So, I’ve started a new hobby.  One that I’m finding rather fun even though it has nothing to do with gaming or computers (except in that I read blogs to help me find more deals).  There’s using coupons and there’s this.

I’m not an expert at it yet, but between matching coupons and sales, I saved over $40 last week.  Maybe more, I’d have to go through my receipts and I don’t feel like doing it at this time of morning.   I paid more than some of the girls whose blogs I’ve been reading.  BUT I’m paying less, in many cases much less than I have been.

I got 2 boxes of Tornadoes for free, 2 more for .99 cents.  I got 2 Healthy Choice meals for $1 each and 2 more for $1.50 each.  Lean Cuisine meals for $1.67 each (I didn’t get them at the store that doubled coupons for this weekend only), cups of yogurt for .32 cents each and jars of peanut butter for $1.20 each and a box of raisin bran for .50 cents.  I did get healthy food as well including a bunch of produce.  Overall, I paid about the same as I normally do but got almost 1/3 more food.  My fridge, freezer and cupboards are over-full, though I do need to pick up another bag of apples and more yogurt since we go through them so fast.  Even the 18 month old loves them.

On the other hand, I’ve gotten razors at Walgreens and received register rewards (like coupons good on the next purchase) back for more than I paid for the razors.  I did the same for womens body wash.  I’ve paid only tax for deodorant. Last Sunday I went to Walgreens and bought mens body wash and deodorant, I paid $4.97 and got $4.50 in register rewards.  This Sunday, I’ll be able to get 2 packages of diapers for $6 each before register rewards.  It’ll be about $4.50 each if you subtract the extra $3 in register rewards I’ll get for buying 2 packages at once.  I may get 4 packages of diapers simply because that’s the best price I’ve been able to get with any consistency so far.   I’ll probably get another set of body wash and deodorant because it’s not like my husband won’t use it and it never goes bad.  The same week I get the diapers, I’ll be able to combine coupons with the sale on toothpaste to get tubes of toothpaste for .24 cents each before tax, and I think that’s the week that I’ll be able to get hair ties for $3 and get $3 in register rewards, I’ll have to look at the circular after I finish my writing for the week.  The week of Father’s day, I’ll be able to pay $3 for mens body wash (Nivea) and get back $6 in register rewards.

I haven’t broken down all of the deals I’m going to be doing because I’ve been going week to week.  I know I have enough shaving cream to send some to my sister when I send her the afghan I knit for the baby.  I may send body wash since she can use it as bubble bath and she’s going to need it once she goes back to work in the next couple of weeks.

I can get more deodorant for just the sales tax at Dollar General this week, so I’m probably going to get some and donate it to the local women’s shelter.  It’s hard to justify not spending .50 cents for 4 sticks of deodorant when I know they desperately need personal care items.  I think the deodorant that my son always wanted me to get will also be free at Dollar General, I need to look at the ad… I don’t know if he’d want it now or if he’s found something better in the Marines.

I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with the extra mens care items, but most of these I’ve been getting back more in register rewards than I’ve been paying out… Making money on transactions is very addicting.  LOL

My goal is to get my grocery bill down by 50%.  That means catching the sales and trying to stock up on the things we go through the most… like peanut butter (with apologies to the dear friend who hates the stuff lol).  I was supposed to get some cereal this weekend, but the only stuff they really had on sale was sugar cereal and since my hubby and I have been trying to watch what we eat (and since the kids don’t need the sugar) I held off.  I need to find some coupons for the stuff that’s healthy, or see how much it’d be to buy the healthy stuff at Wal-Mart with the coupons I do have… for Total and Fiber One… at least they’ll eat it with fruit on it.  I’ve been doing better at stores other than Wal-Mart because they don’t really have sales 😛  Oh yea, and because they don’t really have a whole lot of competition here and their prices are higher than in other areas.  I do read the deal pages on Wal-Mart and go there with the intention of doing those deals.  Instead I’m finding my prices are .50 cents to $1 higher than quoted on those pages with prices from central IL and other areas.   ‘Always Low Prices’ my butt.  Granted, they are lower on some things, but others their prices are much higher than I want to pay.  And with coupons, I’m able to pay less than I’d pay at Aldis for some stuff.

