Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Frugal Shopping Thoughts

So the last few months my main goal (in terms of shopping/money) has been to get used to this new shopping stuff as well as build up our stock pile of supplies.

I've learned how to cut/organize coupons efficiently.

I've learned how to figure out the best sales and what's worth buying (although that's still a lesson in progress).

I've learned some valuable lessons and rules regarding couponing/frugal shopping (I need to update my rules list I posted before as I've come up with some more since then).

I'm working on trying to plan meals a week in advance and actually follow through on the menu (this has proved to be challenging somewhat, especially when I I hit a gluten-attack and wind up exhausted and cranky and in pain).

As September gets closer, I've been thinking about how to tackle the next month.

(side note - A very wise person told us before we got married that a great budgeting technique is to always be one month ahead of yourself in pay checks. In other words, all of the pay checks we receive in August get put in the bank and not a penny is touched until September 1. Then at the beginning of the month we have our entire month's budget already in hand and we go from there - as opposed to living from pay check to pay check. I don't remember where it was we picked up this concept, but it has been amazingly helpful. Any ways, so when I look at finances and stuff, it's very easy for me to plan a month in advance because I'm not theoretically projecting what we will have in the bank, I know what we have!).

So, in September while obviously continuing the rest of the above techniques (especially the meal-planning because I can't escape people talking about how that is the best way of saving money on food), I'm going to try adding another step to my shopping.

Currently I have a monthly amount of money set aside for groceries etc. I want to break that down into a weekly amount (slightly smaller than what our current budget would allow weekly) and see how I do on that.

It's going to require really thinking through what I'm buying every week, but I think it will be good in the end. And I think that's going to be the real way to start cutting down on our actual grocery budget.

A tricky part is that everyone I've read on this stuff is emphatic about only using cash. And while I do see the benefits of that (forcing you to limit your spending, etc), we use a credit card because of frequent flyer miles (the card get paid in full every month - never again do I want to experience the agony of paying off credit card debt!). And in my family situation (being spread out all over the world), frequent flyer miles are an essential part of life. So I'm going to have to work on being really disciplined on still paying with our card but only allowing x amount per week.

Oh the fun and joys of frugality!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The CVS Happy Dance

Even though I didn't "coupon" this week, I still went CVSing because I had coupons that were applicable and there were some happy deals.
  • Edge Shaving Gell 2/$4 combined with two $.75 coupons = 2/$2.50

  • 2 packs of Stayfree Maxi Pads $4.50 each minus two $1.00 coupons = 2/$7.00 plus I got $5.00 back in ECBs.

  • 1 packet of Kotex pads - $1.39 minus $1.00 coupon = $.39 and I got $1.49 back in ECBs! (I think the pads were priced wrong in that store, but hey, I earned $1.10 so I'm not complaining!)

  • 1 box of Playtex Tampons $4.99 minus one $1.00 coupon = $3.99 with $3.00 back in ECBS.

Total before coupons = 19.38

Total after coupons = $13.88

Paid $5.00 out in ECBs, so my total out of pocket = $8.88

And I got $9.49 in ECBS for next time. So theoretically, I just got paid to go shopping :)

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Am I a true book worm?

I'm a book addict. So when I ran across this post from the blog Mommy's Got Green, of course I had to participate!

So here's the basic idea:

"The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA estimates that the average adult has only read six book from the following list of 100. So let's see how you stack up."

  • Bold the books that you have read

  • Italicize those books which you intend to read

  • Underline the books you love

  • Pass the list on to others

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Score: 60/100


I'm happy to say that I did ten times better than the aerage person; however, I have to admit, I was thinking my score would be higher than that. Well, I guess this is a good list for me to work through reading! Other than the two that seemed repetitive (having both the Chronicles of Narnia and Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and Hamlet as well as the Complete Works of Shakespeare), I personally felt it was a pretty good list of books to have read. So, that's a good incentive for me to try the ones I haven't.

Maybe in a year I'll check back and see how I've done!

A Laugh

I'm in pain. Serious pain. But for once it has nothing to do with food.

Nope, this time we went tubing for five hours down a river. And despite putting on multiple doses of sunscreen, I still managed to fry my legs really, really badly. Currently I can't bend my knees because the skin hurts too bad!

