Julie & Julia

Tonight I watched the movie "Julie & Julia." It was a cute movie and has given me some things to think about as I'm just starting out on my own blogging adventure. When I first decided to start this blog I didn't send anyone the link. I was doing this for myself and not because I cared in the least if anyone else read it. I assumed I would write here every night as sort of an on-line journal and my husband would be my only reader and then we would talk about things I wrote in my blog posts. It's only been 2 weeks, but already I'm having so much fun writing that a few days ago I sent the link to my 4 very best friends (that includes you Mom). My friend Kim asked if I had seen the movie "Julie & Julia" because she assumed that was where I came up with the idea for the blog. I had heard of the movie, but hadn't seen it. Of course I googled it to read the reviews and realized pretty quickly why she would think that was my inspiration for this blog. So, of course, I had to go rent it. (By the way... LOVE the Red Box! I love renting movies for only a dollar!)

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie. Although I'm glad I didn't see it in the theater, I could see a lot of similarities between myself and the main character Julie. I can understand her motivation to want to start her blog project. I think that what I have struggled with over the past several (well, if I stop and think... and count... more like eight) years is that I felt like I was just kind of lost. Not in a totally dysfunctional and depressed state or anything, just personally unfulfilled. I mean, I did get married, have fantastic friends, have the most amazing little boy, but just personally, I felt lost. At times I've struggled to explain this to my husband because I haven't ever wanted him to feel like I wasn't fulfilled in our marriage. It seems like the two should go hand in hand, but they just don't. I feel like there is this whole part of my life that is progressing as it should and as I want it to, but then there is this whole other part of my life that has just been stagnant for way too long. I know my husband understands how I feel because I think he feels the same way.

I think that a lot of how you are feeling on the inside shows up in different ways on the outside. For me, that feeling of not really knowing my place in life professionally and feeling like I had lost my way spiritually and feeling like I was missing some sort of motivational drive or passion has expressed itself outwardly in the chaotic way that my surroundings are kept and in my inability to see anything all the way through. Don't get the impression that I am living in some crazy "Clean House" style clutter pit (well, the garage, maybe yes!) or that I sit around on the couch all day watching mindless TV and eating Bon Bons. I can certainly make the main living areas of my house presentable for company and I'm not an anti-social person, but it's the "behind the scenes" stuff that is just a mess. Total disorganization. It just nags at me constantly. It's hard to function the way I want to function when everything is in such disarray.

I have no idea why I've finally reached a point where I am ready to change, but I really truly know that I am there. I am ready to be more physically and mentally healthy. I feel like for the first time in eight years I'm taking the right approach to change. I'm up for this challenge. I want the person that I am in my head to match the person I am on the outside too.

Today I took a load of clothes to Goodwill. I'm sure it is the first trip of many. Normally I would let things pile up because I would reason with myself that there was no point in making the trip until I had gone through EVERYTHING in my house and taken it all at one time. Well, the Goodwill is not even a 5 minute drive down the road and who cares if I have everything to take at one time??! At least this was progress. I'm learning that everything doesn't have to be a grand gesture. It seriously took me less time to go to the Goodwill, drop off those clothes and come back home than it did to find that change purse last night!

So, as I sit here drinking my green tea after just taking my metformin on my 14th day of not drinking coke and my fifth day of not eating out I can honestly say that I am more proud of myself for the way I have lived my life these past two weeks than I have been in a very long time. I may have been more proud of myself for things in the past, but I've certainly never, ever been as aware of it as I am right now.

I Hate Buying Cosmetics!

Today I went to Rite Aid and CVS. I feel a little torn because I spent more money than I wanted to, but I also got some really good deals on things that we needed. I'm realizing though, that I'm going to have to be careful not to buy things just because they are a good deal. Now that I have a small stock pile built up, I need to only buy things when they are almost free.

I rarely buy make-up and only buy face wash, shampoo, body wash, etc. when we run out. Before last week, I wasn't using coupons for any of it, so it would be $7 or $10 here or there added into a Target or Walmart trip total. This is the first time I've bought several things at once to stock up. The only make-up I ever really use is a tinted moisturizer (I like Olay Total Effects), mascara, cover-up (if needed and I'm going out) and blush. I currently don't own any eye shadow. I have one black eye liner pencil, but can never get myself to spend money on make-up. However, I was all out of my tinted moisturizer, my mascara is ridiculously old and I have some cover-up from my Mom, but it just isn't really the right kind for my skin and is too sticky, so I needed something different.

