kayla aimee: only slightly neurotic

Five For Friday | (Unintentionally) Creepy Things I Say To My Baby

I'm gonna kiss your face off - It's that extra "off" tacked on the end that takes this from being a sweet bit of loving to something slightly creepy. "I'm going to kiss your face" is acceptable. "I'm going to kiss your face OFF" is slightly reminiscent of bad horror novels and poorly written movies featuring John Travolta.

I'm gonna eat you up - It seems I have mistaken my child for food. My baby is not a slice of cheesecake. Or a delicious bass.

I'm gonna get you - In and of itself this ranks as more scary than creepy. It's the way that it tends to come out in what Jeff likes to refer to as my "redneck baby voice" as something like: I'S GOAN GIT YOO that really ruins this one. I'S GOAN GIT YOO sounds like one of the example phrases you would use in a conversation in which you are explaining to your children why they should never talk to strangers.

I'm gonna steal all your sugar - While this has yet to have any effect on my infant, it did reduce my three year old niece to a blubbering mess of tears this week. As it turned out, she thought my kissing her head accompanied by said phrase mean that I actually had, indeed, stolen all of her sugar. Slightly unsure how I had managed this feat, she attempted to prevent it from happening again by refusing to hug me goodbye, saying "Keeka, don't steal candy from my hair." That kid is always going to have one eye on her dessert when I'm around.

I'm gonna nom off your toes - It appears there is a theme emerging in which I am attempting to convince my child that I am, in fact, a cannibal.

Despite my acknowledging that I say weird things to my kid, I continue to indulge in the behavior. I am not alone here, right?

Five For Friday | Hodgepodge

1) I found this picture from my bridesmaids luncheon while transferring stuff to a new hard drive. The tea house had all of these fancy hats we could wear and pretend we were British. So pretty much, me and Princess Kate? We're EXACTLY THE SAME.

2) Today is Canada Day! I lived in North Vancouver for a bit back in 2004 and loved it so much. Happy Canada Day to my Canuck readers!

3) Speaking of Princess Kate and Canada, have I told you that I'm obsessed with the website What Kate Wore?

4) I've been streaming the Casey Anthony trial for the past few weeks. I find trials incredibly intriguing. This one in particular is both fascinating and horrifying. What do y'all think? I think that she is guilty.

5) I managed to shave one entire leg before Scarlette demanded that I get her out of that bouncy chair RIGHT THIS INSTANCE. And that people, is what I like to call "progress." I mean, who really needs TWO smooth legs, that's what I like to say.

Five For Friday | Childhood Nostalgia

My favorite childhood toy was my Teddy Ruxpin Bear. I also had Grubby. Holla! I actually still have my Teddy Ruxpin. I kept it thinking one day I would pass it and it's obsolete cassette tapes on to my child. Except that at some point in the 25 years that I've owned him, he lost an eyeball.

And a talking teddy bear with a hollowed out eye socket is probably one of the creepiest things you could give a kid. So I'm just going to give her my baby doll that has anatomically correct boy parts instead. Win, win.

My favorite song from when I was little was Katie and Tommy She's In Love With The Boy by Trisha Yearwood. Except I thought the lyrics were: "Later on outside the tasty feast" and "You yourself was just a hay seeding plow boy who didn't have a row to hoe."And I always wondered "how was he a hay seeding plowboy if he had no rows to hoe? That crazy Trisha Yearwood and her lyrics that don't make any sense."

My favorite childhood memory is hands down the time my cousins and I spent an entire summer reenacting Cool Runnings in my grandparent's apple tree. Right.

My childhood crush was three words. Jonathan. Taylor. Thomas. You could not see my walls for all of the Teen Bop posters covering it. And bless your soul if you tried to touch the remote control while Home Improvement was on. I will cut you, 4 year old little sister.

The thing I was most afraid of as a kid was people poisoning my Halloween candy. Do people still tell kids this story?

I remember our teachers telling us that bad people used needles to shoot drugs into tootsie rolls and other such treats. And McGruff The Crime Dog coming to our school and telling us to JUST SAY NO and also to let our parents inspect our candy for things before we ate it. And my parents dutifully spreading out all of the candy that we'd collected in our safe, suburbanite neighborhood and throwing out anything that looked like maybe someone tampered with it.

I lived in fear that I was going to eat a snickers and inadvertently become addicted to heroin. So my childhood was totally normal, right?

* I decided to add the link-up to this post because I wanted to see what everyone else had to say. If you do this post on your blog, link it up below so that we can all read/comment on each others!

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Five For Friday | Share Your Frugal Tips & Tricks

You know what's not frugal? That teal pillow that my grandmother surprised me with for my birthday. Thanks Gran!

Coupon blogs: I read a few but my favorite is Organic Deals because it's super hard to find coupons for natural products! FYI: I have moved on from my obsession with extreme couponing and now I want to be in a gypsy wedding. Thanks for nothing, TLC.

Online shopping: I am really bad about impulse shopping so I've found that for my personality, shopping online works better because I can see my total and stick to my budget. 

The biggest savings I've found is Amazon Mom. If you haven't signed up for this yet, go do it. I use my swagbucks to earn Amazon giftcards. Every time I spend $25 worth of giftcards at Amazon Mom, it gives me another month of free 2 day shipping. This is really a huge help to our budget for diapers and wipes because it's basically all free.

Cloth Diapering: We just started cloth diapering, we had to wait until Scarlette's legs got fat enough! I'm using the BumGenius diapers right now and so far so good. Jeff is not thrilled with the idea of cloth diapering but I've persuaded him with my powers of seduction. That's not true. I just showed him how much money we would save and promised to do the laundry. While scantily clad.

Household: I'm working so hard to cut down our clutter and live simply. I really like the link up on Raising Homemakers b/c I am not domestically inclined. I also like Organizing Made Fun, even though that is false advertising. The only thing fun about organizing is shopping for orgazational stuff that you'll never use. Am I wrong?

Entertainment: We have a $0 budget for entertainment. We put all of our gas/groceries on a rewards card (that we pay off each month) and then cash our rewards points in for dining/movie giftcards. We're lucky in that Nintendo gave us a Wii last year. We stream movies on it, play Wii Wheel of Fortune and I try to get my bum back up where it used to be by doing yoga :/

Saving money and green living/eating are especially important to me right now as I attempt to stretch our budget and be a SAHM. I'd love to compare notes and hear some of your frugal tips and what websites you love! (Note: Some links above are referral links and it's totally fine w/me if you link up w/your own referral links in the comments!)

Five For Friday | Sleep Deprivation

scarlette vonne, 6 months- more photos here

UnDomestic When making cinnamon rolls from a can, it's important to remember to check and make sure that the metal icing lid is not stuck to the bottom of one of the rolls.

This is important because if you later pop said plate of cinnamon rolls in the microwave because your baby started screaming and you couldn't eat them fresh out of the oven, well then you've inadvertently set yet another fire in your kitchen. This is all hypothetical, y'all.

Reading A few people asked in this post who my favorite Amish fiction authors are. If you're getting started, go with the Lancaster County Secrets series or anything by Beverly Lewis.

Blogging The $100 Homegoods giveaway is still open here. I've had a few people ask how I got to be a part of that and some questions about how I make a little income from my blog. I'm totally happy to do a post or two on how to make money blogging if that is something y'all are interested in, if so please let me know or feel free to ask a question.

Sleep Deprived I went to put a bottle in the refrigerator and found it a half an hour later in the entertainment center. They aren't even in the same room. (Side Note: why is there no d in refrigerator but there is a d in fridge? I disapprove.)

More Sleep Deprived I've been washing Scarlette with bubble bath for the past week. Apparently, I mixed up the bottles and thus kept wondering why the body wash was suddenly so dang foamy.