Small Successes Thursday

Once, again, it is Thursday. This whole time thing is a little repetitive, no?
I accomplished a heck of a lot today:

1. Helped my sister M take care of my sister N's new twin girls and her two- and four- year old boys while N is in the hospital recovering from an emergency hysterectomy.
2. Got peed on by a cute puppy while helping M take a picture to help sell the puppy.
3. Played with my nephew Josh and got snuggled ferociously by the babies and my nephew Christian. It was a lot like being snuggled by J but by a way bigger kid. I think Christian is going to be a linebacker. Seriously, this kid is like a friggin wall. Not fat at all, just solid as all get out. But I digress.
4. Cooked a lovely dinner for sister N's family before I came home to my own family. I hope it was lovely, anyway. Hmm. I will have to ask my sister M how it turned out since she stayed for dinner and I didn't.
5. Shampooed the carpet for book club tomorrow. Gotta have a clean house!
6. Snuggled my little J and put him to bed. We read "In a People House." I sure missed him today!
7. Made brownies for book club tomorrow.
8. Took the gimpy PT Cruiser in for it's repairs (new clutch, transmission, and radiator) and found out that it only needs a new clutch and radiator! Yay!
9. Got a rental car for while the Cruiser is in "hospital." Damn those things are expensive. It is a great way to decide what cars we would potentially own or not. Thus far, our rental experience has taught us that we will never own a Hyundai Elantra or a Dodge Caliber (our current rental). I love my PT Cruiser. When it finally dies I will be a sad, sad lady.

Wow, that got pretty ramble-y. Huh. Anyway, Happy Thursday almost Friday!

The Grocery Goddess Strikes Again!

I think that has a much better ring to it than Grocery Guru.


This week I went to 4 stores, breakdown as follows.

Sunflower Farmer's Market:

• 1 green bell pepper, $0.69
• 1 cantaloupe, on sale for $0.50
• 4 nectarines, $0.99/lb, total $1.17
• Red potatoes, $0.50/lb, total $1.55
• 3 red onions, $0.50/lb, total $0.49
• Seedless watermelon, 4lbs/$1, total $1.7

Total: $6.19, savings $1.91 (They forgot to give me my BYOB discount. Oh well.)

King Soopers (Kroger affiliate):

• 2 bottles of Santa Cruz lemonade, on sale for 10/$10, plus two $0.75/1 coupons, doubled to $1 each, total FREE!!
• Bread, $1.99
• 5 ears yellow corn, $0.19/each, total $0.95
• 3 pk Ivory soap (not pictured), on sale for 10/$10, total $1

I also got a BYOB discount of $0.05. Total: $4.68, savings: $6.51! That's a 58% savings, a new personal record for me!

Safeway:

• Mott's Apple Juice, on sale for $2.49, coupon for $0.99 per gallon, total $0.99
• Lucerne eggs, 18 ct, on sale for $1.39, coupon for $0.99 per carton, total $0.99
• Van de Kamp's fish sticks, on sale for $4.99, coupon for $3.99 per box, total $3.99

Total: $6.03, savings $6.20 = 51%! I rock.

Costco:

• Goat Milk, $3.99
• Tillamook medium cheddar (2.5lbs), $6.59
• Kirkland Bacon 4- 1lb pks, $8.99

Total $19.57

I also went to Target for lightbulbs ($0.77) and Kids N Pets ($4.74).

My totals for the week are:
Groceries: $35.47
Including non-food items purchased: $42.26

18 Months

J had his 18 month checkup today. Aside from hating his shots and being poked and prodded (which, who wouldn't?) he did great!

The Stats:
33" tall, 73 percentile (up from 30.5" at 45 percentile at 15 months)
24 lbs, 10.5 oz, 35 percentile (compared to 23 lbs 9.5 oz and 40 percentile at 15 months)
Head circumference 50cm, 95 percentile. Yep, still got a gigantic head.

According to the doctor, he's VERY smart (which we knew, but it's nice to hear from a non-related person) and very cute (which we also knew!).

Random Bit Of Cuteness

James whines, pointing and whimpering rather than using his words to tell me what he wants. He gets closer to crying every moment, and I don't know what's wrong. I finally just ask him, "Baby, what's wrong? Tell Mommy what you want!"

The whining stops. He looks up with his big blue eyes, reaches up to me, and says "Love you!"
He gives me a big hug and cuddles on me until dinner time.

Small Successes Thursday

Yep, it's Thursday again! Sometimes I think the main point of this is to keep me blogging at least once a week ;-).

Today I accomplished the following:
1. Finished The Time Traveler's Wife. Wow. What an incredible book. The end brought tears to my eyes.
2. Started re-reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
3. Started setting up Microsoft Money to manage our finances.

Hey, look at that. I did do 3 things today!

