Rrom 2 Done and some RA shopping!

Well this week it was my goal to get our basement cleaned up and organized.  Our basement is home to my son's toys, my stockpile and some miscellaneous stuff we just needed to put somewhere!  Last week was pretty hectic as everyone here got the flu so in all honesty I wasn't able to finish the basement until today...oops!  But at least its done.  I was going to post pictures but now the baby woke up so I can't, so I'll upload them tomorrow.

This week is a great week at Rite Aid - check out frugalsuzs blog on the right hand side to take a look at all of the great matchups including free dog treats, stayfree pads (great item to donate or if you know someone who is having a baby in the near future they could use these!), free edys ice cream and a bunch of other things!  I knew I should have sucked it up and went to RA early Sunday morning but I just didn't feel like it.  Instead we made a big breakfast and cleaned up the kitchen and then my mom came for dinner.  So of course when I went today all they had left was the Stayfree.  Oh well, I'll just try another store by work on lunch tomorrow - they usually have more stock anyways. I haven't had the chance to really look at the other ads yet but I think from what I remember Meijer has some decent stuff this week and Kroger's mega sale is extended this week as well.  I was able to pick up some cheap Kraft singles and Kens dressing! 

I think my favorite deal today was free batteries at Target!  Unfortunately, I didn't find out about this deal until the weekend and the coupon expired today, but it might be a good thing to know next time this coupon comes out!  At Target, in their dollar bins they sell Every Ready batteries and they are made by Energizer.  Energizer had a $1 off coupon  in one of the inserts and I was able to use that coupon on those batteries without any issues and only paid tax!  I bought 15 packs and paid .90.  Now these aren't the greatest batteries in the world but I'd rather pay next to nothing for them and throw them out quicker then pay big bucks for the better batteries.  They go perfect for my sons hand held games, especially on car rides!

Room 1 - Done!

Well this was an intesting week!  It was the LONGEST 4 day week of my life!  We started our bowling league on Thursday and that was pretty fun!  I had my graduation ceremony (whoo hoo all done) on Saturday and then our whole family went out to eat at a yumm restaurant.  It was a great time.  After we got home, my husband got the stomach flu so I was taking care of him Saturday and Sunday.  Then my son got the flu yesterday and it feels like I have it today...booo. 

Anyhow, I did complete my first room of cleaning/organizing/decluttering.  I got rid of 3 grocery bags of garbage that I didn't even know I had in there!  I also organized all my gift bags and Easter stuff, so now I know what I have!  This week I'm going to work on the basement.  Luckily, it's not too bad but I have stockpile stuff on the floor and just some odds and ends I'd like to tidy up. 

This week looks like a slow shopping week thank goodness.  There are some great deals on the Sinex at Walgreens and one of the drugstores has a money maker on the Maalox.  I'll post the deals on those later tonight.  For now, I'm going back to bed, but wanted to post that I did complete my goal of cleaning one room so far!

Holy clothes Batman!  It seems like ever since Christmas all I've been doing is laundry.  It doesn't help that our house is a quad and the laundry is at the very bottom floor and it needs to be hauled up to the very top floor!

 This is the corner of the laundry room where I have a stockpile of kleenex, toilet paper and laundry detergent on the floor. As you can see, it's gotten pretty messy!

This is behind the door and is just a mixture of party and holiday stuff.  Its been driving me nuts for a while because everytime I open or close the door something falls!

Here are the after pictures:

Everything is restacked nice and neat.  The cardboard box is holding the clothes that my son and daughter are out growing.  I usually put those away once a month.  The cardboard box is sitting on a rubbermaid box that hold items I want to sell at our annual sub sale in September.

Remember all those crazy clothes?  They are all put away now and I can see the floor!  The black bag hanging on the door there is all of our unmatched socks - I usually try to match these up once a month.

This is the back of the door now.  It doesn't look all that much different, but to me it is! 

New Year with New Goals

Happy New Year!  A little late, but none the less!  Last year was a very very busy year.  I finished up my Bachelors degree, and we had our second baby.  December seemed to fly by and January seems to be doing the same.  This year I've got a few goals that I'm going to try and tackle and hoping this blog can keep me somewhat accountable...if I keep up with it!