For those who say that it’s too expensive to drive to 3 or more stores… sorry, I can do those in one wide circle around town.  Go to one store, the next is on the way to the bread store… and if I decide to do Wal-Mart for something that’s past the bread store in the same direction and I can just loop around to go home.  All within 5 miles of my house.  When you shop the loss leaders with coupons it pays for the gas… Oh yea and drive a Honda Civic which is more fuel efficient than my old Buick (R.I.P.  I do miss that car even though it started needing more work than I could afford to put into it after I had to buy 4 new/used tires for it last summer because we kept getting flats, luckily I had the money on hand for various reasons)  Of course it also had more than 250k miles on it at only 11 years old LOL.  Too many trips back east in it… of course the last one of those was 2006 and I’d love to see my family again, but that’s another post for another day.  It’s well after 4 and I need to get back to sleep so I can get up for work in 3 hours and I’m starting to ramble because I’m tired.

Ok, so I’ve been using a pedometer and trying to increase my steps.  I didn’t hit my goal today.  I only managed about 7200 steps instead of 8000, which is still less than the 10,000 I should be walking for my health.  I am making progress on other aspects as well.  But I still need to work at it so I can nail more than just the water every day. 

I’ve been very tempted to delete the post below where I was being so negative, but I haven’t decided yet.  It may disappear.

Oh and one reminder note: losing inches is better than losing pounds and the negative voices need to go LOL.

Someone said something, that I’ve heard over and over the last couple of weeks.  I don’t remember offhand who said it, but it basically goes ‘doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity’

Guess it’s time to change what I’m doing, otherwise my results will be the same.

I said something earlier about my daughter doing a Walk Away the Pounds video with my husband.  Well, this morning, when I was doing the video because of a walking contest we’re doing at work… I caught my son doing it.  I even got it on video.  Once I get my writing done for the week, I may try to get it uploaded for those who are interested in seeing it.  My husband said the 1 year old did it, but I didn’t believe him until this morning…

As for the other… well we’re doing a contest at work where they gave us pedometers and divided us into teams, and we’re supposed to see which team can get the most mileage between March 1 and May 31… so far all I’m finding is that the pedometer doesn’t always show all of the steps I’ve taken during the day, and when it does, I take a lot fewer steps than I thought.  My goal is to hit 5,000 consistently by the end of March…. which means I need to find out if I can have the pedometer replaced as I managed to break the clip somehow…. Let’s just hope they don’t consider that actually breaking the pedometer, and I won’t have to pay for the replacement.  Sighs.

I’ll freely admit that my daughter watches too much TV.  My husband has to have the TV on, even when he’s just sleeping in the living room, and my daughter has taken after him.  I’m going to have to work on that since I’ve never been a big fan of TV except for a few shows… which I can now watch on Hulu or something now that I have Internet access again LOL

So, since we got cable again on Tuesday, she’s watched Cartoon Network pretty much non-stop while she’s been awake.  Except when she does a Walk Away the Pounds 2 mile walk video with my husband… but that’s another story.  At least she’s getting exercise.

Back to my point, Sketchers has been advertising a shoe for girls called Twinkle Toes or something like that, and I keep hearing from my daughter that she wants a pair of them… I haven’t figured out how to break the news to her that even if I had the money, I wouldn’t be buying a pair of Sketchers for a 5 year old.  I just can’t see spending that kind of money for something she’s going to grow out of rather quickly.

Let’s not even mention the ad she saw for makeup for girls when we were cuddling in the recliner yesterday.  It was showing different makeup in a case that looked like a cell phone, etc.  I was at Claire’s a couple of weeks ago to look for a bag to put some jewelry in to protect it when I shipped it to my son for his girlfriend (whew, that’s a long sentence, but I can’t figure out how else to put it LOL).  While at Claire’s, I saw the makeup in cases that looked like cell phones among other things… but do I really want to buy that for a 5 year old??  I did see a couple of other things that I thought she might like for her birthday… I can’t believe my baby girl is growing up.