So I'm not doing a whole lot of anything currently (you know it's bad when I don't want to go out and get a newspaper for couponing just because I don't want to bend my knees!).

In the meantime, just for laughs, for all the crazy couponers out there, here's a post your husband (and you) will get a kick out of!

Friday, August 22, 2008

Dancing Decision

I made my decision several days ago, but I haven't posted about it because I wanted to let it sink in first. You know, settle into it, give my addled brain a chance to reject or approve of the idea.

The short of is that after prayer and planning and dreaming and scheduling, I could not get a peace about working at the studio. In some ways it felt like a dream come true, but in others, akin to opening myself up to a nightmare. (OK, maybe not quite that extreme but my literary side liked the imagery!)

Basically there were quite a few reasons against taking either or both positions (and after I made my decision and passed it along to the powers that be, I discovered it probably would have entailed taking BOTH positions as opposed to just one, at least initially). Some of them were as follows:
  • I'm not doing my masters this year because Chris is going back to school and I've really felt like the Lord has been leading me to be a support to him in the next few years not focused on my own school, etc. And although he (Chris) kept telling me not to factor him into my decision, I realized that I had already factored him into my decision by the simple fact that I'm not doing school; therefore, why would I take up that time with yet another activity? And an activity that would take me out of the house a lot.
  • All the "Pros" of taking either position (other than the fact that I would be dancing again) were based on which of the positions would be better - not pros in terms of how getting into this would be an improvement in our lives.
  • Dancing again - I wouldn't be dancing. I would be administrating or teaching. I miss dancing. I don't miss a lot of other parts of that world - Christian or non-Christian.
  • I'm struggling keeping up with 40 hours of work a week (case in point, I was so excited this week that I thought I was going to be able to have two full weeks without taking any sick time - first time in months I think. And then Wednesday hit) - why would I add another 20 or so?

There were other reasons beyond this. But I think one of the key elements for me is the fact that since I've made this decision I have had peace. I haven't had one moment of doubt concerning my decision.

Maybe this was just one of those moments when God wasn't going to "yay" or "nay" the decision and would have given me strength to go with either one. Obviously I'll never really know. But as things stand right now, I am confident in the decision I have made.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

My food is being problematic

So yesterday all this glutenny stuff snuck up behind me and smacked me really hard. It's most unfair when I get really sick from eating and I have absolutely no idea what I ate that is the problem.

Any ways, I've decided I'm going to have to do a reversal and go back on a very, very strict diet for the next week or so with the foods I'm 100,000% positive are fine (i.e. vegetables, rice, and chicken - but only when flavored with the appropriate things - and some of the new gf recipes i've found that don't contain other potential dangers), get all this new garbage back out of my system, and then basically start over again. I think the additional areas that are potentially really causing me trouble might be
  • soy
  • beef (fed with wheat...)
  • sugar

From everything i can read, if you're already having intestinal issues, all three of these can exaserbate the issue a lot and cause gluten-like symptoms. Maybe if I try to weed them out of my system for 6 months to a year and give my entire stomach a chance to completely heal, i'll be able to eat them again.

But, it'll be another case of experimentation as to whether or not those threee really are causing me more grief.

I'm just so tired of being sick all the time. It gets very discouraging.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Shoppings

So, thus far this week, I've hit Walgreens and CVs. Last week the sales were pathetic basically everywhere. This week, a lot better! Walgreens is frustrating me a little bit - more on that in a bit - but CVS I did really well at.


CVS
  • 1 bottle of baby lotion: $1.88 on sale - $2.00 off any CVS brand skin care = FREE
  • 2 bags of Chex Mix: these were on sale a few weeks ago 2/$3; however, they were out, so I got a rain check. Love rain checks! 2/$3 - two $.50 coupons = 2/$2
  • 3 boxes of Puffs tissues: on sale for $.88 each - three $.25 coupons = $.63 each!

  • Mountain Dew 12 pack (got to keep Chris' stock up!) - buy 5/$11 ($2.20 apiece)


  • 2 bottles of Glade spray. On sale for $.88 each combined with a B1G1 coupon - $.44 each!'

