Today I tried making a S’mores Latte. Yesterday, I had made some marshmallow fluff, and I wanted to use that in a coffee drink. Now, I’ve tried making one before, and it didn’t work out. So I tweaked my method some this time, and it still didn’t work! By “didn’t work,” I mean it just didn’t taste like a s’more at all (by the way, do folks eat s’mores in your country??). This time, I used chocolate syrup in the cup as well as mixed into the espresso, marshmallow fluff mixed into the espresso as well as on top. I tried toasting the fluff that was on top, but we don’t have a kitchen torch, and a regular ole lighter did NOT do the trick! Then I sprinkled some graham cracker crumbs on top (they might as well not have been there at all). All together, it just tasted like a milky, slightly chocolate-y latte.

I did a little Googling. I found a few recipes that were basically the same thing I did (except they toasted the marshmallow- maybe that makes a bigger difference than I realize!!). THIS RECIPE (the pic below is from that website) uses homemade toasted marshmallow syrup for the coffee itself, so I’ll give that a try! And THIS ONE uses marshmallow extract and homemade chocolate syrup.

The Home Reno

is still not done.

I’ll say, it’s getting so close. Here are a few things they’ve done recently:

• Air conditioning!

• The quarter round has been installed everywhere but still needs to be painted (or at least the little nail spots… not sure how that goes).

• The bathroom doors and drawers have been put back in, as well as the hardware.

• The windows were replaced a while back; they finally fixed the interior of those… sort of. They basically just measured how much of a gap there was and cut a piece of wood to cover the gap; in the kids’ room, the window “trim” is 8 inches wide and looks goofy. They should have added new drywall to cover the gaps then put in new, regular-sized trim. In the contract, that’s even specified under “window replacement.”

• Ceiling fans, door knobs, light switches, plugs, etc

• Insulation in the attic

• The closets have shelves and rods now.

Still to be done…

• Fix the window interiors.

• Cut a hole on the house for the dryer vent.

• Paint touch-ups everywhere.

• Tile bath/shower.

• Install toilet and rest of plumbing hardware.

At this point, I’m not giving an estimated time of completion because it’s been 6 months, and we’ve had a dozen estimates already. It’ll be done when it gets done. 😅 And when that happens I’ll send you a bunch of pictures!

The Kids

are doing great.

Baby girl (for all my kids, I just call them “baby” for the first several months) is growing great. She’s a GREAT sleeper. After 3 kids who didn’t sleep all night until age 2-3, it is wild to have this baby sleep all night. We’ve never done any sort of sleep training, so I was fully prepared (mentally) to go through 2 years of sleepless nights. But nope, so far, she’s doing at least 6 hours a night and lately, more like 8+. 🤯 She just hit 10 weeks old and had her 2 month checkup yesterday. All is well!

Charlie is a daggum chatter box. All day long. He narrates every thing in big full sentences. It’s delightful. He’s still super into dinosaurs and animals and, more recently, letters and numbers too. He likes make-believe play, like Annabelle always has (Alexander, not so much), so they’ll sometimes play together.

Annabelle is my little other mother. She’s been empathetic and helpful since she was very little, so this makes sense for her. If someone needs help, she jumps in without asking. If the baby starts crying, she rushes over to pick her up and try to comfort her. I can not wait to decorate her pink-and-white bedroom and make it a fun magical space!

Alexander is a TWEEN! He’s been one for a while, but he’s really stepping in to the role🤪 If you’ve seen Inside Out 2, he’s like the character Ennui. While he’s never been very excitable, he’s even less amused by things nowadays. He’s very honest and determined. Lately, he’s been working on a puzzle book for kids; he has about 30 pages of puzzles designed so far, but they’re all hand written in his notebook. He’s slowly working on digitizing them because he wants to try selling them! I’ll keep ya posted if that project comes to completion!

I’ve Been Baking

almost every day lately and have several plans for more things I want to make!

Here are a few I’ve made (not my pics!):

1. Chocolate chocolate chip bundt cake - I followed that recipe sort of. In another recipe, she suggests increasing the sour cream to 1 cup and decreasing the buttermilk to ¼ cup. I did both of those things, and I also used Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. And I omitted the cream cheese filling and put a bunch of chocolate chips instead. Then I topped it all with powdered sugar after it baked! (See number 1 below)

2. Chocolate chip pretzels - I was trying to make soft pretzels that had chocolate chips in them. I followed that recipe (the one I linked) but then added sugar to the dough and mixed in chocolate chips. They just tasted like regular pretzels with a hint of chocolate. I need to increase the sugar by a lot more and then add more chocolate chips! I’ll try again.

3. Buttermilk biscuits - I don’t follow a recipe anymore for biscuits. But this is the one I used to follow, many years ago, and now I just do it from memory!

4. Meringue cookies - If you’ve never tried making these, please do. They’re simple and so delicious. We like using them in Eton Mess.

5. Puff pastry - I made half this recipe. Then I used it to make some pinwheels! For pinwheels, simply roll out your sheet of puff pastry, layer filling (I used ham and cheese), roll it up tightly, cut it into 1-inch sections, place on a baking sheet, then bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes!

Here are some things I PLAN to make:

1. My mama’s chocolate chocolate chip bundt cake - My mama used to make this cake when I was growing up, and I just loved it. The only reason I didn’t make it this past week is because I didn’t have the ingredients. Hers calls for 1 box of vanilla cake mix, 1 box of instant vanilla pudding, 1 box of instant chocolate pudding, and then water, a little oil, and chocolate chips. I don’t buy the boxed stuff hardly ever, but I’m going to buy them JUST to make this recipe! ❤️ 

2. French silk pie - I did a poll on IG stories: should I make a French silk pie or French silk pie cookies, and the pie won by a smidge. I’m going to do an Oreo crust for mine. If that’s not the classic way, and people are upset by that, then it just gives me an excuse to make it again with a regular pie crust. 🙂 

3. S’mores bars - I made this recipe yeeeears ago and then couldn’t remember what recipe I used. I finally found it, so I’m def going to make them again!!

