Head above water.

I finally feel like my head is slowly coming back above water.... I don't know why I went down under, but I'm making my way back up!

The menu is on the fridge, and a mammoth pile of bills are paid and ready to go out the door. Plus, we have a separate account payment system for medical bills. Those are also completely caught up and d-o-n-e!

It's such a good feeling to be caught up.... but also to know where every dollar is going. To say that the month of August was over budget would be correct. Our dining out expenses alone pretty much killed our budget.

It is SO easy to just forget about the budget and go out to dinner. Going anywhere for dinner seems better than cooking at the time. (Until you get the bill.) I can see why folks use the envelope system now. It definitely would have helped curb the dining out expenses we incurred this past month. No doubt about it!

So, even though this month has already begun.... I am starting our own envelope system, for groceries, dining out and gas. Those are the three main ones that we seem to go over on in regards to our budget. That should really help us to stick to our budget this month. As I mentioned before we have been using our credit card to earn points for our hotel stay in Moscow. But, I believe we have enough for now... and it's more important in my mind to curb some of that spending and see how well we can stick to our budget.

I will say that thankfully we have still been able to pay off our credit card bill each month. Unfortunately, it hasn't left a whole lot of anything for savings. I'll write more about savings and that mindset in a future post. :-)

Menu Plan...It's coming!

I have everything on paper for all my menu ideas this week. I am very excited about it. It goes all the way through next Wednesday. Hooray! Now I just have to put the meals together and get them on my blog. I am planning to succeed this week! Not only on the frugal front, but on the eating front. My meals are all fairly healthy and when I know what I am cooking... I tend to stick to the plan.

Now onto one other piece of information. I can't believe I didn't know about this sooner. I never noticed this, but my friend Kris has had this blog listed on her website. It's called a Year of Crockpotting. One year!! There are some pretty good looking recipes on this site. The chewy peanut brittle looked awesome. (Yes, I did just say I was eating healthy, so naturally my mind is gravitating to the sweet treats that I haven't had in a while!) Anyway, check it out!

(Especially posted for my friend Becky who is looking for crock pot meals!)

My menu plan

Hmmm... I suppose I can name all the restaurants I have eaten in this week. Lots of salads!

Adoption stuff has taken over my life right now, and I have to just let the other areas step aside...

Big news is that we have been referred two little boys! We are busily getting ready to travel in a few weeks! Plus we have so much to get ready here at home! I have a feeling life is about to get a whole lot busier!

New week

Well, I'm getting ready to start a new week and have high hopes for a menu plan and a good grocery run. I sometimes feel like I am starting over, and just trying to get back into the swing of things. I hope to post my menu plan on Wednesday when the all the new grocery flyers come out in our area. :-)

In other news: My other blog is still not working. If it were frozen, I'd start a campaign to free my blog. As it is, I noticed one very polite comment from someone also recently dealing with the same technical issue that I have. they asked blogger to put all their energies into fixing this problem, or something like that. I don't know how they stated it...but it WAS polite, and I appreciated it!

Ugh... My blog is not feeling well

Not this blog, my other one about our adoption. Apparently it has caught a blogger bug. It has to do with the new dashboard and gadgets that they recently installed. I have been reverted back to the old template and have no way to install layouts and gadgets on my blog.

I was trying to revamp that blog a little bit, like I did this one. I figured the weekend would be a perfect time.... more time, less to do in a busy week. Hmmmm.... I should have just gone to bed instead.

So, if you can't link to my other blog.... that could be why. I'm hoping blogger gets it straightened out soon.

Blog Makeover

Yep, I revamped the ol' blog. I wanted to add this little gadget that my friend Kris added on her other blog. But when I added the new Blogs I read, it just sank into the background. The bright orange background!

So, it was time to finally add a little dimension with columns and colors so that the "blogs i read section", would stand out. I don't love the new look....it's okay for a do-it-yourselfer. (Especially when this do-it-yourselfer has no idea about html!)

I'll have to wait to get my blog the way I want it, designed all nice and snazzy. But I can't afford that yet, even at a frugal price. We just forked out $800 bucks to fix dh's car, remember? Dh did report that the car is running much better than it has ever run since we bought it 2 and 1/2 years ago. Hmmm..... I guess that's what maintenance does...... $800 worth.

Night all, I've worked on this makeover way past my bedtime!

Car Trouble

Once again we find ourselves in car trouble. For my previous post about Dh's car which was in January click HERE.

