Our Christmas Card - Courtesy of Shutterfly

With Love Chartreuse Christmas Card

Visit Shutterfly.com for classic photo Christmas cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

A new business

As if life were not crazy enough, a couple of friends and I have turned a hobby into a living - we hope, at least. As of next week, www.tulsamakescents.com will go live and we already have a line of people waiting to get in and start saving. I think we can make a difference and really show people how not to spend all of their paycheck at the grocery store - it's not necessary! Wish us luck!

I've been Wagging

So I have been taught in the ways of couponing by a new but dear friend. She's shown me the ins and outs to getting the best deals, and as you can see from the pictures below, I think I've been doing pretty well. I am going to start posting my savings, just for me to keep a little record somewhere. It's my new project, and I'll grow tired of it eventually, but for now I love it. DH knows I tend to get into something for a while, grow tired of it and let it go. However, getting these kind of savings, I don't know I will be able to let that go anytime soon. I've been a bargain hunter since birth, and probably will be until I die.

Since this blog is mainly for myself, I will just assume no one is going to care if I spend my posts recounting the wonders of Wagging at Walgreens. Wagging is a term some folks have come up with for shopping the deals at Walgreens (e.g. Wags)


5/4
$15.19 before tax

$31.83 after tax

$242.76 saved on 5/4

$58 RR after shopping
















5/5
$10.10 before tax

$19.01 after tax

$129.60 saved on 5/5

$61 RR after shopping















My stockpile as of this week!
This shelf is in the garage and is only the shelf stable items that are not temperature sensitive. The other items are kept in the house.

A little crazy?

Baby Girl just turned 3 in December, but I've been looking at schools since before I got pregnant with her. I feel like people must think I am neurotic when I bring my 3 year old to a magnet school fair on a Saturday - maybe I am neurotic. I just want the best school for my kids and it's looking like private school is not going to be a financial option for our family. The neighborhood school is good, but the language immersion program at the magnet school is so much better.

So we've been working on French. I bought her a DVD, CD and flashcards with basic French words to start working on. She can sound out the words surprisingly well for a little girl who is technically behind in speech. I have two years to prepare her for testing into the magnet school.

Enough school talk - we had a really good Christmas. Other than the usual family drama, we had a great time with the kids this year. They really got into tearing into the presents which makes it totally worth buying them all. Little Man got a VSmile Baby that he could not care less about. Baby Girl got the regular VSmile and is really loving it. She picked up how to use the controller amazingly fast and beat level one on the game first day!

DH picked up a paper route again - this one is a little different though. More money for less work essentially. He got a route in a part of town that houses a lot of big names in the area who tip well. Plus the route doesn't have a ton of apartment complexes where he has to walk for an hour in the freezing cold.

I am gearing up for the local children's consignment sale - I have 3.5 bins of clothes to sell this time. I think probably more than any sale before this. I am about to sit down with an iron and hangers and get to work. Hopefully all the effort results in big sales for me this season.

First Flight

Thought I should post a picture of Baby Girl watching the planes.

Life's good

DH reminded me that I had a blog last night. I had forgotten. Since I am probably one of two people in the world who reads it, I am not answering to an audience, I let life take over and forget.

I just got back from a women's conference in Baton Rouge. It was Baby Girl's first plane trip and it went way better than I expected. She thought flying was too cool. I had a blast spending some one-on-one time with her - it so rarely happens these days. It has brought to me an appreciation for her that I didn't have a week ago. The distance and time apart also made me love my husband and Little Man just a little more than before. Not sure how I have any more room in my heart to love more, but somehow it keeps piling up in there.

Speaking of piles, the laundry piles are getting progressively smaller. It's awesome to actually enjoy my home. For so long, we have lead a life that didn't allow us time to clean and organize - we're changing that. The dishes are always done, the laundry is getting there - I actually have floors clean enough to vacuum whenever I want to. I know where all the cordless phones are. I am almost to the point where we can start eating dinner at the dining room table again - right now it is art project central - mine and Baby Girl's. She does her play-doh and painting; I have my sewing and embroidery. But I'm working on it - slowly but surely.

SO that's all. Really, things are good. No use in making up something to say when, "Life's good" covers it.

The physical rain stopped

So, depending on where you live, you might have noticed that it has stopped raining for about a week. It has been raining almost consistently for weeks now, ruining a perfectly good summer with heavy, energy-draining humidity.

It seems as though the drops of rain falling from the heavens stopped only to allow the drop of tears to fall from my eyes. I have a pretty good perspective on things in my life, and I can typically handle a decent amount of conflict - indeed, I require a small amount to thrive. However, an alcoholic brother who is slowly killing himself, a sis-in-law who is taking the fast-track off the earth (then finding out she is pregnant by my "clipped" brother), the unending phone calls from the former and family, and the very unfortunate death of my friend's sick little boy - wow - I'm a little overwhelmed.

I will gladly welcome the physical rain back anytime....but the forecast only calls for "variable cloudiness" - WTF is variable cloudiness?