Rite-aid was offering a $5 off of a $20 purchase coupon for watching 20 short ad videos (http://my.adperk.com/splash/d30b50da/index.html) so, I did that last night and printed my on-line coupon. I also found a great coupon match up for coupons from the Sunday paper and store coupons from this week's sales flier at The Krazy Coupon Lady (http://thekrazycouponlady.com/category/rite-aid). I also printed out the Johnson & Johnson Beauty for All Ages $10 rebate

(http://print.coupons.com/couponweb/Offers.aspx?pid=13903&nid=10&zid=xh20) This rebate is good when you purchase $30 worth of Aveeno, Ambi, Clean & Clear, Purpose, Lubriderm and RoC products.

So, I went to Rite Aid armed with my coupons and my list and found everything I was looking for. The only difference between The Krazy Coupon Lady's scenario and my scenario was the pricing. The prices shown on that website were less than I paid for the Lubriderm and the Aveeno. Maybe they had smaller sized products that weren't available in my area, or maybe prices were just more here! I bought the Lubriderm, Aveeno and Clean & Clear (which happens to be what my husband uses for face wash, so that worked out great!) at Rite Aid and then went to CVS for the Olay Total Effects tinted moisturizer (which is always right around $20 so I HATE when I run out) and I also purchased some cover up and mascara.

All in all, my retail total was $93.39. Holy cow! Although I am sure I would have spent that anyway buying everything separately at different shopping trips and never realizing what it all added up to! BUT...

I had $31.50 in coupons

I got back $8 in Extra Care Bucks at CVS to use on my next purchase

I have the $10 Johnson & Johnson rebate to mail in

and

I have a $5.00 rebate to mail into Olay

So, that all brings my total down to $38.89 which is a savings of 58%

Not bad, but I'm really hoping eventually I can be one of those people who consistently saves around 75%. I think I can get there with practice.

I Tried to Pick Something Small...

... and it turned into a 45 minute activity! I didn't really have time today to tackle anything big on my list. This morning my neighbor and I took our boys to the Aquarium (that membership has been one of our best purchases all year!), came home, had lunch and Andy went down for a nap. I got some laundry folded, some dishes emptied from the dishwasher and then I sat down to go through this week's grocery sales fliers and match up the deals to my coupons and before I knew it, nap time was over.

We went to the grocery store... my 2nd adventure in couponing. I spent $75 but saved $43 and $20 of that $75 total was diapers, which I do not count in my grocery budget. So, I feel pretty good about that. I still need to make a trip to Rite Aid and CVS tomorrow. I'll post about that trip and the rebates and coupons separately tomorrow.

On Wednesday nights my group of friends here gets together for a group we call "Stitch n' Bitch." Lately there's been less stitching and more... well... you know... going on! It's more like our weekly therapy session and I feel incredibly lucky to have that once a week! Thanks to my awesome brother for watching Andy tonight so that I could go, because I sure needed a break!

Anyway, I didn't get home until 10:30 and still needed to take the trash out and all of the gazillion boxes from unpacking all the dishes yesterday and then FINALLY at 11:00 I sat down to figure out what I could accomplish from my list today!!! So, I picked to organize my gift cards in the cute little change purse that my grandmother made me for Christmas last year. My grandmother is very crafty and makes wonderful quilts and bags and all sorts of great things. I love getting presents from her. They are always my favorite. So, anyway, this little change purse is perfect for gift cards because it has 3 staggered pouches inside and fits perfectly in my purse. This way I don't have gift cards stacked in my wallet making it too bulky to snap shut.

So, I thought I knew right where the purse was. I mean, I had just seen it... somewhere. After searching around for 30 minutes I FINALLY remembered where I had put it. It took me all of 5 min. to get my gift cards together and put them in there. Although, I did find some gift cards that I forgot I had. I have $385 worth of gift cards to various places. That does not even include gift certificates I still haven't used. I have a gift certificate to a bed and breakfast from my Mom that I need to make reservations for and one for a massage and a facial from my husband from Christmas A YEAR AGO that I haven't used. Seriously???!!! What is my problem???!!! Who procrastinates getting a massage? I LOVE massages!

One of the things that has been so frustrating for me is the time that I feel like I'm wasting looking for things. I'm so over it. I know that I can only tackle organizing one thing at a time, but some days it just doesn't feel like it's happening fast enough. It's not just time that is wasted either, it's also the money. I cringe at the thought of how many duplicate items we are going to find out in that garage (I can't even THINK about putting the garage on my list until at least March!). We are always looking for a wrench or a tape measure or a stud finder... and eventually give up looking and just buy a new one. Really, it's sad. And embarrassing. I don't want to feel so scatter brained all the time anymore. That is why I'm doing this whole project. I am really proud that I've stuck with this for almost 2 weeks now!!! Only 50 more to go! ha ha!

Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Dishes??

Next on my list was to unpack the farm dishes from my grandmother. My intention with that task was to unpack AND put away. However, I totally did not expect the number of dishes that were packed in those boxes!!! There are 24 (yes, TWENTY FOUR!) dinner plates alone! So, although I had cleared out a bottom cabinet for the dishes, there is no way that they will fit in there. I am going to have to completely rearrange my cabinets.

I really like the dishes. I think they are cute and I will actually use them as my special occasion dishes, so I want them to be accessible, but there was no way I could tackle moving everything around in my kitchen tonight! I'll have to ask my grandmother why she had so many!

It does feel good though to get all of those boxes out of the garage. Those dishes have been packed up for over three years. When I got them we were living in an old house built in 1920 and we were in the process of (slowly) renovating it. So, everything stayed in boxes. Before we could finish renovating that house, we moved to Charleston and lived in a rental house for a year and a half, so a lot of things still stayed in boxes. We just moved into a new house in June and I'm (slowly) getting things out of boxes. Sometimes I discover things I didn't even know I had!

The other thing I'm working on crossing off of my list this week is not eating out for a whole week. So far so good... although it's only been 3 days! My biggest weakness with eating out has been lunches. I always feel like I don't have anything for lunch or know what to buy for lunch. I've been trying to stay away from processed lunch meats, but I still need something easy for myself and for Andy. I was definitely wasting the most money by eating out for lunch 2-3 days a week. The saving money part does feel good. I've hardly spent any money this week. I've just been getting more creative with what we already had in our pantry and fridge. Hopefully I can keep it up!

How to Organize a Pantry

I feel like a weight has been lifted! I FINALLY got my pantry organized! The first two pictures are the "before" and the last two are the "after." Things were just thrown in there every which way and I could never find what I was looking for. Until recently, I just tried to ignore it. I knew I was wasting money buying things I probably already had, but I wasn't motivated to sort it all out. It finally got to the point where it was driving me crazy over Christmas. We had family in town and every time someone asked if we had sugar or creamer or honey, etc. I would frantically search through the pantry because I knew we had whatever they were looking for... buried... somewhere under the taco seasoning...

Seriously though, it was embarrassing. And it really did stress me out. Besides, there really isn't any point in me couponing if I don't know what I have in my cupboards (or a place to put all the things I'm scoring awesome deals on!) So, today I finally conquered the pantry clutter!

Here is what I did:

1. Searched YouTube for a video under "How to Organize a Pantry"

2. Watched it

3. Did what the organizational guru in the video said to do

First I took everything out of the pantry. Next I had to add in my own step that they didn't mention on the video... vacuum the pantry floor. I had several pieces of dry pasta that had fallen out of a bag all over the pantry floor, along with colored sprinkles from a jar that had opened and everything was snuggled in with some dust bunnies. So, that all had to go. Then I grouped everything I had laid out on my table by the following categories:

Baking ingredients

Canned fruits and vegetables

Dried Pasta, rice & beans

Cereal

Dressings and marinades

Snacks

Juice

Spices (the ones that aren't part of our spice rack)

Bread

My pantry is pretty bare so you might have more categories to sort by.

Then I started putting everything back into the pantry in groups. I ended up going to Walmart and getting two inexpensive fabric bins for snacks. One for family snacks and one for my son's snacks. I also added some wire racks to the back of the pantry doors. I decided to put all of our canned goods on the large rack and our tinfoil, freezer bags and cling wrap on the other. We also had one of those grocery bag holders from our old house that I hadn't hung up yet, so I mounted that to the wall. I also painted the inner part of the raised panel on the door with some black chalkboard paint so that I have a place to make a list of things we are running low on or almost out of.

Overall, I'm SUPER pleased with myself. I feel like this huge area of stress has just been eliminated. I'm already meal planning in my head with things from the pantry that I didn't even know we had!