My Grocery Awesomeness Continues

I'm going to have to come up with a better name for this. Perhaps I will just stick with Grocery Guru. Anyway, this week's grocery shopping (everything, not just food):

King Soopers (Kroger):

• Bread - $1.99
• Colorado Proud Milk - $1.48
  
• Kroger Distilled Vinegar (not pictured, for laundry) - $2.99, on sale for $2.49
• Kuner's canned veggies - reg. $1.09, on sale 4/$3
• Fage greek yogurt (individual cup) - reg $1.99, on sale for $1.49, plus $1/1 coupon, final price $0.50!
• Oikos greek yogurt (individual cup) - $1.99, plus $1/1 coupon, final price $0.99
• Kroger CanJel (pectin) - $1.79
• Cheerios - $3.08, plus $0.55/1 coupon doubled to $1, final price $2.08
• MultiGrain Cheerios - $3.19, plus $0.75/1 coupon doubled to $1, final price $2.19
• Kellogg's Special K Blueberry - $3.49, plus $1/1 coupon, final price $2.49

Tax was $0.22, and I got $0.05 off (whooptie doo...) for bringing my own bag. Grand total at Kings? $19.27, with $7.25 in savings. Pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Albertsons:
I already mentioned this before, but whatever:

• Blueberries - reg $3.99 per pkg, on sale for 5 lbs for $5 (almost half what King's has theirs on special for...)

I got 5 1-lb containers, and with tax, spent all of $5.05, and saved almost $15 (though really, that's debatable, because had they been $3.99 each I would not have gotten them at all). These will be made into jelly/jam and syrup. Yum!

Sunflower:
Here's where I got kind of spendy, but that's mainly because we splurged this week so I could make lots of enchiladas:

• 3 green bell peppers - reg $0.69 ea, on sale for 2/$1, total $1.50
• 1 anaheim pepper - $0.48
  
• 1 package of 3 dozen corn tortillas - $2.19
• Nanita's Enchilada Sauce (local and YUMMY) - $3.99
• Dreyer's Ice Cream - reg $5.99, on sale for $3.99
• 0.9 lb Sunflower brand organic coffee (not pictured)- $6.29
• 1 large sweet onion - $0.77
• 5 Fuji apples - $0.99/lb, total $1.48
• 6 nectarines - $0.88/lb, total $1.47
• 4 pork Polish Sausages (surprise for C, not pictured) - on sale for $1.97/lb, total $2.17

In all at Sunflower, I spent $24.23, and saved $5.67 by shopping for sale items and bringing my own bag ($0.10 here per bag). Not so good for budget, and the ice cream wasn't necessary, but the enchiladas I made using the more expensive ingredients will be good for lunches for me all week, plus a meal in the freezer, plus were dinner for J and I tonight. They were a hit, too.

I also made a trip to Whole Foods because I heard a rumor I could get Santa Cruz Lemonade for $0.24 (on sale for $0.99, plus the $0.75/1 coupon). Well, they were on sale, but for $1.50. In all the lemonade ended up being $0.80. Not too shabby!

My final purchase tonight was Country Save laundry detergent. The only place that sells it in my area is Vitamin Cottage, but it is well worth the special trip, plus it's on the way to King Soopers. We don't buy anything else there because we can get better deals elsewhere and we don't buy supplements, but the detergent is about the same price as the cheap stuff at the grocery store (per load) and it cleans cloth diapers like wow. All Free and Clear is worse than just washing the damn things with water. Never use it on diapers. It sucks ass. Ok, enough of that rant. I love my Country Save, and I will never try to use anything else on diapers again. Never. NEVER. I am washing J's diapers now, actually, with the nice wonderful best detergent ever. Anyway, the detergent was $8.36 after tax.

My grand total? (Honestly, I'm kind of scared to add this all up...) $57.71. Yikes. Not awful, especially considering that last week we were under budget by $11. Also, if I drop the non-food items the total goes down to $46.86, which is really quite good! Sweet. We won't need to buy quite as much next week, but we will need to make a trip later this week to Costco for goat milk for J (since they have it for $6 or less per half gallon, versus close to $8 per half gallon at grocery stores).

My grocery trips this week also contributed to my Things to Do list, since I brought my own bags which is both "green" and helping reduce our dependence on plastic bags! Yay!

Whew. That was a long post!

Giveaway and Bargain!

BabyAge is giving away the ultimate backyard set! Click here for the entry form and details. There will be one prize awarded that includes all of the following, valued at over $14oo! The Ultimate Backyard Prize includes Picnic on the Patio Playhouse ($254),Clubhouse Swing set ($684), Patio Playhouse ($306), Sand and Sea Play Table ($118), Easy Store Large Picnic Table and Umbrella ($90), Adventure Wagon ($83), Cozy Coupe 30th Anniversary ($67), Mulching Mower ($31), 2-in-1 snug and secure swing ($16).

Also, on a totally unrelated note, Albertsons LLC stores have blueberries on sale through Tuesday (so, tomorrow) for 5/$5, 11-16 ounce packages. So yesterday I went and got 5 pounds of blueberries for a whopping $5! I think I will be making some syrup and some jam, probably one jar of each, but who knows? I will update on my weekend domestic projects later.

Toddlers are Amusing

J likes to give people "respect" by bumping knuckles with them. It's the cool thing to do. Tonight he was sitting there bumping his own knuckles together saying "pect! pect!" He then very enthusiastically gave Mommy respect.

He also says "ass" when he is trying to say "thanks." Yep, my kid says ass in everyday conversation. Sweet.

It's a Jungle Out There!

I may have planted too many tomato plants.


I think next year one Early girl will suffice.

Small Successes Thursday

Ok, so this SST is a little different from previous ones. I honestly had one of the worst days ever, and don't feel like I accomplished shit. I spent most of the day trying not to cry. So I am going to try my best to come up with three positive things that I accomplished.

1. Watered my garden.
2. Read some of my book, The Time Traveler's Wife.
3. Washed diapers.

Well look at that. I did do 3 positive things today. Now I am going to go take something for my back, because it hurts.