Goals

1.  Work out 3-4 times a week
2.  Declutter and organize the house - and keep it that way!
3.  Track all grocery/drugstore spending so I can see the totals at the end of the year
4.  Save as much as possible for vacations/Christmas/new stuff for the house/etc
5.  Donate whatever we don't use from the stockpile and our odds and ends
6.  Meal plan

Goal 1 -  So far 3 weeks into the new year I'm still doing good on this goal!  After I had the baby I actually weighed less then I did before I got pregnant, so I wanted to keep my weight the same.  We used to belong to Lifetime gym and we loved it, but when we were looking for a house we decided to cut all unnecessary expenses and that was one of them.  We decided to join again and love it so much.  They have a great childcare room for our kids and it allows us to workout together to keep us both motiviated.  I also do pilates classes at the gym on Saturday's....so far so good!

Goal 2 -  Ehhhh, we're getting there.  After Christmas and all that, our house looked like an absolute disaster zone.  It was filthy, there were toys everywhere, unopened presents, clothes, dishes, boxes, everything everywhere!  We are finally getting it back to clean, but we want to purge the stuff we aren't using and make better use of the space we have.  I'm planning on working on one room a week to get it purged and organized.  I know it sounds like a lot of time for one room, but for me it's what will work since I work and like to spend time with the family when I get home from work.  Needless to say, cleaning and organizing takes a back burner to everything else.

Goal 3 -  2 years ago I had a great spreadsheet that I tracked all my grocery/drugstore purchases but my flash drive got formatted before the end of the year and I lost everything!  So this year I'm going to try it again, but there have been such fabulous deals at Rite Aid that my receipts are ALL over the house, purse and car.  So I'm hoping to get those all organized and put together this week and then enter in all the receipts the same day.  We'll see how it goes. 

Goal 4- At the end of the month whatever money is left over from the month will go right into our savings.  Currently we put away $100 a month for vacation and $80 a month for Christmas gifts.  Last year we slacked BIG time on putting the $80 away a month for Christmas, and I'm bound and determined to not make that mistake again.  So I'm trying to pay all bills as soon as I get paid and make sure we put money away for gifts and only then can we spend on "other stuff". 

Goal 5 - We usually donate between 2-4 times a year to Purple Heart or a women and childrens shelter.  We made a big donation to Purple Heart in November and I have a big Rubbermaid tote of stuff to take to the shelter.  Hopefully we can do that this week or next, but right now the box is just sitting in our kitchen driving us both nutty. 

Goal 6 - I've seen everyone meal planning a lot lately and when I've been able to do it it does wonders.  Meal planning takes the guess work out of wondering what's for dinner when I get home and trying to throw something together.  It helps us from just ordering out because we're too lazy or there isn't any meat thawed out.  I've been doing it on and off, I don't know that I could do a whole week's worth of menus, but even if I do a couple of days it helps me out.  Its all about doing what works for you.  Tonight we are having smoked sausage and macaroni mixed with broccoli.  I know I'd like to make a stuffed cabbage casserole this week so I just need to stop and get the cabbage - might do that for tomorrow night.  I think I'll just make a weeks work of meal ideas I'd like to do and just make sure we have those items on hand for the most part and see where it takes me. 

I'll be keeping you updated on these goals at the end of each month.  I got back into couponing big time since I've been back at work (there are all the stores  I need right by work so I hit them on lunchtime) so I'll be posting my deals and pictures of the goodies I've gotten again!  I get most of my deals from Frugalsuz - she's on the blog roll to the right - she does a fantastic job of outlining the deals and what coupons go with them.  Well the baby is sleeping so I need to catch up on some laundry.  This week I'm tackling the laundry room!

Wow its been a while!

Well it has certainly been a while since I've posted!  I have to say I do miss it!  I finally finished school - I've got my Bachelors now, so that should free up some time!  I had our little baby girl Sept 27th and she's been keeping us busy!  She is so perfect in every way!  I've had to take some time off shopping and hounding for a bit with being so busy and stuff, but I'm back at it and better then ever!  There's some great deals at all three drugstores and I can't wait to get out and shop! 

Great News!!

Sorry I've had such a long hiatus, but I just had way too much on my plate and couldn't fit in blogging too!  I had a pretty hard and time consuming semester of school and a big project at work and was just so tired all the time!  In between all that though I got some great news....I'm pregnant!  Thankfully I'm in my second trimester now and feel a bit more pep in my step, but still always feel on the go!  Our little one is due Sept. 25th and we find out April 29th what it is!  I can't wait, Babies R Us here I come. 

