Shopping Success

To say that I like to grocery shop would be a vast understatement. To say that I love and am addicted to grocery shopping would be more accurate.

There are so many wonderful things about grocery shopping. Not the least of which is that it is shopping (which I love) that I HAVE TO do. Its like a perpetual excuse to shop.

What I also love about it, is the satisfaction of getting good deals. Between coupon clipping, and shopping the adds - I love to see my pantry filled to the brim while staying on track with our small-ish grocery budget. I have had many a shopping trip where I left quite pleased with the deals I had found.

But none has been quite so satisfactory as my most recent trip. It was practically brilliant if I do say so myself, and as evidenced by my receipts:

Receipt Summary:

1st Trip:
Spent: $24.56
Saved: $36.30
AND because I purchased all the correct items - I got $15 off my next trip. Hence, trip #2, 5 minutes later

2nd Trip:
Spent: $4.97
Saved: $49.67

That's right - $115 worth of food. For just under $30.

Some highlights of the trip were:

Always Maxi Pads: Originally $10 a box - on sale for $5 a box - and I had 3 coupons for $3 off a box. Final cost $2 a box

Rice-a-Roni: Buy 8 boxes (at .87 cents a piece after sale and my coupons) and get $5 off a fresh meat purchase - making that large package of sale priced chicken 14 cents

Buy $30 worth of P&G products (which were all on sale) and get $15 off your next purchase. Also, I had coupons for every single P&G product that I bought, so the sale price came to $30, which earned me the $15 coupon, but after the use of my coupons - those items really only cost me like $18! Even better - I have gotten smart about these "next-purchase" coupons which expire waaaaay too fast - I break my shopping trip into 2 trips. Take round one out to the car, and come back in for round 2.

So yeah. Please excuse my enthusiasm over my own success. Mon Amour knows that after pretty much every trip to the grocery store I delightedly announce to him how much I saved. Usually I stop there...but this one needed to be blogged about. It was a great way to start off our frugal 09.

Too Cute

Marge makes this face when she wants something:



It's too cute.

Strange Place to Find Mice

As previously mentioned we have a serious mouse problem.

They have eaten my favorite shirt.
They have eaten some socks.
They have eaten our food.
They have eaten the dogs food.
They have eaten our aluminum foil.
They have eaten my pot holders.

As a result, dead mice turn up every where. We find them in the bedroom, living room, spare room, kitchen, in drawers, in the attic, in the pantry, in the ceiling. We thought we had seem them every where. But until recently, we were mistaken, because the other day, we found them....

....inside the light fixture in the ceiling of the bathroom. It was not a pretty sight when we cleaned it out (i.e. if you are squeamish, don't look too hard at the pictures that follow)

The one on the left makes it look like a miniature elephant. But the foot and tail on the right confirm it was a mouse.

My question is - what is comfortable or yummy about a bathroom light fixture that the mouse would hang out there? I mean I suppose it would be warm up there. But when checking my house for dead mice, the bathroom ceiling would not be top on my list of places to check.

Country mice are much more unpredictable than the city mice I am used to.

Christmas Cards

We didn't send out Christmas cards before Christmas this year, but we decided we did want to get some kind of photo update to our far away relatives. So we are going to send a New Year's e-card to all the relatives who may be curious to know what we look like these days. (For much of Mon Amour's family, who I have never met, the ONLY pictures they would have ever seen of me are the ones from our wedding). Marge had to be in the picture of course. Which made it a crazy adventure. We haven't selected the winning photo yet. But here are a few of the best moments: "Marge, you WILL look at the camera for the Christmas photo" "Quick! Marge is being cute, everyone lean in to the camera" Who needs Mon Amour's face anyway. For that matter, who needs me in the picture at all.

Finally, we are all in it....only Mon Amour had been holding his smile just a little bit toooooo long. I don't know exactly how I would describe that face, but it makes me chuckle.

The Day After Christmas

Last Christmas, for our first Christmas together, Mon Amour and I opted NOT to get a Christmas Tree. The debate of real (my vote) vs. fake (his vote) Christmas trees was heated. So in order to keep the peace, we skipped a tree all together. Neither of us minded; it saved us some money, and we weren't going to be at our own house for Christmas anyway, so it didn't matter too much.

This year, the same problem arose - do we get a fake tree? or a real tree? (funny how disagreements like this don't just go away when you ignore them) But we decided this year we needed to get a tree. So we struck upon a compromise - fake tree for now, real tree sometime in the future when we have kids that will make picking out a real tree lots of fun.

