The High Chair

The Opposite of Fun: Potty Training

2012-01-30T09:25:00.000-08:00

If there was a parenting manual with a clear job description, one of the responsibilities would definitely be to teach your children to put their human waste in a designated receptacle. Yup, Potty Training.

The words make me want to crawl into a hole into the ground. I feel like there's some areas of parenting I more or less "get," but this whole getting the kids to use the toilet like normal people is my Waterloo. I'm 3 for 3 for kids who weren't fully potty trained until 3...and a half.

That track record is a bit discouraging now that I'm trying to get Ben out of diapers, and he has resolved that he's not going to give them up without a fight. We put the underwear on the kid and we drag him, whining and wiggling, to the potty several times a day. He will pee once he's finally on the can, but we end up hosing him off in the shower a few times a day after he poops his pants. It's enough to make a vacation sound good, even if it's to Greenland.

Given that, for some reason or another, I'm really bad at potty training, I get lots of well-meaning and practical advice when the topic comes up. But given the history of my children, I'm starting to think it's not just me. Here's my experience with some of the common potty wisdom we often hear.

1. Kids love prizes! Bribe 'em! Come up with a big one and remind them of it constantly.
Yes, they do love prizes. Ben currently has a generous helping of Skittles (his candy of choice), stickers, and a trip to McDonald's on the line if he poops in the potty. Just once. He doesn't even have to stay clean all day. I'm just asking for ONE poop that hits the water. In his entire 3 years and change on this planet, he accomplished this feat once last September, right around his third birthday. He was really mad about it - I think he felt like I tricked him - and has refused to do it since. It's the end of January, for the record. And we brought McDonald's into the deal before Christmas.

Amy would pee a drip into the potty, get some M&Ms, go five minutes later, pee a drip, get some M&Ms, and repeat this cycle until she went dry. After playing this game too long, I told her, "You're so good at peeing in the potty! Now you can only get prizes for pooping." She started pooping in the potty, but peeing her pants again.

2. Just cold turkey them off diapers! They won't like to be wet or dirty and start going.
2 out of 3 of my children have no problem sitting in their own mess. If Amy did get uncomfortable, she would hide her dirty underwear. Once I found a pair hanging in a tree in the backyard. Then I found several more pairs stashed behind the fence. Kate didn't like being wet, or using the potty, so she'd hold it as long as possible - up to eight hours, even if we sat her on the potty in the meantime. Then she'd have a giant accident and throw an epic tantrum. Eventually, even though she was 3, I had to give up because her refusal to pee could, seriously, lead to health problems.

3. Have them clean up their own messes. It'll help them accept responsibility for their actions.
You'd think. If Ben makes a puddle, I throw him a towel and tell him to clean it up and go change his clothes. He does without argument, and he's done it so many times I've come to the conclusion that it's really making no difference in the overall scheme of things. (but don't get me wrong. He's going to continue to clean up after himself, no matter how long it takes.)

As for cleaning up his poop, that crosses my line of "trying everything." I can only imagine how that can epically backfire on me. Let's just say this. Some children have potty training issues due to constipation. Ben doesn't have that problem. Not even close. Everything comes out just fine.

4. Sit them on the potty every half hour/every hour/every two hours.
Check. Sometimes it does help, and other times I swore my kids would get off the potty, put their underwear back on, and mess it. And even if Ben pees every time he sits on the potty, he's only told me he's had to go a grand total of ONCE. Otherwise he'll just puddle it.

5. Have a potty party!
We tried those for Amy and Kate, going all out with decorations and prizes, with no long term results. Amy stayed dry that day, with her Auntie sponsoring the party, but the next day she digressed right back to where she was before.

6. Make them sit longer.
With Amy and Kate, I put our portable DVD player in the bathroom and let her have movie marathons while she sat on the potty. I would review the technique at best with "mixed results." I haven't tried it with Ben, because I think his resolve NOT to poop in the potty is so strong that he wouldn't be tricked so easily, and it would probably just be a waste of time.

7. Just let them go naked! One accident and they'll work harder to make it after that!
I wish. You know a kid can poop right in the middle of the floor and go right along with their day? They can. Kate freaked out if she made a mess on the floor, but rather than run to the potty when she had to go, as noted above, she'd just hold it. And hold it. And hold it.

8. Feed them lots of juice and salty snacks, and then have them sit on the potty.
I did this with Amy and Kate, and since Kate was so resolved not to go, I made her double-fiber oatmeal chocolate chip muffins, and let her eat as many as she wanted, as an attempt to just get that first poop victory. We put her in the bathroom with the DVD player, and we did get our victory...after 3 straight hours of Elmo's Potty Time and camping in the bathroom. However, I don't want to try that with Ben. I don't think he'd sit that long and I feel like I'd be arming a time bomb.

9. Sticker Charts!
I must admit I never consistently did sticker charts with my kids until recently. I just didn't see how stickers were going to be the magic bullet that motivated my stubborn children to potty train. But I gave it a go, just for kicks. I made a spreadsheet so I can print it up week, after week, after week...as long as I need to. At the end of week one, Be's chart looked like this:

As you can see, rather than consistent progress, it looks more like the up-and-down stock market charts you'd see on the Nightly Business Report. Note there isn't a single "Dry or Clean" sticker, which he would earn for staying dry or clean all day, and there also isn't a single "poop" sticker on the chart. So sticker charts did not prove to be the trick I needed. However, I'll keep doing it because he does like to pick the stickers, and although I don't think it's going to motivate him to ultimate dryness, it does let me see his progress and get a better idea of what's working in the big picture and all.

11. Boys are harder than girls.

I tend to get this sympathetically when people notice my 3 1/2 year old, who can hold a full conversation with you, is still in a diaper. My girls gave me such a run for my money it just makes me cringe to think Ben could be harder than they were. (But hey, he just might be. If he's still in diapers at four...or in kindergarten...or at prom...or at his wedding...)

12. Pull-Ups!

Pull-Ups are a glorified diaper that leak like crazy if the kid drops a full load in it. Sure, they work to minimize mess if your kid is like the ones one the commercials, who feel a little dribble and then run to the potty, but I've never actually seen that happen. Pull-Ups are an especially ineffective for overnights and road trips, which are very tricky potty training areas, because they're not designed to actually absorb a mess, but simply catch a bit of it. We even tried the ones that got cold with Amy, and I'm sure some kids don't like sitting in a cold pull-up, but she either didn't seem to mind, and if it did get annoying, she'd just take it off and hide it somewhere. Ever play "WHERE'S THE PULL-UP?" It's not a fun game.

I only use them when I leave my kids with a babysitter or in the church nursery as an act of mercy for the gracious person who is caring for my child, but I firmly believe that, if anything, they slow down potty training because, at the end of the day, it's still a diaper.

13. Kids potty train sooner if they wear cloth diapers.

Not necessarily. I'm a cloth diapering advocate, but this is not a benefit I give when I explain the glories of them to a friend. I cloth diapered all my children, obviously, they were still late potty trainers.

12. They'll train when they're ready.

This is the ONE thing I believe about potty training. Some kids wake up when they're 18 months old and decide they're done with diapers, and others decide pooping where they stand is just so darn convenient they refuse to give it up without a fight...for a couple years. One day it seemed like Kate and Amy resolved they were going to join the ranks of the bathroom users, and I figure that day will come, sooner or later, for Ben. It does for every kid, right?

Should have been a Viking Family...

2011-12-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

My biggest battle with Ben at the moment is daily pillages through the kitchen, where he helps himself to anything he wants, even if it means taking a chair from the dining room, pushing it into the kitchen, and climbing right onto the counter. It's to the point where nothing is out of his reach, and it's not like I can hang the knives and bags of marshmallows from the ceiling. (Child locks seem like an obvious answer, but I haven't had good results with those in the past, and as I start to see that "The creature can use tools..." I have a feeling they'd just be a big waste of time and money, and possibly end up causing damage to the cabinets in his efforts to open them.)

I had the Holy Grail of our home - the Candy Jar that stores all trick-or-treat goodies - stashed in a cupboard of the stove that I never opened in front of Ben, so he left it alone on the grounds he didn't know it was there. But the other day, I noticed David in the kitchen, with a handful of M&Ms, the Candy cupboard wide open, and Ben at his ankles. You know those moments where you want to do a slow-motion jump and yell "NOOOOOOOOOO!" to stop a disastrous event? I had one.

David assured me Ben wasn't going to try climb the stove, but he did the next day. I caught him just in time.

But I think I figured out the root cause of Ben's behavior. Genetics. Sure, it could be a cop-out, but I have to wonder if there's a relationship between our distant family tree and his continual pillages in the kitchen.

My great-grandfather on my Dad's side immigrated from Denmark, and ended up traveling through Alaska working as an engineer. He kept a journal of his adventures, including close encounters with bears, saving the life of a friend, and dealing with lack of resources, like eating pancakes cooked in gun oil. (His comment on that was something like: "It's not very tasty, but can be eaten if one is hungry enough.") At one point in the journals, he mentioned that, after a long journey with his older brother on foot through frigid Alaska conditions, their appearance, with their beards and long hair neglected during their travels, probably resembled their Viking ancestors.

When I read that, I thought "Huh, we have Vikings in the family." Then, a few months ago, David and I were watching a documentary about the Dark Ages of Netflix (yeah, because that's how we party around here) and they mentioned the Vikings and described them as a group of young men, essentially unemployed with nothing better to do, who sailed around the British Isles and pillaged and plundered where ever was convenient.

As we were watching, David said, "Wait...Vikings were just a bunch of thugs! They didn't have jobs, and got bored, so they went around and stole and broke stuff!" One king in Britain got the best of the Vikings and protected his cities by building walls around them. "So how did that go?" David said. "'Hey Olaf! This city didn't have a wall last time we were here.' 'Oh screw it, Soren. Too much work. Let's go raid the monastery down the river.'"

So as I got a feeling for Viking culture, and know we shared some of that DNA, I began to see Viking tendencies in my son. If he wants something, he takes it. If you take it back, there's no remorse or apology, it's "HEEEEEY MOM!" He makes no effort to be sneaky, but just helps himself.

For example, yesterday I caught him climbing on the counter and taking a bag of chocolate chips, I took it away and put it back, along with a scolding. Then I ran briefly ran upstairs to do something laundry-related, and came back down to find the empty bag of chocolate chips on the kitchen floor. While I was trying to figure out how he ate half a bag that fast, I went into the living room and noticed he had simply poured the bag into a bowl and was eating them in front of the TV. I took that away, and got a "HEEEEY MOM!" as if to say, 'I stole that fair and square!'

But Ben isn't the only Viking in the family. I have noticed my girls would have made excellent Viking women. While they don't always aid or abet their brother, they have no problem sharing in the spoils. Last night after the chocolate chip heist, I noticed some chocolate on Amy's face. Now even though she gave me a run for my money has a toddler, she's turned out to be a pretty good first grader, and her biggest vices are slacking on cleaning her room and forgetting to use her fork at dinner. When I asked her if ate some of the chocolate Ben took, she looked mildly sheepish, but unrepentant. I looked over at Kate, who freely admitted that she'd taken a cut of the loot.

Now my hope is that Ben's fearless and independent spirit and mechanical inclination might drive him to a wildly successful career, and he'll take after his great-great grandfather as an engineer who wasn't afraid to work hard, travel and go where very few men have gone before...and that he'll give up the pillage and plunder side of things.

Smart Stockpiling

2011-08-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

Normally when someone thinks of a "stockpile," stashes of canned food, bottle water, and toilet paper come to mind, usually in preparation for the zombie apacolypse. (Okay, or some more likely type of crisis.) And sure, it can't be a bad idea to have a "just in case" stash of food and necessities, but stockpiling other items can really stack up long-term money savings.

The basic principle of the frugal stockpile is "Buy it when it's cheap." If you know you'll use something sooner, or later, and you see a really, really, good price, you go ahead and buy it...even if the later is more likely than the sooner.

In order to truly get the most out of a stockpile, you have to balance your space, time, and money. It can be tricky and take some time, but if you come up with a strategy that works for you, it can really open up room in your budget for other things...like canned food and bottled water so you can prepare for those pesky zombies.

Anyway, here's a few things I've stockpiled that have really made a difference in our family's monthly budget. Sometimes I spend a little more up front, but not having to buy the item for months makes up the difference. I'm also blessed to have a big basement so I have space for stashes, but I also managed some stockpiles (baby clothes was my goldmine) back when we lived in a 2 bedroom house with 3 children, so a little creativity with your space can pay off.

1. Food (duh).

I have some non-perishable food stashed, but I don't consider it my main money saver. Sure, it helps, but I only stockpile food if it's a rock-bottom price on something we use all the time. I also grab super-cheap things like paper plates, batteries, and candy I can put in gifts. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what the "rock-bottom"stock-up price will be, but that just takes practice. For example, I've figured out that my stock-up price for soda (we don't drink that much, but it's good for parties and my husband as a Pepsi addiction that comes and goes) is about $2.88 for a 12-pack. My husband is on on this with me, too. When we were on vacation he went to a small-town grocery store for a case of Pepsi (addiction was ON at the time) and came home saying, "You're rubbing off on me. I just paid almost $7 for a case. It killed me." It also killed me that he paid over double our usual price for Pepsi, but hey, we were on vacation. Gotta splurge a little, right?

2. Health & Beauty stuff.

The beautiful thing about a Health & Beauty item stash is that the shelf you see here is a 6 month to 1 year supply of most of our basic needs (think about how long a tube of toothpaste, box of band-aids, or bottle of shampoo lasts, so we really don't need more than 4 in there at a time), and saved a least a $1, and sometimes much more, each time I bought the items. I don't think I paid more than .99 cents for each bottle of shampoo or conditioner, and some of the items, such as some body wash for David, tweezers, and nail clippers, were free or pretty darn close. So you can start to see how the savings added up, because now I don't have to go out and pay whatever the store wants when we run out of something like shaving cream or toothbrushes. There's also a several bottles of medicine, such as Children's Advil and NyQuil, which is one of the best things I've stockpiled. If you wake up in the middle of the night with a nasty cold or sick kid, it's so nice just to have medicine handy, especially if you only paid a fraction of the normal price for it, instead of having to run to a drug store that happened to be open and pay 3 to 4 times as much as the sale/coupon price. And for the record, I got the boxes on an amazing sale and the post-it labels where free.

3. Kid's clothes and shoes.

This is the area where I can claim the most savings for our family. It takes up a bit of room, but even if we didn't have the basement, I'd figure out how to make the room for the clothes stash. We have three children 6 and under that grow like crazy, but I hardly ever buy them clothes. This is a simple as having a bin for each size and gender, and a box for each size of shoes. When I get some hand-me-downs, gifts that are too big, find an amazing deal on clearance or used clothes, or acquire clothes some other way, I simply throw it in the designated bin until the kid is ready to wear it. So what is the fruit of this? When Amy started school this year, I just had to buy her jeans (on sale, of course). She had EVERYTHING else she needed. But while I was it, since decent school jeans are a tough find, I went ahead and hit an Old Navy $10 jeans sale (plus I had a coupon code and cash back!) and bought her a few pairs in next size up to throw in her size 7 bin so we'd be prepared for the inevitable mid-year growth spurt.

4. Random stuff we actually use.

The contents of the "Random" bins would probably vary from family to family, but I stash kid's presents (my own kids and friends), school supplies, yarn (being a compulsive knitter, I never turn away free yarn, which translates to making people free gifts and saves me from buying yarn when I get a knitting bug, so it's definitely worth the space and NOT HOARDING, as I try to explain to my husband. ;) and I currently have a stash 2 cases of printer paper, which was an amazing deal, and allows me to be very generous with printer paper if anyone ever needs it. So these bins allow me to go "shopping" down in my basement instead of at the store, and that eventually adds up to money in the bank.

Other things I've stashed are diapers, winter clothing (especially in South Dakota where it's practically child abuse NOT to have a solid stash of snow pants and mittens), party supplies (Ben's birthday is coming up and I bought his stuff last spring on clearance), bike helmets (even if my kid already has one and I find a high quality used one at a good price, I grab it. They're just so expensive to replace new if they get lost or broken), laundry soap, stain removers, sunglasses (am I the only person who loses them like crazy?), and greeting cards. My general rule is that if I know we'll use it, and we have space for it, and there's room in the budget, and we don't already have more than enough, I get it while it's hot.

The one thing I have that probably looks a little compulsive is about 20 boxes of Magic Erasers stashed under a bathroom sink. But if you think that's getting crazy, you don't know my family. Cleaning supplies are an investment.

Strategic Online Shopping

2011-08-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

My husband is getting ready for yet another semester of school, and as our routine this time of year goes, he handed me his book list so I could find the best possible deal, which I have down to an art. Gone are the days of walking into the college bookstore - or any store, for that matter - and being at the mercy of the price tags. Here's my technique for getting better-than-good prices for online shopping.

1. Check ShopAtHome.com
Rebate sites, and others like ebates, give you a cash rebate for shopping online at certain stores. Honest-to-goodness, even though it sounds "too good to be true," you really get a check in the mail every time your account gets above $20 with Shop At Home. I've been using it for over a year and am up to about $150 in rebates. Sometimes it's only a few cents, and somethings it's a pretty significant percentage. It all adds up in the end, of course. Anyway, that's the site where I usually start my online shopping strategy.

2. Pick (at least) 3 Stores that you know carry your item.
For textbooks, I also checked amazon.com, too, even though it's practically the only place online that doesn't do cash back on Shop At Home. For items like toys I might check Target, Wal-Mart, and Toys R Us, and for household items I might check Target, Sears, and some place like Overstock.com. I search all of them on Shop At Home to see which has the highest cash back, best coupons, and lowest shipping. I might even put the item in my cart and "proceed to checkout" and see what my exact amount would be. For the textbooks, I checked Textbooks.com, Chegg.com, and Amazon.com. Chegg.com had the lowest prices for the books David needed, including shipping and highest cash back at 10%!

3. Cross-Reference for more coupon codes.
Site like Coupon Cabin collect coupon codes, and you can always google "______ coupon codes"to see what pops up. Sometimes there's just duds, but you've got nothing to loose by trying for a few minutes, and might find a good one you could shave a few (or a several!) bucks off your purchase. I didn't find any this round, but it's definitely saved me money in the past.

4. How you pay.
Do you get cash back or rewards on your debit card? It can be worth a shot to look into. We get a tiny bit of cash back with our debit card, but hey, eventually it all adds up.

So let's look at the text book situation and see how I did:

Bad: Walking into bookstore and buying books. Didn't even bother and saved the drive.
Better: Amazon.com, which would have cost us $359 with free shipping with Amazon Student
Best (I found): Chegg.com, $324, including shipping, and I'm going to get a 10% rebate with Shop At Home sooner or later. So I got it down to $293, which saved us $66 compared to just getting them on amazon, and it only took me about half an hour or so to shop around. $66 for half an hour on the computer? Sure, I'll take it!

Want to hear how I found the best price for David's calculator? Just teasin'! Happy Shopping!

Our First TDY...Day 1

2011-08-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

(I actually wrote this last week, and just got around to posting! But better late than never, right)

TDY is military term that means "Temporary Duty" (as opposed to PDS, which is Permanent Duty Station. I know, go figure...) and this week David is taking his first TDY since he got back from Tech School over a year and a half ago. And for a first TDY, this is a pretty cushy gig.

In fact, it's such a cushy gig that it's really not a big deal. Before we were in the military, my husband did a couple business trips that were a week and change, and it was a huge ordeal where I probably whined like a baby. But in military life, if your spouse gets a easy, week-long TDY two states away, you don't dare whine about it. The wife with a husband who's hasn't seen her husband since last winter might slap you.

However, the sweet deal that it is, it does benchmark our first military separation in his job. It will probably be nothing to write home about. But I'll blog it anyway.

We said goodbye to Daddy before church in the morning, and then successfully got myself and all three children in and out alive, but that's no biggie...for us, at least. The bigger issue was that he was supposed to be the substitute worship leader this morning, and his last minute orders (told him about it Tuesday, and bought the plane ticket Friday so he could leave Sunday) left the church high and dry because he was the back-up to the back-up. They worked it out, although I know it was a giant pain, but as our pastor graciously put it, "The Air Force trumped our plans," and they adapted.

Later that afternoon, my cousin called and I filled him on what was going on. He asked if David got a "government charter flight" for his trip.

After we joined the Air Force, I figured out pretty quick there weren't planes you could hop on any time to get from one base to another. Now these planes do exist (they're actually referred as "hops") but those are cargo planes and it's only on certain bases, going to certain bases. We're at a bomber base, and the cockpits of those planes are about the size of a Prius with the rest of the plane reserved for gas and bombs, so they don't take passengers.

If you do take a hop, you're at the mercy of the military Space Available travel system and could be stranded for any amount of time where ever the planes need to stop. Now hops can be a good deal if you want to get to Europe or happen to be at the base that has the flight out and able to get to the base you want, and have a lot of time to do travel. Most of the time, however, military members just get a ticket on a commercial flight just like everyone else, even if they're flying on orders.

The exception is when they move hundreds of people at once for something like a deployment or tech school, and then they might use a big passenger plane. A Senior Airman going to teach a training by himself? He's riding coach.

I explained this to my cousin, who said, "But he's a Senior Airman, so doesn't that get him a hook-up?"

Sighing, I said, "Do you even know how military rank works?" But before I could launch on a speech of how rank is designated from 1-9 with 9 on the tippity-top, and David is a 4, he laughed and said "Yeah, I was just giving you a hard time."

Anyway, then we went to a Bible "Story-ing" night at our church, followed by a dinner. There was only a handful of people there, and my kids behaved marginally for the speaker, who was even aimed at a younger audience, and then Ben went hell on wheels for the dinner. Thankfully it was very casual and not very crowded, because at one point Ben had the audiacity to not only disobey me, but run away. I put the empty plate I had in my hand on the floor (I was getting ready to get Kate her food when Ben did...whatever he did...I honestly can't remember now!), used his first and middle name in my monster-mother voice, ("BENJAMIN DAVID YOU DO NOT RUN AWAY FROM ME!") chased him out of the church gym, snatched him, smacked his butt, and stuck him in a time-out. (Yup, my kid has a time-out bench at our church. Fun times.) Then I was pretty embarrassed because I was sure I made a scene, and tried to go calmly back in the room as Ben screamed from his time-out bench and look extra sweet while I got the girls, who were demonstrating decent behavior, sat down with food.

Now back in my west coast hometown, I probably would have gotten looks of horror for chasing down my child and spanking him, but hey, this is South Dakota, where a parent can get looks of horror for not chasing down and spanking a misbehaving child.

But as is our custom with church potlucks, in spite of my best efforts to train them to act civilized, the kids run around with their friends, get insanely wound up, make a huge mess, and eat the most unhealthy foods available. Case in point:
I told Ben he couldn't have a brownie until he ate some of his dinner (Really, it was a hot dog. I was making him eat a hot dog to get a brownie. I know, I know. As a friend of mine put it, "You can't have your sugar until you eat your fat.") he whined, he got up and down, he drank more punch than he probably should have, and he tried to wear me down until I just gave him the brownie. I stood firm.