4. Graham crackers - I’ve never made them from scratch, I don’t think!

5. Baguettes - I’m not a cookbook person; I tend to get recipes online. But I actually pre-ordered Betul’s first cookbook because all of her recipes look amazing. And the few I’ve followed are GREAT.

We Tracked All Our Expenses

for August, using that budget tracker I shared recently.

I got it at this link here, for $10. This tracker requires you to input all of your numbers manually. It doesn’t sync to your bank or anything. That actually works better for us because we’ve got some expenses that are specifically for the add-on that we didn’t include in the budget. And we went on a little trip, which is part of our profit/travel fund, and the trip was paid off through that. So this type of budget tracker worked for us.

We went ahead and set up our planned expenses for all of August: how much we figured we’d spend on

• groceries

• fuel

• bills (separated into phone, internet, electricity, insurance, etc)

• subscriptions (Netflix, iCloud, etc)

• eating out

• entertainment

• personal care (that’s like shampoo, band-aids, etc)

• baby stuff

• farm stuff

• kids’ allowances

• school expenses

• savings account

• roth IRA

• and some other stuff…

And once a week, we went through receipts and our online accounts and input all of our expenses, categorizing them along the way.

Throughout the month, we can keep track of each category, how much we’ve spent and how much we have left in that category. Additionally, we can see how much we have overall, for the month.

You also get some graphics that are automatically generated, if that’s helpful for you!

Overall, for the month of August, we spent around $1,800 less than we spent in July. We had spent around $1,200 on groceries in July; in August we spent $760. We spent $800 or so on Amazon purchases in July; in August we spent around $150.

Here are some takeaways that could be helpful:

• I added things to my Amazon shopping cart regularly, a few times per week. But I did not place any orders until the end of the month, unless they were necessities. This helped a ton.

• We planned to intentionally use our leftovers and use the ingredients we already had in the house. This cut back on those pesky middle-of-the-week grocery runs.

• When we did have to make a mid-week run, we still made a list for it. In the past, we run into the store for 2 things and come back out with 10. Having a list, no matter how small, helped.

• If something broke, we tried to fix it. If something can be repurposed, we use it rather than buying something new. What’s that saying, “recycle, reuse, repurpose, repair”? Something like that. That’s the goal!

• We downgraded a few things. Like, we switched to the Netflix with ads, and we switched from Spotify Premium to the free version of Spotify. I canceled all my podcast subscriptions (just a handful, but hey, anything helps!).

• For my birthday, we dug around and found birthday freebies, plus I found two Visa gift cards totaling $75, so we used those to get pizza on my birthday.

To clarify, here’s what’s going on: Cam has 2 jobs.. sort of. He’s been doing freelance work since we moved to Louisiana in 2017, and he’s done great with that. In May, one of the companies he’d been working for asked if he would come on full-time, as a contract worker rather than a freelance worker. With that would come a regular paycheck as well as health insurance. AND because they regularly hire freelance workers, they encourage their employees to continue their freelance work, as long as they get the contractual work done well and on time.

We talked about it and prayed about it and decided this was a good move. It’s a temporary gig, from June to December of this year (for political season), and there’s a small possibility that it will continue into 2025. Because of the home renovation loan, we decided to try to live ONLY on the contractual salary and put all of his freelance income (minus taxes…) toward the home loan. The home loan for the add-on is currently our only debt, so we want to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

This budget is going to help with that a lot, and our goal is to pay off the loan within 2 years! If you’ve got questions about budgeting or the add-on or our specific situation, just reply to this email. I’m happy to help out or clarify things!

Speaking of Birthday Freebies

….I turned 40 a couple weeks ago. Woop woop!

And we went around town that day, getting a few freebies that businesses give out on birthdays. Here are some of those, in case you didn’t know about them:

• Nothing Bundt Cake - You have to sign up for their club or newsletter or whatever, online, and it’s free. Then you just go in on your birthday for a free mini bundt cake. I got the white chocolate raspberry.

• Starbucks - You can get any free drink or pastry, ONLY on your birthday, if you’re a member.

• Ulta and Sephora - Both places, if you sign up for their app, you can get a free birthday gift during the whole birthday month.

• Crumbl - One free cookie if you put your birthday in the app.

• Chick-fil-A - Free birthday dessert through the app.

There are a lot of others that I didn’t personally use: Buffalo Wild Wings, Panera, and now I can’t remember the others. But if you search online for “birthday freebies” you’ll find a TON. For most of them, you just need to sign up for their free membership or newsletter or club. ❤️ 

Okay That’s It

for this week. I know I haven’t been consistent with sending these lately, sorry about that. With the baby and the construction and homeschooling, I’m just sort of frazzled and scattered a lot.

I mentioned it on IG stories but, when I feel like this, out of control, I like to bake or clean. So I’ve been doing a lot of those two things and not so much reading, relaxing, talking to friends… the things that would probably actually help me mentally. 😄 

Oh! If you’re interested, there’s a new documentary on Netflix called Apollo 13: Survival that’s got a lot of actual footage and audio relating to that mission. I thought it was really good! And Tom Hanks sounds just like astronaut Jim Lovell, the character he plays; I wonder if that’s why he was chosen for that role!

If you wanna send me anything, my PO Box is still open:

Bethany King, PO Box 8152, Shreveport LA 71148

I’ve got an Amazon wish list and a Buy Me a Coffee link (which is like a tip jar) if you want to support me in one of those ways too.

Love you!!
Bethany