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Two cute quotes from the kids...

:::While driving in the car the other day...:::
Sabrina: "My foot fell asleep."
Abigail: "Great, now it's going to be up all night!"

:::While driving in the car today...:::
Niko: I know why it's called McDonald's. Because they MAKE food. Get it? MAKEDonald's!
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I tried my hand at shopping at Walgreens today. I don't feel like I did that great. I thought I had planned out in my head pretty well, but I guess the register didn't agree with my game plan. I ended up getting two boxes of Huggies wipes ($3.29 each), and two bottles of Garnier hair stuff (spray and mouse, on sale for $2.99). I used one $5.00 off Huggies coupon (internet printable), and two $2.00 off Garnier coupons (from the EasySaver catalog), and paid $4.60 for everything. I guess it's not that bad of a deal, seeing as how I saved over $11, but not as good as I had hoped to do. I will save the boxes of wipes for when we go camping... they're great for cleaning off the kids between trips to the showers or pool.
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Okay, here is the project that I did yesterday. It is nothing too fancy or "cute", but it saved me a lot of money. My girls share a bunk bed. We've had it for about 7 years now, and the bunkie boards that came with it were just plain worn out. The tops of the bunkie boards were covered with this kind of papery fabric, and from years of them crawling over the edge of it to get in bed it was all worn away and tearing. Since the mattress gets shoved against the wall, it exposes about 2 inches of the bunkie board, and all kinds of dirt, sand, dust, little pieces of toys, stray crumbs from the food they're not allowed to eat in their room, etc. kept getting trapped in that area. I would try to vacuum it out every time I vacuumed their room, but then they start poking at and ripping the cardboard too.
I looked into replacing the bunkie boards, and they range from $36-40 each at the discount furniture places in the area. There was no way I could swallow that chunk of change for something like that, so I turned to the trusty old thrift stores. $4.95 paid for enough heavy canvas fabric to completely reupholster both of the bunkie boards. I taped up the worst tears in the papery fabric, though I had debated with myself about taking it off completely. I decided to leave it place after cleaning them as thoroughly as possible and cutting off the stained areas, hoping that the paper and cardboard would provide some additional structural support.

I just laid the bunkie boards down on the fabric, and then with my Dad's help, we used his old manual upholstery stapler to tack the material around the edges... sort of like a huge seat cushion. We started with the centers of the 4 sides, then folded in the corners "present style", and then went along the rest of the ends.

They look 10,000% times better now, and the canvas material will be a lot sturdier than the previous covering. Now I won't be cringing every time I make their beds!