We did not get the work done in January because we did not want to invest $2000 in the car. However, we could not really afford to pay for a used vehicle either, and chose to wait until we could afford it. Unfortunately, this car did not pass emissions inspection, and it needed a major tune-up to do so. It is costing us $800 this time around. He expected it to cost about $300. I had no such misplaced hopes.... I have seen that car, and it has never had a tune up since we owned it. This I knew had the potential to be costly.


I'm sick about it... because each time we try to get ahead, we get a set back. Yes, we have the funds in our emergency fund, but that wipes that out. Not only that, but we have to look at our budget again and spending habits to see where we can cut things... even temporarily. It's gonna hurt, but it's necessary. Bleck. I'll tell you why in a later post.

Chore Chart

I'm not sure what exactly is the deal, but it seems like this house is hard to keep clean. Or maybe it's just an area of discipline that I am working on.... but I would like to be more consistent about keeping up with my house. I would like it to be a place where we can all come home to and relax. To unwind, and enjoy each other as a family. A place where friends came come in at a moments notice and I can welcome them in without cringing over how my house looks, or wondering if the bathroom is clean....

My children are definitely old enough to help in this endeavor. They are almost 9 and 10, and 45 minutes a day of chores, aside from their regular chores is not going to kill them. In days gone by, as a part of our rich history it was expected of children in the family to help out with the family chores. My own grandmother had to tend the chickens and milk cows. Tom Sawyer had to whitewash the fence before he could play, and in Russia and other slavic countries the children all had "jobs" to do within the home. (I'm sure there are other countries as well, but that one comes to mind.) I'm not sure why we think that kids today don't have to do much to help out in the family. I've seen too many kids doing the minimal, and even then begrudgingly, that they have to cease playing video games for the immediate chore. Hmmf. I too have been guilty of not expecting too much from my children in this area. But not anymore. They have 14 hours a day to play, relax etc (during the summer months).... 30-45 minutes to help clean or straighten is not asking too much.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox now. Sorry about that.... :-) So, I created a chore chart for our week to better handle the cleaning of our home. Like I said I want to be on top of it... and not have to do these massive cleanings on weekends. I'm sure some people have used fly lady... but I'm just not into all the emails, or how she breaks everything down. It's a little overkill for me. If you want to check out how I made up my schedule click here.... it will take you to my other post that describes it more in detail.

I'll let you know how it works out. Who knows maybe in a few months it will be a Works for Me Wednesday post. Anyone else make their kids actually do chores when they are at home? I would love to know what chores your kids are required to do. Maybe it will give me some more ideas.... :-)

Funding our Adoption

I've mentioned in passing here at Coins In The Couch, that my husband and I are in the process of adopting internationally. Specifically we are registered in Moscow, Russia and hope to adopt two siblings, either two boys or two girls, ages 4 and under.

We do have two biological children and while some may think we are crazy to head back into the diaper stages of life.... we look forward to expanding our family to six. It's something I have been praying about since 2002, and hopefully God's timing will be such that we will actually complete this adoption this year.

Adopting internationally is expensive for one child, let alone two! With the dollar dropping in value, it's even more expensive than this time last year. We are praying and working toward not going into debt for this adoption. So, we have begun fund raising and saving like squirrels, in order to accomplish our goals.

We've had three yard sales this summer, and now we are working on selling handmade cards. You may have seen this on a few other blogs. Jennifer at SisterlySavings and Jeannie at What's a Girl to Do got together and began spreading the word about my handmade cards. Jennifer created a button on her blog that you can grab and post on your own blog to let your readers know about our fundraising. That was soo thoughtful of them and already Mercedes at MoneyCommonSense has grabbed that button! (And ordered a set of cards! Thank you!!)

So, if you would like to grab the button and post it on your own blog, please do so! And if you would like to help us raise money for this adoption I would love to make a set of cards for you! I'll post some samples on my sidebar and if you click on them it will take you to the link on my adoption blog.

Thank you for helping us fund our adoption!

Catching, Cleaning and Cooking Fish

Well, we went out on a boat on Sunday all day and fished the inlet. I was so proud of myself... I caught the first fish of the day and baited my first live shrimp to boot. By the end of the day I was a pro at baiting not only shrimp, but live fiddler crabs as well. We caught about 8 fish, packed them in ice, and dh will be cooking them up this evening. We'll see how we like it. lol! Free fish dinner...I know Ilike that!

We went to one Publix and asked about the mystery coupon....the lady had no idea what I was talking about. Late that same evening dh ran to another Publix, but forgot to ask. We also ended up only getting one paper on Sunday, so once I look through it, I see an order to Coupon Clippers coming!

