The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

As long as I can remember, I’ve always been told that I look like my mom.  So much so, that in high school people thought my mom and I were sisters.  And I can see why, she looks young and in no way has a “mom body” .  It never really bothered me that much that I looked like my mom.  (‘m hoping to follow in my mother’s footsteps and at 48 years old and a grandma look like I’m 37.5! I was just re-reminded of it again this week as a friend said, “Wow, you look like your mom!”  Maybe it is that as a teenager being told that you look like someone 22 years older is not quite the “hot” factor you were going for when you were getting read that morning.  But there is something about babies/kids/teens looking like the members of the family that people feel inclined to comment on.  And I’m finding I’m the same way.  I saw my niece for the first time this week up close and said “Wow, Jade, she looks just like you!” Like it would be much different.   AND recently (after years of “She looks like her daddy!”) people have started to say that Belle looks like me.    I wonder what she is going to think about that.  If she will shrug it off or be glad that she has these genes!   We will see….

It’s official… I’m burnt out.

GASP! I can hardly believe I’m writing these words, but I thought them two days ago, said them out loud to Jason yesterday and today I am still feeling the same way.  About coupons and bargains that is.  I had actually read on one of the blogs a few months ago about someone asking if that particular  mom had ever got tired of finding/going after great deals.  And she said yes and that she recomended that every few months you take some time off of couponing or bargain hunting.  I didn’t think much of it at the time and honestly thought I probably wouldn’t get there.  But I have.  Coupons have lost their luster, flipping stuff on Craigslist has become a hassle and the thought of using mental energy to put together coupons to score great deals is a no go.  So I think I have reached that point of burn out.  I’m not sure how long I will take off or what exactly it will look like.  For example, there is a sweet deal at Walgreens today with kleenex, paired with a sale and a coupon that I plan to go get tonight.  But I think I’m going to give myself the wiggle room to let some deals slide by and know that whever I do pick it up again, there will be sweet deals then as well.  As for my Craigslist flips, I have a post coming soon.  I need about 2-3 more weeks to get some winter stuff sold and then I can post the offical results.  (And yes, now that I have the cash from those flips in an envelope for our 5th Anniversary trip, I”m excited, but the thought of doing more at this point… no thanks)

Water, Farts and Native Americans

Jason and I are in discussion right now about the possibility of purchasing a video camera in the near future.  (Most likely it would be bought with our Christmas money and I say it is totally unromantic!   Our first camera that we got for our wedding had a small video option so up to this point we have just taken several 15-30 second vidoes of the kids.  It has worked out great, but the camera is on the fritz so we are now faced with this new dilema. We both have enjoyed  taking/watching videos of the kids .  However, my home vidoes of me as a kid are something I would be ok with never seeing again. Sure the videos are cute of kids when they are smaller- but most of the videos of me personally are in that awkward tween stage and several embarrassing moments are on camera.  The time I wouldn’t jump off the dock into a foot of water, the time I was trying to jump rope and I started farting (yes that really happened!) and the time we put on a play about the pilgrims and I was the cheif Native American  and I was trying to speak in some sort of dialect that was terrible!   Needless to say, I really have no desire to capture my kids on camera… when they are older that is.   But these little things like talking, walking, singing ect I do!  Then there is my husband who has absolutely no home videos, however, this man has a photo album for every year of his life… and that is no joke.   Jason and I are both big photography buffs so our kids will have plenty of documentation of their lives, but he wants to give them the home movie part… I on the other hand am a little shy.  I think if we were just given the $$ for the video camera I might be a little more eager to make this happen, but to put all my Christmas cash towards a gift I’m not so sure of…. well, I need to think this through.  Anybody else have any embarrasing home movie stories?

Price Match!