  • Neosporin/Johnson & Johnson - $11.77 total - $2.50 worth of coupons = $9.27. (Now a question I've seen around is why not just buy the generic? Well, initially the generic is cheaper. And sometimes it still is cheaper when combined with coupons. However, when you add in things like $5.00 ECBs back - which was the deal on these - then the price difference swings in the favor of the name brand. Otherwise, yes, I would buy generic).

Total before coupons = $32.0

w/ coupons = $26.92

Combine 2 CVS specific coupons (the $2 off any CVS brand skin care and $2 off total purchase of $10 or more) = $22.92

subtract an additional $16.97 in ECBs from previous purchases and my total out of pocket = $6.49 (includes tax)! And I have $5 in ECBs for next trip.




Walgreens


Walgreens has apparently been changing their policies on their register rewards. Last time I shopped they informed me I could only use 1 register reward per transaction (unlike CVS where I can throw them all on together). This time they informed me that their policy has changed even more and if you use coupons on something that is supposed to generate register rewards, they won't give you the register rewards. Now, personally, if this is true and not just that particular store being annoying, I find this crazy and misleading. I've emailed their customer service, so we'll see if I get a response. Either way, I'm taking some items back to WG because of this.

However, that said, they did have some good sales on this week.
  • Their weekly paper had a slew of $.39 coupons (not $.39 off the item but the item costing only $.39). So, for a grand total of $5.46, I got Hydrogen peroxide, a pack of college-ruled paper, a pack of mechanical pencils, a fly swatter, 3 boxes of Jiffy corn mix, a box of toothpicks, a pack of gift tissue paper, 3 rolls of tape, and 3 sets of plastic cutlery (for Ugly Tree!)

  • They also had a 2/$1 on salt and baking soda, so I got a couple of those.
  • They had Dixie plates for sale Buy 1 for $3.79 get 1 free. Plus, I had two $.60 coupons, so my total $3.09 for 72 plates (again - Ugly Tree!).

  • They also had the Airwick scent refills at 2/$5. Had a $1.00 coupon for that = 2/$4 and I got 2 warmer units for free.

  • I also got some Pantene hairspray and gell which was on sale for 2/$8.00. Subtract a $1.00 manufacturers coupon and then a $5.00 Register Reward and it was 2/$2.00. Good deal, right? Frustrating though because I should have gotten $3.00 back in Register Rewards as they advertised, and I didn't.

Total out of pocket - $16.94

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Baking

So, my Domata gluten free flour arrived this week, and I decided to see how it works.

Well, I tried two different bread (think needs bread flour type) recipes, and frankly, it was very disappointing. The first batch was hard as a rock (keep in mind I'm not that expert of a bread maker either) and the second just doesn't taste that good. So, I think I'll have to try some of the other gluten free bread recipes I've gathered that require combining your own flours, etc. Domata just doesn't seem to do that good a job in place of regular bread flour.

However, I did make banana muffins with the flour and those turned out really good (although there is the faintest pepper taste to them that I can't figure out for the life of me).

Well, other than the whole exploding part.



Normal banana muffins are very smooth, dome-shaped muffins. These are just, well, let's call it "dome challenged."
I put rice syrup in in place of sugar (as large amounts of sugar really do seem to bother me), and it made the dough incredibly sticky. Not sure if that's what caused the muffins to puff up the way they did, but they sure looked funny coming out of the oven!

Friday, August 15, 2008

To dance or not to dance

I started my first ballet lessons when I was three years old; although, I believe instinctively I danced from the time I could walk. Just so much easier than walking! 27 years later, I still love to dance. However, life has done it's usual morphing and many things have changed for me in this field.

When I was younger, I always wanted to become a professional dancer. As I got older, that dream became that of a professional working in a Christian company to bring the art of dance to a rather (at times) closed door Christian society.


When I was 18, I went off to college to get my degree in English education (bookworking - my second passion!), hoping and praying that dance would stay a part of my life somehow but not sure on the "how." That door did open and I worked all the way through the college as a ballet teacher at a Christian owned studio.


And then I started teaching high school. And within a month, I knew that something had to give. And even more, I felt like God was saying to me, "let go of this. It is no longer for you." And so reluctantly but with the realization that I literally could not both teach school and dance, I let go.