We'll be visiting a Publix soon to shop for the week, and I need to hit a CVS to use up some ECB's. Thanks to Sisterly Savings for posting the CVS deals for the week. I haven't had time at all to look, so it was a real time saver for me!

"Frugaling..."

So, today my youngest son was practicing for baseball and telling me how proud he was of himself. He said, "I hit the ball like 3 times and they were all line drives"....

"Great job!" I said, and then I asked him, "Hey are you going to encourage anyone else today?" (Thinking of the teammates he would see that evening at practice ).

He said at his most precious:

"Yeah, I'm really proud of you Mom....... and your frugaling....." LOL!

Goodness, ladies I didn't even know I was frugaling.... Did you?

Just a few thoughts....

I talked to the manager of my Publix as I was curious as to why our region offered the Publix TP as the mystery coupon and we received the 2 liter bottle of soda again. He didn't really comment that they "ran out"... and asked "why did you want the TP?" I chuckled and mentioned, that I was a little disappointed in their originlaity since we just had the soda two weeks ago, and how some online friends had gotten the TP.

He sort of laughed and said that's funny. And I asked what was funny? He said he couldn't believe that people where talking about the Publix penny coupon online. I thought about that afterward, (of course I never have the right words to say at the time)! I wanted to say, "Dude, there is a whole sub culture of frugal customers online that you aren't even aware of!" Get thee aware! LOL!

Anyway, I "think" they never got enough product to do the 1 penny TP last week.

Saving with my husband...

I just want to say that my husband is awesome! He gets so "gigged" (is that a word? Maybe it's a word from somewhere deep in my 80's past).... anyway he gets so "gigged up" about saving money and the deals we are finding. He even goes to stores on the way to work to help me. lol! Ya gotta love that!

This week Walgreens had so many register rewards deals. There was the Olay Bar Soap, and then there was the Zest, Ivory and Safeguard soap... and then Herbal Essence, Pantene, aussie shampoo and then Secret and Old Spice deoderent. (to name a few) So as not to wipe out any store, dh went to 4 different stores in our area, and I went to the two we normally shop at. Then dh and I put our brains together and decided to purchase a gas card with the RR's at Walgreens. They said we couldn't use them to purchase gift cards. Bummer. But his next stop netted us a new outlet.... So, we have been using our RR's to save money on groceries this week.

I have forgotten how much my dh appreciates saving a dollar.... He is so "into it", and I just smile and give him a big hug. God really has blessed me with my mate.

Find for the week.....

I read Crystal at Money Saving Mom every day. I love to hear about her shopping trips and how much she is able to purchase with only $35 (well now $40) dollars a week. One of the things that her grocery store allows her to do, is to use a catalina (sometimes known as register rewards) on her groceries. For instance she can use a Walgreens RR on her grocery bill.

Having just taken advantage of several of the Walgreens Regsiter Rewards deals this week, I thought I would check at my favorite grocery store to see if we could use our $4.00 off Register Rewards there. Answer...yes I sure can! One per transaction. So I will be making several smaller trips over the next few weeks to use up some of my catalinas before they expire!

National *---Fill in the Blank---* Month

Oh I just have to say, I am finding March to be a very intriguing month indeed. Not only is it national Frozen Food Month.... (which has many sweepstakes in which one can enter)...but there are plenty of other observances going on in March. Here are a few:

• National Social Work Month
• National Rosacea Awareness Month
• National Poison Prevention Month
• National Furniture Refinishing Month
• National Foot Health Month
• Just to name a few......

Then there are the food related observances:

• National Frozen Food Month
• National Nutrition Month (one which I desperately need!)
• National Flour Month
• National Peanut Month
• National Hamburger and Pickle Month
• and National Noodle Month

There were plenty more to choose from, I just thought I'd throw a few out there.....I'm so wondering about National Hamburger and Pickle Month and National Noodle Month.... I have got to find out more about those! :-)

National Frozen Food Month

Did you know that March is National Freezer Food Month? I was alerted to this by Money Common Sense (one of the blogs I read). She will be using up the food in her freezer this month in honor of the occassion.

I was quite interested in this, as maybe there will be some good sales and coupons on freezer foods this coming month. You know maybe I can stock up? Oh yeah, I need a bigger freezer. Bummer.