Then after I gave up on him eating anything and let him go play with the other kids, his four year old buddy Calvin came up to me and proudly announced, "I gave some of my brownie to Ben. He wanted it." I had a hard time positively responding to Calvin's gracious, selfless act of sharing when I was stewing over the fact that Ben found away to get past me. Well, little guy, you may have won the battle, but if you think you're winning the war you have another thing coming.

Finally I just said, with as much sarcasm as I possibly could muster because I was talking to a mom of three boys who's husband had been deployed for about half of their marriage, "You know, their father isn't around..." She gave me an amazing "Riiight..."look knowing perfectly well that David left about 6 hours earlier. I went to chase down Ben, again.

When we started cleaning up the natural disaster under the cafeteria table where the kids ate, I went over to them and said, "We're going to play a game. Everyone sit down with their hands folded and mouths closed. First one to talk loses." They hustled to the couches, and I expected this to last all of 30 seconds. My friend Alisha went over to the couches where the kids parked and began to monitor the progress while I started vacuuming. Then, with a moment of inspiration, I pulled out a bag of M&Ms and asked Alisha to give them to the kids who were doing the best.

"It's not bribery," I said. "It's Classical Conditioning."

But in the end, we all got home and talked to Daddy on speaker phone to say prayers, and then I talked to David as he told me all about his "suite" in the base hotel and his dinner at the Texas Roadhouse with the people he would be working with that week...and then I ate fudge and blogged. And now it's going to be an early night for this mom.

(For the record, days 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 really were nothing to write home about and David came home safely right on schedule.)

And I'm back!

2011-08-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

Maybe. Lately I've been thinking about getting back into blogging, because as you can see it's been awhile since I've been around this block. But it's just been hectic, and having 3 kids finally caught up to my writing time. So here's my cameo on Blogger, and we'll see if I end up a regular cast member again.

In honor of David and my 8 year wedding anniversary, I would like to immortalize our amazing date night. Now if anyone is thinking "Yeah...not in the mood for a sappy story about staring each other in the eyes and pondering your love," don't worry about it. The only reason my husband was staring at me tonight was to make sure I didn't turn into a chipmunk. Trust me...this date didn't go smoothly.

I got to start my day with the blessing and honor of attending our friends' court hearing where the stepdad officially adopted his wife's daughter. It was so sweet and cute and went perfectly. But after that, the day got interesting.

This is the week of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which means that bikers from all over the country, and even the world, come to show off their Harleys (and I have seen a few Hondas) and party like crazy. I've heard a few statistics on how many bikers show up, and think it's in the hundreds of thousands. No joke. Now think that the normal population of the "Rapid City Retail Area" is 200,000 people, so that many people on motorcycles, besides the locals, running around makes the city pretty crazy.

After the successful adoption hearing, we went to lunch with family. The newly adopted seven year old picked Denny's (her mom talked her up from McDonald's and Hardees, and almost got her up to Applebee's, but didn't make it) but when we got there, the parking lot was full of motorcycles, and there was a 45 minute wait, and it was 10:30 on a Tuesday morning. We decided to drive over to a Perkin's, and our thinkin' friend called up and got us reservations. For the record, normally in Rapid City you don't need reservations at Perkins's...especially on a Tuesday morning.

When we arrived at Perkins, my friend's daughter looked at me and said, "Why do motorcyclers like pancakes?"

She's a very clever child and full of jokes, so I geared up for a punch line and said, "I don't know. Why DO motorcyclists like pancakes?"

She just stared back at me, and the looked around at the packed Perkins' waiting area. It turns out she wasn't telling a joke, but actually wondering why bikers were packing pancake houses all over South Dakota.

Long story short, it was just one of those mornings where everything took longer than it was supposed to. But eventually I got home, and David for off work early, and we were able to face a different issue...why David came home to a box from Walmart on our porch that was soaking wet, smelling very strong of something flowery, in a garbage bag.

It all started because I saw a good deal online for toothpaste. I paid $3.00 or so, and got a rebate online so the toothpaste would be a really good price, with free shipping. So I went ahead and ordered it while I was on vacation, but I came home a couple weeks later to find a package that had my name on the box, but someone else's order and packing slip inside. It struck me as odd, but I started the return process and thought it was even odder that I received a return slip for the toothpaste even though I was returning some other chick's blush who had an address in Baltimore. But oh well, just sent it back, and got an email saying that my return was being processed.

So to our surprise, we found a box leaking and reeking Snuggle Fabric Softener, with someone else' packing label that said it was supposed to go to Brooklyn, but had our address on the front. It was a giant mess with the box completely soaked through and a big puddle of Snuggle in the bottom of the bag. David was all for just returning the box, garbage bag and all, but I thought that really wouldn't be classy. But in the end, the box was just too big of a mess to take anywhere, so we just tore off the soaked mailing slips to take it in.

You know you have a wild marriage when you have an anniversary, get a babysitter, get all dressed up, and go to Wal-Mart.

We really just ran in to do the return, which seemed like a lot of hassle for $3.00 worth of toothpaste, but it was just too epic of an order mistake to just drop it. In fact, it was so epic that a Wal-Mart manager said she hadn't seen anything like in awhile. But we had a good chat with the nice associate and got our $3.00 but and went on our merry way.

David surprised me with reservations to a classy place in downtown Rapid, and one look at prices the menu showed me that my husband really was trying to spoil me and take me out for a nice night. I mean, I had a fresh haircut and was wearing a dress and mascara. We were going to go uphill from a Wal-Mart return, right?

My husband ordered prawns for an appetizer, and they were amazing. But after a couple bites, I noticed a weird, numb feeling in the back of my throat, and it made me wonder if I might have a shellfish allergy, which is something I've been trying to figure out for the past couple years. I know I can't eat crab, but everything else seemed okay.

About five minutes later, a trip to the bathroom and a view of my swollen tongue in the mirror confirmed that I am, in fact, allergic to shrimp. Yay.

I went back to the table and explained the situation to David, just as the waiter brought our salads. We figured I should at least get some allergy medicine in my system, and, much to my embarrassment, explained the situation to our waiter, saying that we had to cancel the rest of our order and that we needed our check so I could go get some medicine.

But hey, I guess if you pay well for your meal, they take care of you. The store co-owner came by our table (did I mention this was quite embarrassing?) and said she might be able to find something in the back for me. A few minutes later she came back with some Benadryl, which I accepted on the hope of salvaging our date. A few minutes went by and although it was slightly tougher than usual to swallow, I was breathing fine so decided to keep on trucking. We joked about just taking our meal to go and eating in the parking lot of the hospital. That way if I got worse, at least I'd be able to hop right over the ER.

By the time our food arrived, I was pretty sure it wasn't getting worse, so I resolved to enjoy my meal. But long story short, David's meal was repeatedly messed up. And it wasn't that he was being picky, but they were serving him something he really couldn't eat. (Trust me...making the long story short. :) But they did give us dessert on the house, and I enjoyed a piece of excellent chocolate cake.

At that point, we figured the romantic evening was pretty well shot, so we went Office Depot so I could pick up some mailing labels for my MOPS group and then to Target to get some allergy medicine so I could take another hit before I went to bed. Oh, and I forgot to mention that David stepped in something that was very possibly vomit while we walked to our car after dinner. At that point I just laughed like a crazy person for awhile because, hey, what else can you do?

But in the end, it's all good...and this is where the sappy-sap-sap comes in. We're celebrating an anniversary of being married, and we talked about how when you're dating, it's about the dates, but when you're married, a flop date isn't that big of a deal because it's not like that defines the relationship. It's not like he's never going to call me again just because my tongue got puffy from a pricey prawn. And besides, if I'm going to have a trainwreck of a date night, there's no one I'd rather stand at the Wal-Mart customer desk with.

Here's to many more years of Wal-Mart returns. But I will pass on the shellfish from now on.

Living in the Loony Bin

2011-01-25T13:07:00.000-08:00

With a 2, 3, and 6 year old in the house, sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by crazy people. I mean, how would you feel if you try to go to the bathroom and have a little person covered in macaroni and cheese repeatedly open the door, say "Almost done!" laugh his head off, and then close it. Or maybe you look into the kitchen to see another little person sleeping across two chairs only half dressed. And it's always fun to try to type with an extra pair of hands poking at the keyboard!

I know all this chaos has an effect on my mental state, but I didn't realize how much I was until I took a blogging gig with a company called Noblivity. Long story short, I was supposed to write about sustainable living, including eco-friendly products and the markets for them. This would require some research and expanding my writing outside of my usual area, which is currently, as you can see, kids' craziness and coupons. Since I want to get into freelance writing when I grow up, I thought this would be a great chance put all that stuff I learned about writing and research back in my college days to use, and maybe even get a few clips for my portfolio, which will be nice to have when I grow up and start my career...whenever that will be.

That was about three weeks ago. I busted out a little introductory post that was nothing fancy, and then started thinking about week #2...and ran into an interesting problem. I didn't have writers' block; I could think of a zillion topics to tackle and where to go with them. It was more like I was on a train and kept running into pieces of broken track, and by the time I got the track fixed, I completely forgot of where I was going. For this project, I had to take a new topic, find information, make connections and put it all together in a nice, pretty package. If you look back at my college transcript, GPA, and pre-kid resume, apparently at one point in my life I could do this in my sleep, but when I started trying to get something rolling over the past couple weeks, well, it didn't take me long to realize that this gig wasn't going to work out.

I can ramble just fine when I blog or go off about a topic I'm familiar with, but now I'm just not able to process new information that isn't immediately vital. Besides my usual routine, all three of my kids have been sick at some point over the past few weeks, so I've had to evaluate "mom" issues ranging from fever spikes, to finishing Christmas thank-you cards (and mailing the stack of Christmas cards I just found last week), to if Amy is well enough to go to school or not, to how to get the ring out of the bathtub (which probably wouldn't be such an issue if I cleaned it more often).

And I do everything with a fair amount of background noise. For example, Kate is going through this kind of funny, but mostly annoying phase, where she refuses to nap and then falls asleep in a weird place, like across the chairs on the kitchen, or under a coffee table. Then, when she is prematurely woken up by one of her siblings, she gets angry and pulls out her best whine, which I've concluded is her effort to perfect the most annoying sound in the world. Ben has figured out where I keep the knives (EEK), can open the fridge (URG), get water out of fridge door (UGH), and is going through that developmental thing where he likes to pour stuff out of one cup into another cup, which I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't experimenting with orange juice, stolen out of the fridge, in the middle of the living room.

So where was I going with that? Ok, my blogging gig. I got Week 1's post in alright, and took in the editor's suggestions for Week 2. By the weekend, I ended up jumping on the easiest one, and guiltily submitted it knowing that it wasn't exactly what she would be looking for. But I did attempt to dig into to researching top sustainable products, immediately hitting a dead end, only to spend a week trying to dig up bits of information here and there on Google until I finally realized why I couldn't find the info I needed (Thanks to David explaining it to me, because I finally brought it up with him.).

Last night rolled around, and I was supposed to get the post in today. After I got the kids in bed and plopped on the couch, I had that moment where I stared at my laptop, feeling completely brain dead after a day of chasing the kids and futile attempts to get my house clean. I farted around on facebook for awhile, and then was able to connect that I had scrubbed our bathtub that afternoon....I had some bath salts we made at the last MOPS meeting....I just bought a used copy of Julie and Julia that was calling my name... The revelation came to me that I could go sit in the bathtub with a book for a little while! It sounded divine, especially since I don't think I've taken a bath since I've lived in this house, and I must confess that I did that instead of busting out the blog post.

But as that night went on, I pondered that maybe the gig wasn't a good fit for me right now. It sounded fun and it would be good experience, but I just didn't want to stress about it and then not deliver my best. And besides stuff at home, I already have a few other commitments that require some time and attention, like keeping up my responsibilities with our rapidly growing Mothers of Preschoolers group and running a small group Bible Study with David for our church (although our "small" group is about 12 couples. :) I have a couple other writing projects that are more within my brain capacity at the moment, too. So this morning I sent in my "Sorry..." email, and was graciously left with an open door if I ever wanted to give it another shot.

The funny thing is that I feel surprisingly okay with this. I was thinking that I should be disappointed that I can't pull of something that was second nature to me 7 or 8 years ago, but since Amy was born my career choice has been making mac and cheese and matching socks. After 6 years of finding food in weird places around the house and several diaper changes a day, it makes sense that I wouldn't be able to jump right back into "writing about stuff I don't actually do myself" (which was pretty much my major in college and how I spent 6 years of my life). And someday Ben will not only be able to get in the fridge, but prepare his own food, and Kate will be the ornery teenager sleeping until noon, and Amy will be running around the world like she wishes she could now, so I'll have more time to write about whatever I want, even if I have to learn something first. Still plan to rock graduate school when I'm 40!

Watching my life flash before my eyes...

2011-01-24T16:36:00.000-08:00

Today a friend from back home sent me this link called "S&*@ My Kids Ruined," which is a blog collecting pictures of things children have managed to destroy, one way or another. Now besides the fact a friend "Saw this and thought of" me, instead of looking at the shock and awe I suppose some people, parents or not, would, I found myself rating the messes relative to stunts my kids have pulled. Sure, some of them are pretty bad, but my kids have blown several of these things right out of the water. If you're one of my newer readers, I have 10 posts tagged as "Classic Messes," including various stunts with body or wall art, spills (Ben's yet to outdo knocking over the 18 pound bucket of granola syrup and then crawling through it.), and my son even managed to "ruin" my sister's earring by swallowing and passing it. And these blog posts just skim the surface of stunts they've pulled.

So considering how much time I've spent scrubbing marker off skin and crayons off walls and vacuuming crumbs off the carpet or pulling out my carpet shampooer for whatever reason, it takes a lot to phase me now. When I see a picture of a kid covered in marker or a room that appears to have every drawer and toy box empty or only one box of cereal spilled on the floor, it doesn't really hit me that hard. In fact, it takes a pretty big disaster to phase me these days. Probably had to build that tolerance to disaster up to keep myself out of the crazy house.

Rather than list all the messes my kids have made, after viewing that blog, I did note there are a few things my kid's haven't done...yet. Here's a list of a few things I was thankful I haven't had to deal with...yet.

1. Destroy an expensive electronic or piece of furniture.
This probably has a lot to do with the fact that we just don't buy a lot of expensive things knowing that they'd be vulnerable to attack by our children. (This is why we have a $30 used kitchen table and hand-me-down couches...I just couldn't bring myself to buy new ones.) Sure, Ben's spent some time dumping water on the couch just to watch it spill, Kate took a glue stick and stuck a cut-out of a balloon to my china hutch, and when Amy was little she wrote her name on a desk in Sharpie, but when it all came down to it, I never felt like I was at a terrible financial loss over any of them. Oh, one of the kids yanked the tray on a DVD player so it never went back in right again, but it was a hand-me-down, and we managed to score another hand-me-down, so that was no biggie. And we're on our third VCR (which survived David removing a CD and a spider ring), but that's why I scrounge them up and don't pay more than $5 for one.

2. The Car.
This is probably the biggest YET I've got, but if you've ever met my kids, you'll understand why I'm grateful they've never managed to start car...yet.

3. The Appliances.
So far our washer, dryer, vacuum and stuff have all lived good lives and died of natural causes, and the kids haven't figured out a way to stick something somewhere that caused disaster.

4. Other people's stuff.
With the exception of a few things at the Grandparents, who don't really count because they're, well, grandparents, I can't really think of anything big my kids destroyed that left me feeling liable. (And if I'm wrong about that and owe you something, please let me know...my memory isn't the best these days!) (Oh, never mind. Amy got paint all over my neighbor's carpet, right before they were ready to put their house on the market. Still sorry about that, Catherine!)

5. My figure.
After 3 kids in 4 years, I've managed to be happy with my jean size, so I can't blame them for a huge weight gain. If anything, I can probably thank them for keeping me thin...between chasing these stinkers all over the world, rarely wanting to put the energy into cooking huge meals, and avoiding unnecessary snacking because I feel like if I sit down with a bag of chips I'm suddenly circled by vultures. The fact that I have to sneak snacks and hide in the kitchen to eat them has helped me exercise junk food self-control.

6. My marriage.
If anything has kept things in perspective for David and I, it's the kiddos. We've learned the value of approaching these challenges (I was trying to think of a nice word... "terrorists," "attacks" and "threats" also came to mind, but, well, I really don't think my kids are THAT bad.) as a united front, and truly appreciate getting those few moments to sneak some time with each other, from an actual date night, to catching up our Netflix DVDs after the kids go to bed, to grabbing a conversation while David is getting ready to run to class after he gets home from work. And someday...Amy will be old enough so we can make her babysit and we can leave whenever we want. Oh, the things to look forward to...

How to "Roll" Walgreens Register Rewards

2011-01-21T19:40:00.000-08:00

This is mainly a shout-out to my base's coupon group...we have a great group of ladies swapping local deals on facebook, and naturally we show off our scores. Since I'm stoked I FINALLY figured out all the quirks to getting a good deal at Walgreens, I'm showing off...with details.

Walgreens normally isn't the cheapest place to shop, but following the norm of more "expensive" stores, they tend to have really good sales. And this week, there was enough stuff we actually "needed" to get me drive "into town" to pick them up (especially since I had to go to Hobby Lobby anyway) because with the time and gas it takes to get to Walgreens, the deal has to be pretty compelling before I'll haul out there.

This time I planned out a strategy ahead, which filled in some holes in my stockpile so I shouldn't have to go back to Walgreens for awhile. One of my big reasons for buying stashing good deals is to get me out of shopping later...I'd rather be home knitting.

So tonight's score - All these goodies....

...for $20.74.

(for those who don't have a mental grocery calculator, if you walked in a Walgreen's off the street, one box of the DayQuil, the bottle of NyQuil, and both shampoos would run about $20.)

Anyway, this was a 3 transaction process, and I'm sure some of my dear readers are already thinking "URG, Rachel...I'd rather learn to KNIT that read more about shopping," so my feelings will not be hurt if you find click off the page now...I'll never know!"

And for the rest of my bargain hunting peeps who are thinking "PLEASE share!"

So here's transaction #1:

These were on sale for $5 each. I had two coupons for $3 off a DayQuil and a NyQuil, and there is a $10 Register Reward (RR - the coupon that prints at the end of your transaction) when you buy $20 worth of the Vicks stuff. SO (with tax) I paid $15.20, and got a $10 RR for my next purchase...which I did immediately. (One thing you NEED to know about "rolling" at Walgreens is that you can't get the same RR deal twice in a row, so if I tried to get the Vicks products again, it wouldn't print. You have to do a different deal if you want to print more RR.)

Transaction #2:

I actually had to change my plan from here last minute because they were out of what I originally going to get, but I adapted and it still all worked out fine. The Pantene was on sale 2 for $7, with a $2 RR, and the Advil was 2 for $10, with a $3 RR, and of course I had a coupon for $3 off the shampoos and $1 off each bottle of Advil, and I used my $10 RR from my last purchase, so when all was said and done, I paid $3.02, and got $5 in RR back.

And for the last hurrah, Transaction #3

This is where I was able to do some "stacking" where I used the Walgreens store coupons and manufacturer coupons I found online (Thanks to the My Military Mommy Coupon Database - I got all the other coupons from Sunday papers, except the Advil, which I think I saw at KCL). Now one of the quirks to using coupons at Walgreens is that you can't have more manufacturer coupons than items, so if you have a coupon for 1 item and a RR (which counts as a manufacturer coupon), you have to get a "filler" item, so you still have 2 items when you check out. Store coupons, however, don't count towards that total, so if you have one store and one manufacturer and are only buying one item, it should work. (In theory, I haven't tried it!) Anyway, if you have 8 manufacturer coupons and 7 items, the register will end up rejecting one of your coupons. I didn't have manufacturer coupons for my Sharpies, and they were only .99 a package with a store coupon that gave you the discount for up to 3 packs, so I grabbed a few more of those so I'd have my "fillers," and besides, if there's one random thing I can stash and know I'll use it sooner or later, it's Sharpies. End cost, using all the coupons and RR from transaction #2 - $2.52.

If you really want to dig into the geekery of this, here's the receipts, but you'd probably have to click on them to make them bigger.

And as I said, this trip was to fill in some gaps in the "health and beauty" stash I've been working on since I've started coupon-ing and I've finally arrived at the point where I have a decent supply of the essentials and can really "name my price" when it's looking like it's time to restock.

Oh, those bins were FREE because I used a gift card I got with Office Depot Workplace Rewards. I have another coming in a few months and I'm going to get more so I can have it all organized and pretty. And now that I think about it, the labels were free, too, with a coupon I got by signing up for Post-it junk mail and using it at a sale at Office Depot. It may look neurotic, but first of all, I can find everything, and just as important, my husband can find something he needs. He even looked at it and said, "I love it," and he's not a gusher...I think he just harbors a secret fear I'll hoard free toothbrushes and this gave him some comfort that I am staying sane. That said, the size of the bins keep me from getting overzealous if I see a great deal...we don't need any more toothpaste or razors than can fit in those bins!"

(And yes, if there's one thing I've overstocked, it's cold medicine. In my defense, there's been good deals on it lately, and I'm still getting the hang of balancing my stockpile. But also in my defense, I'll be giving any other Vicks coupons I find until next winter!)

So what kind of reaction did I get when I said I was going to do a few transactions and had just as many coupons as items? I scored a fantastic gal checking me out, and she even took a few moments to try to find me ANOTHER coupon I could stack in the Walgreen's book...she couldn't find it, but I appreciated the thought. And the times on my receipts where 6:59, 7:00, and 7:02, so the whole process took very little time out of my Friday night. In fact, I spent more time typing about the deal than I did in the store!

(Learn more about Walgreen's coupon policy here!)

Where do you get coupons?

2011-01-07T13:44:00.000-08:00

I'm helping to teach a couple coupon classes this week, and as I was typing up a list to hand out, I decided to just post my list here to save everyone the time of typing in links if they just wanted to check here. So here you go, for your clicking & saving pleasure!

(Because this is for a class I'll be doing in person, I don't have any explanations with the sites at the moment. But if you click on my "Favorite Moneysaving Links" tab I go into more detail on my favorite sites!)

BEST ONES IN BOLD

Blogs and Websites with deals and information

www.thekrazycouponlady.com

www.mymilitarymommy.com

www.mycitymommy.com/

www.coolsavings.com

http://www.mysavings.com/

www.couponcabin.com

http://www.southernsavers.com/

mygrocerydeals.com

www.allyou.com

Places where you can print coupons

www.coupons.com

www.smartsource.com

www.redplum.com

www.eclip.com

www.pillsbury.com

www.eatbetteramerica.com

http://commissaryproducesource.com/Documents/Ellsworth%20AFB%20local%20coupons.pdf

www.Target.com (go to the “coupons” link at the bottom of the page)

www.pgesaver.com

www.boxtops4education.com

Places where you can order paper coupons online

www.thecouponclippers.com

www.ebay.com (search “coupons”)

Places to get cash back or points for your online purchases

www.shopathome.com (Also has free samples & coupons)

www.ebates.com

www.swagbucks.com

Other tips:

If you're looking for a specific coupon, search the coupon database at My Military Mommy. (It's not just for the military – It's part of the My City Mommy network and they have the best one I've found!)

http://www.mymilitarymommy.com/2010/04/coupon-database.html

If you have to enter your zip code to access coupons, try a coupon from a larger city to get a better variety of coupons to print, like 90210.

To avoid getting a bunch of junk mail, create a second email address (or use an old one) and enter that one when you sign up for coupons. And pick a password to use for all of them if you have to open accounts.

Visit a company's website or facebook page to find special deals, coupons, or free samples.

Be sure your printer is working before you try to print the coupon, otherwise you could loose your chance to print it; test with a coupon you don't really care about first to make sure everything prints okay.

I am that idiot.

2011-01-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Eve, I got to experience my first South Dakota blizzard. Apparently, it was a small one by midwest standards, but we still had to hunker down in the house and cancel our plans with friends for the evening. But hey, it was fun to wrap up 2010 (which was a crazy year for the family) snuggled up with the kids watching The Princess Bride and letting them eat in the living room.

So on New Year's Day, we got 2011 rolling by going outside and shoveling the snow drifts off the driveways and sidewalks, along with several of our neighbors. The kids put on their snowsuits and pulled out the sleds, and we made a block party of it.

This was the drift we shared with our neighbors, but they got the worst of it, with their van blocked into the garage. As they shoveled, they moved the snow into their front yard and made a pretty epic sledding hill for the kids.

But our other next door neighbors got the worst of it, as usual. The pile of snow from our last storm didn't even have a chance to melt before this one, so the big pile is at the bottom of the picture is half snow and ice, which means it's not going anywhere.

Now this whole snow thing is new to me. But I'm getting better at driving in it and dressing for it, but I still lack the skills in judging it. For me, snow is snow, but I'm learning there's different types of snow and drifts and all. But before I tell my story of how I learned that snow can be very hard, even when it's still too fluffy to make a snowman, watch this video:

Snowy Conditions Proving Hazardous For Nation's Idiots

After I watched this a couple days after the storm, while I was still nursing a sore shoulder and neck from my personal idiot move in our Snowpocalypse, I couldn't help but to have a laugh, because I could have told my story on The Onion.

My husband was helping our neighbor shovel out her drift (I used to describe it as "giant" but last night I drove to the other side of base and saw the really giant drifts. One of my friends couldn't open her front door.) I went over to see how they were doing, and thought it might be fun to jump in the pile of fluffy snow. You know, the "Oh, I'll be a kid for the next minute and then go back to being a grown-up," sort of urge.

So I jumped up, and slammed my shoulder onto the drift, which didn't even give. My neighbor didn't hide the fact she found it hilarious, and my husband just stared at me, and then commented about how his wife just wasn't the smooth type.

"I thought it was going to be fluffy snow," I said, recognizing that it was pretty funny, and pretty dumb.

David, still looking awestruck that I tried the stunt, said, "You were walking on it."

Touche. "Well, at least it didn't hurt," I said.

The next morning, I woke up with a stiff shoulder and a dull pain in my neck. I sat through church wondering why my back felt so messed up. Then it finally occurred to me that nailing a solid drift of snow with the full force of my weight might cause a little discomfort. Later that night, I tried to roll back in our bed, only to end up with a sharp pain in the neck when I leaned back.

I think I gave myself whiplash. It's feeling better now, but there's still a lingering reminder in my back and neck that snow, when blown into drifts, can compact into a solid mass. Of course, any idiot knows that.

You know coupons are a part of your lifestyle when...

2010-12-29T06:18:00.000-08:00

...last night our family took a night out with dinner and a trip to Storybook Island to see the lights (before the possible blizzard and sub-zero temps hit this week!). As we sat at Culvers (my new favorite burger joint, making the distance from Burgerville a lot less painful) I told the kids we were going to make another stop on the way home. Amy screwed up her face and said, "Walgreens?"

Since we live a little outside Rapid City, when we "go into town," I usually have a stack of coupons ready to run into Walgreens and grab a few of their super-cheap sale items. But tonight I was actually able to say that I had no plans for Walgreens, and we had an even cooler plan for the kiddos, besides waiting in the car with Daddy while Mommy bought shampoo.

I did hit Wal-Mart and Target on the way home, though.

Lessons Learned This Christmas

2010-12-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

This year we did our first Christmas away from family. And even though we missed the festivities back home, it gave us a chance to try different things and start new traditions...and we ended up having a lot of fun, despite being 1000 miles from our usual holiday crowd. Here are some lessons I learned this Christmas:

1. My Kids + Candles = Horrible idea, any time.

After Christmas Eve Service started out with Ben trying to escape like that, I should have seen the rest coming.

Of course, it's a duh, not to let kids play with fire. But this year at my church's candlelight service, I decided to at least try to hold Ben while I held a candle. However, he was determined to hold the candle on his own. My kids tend to leave a path of destruction as it is, and I don't want to add "burning down a church" to their list of offenses. I decided to take Ben out of the service, which he fought wholeheartedly and screamed, ironically as the congregation sung "Silent Night." (And I think I nearly set my hair on fire as I wrestled the candle out of his hands and tried to blow it out.) So after I dragged him into the hall, we dodged into the toddler classroom in hopes that it would contain some of the noise. He was still livid, and then Amy found us (followed the noise, I'm sure) and brought me Kate, who was screaming just has loud as her brother saying she burned herself. Turns out a little wax melted on her tights and didn't even make a mark, but I still had two children screaming at the top of their lungs and an injury to treat. Thankfully an usher came in and took Ben off my hands, and found a way to calm him down and keep him entertained while I picked the wax off Kate's tights and gave her a band-aid (for the placebo effect; she didn't need it). While all was settled, Amy said, "I burned myself a little bit, but I was brave."

2. Buckeye Balls - the coolest thing ever to come out of Ohio.

One of my favorite things about military life is meeting people from all over the country, and even the world. (It's not unusual to pull up to a party and see a driveway full of cars with plates from different states). This Christmas our friends from Ohio introduced us to Buckeye Balls, which, as you can see, are peanut butter balls partially covered in chocolate, and are one of my new favorite things. But initially, I was confused about what they were supposed to look like. "Buck Eyeballs?" I asked my friend who shared them with us. "No, Buckeye Balls."

My confusion stemmed from the fact that I had no idea what a Buckeye even was. Well, turns out a Buckeye is a nut that can be found all over Ohio, and these treats look just like a Buckeye nut. We spent Christmas Eve another couple from Ohio, who also served Buckeye Balls, and even showed me a Buckeye Necklace, and sure enough, the peanut balls look like Buckeyes. (Although real Buckeyes are very poisonous) Then, we were joined by another Native Ohioan, who not only shared her education about Buckeyes, but got into a discussion with our hostess over if her Buckeye balls actually looked like they were supposed to. So thank you, Ohio, for contributing such a wonderful candy to the world. I had some for breakfast this morning.

3. There's nothing like knitting.
I suppose this is really a lesson I re-learned, but I can't believe I even let myself forget it in the first place. With all the craziness of the season, I let my knitting projects sit in the bag for the past month or so. Lately I've been very, well, wound up, and have a hard time settling down and relaxing. Then, on Christmas Day, David gave me a "100 Knitting Projects" calendar, and after the kids started to settled down, I flipped through it and found a cute lace baby hat...and I do have a friend due any day...so I pulled out my knitting bag, took a moment to clean out some projects I started but decided not to continue and leftover yarn, and started in on the hat.

Knitting Guru Elizabeth Zimmermann once said, "Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit, either." There is something so relaxing about taking a mess of yarn and creating something orderly and useful, or just fun to look at. As I trucked on with the pattern, which was different for each line, I realized something else - I had to do one thing at a time, and pay attention. Although some knitting can be accomplished without even looking at the needles, lacework requires undivided attention. I couldn't even listen to music without losing my place in the pattern. But it's okay. In our world where multi-tasking is considered an art, it's a trip to spend some time just focused on one thing. Give it a try if you haven't lately.

Now I'm almost done with the hat, but I got held up because, well, I don't have very many opportunities to give it the attention it requires. One squeak from a kid could throw off the row.

And I LOVE the star that came out of the top. It was a pleasant surprise because the picture didn't show the whole hat, so I was working blinding for the first part. So now I have a plan for the future when I'm super frazzled and feel pulled in 80 different directions. If I have a few moments when the kids are under control (sleeping or hanging out with dad, most likely) then I'll grab a cup of tea and knit lace. And only that.

Putting the KRAZY in KCL

2010-12-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months, I've gotten really into using coupons, including sporting my binder at the stores and coveting this wallet. (I love how the description says there's places for "debit cards and store discount cards." Do we need that many spots for credit cards? Of course not!)

Anyway, being in a small city that seems to have a high level of Coupon Crazies per capita, it's not uncommon to go into a store hoping for a good sale, only to find it sold out. After last night I went to Target with coupon in hand for Pop Arts water bottles, and not only where the water bottles gone, but so where most of the other smaller kits that would end up at the $1.50 price, except for the Mosaic picture frames, which I went ahead and bought to throw in my birthday-gift stockpile...but still, with the way the shelves were cleaned out, it was fairly obvious someone else had to have known about using the printable coupon with the sale and gift card deal.

Heather at the Krazy Coupon Lady recently posted a video on how to take special orders to make sure your item will be in stock and you'll be able to get the amount you want, but I have another idea to keep high-demand items off the shelves. With only two Safeways, three Walgreens, one Target, one Walmart, and a fairly small commissary, just need to make sure no one else in the area starts using coupons.

And I think the easiest way to do this is truly look crazy while we walk through the stores with our binders so any coupon skeptics will be convinced that anyone who takes the time to organize their coupons that neurotically must be totally out of their minds and want nothing to do with it.

Right now I get a positive reception when I walk through the stores with my binder, usually like "I wish I could be that organized!" or asking how I do it. The other day at the commissary an older gentleman said, "Wow, it looks like you have that down to a science." The problem with giving this good vibe is that people might actually go home, look up the KCL website, and consider starting their own binder...and that's exactly why there's never any Wholly Guacamole or Disney Vitamins in the commissary when the sales are good.

So the obvious step is to make ourselves totally unapproachable when we're on a coupon mission. And I think we could start this by starting a fake cult. Hear me out here.

Of course there would have to be some sort of outfit that makes us stand out from across store. My initial idea is old fashioned wizard outfits with robes and big pointy hats (a friend said she wanted to carry a staff that lights up in rainbow colors, and I think she's on the right track.) Of course we will have to be chanting some mumbo jumbo as we walk up and down the aisles and if anyone asks (okay, no one would actually talk to us, but if we get a strange look) we can explain that we are appeasing the marketing and stocking spirits to make sure we get the items we came in the store hoping to find. We'd have to preform dances and rituals in the store parking lots to prepare the spirits for our entrance, and I imagine we'd carry something that smells funny as we walk though the store. I'd say incense, but setting things on fire would probably get us kicked out of the store. We'd probably have to settle for spraying different scents of Glade sprays (which we can get with coupons) as we shop, depending on which spirit we want to please.

The goal would, of course, be to make coupon crazies really look totally out there, so no one wants anything to do with extreme coupon shopping and we can keep the best deals to ourselves. However, if someone wanted to join the group thinking that the crazy amount of money saving is worth it to the point where they'd be willing to join a cult, they can go on a waiting list until someone else leaves the group (moves away or whatever), and then when a spot opens up, they can go through a bizarre series of initiation rituals until they are allowed to our meetings, where they learn the true secret of the cult...that we don't believe that the Spirit of Cheap Produce likes Vanilla Scented Glade spray anymore than the next guy, but we're just trying to get first dibs on stockpiling the good deals. Then we'd go on to eat appetizers and swap diaper coupons we don't need for $1 off our favorite brand of shampoo.

But the fact remains that I live on a small base, and the commissary is right across from the building where my husband works. It's not uncommon for me to run into one of his co-workers when I'm shopping, and I don't think David would appreciate looking out the window and see me dancing with a staff in front of the commissary. I think he'd prefer if I just talked to a manager about special ordering the vitamins.

This is for you, Grandma!

2010-12-16T09:49:00.000-08:00

I know I've been neglecting my blog lately, but today I had talked to my Grandma and she requested pictures of the kids building the gingerbread house she sent them. It was a fun experience to put it together so I was thinking about pulling up blogger anyway, and of course, what Grandma wants, Grandma, gets. :)

The box came in the mail at the perfect time, because between Amy being so tired she doesn't know which end is up (her school has full day kindergarten, which is a fantastic program, but the long day really kicks her butt and lately she's been coming home so tired she randomly breaks into tears, and fighting a cold this week hasn't helped her at all), and Ben and Kate being little snot machines as the cold went through our house, I decided to keep our crankiness and germs to ourselves and skip going to our AWANA club last night. But to console Amy over staying home, we put together our gingerbread house.

However, it proved to be easier said than done, because the icing wouldn't stick. After three catastrophic collapses, and bedtime rapidly approaching, I finally pulled out my industrial hot glue gun and had at it...

May not end up on the cover of a Martha Stewart magazine, but it was ready to withstand the impacts of three little kids ready to slam candy on it. And of course, as soon as the candy was out of the wrappers, Ben had a mouthful.

They continued decorating in proper "1 for the house, 8 in my mouth" fashion, and eventually completed a house that looked like it got hit by a hailstorm of little candies...and they had a blast doing it.

It was also David's birthday, and even though he had to spend most of the evening locked in our computer room taking an online final for one of his classes, when he finally emerged triumphant with a 95% on his test, we had birthday cake and the kids presented the house in as a birthday present built in his honor.

(His hand is in Ben's face to keep the kid from grabbing the candles)

And so ends the saga of our families' first gingerbread house...maybe next time I'll figure out a way to put it together without the hot glue gun!

You think you know a guy...

2010-11-21T15:50:00.000-08:00

You'd think after knowing each other for nearly a decade, I'd have figured out David's pizza topping preferences, especially because I've spent a good chunk of the past seven years planning and preparing his meals.

This weekend I had the fun of going to Living Proof Life with Beth Moore, and since my husband's cooking abilities are, uh, limited, I threw together a pizza and stuck it in the fridge before I left, and told David to cook it when they were ready to eat. It was a plain cheese pizza because even though we had pepperoni in the fridge, I didn't use it because David doesn't like pepperoni...right?

After a delightful and busy weekend, before I went to bed last night I grabbed some of the leftover pizza and put a few pieces of pepperoni on it before I stuck it in the microwave. I settled down next to my husband as I got ready to eat, and he said, "We have pepperoni?"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you put it on the pizza yesterday? I was hoping there would be something besides cheese."

"What? You wanted pepperoni?"

Once in awhile we all get a revelation that changes our perception of the world. At some point very early in our relationship, I was put under the impression that he didn't like pepperoni pizza, and only liked Hawaiian. I've spent my married life ordering Hawaiian pizzas when we went out, and if I was cooking and we didn't have stuff for Hawaiian pizza, I'd make a cheese pizza before I'd put pepperoni on it. I do make a BBQ chicken pizza he likes, but I just assumed his dislike for other types of pizza was one of his picky eating quirks and would only put cook with pepperoni if he wasn't going to be there to eat it.

And then here he is, requesting pepperoni? My world was rocked. He went on to explain that he does, in fact, like it, and "likes all meat, but just have preferences. It's not like vegetables, where I have some real dislikes."

Why didn't I ever wonder why my carnivore husband would dislike a spicy meat like pepperoni? When I saw him eat a pepperoni pizza, I assumed he was just really hungry or being polite. I had no idea he was enjoying it. He told me even likes a good Meat Lover's pizza just as much as a Hawaiian. "Pizza is pizza," he said, with his only disclaimer being that he really doesn't care too much for cheese pizza.

We're both glad we had that conversation, because now our pizza can have more flavor, and I can quit being bummed that I married a guy who didn't like pepperoni pizza.

But I did get some consolation over this misunderstanding this morning during Sunday School. We're in a "marriage builder's" class and today we played a game called Spouseology, which is kind of like a Newlywed came where the couple has to answer a question to see if we got the same answer. In the entire game we only missed one question, and made that point up with an "Extra Credit" point. And even though there were no questions about pizza toppings, it was good to know we would have gotten it right if it did come up.

(And while we were at it, I made sure he knew my favorite pizzas, in order, were the Stuffed Chicken Bacon Ranch from Papa Murphy's, a nice, spicy Buffalo Chicken, and my token favorite is pepperoni and olives. We both agreed we don't like the very thin, cracker-like crusts. But when it comes down to it, pizza is pizza.)

Still alive and kickin'

2010-11-17T10:30:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to apologize to my readers for neglecting my blog lately...funny is that when life hits and there's tons of interesting stuff to write about, there's not much time to do it!

But eventually I'll get back on the blogging wagon. But now I hear Ben playing with something in the kitchen and feel a draft that gives me a hit Kate might have opened a door, so gotta run!

The Airman Who Saved Halloween (and the wife who kept things going in the meantime)

2010-10-31T20:27:00.000-07:00

Tonight I found myself in a little bit of a pickle. As I went to get ready for trick or treaters, I couldn't find most of the candy I bought. We had a bin of banana Laffy Taffy from the case lot sale, a bag of Crunch bars, and some suckers leftover from Amy's birthday party goodie bags, but I also had a hunch that wasn't quite going to cut it...and although I was sure I bought four more bags of candy at a sale at Safeway the week before, and that I threw it all in the closet at the top of the stairs to hide it from the kids, it was no where to be found, even after a careful sorting and reorganizing of that space.

My kids weren't the only ones in the neighborhood excited to trick or treat, and I was pretty my half-full pot wasn't going to get us very far through the night. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I rationalized my actions by thinking that what I was going to do may make me a terrible mother, but if I let my kids eat all candy they got when they went trick or treating through David's office building, I'd be a terrible mother. And if I could be a little sneaky, they wouldn't miss it anyway.

When the kids went to the Halloween festivities at Dad's work, they came home with enough candy to fill a gallon jar and then a gallon freezer baggie. First I picked through it and took out all the stuff my little ones don't need, like jawbreakers and gum, and the stuff that no one in the family really cares for (but is still good!), like Butterfingers. All that went into the treat pot, and the pot went on the porch, and we went out as a family to venture for more candy. I was confident that we'd replace what I gave away without too much trouble.

South Dakota must have gotten the crankies out of its system in our miserable windstorm last week, because the weather tonight was the best we could ask for of the Dakotas in October. I got a little chilly with a sweater by the time we went in, but the kids just needed long sleeve shirts under their costumes and they were good to go....with what seemed like every other kid on the base.

By the time we got back from going around the block, which was all my little ones could handle, our candy pot looked dangerously low...and we still had two hours left of trick or treaters. I weeded through the Ben and Kate's candy (Amy was good to go for the rest of the neighborhood with Dad) and added to my pot. A little while later I just dumped in the rest of Ben's bag, knowing that Amy would come home with quite a haul. It was actually a bit of a relief to know we wouldn't have such an insane amount of candy in the house, and Ben and Kate were watching Pinky and the Brain (we decided to pull out the DVDs for Halloween) sucking on Tootsie Pops, so they were oblivious to my scheme, thankfully.

By the time Amy and David got home, the gallon bag was empty, and the jar was running low. As soon as I could sneak it away, I grabbed Amy's bag. Knowing she'd be more likely to catch on, I picked out the hard candy and gum (still haven't gotten over the time she lost a piece she was chewing on in the car and I found it an hour later, stuck to the back of my pants while I was walking through the grocery store), and David finally asked how I managed to loose the designated trick or treat candy.

I told him I was sure I put it in the space at the top of the stairs. I checked the cupboards, and even looked down in the basement to see if I put it next to where I kept the pot we would use to pass it out, but I was baffled as to where it could be.

David double checked where I thought it was, then he disappeared down the basement. I was very sure I didn't put it there, but figured I could very possibly be crazy, and told him it was in a Safeway, or maybe a Walgreens, bag that was tied shut.

He found it. It was in a laundry basket stashed off to the side of the wall. And suddenly everything made sense.

Last time we did a big laundry folding marathon that, with David and I working together, took most of "Clash of the Titans," (I've tried not to get that behind since that wild night, and so far I've been moderately successful) I tossed all the kid's summer or outgrown clothes in a laundry basket to sort later, and then I put that laundry basket in the closet on top of the stairs, and eventually it ended up next to bins and boxes I used to sort clothes for hand-me-downs or whatever. I guess the candy fell in the basket. But the important thing is that it was found, and properly distributed to the princesses and goblins.

And even after donating about 3/4 of my kid's overall spoils to the neighborhood, they still went to bed on Halloween night with this much stashed:

And would we really need more than that?

What should we really fear on Halloween?

2010-10-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

Today marks the beginning of our family's Halloween Festivities. My husband's office (which is a huge building) is going to be decorating and letting the kids trick-or-treat through the cubicles. The military members who work there (there's also a lot of civilians) are even going to be permitted to go home after lunch and change into costumes.

Sunday I plan on taking the kids trick-or-treating, assuming the South Dakota wind doesn't suck the fun right out of it. Either way, we probably won't go too far through the neighborhood just because the babies get whiny, even with the candy incentive, and besides, how much junk food do the kids really need to take home, anyway? My main plan is to let the kids watch a movie in their costumes and eat popcorn and caramel apples, and probably a few pieces of trick-or-treat candy.

This morning the to trick-or-treat, or not to trick-or-treat controversy popped up on facebook, and I came across some enlightening articles about the safety of Halloween.

Snopes.com did the research on how many kids are actually poisoned or hurt by tampered candy passed out on Halloween, and the results where that there are no recorded incidents of a child legitimately being poisoned by trick-or-treat candy, and as the research by Barabra Michelson at Snopes showed, the incidents that appeared to be poisoned candy where either hoaxes, misinformation, or there was a whole lot more to the story; one sad example was a premeditated murder of a specific child by his father poisoning his candy. There are very few cases of needles or razor blades found in the candy, and those were pranks or turned out to be hoaxes.

This commentary from the Wall Street Journal backs this up, and goes on to say that a professor who researched Halloween crime statistics from 30 states was actually tempted to name her paper "The Safest Day of the Year." She says: "Why is it so safe? Because despite our mounting fears and apoplectic media, it is still the day that many of us, of all ages, go outside. We knock on doors. We meet each other. And all that giving and taking and trick-or-treating is building the very thing that keeps us safe: community."

And that is my favorite thing about trick-or-treating. It gives us a chance to get to know our neighbors, meet the kids running around the block (and note which ones might be trouble), and give our kids a chance to just dress up as whatever they want and have fun. Back in Oregon, it became our tradition to take my kid's trick-or-treating in my in-laws neighbor because on Halloween the neighbors set up haunted paths around their lawn, served ~gasp~ hot chocolate, and dumped candy generously on the kids. It was the one night of the year where there were no strangers and everyone was just neighbors.

