Mommin' It Up!

March 31, 2010March 31, 2010

The Circus is Coming to Town (and we’re giving away tickets)

The Ringling Brothers Zing Zang Zoom will be at the Ervin J. Nutter Center in Dayton April 29-May 2, and we’ve got a family four pack of tickets to give away!

Thanks to Mom Central, I’m taking my family on April 29th, and I can’t wait! It sounds awesome – here’s what the winner of our Cincinnati giveaway had to say:
“Winning these tickets gave my family the opportunity to experience the greatest show on earth. From beginning to end, all of us had the absolute best time. Zing Zang Zoom was spectacular. Thank you!!!” –Karen

To enter to win four tickets to the April 29th opening night:
1) Leave a comment on this post telling us what you think your kids would enjoy most about the show.
2) Tweet about the contest on Twitter and leave a comment here telling us you did so.
3) Post about the contest on Facebook and leave a comment here telling us you did so.
4) Subscribe to our feed and leave a comment here telling us you did so.

The contest will run until 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 7th, and the winner will be chosen using random.org. Good luck!

But there’s more! Mom Central is offering a great deal on tickets – just use coupon code MOM on Ticketmaster.com and you can get four tickets for $44 for Monday-Friday matinee shows (any additional tickets are still priced at $11), and $4 off Friday night and all weekend shows.

Really want to win? Enter the giveaways hosted by our friends! Tickets are available from Shannan at MommyBits and Cortney at Evan Has Landed!

March 30, 2010

Laminate Love

I love my house. It is old, built in 1917, and ripe with “character”. Woodwork (plain but pretty), window seats, plaster walls (cracks notwithstanding), hardwood floors – I love it.

The one thing I don’t love about my house is the kitchen and downstairs half-bath. The half-bath is a poorly done add-on and about the size of an airplane lavatory. The kitchen is very small, the cabinets are cheap, and even though we put in a new floor when we moved in, we did not make a wise choice. Almost nine years later it was cracked in places, impossible to keep clean, and just plain gross. If one can be disheartened by a kitchen floor, I was disheartened by mine. It has gotten to the point recently where even when it was clean, it was really not clean. You know? Just icky.

So I’ve been saying for awhile now, that I’ll live here forever, in my house, contentedly, but all I really want for every birthday, Christmas, anniversary forever is a new kitchen floor.

Well, Happy 10th Anniversary to me!!

Bobby Rapson gave me the one gift I really wanted and he worked hard allllll weekend to get our new floor installed all by himself! I am SO in love with it. I want to marry it. (Which probably is a total backfire on Bobby’s end, because I think he wants me to still want to be married to HIM. ) Sunday morning I actually went in and sat on my new kitchen floor and sang “You are my sunshine”. To my floor. It’s THAT wonderful, people!! Wanna see? Here are some pictures!

Our old floor (with oven and refrigerator already moved out of the kitchen):

Joshua helping Daddy pull up the old yucky tile:

The frightening kitchen with no appliances and a sub-floor:

And…the Pergo of Dreams!!!

See why I’m so IN LOVE?? It made all the difference in the world! It looks amazing, and is going to be so easy to keep clean!!

Thanks to my hard-working hubby for making my flooring dreams come true!

March 29, 2010March 28, 2010

A Little Stocked Up

Because I like to give Emily ample opportunity to make fun of me, I thought I’d post this sweeet CVS deal I got Saturday night! I do enjoy posting my deals each week, but I’ve been finding if I wait until Saturday to do it, I just won’t get around to it. So, I’m just gonna spew my nerdy yet heroic acts of couponery up on this here blog anytime I FEEL like it! MMkay?

(And let me say that as I write this, my kitchen floor is being re-done by my wonderful husband as a 10th anniversary present! I am so excited! But most of my kitchen is now in my dining room which means the only clean surface I had to take this picture on was my couch!)

Lemme tell you a little secret which you may already know. A lot of CVS stores start the following week’s deals on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday morning. *So* if you are a nerd like me and look ahead on the internetz to what is going to be on sale the next week, you can shop on Saturday night and get the current week’s deals PLUS the next week’s deals. Which is what I did this week! And it was awesome! Here’s how it played out:

Pampers $8.97 (current week’s deal)

2 Huggies $17.98 (next week’s deal)

3 Listerine $5.97 (next week’s deal)

Huggies wipes $3.49 (regular price)

Secret deodorant $1.37 (clearance I could not resist!)

Total = $37.78

coupons:

CVS $5/$30 email coupon (expired but my store takes for 30 days)

– $1.50 Pampers manu q

– $6 two Huggies $3 off printables

– $3 three Listerine manu q’s (from paper and printables)

-$3 off 3 Listerine CVS printable coupon from CVS.com

-.75 Huggies printable q

-$.50 off Secret manu q

– $4 CVS CRT when you buy Huggies wipes and diapers

– $3 CVS CRT any Huggies Supreme diapers

– $2 CVS CRT off any $10 baby care purchase

total = $9.03

I paid with 7 ECB, paid $4.21 cash including tax, and got back 8 ECB – 3 for the Pampers and 5 for the Huggies! Holla! I was super-excited to be able to use all those CVS CRT’s from the magic coupon machine at the same time!!

Thanks to the great diaper sales at CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens lately, I am SUPER-STOCKED on diapers and wipes. I keep buying them even though I am going to start to work with Sophie on the potty training thing again soon because a) she is still REALLY opposed to the idea and b) if I don’t use them I have a few good friends with babies in size 4 I can give them to! Here’s my giant stockpile!

Um, there’s also an unopened jumbo pack of Huggies in Sophie’s bedroom!

Ok, so I may have a little problem…but I’m not going over budget…no one’s getting hurt, right!??