*edited to add: I told her that I don’t wear makeup so she didn’t need makeup, and she just looked at me and said “but it’s toy makeup”  LOL

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, I guess my point is that these companies know what they’re doing when they advertise during the day on a channel like Cartoon Network.  They know the kids are going to be bugging their parents to buy whatever it is they’re trying to sell.  I may consider it a dirty trick, but I understand it.  I also know that I can combat it by being consistent and telling her no when she asks for whatever it is on TV.  Even if I do decide to buy it later for her birthday.  LOL

Ok, so this is a few weeks old at this point, but I got a kick out of reading it on Slashdot when it first came out.  http://politics.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=10/02/16/2346202 I even went to the source and read some of the first and second report written by the IPCC, or at least the parts that were referenced to in the by the Utah Assembly.

Apparently, the Utah Assembly seems to think that if they pass a resolution denying global warming or global climate change based on one inconstancy between two different 600+ page reports written by 2 separate groups, then this denial will make an actual difference with what everyone else thinks.  Uhh, yea, I’m going to change my mind about how I feel about global warming based on something that some state I don’t live in has as a resolution.

As for what I really think… well I know there’s a lot of controversy surrounding what’s been said and determined.  So rather than fighting over the details, is it really going to hurt for us to conserve energy where ever we can?  I know that if I conserve electricity my bill will go down.  If I conserve gas by driving more, I’ll be healthier because I’ve been walking more and/or I’ll save money on gas.  With trying to pay off all of my bills before I turn 40, I can’t see how either of these options is going to hurt anything.  Neither will starting my own garden, whether it be container gardening or square foot gardening.  I save money and have more plants around that’ll absorb CO2.

Let’s face it, the whole thing with carbon offsets is bogus anyway.  There’s no way to track what’s actually being done, so why do we look up to those who buy these carbon offsets instead of using Ed Beagley, Jr as an example and making their homes truly ‘green.’  Just because they have the money doesn’t mean they should waste it instead of conserving our resources?

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions because I feel like if I’m not going to start today, I’m not going to start Jan 1, but I do have goals for the coming year(s).

I’m giving myself a deadline of Jul 2014 to reach my goal weight.  That seems like a long time, but if I put pressure on myself, I do very badly.  My 25th high school reunion is the 4th of July weekend that year, so I want to be at goal. 

I’m giving myself until my 40th birthday to get out of debt.  I’m using Dave Ramsay’s system, and with as little as we owe, it’s not outrageous to think we can be done by May 2011.  I’d like to be able to give more in December 2011, and repay the kindnesses shown to our family this year. (My church did an Angel tree for families with little money.  My kids ended up with a lot of gifts from the church, and they gave us food.  I was amazed at how much we got, and in tears from the generosity.)

I have yet to figure out what else I want to change about my life, but I do know I want to go back to school and finish my degree as well.  I’ve spent too much time being complacent about where I am in life.

Like it’s not obvious with not being on the MUD recently, I haven’t been around much.  I’m working toward being able to post more frequently again.  Until then, you can check out my articles on the Examiner.com website 🙂  I think I posted a link to the side.  If not, there are several posted below.

~Shar

So I did get the letter from my oldest, and he’s doing well.  He sounds so mature already, I’m so proud of him.  I wrote him back the day after I got the letter, but I need to write again already.

And I’ve started writing for somewhere else too.  I signed up to write for Examiner.com as their Oklahoma City Weight Loss Examiner.  My URL is at http://www.examiner.com/x-22761-Oklahoma-City-Weight-Loss-Examiner.

My first article went up tonight.

California unloads on eBay (Opens in a new window)

To help close the gap in the budget, California is selling their surplus on eBay instead of just auctioning it like most states.  To try to get more money out of these repos and impounds, the governor is autographing many of the items.  All a great idea, in my humble opinion. 

What I find really hilarious on one level and mind boggling on another are the comments being made at the bottom of the article.  There are many, many people saying that the problems with California are the fault of the liberals in charge, etc etc.  Uhh, hate to break it to you, Schwarzenegger is a Republican.  The whole problem with California’s economy is two-fold, and neither problem can be placed at any one party’s feet. 

First, they were spending much more than they were making for years.  You can’t do that. 

Second, many in California are being hard hit with the problems with the housing bubble and the economy tanking. 

So in essence, California was spending as much as if not more than they really had coming in, and then they suddenly had less coming in.  Oops.  Seems to me, that’s the problem many people are having too. 

On a personal note, I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much.  It’s been a very busy summer.  My oldest made it off to boot camp, and I’ve gotten one (form) letter back from him already.  I’m sure I’ll hear from him again soon… this time in his own words 🙂