All growed up...

Lately Grace has been bound and determined to stay up past her bedtime. We have a pretty good routine: snuggle a bit on the couch in our jammies, go in to her bedtime, read 3 or 4 stories - depending on the size of the book! Then we (I) sing a song and pray. We've been leaving the lamp on for her for about a month now, and she reads herself to sleep. Grace has always been very good about bedtime - a parent's dream since she was 6 weeks old and sleeping from 7-7!

But she is going through some sort of phase lately - she is bound and determined to stay up as late as she can. She has figured out how to go to the bathroom and then come to me and say "I peed, Mama" this is the ONLY time she ever tells me that -so I know she's using it as an avoidance tactic - she does the same thing at daycare. She saves all her poops for naptime and let's go...I feel so bad for her DCP! Apparently it's quite the mess. So I KNOW she knows what she's doing. Darn her.

Last week Friday her babysitter finally got her to nap around 3pm and I picked her up at 4:15 - I almost had to pry her eyes open she was so tired and was in such a deep sleep. So I knew she was tired and was anticipating an early bedtime. We even rented a movie and everything! Well, it's Monday and we still have not watched that movie...

Friday night she was so funny! She was bopping all over the place - just bouncing off the walls. Smacking herself in the forehead, making funny faces, dancing, jumping on the furniture, spinning in circles, making nonsensical noises and just generally trying to be funny and make us laugh. I told Clint - I'm getting my first glimpses of what junior high life is going to be like with Gracie. She reminded me so much of a hyper junior higher saying "I'm hyper! I'm hyper!" You know how we used to be. Then it hit me - Gracie's not a toddler anymore. Nothing about her suggests "toddling" - Nope - she's a KID.

It was a sort of bittersweet realization, you know? But I have my sweet Annie coming right up behind her and I wonder what she's going to be like learning to walk and talk. It just came upon me all of a sudden that she needs to be starting to eat baby food this month. Wasn't she just born???

Pretty soon I'm going to have to start thinking about preschool and number 3..

Maybe just preschool~

Wags 9/26

Oh, I just tore it up at Walgreens during my lunch hour today! This weekend is what they call Double Dip Days - it means that it's the end of their September Easy Saver Catalog and the beginning of their October Easy Saver Catalog. The Easy Saver Catalog is a catalog that prints out - online and they usually have copies of it in their stores -these Instant Value Coupons that can be stacked with Manufacturer's coupons. The catalog also has all the store's rebates for the month. Well Double Dip Days are cool because for two days you can use one month's IVC coupons with another month's rebates and vice versa. See? And they were pretty good this month! Here's what I did:

The October Easy Saver Catlog had an Instant Value Coupon for $3 off a 25.4 oz Garnier Fructis Shampoo or Conditioner. September has a rebate that if you buy $20.00 worth of Garnier products, you get a 10 dollar rebate. So - to sweeten this deal up, I went on Ebay and there was a seller out of Kalamazoo selling Garnier coupons - $1.00 off any product. They sell in increments of 10 for 1.99 (shipping included) so I bought them early this week, they came in the mail on Wednesday -and now I'm getting $4 off each bottle. But the nice thing about the rebates is that they take the rebates off the price BEFORE coupons are added. So - I used 3 -$3 IVC coupons (printed off the computer) and 3-$1 manufacturing coupons from Ebay. They are regularly priced 6.99 and I got 3 of them for 2.99 each - 8.97 + tax OOP (out of pocket)...submit to Easy Saver for Rebate get 10$ back! Did they just pay me .49 to take 75 ounces of shampoo home???? Uh - I think they did!

Even if you factor in the 1.99 I used to buy the coupons - I still paid 1.50 for 75 ounces of a GOOD shampoo! Whew!

Now, I still have 7 of those $1 coupons from Ebay left and the $3 IVCs are running all month long - so I'm going to wait it out and see if they put those big mammoth shampoos on sale some week and then really cash in :)

I also did this with Pert Plus - they have a September rebate for up to 4.59 and an October IVC for 2.50 off -plus I had a 2.00 coupon off of the 25.4 oz size and a 1.50 coupon off the 13.5 oz size. So I put two coupons with each bottle and paid $1.49 for the 25.4 oz size and uh - here we go again - they paid me .41 cents for the smaller bottle. That's 1.08 +tax for both. AND - I submit to the rebates for 4.59 so it's a 3.51 profit. See what I did there? Oh yeah...

My third and final rebate for September was this: they had a September sale: buy 4 bags (14 oz) of Halloween M&M's 4/$10 - buy 4 and get a $5.00 rebate. There was an October IVC coupon that was get $1 off 2 bags of Halloween M&Ms - so - I paid 8$ for 4 bags of yummy M&Ms and am getting 5 bucks back...that's not 4/10 baby, that's 4/3! And who doesn't like M&M's???

Walgreen's also puts out these coupons online every once in a while like get 10$ off a 40$ purchase, etc...this week it was buy 20$ (after coupons are tallied) get an extra 5.00$ off. So I used that and put in some filler sale items as well that I had coupons with.

Here's what I got this afternoon:

4 bags Halloween M&M's - 10.00
3 bottles of Garnier Fructis - 20.97
1 bottle of Pert Plus 25.4 oz - 5.99
1 bottle of Pert Plus 13.5 oz - 3.59
2 Mitchum Lady Deodorants - 3.98
1 Snuggle Fabric Softener Sheets - 3.59
1 Hall's bag of cough drops - 1.99
1 bottle Glade Pet deodorizer air freshner - 3.99

Total before coupons: 54.10 + tax

Coupons:
Garnier Fructis - $3 IVC
Garnier Fructis - $3 IVC
Garnier Fructis - $3 IVC
Garnier Fructis - $1 MQ
Garnier Fructis - $1 MQ
Garnier Fructis - $1 MQ
Pert Plus - 2.50 IVC
Pert Plus - 2.50 IVC
Pert Plus - 2.00 MQ
Pert Plus - 1.50 MQ
Mitchum - 1.00 IP (internet printable)
Mitchum - 1.00 IP (internet printable)
Halls Cough Drop - .99 7 Day Coupon (from Wag's weekly flyer) ($1 off RP)
Halls Cough Drop - .35 MQ
Glade Air Freshner - $1 IVC
Glade Air Freshner - $1.50 MQ
Snuggle Fabric Softner - 2/4 7 Day Coupon (1.89 off RP)
M&M - $1/2 IVC
M&M - $1/2 IVC

Total of Coupons: 30.24

Total: 25.29 ZING! 5.00 coupon!

Total Out of Pocket: 20.29 (that's what I paid! Crazy!)

Total Rebates Earned: 19.59
Difference: .70


ALL THAT FOR 70CENTS????? My math may be off a bit, but it's still an insanely small price for all that....!

Am I out of my freaking mind here or what??? Please feel free to skip over Wags postings if you think I'm going a little psychotic, but this is SUCH a FUN game. I've got shampoo pretty much for all of 2009 dont'cha think? And next week Johnson's & Johnson's is on sale! And I of COURSE have coupons :)

The hard part about these are getting the exact items for the exact deals and coupons - they are VERY specific -coupons and rebates alike. The other hard part is the cashier's sometimes don't know what to do with all my coupons and things. Like this afternoon the cashier told me that I couldn't use three of the same IVC coupon (for the Pert Plus & Garnier) because it says 1 item per coupon. Well that's fine, but I had 3 items and I had 3 coupons - so I'm sorry - but it goes through! But, I just said - that's fine, just give me the one then and took the other coupons knowing that I can just come in tonight when my favorite cashier, Katie, is working and do my deal. So - she took off all the extra merchandise, and then it turned out that I had picked up the wrong cough drops, so she asked me if she wanted her to go and get me the right kind. I said "sure" (otherwise, no cough drops for Amy) - this is interesting because I knew the store manager was over by the cough drops stocking because I had asked him where the Snuggle was earlier. So she comes back and says, "You know what? I'm just gonna go ahead and let you take all that shampoo...etc..." Translation: "I asked the store manager and he said you can use as many IVC's as you want, I was wrong, you were right, but I'm not going to let you know that..." Sorry, Carol - I am ON to you! But who cares? You've got to be nice to the cashiers, giving them crap never gets you anywhere and I got my freaking boatload of shampoo. Not to mention 7 more bottles to come in the month of October...

Ah, it's the little things in life isn't? Do not dismay - a picture will come :)

5 Little words I'm longing to hear...

"I have to go potty"

BEFORE actually going potty

*deep sigh* she's getting there...

Sweetness

I know I've had a verbal toddler for a couple of years now - (I can't believe Grace is almost 3!) But just this weekend, for the first time since November, 5, 2005, I thought to myself how beautiful the name "Mommy" sounds coming from a sweetheart of a little girl who just wants to be near me all the time.

Another thing I don't ever want to forget is waking up to the sound of Annie, in her bed, jibber jabbering away to her toy lambs. She does this every morning -for at least 20 minutes, just talks away. Inflections and everything. I so wonder what she is thinking about, but mostly I just love to hear the contentedness as I wake up --before the fussing for breakfast comes!

Taking down the Barker

So - funny story about Grace at the fair this past Tuesday. Of course as prizes, there are Dora balloons, blowups and stuffed animals EVERYWHERE. Well, we stopped at an easy thing that she could win - the fishing picture. She won her Dora blow up hammer thingy and was happy as a lark.

Off we head towards Kiddie land, passing by numerous other games with like prizes. This exceedingly obnoxious barker at a dart/balloon game calls out to us "Hey - prize for the kiddo - each one wins..."or some other such thing that they all do. Well Clint says to him flat out, "No thanks, we're happy with what we've got." Upon further inspection of the booth I see this huge plush Dora doll- obviously it is a nicer prize that what we won, and actually we have a small Dora doll at home for Grace.

Even after Clint telling him "No thanks" the barker than proceeds to yell at Grace - "Hey little girl - I've got Dora prizes too" OBVIOUSLY trying to entice her and start the whole two year old temper tantrum of wanting more. And how out of line was he? To be barking at a 2 year old AFTER we had refused. Clint wanted to deck him, and I was very displeased.

Not to worry - Grace turned, looked at him, leaning forward with her fists straight out behind her and barked back: "I've got Dora at MY house!"

and walked on.

Oooh girlfriend!

Fair Week 2008

Grocery Mania

The Big Splurge

Above is my slideshow of my grocery shopping this weekend. Scroll over the pictures to see prices and deals and the final tally for the weekend! I almost doubled my money. I think for the most part the big splurge is out of my system. Now my goal is to get lots of stuff for pennies, you know and then fresh items. But my stockpile is beefy. That's the key to cutting down the grocery budget, getting a stockpile in your pantry. Finding the good deal...i.e. Kotex and boxed potatoes...and stocking up with multiple coupons! Also the trick to Wal-greens is their Easysaver catalog, rolling over the Register Rewards and they have some monthly rebates that I'm going to try to learn about also. And don't let any disgruntled, know it all cashiers stop you. Merely smile and ask them to try the coupon. Or speak to the manager if necessary. Both happened on my Wal-green trip in Portage. The cashier and manager at the Wal-green in TR were awesome :) I'm actually going to write in a letter about them.

So anyhoo - I promise I'll get back to logging about my Cinderellas, but I'm going to keep in the grocery tips too as I find them. After all - it's for the family's sake that I'm doing this!

@Kate: Thanks for the blog template tip! I found one and stayed up entirely too late last night working on it...and also - I'm putting in a couple of days of overtime by helping out in the Glen Oak's library on Monday and Thursdays - then I come in and do my 8 hours in the Distance Learning Center. Probably only for September, until they hire their new morning person. I figure the OT can be my Christmas budget :)

@Elisabeth: Kotex must be running a massive campaign because I am finding coupons for them everywhere! If you have both Internet Explorer and Firefox, you can download two coupon printers and print Kotex coupons off of coupons.com and smartsource.com - you can print all coupons from these sites twice until they cut you off. Plus there has been the same coupons in the inserts in the Sunday paper. Find the package of Kotex from Wal-Mart that are $1.00 and stock up. You can use multiple coupons in 1 transaction as long as you have a coupon for each thing. i.e. 10 packages of Kotex + 10 1.00 coupons = pads for life! ha ha!

Exhausted

Well, all I have to say is I ended last week exhausted and am beginning this week exhausted. Some weekends are just like that. The biggest bummer is that I left my camera at Mom and Dad's so I have to wait to blog about my big, MASSIVE savings this week, but Wal-greens did not let me down!

A brief glimpse though of what I did today: Meijer is running a special -buy 5 Kellogg's cereals for 10 and get a free gallon of milk...well - I went here and printed off 2 coupons for Mini-wheats on my computer at work and 2 from my boss's computer (most websites let you print 2 coupons)-I went to the store and got 4 boxes of Mini-Wheats, a box of Rice Krispies (for treats) and a gallon of milk for cha ching - $5.00 (I also had a register coupon for $1 off next purchase from this weekend's gala)

Considering that milk is usually 3.89 a gallon - I think that's a pretty good deal :) - my receipt said: "total savings - 13.99.

My second transaction -sometimes ya gotta make more than one - and I had another register coupon so I did two transactions was for 6 tubes of crescent rolls and 6 tubes of cinnamon rolls. I had $1/1 coupons for each tube and they were on sale at Meijer 2/$3 - I got them for 50 cents a tube - 12 tubes of rolls for +$1 register coupon and- cha ching - $5.00. Total savings on that transaction was 21.34.

Do you know how many different things you can do with crescent rolls! These babies come in handy and I know it says not to freeze them, but I think you totally can. And the cereal I'm putting in the care packages we're putting together to hand out. I wanted to put some cereal in it, but all I bought this weekend were the Fiber and Kashi health cereals and I figure since we're giving it to families with small children, they might want something tasty, rather than something that was merely designed to make you poop...*hee*

I'm thinking of keeping a tally of my savings on the sidebar - simply because I'm annoyingly competitive and this whole coupon thing has gotten to be one big massive game for me right now and I want to see if I can keep one-upping myself. My goal each week is to get at least SOMETHING free (from the store) and yes, I do sound incredibly Dutch right now Kate! :) but heck- this is fun.

This past weekend my free items were:

10 packages of Kotex pantyliners (I have 6 more coupons for these, I think I'll be set till menopause)
1 Johnsons & Johnsons Bud-E suds bar
1 bag of beef jerky
4 bags of Green Giant vegetable steamers
6 bags of Chex Mix
1 bottle of Crest Mouthwash

Are you mocking me yet? I totally wouldn't blame you!

and I'm already starting on this week with my gallon of milk :) with some very well laid plans for shampoo and toothpaste...(insert wicked grin and evil laugh)

And so it begins!

Well girls, wish me luck! I've got my coupons organized, my spreadsheets and shopping lists ready and I'm going to hit the groceries HARD this weekend. I counted it up and I have - no joke - 200 (yes, that's right) valid coupons to use this weekend at Hardings, Walmart, Walgreens and Meijer. I'm taking pictures and tallies of everything and I'll let you know how it goes!

Last night was my first trip of the weekend - small one to Hardings - had 5 coupons for Betty Crocker potatoes - normally priced 1.97, marked down to 1.00 save $1/2 boxes - that's .50 a box and 5.00 for 10. That's 75% savings am I right? And those are nice to have in the pantry for when you're in a bind for supper.

And today during my lunch hour I began the rolling at Walgreens - bought 3 boxes of Robitussin cold medicine - on sale from 5.79 to 3.99. Had 3/$3 coupons and paid 2.97 for all three boxes. Register Rewards this week awards you a 10.00 in store coupon for your next trip when you buy three, so basically I just MADE 7.03 - in a way of looking at it :) HA!

Oh, and last night it was DEAD at work so I went to Freeflys and signed up for about 30 free samples! (That's for you Elisabeth! :) But watch out you have to be careful of the ones that say participation required - I don't do those they are a pain in the butt. I just do the ones that ask for your address.

The only bad thing is that I'm already worn out from planning and I have a long way to go this weekend!

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Two Cinderellas

My first freebie!

First things first! Here's some pics of my sweeties :)

Charlie Chaplin...Or...Grace enjoying her ice cream sundae!

Scary, scary monsters!
My little Newsie
This outfit had the whole kit and kaboodle - hat, bib, sleeper and two little booties!
My sweet Anniecakes

I got my first free sample in the mail today (I've had free samples before, but this is my first since my official moneysaving hobby has begun!) It's from Fiberone.com - kind of fun to get because today I found out that Walmart.com has a free sample section and I signed up for four or five more grocery item samples!