My love/hate relationship with Metformin

My grand plan for today was to organize my pantry after Andy went down for his nap this afternoon... but things didn't quite work out that way. First of all, I'm single parenting this week while my husband is away for a for work until Friday. I dropped him off at the airport at 12:30 and came home to put Andy down for a nap, all excited to get started on that pantry! Of course, that was right when my husband called from the airport to say he had a message from our tenant that his hot water wasn't working. FANTASTIC! Now, I must say that I am pretty darn handy when it comes to working on the house (or our rental houses) but I am NOT the plumber of the family!! My husband handles all of that! When I called the tenant I found out that NO water was coming out of the faucet when he turned the hot water on. Of course I totally panicked and assumed a pipe had frozen and burst in the crawl space and water must be gushing everywhere. For some unfathomable reason it's been below freezing here at night for several days now. (we live in Charleston, SC... COME ON NOW!!!) So, Matt was on a plane and Andy was sleeping and I was freaking out. Roto Rooter said they would add us to the list of people with frozen pipes and I was completely panicked at how much they would charge me for a Sunday visit.
Well, God bless my brother and his fiance. My brother drove me over to the house to check things out while his fiance stayed at my house while Andy napped.
The pipe had been frozen, but not burst. When we got there it was pretty much thawed out. The hot water was working again - although there was a small leak on the hot water heater - and a friend who is a licensed plumber returned my call, wasn't doing anything and came over and fixed it for me.
Crisis averted!
But of course this fiasco entirely killed my nap time plans! So, I'm crossing something else off my list instead. I've started taking my Metformin every day. I started last night. The reason this is a big deal and I have been putting it off is because the last time I was on it (when we were trying to conceive) I felt sick for the first 4-6 weeks. So, you can understand my reluctance to want to voluntarily start taking it again. When does it ever seem like a good time to feel sick? Metformin is actually a diabetes drug that helps regulate insulin levels, but it is often prescribed for patients with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). I took the Metformin starting a month and a half before we conceived all the way through to the end of my first trimester when I was pregnant with Andy.
I feel like I need to start taking it again now to start getting my body ready for when we decide we are ready to try for #2. I hate having to take a daily medication and I hate how sick I will feel for this first month, but after that, I know I will love how much it will help regulate my hormones and also, it does help me to lose weight. I find that when I'm on it, I rarely crave anything sweet. This is TOTALLY opposite my normal self! Ha ha! If I do eat anything sweet, I will feel really sick after. It helps curb my craving for cookies or cake or brownies or any other yummy baked good.
I think that the Metformin is the best treatment for me for my PCOS when I combine it with a better diet and with exercise. I just need to find other things to occupy my mind this first month. Tonight I clipped coupons and now I'm drinking my green tea and then heading to bed. Hopefully there won't be any bumps in the road tomorrow so that I can get this disaster of a house cleaned tomorrow during nap time!

My First Adventure in Couponing

Okay, so this isn't something that was on my list, but it's something that I have really been reading up on a lot and really want to get good at! Last Sunday I bought two Sunday papers and clipped all the coupons for products that my family uses. I organized them by category in baseball card holders in a binder. I think this method is the one that will work the best for me. I then went through the sales fliers of 3 grocery stores near me as well as CVS and Walgreens and matched coupons with items already on sale or items that had store coupons offered as well.

I ended up going on Thursday night to do my grocery shopping. This was a mistake because the grocery store I went to ended up being sold out of a lot of the items I had coupons for the best deals on. Probably because they were doing super double coupons and doubling them up to $2.00 each. So, I'm sure a lot of other people had the same idea as I did ~ and they all beat me to it! Now, I know that I could get rain checks for the items they were sold out of, but this is the grocery store furthest from my house, and it just wasn't worth the drive all the way back over there for those few items. I'm sure the same good sales will come around again and next time I'll be more prepared!

Now, this was only my first week clipping coupons, so I didn't have a good base to pull from, but I think I still did okay. My total before coupons rung up at $214. I have to say that I was slightly panicked that I didn't calculate right and was going to end up paying close to $200 for groceries...BUT... after she scanned all of the coupons and they were doubled up to $2.00... it took ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN DOLLARS off of my total!!!! With tax I ended up paying $104 and change. I was totally shocked!

Of course my goal is to get to the point where I'm buying only $75 worth of groceries and paying around $35 or so. But I don't have a stock pile yet, so I'm working on that now. My current monthly grocery budget is $75 per week. Even though I spent $104 this past week, there is no way I would need to spend anything more than $25 on perishables (if that!) this upcoming week.

I took a picture of everything I got on my trip. The best part was all of the meat I got for practically nothing! I got 3 bags of frozen shrimp for the price of 1 (this was a HUGE contributing factor to the total price. Those bags of shrimp are normally $25 a piece) and I got 2 lbs of ground turkey at less than half price and I got 5 and a half pounds of chicken for the price of 1 and half pounds. I'm pretty pleased with myself. Pleased enough that I'm making tomorrow's item to cross off my checklist "Organizing the Pantry" because I need someplace to put everything and I need to have a good inventory of what I already have. I'll post before and after pictures of that as well... because that sucker is a TOTAL disaster!!!