As a deal finder/hunter I am always on the look out for how to make things quicker or a more smooth operation.  I usually like to go to just two stores a week and then maybe stop at Walgreens or CVS depending on how good their sales are that week.  I had heard that Fareway and Walmart price matched adds of other stores, but I had never tried it. For some reason it was a very complicated process in my head (like at Walmart I would have to check out normally, then head over to the extremely long line at customer service and wait for a manager to “fix” my prices, ect)  However, Aldi had an amazing deal on blueberries a few weeks back, but when I went to pick some up, they were completely out.  I was “forced” to try to match the add at Walmart because I really wanted those blueberries for $.99 per carton!  So I ran to Walmart and blueberries were the only thing on my list.  I figured that would help make the entire process easier and quicker for my first time.  When I went to the register, I told them I wanted to match the add and i wasn’t sure how to do that.  They just asked to see it and then proceeded to check me (and my 20 cartons of blueberries) out within 20 seconds!  No manager was needed- it was a simple override and we were on our way.  Talk about slick!  I loved it!  Then I got brave and took the Aldi add to Fareway and had them match Strawberries and Cantelope (2 items instead of one!) and figured I would create some scene with managers, but again, it was a simple override.  If I didn’t know any better, I would have just thought it was a normal grocery check out.  So, needless to say, I’m way excited about getting more deals with fewer errands!

What would you do for $100?

I had posted a while back on my facebook status asking people if they were completely capable of accomplishing a task that was rewarded with $100- how much time would they be willing to invest?  The answers I think ranged from 1-5 hours.

At the end of June- it was June 30th I think, we went to HyVee on the strip at about 6:15pm for a few items.  We walked in the door and saw a sign that said “Open and account with Bank of the West and we will give you $100!”  Now, I don’t know about you, but $100 is still a very big deal in our lives, especially when it comes all at once and doesn’t need to go in the budget.   So I went and ask the lady what the catch was.  She said 1) The deal ended that day when the bank closed – in about 35min and 2) we needed to have at least 10 online bill pays go through that account in 60 days to “qualify” for the $100.  So, Jason and I talked about it while we picked up our few items and ended up deciding we would give it a try.  Jason stayed there to get the account set up while I ran the last errand with the kids. It took him about 30 min to get it all in place and we picked him up and all came home.  We went through all of our bills and I decided even if it took 1 or 2 hours of my time over the next 2 months paying our online bills from a different account and then changing back, it would still be very good $ for my time.  Besides, at this point, we had only invested about  30 min.

Later that night,  I had a brilliant beyond brilliant idea- how to do this a different way.  We called and asked if there were any min. amounts of what had to pay, they said there was no min. amount of each online bill pay, but just that there had to be 10 of them.  So my dear readers, know what we did?  We logged on to the bank account, took our BP bill (that we pay off each month) and scheduled 10 payments.  The first 9 payments were $10 each and then the 10th payment was the remaining amount of the bill and we scheduled it all to happen on 10 different days and they all just cleared on the 7th of Aug.    That task of setting up all those bill pays took Jason about 15 or 20 min one afternoon.  We called the bank yesterday once everything had cleared and they said we had met the qualifications and our $100 should be deposited within in the next 30 days.  My plan at that point is to close down the account and be done with it all- but overall, I’m pretty happy with our on the fly decision and hopefully with this $100 and a few other creative ideas for the month of Aug- we will write our very last check to pay off the van!!!!!!!!!!!

ps. I have to say that I personally did try to pay another bill with the 10 bill pays, but I did it incorecctly (I tried paying from the bill site, and we had to log onto the bank site and pay directly out of there) so they didn’t count.  I had probably invested about 20 min total of my time over those few days try that route.  But the bank called us and told us we were doing it wrong   Thanks for the heads up. So, I total, I think we spent about 1 – 1 1/2 hrs on this venture.

Whatever you do, don’t run out of Mayo!?!

It is strange but true.  My dad had one rule growing up.  He never wanted the house to be rid of mayo or peanut butter.  I know that he enjoys both of those condiments, but I am still not sure why exactly that was so bad.  In fact, I always thought it was a little weird.