Since this is our first Halloween in our new neighborhood, I think it will be a great opportunity to meet some of the families new to the neighborhood and let my kids at least get some fresh air and exercise in their pursuit of candy. Weather permitting, of course.

Wild Shopping Sprees in Frugal Living Land

2010-10-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

Today, after tracking Krazy Coupon Lady and watching some ads, I hit the town with some coupons and a plan, and ended up scoring all this for $50.14, including tax. If I would have paid full price, it was worth $183.98, which is a savings of $133.84...and all it took was a scanning a few ads, printing a couple coupons, and a bit of organization. And I consider it totally worth the efforts.

If you're not immediately impressed, allow me to point out that's pressure cooker in the back retails $70, and those gloves have a $40 price tag. A score like this took a bit of strategy, and here's the breakdown...

First, I stopped at the mall, and realized that I just walked into the only mall in Western South Dakota on a Saturday afternoon. Crowded stores aren't usually the best bet for bargain shopping because stock runs low and employees tend to be swamped, but the $20 pressure cooker at JC Penney's was calling my name, especially after scanning garage sales and thrift stores all summer for one with no luck. While I was there, it occurred to me that it's rumored to snow next week, I still needed a decent pair of gloves, and I had a Sears' gift card with around on it $15 in my wallet. So I swung into Sears, found a pair of $40 Isotoner gloves on sale for for $28, plus an extra $10 off in store coupon...so with my gift card I only paid $6.15 for a rather nice pair of gloves. I was especially pleased because I had looked at the same pair of gloves at the BX for about $26 and decided to pass on the hunch I could do better.

At Penney's, a very helpful store associate helped me hunt down the pressure cooker because, for some reason, it wasn't with the rest of the pressure cookers. After we found it (I cut the picture out in the ad and brought it in, so he was able take me right to it.) he said he had something else to show me. I figured he was going to try to up-sell me, but he lead me to a table with clearance cookbook inserts, including a set of pressure cooker recipes for 1.97 that was normally $10. I went ahead and bought it, and did find the recipes to be a little fancier that my family needs, but there were still a couple with potential. So the total I spent at the mall: almost $40 for $120 worth of stuff, and I already have a $10 rebate for the pressure cooker ready to mail.

Then I cruised over to Office Depot to take advantage of a $1 sale, including using a $1 off coupon I had for Post-It labels to make them FREE. I have a terrible habit of losing scissors, so I stocked up on those, too, and grabbed their last package of $1 highlighters. Total for this stack: $4.15, and the regular price would have been $24.45.

Next was on over to Safeway to pick up some Halloween candy for the trick-or-treaters that are expected to bombard our house next week. They were on sale for $2 a bag if you buy $4, and I had a $1 off three coupon, which made it $1.75 a bag (yes, I have noticed some better deals since, but it's not that bad of a deal). I also tried to use a $2 Walgreens Register Reward, which I knew Safeway was supposed to take, but the checker and the bagger didn't get that memo yet...literally. Safeway was extremely crowded (again, Saturday afternoon is not the best time to shop with coupons!) and I let it go even though I tried to explain that it was a "manufacturer" coupon, not a Walgreens coupon (and decided not to bring up that I had the Safeway coupon policy, which states they are taking Catalinas from other retailers, in my car). But after I checked out, one of the checkers got curious and called over a manager, who did confirm that she got a memo that Safeway was taking Walgreens RR, and even offered to adjust my receipt. But since it seemed like half of Rapid City was crammed into the store, my RR didn't expire for another week, and I was getting hungry, I thanked her for the info and said I'd just use it next time. So I paid $7.00 for all this candy, saving $10, but let it be on the record I could have paid $5.00 ;)

At this point I stopped at Culvers for a burger, which has officially replaced Burgerville in my heart. If anyone from the Northwest is shocked, really, you don't know how good a Culver's burger is. And I remembered to ask for the military discount.

Last stop was Target. I got some good tips from KCL, and brought a stack of coupons with some daring deals...would they really give me the free dental floss? The checker took all my coupons, and all these goodies were $8.51. (I paid full price for the bread to save myself a trip to the commissary) and I saved $11.49.

So with a little running around and planning ahead, I got all sorts of fun stuff and only paid 27% of the retail price when all was said and done. And now to find some pressure cooker recipes...

Support Trees for Troops!

2010-10-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

It's always fun to plug an organization that is helping out our troops, and today it's Trees for Troops, which supplies Christmas Trees to military families. They're trying to gain funding from the Pepsi Refresh Project, and here's the info on how to help them out:

You can help Trees for Troops bring an additional 5,000 military families together in SPIRIT
this Christmas Season!

Trees for Troops is in the running for $250,000! Cast your vote in the Pepsi Refresh Project!

About the Pepsi Refresh Project:
During the month of October, we are competing for a $250,000 grant in the Pepsi Refresh Project that will help us deliver an additional 5,000 trees to military families this Christmas. The top two ideas will each receive a $250,000 grant from Pepsi.

About Trees for Troops:
Since 2005, Trees for Troops has reached nearly 67,000 military families by delivering fresh Christmas trees donated by American farmers to service members and their families living on bases across the U.S. Last year alone, Trees for Troops provided over 16,000 military families across the U.S. with a real tree. View Lilly's Story on our YouTube Channel and see what the gift of a Christmas tree meant to her family. Visit the Trees for Troops website (www.TreesForTroops.org) for more inspirational stories.

HOW TO VOTE:
1.    Go to www.RefreshEverything.com/TreesForTroops and create an account with your name, email address and birthday. This will allow you to quickly login each day to vote.
‐OR ‐
2.    Login to your Facebook account, search for the Pepsi Refresh Voting App. Allow it access to your profile andthen you will be able to vote daily through Facebook.
‐ AND/OR ‐
3.    Vote from your mobile phone. Text* 102662 to Pepsi (73774) *standard text message rates apply
It takes less than 1 minute to vote. Make a pledge to VOTE EVERY DAY online and via text message during the month of October. You can vote once per day the entire month and votes are cumulative.

NEED A REMINDER?
Sign up to receive a *daily text message during the month of October reminding you to support Trees for Troops in the Pepsi Refresh Project. Your daily vote is needed to help us reach our goal! Text TROOPS to 69302 to begin receiving text updates. Or visit www.treesfortroops.org to sign up for email updates.

Your daily voting WILL make a difference in the lives of military families who sacrifice so much. Vote for Trees for Troops TODAY! (and tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that...the whole month of October.)

TELL YOUR FRIENDS:
• Share on Facebook or post it on your wall
• Schedule daily tweets on Twitter
• Text your friends
• Challenge your school/company groups

RESOURCES:
• Website: www.treesfortroops.org
• www.youtube.com/user/ChristmasSPIRITFdn
• www.Facebook.com/Trees4Troops
• www.Twitter.com/Trees4Troops

Visit www.TreesForTroops.org for more information. If you have additional questions, please contact Lauren Mangnall at mangnall@drakeco.com or (636) 449‐5060.

**Daily text reminders will ONLY be sent during October 2010. Other Trees for Troops updates may be sent periodically after October.

How cool is this? - Free Sears Gift Cards for Active Duty Military!

2010-10-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a part of the country characterized by being full of people who don't generally support "the war" and give an anti-military vibe, pushing a lot of negative stereotypes when it comes to troops and the leadership. (Loooooong stories there, but I'll leave it at that.) I saw a lot of protests and bumper stickers that made it clear how some people felt about our involvement in the Middle East.

Now I'm definitely not trying to trash on my hometown or write a cranky post, but I just want to contrast the negativity surrounding the military that I saw there to the amazing support I saw for our troops once David went Active Duty and we left that part of the country. As soon as we got on the other side of the Rockies, people were thanking us (as in David, and also acknowledging our family) for our service and offering incredible support, including businesses and corporations. I had NO idea the military was so popular in the rest of the world! It's kind of like being rockstars sometimes.

And here is yet another example of how a great freebie in support of the troops... Sears is opening up its Heroes at Homes Wish Registry and offering free gift cards to Active Duty Service members! This program is open NOW until October 15th at 1800 CST. (See, if you can't figure out what time that is, then you can't sign up! ;) If you're a spouse signing up, don't forget to use your husband's name and birthday!

The page is experiencing a lot of traffic and is pretty slow, so I think I'll try to sign up after the kids go to bed tonight. Thanks, Sears!

It's the most wonderful time of the year (or at least one of them...)

2010-10-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

Don't forget Summer Clearance Sale are in their prime, folks!

Yesterday I went to K-Mart and got David two pair of shorts and a t-shirt for $1.99 each. Considering that my man has been wearing the same pairs of shorts for our entire marriage, he needed the upgrade.

And if you can make it to Sears today, they still have their Columbus Day Sale going on, including ALL their shoes on sale! We were in there yesterday and David got an awesome deal on a pair of running shoes (which he also needed to upgrade!) Read more about the deals here, which include 50-60% off outerwear, 75% off jewelery, and 40% off sheet sets.

I also learned, when I was at Kmart, if you sign up for their Rewards card, you can earn points at Sears and Kmart. Even with the limited shopping in my corner of the world, we do have Sears AND Kmart, so I signed up!

If you shop online and have a shopathome.com account, Sears and Kmart are offering 5% cash back. Both stores also have a buy online, pick up in store option and Sears has free shipping. So if there's anything you need for next summer, now might be a good time to check it out!

It's probably about time...

2010-10-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I'm no fan of having animals in my home. You can read more about an ordeal I had house sitting for a friend with cats here, but since that post I'm proud to say David and I successfully fed the neighbor's big dogs for two whole weeks, which is probably the most contact I had with animals since my childhood cat died before I got married. In fact, my feelings about pets are so well known that I offered to feed a friend's cat while she went out of town, and she said she had it covered, and that she didn't even ask me, saying with a laugh, "Rachel, I read your blog."

Naturally, I birthed a little girl who is drawn to animals, and wistfully dreams to have a pet someday. I've been firm about it so far, but a few times I've considered letting her let a turtle or something. However, the thought of cleaning up after another creature reminds me about why we are an animal free home.

Amy's sixth birthday is coming up, and I've had a hard time choosing a gift for her, besides some games and movies I know she'd like, and letting her pick out some clothes for herself at Target. When asked her what she wanted, she said she wanted an alarm clock so Daddy wouldn't have to wake her up in the morning (we can handle that), and then rattled off a list of possible pets, which I vetoed, hoping she'd ask for a Razor Scooter or something.

With all this mind, I talked to a woman who raised seven children who pointed out that it can be very important for a child to have a pet to love, cuddle and care for, and I suppose she has a point. She said that when she approached her teen years, her parents bought her a horse and it kept her out of loads of trouble because she spent all her spare time taking care of it and she never even thought about running around with boys. She was absorbed with her horse during those potentially disastrous years.

Amy is not getting a horse (that would be fun to explain to the base housing office!), but this wise woman said, if I'm not open to a dog or a cat, a hamster or something like that would be a good pet for a kid her age.

Even though I softened to the idea of letting Amy get some type of rodent she could keep in a cage, I still nuked the idea as soon as I looked at her trashed bedroom. She has shown no signs of being naturally tidy or taking the initiative to keep things clean (just like her mother) and is amazing unresponsive to our nagging or incentives to get her to clean up after herself. (I'm sure my mother will say she's just like her mother.)

So I decided to pull out the big gun, and David and I told her that if she keeps her room clean for 6 months (until my birthday), she can pick out a hamster or gerbil or whatever. We explained that a pet was a big responsibility, and she had to show us she could be responsible with her room before we'd let her have one. Amy seemed thrilled about this idea with this idea at first, but so far she's made no effort whatsoever to clean up her room. But hey, it's all in her court now, and we'll see if we bring a new family member into the house next March.

The Skinny on Shaving

2010-10-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

All too often, I've gone into the store to buy razors or blades, thought "It is SO expensive to shave!" and considered giving it up altogether and just going hippie. However, my husband is the first to veto that idea, and is willing to spend the money for me to look like a girl. (Although it makes me wonder who decided that women shouldn't have the body hair God gave them, and makes me want to go back in history and slap him or her in the face for leaving a legacy of a huge pain in the butt for future generations of women.)

When I started coupon-ing and finding coupons for razors, it occurred to me that I didn't have to marry my razor, and could just buy a bunch at bargain prices and then restock blades for each as they came on sale. However, I quickly realized a flaw in this plan: Razor blades rarely come on sale, at least at a worthwhile discount.

It's a basic marketing strategy. Give away something that takes refills, and then make your money later off the refills. This is why we always see fantastic coupons and deals for things like pretty razors and Swiffer products, because the company is crossing their fingers that we'll fall in love with the product and buy accessories and refills later.

Well, we don't have to play that game, do we now? And since I have an entire page of my coupon binder dedicated to razors, I wondered at what point is it cheaper to buy a new razor, as opposed to a pack of blades. So this morning I went to Walgreen's website, popped up an Excel spreadsheet, and did a quick rundown of what razor blades actually cost. (Why yes, I do have a lot of time on my hands. Perk to being a trophy wife!) Some of the blades were on sale, but I just popped in today's Walgreen's price, as if you were shopping today. (And even though I do have a lot of time, I don't have that much time!)

So the point of this chart...Look at the cost per blade for your favorite razor, and/or what you happen to have in the way of coupons. If the cost to buy a new razor (which usually comes with an extra blade, so count it as two!) is cheaper than buying a pack of blades, then you may as well just get a whole new set! If the razor you're considering isn't listed, the blades actually are on sale, or you're not shopping at Walgreens, it's easy math that only takes a few seconds if you pop out your cell phone and find the calculator while you're in the store. Just divide the number of blades or razors by the cost of the pack, and you'll know if your coupon to buy a new razor really is saving you money! So, for example, if you're at Walgreens and have a coupon that will get you a Venus Razor for $5, then divide it by two which comes to $2.50, and you may as well buy a new pack of blades (or wait for a better coupon and sale!), which are only $2.38 each in an 8 pack. If you have a coupon to get you a Venus Embrace for $4 so each blade in the pack cost $2 each, then you may as well hit it because the blades are $3.75 each if you buy a 4 pack. (Isn't in fun when the nicer item comes out cheaper!)

Of course, you can save money buy just going with simple disposables as opposed to price checking pretty razors, but I'm not really coordinated, and the slightly more advanced razors save me some pain...but if you're a Bic girl or guy, then more power to you!

After reviewing this chart, I decided that if I can get a fancy razor with two blades for $3.50 or less with coupons and sales, then I'll go ahead and pick it up. (Take a deal like this!) And after a few weeks in the coupon world, that's not very hard to do at all. I may just work towards a $2.50 goal! For David, I'll shoot towards $3 a razor, because after putting these charts side by side, the men's blades are definitely cheaper than women's; however, I think I've seen more coupons for women's razors...but if it's cheaper in the end, I may just start using the guys' razors!

I wasn't able to get all the prices of the actual razors, but who cares, because we all know there's no reason to EVER pay full price for a razor! Disposables are in green. Enjoy!

So here's the table for Men's Razors....

Men's	Razor	# of Blades	Blade Cost	Cost per Blade

Gillette
* Mach 3	$9	12	$24	$2.00
		8	$20	$2.50
		5	$13	$2.50
		4	$14	$3.50
* Mach 3 Disp..		3	$9	$3.00
* Sensor Excel		10	$20	$2.00
* Trac II		10	$15	$1.50
* Custom Plus Disp.		4	$6	$1.50
* Sensor 3		8	$19	$2.38
* Atra Plus		10	$15	$1.50
* Fusion	$9	8	$26	$3.25
* Fusion Proglide	$10	4	$17	$4.25
* Sensor Disp.		4	$8	$2.00
* Good News Disp.		12	$9	$0.75


Schick
* Quattro		4	$10	$2.50
*Hydro 5	$10	4	$8	$2.00
* Hydro 3	$8	4	$8	$2.00
* Senstive Disp.		12	$7	$0.58
* Quatro Titanium	$10	4	$11	$2.75
* Xtreme 3 Sens. Disp.		8	$12	$1.50
* Quatro H.P. Disp.		3	$8	$2.67


Bump Fighter
* Disposables		4	$4.50	$1.13
* Shaving System	$6	4	$5	$1.25


Bic
* Disposables		5	$2.50	$0.50
* Sensitive Disp.		13	$4	$3.25
* Twin Select Disp.		10	$3	$3.33
*Triple Disp.		8	$7	$1.14
* Flex 4 Disp.		3	$6	$0.50


Walgreens
* Triple Blade	$6	8	$10	$0.80
* 5 Blade Disp.		3	$4	$0.75
* Twin Plus		10	$9	$1.11

And the Women's...

Women's	Razor	# of Blades	Blade Cost	Cost per Blade

Gillette
*Venus	$6	4	$10	$2.50
		8	$19	$2.38
* Venus Breeze	$10	6	$18	$3.00
* Venus Embrace	$10	4	$15	$3.75
* Venus Embrace Disp.		3	$12	$4.00
* Spa Breeze Disp.		2	$9	$4.50
* Venus Disp.		3	$9	$3.00
* Spa Breeze	$10	4	$13	$3.25
* Venus Divine		4	$12	$3.00
		8	$13	$1.63
* Oceana Disp.		3	$9	$3.00
* Venus Vibrance		4	$13	$3.25
* Daisy Disp.		12	$9	$0.75


Schick
* Quattro	$10	4	$12	$3.00
		8	$21	$2.63
* Intuition		3	$11	$3.67
* Intuition Plus	$10	3	$11	$3.67
* Slim Twin Disp.		12	$7	$0.58
* Extreme Disp.		4	$7	$1.75
* Quatro Disp.		3	$8	$2.67


Bic
* Silky Touch Disp.		10	$3	$0.30
* Soleil Triple Disp.		4	$6	$1.50
*Soleil Bella Disp.		3	$6	$2.00


Walgreens
* Triple Blade Disp.		4	$4	$1.00
*Twin Blade Disp.		10	$3	$0.30
		12	$4	$0.33

It's a good thing I married young...

2010-10-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

...otherwise I might be THAT single lady.

Last night at Safeway, I was in line behind a guy probably within five years of my age (with me at the older end) who looked like he was only shopping for himself. Because David and I have an understanding that we can acknowledge if we think another person is attractive (not like my husband ogles every girl that walks by in a short skirt, but if he says "yeah, she's pretty," it just shows me that he's alive and not stupid), I'll say that he was cute, and if I was single and not so distracted wondering about how I couldn't find the Nivea chapstick I would have gotten free with my coupons, I may have looked twice.

Here's how I told my husband the rest of the story:

"If I was single, I totally would have had an awesome pick-up line at Safeway last night. When the lady asked him if he had a club card, he said no...and I could have said, "Hey, you can use mine. Here's my number."

(David gives me the look that says, "wow, my wife sure is a dork, but I still love her.")

"But," I said, "I don't think I could have hit on him..."

"Yeah," David interrupted, "You couldn't date a guy that doesn't even have a Safeway Club Card."

And he's right. I went on to comment about how this guy probably farted away at least $30 (well, I realized as I write this that would have been my savings on a $90 transaction on an off day, but he probably wouldn't have gotten that high without even trying a little) and did he even look at the price tags? He spent all that money and hardly had anything in his cart!

Although coupons and grocery shopping savings strategies usually are considered the territory of women with families and children, I still can't wrap my brain around the fact that there are single young men wandering through the world that don't even have a Safeway Club Card!

So what did I do in the real-life situation? Although my first instinct was just to reach over and type in my Club Card number for him because I have this anal-retentive issue over anyone paying full price for a cart of groceries, I let it go. If I was 30 or 40 years older with permed gray hair, I could have patted his shoulder, handed him a club card application, and said, "Son, you need to find yourself a nice girl to do your grocery shopping, because you just wasted a bit of money. Get a club card and use the money you save to take a pretty girl on a date." (How I can't wait to be a crazy old woman is an entirely different post.)

Besides, IF I was single and IF I decided to make a move, it would have been a little awkward, because if he glanced over to my groceries, it was personal items and 4 boxes of Fiber One bars. (Hey, that was where my good stacked coupons fell this week!) It's probably a really good thing David found me and got me out of the dating world right out of college.

Cheap Printer & Ink

2010-10-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

One of the big obstacles to printing coupons and rebate forms online is, well, not having a printer. Since mine broke last week (~sigh~) and I'm missing awesome coupons like crazy, I've been on the market for the new one, and delightfully, this HP Photo printer that retails $70 came up today on My Military Mommy for $15 with shipping! If you're thinking "This has to be a scam" don't worry about it; it's from a credible website that sells overstocks and such. However, it is a "Daily Deal" so if you don't order it TODAY, you're out of luck.

I've been trying to find a printer on craigslist that uses the same ink I already have since I got a great deal and bought a bunch over the summer, and did have one pop up, but unfortunately I've had a hard time connecting with the guy selling it. So, I went ahead and ordered the one above because I figure that even if I buy the used printer to use up my stash of ink, I'd still have a cheap back up printer set aside for if (or, with my luck, when) the other one breaks.

And I also have a cheap way to get ink!

Clinkinks sells generic ink, which I used to be squeamish about, but I got over it after I decided the name-brand ink just wasn't worth the money. When it comes to printing my photos, I watch for sales at places like Snapfish and Seehere, so I'm not too concerned about fantastic print quality when it comes to my printer and ink. As long as it can pop out my knitting patterns and coupons, I'm a happy camper.

At Clickinks, the ink for the printer above is $38.75 for a pack with 2 black and one color. For this brand, the site automatically offers free shipping and 10 off, so your total would be just $34.87. If you have a Shop At Home account, you can pull an extra 10% off, which would make it $31.39, or $10.46 each, which isn't too shabby, especially since you'd pay $16 each if you ordered from Office Depot.

For my Epson Printer, my ink qualified for Click Inks "Buy 2 Get One Free" deal that made my ink super cheap...of course, now I have a drawer full of it and a broken printer...but maybe I'll be able to resell it or something and cut a little bit of my costs. At the very least, I used enough of the ink to break even if I had bought name brand and retail!

Military Base Trashpicking: No, it's not because we're not paid enough.

2010-10-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

I've always been a shameless scrounge. Part of it this does stem from my hippie mentality that there's no point of wasting good stuff by chucking it in a landfill, and then there is the fact that I get some weird buzz off saving money. Even back before our military life, if I noticed something intriguing on the curb on trash day, I'd walk by nonchalantly to see if it was something we could use. I'm still using a drying rack I swiped from my neighbor's garbage two years ago. It was broken, but with a few rubber bands and some hot glue and it worked fine, and I was finally able to throw out the honestly-to-goodnessly broken one I was still trying to make work.

I heard rumors of how fantastic base garage sales could be, especially considering how often military families can end up packing up to move. But what I didn't know was how stuff can end up passed around when it's time for to PCS (Air Force term meaning "Permanent Change of Station." "Permanent" is used by military standards, compared to TDY, which means "Temporary Duty" that could be training or something away from home. Pretty much, it's Temporary if you don't formally change your address, even if you're there for six months, and Permanent if you pack up and park somewhere, even if it's just for six months.)

When we first got here, our next door neighbors were already planning a move, and one day I looked out the window and noticed a freestanding firepit in front of their house. My first instinct was to get my trash-picking on, but David wasn't as excited as I was. Being new in the neighborhood, he didn't want me looking like a bag lady this early on.

However, I finally got him to be okay with me knocking on the door and asking if it was up for grabs. Our neighbor said it was and they didn't want to take it to New Mexico, and then we had a firepit to enjoy for the summer, just like that. Later that day, I ended up having conversations with a couple other neighbors that went like:

"Looks someone got their firepit."

"Oh, yeah, I picked it up this morning."

"Aw, I was going to grab that! Those things are expensive!"

"Well, we'll have to have you over for S'mores."

A few days later, there were several bikes lined up in front of their house, including one about David's size. We'd been talking about getting him a bike, and I encouraged him to go over and check it out. Still not convinced that he wouldn't look like a bum if he did, but acknowledged a free bike would be nice, he went over and talked to the neighbor, who was more than happy to hand over the bike, and a helmet...and went on to ask us if we wanted his basketball hoop and a playset for the backyard, and I went on to grab a rug and a little couch for Ben's room on other days when they piled stuff on the curb.

As the summer went on, I realized I'm not the only one who's checking out junk piles. One day I ran into some of my friends who were excited about some chairs they took off a curb, but could barely fit in their van. At the base thrift store, I talked to a woman (whose husband had quite a few stripes on his sleeve) about how she went by a house, took at a look at the garbage pile and ended up taking a bunch of the bags to the thrift store before the garbage truck came around because she couldn't see wasting all those of clothes and toys.

Then I realized that this way of life spread past our base. I read this article in Military Spouse Magazine out loud to David to prove that trashpicking is a popular military pastime, and Jenny The Military Spouse also pointed out that there can be a level of shamelessness surrounding the PCS.)

(If you can't see it, you can read it here, and the story continues over the next few strips.)

My biggest score for the summer was our charcoal BBQ grill, which I saw next to a dumpster at the base recycling center. I did ask the attendant if would be okay if I took it, and he said that he didn't think the other guy working wanted it, and to go right ahead. It took some work to fit it in my car (I had to take the carseats out and put them in the truck so I could lay the grill across the backseat) but I got it home and said, "Happy Father's Day!" to David, and we enjoyed our free grill the rest of the summer.

Obviously, military moves can be stressful. We turned over about half our street since I've been here, and even if they have several months of notice before they leave, there's still scrambling and stress, and all too often, families just stick stuff on the curb and hope someone comes to take it away so they don't have to worry about trying to sell it or hauling it off somewhere. One of our neighbors is moving to Guam this month, and I'm finding myself craning my neck out my door to check out the new piles he puts on the curb. This morning as Amy got on the bus, I helped myself to a coffee table for Ben's room so he'd have a place to play with his cars and blocks. When he walked into this room and saw his "new" table, gave a satisfied smile, tapped it and said "Able" several times, which is high approval for a kid who just turned two.

And we do start them young. Yesterday afternoon the neighbor going to Guam put out boxes of stuffed animals and toys, which were swarmed by kids getting off the school bus. Each walked away happily with a new toy. If there's one thing that's fun about living on base, it's trash day.

A Mother's Wildest Fantasies...

2010-10-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, David and I got a chance to sit down and watch a movie. With all the craziness lately, this is a very rare opportunity, and we finally got to see "Date Night," staring Steve Carrel and Tina Fey. Since we are also a boring married couple, we found this movie very entertaining.

In one scene, Tina Fey's character is describing to her husband about how she wishes she could just get a motel room, eat lunch with "nobody touching her," and wistfully said she'd drink "a Diet Sprite..."

I share a similar wild dream. I want to hole up in a place that's clean (my house, motel, I don't care), have the whole place to myself, watch TV with a remote (our disappeared months ago and for all we know one of the kids threw it to the neighbor's dog) and drink tea at my seat without any risk of someone spilling it or Ben walking up and demanding, "Joos." (He calls tea "juice," and it's not like I sweeten it. Go figure.) Maybe I'd work on some knitting, or just doze off and wake up...whenever I wanted... Or...just do... absolutely nothing.

Tonight, as I tried to get Amy to clear the table and shuffled around the kids to get from one end of the house to the other, I found myself fantasizing about eating out of a pint of Ben & Jerry's without little mouths opening up around me demanding a spoonful of Mom's ice cream and watching Antiques Roadshow being able to hear what's going on.

But for the moment, I hear banging around in the girls' room and it's time to get pajamas on. At least tonight I might be able to take a shower and read a few chapters of a book after the kids go to bed. At least we never have a dull moment!

Adventures in Hippie Medicines

2010-09-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

Last week, I came down with a nasty cold, got better, and then suddenly lost my voice. This was very inconvenient timing, because it fell on the weekend we were supposed to go to Marriage Coaching Training down in Nebraska. Some friends invited us six months ago, and short of being locked down in quarantine with the plague, I was going.

I was also feeling generally "off" and icky, and so after consulting two of my favorite hippies, my sister-in-law Andrea and my dear friend Carmen, decided to try a regiment of raw cranberry juice and raw apple cider vinegar. However, the commissary doesn't stock these, but when David had to run downtown to the bank after work, I said, "Hey, the hippie store is right down the block. Can you pick some stuff up for me?"

Right before we left for Nebraska (a two hour drive) David came in with the bag from Rapid City's only health food store, shaking his head. He said the store was full of women, two tattooed men who looked like they may be into "herbal remedies" (if you gather my meaning...) and David, still in his uniform, asking if he could get raw cranberry juice. He felt like he was in a game of "One of these things is not like the others..."

"Raw or Unpasteurized?" the lady behind the counter asked.

David hesitantly replied that he was pretty sure I said "raw" and ended up getting a lengthy explanation of the difference between raw and unpasteurized, which turned out to be kind of pointless because the store didn't even have raw cranberry juice and David ended up getting unpasteurized anyway.

"All that was $16," he said. Sure enough, I checked the price tags to find that the raw apple cider vinegar was $6 (not too bad) and the pure cranberry juice was $10 (what the heck!). Andrea said I could probably put a tablespoon of the vinegar in the cranberry juice and chug it down.

Andrea, my friend, no, you can't. It tasted so potent it had to be healthy. I was able to gulp down about half the glass (the price tag on the cranberry juice was a big motivation) before I gave up.

But I packed the bottles and took them to Nebraska with us. I didn't know if I was going to be able to finish the cranberry juice, but my mom used to make an apple cider vinegar and honey remedy for sore throats, and it really helped. I planned to at least take that a few times while I was staying with our friends.

Of course, the $10 cranberry juice came a topic of conversation in our hosts kitchen, and naturally we had to all try it to see how potent it really was just for laughs. I was even able to practice one of the new skills we learned in our training...the "I statement."

It's just stating things in a way that gets it all out there without making your spouse feel defensive (hopefully!) by wording it as "I feel...when...because..." For this mine was, "David, I feel confused when you paid $10 for that juice because you know I wouldn't normally spend that much on a bottle of juice, and I would have expected you to call me and price check it."

He chivalrously replied that if his wife wanted it, she got it, and he didn't look at the price tag anyway so he didn't notice it seemed expensive until she rung it up. We didn't finish the juice, but got some entertainment value out of it by passing it around to the kids just to watch their reactions when they tried it. (The girls were grossed out, but I think Ben would have finished the glass.)

However, my apple cider vinegar and honey remedy didn't fail me and I was feeling much better by Sunday (1 Tablespoon vinegar, 1 tablespoon honey mixed into a mug of hot water, if you're interested) and I tried to get our host, Charlie, to try it since he had a cold, especially since he's a pastor and had to give a sermon Sunday morning. After sampling the cranberry juice he was wary of anything else from the hippie store, but before church I made him some and told him just to try it, and if he didn't finish my feelings would not be hurt at all. I guess I must be used to this stuff because I can sip it like tea, but Charlie took two drinks, abandoned his mug, and hit the medicine bottles in their pantry.

Oh well, I guess not everyone has an inner hippie.

Stacking Coupons - Who's idea is it, anyway?

2010-09-27T09:54:00.000-07:00

As I start getting all gung-ho over coupons, my husband is getting back in school to work on his Economics and Finance degree, and one of his classes this semester is Marketing. The other day we had a conversation over "stacking" manufacturer coupons with store sales or coupons, and if the manufacturers and stores work around each other when they plan sales and coupons. Is it some marketing guy at Target saying "Oh poop," when he opens the P&G ad on Sunday morning and realizes that the razors he put on sale are suddenly extremely cheap if someone brings in that coupon? Or is someone at P&G worried about getting reamed at work the next morning when they see their products with coupons marked down in the Walgreens ad?

I got my answer this morning when I flipped open my Walgreens ad.

This ad is telling you to bring in the coupons from the P&G ad! I can tell you that there's a coupon for $2 off the Venus razor, which makes it $3.99...60% off. So apparently the manufacturers and stores have some sort of communication over coupons and sales...and they have to be anticipating at least a few Krazies coming with stacks of coupons and milking the system.

So if you had any qualms over the ethics of coupon stacking, don't. Someone somewhere must be making money off these deals somehow...otherwise they wouldn't do it. You're not the one making the rules, and hey, there's no reason play to win at the coupon game.

(Oh, and yesterday in the car, David shushed the kids and I when an ad for Lowe's came on the radio. He listened through it and then said, "Sorry, but we can use our 10% military discount on top of sales at Lowe's and I wanted to hear it was anything we needed." See, the stacking mentality is contagious!)

EDIT: After further review of the Sunday ads, I noticed other stores had similar promotions, including Toys R Us and K-Mart. Walgreens even is giving $4 off in "Register Rewards" (coupons to use for anything at Walgreens) off Sinex, noting right next to the picture there's a $4 off coupon in the Sunday paper. I've got that coupon, and you can bet I'm going to give Sinex a whirl!

EDIT #2: I also think it's important to note that not ALL stores allow stacking coupons, including the Commissary. Safeway, Target and Walgreens do, to name a few. However, you should be able to walk into the majority of stores (mainly grocery stores, including the commissary) and use a coupon on a sale item (exceptions being crafts stores and some department stores, but it will clearly say "off one regularly priced item" on the coupon.) Just read the fine print and try to track down the store's coupon policy before you get too wild with your plans!

The Coupon Binder - 2 week review.

2010-09-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

A little over two weeks I started carrying a binder full of coupons on my shopping expeditions. I've had a little too much fun with it, and have determined that this definitely worth keeping up. I've saved my receipts in a "Brag Bag" in the back of my binder, and determined that in the past few weeks I spent $246.12 with $170.81 in savings on my receipts (counting two $10 Target gift cards), which means I saved almost 69% on all the stuff I bought with coupons in the past two weeks. And that doesn't include a lost receipt noting a trip to Toys R Us where, between bringing coupons and watching sales, I bought a toy basketball hoop for Ben and a Sorry game for around $25, that would have been $45 or so if I paid full price.

Of course, it's hard to quantify how much actual "savings" I had. The numbers on the receipts just show what you saved if you waltzed into that store and paid full price; even before coupons I always stocked up at sales. I was able to go to Safeway and use coupons to get a better deal on some things that are generally cheaper at the commissary, so if I wanted to get really technical, I'd have to compare my Safeway savings to commissary prices, and frankly, I have better things to do. However, I can say that before I carried my binder, I was only saving $5-$10 each commissary trip with coupons I was grabbing here and there (and $10 was a GOOD day!) but as soon as I brought my binder, my savings jumped to $20-$30 a trip. I also wasn't taking advantage of the stacking coupons with loss-leaders at Safeway and Target, and you can really get ahead with those.

And I'm just skimming the surface of the coupon world and am still a baby compared to the Krazy Coupon Ladies, but I feel like it's definitely worth the time, which isn't very much at all. It actually gets kind of fun to look for the good deals and get everything organized...and it's a great feeling to walk into the house with two big bags of groceries and say, "$22, baby!" to my husband.

Now it is kind of awkward to fumble the giant, slippery binder around the grocery store, so I decided to get some use out of my sewing space and work on this problem.

(It has been my married life's dream to have my own sewing area, so I set one up in our extra bedroom when we moved into this house...six months ago, and I never used it until yesterday! This project alone was worth breaking in the space.)

I grabbed some material I picked up on clearance awhile back with some grand purpose that never came around, and took a couple nap times to make a cover for my binder.

The handy thing about this is I added a hook & loop closure so it stays shut, and it's not as slippery. Now I know some of you are probably thinking "Oh wow, Rachel has gone completely nuts over this coupon thing..." but I know at least a couple of my fellow Krazy Coupon Ladies are totally coveting something this right now. Well, ladies, maybe if you're nice, I'll post the pattern. ;) (Not like it's rocket science to make if you have any sewing experience. It's just a really big book cover.)

Soon I'll post exactly how I put my binder together and my customizations compared to the KLC technique. This thing is so handy I'm already planning on taking it on our vacations. (If you're shaking your head, hey, I may look nuts, but I'm okay with that if it means getting more out of our money for my family!)

The Defense Authorization Act in full glory!

2010-09-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

Lately you may have seen headlines about the Senate voting on the Defense Authorization Act. There's quite a bit going on with this bill, and at lot of it will effect military culture and families.

So what is the "Defense Authorization Act" anyway? NPR says, "Every year, Congress approves a bill that spells out the national defense policy." Okay. So this year, what exactly ended up in it? Fox news said, "The routine bill authorizing $726 billion in defense spending had turned into a political football in recent days as lawmakers feuded over add-ons that dealt with cultural hot buttons ranging from immigration to abortion to gays in the military. " It didn't get enough votes to pass, but it's coming back up after the elections this fall. Good ole' Jim Leher at the PBS Newshour discussed how it was really just a mess of politics with an election coming up.

Most of the big headlines yesterday, like at CNN and the BBC, talked about how it all affected Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Washington Times addressed that there was, in fact, an amendment allowing for abortions in overseas military hospitals.

The Bill also included the Dream Act, which, as Fox News says, "The DREAM Act allows young people to become legal U.S. residents after spending two years in college or the military. It applies to those who were under 16 when they arrived in the U.S., have been in the country at least five years and have a diploma from a U.S. high school or the equivalent."

Now I know that's a lot of links, but that's how much I had to dig to figure out what actually went down in the Senate yesterday. So besides trying to pass the military's budget for the year, the Senate tacked on amendments to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell," to allow some illegal immigrants citizenship if they join the military or go to college, and to flip the ban on abortions in overseas military clinics...and that's just what made the headlines.

Is it just me, or is that an awful lot to cram into one vote?

I guess it's typical of Congress to tack on random amendments to bills for any number of reasons, I think, in my humble opinion, that is a stupid way of doing things. First of all, it makes it pretty hard for the Senators to speak for the people they're supposed to be representing. How many people feel exactly the same way about military spending, immigration, abortion, and gay rights? This is the kind of stuff that starts arguments at family reunions. Someone could see sense in one of those amendments, and be adamantly against another.

Let's say, Darlene, the gal in charge of the budget for our Mothers of Preschoolers group, and Shari, our Coordinator, sat the rest of the "Steering Committee" down and said, "Alright, we set up our budget for this year. But before we can vote on it, there's a few other things we have to vote along with it. First, if our MOPS material should be in English and Spanish. Second, if we should let Dads into our group. And finally at each meeting, if Darlene gets to sit in the back and throw sticks at people. It's all or nothing, ladies."

Does that make any sense at all? Obviously, those things are entirely unrelated to each other. It might be a great idea to have MOPS materials in other languages, but letting Dads in the group would change the entire dynamic of our group and would take some serious discussion, and does Darlene really need to throw sticks during the meetings?

Of course, we don't have to worry about having a discussion like that at our MOPS group because we have honest people with some common sense in charge of the group...and besides, what would any normal group do if the leaders presented something like that at a meeting? My guess is that if Darlene and Shari went absolutely crazy (which they would have to do) and tried to pull something like the rest of us would call mutiny and there would be some changes in group leadership.

So why on earth is the Senate tacking huge moral and policy issues on to a budget bill? Why are they being so whinny when people are calling them on their crap?

When I did some reading, I found that they were trying to get more stuff in the bill and transcripts of the actual conversations in the senate two days before the vote. It was a bit eye-opening. Check it out here . The defense discussion starts on page S7191. If you're really a glutton for punishment, you can peruse the bill yourself right here.

And what can we do about it? There's a vote coming up, and you can go to Congress' webpage, do a little digging, see how your Senator voted for this act and learn more about what went down. Because it's the time of year when Senators are up for re-election, you can decide if you even want your Senator to have a chance to vote when the bill comes back up after the elections.

I know we all have different opinions on these subject, but chucking everything in a budget bill and then playing politics with the entire military culture isn't the way to handle these issues. There's a quite a few of us running around the military, and I know we can get pretty loud. Let's speak up about this.

Another round of home haircuts...

2010-09-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing I refuse to pay for, it's a professional to cut my kids' hair. (with the exception of one special treat for Amy last fall) They just wiggle and cry and I can't imagine paying someone $15 to "do the best they can" on my kids.

But if there's one thing I probably should pay for, it's a professional to cut my kids' hair. It just never goes well, and I should give credit to paying someone with skill and experience not to mess it up. Look what I did to poor Kate:

Last week she got into my knitting bag, swiped my scissors, and took a few hacks off her bangs. Once the chunks settled, it framed her face and looked really cute...so I decided to give her official bangs, but I forgot one important rule that any professional would have known. Don't cut bangs wet, especially when there are cowlicks involved. The morning after I tried to cut her bangs, Kate came into our bedrooms, looked in the mirror and saw a chunk of hair sticking straight up, shrieked in horror, and ran out of the room crying. Guess she's at the age where she recognizes a bad haircut.

Later David looks at her and says, "Your hair looks awesome, Kate."

She passionately replied, "No it doesn't! I look terrible!"

So, having her mother's cowlicks, bangs will always be a struggle for Kate, and I guess now we're back to growing them out.

But for my boy, I have the luxury that if I mess up, I can just keep cutting. This time I was doing okay, but then I tried to use the ear attachment on the trimmer, ended up giving him Vanilla Ice stripes, and as awesome as it would have been to leave them, he ended up with, as we call in the Air Force, a "high and tight." It only took a wrestling match that ended with three adults holding him down to get it done...

But we got it done, and he no longer is walking around with a chronic case of bedhead. Here he is being consoled by his daddy after all the trauma...

Even though I don't exactly have a portfolio after my haircutting experience, David said he's going to let me practice home haircuts on him. If you're impressed with my husband's bravery, don't be. Right now he's just shaving his head with trimmers to keep it in military regulations, and I'm just going to try to the point where I can do a decent high & tight. He figures that if I mess up, he'd just shave it anyway.

Swagbucks vs. Shop At Home ...the faceoff!

2010-09-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been trying to get the most "bang for my buck" out of my online shopping, and have been playing around with Swagbucks and Shop At Home trying to figure out which will have the biggest payout.

Both sites offer incentives for online shopping. Swagbucks uses a point system based on online shopping, taking surveys and polls, and searching the internet, while Shop At Home pays out in cash rebates from your online shopping and you receive a check once you hit $20. I actually got a check over the summer, so I can vouch the site is legit.

Swagbucks is like a Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups...you slowly accumulate their points, or "Swagbucks" and can cash it in for prizes. And just like Chuck E. Cheese, you can get the little prizes whenever, or save up for the good stuff...like the $5 Amazon.com gift card you can get for 450 Swagbucks, which, if you regularly use the search program, might take a month or two. You can get better deals on some gift cards, but they're niche companies and it only does you any good if you want to spend a couple hundred swagbucks to get a $5 to EcoChic.com or Fragrance.Net.

Shop At Home, however, works in cash. You go to their site and see if the store you want to shop at is there (and many are) and then you go to the store through their site (a "Trackback") and a few days after you do your shopping, a rebate will post to your account. It's kind of like throwing your change in a bucket. I use this all the time to get an even better deal when I'm bargain shopping online. The rebates average between 3% and 9%, but I've seen them higher, and stores often post sales with higher rebates. They also post coupons and special offers that can save you even more money. Besides the online shopping, you can also browse coupons and free samples, which is always fun.

So at the end of the day, or month, or year, which one is the better deal for saving money your online shopping? I've got to go with Shop At Home.

The fact is Shop At Home just has a higher payout. For example, I was considering buying my kids an indoor trampoline online to help us survive the South Dakota winter, and I was looking at one at Target for $80. Swagbucks offered "Two points for every dollar spent," which came to 160 Swagbucks, which wouldn't even get you a $5 Amazon card. Shop At Home, however, offered 5% cash back, which meant I'd get a $4 rebate. I'd have to spent $225 online to get a $5 amazon card with swagbucks, but if I averaged 5% cash back at Shop At Home, I'd get $5 after I spent $100...and it would be cash.

I'm also thinking about getting Netflicks, and swagbucks offers 531 Swagbucks for signing up through them, which is enough to score that $5 gift card, but Shop At Home offers $14 cash back, so it's not too hard to figure out which is the better deal there.

Swagbucks is fun for collecting the free points through their search engine and polls, even though their search engine kind of hurts to use after getting used to Google, and sometimes I still fall back on Google if I can't find what I need with Swagbucks. I also signed up a month ago to take their "Trusted Surveys" but haven't had qualified or earned any points for a single survey yet.

One thing that miffed me a bit about Swagbucks was when I was going through their "No Obligation Special Offers" and decided to sign up for one of the "earn money for surveys" programs just for kicks. After I jumped through a bunch of questions to get to the "tutorial survey," the company actually had the audacity to tell me that I'd have to enter my credit card number during the survey because I was supposed to walk through signing up for this website and give feedback on how it worked, but I could "cancel my free credit report account within 14 days." Noooooooo thank you. You can't pay me between "$5 and $75 a survey" to throw around my credit card number and I canceled that deal.

So in the Swagbucks vs. Shop At Home...Swagbucks for killing time and collecting points with their search and polls, but Shop At Home wins for online shopping and collecting cash. I've never really been a fan of Chuck E. Cheese.

(EDIT #2 - I'm thinking about switching my cell phone to a tracfone and found out I could get 18% cash back from Shop At Home (which means I'd save money every time I bought minutes online) plus use a $3 off coupon off my first phone...not too shabby!)

Lessons we impart to our children...

2010-09-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

Amy hasn't even been in kindergarten a month, and I'm already on a first name basis with the school nurse after getting calls two days in a row. On Monday she called just to let me know that Amy fell down a Jacob's ladder on the playground and scrapped up her back a little. No major damage, but she wanted to give me a head's up. The next day I got another call...because Amy had a rock stuck in her ear.

The nurse said she couldn't get it out without the risk of shoving it in deeper, and said we needed to come and pick her up. So I had to call David, who already called me said he was so busy he was going to work through his lunch, to tell him that he had to bring me the car so one of us could take Amy to the base clinic so a professional could remove the rock.

By the end of the day, all was well and the doctor put the rock in a bag for Amy to bring home. When we asked her why she did it, she just shrugged a little and didn't really have an answer. David said the doctor every kid has to do it eventually. After I thought about it, I remembered I shoved a bead up my nose when I was about her age. And I guess we never sat down and told Amy "it's not a good idea to stick small objects in your ears or nose..."

But this is what parenting really is about...preparing our children to get out in the world. But as parents, we get the fun of teaching them the important little lessons they need to know sooner or later. Here's some of the ones we've been working on lately in our house...

"You need to put your underwear and pants back on after you use the bathroom."

"The computer printer isn't a dollhouse."

"Don't drink your bathwater."

"Bananas need to be eaten in moderation."

"Bring your lunchbox home every day, especially if I put milk in your thermos."

"You can't just walk out of the house and play in the neighbor's garage."

"The toilet brush and plunger are not toys."

"You can sleep in the shirt you wore all day, but you really should change it in the morning."

"Keep your food on your plate."

"DON'T DRINK YOUR BATHWATER!"

What are some of the lessons and life skills you've had to teach your children?

Recycling Butter Wrappers - Really!

2010-09-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

Today's tip may seem like something our Grandmas would have done during the Great Depression (well, those that weren't churning their own butter, and those who could still actually get butter) (Did they even have butter wrappers in the 20s, anyway?) but hey, they were pretty good at saving money and not wasting anything back then, right?

The other reason I like this tip is because it really is a quick, easy way to grease a pan. It's also "green" because you're using something you would throw away anyway. So here goes...

If you examine your butter wrapper after you unwrap the stick, you'll notice that there's still butter on the paper. If you left the butter to soften at room temperature in the wrapper, there's even more.

So you could just chuck the paper, or you could fold it neatly and put it back in the fridge. Then, next time you need to grease a pan, pull it out, unfold it...and rub the paper on the pan.

One wrapper is enough to sufficiently grease up to a 13x9 pan. If you unwrap the butter while it's soft, you could probably get two pans out of it. And then, finally, you throw the wrapper away.

I still use my non-stick spray can for muffin tins because it's tricky to evenly wipe butter on all the tins (not impossible, and if you want to try it more power to you!) and if I'm making a cake where I'll be flouring the pan. But the butter wrapper takes care of all my other pan-greasing needs, and doesn't cost a penny...and is a tip that would make your Grandma proud.

The Method to the Maddess

2010-09-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

I know I said I wasn't going to make this a "Coupon Blog" but I've had a lot of interest in these adventures lately, and wanted to share how a specific money-saving strategy can work after finding a darn good deal on diapers this week.

Target advertised a special for large cases of Luvs for $16.99 (normally 17.99) and then you get a $10.00 off gift card if you buy two. But I didn't know this before I went into the store; I had a bunch of Huggies and Pampers coupons, and was trying to figure out if that would make them cheaper than my normal brand, the Up & Ups (Target generics, and they're the best generic diaper I've found in my almost 6 years of changing diapers). The name brands were still more expensive than the Up & Ups, even with the coupons, so I decided not to buy diapers (this was a purely educational/possible stockpile opportunity trip) and wandered around the corner to find the Luvs sale posted.

This is the point where I pull out my cell phone, find the calculator, and start doing some math. (I just look like I'm texting, right?) I had a $1 off coupon for Luvs in my binder (see, that's why I carry that thing around!) so I could get two cases for 32.98, which isn't a bad deal, but the Up & Ups are still cheaper...but figure in the gift card, and that's 22.98, which comes to 11.49 a case, which is a pretty good price for 96 diapers. They're not only cheaper than the generic, but there's more diapers in the cases. So I took picked up two cases of size four diapers, and felt rather pleased with myself.

Then at the register, I not only got my gift card, but a $1 off Luvs Target coupon from the register (a "Catalina"). I slipped that in my binder, and got the diapers home to find that each box had a coupon book, which gave me two more $1 off Luvs coupons. Since Target lets you "stack" store and manufacturer coupons, I skipped on back to Target, used all my coupons, got another gift card, and scored two more cases of diapers (bigger sizes for my other kids overnight diapers) for $10.49 a case (and another $1 Luvs Catalina and coupon book which has all sorts of goodies in it) ...and now I won't have to buy diapers for awhile!

I mainly use cloth diapers, except when we're going out or overnight if he's got a bit of rash. So this is enough diapers to last me a long time. The coupon books that came with the diapers are full of high value coupons good until 2012, so those are in my binder now and could possibly mean more savings in the future. (If you decided to try this sale, good until Sat. Sep. 11, be sure to get the boxes labeled with the coupon books...not all of them are!)

Are you a Coupon Queen who has found even better deals on diapers? Please brag, even if it's not a current sale!

Sears Gift Card Winner Try #2!

2010-09-09T06:29:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately, I never heard from one of our winners for the Sears Gift Card last week. But I'm happy to announce our new winner...

Ashley! (#5)

Congrats!

How to make a boneless, skinless, chicken breast

2010-09-08T07:25:00.000-07:00

There's rarely a time I can put a guarantee on a money-saving tip. There's always too many variables in life to say, doing this WILL save you money. But if you're currently buying boneless, skinless, chicken breast, I can promise the tip below will lower your grocery bill.

I used to buy frozen chicken breasts by the bag, but once we had to go to penny-pitching mode, I quit buying those in favor of cheaper meat. It didn't take me long to figure out that I could save a few bucks on chicken if I just bought it with the bones, and stripped it the dainty boneless, skinless breast myself.

At first this was a laborious task, but I didn't have anyone to show me out to do it; I just started hacking at it with a knife until I had the chicken off the bone. But over the years I've figured out a quick and easy way to this, which I will share with you...you can take the skin and bone of a chicken with two cuts. Really.

I use a steak knife; it's flexible without being too flimsy. I'm sure a gourmet chef would have a different opinion, but we've made it pretty clear that I'm not Julia Child. Put the breast on a cutting board meaty side up, and if you're right-handed put the side with the most bone to the right, and if you're a lefty flip it. Start to peel back the skin, and then put the knife under it to loosen where it's attached to the meat. Cut one.

Now that your skin is out of the way, notice the fatty line along the edge of the breast over the bone. Stick your knife in there, and slice as deep as you can into the meat. As you do this more often, you'll get a feel for exactly where to put the knife so you cut the most meat off in once piece. Cut all the way to the end along the fatty line, and Ta-da...

Exactly what you see in the trays that cost $4 a pound! Once you get your technique down, it only takes minutes to de-bone your chicken. And if you're really ambitious, you can use the leftover bones to make broth. When I'm on top of things (haven't really been lately...) I put the bones in a freezer bag and collect them, along with carrot tops, onion skins, and celery leaves, until I have enough frozen to make broth, and then I just toss the contents of the bag in a pot and simmer it. So not only do you save a few dollars a pound on your chicken, you could get FREE chicken broth.

If you watch "loss leader" sales, you should be able to find bone-in chicken breast for 99 cents a pound. But even if you buy it at regular prices, you're still pressed to find boneless cheaper, unless you're at a point where the bone-in breasts happen to be a little high and the boneless are on an amazing sale. When I had a big freezer, I'd watch for the 99 cents a pound price and buy 30 pounds, so I never paid more than a dollar a pound for chicken. Sometimes if I had some time after I got home from the store, I'd de-bone a few packages and freeze them boneless and skinless, but since I got better at de-boning, I don't really find this to be a major time-saver anymore; the main advantage to doing that is that it defrosts faster without the bones.

So if you're willing to get your hands slimy and master this easy trick, you will start saving money on chicken. I promise.

I've gone Krazy.

2010-09-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. I have been known to go into things under kicking, screaming protest, only to finally give it a chance and realize that it's not so bad. So yes, folks, after reading "Pick Another Check-Out Lane, Honey" I am a binder-carrying Krazy Coupon Lady.

I see learning to live frugally like filling a toolbox. You learn something here, another thing there, master some things, drop others, and soon you have a skillset that helps you save money, get ahead in life, and just feel good about yourself. We all have different gifts and skills that fill our toolboxes. Maybe you're great at cooking from scratch, or plant a tomato plant and actually get tomatoes off it at some point over the summer. Some of us can hem our own pants or sew patches on our husband's uniforms, and some of us can change the oil in our car...while the rest of us couldn't thread a sewing machine or shouldn't touch anything under the hood.

But in that toolbox, coupons are a tool anyone can use. It's like the hammer. If you live in a big city you probably could get more out of coupons than someone in a rural area with fewer shopping options, but that doesn't mean they can't be useful to you...if you play your cards right...

And that's what the Krazy Coupon Ladies teach you to do in their book. They spell out a strategy for using coupons that allows you to work the system and truly save money by (wait for it...) stocking up when items you use hit rock-bottom prices. It's the definitive work on coupons. There's nothing you don't know after reading it!

One of the recommendations in the book is to organize coupons in a binder, according to category, and cart the binder around with you whenever you go shopping. I went ahead and gave this a try. Here's the mess I made while organize the coupons I've been stashing all summer...

But after a few hours of clipping and sorting... I have this...

And it's already demonstrated that it's worth it's weight in gold. Here's an example. KCL encourages you to save every coupon you MIGHT use (and some you won't normally expect to use, if they look good enough) until it expires. Then, when a good sale or stacking opportunity arises, sweep it out of your binder and take advantage of the rock-bottom price. Anyway, I was at the commissary scanning the markdown shelves, and came across a couple bottoms of NyQuil, a year from the expiration date, that ended up marked down for one reason or another. I happened to have a couple coupons for NyQuil in my binder, and just like that, I have a stash to get us through flu season at a fraction of the normal price!

You can get a view of some of the things in the book by checking out KCL's "10 Days to becoming a Krazy Coupon Lady" on their webpage. (the binder is day 5. :)

And a note...I've decided that although I'm having all this fun with coupons, I'm not going to make this yet another coupon-central blog, and keep my focus on family life and creative frugal living. However, when I find a deal worth shouting from the rooftops, I'm sending it over to Sarah at My Military Mommy to add to the great deals she's already sharing. So if you LOVE a good deal, (in the military or not!) follow My Military Mommy!

And the winners...

2010-09-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

of the Sears Gift Card Give-Away are...

Mami2jcn (#2) and Katie (#8)!

Katie - I need you to email me your address by Wednesday 9/8! rachel.ollivant at gmail.com.

Thank you for entering, and I hope that this won't be our last give away at The High Chair!

Busy weekend!

2010-09-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I will be spending time with my family, including my lovely sister-in-law, who flew halfway across the country to spend a few days here. So, since I've had some new readers pop up, (thanks!) I'll link to some favorite posts and topics of interest (at least to me. :) Enjoy reading, and enjoy your Labor Day weekend!

My rants on cloth diapering... (for those who happen to find stuff like that interesting...if you don't, then feel free to skip it!)

The Romantic Side of Poop (This is actually one of my all-time favorites I wrote this time last year, but I forgot about it until tonight!)

Preparing our Children to Fight the Zombies ;)

(And don't forget that the deadline for my Sears Gift Card Giveway is tomorrow night! I'll announce the winners Saturday, so be sure to enter and then check back to see if you're the winner!)

For all those who want to learn to knit...(ALMOST) Free Kit!

2010-09-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

...and I'm not there to teach you.... I was farting around online and came across this kit:

Beginner's Scarf Set with needles, yarn, yarn needle, and directions for $9.99 (Total with shipping and tax is $17.28)

$17.28 is a lot for a couple skeins of yarn and a set of needles, but there's a way you can lower the price, almost to free...

- Use code DEAL10 for 10% off. Now you're down to $16.28

- If you don't already have a ShopAtHome account, you can start one*, search "Orange Onion" through them and click to the site through their links, find the knitting set, and then you'll save $5 for starting your account, and then another 50 cents. Now you're down to $10.73**, which isn't too shabby!

- I figured out a way to get this for almost FREE!

If you have a PayPal Account, choose that option when you check out. When I checked out my order (A backpack for Ben (their Daily Deal) and a Tinkerbell Messenger bag (on Clearance) to put in the present stockpile for the girls) a box came up saying that I could choose a "Bill Me Later" option and get $10 off my order! I went ahead and chose that option, but of course, long story, I messed up my order and didn't the $10, but if you pay a little more attention than I did, you should be able to get a good deal!

(This would apply to any $10 item at the Orange Onion, so if you're not a knitter, browse around and see what else looks appealing!)

Of course, it's still cheaper to swipe a skein of yarn and needles from Grandma and let her teach you, but if you don't have a knitting Grandma handy and want to learn, this could get you moving!

*If you do start a ShopAtHome account, you can enter my email and I'll get $5, too...rachel.ollivant at gmail.com. Thanks much! ;)

** The catch to ShopAtHome is you have to get $20 in rebates before they'll send you a check, but there's lots of popular shopping webpages that can do rebates, and when I shop online I almost always get a rebate for where I'm shopping. This includes all the places I print photos, such as snapfish and seehere. I earned enough for a rebate check after a summer of shopping online. They also post coupon codes and promotions to help you save even more as you're shopping.

Oh, and the Orange Onion also has some other intriguing deals...just sort the price from "Low to High" instead of the default "High to Low" and you might find something else to increase the ShopAtHome rebate and get more out of your shipping cost, which is a flat rate of $6.99!

My Favorite Stockpiles

2010-09-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

If I had to pick one of my fundamental frugal practices, it's the stockpile. I first read about it in my good old Tightwad Gazette back when Amy was a baby (5ish years ago). At first I didn't believe that buying lots of stuff when it came on sale would really save that much money, but now that I've had some time to see how it works, it's one of the top money savers for our family. Now when we think "stockpile" I think we tend to picture crazy old men guarding barrels of beans with a shotgun, but there's more to storing food and household items than preparing for the Apocalypse. You can stockpile everything from pasta to cheese to diaper rash cream to school supplies to kid's clothes. It's just a matter of buying super-cheap and keeping things organized so it's handy when you need it. Then, sooner or later, you won't have to buy things full price because you'll already have what you need, and your monthly spending will start to shrink.

So rather than continue to rant on the glories of stockpiling, I'm going to show you some of my favorite food-related stockpiles in my house. This doesn't even touch on my bins of organized clothes for my kids to grow into, Christmas presents, yarn (well, my husband will call that insanity, not a stockpile), and other useful things. I took pictures of stuff on shelves to show how a modest stash (compared to some hardcore stockpilers) fits into a normal-to-small kitchen.

Lately the commissary had great prices on Lipton tea, and even offered coupons in the magazines by the doors. The price without the coupon was pretty good, and then once I discovered the coupon I decided a proper stock-up was in order. For a couple months, I bought a box of tea at each shopping trip until my designated shelf was full; I think it goes back 7 boxes. (Usually the proper way to do stock-up would be to buy a ton as soon as you spot the low price, but since I didn't want to to take all the coupons they provide out of the magazines at once, I paced myself this time) Not only does this make practical use of that weird top/back/corner shelf that tends to turn into a black hole for souvenir coffee cups, but I can feed my caffeine habit without making a huge dent in our budget. These were all less than $2 a box, when regular price can be around $4! (Here's my rant on making iced tea)

My husband's drink of choice is Gatorade, and thankfully it didn't take me very long to figure out that I could buy it in a powder instead of bottles and save a bunch. One day at the commissary, I was looking at the mark-down shelves and picked up 3 containers that were marked down about 75 cents cheaper than the normal price, just because the plastic around the edges got a little wrinkled up.

I found a great price on chocolate chips at the commissary, and then found two giant bags in the clearance section and grabbed those. I love to bake and use chocolate chips liberally, so this was a fun find!

When it comes to a money-saver, I think this is my winner. Kid's vitamins can be expensive, especially when I have three kids and myself eating two each (yes, I eat kiddie vitamins!) we can go through a bottle in a couple weeks. After noticing they were really cheap at the commissary and then finding a coupon, I started buying a bottle every time I went to the commissary. (And will continue to as long as the sale lasts!) I'd guess I bought half with the coupon, and half without. Since the weather is still nice and my kids are still getting plenty of sun and fresh fruits and veggies are in season, I figured they're getting their vitamins through that, so we're saving these for winter when we're all cooped up and the flu season starts. Some of these were less than $1.50 a box, compared to the usual $4-$5! (Click here for more info on that sale!)

And I'm still using stuff from our big case lot sale last spring...this is what a six month supply of brownie mix and kitchen garbage bags looks like, and it's just a corner of my stairway closet. I think we ended up with a lifetime supply of cups, but they've been extremely handy when we're throwing a party and realize that there's not enough glasses to go around!

I'd consider this "Stockpiling for the Beginner," because you can take stockpiling as far as you want...once you start recognizing low prices (coupons can't hurt; in fact, they can help your savings explode...but that's a post for another day!) and use your space effectively, you can easily end up with months, or even years worth of food and other useful stuff in your house, and save money in the process. I just wanted to show how you can start small and still lower your grocery budget. I won't need to buy tea, vitamins, Gatorade, chocolate chips, brownie mix, or garbage bags for awhile!

Still think I'm crazy? Give it a try. Sometimes it takes some practice to figure out what the rock-bottom price really is. I remember buying a ton of something thinking it was a great price, only to find an even better price two weeks later! But don't get discouraged...eventually you'll be able recognize low prices on your favorite items instinctively. If you stick to it, the pennies you save will turn into quarters, and the quarters into dollars, before you know it!

How Coupon-ers Can Support Military Families

2010-08-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

The Krazy Coupon Lady blog posted a great write-up on sending expired coupons to military families overseas, who can still use them at the commissaries or BX/PX. With KCL, you mail yours to a volunteer who collects them and sends them off. This month they're sending them to Japan. She has an address and instructions here!

I've seen some other sites with similar programs, and I'll post them once I track them down. I have friends who were stationed overseas who benefited from programs like these!

(And don't forget to enter my $25 Sears Gift Card Give-Away! And tell a friend!)

My world is rocked.

2010-08-30T19:40:00.000-07:00

After two years with three little kids at home all day every day, Amy started kindergarten last week...full day kindergarten.

This week I kept hearing about blearily-eyed moms sending their babies off to school, and I started to wonder if I was normal because I think I was just as excited as Amy was for her to go to school. She's wanted to get on the big yellow bus as soon as she figured out it took a bunch of kids to a place called "school," and with a fall birthday, she had to wait until she's pushing six before she finally got her turn to take on this adventure called "Kindergarten."

When I dropped her off at her class, she was wide-eyed and taking in the desks, the other kids, the letters on the wall, and her new teacher like a kid in a candy store. She barely noticed I left.

But this afternoon I think I put my finger on why I had no problem leaving her in kindergarten. It didn't feel like I was leaving my "baby" because Ben was in the stroller and I was dragging Kate behind me as she screamed, "We can't leave Amy!" So in our family, getting Amy to school in one piece felt like "Alright, one down, two to go..." But we'll see how I feel on Ben's first day of kindergarten...when I walk away from the class all by myself! (Okay, I'm already planning on spending that day sleeping through soap operas and eating bon-bons...two things I never do, but after getting all these kids through the pre-school years, I'm taking a day off!)

Anyway, get this. With Amy gone, I can get Kate to take a nap...at the same time as Ben... which gives me two to three hours of a quiet house every afternoon. It's a whole new world.

So what am I going to do with myself? Besides the fact that I can now take a NAP if I want... ~weeee!!! ~ and I probably should put some energy into organizing and deep cleaning our house that went to pieces over the summer (including scrubbing all Ben's artwork off the walls...now there will be a post on THAT soon!), you may have noticed I've got some new boxes around this blog. Since I'm writing here anyway, I decided to give this whole "Blogging for fun and profit" thing a whirl. It doesn't cost me anything to pop up some ads, and if people click them, then great. I will try to keep them tasteful and not sell out too dramatically. And maybe I'll make enough to for a Starbucks run! (I noticed I already got some commissions from the TOMS shoes ad, so thanks to whoever clicked there....and I'm pretty sure it wasn't my mom!)

And someone else in my family is going back to school, too. We finally have David working on his degree again this term! I tried to get him to put on his backpack and stand on the porch for his "first day of school" but he shot that idea down. But since one is an online class, I did sneak in and grab a picture of him trying to pull up his syllabus.

He still has some tests and training coming up for his AF stuff, so he's going to be a busy boy the next couple months. Naturally, children sense when you need to do something important, and here is Ben helping his Dad with his studying!

Project for this week...reorganize our extra bedroom so David can have an office. He needs a kid-free zone to do his homework!

Easy Iced Tea

2010-08-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is Rachel, and I am addicted to Iced Tea.

I suppose my mom was the one who first introduced it to me, and I casually drank for a few years until my second kid was born, and then I started drinking it more often for those extra caffeine fixes. When I became a mother of three, I found myself drinking a quart a day. Lately I've been trying to cut back to a glass or two a day and trying to drink more water, and you know what? I DON'T WANT TO QUIT! My addiction makes me happy, thank you.

I've had a couple friends ask how I make iced tea, and it's really easy and definitely economical. You can get a box of 100 Lipton tea bags for, on average, $2.99 on sale, but I've found it cheaper. For less than the price of 1 latte at Starbucks, you can get 100 or more glasses of tea!

When I make tea, I fill a 2 quart pot half full with COLD water. If it's not cold, it could end up cloudy. I use filtered water because we have crazily hard water here. Bring it to a nice full boil, turn off the burner or remove the pot from the heat, and add 6-9 teabags, depending on how strong you like your tea. I use 7 bags. Brew from 3-5 minutes, again depending on your preference.

Next, fill a 2 quart pitcher halfway full of COLD water, remove your tea bags, and pour the tea into the pot into the pitcher. Add more water if needed, and then put in the fridge until it's cold. That's all there is to it!

This is, obviously, a recipe for unsweetened tea. Being raised in the Pacific Northwest, I am accustomed to my tea tasting like tea as opposed to sugar, and am not a fan of the Southern "Sweet Tea." So, if you're looking for a recipe for sweetened tea, sorry, I can't help you there!

You don't have to use Lipton tea bags; any other flavor will work. Sometimes I'll throw in a couple bags of peach or mint tea in with Lipton for a little variety. Green tea also makes great iced tea. You could also add coffee syrups to get try to copy the flavored tea you can get at some fast food restaurants.

I've considered buying an iced tea maker (just looked at one at a rummage sale last weekend) but decided that my pot-and-pitcher method works fine, and doesn't take up extra space in my kitchen.

Of course, some of us like a little kick of lemon with our iced tea (or water!) My husband once suggested that we try to freeze chucks of lemon in iced cubes for our drinks, and it's been a hit ever since...

Just cut lemon into small chunks and put each piece in an ice cube tray, and then fill with water and freeze. After it's frozen, if you want to save space in your freezer and free up your trays, put the cubes in a plastic freezer bags. This is also a good money-saving trick because you can cut the lemon in small pieces and lemon flavors the water as it freezers, so it stretches the lemon further, and an entire lemon can fill one ice cube tray.

Even if you're not looking for a daily caffeine fix, iced tea is a refreshing drink for yourself and company...and if you are looking for a jump start in the morning, this is a cheap way to do it!

***

Don't forget there's still time to enter the giveaway for the $25 Sears gift card!

REALLY good deal that the commissary - Disney Vitamins!

2010-08-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

I have no intention of making this a coupon blog, but I did come across great deal at the commissary that's worth sharing...

Prices change in the commissary at the middle and end of each month, so I don't know how much time you have to grab this one...but last I checked, Disney Princess Gummy Vitamins were less than $3* a bottle...and coupons.com has a $1 off coupon!

I can't link directly to the coupon for the vitamins, but you can click on the banner above and browse coupons.com to until you find it. You might see some other great deals, too!

*As I understand it, the commissary doesn't want you posting exact prices online...so I can just share that it's a REALLY great deal and encourage you to go check it out!

For the record...

2010-08-28T08:20:00.000-07:00

A friend posted this video to facebook this morning, which explores rather, uh, creatively, if anyone saw the our country's financial downfall coming.

And I have to shake my head a little when I see these guys in suits claiming they were totally caught off guard when everything in our country related to money went to crap. So who did see it coming?

An early-20s kid answering phones at a bank did.

Back in 2004ish, after David and I got married, I noticed that it was sure easy to get a mortgage, even for newlyweds with a low income like us. I mentioned to David that maybe we should look at houses. It seemed like everyone else was.

My husband firmly replied, "NO. With these sub-prime mortgages, everyone's interest rates are going to go up in three years, and then they're all going to try to sell at the same time, which will flood the market so no one will be able to sell and home values will drop, and then they'll get stuck in the mortgage with the higher interest rates and everyone will be screwed."

So...if for all you folks in suits sitting in front of congress with your hands in the air saying, "Didn't see it coming!" ... this girl doesn't buy it. If a 23 year old with a 2 year philosophy degree called it, I really can't see how this was such a surprise to everyone else!

And I'm very glad we didn't buy a house!

Sears Gift Card Giveaway

2010-08-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce my very first give-away!

Sears is providing 2 $25 Sears Gift Cards to promote....

Sears is honoring America’s service people (Police, Military, Veterans, Firefighters, Teachers and Hospital Staff) once again on Saturday, August 28, 11 AM-2 PM in-store. The offer is an extra 10% off of apparel, shoes, lawn and garden, tools, home fashions, electronics, automotive and more!

“Local heroes” need to print out the Storewide Savings Pass and they also need ID to prove their “local hero” status. You can see lots of great deals in the flyer – tops for $14.99, jeans for $19.99, a comforter for $39.99, etc!

The sale is nationwide with the exception of these cities, which will hold it on September 4, 11 AM-2 PM in-store: Boston. MA; Seattle, WA; Miami, FL; Raleigh-Durham, NC; Dallas, TX and Cincinnati, OH. The offer will be the same: extra 10% off apparel, shoes, lawn and garden, tools, home fashions, electronics, automotive and more.

So how can you enter to win one of the $25 Gift Cards?

- Leave a comment telling us about your favorite local hero. If you have a link to their webpage or blog, feel free to share it. If you don't have a google profile with an email address where I can contact you, check back on Saturday, September 4, 2010 to see if you won and contact me by Wednesday, September 8, 2010. If I don't here from you by then, I'll choose a new winner. Please mention how you heard about this giveaway, too!

The RULES (yes, there always are some!)

- Enter before Friday, September 3, 2010 at 11:59 PM and I'll announce the winners Saturday, September 11, 2010.

- Sorry, Mom, but in the name of professionalism, no friends or family. However, I'm happy to send my peeps over to Sarah at My Military Mommy, who is also doing the giveaway!

- Winners will be selected at random.

-The Sears gift card has no expiration date, so the winners can use these any time. There are also 2 upcoming sales in September (9/12 Family & Friends and 9/25 Salute to Heroes), that will be a great opportunity to check out sales at Sears.

Check out Sears on facebook!

Read more about our family's military life and fun frugal living on
The High Chair!

Gift Ideas at VistaPrint

2010-08-27T07:03:00.000-07:00

I know I've been slow on the blogging lately, but I'm going to try to get back in the groove of things. Today I wanted to make a quick post about gift ideas at Vistaprint. A few weeks ago I posted about how I've started making personalized gifts when their "free" items come up, like t-shirts and personalized tote bags for my kids and photo gifts for family.

If you sign up for Vistaprint's email list or make an order, you're going to get lots of stuff from them in your inbox, but I assure you, there's some good deals! Even if you don't have a business or feel like you need a lot of their products floating around your house, there's plenty of ways Vistaprint products make great gifts...and if you watch the sales right, you can get it all for free and only pay shipping!

So here's some ideas:

Teacher Gifts: You can give your kid's teachers personalized notecards, sticky notes, pens, coffee mugs, or a number of other stationary and gift items.

Bridal Shower: Wouldn't it be fun to give a bride-to-be a stationary set or notecards with her new name, or Mr. & Mrs. coffee mugs?

Christmas: With a little creativity, you could make your photo Christmas cards and address labels, gift labels, photo gifts for family, or personalized stocking stuffers for your kiddos.

Look around their site and sign up for their email list to come up with your own ideas! Order as much as you can at a time because the shipping is cheaper per item with the more you buy. (My shopping sprees have come to about $20 in shipping for about $40-$50 worth of items.) They also offer upgrades of the free items that can be a good deal, like paying an extra couple bucks to put a photo on the item or to double your order.

Another cool thing about Vistaprint is that it saves your "portfolio" in your account, so you can watch for when an item you already designed pops up as free again and order some more. And even if you're not planning to buy anything, take a glance at the sales that come to your inbox to get an idea of what comes on sale and how often so you can watch for the best deal when you are ready to get something.

(Disclaimer: Now there is the consideration of, "Gee, Rachel, doesn't it kind of come to the point where you're just taking advantage of someone's business by only ordering their free items?" Three thoughts on this. First, I'm not the one deciding the sales or sending me an email full of free deals every couple days. When a company chooses to do a "loss-leader" sale (meaning that they'll take a loss on some items in hopes you'll by other marked-up stuff from them in order to make it up), they're just making a gamble that you'll buy something else. But if the company isn't requiring you to by anything with the free item (which would be fully in their rights), then they put out the risk that some people will only order the free items. Second, they can't be losing too much money, otherwise they'd stop doing the sales so often. A good business knows how to cover its butt. And finally, Vistaprint has been pretty good to me, and if I do need to buy anything they sell, I'll go to them out of loyalty, and sometimes I pay for an upgrade of an item. There's also the fact that I'm plugging them in my blog and giving them some free advertising, thanks to the free products. Vistaprint also puts their website in tiny letters on all their free items, while you can pay $2 to have it taken off. (Of course, I keep the fine print for free. :) So when it comes down to this, like using coupons, it's just playing the big marketing game. May as well have fun with it!)

Aw, Shucks....

2010-08-25T08:21:00.000-07:00

My friend Cheri, who makes some pretty awesome handmade cards was kind enough to nominate me for a blog award, and here it is...

Ok, so on to the Award Rules.

1.Thank the person who rewarded it to you.

Thanks Cheri! This is almost as nice as when you let me copy your math homework back in high school!

2. Copy award to your blog.

3. List 3 things you love about yourself.

a. I'm not exactly shy.

b. I did pretty good in picking my husband.

c. I can (almost) always find something to laugh about in life.

4. Post a picture that you love on your blog.

Yesterday Amy "practiced" getting ready for kindergarten, and of course her little sister had to get in on it. We dropped Amy off this morning for her first day of school!

5. Pass the award on to 5 other inspirational people.

Emily at http://mylifebyblogs.blogspot.com/

Christina at http://saimaeve.blogspot.com/

Stephanie at http://adoptionmission-possible.blogspot.com/

Sarah at http://www.mymilitarymommy.com/

Carmen at http://thecarpenterswifeandkids.blogspot.com/

(I'm doing 6, ha!)

Heather at http://heather-becomingatitus2woman.blogspot.com/

Thanks Cheri! This was fun. :)

Fun times...

2010-08-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

I won't have much time to post over the next couple weeks, so I figured since there's a lot of new readers lately, I'd post some links to some of my favorite past posts. Enjoy!

Ben pooping treasure.

Why I don't bother with baby leashes any more.

Amy's amazing ability to lie.

(When I first started this blog, I gave my kids nicknames for privacy purposes, but I gave up after it got confusing and I kept forgetting anyway.)

How I got my daughter to eat eggplant

2010-08-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

Lately a big theme in our house has been "healthy choices." I've been trying to get Amy to think about what food are healthy, how unhealthy foods make her feel, ways different foods good can be good for her.

This also been a little trick to help keep junk out of the cart at the grocery store. If she holds up a box of pop-tarts or gummy bears, I just add it to the game, "Are those a healthy choice?" and she usually sighs and put its back. If they don't get too wild or whiny in the store, we'll get a couple "special treats," like I'll let them choose what flavor of ice cream we get.

When we're looking at the fruits and veggies, they get choices like "red or green apples," and the other day, in a sudden burst of inspiration, I told Amy that she could pick a new veggie to try, which was, believe it or not, and exciting prospect for her. I suggested an eggplant, which was new to me, too, and she hopped a little and said, "Yes! I saw that one on TV!" (PBS kids, especially Sesame Street and Word World, has been helping indoctrinate good nutritional principles into our kids).

So we came home with an eggplant, and I began to ponder how to cook it....which turned out to be a lot of pressure. I had no idea how to cook an eggplant. Normally I stuck to easy veggies staples like carrots, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and green beans and I've ventured into the squash family. I wasn't entirely sure I'd ever eaten an eggplant. If I messed this up (and I had a feeling it wouldn't be that hard) and Amy didn't like it, then it's very likely she'd be wary to try eggplants or new veggies for quite awhile.

I flipped through a couple cookbooks, but the only recipes I found used it in casseroles, and I didn't know if that would be the best introduction. After a few days of pondering, I decided my safest bet was to go Paula Dean on it and just fry it in butter.

When I finally got around to cooking it up, I decided to serve it as a side dish with some chicken and pasta with cheese sauce a'la jar. First I peeled it, because it just seemed like a good idea, and as I started cutting it, I realized that it had seeds in it, and I asked David to google "Can you eat eggplant seeds?" (you can) As I tried to cut out the areas with lots of seeds, it finally occurred to me that I could just ask Carla.

My mother-in-law gave me Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living as a wedding gift, which we'll make sure we grab if the zombies ever take over and we have to run out to the country and live off the land. Out of the many topics in this book (which also includes detailed instructions on how to properly breed, raise and butcher variety of farm animals and wild game), she lists every garden vegetable you can think of, and how to grow and cook it. And sure enough, she listed eggplant, and one of the options she gave for cooking it was to dipped it in milk and egg, then bread crumbs, and frying it.

I didn't have any bread crumbs, so I put David on crunching up a bag of croutons while I finished getting the eggplant ready to cook.

I will not be posting my recipe for eggplant, by the way. It is certainly not the healthiest or the best way to cook it, but well, it was an experience.

I only had enough croutons for 5 slices (and they certainly weren't finely crushed enough), so then I tried lemon pepper. After I took a bite of one of those and realized that the flavors didn't go well at all, I just went with butter and salt for the rest, and tried not to cook them to slimy mush, which I realized wasn't too hard.

By the time I finished my filling my plate with cooked slices, I had another taste, and it wasn't that bad, but I had very little confidence that it would be a hit...

...and then I realized that my pasta wasn't ready, and if these got cold, I was out of luck.

So I called the kids to the table and served it as an appetizer. Amy, who is very open to try new things, took a bite right away and approved. This surprised me, but I didn't complain.

She ate a couple pieces, until she got one with some lemon pepper on it (I didn't serve them, but some seasoning rubbed off on some of the plain pieces.) and is not a fan of "spicy food," so she requested that if I made it again, she didn't want them spicy.

Kate is my finicky one, and she didn't even want it touching her plate.

Ben gave it a bite, but didn't finish the rest of it. But he usually doesn't eat much at dinner, anyway.

And finally, it had to go by my toughest veggie critic, David. He had no desire to eat eggplant, but he had the pressure of his little girl, who might actually grow up liking veggies, who really, really, wanted her Daddy to taste the eggplant, too. This picture sums up how he felt about it.

He tried it, and later, after the kids were out of earshot, said he didn't think I should cook eggplant anymore. And I don't think I'll pull that stunt again. It successful in that Amy was open to trying something new and doesn't hate eggplant, but I think I won a craps shoot on that one. I've always introduced new foods without fanfare and told the kids if weren't leaving a tip, they couldn't complain about the service. And I think I'll start looking into recipes before I buy new veggies!

What are your favorite recipes for veggies?

Fruit Popsicles

2010-08-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick idea for the few hot summer day we might have left. Pick up some popsicle molds, mash up some fruit and freeze the mashed fruit in the molds. My kids dug them!

Obviously removing seeds from watermelon would be a bit labor-intensive, but you could use a seedless watermelon or just let the kids spit the seeds out of the popsicle. I tried this to use up some leftover watermelon.

There's a trillion things you could put in a popsicle mold. You could try other kinds of fruit, including berries, and pudding, yogurt, smoothie, or just regular fruit juice. Use a blender if you like a smoother puree for your fruit. If you're trying to come up with a healthier snack for your kids, this is a great way to control what goes into your families' food.

The fact is that kids will eat just about anything frozen to a stick, especially if you let them help make the treat!

Target - For the Win!

2010-08-11T07:35:00.000-07:00

Last week I wrote about going to Target with some coupons, and not being too impressed with my savings. However, this week I started studying the Krazy Coupon Lady website, and last night I went armed with a bigger stack of coupons and a plan to take full advantage of the sales this week.

So what was my final price on all the goodies in the above picture? $13.08 before tax. I saved $17.38, which is perfectly fine with me. Here's the breakdown...

First of all, all that stuff was FREE (except one of the Sobe's was .50 cents, so it should have technically gone in the other picture). I had coupons good enough to cancel out the costs of the pens and post-its, and the bread was free if I bought the two packages of lunch meat, which is in the following picture....

Total on these items was $7.38. The Krazy Coupon Lady (KCL) posted the pizzas as being free with a $2 off coupon, but they were $2.89 at our Target, and I just got them anyway because .89 cents each still isn't too shabby. The Dora movie was a smooth little trick. Target.com posted coupons for $3 any Dora movie, and most were around $13....except the Pirate one, which was on clearance for $5, and now I have a $2 gift to toss under the Christmas tree for Kate. KCL linked to a coupon for $1 off each pack of lunch meat, so with the free bread that came out to be $1.19 for each item.

And here's I bought without a coupon. We needed the kid's toothbrushes after we had several mysterious disappearances lately (maybe it's the same aliens who tried to steal David's shaving cream the other day) and I had a couple coupons for kid's toothbrushes, but this box was only $1.97 and I wouldn't do better than that with what I had at the moment. Target.com also has coupons for dollars off apparel, and KCL advised to go look at the clearance section and then use your coupons. The shirt was $4.38, so it would have been $2.38...if I would have printed up the right coupon. Turns out when I got to the check-out I had the one for the pants, so I had to pay the whole clearance price, which certainly isn't the end of the world even if I can't brag about a $2.38 shirt. However, there is the problem that I'm not sure I like the shirt after all. There's elastic around the bottom, and it was tricky to adjust it so I didn't look like I was wearing a pillowcase tied around my butt. But I liked the top part, so I'll play around with it to see if I can get it to look somewhat flattering.

So I was much happier with this run at Target, and this coupon game is kind of fun. And now I have a healthy supply of pens (which I've had a hard time finding ever since we moved into this house) and I even was able to use the Post-its to restock the stand I made at my very first Mothers of Preschoolers meeting when I got to this base.

Some may be wondering on the time it took to come up with the deals, and it wasn't much because KCL tells you exactly how to do everything and links to the coupons you need when you read about the deals. There's also this cool shopping list feature where you click the shopping cart next to the title of the post and select what you want off her posts and X off what you don't need, and then print it out so you have it handy at the store. Since it was my first run with printing, tracking down paper coupons, and getting everything organized, it took an afternoon, but I can see the pace picking up as I get a routine down, and it's a more productive way to use my farting around online time. I could be playing Tetris, after all.

"Hey baby, can I buy you a sandwich?"

2010-08-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday David and I celebrated our 7 year wedding anniversary (7 years on 8-9-10...how cool is that!) We decided to keep it low-key because we took a nice, kid-free dinner date to the Firehouse Brewing Co. when my mom was in town a couple weeks ago, our family vacation is in a couple weeks and we want to save money for that, and that migraine and the meds over the weekend put a hamper on my ability to prepare anything creative or produce enough brainpower track down a babysitter that would work for brownies and pizza. We ended up having a quiet night at home...well, as quiet as it can be with our kiddos.

Now although I think saving money is sexy, using fast food coupons on special occasions only has so much charm for anyone. So I'm certainly not saying it should be every holiday (but hey, if you both don't mind, more power to you!). But today, after I spent the afternoon getting better acquainted with The Krazy Coupon Lady and sorting my Sunday paper, and having the "I don't know what to do...what do you want to do?" conversation with David, That Krazy Lady posted a printable coupon for Buy-one-get-one free coupons to Quiznos...and we like Quiznos....

In fact, the first time David ever bought me food was at a Quiznos. We were trying to get together with some friends for some kind of street evangelism/outreach sort of thing (yep, we're some crazy kids) but no one else showed up (that seemed to be a pattern when we went to "group" outings...it was like God kept making sure we got ditched so we'd hang out. That may sound silly, but anyone around us that time will tell you it's true.) and then I got a flat tire in a part of Portland that didn't believe in building shoulders on the road (Glisan St. by the Gateway Transit Center just coming off I-205, if you're familiar with the area) after dark, in the drizzle. But this guy I was hanging out with helped me get the car to a safer place, changed the tire, and then we stopped into a nearby Quiznos and he bought me a cup of soup, and we hung out a bit before I'd have to drive home, on the freeway, on a spare tire the size of a Ho-Ho. He was so smooth you'd almost think he planned the whole thing.

Anyway, if we're going to use coupons on our anniversary, Quizno's is the place for us to do it. I also found a bunch of BOGO Limeade coupons from Taco Bell in the Sunday paper, which happens to be one of David's favorite things. So he ran downtown, got sandwiches and Limeade, and I cooked some seasoned fries, and gave the kids hot dogs.

David is also wearing his present, a shirt I picked up on sale at my last Target run. He gave me a cold-hardy rose bush. Let's see if I can keep it alive this winter!

What I should have done was feed the kids while David was out, and then kicked them out of the dining room and claimed the table for us...but that occurred to me too late, and the kids didn't exactly make it an relaxing meal...but Ben did entertain us by sporting an oven mitt.

That's my boy... For dessert, I tried to make a Lime Jello Cake, only to realize that I didn't have a cake mix, which is in the recipe I have. So, I tried to make a scratch yellow cake and add the Jello...which actually more or less worked.

I had to send David to the Shoppette (our super-overpriced base gas station that is the only thing around when the commissary is closed after hours and on Mondays) for the whipping cream and powdered sugar, but hey, it's our anniversary...we're living wild. ;)

And then we got another lesson in why it's important to have stockpiles of stuff we when we can find it cheap. When I first started sorting my coupons, I asked David if he needed any shaving stuff. He said he didn't, but I bought him some razor blades anyway since I found an all right deal. And last night, I opened the medicine cabinet to get some chap stick and found it a fragrant, foamy, slimy mess. As soon as I opened the door, blue gel dripped all the way down the wall onto the floor.

Somehow, David's shaving cream exploded on its own; we couldn't figure out if the button got stuck, or if the aliens tried to steal it as fuel for their spaceship. But it was 10:00 at night, we had a big mess to clean up, and the can, the last one in the house, was completely empty.

So he went over to the Shoppette and paid $1.75 for small can of shave gel so he'd be ready for the morning. I told him I was going to start getting it when I saw it good deals...because apparently we never know when we'll need it.

Oh, and what was the cost of our final anniversary dinner date? I don't know...a lady doesn't ask.

(And if you're looking for a classier way to save money on a date, check out restaurant.com where you can get discount gift certificates for eating out at nicer places. However, before you try it make there's places to use it near where you live; there's only one in Western South Dakota!)

How To Make Stovetop Popcorn

2010-08-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

What movie night is complete with out popcorn? If the kid's hear that we're popping in a video, then "Can we have popcorn?" is the next thing out of their mouths. (And I'm vacuuming and picking it out of the carpet for a couple days, but ah well.)

In an effort to lower the budget and save some space around the kitchen, I learned how to make popcorn over the stove top. Besides the fact that it's only pennies to fill a bowl full of fresh popcorn, you can put whatever you want on it, from good ole' butter to olive oil your own seasonings to cinnamon-sugar. You can also adjust it to your health preferences, like less salt. You can always google "popcorn flavors" to get ideas!

Another nice thing about making your own popcorn instead of microwave bags is that you can control exactly how much you make at a time and how much your family, or you, will eat.

I usually start with about a tablespoon (or so...I usually just dump whatever looks good) of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil and a few dashes of salt. The fun thing about stovetop popcorn is that it coats the kernels as they pop, so you get a nice, even flavor over your popcorn. Drop in a few kernels for testing the heat of the oil; when one of those pops, you can add the rest of your popcorn. I add 1/4 cup kernels in a 2 quart saucepan. Cook about med to med high heat. And I forgot to put on the lid at this step, and ended up with my test kernels popping and shooting across the kitchen. So, don't forget to the add the lid.

I have a gas stove, so it's easy to constantly to shake the pot over the heat. I've gotten this to work on a flat-top ceramic stove, but beware scratching. Soon you'll kernels will start to take off!

Remove from heat as soon as your kernels either stop popping or the pan fills. I happen to have a glass lid to my pot, which makes it easy to tell when you're done, but you can still make it work with metal lid. Leave the lid on for a few moments to make sure all the kernels have popped, and let it cool a bit. Then enjoy!

(It was kind of tricky to take the pictures with one hand while I was making the popcorn with the other, so excuse the photography. But try it yourself to see how it really looks!)

It's Sunday!

2010-08-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

As much as I would love to make a "Sunday Thought" a regular feature of this blog, not every Sunday morning is as quiet around here as this one. It's 9:15, Ben and I have been watching PBS kids for a bit, the girls are still asleep, and I just heard David getting into the shower. Now I'm sure many mothers are thinking... "Hmmm...something is fishy about this picture..." and you're right. If we have a lazy, church-skipping morning it's because Kate was up at 1:30 AM crying about a diaper rash and needed a change, and I was doped up on migraine medicine so David had to do the night shift on his own. (David says Ben & Kate were up several times before I finally woke up, so I guess I just hit the end of the party.)