Then I new dilemma arose: Fake trees are ridiculously expensive! At least nice looking ones are. Being the frugal folks that we are, we decided to endure one more Christmas without a tree, and we would go shopping the day after Christmas and get a fake one at a super-low-clearance price.

So that is what we did. (More accurately that is what Mon Amour did. I was still sick at that point and unwilling to move from bed. ) Initially we were thinking that a plain non-lit fake tree would be perfect. Unfortunately, clearance shoppers can't be picky. So instead, we got the super-deluxe, 7.5 foot tall tree with white AND colored lights that comes complete with a remote that controls the function (the lights blink, fade in and out, etc) and the speed (imperceptibly slow, to seizure-inducingly fast). It is AMAZING! As in, for the time being, I have been converted to the fake-tree mindset.

The tree was is so amazing in fact, we just had to put it up. So on New Year's Eve up went the tree:


The Box


Take a second look at the completed tree and you will notice that the ornaments stop about 3 feet from the ground. Marge likes to chew on the tree; we decided not to add the unnecesary temptation of ornaments. Next year maybe we will work on teaching her not to eat the decorations.

The tree being decorated, we waited until moments before midnight to begin the countdown. Turned the tree on to the "flash alternately white and colored lights" function (the most annoying) and slowly increased the speed as we counted down (note, we have no tv, we had no way of watching the shiny silver ball drop). At the stroke of midnight (as measured by my sister's cell phone) we turned it to its highest speed setting and watched it go crazy!

That is how we welcomed in both our new Christmas tree, and the new year.

Christmas Lesson

This Christmas I learned a valuable, albeit very difficult lesson, namely, that I cannot do it all. Sometimes, in fact, the best thing I can do is nothing at all.

Nothing is exactly what I did all Christmas break. Tuesday through Wednesday it was due to congestion and related discomfort that had me miserable all day Tuesday, and in bed all day Wednesday. Thursday, by God's wonderful grace, I was out of bed to open presents; still no voice, but well enough to join in the festivities. Friday, when it should have been over, I was hit with round 2 - a stomach bug that had me in bed pretty much all the way through Monday. To change things up I even spent some time in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm on Saturday cause I was forgetting to drink water (which is ironic, since in general water is my standard cure-all. I must have been really out of it to forget about the all important h2o).

All that to say, I did absolutely NOTHING for almost a week solid; and it drove me crazy! I prefer to be ridiculously busy and I thrive off of checking things off my to do list. But after being sick that long I finally succumbed to the fact that it was okay to do nothing, and that bed was the best place for me if I ever wanted to get back to being productive. It was a rough lesson but eventually I think I got the gist of it.

I am pleased to report that despite my illness, I had a absolutely lovely Christmas! And, I am now 100% healthy and back to being productive.

I hope your holidays were equally as fun....though hopefully less disease filled.

Cleaning out the Stove

A wood burning stove is not all fun and games. (though, its probably like 95% fun and games!) From time to time one must scoop out all the ashes and dispose of them without getting them all over your carpet, or yourself, or your curious puppy. I have mostly mastered this skill because it needs to be done fairly frequently, and with repetition comes mastery.

However, only once have I tried emptying out the back of the stove. It shouldn't get quite as dirty quite as often, so I don't worry about it too much. But recently, I decided it was time to give it a good cleaning.


Here is what it looked liked closed. Very normal and innocent looking.


Then I opened it...



I found some ash...


some soot....



some plain old grime....


and....



A dead bird!

Its kind of hard to see - but its body is that lump just above the brown leaf. Its head is not the furthest from the camera, wings to the right and left.


Needless to say, it was gross. And I realized I had a decision to make. I could leave the bird in the stove, not make a fire (now that I knew it was there, smoking it further was just a gross idea) and wait to let Mon Amour take care of it. OR I could take it out myself, and start the fire like I planned.

I decided on the latter, reasoning that it couldn't be much worse then the dozens of mice I have removed from traps in the past 6 months.

Well, it was. I had great intentions of taking its picture outside of the stove...to further document the gross-ness. However, as soon as I poked with with my stove-shovel, my nose informed me that this would need to be a speedy operation. (Marge's nose, on the other hand, thought it smelled like dinner....so it was imperative that I move even more quickly) Quickly into the double layered plastic bag it went - and just like that it was tied tightly shut and on its way to the dumpster.

Once I managed to clear my mind of gross thoughts, I discovered that I was quite pleased with myself. Smoked bird removal is much more impressive then dead mouse removal, and I can do both. (Though I will confess I would prefer refrain from doing either for a very very long time...if only our chimney had a cover to keep the birds from coming in....or the fields some corn in it to tempt the mice out of the house. Oh well.)