I started my second to last semester of school, and I'll officially be done Sept 13th, and I can't wait.  It can't seem to come fast enough.  I started back up hounding a few weeks ago and it felt great!  Oh how I missed CVS.  I started out by getting like 8 bottles of Dawn for free, and got a bunch of diapers for pretty cheap too.  I think so far we have close to 40 packs and about 8 packs of wipes, so I'm getting there!  Anyways I hope to be on here a bit more often, and I'll probably do a mix between posting about the pregnancy (I'd kind of like a journal) and grocery! 

Is it the end of January yet?!?

Hey everyone, hope you had a safe and happy new year!  We were just so tired out with everything we decided to stay home and just pig out!  I'm usually one of those people who say my new years resolution is to work out more, eat better, etc, but this year I decided I should change it up.  I do stay in shape for the most part and I don't eat bad so I don't really know why I make those my resolutions!  This year I decided I'm going to try and just relax more and don't worry about the things I can't change and the things that happened yet.  It didn't get me any farther last year worrying about those things so I might as well try something different! 

January has already been a busy month.  My little one turned 5 and we had a birthday party for him last week at the house and I think it went pretty good!  Both mine and my hubbys classes started up again, so we miss the time we had off!  Work is still going, not all that great, but its going.  Things are definitely changing and its really hard to adapt to it, its just been so much like a family there and now it feels like its being broken apart.  Oh well, all I can do is keep my head in the sand! 

I've been shopping a little bit more this month and my favorite deals are listed below.  We went to Meijer last Friday to get stuff for my sons party and just some other general items we needed and our before coupon total (including beer) was $90.  After coupons it was $46!!  I was so happy, it was a good way to start off the couponing year. 

CVS

Oust $3.99 - use BOGO coupon and get $3 ECB for each one - I think the limit is 6? 

WALGREENS

Bayer and Contour meters $14.99 - use freebie coupon and buy both in 1 transaction get 2 $5 RRs and 1 $3 RR!  So just pay tax and get $13 in RR's! 

The grocery store deals aren't very good this week...thankfully, I'm too tired to shop!  I hope next week they are better, although Meijer just had their 10/$10 sale, so I doubt they'll have anything good!

I'm BAAAACCCKKKKK!!!

Hey all, I can't believe its been a month since I posted!  It has been CRAZY around here the last few weeks and I'm looking forward to a nice quiet weekend - we'll see how that goes!  We went on our cruise Dec 13th - 20th and it was amazing, I wish we didn't have to come back.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous, couldn't ask for anything better.  My two favorite islands were Aruba and St. Thomas by far - you could definitely do a week vacation on those islands alone! 

The night after we got home, our darn furnance went out!  We had gotten home around 9 that night and noticed it was cold and after playing with the thermostat realized the furnance would kick on then turn off.  We were having my hubbys side over for Xmas Eve and plus it was freezing so we really couldn't go without heat, so we called that night and they were out within a half hour.  They said it was a bad board - it would be around $600 - $700.  Our furnance is 17 years old as it was, and I know when we got the house 3 years ago our inspector told us we had like 4 or 5 years max on that furnance left.  So we decided we should bite the bullet now and get a new one.  Unfortunately I didn't have time to compare prices and furnances so we went with what the guy recommended.  I think we paid a bit more then we should have but they did come at 10pm and had it all installed by 4am so that was definitely good service.  And we live in a quad so this furnance is supposed to help circulate the air better then our old one.  We notice that our top level is about 5 degrees colder then our main level and we hated that.  I've noticed the past few days its only about a degree or two cooler so it is helping!  Plus we will be getting a rebate from DTE and Consumers for having an energy efficient model and we will qualify for the tax credit of about $900 too.  So that helps I guess. 

Christmas was great, got to see all the family and then we had my cousins wedding shower on Sunday that was a good time.  We are just laying low for New Years Eve and making a good crab legs dinner!  I just need a few days of pure nothing, I still feel pretty whipped!  Although I can't wait to go do a good grocery shopping!!  I miss the stores!

How was everyone else holidays?  Any good new year resolutions out there?