Anyway, since I'm on sitting here on this lovely, drizzly, South Dakota Sabbath (when was the last time I woke up to rain in the morning here!?), I'm going to share a thought from one of my all-time favorite books, "Hinds Feet On High Places," but a lovely woman named Hannah Hunnard. She wrote this book while she was spending some time in the Swiss Alps, and it's about a character named Much Afraid's journey to change her name to Grace and Glory. (I've always wanted to have twin girls named Grace and Gloria, inspired by this story, but David vetoed that idea, besides the fact that the doesn't want to try for two babies until he gets the chance. But if we ever get cats I dibs names!)

So here is the quote of the morning:

“Many a quiet, ordinary, and hidden life, unknown to the world, is a veritable garden in which Love’s flowers and fruits have come to such perfection that it is a lace of delight where the King of Love himself walks and rejoices with his friends. Some of my servants have indeed won great visible victories and are rightly loved and reverenced by other men, but always their greatest victories are like the wild flowers, those which no one knows about. Learn this lesson now, down here in the valley, Much-Afraid, and when you get to the steep places of the mountains it will comfort you.”

I think this applies to motherhood and raising our kids because a lot of it happens while we're stuck in the house with the kids, and our accomplishments certainly don't make CNN. But every time we serve our families, overcome some challenge in home, or just live to tell about another day with something close enough to a smile, it's another wildflower in the garden. When you're up to your elbows in poop changing a diaper on a screaming baby and you keep your cool until it's done, no one else may care, but believe it or not, taking care of our babies, who are some of God's most fragile creations, adds to His "lace of delight."

I would say, "Besides, your kid might grow up to be President!" and the entire world will appreciate how all the work you put into raising that stinker, but we all know that's probably not going to happen. (Nothing against our kids, I'm just looking at statistics...only a few kids every generation end up in White House :) But when we surround our kids in wildflowers, they'll at least grow up smelling nice and and able to spread that fragrance on to others...and some day, they can move on to flourish in their own garden. And when it comes down to it, that's the best thing we can hope for our kids, even if the garden turns out to be Washington DC or homes surrounded by their own children. If our children end up living "quiet, ordinary, and hidden lives," but are living them in a garden of "Love's flowers and fruits," then we've succeeded as parents.

Homemade Taco Seasoning & Guacamole

2010-08-07T05:53:00.000-07:00

After my recent run of rants on coupons, I had a friend request my recipe for Taco Seasoning, which I am happy to share. I originally got my recipe from Hillbilly Housewife, but I'll repost it with my own comments...

Taco Seasoning

Use on Chicken Chunks, Ground Beef, or Ground Turkey.

1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon onion powder
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
dash oregano
dash cayenne pepper
1/2-3/4 cup water

When I make this, I mix it up in a measuring cup and dissolve it in about half a cup of water before I add it to the meat, and then I add more water if it looks like it didn't cover the meat evenly.

The original recipe said the cumin was optional, but I think that's what makes this seasoning so delicious. If you don't have any, you could leave it out and still have taco night, but I highly recommend including it.

Keeping in mind that cayenne and chili powder sure look alike if you're not paying attention to labels...don't mix the bottles up and add two teaspoons of cayenne pepper. I can promise your kids won't eat it...but was probably a Rachel Original. ;) But if you do like a little more kick to your tacos, you can add a bigger dash of cayenne.

And while I'm at it, I'll post my recipe for...

Homemade Guacamole

2 ripe Avocados
About half a cup to a cup of your favorite salsa
About half a teaspoon of cumin
Big dash garlic powder

Now this is one of those "dump" recipes that can be annoying for the meticulous cook who just wants to know if a "big dash" is closer to an 1/8 of a teaspoon or a 1/4. For that I apologize, but I never measure when I make it. I just mash up the avocados using my trusty potato masher (I used to use a pastry blender until mine broke!), dump in the salsa, add the seasonings, mash some more, stir it up a bit, and enjoy.

If you're the only one eating it, you can use one avocado and half the rest of the recipe.

You can also tweak this to your preference... you might like more or less salsa, you might want to add a can of chopped chillies or different seasonings with some more kick. Guacamole is one of those things that's really easy to personalize because there's no "right" recipe for it. You'd have to work pretty hard to make inedible guacamole, so play around with it! (and if you do somehow end up with disaster, there's no shame in that...you talking the the gal who dumped two teaspoons of cayenne pepper in taco seasoning!)

If you have a favorite recipe for guacamole, please comment and share!

My Coupon Crisis - The Commissary & Our Conspiracy!

2010-08-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

For my first post, I wrote about how I came to the point where I decided to give coupons another shot and other ways I save money on groceries. Yesterday, I discussed how coupons can be tricky because when all is said and done, they're not designed to save you money, but to get you to spend more sooner or later. However, I still believe that coupon use is a game worth learning, and I took a giant stack to the commissary on Tuesday I got from the Sunday paper, packaging, and browsing online.

I know that's hard to read, but I spent $119, and saved $13. I would have come close enough to my $100 goal, but I picked up some razor blades for David with a $2 off coupon, which came to around $14, so that knocked me a bit over budget. (When he's out of the military, he said he's going to grow a pony tail and beard. At least we'll save money on shaving supplies!) This is a humble savings compared to more hardcore coupon queens, but I set a goal to shoot for saving $10 on each shopping trip, which will add up to at least $40 a month, and I reached that.

Most of my coupons were worth the effort; however, there were several I didn't use because the commissary either didn't have the item, or I was able to find another cheaper option, or even with the coupon, it just wasn't that great of a deal when all was said on done.

(For those just joining this blog and haven't spent much time around the military, a "commissary" is the grocery store on a military base. Only those with a Department of Defense ID (Active Duty Military, Retired Military, and their dependents) are allowed to shop there, everything is tax free, and they don't mark up their stock. There's a 5% surcharge added to each purchase to cover operational costs, but I've found that the prices are usually so low it makes up for it. Even though I'm doing this shopping trip on base, what I learned still applies to the rest of the world.)

Our commissary is closed on Mondays, so going there first thing on Tuesday morning ensures that all the shelves are stocked and that plenty of store coupons are posted. But this time I noticed there wasn't much in mark-down meat, which I can usually get in abundance on Saturdays, saving up to $1.50 a package. I may have to make a special trip this weekend to see if I can get some good deals on chicken and hamburger to toss in the freezer.

I brought a coupon for .75 cents off two packs of Ball Park Franks, but didn't use it because the commissary has a really good price on Hebrew National hot dogs (about half of what it normally is), which are kosher and use the best parts of the cow instead of, well, the parts that usually go into hot dogs. Hot dogs aren't a staple in my house, but we do like them for backyard cook-outs and in mac and cheese sometimes. With Hebrew Nationals so cheap, it wasn't a tough choice to throw out that coupon.

One of my tougher issues with using coupons, which I pondered that afternoon as I spent 10 minutes stirring a scratch white sauce for mac and cheese at lunch time (which was delicious!). A lot of coupons are for processed convenience foods, which I've been trying to avoid for the past few years. Now let's get something straight...if I preach to you on the evils of processed foods, you'll catch me eating straight from a bag of marshmallows by tomorrow. So even though we are hardly a model of perfect nutrition in our home, I try to avoid things like high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils, and focus on eating things like whole grains and good fats. I've found by that making things myself, I can control exactly what goes in our food. Even if I'm dumping in a big cup of granulated white sugar in cookies, at least I know exactly how much sugar is in what we eat, which leads me to try to cut sugar or use alternatives in other recipes.

Coupons make it really tempting to go for foods that I normally wouldn't consider. We don't eat a lot of dry cereal at breakfast and I try to make things like homemade granola with yogurt, a fruit and nut hot cereal, muffins, or just whole wheat toast and eggs. Even though cereal is messy (especially when Kate sneaks the bag and carries it into the living room to eat in front of the TV) and doesn't seem to fill my kids up, it sure is easy to grab a box if the coupon is good enough...but if I give them cereal at breakfast, they're "starving!" and whining for a snack halfway through the morning, and I usually get some nasty diapers. With my three little kids, cereal and milk require some pretty intense clean up, and that can cancel out the time I saved by just pouring a bowl for breakfast. (David is the only one in my house that eats cereal regularly, but he's happy with the generic brands that usually are pretty cheap.)

I often see coupons for individual containers of yogurt, but I buy the quart sized whole milk plain yogurt and sweeten it myself with a little honey and vanilla...and my kids eat this! I consider this a nutritional victory and even if I can get the flavored yogurt cheaper, I'm not about to mess up the fact that my kids will eat my hippie version because of course they'll want the creamier, colored, flavored version over my extra-healthy concoction if I give them the choice.

After spending the past few years learning to cook from scratch, I've gotten past the intimidation factor and can throw down a pan of muffins or make a sauce or salad dressing on auto pilot. So I don't buy a lot of mixes (the exception is Angel Food cake, because a scratch recipe takes a dozen egg whites, which makes it expensive and tricky, and my other is brownies, because I just like 'em better from a mix!) or dressings (exceptions are ranch and Cesar dressings, because I haven't really tried. I do my own vinaigrettes and marinades.) I also have a great recipes for taco seasoning and honey mustard sauce. I'm saving money by making these myself, and even in the rare situation that buying a bottle or mix would be cheaper, you make up for it with quality and healthiness. If you can make a good scratch cake that costs slightly more than an .89 cent mix, you end up with a cake that tastes like a $20 bakery cake...or even better! Why use a coupon for microwave chocolate desserts when I can whip up my own brownie pudding for pennies?

Besides cooking, the Do-It-Yourself factor can apply to other areas. I made my own laundry detergent and made 10 gallons for $2, so I don't usually care if I can save $2 on one bottle. There's great deals on disposable diapers if you use the right coupons, but my cloth diapers paid for themselves a long time ago, and it's probably about the same amount of work and time to track down the deals and coupons as it is to toss in a load of laundry a couple times a week. I spent one a little bit afternoon making my laundry soap, and it's a six month supply.

So if you look at the big picture, there's many situations where you can save more money than using a coupon. Then why am I still going to give coupons a go? Because, of course, there are areas where DIY doesn't work for one reason or another. I use disposable diapers on outings, road trips and when I need to push Ben over a diaper rash, and although I've threatened to turn hippie, I still shave my legs and need razor blades. I have store-bought detergent handy because my homemade stuff doesn't quite cut it for diapers. And flipping through the ads, there are coupons for foods and household items we really use and enjoy. And because of this, I'm determined to figure out the coupon game.

So here is the Grand Plan to make the most of coupons as a resource to save money. Some friends and I are going to get together every couple weeks with our Sunday papers and swap our coupons. This way, for example, if someone finds a deal where they can save a lot of money on diapers, but needs two coupons, someone without a baby can clip it from another ad and give it to her. And keeping in mind that there's more than saving money than coupons, we're going to take part of the time to share moneysaving strategies; for our first meeting, one gal is going to teach us how to make homemade tortillas. We also have some experienced coupon users who can share their strategies with the rest of the group. This way, we can all swap our ideas and knock those Marketing Gnomes (see my previous post!) right into the ground!

Blog Hop 2010

2010-08-05T13:41:00.000-07:00

Today when I stumbled across this post about Blog Hop '10 I figured I'd crash the party!

So here's my introduction to the fellow Hoppers... I'm Rachel, married to David 7 years this Monday, and I have three kids - Amy, Kate, and Ben, who are 5, 3, and 1. My husband joined the Air Force last fall and in March we moved from our home in Washington State, to the last place I ever thought I'd end up - South Dakota. However, the longer we're hear the more we can see that this is where we're supposed to be, and that all the craziness that got us here (including a job loss) was classic Romans 8:28...."all things working for the good of those who love Him..." and we're also seeing Jeremiah 29:11* and Acts 17:26-28** coming to life.**

I write about raising my kids, frugal living, and our new military life. Right now I'm running a series on figuring out how to really save money on shopping with coupons, and next I'm planning to start another series on finding GOOD stuff at garage sales. If you browse my blog, you'll find posts ranging from epic potty training adventures to fighting head lice and many other parenting dilemmas. It's nice to meet you and I hope you enjoy our stories!

*For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

**²⁶From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. ²⁷God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ²⁸'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'

My Coupon Crisis - Target

2010-08-05T09:14:00.000-07:00

As I wrote yesterday, I'm just starting to dabble with coupons. I started out slowly by using the coupons that came in the packaging (why not take an extra .55 cents off the butter I always buy?) and the ones hanging all over the commissary (.75 cents off a $1.26 bottle of Tabasco sauce is a pretty good deal!). Then I started browsing online and printing up coupons from sites like coupons.com and using shopathome.com to find coupons at manufacturer's websites and ordered coupons from company's websites. And finally, last weekend I bought a Sunday paper and did some good ole' fashioned clipping.

DISCLAIMER: After I posted this, I realized I should clarify something...I realized that getting 20% off a typical Target run isn't too shabby on a normal day, and if I stumbled on that I'd be quite pleased. The reason why I was frustrated with this trip was because it was a premeditated strategy to save money and when I put some muscle and planning into shopping, I can usually pull down at least 40% in savings. This time, I felt like the coupons threw off my groove.

I have friends who save a TON of money with coupons, and even make money buy using a combination of coupons that ends up coming out to more than what the stuff costs in the first place. My friend Stephanie is pulls stunts like this and buying 30 cans of dog food and making a $3 profit. (She doesn't have a dog, but took advantage of the opportunity and gave the food to a friend.) So I know there's something to do this whole coupon game...so I decided to take on this challenge. Now I fully admit I'm an amateur, and I'm not try to discourage coupon use for those who might be considering it. I'm just pointing out some common mistakes I was guilty of so we can get to the real money saving.

The first issue with coupons that we need to remember is that the people in marketing who decide what coupons will be issues aren't sweet people just trying to save Average Joe or Suzi Housewife a few bucks. Their jobs depend on making their companies money. So, those pretty fliers and "Cents off" coupons are all out there to manipulate into buying their product and one way or another, making money off you, whether it be that you decide you like it and pay full price for the product later, end up buying refills or attachments for whatever it is (like saving a few bucks on a razor and buying blades later), or a store could put out a coupon just to get you in the door to fill your cart. I'm not conspiring. Any basic marketing class will say the first step in sales is to get the customer to "identify a need," and if it's not an actual need, but you make them believe it's a need, then good enough. In my humble opinion, successful coupon use is a battle against the Marketing Gnomes.

And so, in order to be use coupons effectively and save money down the road, you have to be able to beat the Marketing Gnomes, who are crossing their fingers for a bonus this year, at their own game. This makes it tough to save money by using coupons casually...just browsing the ads and clipping whatever looks good.

This brings me to my irritating experience at Target the other day... You might have to click on this to pull up a bigger image so you can actually read it, but here's the receipt. After thoroughly studying the ad and clipping some store and manufacturer's coupons I could stack, I went in with the intention to buy Amy's school supplies, some underwear for David and I, plastic storage bins, laundry baskets, and I had coupons for a toothbrush and toothpaste, plastic zip-loc bags, toilet paper, Kleenex, Goldfish crackers, paper towels, and napkins.

So with all these goodies, I spent $87, had $5 in tax, and saved $21.46, which is about 20%. So why was I grumbling to myself all the way home in the car? Because I still feel like I could have played the game a bit better.

First of all, I had a few different coupons for a toothbrush and toothpaste. Long story short, after I spent so much time looking back and forth at the little pieces of paper and the toothbrushes figuring out which option would save the most money, I probably looked like a crazy lady with a dental obsession. Sure, I saved $1.50 on a toothbrush, but there were plenty of other brands I could have just grabbed off the shelf for a $1.50, and yes, I supposed I got a nicer toothbrush when all was said and done, but although I don't buy toothbrushes so cheap the bristles fall out when you use them, I'm not convinced there's that much difference between the $4 toothbrush and the $1.50 toothbrush. At least not enough to make it worth spending that much time in the Target toothbrush aisle. There's also the fact I didn't check the price of the toothbrush at the commissary; it may have been .75 cents cheaper there, which would have made the Target coupon unnecessary for saving the money. (There's also the fact that we're all due for trips to the dentist, where we'd get a free toothbrush.) I did okay on the toothpaste; it cost 2.29 and with a .75 and .50 cents off coupon, I got it a tube of Crest for 1.04...but I do know I can get a .99 cent brand that doesn't taste like glue...

Then I had some coupons for paper towels and napkins. I had one coupon for each, and then a Target coupon to save another $1.50 if I bought both...and the paper towels were on sale anyway. Now this was a clever little scheme on paper, but there's a reason why I decided to pass when all was said and done. I don't use paper towels. Awhile back when I was cutting back on the grocery budget, I decided that a dishrag was just as good as paper towel around the kitchen, and old cloth diapers were the best things ever for cleaning and washing windows and mirrors. A big case of paper towels also takes up so much space. The napkins turned out to be cheaper at the commissary for the brand I usually get, even with the coupons. So, if I would have taken up this deal, I would have spent $13. By passing, I saved $13. Take that, Marketing Gnomes!

I feel like I did okay on the laundry baskets, underwear, (they were on sale and were "bonus packs" with extra pairs), and most of the school supplies. They had a good sale on a certain item I wanted to get David for Christmas, so I went ahead and grabbed that. I probably could have done a bit better on the toilet paper and sandwich bags, and gallon zip-loc bags. I hesitated on the plastic bins I had in the cart. They weren't a bad deal, but I was sure I've seen them cheaper on sale at a place like Lowe's and I don't really like the clip-on lids because if the clip breaks, you have a useless lid. But the lazy little devil (sent by the Marketing Gnomes, I assume) sitting on my shoulder whispered, "Rachel, you're already at Target, and they're already in the cart. Sure, Lowes might have bigger, cheaper ones with better lids, but this way you can get started on the organizing right away and it will save you a drive all the way over to Lowe's." I bought three bins, Target probably made up for the loss on the coupons I used, and the Marketing Gnomes got a win.

I passed on my coupon for Goldfish crackers, too. I thought they still might be cheaper at the commissary, and I was right. (but I usually try to give my kids more filling snacks than fishies, so I passed on those, too.)

So my overall savings on that trip was 20%, including coupons and sale items. So why does this bug me? If you watch sales closely, you can usually get 40% off any given item at some point. Usually when I browse ads, I don't bother if it's less than 40%. That may sound like a lot of work, but I've been using this method of shopping for awhile and it consistently works. But with the sales I sought out this time, although they looked good, I didn't figure percentages ahead of time; if I did, I would have realized that some of these deals really weren't that great and I could have waited for a better price. After looking over my receipt, I probably could have saved an extra $10-$20 by shopping at other stores, waiting for a better sale, or passing on the item altogether. Granted, it's all stuff we'll use, but I'm still irritated on principle. I walked in with a couple coupons for a toothbrush, only to overpay on other stuff.

But watch out, Gnomes. I'm on to you.

(The coupon saga will continue tomorrow, with my adventure at the commissary buying groceries with a stack of coupons!)

My Coupon Crisis - The Backstory...

2010-08-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

I've never been that into coupons. When I initially started making efforts to cut my grocery budget when Amy was a baby, I took to Amy Dacyczyn's shopping strategy from "The Tightwad Gazette" which focuses on looking for loss-leaders (stuff grocery stores mark down considerably planning to take a loss on that item, but using that to get you in the store and buy other stuff; this is a simple game to play because you just buy lots of the loss-leader, and don't buy anything else!), cooking from scratch with inexpensive ingredients, eating simple and healthy foods, having a garden, and finding foods from creative sources like outlets, garden swaps, and mark-down bins. I was able to run with a few of those ideas (especially scratch cooking), and was proud of how I managed our grocery budget, especially through the rough patches.

Then...last year David lost his full time job and was working part-time or 3/4 time, and that was around when he signed up for the Air Force and we started waiting for him to go to Basic, which was when we'd start getting the regular paycheck. I went on the WIC program to supplement our grocery budget (which was really stressing me out) and we moved in my parents until he finished his training. I was blessed enough to have a friend refer me to Birch Community Services (BCS), which is an awesome program that gets food from things like grocery store overstock, day-old bread, extra food from restaurants and bakeries, donations, and their own garden, then gives it to families than enrolls in the program and pays $50 a month in dues. There's a zillion reasons besides the food that this is a great program, and it was practically enough to feed my family abundantly with very little actual grocery shopping. I even went off WIC because, and while I was in BCS, I just didn't need it.

Then...We moved to South Dakota, 1000 miles away from BCS and all my usual shopping places, and David started working a normal workday and coming home for lunch, Kate got over whatever issue that was making her skip meals frequently for the months before we moved, and Ben started to eat like a growing boy. I looked at my grocery receipts and said EEEEEEK.

I EEEEK'd for a couple months, and then I decided to form a plan to DO something about it. Besides the fact that I had to figure this out without BCS after getting used to that gravy train, now I'm a 25 minute drive from a Safeway, which makes it difficult to take advantage of loss-leader sales regularly, base housing doesn't approve of tearing up my yard for a garden, and I don't have my bulk bins at WinCo, which was a huge money saver before we moved. I have to completely rethink my grocery shopping strategy.

First of all, I set a firm budget and made a goal to spend no more than $100 a week on groceries. Before I did this, I kept making those runs for just one or two items to the store and ended up spending triple what I planned by picking up "a few" other things. Now, I try to stay away from the store except for major trips, and if I run out of something, I take responsibility for my lack of planning ahead and go without until next shopping day. (Or I have David pick it up for me, since he's "mission-focused" in shopping and much better and running in and out than I am!) I hit this goal for July and we'll see how I do for August. By winter, my goal is to get to the point where I can cut town to three shopping trips a month by stocking up on good deals, focusing on inexpensive meals and foods, and cutting unneeded items.

Second, Kate and Ben are still under 5, so I went back on WIC. Some people consider this like food stamps, but although it's government funded, it's a completely different program. The focus of WIC is to help families get healthy foods on the tables and only provides specific foods, like milk, cheese, dried beans, and whole grain options. (You can google WIC for your state to see what your options would be.) When you enroll in WIC, you get to meet with a nutritionist to discuss how to get your kids to learn healthy eating and life habits, which I really enjoy. Now some WIC offices are really bogged down and don't even always answer the phones (like the one in my hometown), but the one on our base is fantastic. If you're military they don't count your BAH in your income when you're considered for the program, and I know E6s with three kids that can make the program. If you're not sure if you'd qualify, give your local office a call with your paystub or LES handy.

Third, I focused on taking advantage of sales and military coupons at the commissary. The commissary (base grocery store) doesn't mark up their foods, so it's really easy to find good deals, although some of the prices are still higher than a Safeway loss-leader. Then I discovered the coupons they post around the store and the flier by the door, and I started finding really good deals and stocking up on items we use often. Right now I have about six 100 count boxes of Lipton Tea because I drink ice tea compulsively and, with the current price and a military coupon, I'm getting it for less than $2 a box - about half the normal price. I also stashed several bottles of Tabasco and A-1 Sauce (two of my husband's favorite things), a few giant bags of chocolate chips that I found in the mark-down shelf, a winter's supply of kid's gummy vitamins, and I always check the mark-down meat freezer and get great deals on hamburger, which I would end up freezing anyway.

And finally, I decided to give coupon clipping a shot. However, I just realized how long this post already is, so I will save that rant for tomorrow. Stay tuned!