty.

Monday was less productive.

Two pictures that are going in my hall way for a $1.00 a piece

Brand new scented drawer paper $3.00

Total Yard Sale Finds: $11.00

Where The Wild Things Are

So sleeping when you are pregnant is difficult but sleeping when you hear weird noises just doesn't happen!


Here is the story: 2:30am hubby and I wake out of a dead sleep to screaming. It sounded like a woman or a small child screaming bloody murder. We do have some weird neighbors so I thought one of them had committed a murder. Hubby and I crept to a window and look, no lights on anywhere in the neighborhood. The screeching goes on for another 2 minutes and then completely stops.


By this point im army crawling around the house looking for the "killer" outside and wanting to call the cops, but hubby isn't convinced we are having a murder on Fairview Ave. He convinces me it was an animal.


Now i've lived in NH my whole life and never heard an animal like this. It was a fox, and we found this on Youtube.com. Sounds just like what we heard. If we had heard this camping I would have been convinced that the Blair Witch Project was out in the woods!


I couldn't get the video on my blog but go to Youtube.com and type in fox screaming and you'll see what I mean!

Thrifty Finds and Shopping with Mom

So my mother and I went out thrifting on Monday. We stopped at two different thrift stores and Christmas Tree Shop. Our first stop was a church thrift store in Fryeburg Maine. It mainly has clothing so my pregnant butt didn't find too much. But I did find this brand new shirt with the tags still on it for $3.00 an X-large (which if this is really an x-large i'd love to see their small) fit my pregnant bump well. Plus I lovveee lilac.

The second store we went to was the doggy thrift store in Bridgton Maine. I found two items (sorry no pictures my mom took off with my loot so I'll have to get back to you on that one when I collect it.) I found a Coach (yes a real coach) baby changing pad that had come out of a Coach Diaper bag (would love to see where that baby ended up) it was brown and looked like it had never been worn plus im a huge sucker for Coach $2.00. I also bought a book on how to sell on ebay, I hoped it would up my sales $.50

My last find was at Christmas Tree Shop and was the cheapest of the day. I found a strand of lights with little wicker balls on them. I had originally been given a hit on these babies by a friend of mine and I loved them so I bought them at full price ($5.99) well this strand was on clearence for $.10 yep folks $.10. Well you get what you paid only half the lights worked. So I decided to take them off the lights and put them in a bowl until I can find a small strand of lights

Im off to put my feet up first day of school killed my pregnant feeties :)

Baby Room Savings Dresser Redo

My hubby is pretty darn handy. We've been getting the baby's room ready for our little baby girl. My wonderful brother and sister in law gave us a beautiful crib and changing table in honey oak color. We had this nice hardwood dresser that came with our house it was a super ugly color. See the free Diaper Genie in the corner :) Yes it does have all of its drawers sorry for the picture.

I refuse to shell out $300-$800 for a dresser to match the set. So my wonderful hubby stripped the ugly paint off and re stained it. Wahla..... this is how it came out! We found the handles for .19 at Lowes on clearance. It cost us at most $10.00 to refinish this dresser we got for free with the house.

Squeezing in a little bit of thrifting time

So sorry Tuesday dump finds have been put on hold until next summer. I luckily had a half day of work today (they break us teachers in easily). I tried to do one more Tuesday dump find blog, So I stopped in the dump store today, there was nothing in the dump store today, actually I couldn't access it because the front loader was cleaning it out... boo



But I did stop at my favorite doggie thrift store and spent a total of $1.25.

















*16 Brand New Christmas Cards .75
*Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Book .50

Welcome to my two new followers im so excited to have you ladies as part of our community!!

Back To Work

Im back to work tomorrow... Booo..... So I there wont be as many thrifting adventures to partake in. I will still be hitting the occasional yard sale and weekend thrift store.

At a recent yardsale I was informed that in some of the southern states that yardsales are held everyday of the week. Awee... heaven.

Rainy Sunday

Today Im linking to Rhoda's party over at http://southernhospitalityblog.com/

It's raining here on Fairview Ave. I honestly think this is one of the few rainy weekend days we've had in a while.

I was lucky enough to do some thrifting Friday and Saturday.

Friday, after a scrumptous breakfast with two (and a 1/2) of my favorite ladies, we went to North Windham to check out a children's resale shop called Kidsstop. One of my friend's mom had found it by accident one day and wanted us to check it out. So we piled in the car and off we went. The store was chucka blucka full with kids clothing and toys. Alot of the stuff was brand new with tags on it! We had a great time picking through the stuff.

Here is what I got

• Three onesies- one is brand new
  
• Two sleep sacks- brand new
  
• A sleeveless fleece sleepsack-brand new


• Graco Snugride- brand new

But my favorite find there was this: A Graco pack and play lite travel system. It is absolutely adorable! Having three levels in our house I decided we might need an extra one. This was only $28, but we also had coupons so i think it ended up being $23. It looked like it had barely been used, and it retails for $89.00 brand new. Sorry this is not the exact same color I got, but same style but im too lazy to set up the thing again.

Saturday I did some yard saleing and came up with almost nothing. I did find some baby shades for the car for .50 a piece, a cute kitty piggy bank for 2.50, a couple of books for .20 and a potatoe masher for .10

I've been looking on Craigslist alot at babystuff, these kids barely use any of the stuff given to them. The things we dont get for our babyshower will definitely be bought off craigslist!