Anyway, you can click on this link Bring Us To Your Table and it will bring you to a website sponsered by the National Frozen and Refrigerated Foods Association. On it you can check out websites, and enter the Easy Home Meals $10,000 Sweepstakes. Now if you really like to enter contests....then click on the Our sponsers link on that page, and it will bring you to many of the frozen food sponsers...(IE: Dole, Birds Eye, Red Baron, Welch's, Totino's etc). Many of those have separate contests for trips to win etc. So you have a plethera of sweepstakes to enter if you choose!

Me, I'll just take the used refrigerator/freezer drawing...if you find one I can enter, let me know.

A Rude Awakening....

It's been a long day.... very long. You know Sunday's for us are about a day of rest. But today felt like anything but. We awoke to our house alarm going off. LOUD. No, no one was trying to break in, we have a system that detects glass breaking, and can sometimes be set off by loudly clinking glass. My ds was taking the dishes out of the dishwasher this morning and must have clinked the glasses loudly. What followed was a comedy of errors. When we tried to put our code in, it wouldn't turn off. Literally would not turn off! Now you need to know that this was around 7am.... I am SO not a morning person, and both dh and I had been sleeping and awoke to this loud blaring sound. So we were bumbling and stumbling around trying to get our brains to think. I didn't have my glasses on, so trying to see what I was doing was difficult as well! I tried to find the number to the alarm company and dh was trying to punch in the code to the alarm. I finally got the alarm company and was talking to them on the phone while dh was in the garage. I was trying to talk yell over the alarm, and all of a sudden everything goes dead in the house, lights, phone.... everything...... BUT the alarm.

I yell to dh, "WHAT DID YOU DO?"

He yelled back (because we can't talk normally over the alarm), "I SHUT OFF ALL THE ELECTRIC TO THE HOUSE, TO SEE IF IT WOULD TURN OFF!"

I yelled back: "I WAS ON THE PHONE WITH THE ALARM COMPANY!"

So Dh runs back out to turn it on... meanwhile what my kids were witnessing must have been humorous. We get back on with the alarm company and they try to fix it, but it didn't work. And for some reason the phones went out again...I have no idea why. So we phone them a third time, and by this time the alarm has been going off for 15 minutes straight, which feels like at least 30 minutes! (Our poor neighbors!) They finally tell dh how to disconnect it.

Peace...blessed peace and quiet...

Who needs coffee when you can wake up like that???

Oust BOGO coupons

Just a quick deal: For those of you with a Publix that has Oust BOGO, here is a coupon you can print twice for Oust Buy one get one free. (Make sure your printer is ready) I know Publix will take one of the coupons, but since they split the price of the BOGO and apply it to each item individually, only $1.69 got taken off my bill. (I didn't check it until I was home, or I would have tried the second coupon or combined with a $1.oo off coupon that I had). Anyway, this coupon might help someone, as that Oust sure is expensive on it's own!

OUST BOGO Coupon

Am I DONE yet???

Jeanie asked if I was DONE yet with all my stuff I had to do today... I sure wish! I saw that comment pop up when I took a break, and I so wanted to respond back... "I have barely even started!" LOL! My new coupon binder is taking forever to get set up, and so I am swimming in paper worse than ever. This is why I get into trouble, because I do this stuff, before we are having company, and then I get even more behind on stuff.

So I can't type long because I am actually going to do the year end (2 months late) filing that I've procrastinated on! I promised myself that if nothing else got done today, my homeschool room would be cleaned and complete. That means all the coupons, (which I got two more envelopes mailed to me today), and the filing. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. :-)

In my high school yearbook on my page I put this quote, which sum me up well.... "If it weren't for the last minute nothing would ever get done".

My Super Productive Day.... or maybe not....

Today was my free day...it's the day my kiddos have Homeschool Co-op, and I have a few hours to run errands. And I had a long list of errands to run too! Lots to get accomplished on our adoption paperwork, photos to be copied, a trip to CVS to get the things I need there, Walgreens for some deals for my mom, Walmart for some bubbles, Sam's Club for just a few items.... I was armed and ready!

But soon after I dropped the kids off, I just didn't feel well. Nauseous, stomachache. Not good. I thought I could stick it out, but I kept feeling worse, so I just decided to head back home. Thank goodness the Lord was gracious as my kids weren't home. I crawled into bed and went back to sleep, hoping I wouldn't get sick. I didn't and so God was gracious once again.

So, that was my well planned day. Nothing to show for it, but an unmade bed! I picked the kiddos up and we grabbed a rotisserie chicken for dinner. Dh will thank me when they get back from basketball...it's easy and done, and it was less than $5. A good deal when you feel too sick to cook. :)