But I've missed dancing so much. I don't really miss performing; I just miss dancing. I miss the smell of the studio, the movement, even my pointe shoes (bloody feet, blisters, and all). While I've tried to keep up at home, it's not been the same at all. There's been a few times when we've had dancers in church, and just watching them has hurt so much because I wanted to be there.


This past spring, an opportunity arose to become a part of a new studio in town that had opened up just a few months before. It's a Christian studio, not just in terms of ownership but in terms of what it is for. The classes start with prayer; the entire focus is for worshiping the Lord through dance. Beautiful.


I was asked if I could get involved in some of the directing of the studio as they had plenty of teachers but there directors were having issues. I prayed about it, Chris prayed, and seperately we both felt that God was saying, "no." So, I turned it down. Since then, obviously some good reasons for why it wasn't right have come forward - namely being that physically I would not have been able to handle it.


However, this past week, I've been offered the position again. And while I've been praying about it, I don't feel like I'm getting a good answer on what to do. Maybe that is my answer, I don' t know. It would be a purely volunteer/ministry kind of thing.


Because I'm a "list" person, I've tried to analyze it as best as I can. But I just don't know. And I need to make a decision - yesterday!



Option 1: Be the Performing Director (choreographer, performance planner, etc) w/o the responsibility of the academic/Studio Director (administrative side - phone calls, bills, etc)

Pros:
  • This would allow me to be involved with less of an initial time commitment (Saturdays 2-5 through October, November, and half of December, some planning time but I can set my own hours, performance days (19th of December I believe).

  • This would be a good way fo rme to get to know students/parents closely

  • I would be dancing again.

Cons:

  • I haven't been dancing, other than what i can do at home, for the last few years. I feel out of practice and out of shape.

  • I've not been able to really exercise the last few months because of my stomach and how much it's been hurting - totally out of shape in general not just in dance.
  • I'm not familiar with the studio yet, and that can make it challenging in choreography (although this is an open audition, so people from all over could audition so I'm not really stuck with 1 style).
  • Saturday commitment which means that I really won't have a day off during the week at all because Sunday's always wind up with various home things that need doing.

Random Thought - truthfully, doing this kind of scares me, and I don't know how much that is affecting my view of this option. At this point, although I know I'm qualified, I don't really feel very qualified because of how long I've been out of that world.

Option 2: Studio Director w/o Performing director responsibility

Pros:

  • get to know students/parents quickly from all levels not just those performing in show
    not physically demanding
  • allow me to get to know the studio/style etc without direct dance involvement

Cons:

  • Big time commitment. (minimum Tuesday and Thursdays for 3-4 hours after work; probably need to be there another day as well, plus being able to answer questions, etc throughout the week nearly every day).
  • Not actually involved in dancing again (although that could open up in the future).

Other Thoughts:

  • I've been praying for the right ministry door to open; is this my door? What about some other thoughts Chris and I have had about ministry opportunities? There's no way I could do something else along with this.
  • I'm concerned about how this will affect my health; I'm still not doing all that good - is this going to be beneficial or hurtful?
  • I gave up doing my master's program at this time so that I can be more of a support to Chris while he's in school. This is something that's going to take me even more out of the house and out of Chris' life. Big time commitment - possibly very stressful - how will affect the home?
  • Looking at the hours/need, I can't help but think they need to hire someone full time for this position. Trying to piece-meal it is only going to hurt the functionality/success of the business.
  • Am I supposed to be a part of this world again? If I were just doing administrative type stuff and not actually dancing, would I be okay with that?

So that's it folks. I need to make a decision, and I don't know where to go with this.

HELP! :)

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Blue tinted

I've been blue the last week or so. Not a deep, navy blue just blue tinted. It's like seeing the world through "blue tinted" glasses as opposed to rose ones! Nothing is necessarily bad just...blue.

"Why?" you ask. "Why is a woman with an amazing husband, secure home, loving family, caring friends, and two crazily adorable puppies blue tinted?"

Well, answering that question in it's entirety would take far too long than I have time to answer tonight. However, let's just summarize and say that I'm tired of being constantly sick, I feel unsettled and restless for various reasons, and there are things that I want to happen which aren't going to happen for awhile, and I'm not very good with the "patience" thing or the whole "letting God work His timing" thing.

In the last few weeks I keep running into the following Psalm in a lot of different places:

1. Psalm 42
1. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.


2. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

3. My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

4. These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.

5. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and

6. my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon--from Mount Mizar.

7. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

8. By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me-- a prayer to the God of my life.
9. I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?"

10. My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

11. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.


It's one of those tried and true "fall back" Psalms used for songs and quoted (at least the first and last parts of it) on posters, bookmarks, and the like. I find sometimes Scripture like this can become very prosaic to me - not that the meaning of the words is any less true or important but that I don't think about them as much because they've become commonplace and easily looked over.

Then last week, over on Bread Crumbs, I read a very apropos blog about Time and trusting in the Lord's timing. Even though she doesn't mention this Psalm in her blog, it got me thinking about the words of Psalm 42 and realizing two things:

1. I don't think I have been putting my hope in God much lately. Oh, sure, I trust Him for the eternal and the big things in life, but I know that I oftentimes get so caught up in the little questions and struggles of life, that I don't even stop to think about having hope in Him for those things. In fact, I think I find it easier to pray and believe in Him for the care of everybody and everything else around me than it is to pray and believe and hope or trust him in things for myself.

Is it pride? To some degree. I don't like being too dependent on other people. Very dangerous and vulnerable position to put oneself into.

Sometimes, however, I think it's more the ą¹€ąøąø£ąø‡ą¹ƒąøˆ ("greng-jai") Thai part of my personality. This term is a very complex term to define mainly because it really has many nuances of meaning and applications in life. In this case though, it's the part of me that at times truly struggles to ask friends, even my husband, for help or time because I don't want to put them out or cause them any inconvenience. In my desire to not "bother" others, my true feelings, needs, frustration, even fears get stuffed deep inside and I just try to move on without asking (or praying) for help. Seeking for hope...

2. The second part of the Psalm that I keep coming back to is the whole "panting after God" thing - the idea of being desperately thirsty and knowing the only thing that can fill that thirst is God.

I'm a big water drinker. In fact, I've gotten to a point in my life where I drink very little else - indeed I only rarely want any other type of substance to drink. Occasionally (think once every few weeks!) I'll have rice milk or juice, but really, water is the only thing that really fills my thirst.

I got here, though, by not drinking other liquids. I used to love juice and milk and drink them all the time. And then a few years ago I really started trying to increase the amount of water I was drinking daily because I know it's good for you (and fewer calories!). Well, over time, water is all I want.

So, using that analogy, why is it I don't thirst after God? I guess because I'm not taking enough time to "drink" of Him.

So back to being blue...

I've realized this blueness is not going to change as long as my hope remains, well, unplaced, and I remain unconsciously dehydrated.

To quote Janna from Breadcrumbs:

"All of us struggle from time to time, in spite of God's Word that says those who wait on God will "soar on wings like eagles" (Isaiah 40:31).

Timing is indeed everything. We need to remember that when we get impatient for things to happen. We need to remember that God's timing is best. He knows all. He sees all. He coordinates all. For that, I'm very thankful. There's no way I can keep track of it all."

Monday, August 4, 2008

And a-CVSing i went.

This week's CVS trip though was probably one of my favorites ever. And, the other charming thing is that our stock piles of toiletries, household items, etc are at the place where if it's not pennies or free, I don't buy it. Because I don't have to! Hee, hee, I love it!


Items bought:

2 - bottles of Dawn dishwashing liquid

1 - 8 pack of Bounty papertowels

3 - Colgate Advanced toothpaste



Out of Pocket - $0.21!



Before coupons, etc my total was $16.22.


The Dawn was on sale for $0.88 each and I had two $0.50 coupons so they became $0.33 each.

The Bounty was on sale for $5.49. No coupons there :(

The Colgate was on sale for $2.99 apiece get 2 ECBS back (limit of 2) and I had two $1.00 coupons making them each free. For the third one, I had a CVS coupon which was expiring this week for $2.00 off that kind of toothpaste plus another manufacturer's coupon making it free as well.


That brought my total to $12.00 (paid for with previous ECBs) and $0.21 was the tax I had left to pay. And, I got $4.00 in ECBs for next week! Ah joys :)

Six More Months of Shuffle and Change

The last post I wrote was July 2018. We were settling into routine, finding a groove, and trying to fit our family of five into a two-bedroo...