About Our Crazy Life

Welcome to my wonderful, blessed, amazing and sometimes crazy life.

I’m a thirty-something mother of five, but don’t get too excited – I’m not that much of a martyr – I didn’t birth them all. Six years ago, I was the single mother of a son and a daughter, struggling to get by month to month alone and trying to make my children the center of my world. Just over five years ago, I glanced up and fell head over heels in love with met the Montana-man-of-my-dreams, moved in and inherited four new mouths to feed (Montana man and his three daughters). Now I struggle month to month with him and our beautiful, wonderful economy and have finally found myself truly wanting to enjoy the simpler country life.

I’ve lived in Suburbia pretty much my entire life with the exception of a brief but memorable nine month stint in Miami, Florida sans kids, thank goodness. With all the suburban madness – mini vans and music lessons, BBQ’s and concerts, nosy neighbors and noisy neighbors and much too much of houses on top of houses, I have decided it is time to exit the madness and head towards the quiet solitude of the country. I am ready to be one with nature. Or at least I think I am. Thankfully the whole family is on board.

I really hope you have fun visiting my website. It’s where I write about our slow but steady switch to the country life, where I chronicle stories and mishaps from my children. Where I write about the sometimes awesome, sometimes failing ways we save money. Where I share my most favorite money saving recipes, and tips for cooking for picky eaters, and where – well – I feel at home. I have many different sections I write in, mostly about ways to save money and live a more frugal, simple life.

This great quint pack, also known as our herd, are the five darlings I claim to mother.

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I love them, really I do. But sometimes I need to embarrass them a little. It builds character.

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They’re all good kids.

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In my spare time (as if I have much), I am a writer. I sometimes write articles but mostly I am working on my novels. I am also sometimes a scrapbooker and if I’m not out spending time with the family, or not in the kitchen cooking or not on my laptop writing, I’m probably scrapbooking or taking photos to scrapbook. It is probably what takes up most of my spare time (what’s that?). I take tons and tons of photographs in which I then need to create elaborate scrapbook pages chronicling every detail of my kids’ lives. I’m so glad you are sneaking a peek, a glimpse, a rough and raw look into our lives. Thank you for visiting!

~Nicole

P.S. I am not only the mom of five human kids, but we have several furbabies as well. We have 3 Shih-tzu’s – Maggie who’s almost 3 1/2, Lily & Bella who are 2 1/2 and we had a litter of puppies – Lulu is one of Maggie’s puppies – we have since adopted her out to a new mama who spoils her absolutely rotten (thank you Annie, we love you!) Then we have our cat, Maple. As if she didn’t already think she was surrounded by chaos, a few months back (June 2011) we added two new kittens, (Cheeto and Dini (her name was originally Nellie)) to our repertoire of animals. We also have a mouse and an aquatic turtle hatchling that is really not a whole lot bigger than a quarter. We named him Milo. He’s been Milo since March. Except that two weeks ago we learned that Milo is actually a Mila.
Update: Mila is HUGE! She is no longer a “hatchling”. I need to update this page so bad. I’ll get there.

I think I live in a zoo.

Besides cooking, writing, blogging, photography and scrapbooking, I also enjoy reading, music, movies, and DIY and home improvement projects. Yes, I’m WAY too busy.

Photos of furbabies (in various stages of grooming and hair trimming – don’t judge!) below:

The Dogs: