A day to pray

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."


I could say this quote constantly over the course of a day and only hope it would help make me a better person. My patience is lacking, constantly. I know that it's all about finding that balance. About knowing what I can change and what I cannot. I need to let go of some of the control that I feel I need to have. I can only control myself...control my own actions and my reactions. I can guide and help mold someone else, but change...not really...but that's how it should be, right?


In my prayers this week...my aunt Anita. They harvested her stem cells a few days ago and will be doing the transfer this next week. I can only pray that her body will have the strength to make it though all of this.
My friend Katey lost her mother to ovarian cancer last week. Since my own mother is a breast cancer survivor, having a friend lose her mother to cancer hits very close to home. I cannot imagine the pain of her loss.


"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Frugal....Saturday?

Alright, alright. So I'm only at week 2 and I'm already slacking on my planned posts. Oh well...here you go anyway.

King Soopers this week has a great deal. Buy 2 Gallons of Milk plus any (4) Participating Keebler or Kellogg's Products and they become $1 each.
Go to redplum.com (under grocery) and you can find coupons for Keebler Town house crackers and Kellogg's cereals and get a heck of a deal.

Also on sale is Earth Grain bread for $1.99. Redplum.com also has a coupon for .55 off. Double that and you get bread for $1.

Go to http://connect.izze.com/ and find a coupon for .75 off Izze drinks. With the $1 sale this week that means free Izze soda!

Also free this week, with a coupon from the Sunday paper, is Reach floss.


Heading out east? Byer's general store is running another .30 sale. Buy cans of Shur Savings vegatables (green beans, corn, creamed corn and mixed veg. only) for .30 each! 8 oz. containers of yellow mustard are .30 as well as Tina's frozen burritos. Sale only lasts through Sunday so get out there if you can.

A day to pray

My aunt is going to Omaha today. She'll be there for about a month, in isolation, for cancer treatment. They are going to be killing off ALL of her white blood cells and beating her body down to nothingness (they have a good start already), in hopes to rid her of this evil.

I complain for being tired, but she's more tired than I will ever know.

I complain of a headache, but her body hurts more than mine ever has.

I complain about being stuck inside because of the cold and snow, but she won't be able to go outside for entire month.

I have no reason to complain. All I can do is be thankful for what I have and pray that she recovers for the hell she's been (and will be) put through.

Frugal Friday

Maybe I'll be witty and Friday will be my day of the week to post about sales and such.

I don't know if I have it in my brain to go through my King Soopers shopping trip from last week, but I can mention that they are having their buy 10 get $3 off sale for the second week in a row. With that sale (and the other sale items for the week), and using my coupons, I saved $72.32 off my grocery bill, spending $103.78. Not too bad I guess since $22.63 of that was from coupons.

If you live out east, Byers General Store is celebrating their 30th anniversary all month. They are having a 3 day sale (today through Sunday) with items for 30 cents!! I hauled the kids out in the snow and cold to stock up on some items.

My big finds...

Shurfine tomato or chicken noodle soup - .30
Bar S hotdogs (not the all beef kind) - .30
Top Ramen noodles - 2 for .30
McCormick Brown gravy packets - .30
Shurfine Pasta, long spaghetti or elbow macaroni 12 oz packages - .30!!
Shurfine chunk light tuna in water - .30 (limit 5 then they are .50)
Cheer detergent, 25-30 load size - $3.00
Roma tomatoes - .30/lb
Iceburg lettuce heads - .30 each

The last thing they have, that I didn't get (since Jim is allergic to chicken) is...
Chicken fryer leg quarters, 10 lb bag - $3.90

I bought quite a bit, buying things for my mom as well (we do that for one another) and also for my grandmother. Otherwise I bought some fresh fruits and veggies, cereal for $1.67 a box, and my big money saver was a can of Wolf chili that I got for .34 after their sale and a coupon.
I'm probably going back tomorrow to take advantage of the sale one more time (picking up more things for my mom and grandma), but my grand total today was $55.06 with a savings of $66.16!

The sound of silence

I love music, I love TV but I love the sound of silence even more. Right now both kids are napping and I am in heaven. Jim is at work so it's just me here and I don't hear a sound beside the hum of the refrigerator and maybe an airplane outside. I love it. I have never been a person who meditated, but I think right now I could sit on the floor, cross my legs and meditate.
My house is a mess right now but I don't even want to do anything that would make noise, even if it's just putting things away.
I'm sure I'm jinxing it by even writing about it, but I could listen to nothing all afternoon and be happy with it. I love my children, but I love the quiet too.

I'm a grandma!

A couple weeks ago we were given the sweetest kitty. She came from a guy that Jim works with and ended up with her from a neighbor. We have wanted a cat for a long time, so this was a perfect opportunity to get one. She had been a outdoor cat, so that was nice. We aren't 100% sure how old she is but she's probably about a year. She's still young and was pregnant with her first litter of kittens. We were told it would probably be a month or so before she'd deliver but to our surprise she had her kittens yesterday!

Jim had to go to work in the morning so on his way out he went to check on her. (Her "home" is in our shed, where she has a "bed", litter box and food.) He came back in and said, "Break out the cigars!" I couldn't wait to go out there and see them!
I went out later that morning and saw 4 little kittens. They were just precious! I forgot how insanely cute newborn kittens are. Later that afternoon I went back to check in on her and that's when I noticed something sad. One of the kittens hadn't survived. I don't know if she passed shortly after birth or when it happened.
I went back later that evening to check on her and what a surprise!! There were 2 new kittens!! I couldn't believe she was still in labor! So now we have 5 kittens total. As of today she is doing well and the kittens seem to be fine.

I can't get pictures to post right now so I'll try to get some soon.

Coupons

For those of you who don't know, I'm a saver. Not a saver as in a hoarder (OMG have you watched that show?? I want to help those people soooo badly), but as in saving money. I'm frugal...or some may say cheap, but I'm ok with that. I shop at garage sales and thrift stores and when I shop at "regular" stores, I shop the clearance racks and sales. It absolutely KILLS me to pay regular price for ANYTHING. I know it's a necessary evil sometimes, but I avoid it as much as possible. Oh, and I use coupons.
I've been using coupons for a while now (before I was married) but I wasn't really "good" at using coupons until fairly recently. What does it mean to be "good" at using coupons? Well, I don't use coupons just because I have them. That was my trap in the past. I used to think, "oh, I have $1 off such and such an item, I need to buy it". I'm much smarter about it now.
I wouldn't say that I'm a pro at it. I know of many women who are MUCH better bargain hunters than I am...so I read their blogs and get their tips, teehee. The key to couponing is matching the coupons with the weekly sales. See what's on sale, use your coupon with it and voila! Even more so, you need to find the BEST sale and use your coupons with it. There have been multiple times where I have walked out of King Soopers with items for free, or they paid me to take it.
The other way to coupon is to go to stores where you can stack coupons and load up on the savings. If you don't know what I mean by stacking, it's when you use a store coupon (i.e. Walgreens, Target and Safeway all do this) along with a manufacturer coupon on the same item. You can get some great deals doing this as well.

Tonight I sat and cut out coupons from this last week's newspaper, my latest issue of All You Magazine, and ones I printed from coupons.com. I still need to get them in my coupon organizer, but then I'll be all set for my trip to King Soopers tomorrow.
Some people say they don't use coupons because it takes too much time. I can see their point. It does take time...but here's MY point. I'm mainly a stay at home mom. If I can sit and spend and hour cutting and organizing coupons for the week, that's not too bad. Not too bad when you figure that most weeks I go to the store and save at the very least $10, if not $20 (or more) just with my coupons. $10-$20 an hour for couponing...not too shabby. Those little slips of paper are as good as cash in my hands. I don't take it too lightly.
Other people have said that buying the store brand is cheaper so they just do that. I will agree with that...sometimes. BUT, if an item is on sale (a decent sale) that week, it can be cheaper to buy the name brand item and use your coupon.

On a side note: when I cut out the coupons from the newspaper, I cut them ALL out. I seperate them into 2 piles, the ones I want to keep and the ones I'm sending away. All the coupons I don't want I ship overseas to a military base, where families can use them while shopping at their BX. They can also use coupons that have expired, up to 6 months. So at the end of the month I pull out all the coupons that I didn't use and put those in my "send" bag as well. It's very selfish really. It makes me feel good to know that I can help the families, of the men and women who are serving my country, save a little money while they are so far away.
If you are interested in doing this you can go to www.ocpnet.org and find out more info. I mean, really, $5 in shipping costs every couple months to show support and help our soldiers and their families save a few dollars...it's not too much to ask, I don't think.


The main point of this post is because I've had people ask me how I do what I do. How do I go to the grocery store, spend $70 and save $80 (ok, that's only happened a couple times)? Stick around and you might find out. I'm not going to become a blogger who sits there and leads you through the entire grocery sale ad for the week. I just don't have the energy to do that. But, if I have a chance, I can let you know about what deals I was able to score for the week and, if I do it early enough, maybe you can score them too.
Just a side note, since I live out here in the far east I mainly only shop at King Soopers so that's the store I'll focus on. I might throw in some Walgreens or Target deals on occassion but don't expect TOO much of me. I have a toddler and an infant ya know. :)

What I should have named my blog...

Adventures in mediocrity

I made the realization today that I'm a pretty mediocre person. I don't have anything that I really excel at. I like to do a lot of things but nothing really really well.

Examples:

Cooking - I can cook, somewhat, but pretty much only with a recipe and it's usually semi-homemade (I'm not much of a "from scratch" girl). I remember someone saying once that you aren't really a cook if you have to use a recipe. I guess I'll never be a cook then.

Baking - I like to bake more than cook but, as I proved today with my disaster of a Valentine's Day cake, I'm not that great of a baker either.

Sewing/crafts - I really love to sew and do crafts, but everything I make turns out just...well...ok. I always dreamed that I would be good enough at a certain craft so that I could take my goods and sell them somewhere. So far, I have made nothing worthy enough for selling. Most of what I make is barely good enough to pass on to friends and family for gifts and even then I usually have to apologize for the stitching, etc.

Those are the main things...the rest, well...I'm an OK dresser, decent with my makeup, anal about cleaning and organizing some things and HORRIBLE about taking care of others. I was always a decent singer, but Simon would heckle me to pieces if I even auditioned for American Idol. I used to think I was a good dancer, but my coordination left me during childbirth I think. And don't even get me started about being a good wife and mother...I feel pretty mediocre about those as well.

I don't know if I should lower my expectations and be content with my mediocrity, or if I should continue to push myself and strive for more. Some days I feel like I should just give up trying, because the dissapointment of my failures can be overwhelming. If I could just find that one thing, that ONE thing I'm really good at I would feel a little better.

Day one

So here I am. I'm starting a blog. I told myself I wouldn't ever do a blog so I'm not sure what made me decide that today was the day I'd start one, but here I am.

I can't promise that this blog will be anything exciting. I don't really know what I'm going to do with it, but I figure as time goes by it will take shape. I know I need a place to talk about random things...so there will be some randomness. I might share some of my bargain's off and on...ya know, the good deals I hear about from other people (or one's I find myself)...so there will be some bargaining. I may share a few pictures off and on...so there will be some picturing.
All in all, it's just going to be about me. Me and my life out here in the country....good, bad, random, boring, fun...who knows what you'll get.

This is me.

Happy Valentine's Day!