Somewhere along the way, I somehow developed my own rule.  We can never, ever, ever run out of bananas.  HA! As I write this I’m thinking, “She is crazy!”  I like to eat a banana every day and if there is not one waiting for me, I get this urge to go grocery shopping.  Like today, the bananas are all brown (another rule of mine, only eat them yellow or slighly brown) but we have apples, grapes and some strawberries in the fridge.  And I still thought “We should run to the store today!”  Do I “need” them, NO!  Do I “NEED” them?  YES!!!!!!!!  You can ask Sarah and Rachel (the three of us often call the others to see if they need any groceries if we are out), very often I will say, bananas please!  When we used to live over in Iowa City, HyVee was across the street.  I can’t tell you how often I would take Belle for a walk over to HyVee, purchase 2 bananas for the day and walk home.   Too bad there are not any grocery stores within walking distance, pretty sure I would help boost their banana sales.

Quote of the day:

Belle talking to her dad.

“If I have a pretend baby, you can bring lunch, dinner and treats to my house.”

What are you doing with your zucchini?

Tis the season where everyone has zucchini coming out their ears!  And while we are not quite there yet (I just got my first 3 this week!) I am eagerly awaiting the time that they are coming in droves.   I actually planted some more seeds in full sun about 2 weeks ago (my 3 plants are only partial sun… I’m guessing that is why I haven’t had too many yet…) Anyway, I plan to blend a lot of them in homemade tomato sauce later this summer (anybody have any luck getting red toamtoes?) and I plan to try my hand at blanching, but for this week I wanted to find a good low sugar zucchini bread recipe.  I hope to make a ton of loaves and stick them in the freezer for a quick side dish.  I made some this afternoon and decided I couldn’t wait for dinner to try it… and it was great!  Not as sweet as the other stuff- but had some flavor and I was happy with with the ingredients were!

This is what the recipe called for, I will post my changes below:

Egg, fresh, 3 large
Granulated Sugar, .5 cup
Canola Oil, .33 cup
Cinnamon, ground, 2 tsp
Zucchini, 2 cup, grated
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour, 1.5 cup
Flour, white, 1.5 cup
Salt, 1 tsp
Baking Soda, 1 TBsp
Baking Powder, 1.5 tsp
Stonyfield Farm Vanila yogurt Fat free, 2 cup

I used Smart Balance oil cause that is what I had on hand.  And I used 2/3 C of sugar… grabbed the wrong measuring cup!  Regular whole wheat flour worked great and I only had 1 C of plain yogurt, so I used an additional C of unsweetened applesauce instead.  Oh, and I dumped a large amount of cinnamon in and a large “dash” of nutmeg (hoping that those would help with the flavor)  Just now I realized it was vanilla yogurt… that would have made it even yummier!   Enjoy!

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Beat eggs until foamy then add sugar, oil, yogurt, cinnamon and zucchini and mix well. Add stevia if you need it to be a little sweeter. In a seperate bowl sift together flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Add dry ingredients slowly to yogurt mixture an dmix until moist. Pour into 2 greased and floured 9×5x13 inch loaf pans. Bake for 35  minutes. Loaves should be golden brown on top. Yields 2 loaves, about eight slices per loaf.

Quote of the day:

This one is compliments of the neighbor boy last night.  He is 2.

(His mom was trying to light those snakes (black and you light them on the 4th of July and they grow…) with a cigarette lighter)

Mom: “OUCH! Mommy is a wus!”

Collin: “Mum, ‘R’ a wus?”

Mom: “Yep, mommy is a wus…”

*Pause*  Then he walks over to her rubs her shoulder and says…

Collin: “It’s ok mum.”

Quote of the day:

Some highlights of our conversations this morning.

B: “Mom, what color was Jesus’ robe?”

B: “Mom, when will Jesus’ mom and dad come back for his birthday?”

B: ” Mom, do people have cell phone who live in the sky (heaven)?”