Here's a pic of my yummy Fiber One samples:

Let me tell you this stuff works and it's tasty too! Bars and Cereal are on sale at Wal-greens for 2$ and I have lots of coupons! Planning to stock up :)

Kudos (!) go to Clint for taking the pic of my Fiber One!

Wow! Two posts today!

Change Please

Every year or so - generally right around the end of summer/beginning of fall, I get very antsy for a change at my job. This summer was no exception. I attribute this to the fact that when I was teaching there was an actual end to my summer and a beginning of something new with the upcoming school year - new kids/new challenges/different schedule, etc...I've been out of teaching for two years now and I still feel like something should be starting up in September. Very weird.

Anyhoo - this summer I was getting antsy and had a couple of interviews scheduled with jobs that weren't really in our family's best interest - i.e. farther away, longer hours and different daycare providers for about the same amount of money I make now. The only upside to these jobs is that they would be DIFFERENT and provide me with a change of pace. Apparently I just cannot commit to one thing for any specific period of time - not comfortably anyway. That was getting to be what I didn't like about teaching - I had a hard time sticking to the ROUTINE that kids need so strongly because I was getting bored.

I actually wound up cancelling my interviews because I didn't want to go and get excited about something I wasn't going to take, because ultimately - even though I personally need a change - my family needs stability and with Clint getting his job last March we finally are getting to where we have a routine and things around the house are stable - routines, daycare, finances, activities, etc...

I think this is what typical family life is. At least for those of us with kiddos who aren't in to activities/sports yet. I want to provide the stability for my girls and for my husband, but in my head I am looking/desiring for something new to spice things up a little. Any new obsession will do. Clint suggested I get a hobby - I told him I needed a hobby I could do from 8-4 Monday - Friday.

Not many of those around, but I do have time to do my coupons at work :) We are talking multiple trips to multiple stores and at least 75 coupons (no joke) for just this week! I guess you could say that my hobby will be finding moneysavers for our family's grocery/shopping bill. There are tons of moneysaver blogs that I am reading and tips and links to coupons. It has taken the bulk of the past two days to make up my spreadsheet, sort my coupons and route my course of action to my money saving deals. BTW - my boss totally knows that I do all this, she tells me that if I don't have anything to do to look busy and ribs me at times about clipping coupons.

I'll probably wind up posting my progress on the blog here just to keep a record. This weekend is my first major spree and we'll see how it goes. I'm excited. I suppose you could say my new hobby will provide change - in both ways!

Yikes

I'm clipping coupons and singing Princess songs in my sleep now. Seriously - my brain is on overload with those two things and when I've stared at a computer for 12 hours and try to go home and sleep - all I see are barcodes and advertisements and all I hear is "Colors of the Wind", intertwined with "A Whole New World." Yikes!

Not much going on this week - last weekend was sort of a sloth weekend - didn't do much, Clint worked on Saturday and we sold our recliner. Kind of a nice bargain as we got Clint's mom's chair and ottoman combo - which is SOOO much nicer for free :) It'll lend itself to some minor redecorations which will keep our spirits up about the house. We've decided to take it off the market. It's been 18 months and no real leads - just some apparently unfinanceable people interested. I suggested to Clint that we let it go off the market for the winter and then maybe put it up for sale next spring with a FSBO sign. Not sure yet on that, but it will be nice not to have the stress of trying to keep the house immaculate (which really is about 50% of the time!)
It'll be nice not to have to THINK about it so much anyway.

This next weekend starts the fair - Clint is a huge fan of the fair. In fact - we got gigs on Saturday beFORE the fair to be 4H judges. 50 bucks and lunch baby! Just for talking to kids about their projects and then handing out awards. Very nice set up as that can be our Fair money :) I suppose on Saturday night there will be visions of stamp collections and sewing projects running through my head. Double yikes!!

RNC

Sarah Palin FREAKING ROCKS!!!

(I just wanted to say that on my blog)

Utopia

I've decided that one of things that would occur in a perfect world would be - a husband who - on his own - observes his wife doing a time consuming/somewhat exhausting routine every evening and - JUST ONCE IN A WHILE - says, "Hey honey, I'll do that tonight." I'm not asking for regularity, I'm just saying once in a while. So I don't have to ask him, nope I want him to come up with it on his own.

My husband is many wonderful things, but a volunteer he is not.