Mommin' It Up!

July 27, 2008

Weekly Winners July 20-26 (sort of!)

I’m cheating a little this week on WW by showing just a couple of photos I took last weekend. After being with our family at Kiser Lake all Satuday, I didn’t have time to go through all of the over 200 pictures I took and so these three are from last week!

Heres Sophie climbing out of the concrete basin of water they play in. She was looking at me for moral support or permission, I’m not sure which!

I caught the sun playing peek-a-boo. It was a beautiful day!

Joshua felt the need to water the already extremely wet ground – but he looked so cute doing it!

Now, on to the correct week! This week I did something that I hate doing, and that was painfully, disgustingly overdue. I CLEANED. I am the world’s worst housekeeper and well, you could really tell. Things were getting bad. So, I cleaned. Starting Tuesday I picked a room or rooms and each day and worked hard. So Friday afternoon, when the kids were napping, I got isnspired to take some pictures. My house is pretty when it’s clean!

Here’s my living room. Notice you can still see some toys under the couch and coffee table. Now, if ONLY I could get my kids to stop playing with toys…hmm…

Here’s our antique organ. My mother-in-law gave it to us. It was in my hubby’s childhood home. It still has the price tag on the inside that says 1899.

Candles on my dining room table…

And a happy little engine on the train table!

That’s as good as it gets for me this week! Go see Lotus at Sarcastic Mom for more Weekly Winners!

July 26, 2008

All Shop and No Pay Makes Jenny a Happy Girl!

Well, I had great fun CVSing this week! I even had a couple of transactions that ended in ZERO out-of-pocket. Yay! Here’s what I got!

My first stop at CVS this week was for MILK! But I can’t go in and get JUST MILK! So…

Milk $3.69
Loreal Vive BOGO Free $4.99
3 Glade Scented Oil Candle refills @ $2.49 each = $7.47 (you know I loves me my GSOC!!)
Total = $16.16
I used CVS $3/$15 coupon
Loreal Vive BOGO coupon (making them both free!)
Two $1 off Loreal Vive Rite Aid coupons (givng me oooooooveraaaage!!!! yess!)
Buy two get one free GSOC refill coupn -$2.49
$2/$2 GSOC refill coupon (inside GSOC holder package I had previously purchased)
Total = $1.67. I didn’t have any ECB small enough, so I paid in cash $2.34 with tax and got back 3 ECB for the Glade! yay!

Now, I am an old lady and have been having trouble with my back, so my next stop was to get some of those WellPatch(es) that are a July monthly ECB deal. And get some more free-plus-overage shampoo. And free baby wipes!!

Four Loreal Vive shampoo/conditioner BOGO Free $9.98
1 CVS baby wipes $2
2 WellPatch $11.98
Tic Tacs (not pictured!) 89 cents
Total = $24.85
I used:
CVS $3/$15
Two $1 off WellPatch
$2 off CVS Skincare q (for the wipes – wasn’t sure if this would work but it did! yay!)
Two BOGO Free Loreal Vive q’s
Four $1 off Rite-Aid Loreal Vive q’s
total = $3.87. I paid with 3 ECB and with tax $1.99 cash and got back 6 ECB for the WellPatches!!

Since that $2 off skincare q worked on the baby wipes, I decided to go crazy and compete the Great Free Baby Wipe Deal of 2008. This week at CVS, if you bought $15 of CVS baby products, you got back 5 ECB. Since the $2 off CVS skincare q worked on the wipes, this meant I could get 8 free tubs of wipes and then get 5 ECB after I got the last one. One problem: you can only use ONE of those coupons per transaction. So this meant I would have to do 8 different transactions! So I added one as a filler very time I went in, but eight times a week is excessive EVEN FOR ME. A couple of times I did two transactions when I was in the store, and then finally I went in one night on my way to Kroger to add some more wipes toward the deal with a couple of sweet zero-OOP transactions!

This is two separate transactions, both of which I paid ZERO out-of-pocket for thanks to coupons! The first one was:
1 CVS baby wipes $2
1 Playskool baby wipes $3.79
3 Sally Hansen nail polish clearance at 43 cents each
Total = $7.08
Coupons:
$2 CVS skincare q
$2 off Playskool CRT
$1 of Playskool manu q
$3/2 Sally Hansen q

The cashier adjusted the Sally Hansen q down to cover my TOTAL before tax, instead of just the cost of the nail polish, so the total came out to ZERO!! Woohoo!
2nd transaction:
1 CVS baby wipes $2
1 CVS hand sanitizer $1.79
Used $2 off CVS skincare q and Free Hand Sanitizer CRT for another total of ZERO!!

I finally finished out the Great Free Baby Wipe Deal of 2008 with this transaction (I bought two tubs so I really did itin seven transactions instead of eight. Eight was TOO MANY!!):

OFF repellent $3.49
two Sure deodorant $5.98
2 CVS baby wipes $4
Two Trident BOGO Free $1.49
Package of straws $1.99
Total= $16.95
Coupons:
$3/$15 CVS q
$1 CVS OFF q
75 cent OFF manu q
$1 OFF Walgreens ES q
$2 off CVS skincare q
Two $1.50 off Sure deodorant Walgreens ES q’s
Total= $6.20
I paid with 6 ECB and 45 cents cash and got back 9 ECB! 5 for completeing the wipes deal, 3 for the Sure deodorant and 1 for the Trident! Woohoo!

Ok, I am shopped out! Hope you all did great this week. For more crazy couponing, visit Super Savings Saturday at Money Saving Mom and CVS Superstars at The Centsible Sawyer!

July 25, 2008

First-Time Offender

Last Saturday after a family get-together, Sophie and I were happily cruisin’ along home via the rural state route off of which my hubby’s sailing club is located when I looked up and saw a State Trooper coming toward me on the other side of the road. I quickly looked down at my speedometer. It said 70. The speed limit was 55. I knew I was toast. Crap!!

Sure enough, the trooper turned around and flipped his lights on, and thus at the age of 30, I got my first speeding ticket. He clocked me at 71, and the fine was $175. That’s right, one hundred seventy-five-freakin’-dollars!! A little steep, I think. Champaign County must be hurtin’ for cash. But alas, I was guilty. I knew I was. It just would’ve felt a lot better if I had meant to speed. I’d much rather be punished for a crime I intended to commit than for one I totally didn’t mean to at all. I was just driving along…not even paying attention. There was no one else really on the road out there in the sticks. Just me and the cop.

At least the trooper was nice. Right away he told me that Sophie was adorable (adorable enough to get me out of a ticket? Apparently not.) I probably would have cried if he had been mean to me. Last year we got pulled over in Indianapolis when Bobby was driving, and the trooper was a complete jerk for no reason. He was a disgrace to his profession. We had two sleeping kids in the back of the car and he treated us like we were hiding meth under the seats or something. Ugh. But anyway, while I was waiting for Good Cop to write my ticket up, Sophie kept saying “uh-oh, uh-oh!” Truer words were ne’er spoken, little girl! He wrote my ticket up and gave me my instructions for payment and/or court (I’ll take payment, thanks so much. I’d love to spend $700 in gas to come back out here and see you again, but I have to wash my hair that day. So.), and sent me on my way, admonishing me to “be safe.” Which I guess means drive 55.

So, my friends, that’s my sob story. Crime doesn’t pay. Unless you are the Champaign County Municipal Court, in which case my crime just paid you $175.

You’re welcome.

Now, please tell me some of you other ladies out there are criminals like me!