Bargin Baby

My latest mission is to get as much as possible for little "Nimrod/Nimalie" whilst spending as little as possible. Hence I spent my afternoon yesterday, with my feet up and my laptop precariously balanced on my contorting belly (with my hands braced ready to catch the laptop should the baby decide to break ut into a dance and kick it off my stomach) and in the midst of all this finding ways to get as much baby stuff as I can for free.

Everybody wants to give you free 'samples' to lure you into their product.....babies and weddings...it's BIG business!!!!

So I ventured to the sites Huggies and Pampers and Heinz and Johnson's and Avent and Playtex and pretty much every baby brand I could think off and found out all of them offer free stuff, be it diaper bags full of samples, coupons for free formula or baby bath or whatever. I then found out that if you call the companies they give you even more, free avent bottles, sippy cups, all kinds of things. It was exciting.

I came across this website smart cannucks which listed all the places I could find more free stuff. It's a great site for people in Canada telling you what competitions you can enter, free stuff you can register for and THOUSANDS of coupons and stuff. So I explored a little further and couldn't believe how much we could save grocery shopping by printing off the coupons. I also discovered lots of our fave places have 'fan clubs' you can join for free and get free stuff. Dairy Queen has a blizzard fan club where you get coupons for free blizzards, Orange Julius gives you free smoothies, Quizzno's gives you free subs and cookies, starbucks even. I just have never checked out any websites such as these before to know.

It was an exciting afternoon indeed, almost as exciting as the day the new Starbucks drive Thru opened and everything was free so we called all our friends and had free coffees and breakfast sandwiches.

So I wanted to share this discovery. Now I've found all this it'll take no time to find the up to date coupons prin them and save (which is good because 'no time' is exactly what I anticipate on having once the baby arrives.

'ittle baby

Yesterday I opened the pack of newborn diapers/nappies we bought about a month ago. When I saw the teeny tiny little diaper that smelt so sweet and 'babyish' (as in nice clean sweet smelling babyish - not poopy diaper babyish) and I realised how tiny our baby will be. I am spending my summer changing bigger childrens diapers (mostly 1 and 2 year olds) so seeing how very very small this diaper was took my breath away and this diaper is going to go on my baby in a few weeks, I can't wait!!!!!

We only have the tiny size because once the baby puts on a couple of pounds it'll fit the cloth diapers we bought and the luxury of disposable will have passed. We opted to buy BumGenius diapers that 'grow with the baby' so they should last us most the way through the diapering years, they look cute, apparently will save us thousands of dollars (or at least hundreds)and are kind to the environment (they look pretty cute too....well right now they do while their all clean and shiny and soft) apparently they work just like a normal disposable but instead of the garbage you put them in the washing machine....I'll let you know how it goes.

Painting the baby's room

These pics don't quite capture the colour but it gives you an idea of how we've been painting it. We also went to a salvage yard and got some cool old window frames which Andy has sanded down, taken the glass out of and painted to match the room as a chalk board for the wall, some cool old fruit boxes from the market that andy has been fixing up and some photo frames. I'll post some more pics as we get it more finished and furnished.

camping at 27.5 weeks

This weekend we decided to have an adventure, to jump in the car and go somewhere.....actually we decided we would do this a couple of weeks ago so it wasn't a total spur of the moment thing but we both procrastinated and procrastinated until it was Sunday (the day we were planning to leave) and we still hadn't decided where we would go and still hadn't booked anything.

By the time we got off work on Friday we were sooooo hot and sooooo tired that we decided to hang out here for the evening with Kevin and April and leave on our adventure first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning ended up being the 1:10pm ferry (we slept in) but eventually we did depart, went to Vancouver Island and found a great campsite on Cowichan River.





It was so fun and refreshing just to be somewhere else, go for a hike and see new things, paddle in a river (which felt about 20degrees warmer than the ocean ever does.

I'm not going to claim that it was all easy and that I didn't miss my bump-hugging memory foam mattress because as nice as my exped inflatable foam mattress is, there isn't a whole lot of padding there to support the bump, there was some definite tossing and turning and times without sleep last night but it was worth it.

In the end we slept in till 8:30am, woke up, ate breakfast and then drove back to Duncan Hospital to visit our friends and their brand new, super cute baby.

The weather here has been so crazy hot. I finished working on Domestics on Sunday and will be doing kids ministry for the rest of the summer which I am excited about. The last few days have been unbelievably hot in the kitchen and it hasn't been uncommon to find me taking a two minute head - in - the - freezer - break during dishes over the last couple of days. Summer has finally come and in full force!!!!!!!!