Sunday confessional

Today, for the first time I am flogging from my Android.  Now I am a typist not really a tester but since we are outside I thought I would give it a try. My confession for the week.....can't really think of anything in particular, except right now I would love to be sitting on the couch, but it is a pretty day and my husband is pruning the roses and we are about to put in a plant he bought for me.  We have been on the hunt for a Carolina Sweet shrub.  I had one in my yard as a child and he searched and brought it home yesterday. 
He is a real sweetie :)
Have a wonderful Sunday everyone!

Saturday - Family Fun

Well, it is Saturday.  Another long spring week has come to a close.  This is the first weekend it has been just the two of us.  We left this morning and ventured into the world.  We ate, we shopped and we just rode around and enjoyed the day.  I have such a good time with my husband, doing pretty much ordinary things.  We got home after our trip (yep exciting things like Staples, Grocery and Target) we came home and worked on our pond. (Our pond is in the picture below, although it was not taken today)  My wonderful husband is now cooking 1/2 chickens for our dinner.  It is one of the things he cooks that I just love.  It is one of my favorites.

PHOTO CREDIT: My Husband Please do not lift

Have a happy Saturday!

Thursday - Site of the Week (well now that Blogger is back up!)

I honestly have not had time to go to the grocery store this week much less surf the web for fun things. I think according to google reader, I have 116 unread blog entries and that was after I marked everything as read a few days ago.

I have been spending a lot of time looking at coupon sites lately. I was looking at coupon mom and liked the idea of using free coupons for charity items. So I took the two coupons from this past Sundays paper that are supposed to be free and I am planning to go to the store tomorrow and get these free items and start a box for a shelter program.

Then I started checking other blogs and websites, and I found something interesting.....people are really angry about these extreme couponers. I just switched over to a binder from my little coupon caddy on Mother's Day. I still haven't entered all of my coupons into my coupon program on the ipad, nor have I organized them all. It has been a REALLY busy week. I only clip coupons on things we use. I do not get extreme amounts of items (even though there are six of us) because I do not have anywhere to put it (I mean I could put it in the basement, but then I will forget and what is the point of that......)I do not want my child to have 4000 rolls of toilet paper under his bed, and I have no desire to have a shelf of canned goods in my bedroom. My bedroom has enough clutter in it without adding food.





So I expect to save around 100.00 a month through my watching sales and clipping coupons. I do it while I watch tv. I do not go out of my way to empty the shelf (ok last week gatorade was on sale and I bought 15, but they had tons!). I am glad they have found a way to spend very little money on groceries, but how many papers do they have to buy? How many hours do they take out of their day to do this? Right now this is something I enjoy, if it becomes too much like work then I will find it more trouble than it is worth.





There are two sites that I went to this week that I found interesting....

http://www.couponmom.com/ I visited this site several years ago and decided that the way she did couponing was not for me. I think I might be changing my mind. Not for my family but to use for charity. She has great lists and it seemed a bit confusing to me at first but I downloaded her ebooks and it became a bit clearer. Now I have a section for cut coupons in my binder and full circulars.





The next web site I visited was http://thekrazycouponlady.com/. I ended up on her site because of the charity ideas. She does a great job on her blog showing you pictures of what she does. She was on extreme couponing but I did not see that episode.





Finally, I love facebook, I can catch up in just a few mintues on most of the blogs that I subscribe to in my reader and I get to see what my friends are up to. So I saw a post this morning from Pebbletossers.org for the food drive this weekend. http://www.helpstampouthunger.com/ I will be cleaning out my pantry either tomorrow night or Saturday morning and getting rid of all those things that are still in date but my family won't touch. It will feel good to declutter my pantry while helping others in the process.

Well I hope that this week starts winding down for us, and all of you too!

Tuesday - Gratitude

I have missed my menu plan Monday post because I have not done one this week.  So today is gratitude.  I am grateful that things are shaping up and I am starting to feel less stress.  School will be out in a matter of weeks and I will be spending a lot of time working from home so I can supervise the kids.  It can be stressful but we are going to try and make plans.

  I have assigned each child a month that they will be in charge of selecting the family community service project.  We will be starting this in June.  Wish us luck!

It is important to teach our children about giving back, they never know when they might be in the position of being the recipient of some else's kindness.

Sunday Confessional

It is Mother's Day.  I have been very lax lately about writing in my blog.  Life has gotten really busy and I have to slow down and keep up with the goals I set for myself earlier this year.  I decided that today I am going to do the thing that I have been doing for a while.  My confession..... I have been very lazy.

I sit and spend lots of time planning menus.  And then unfortunately I have not been very good at following through on some goals I set out for myself this year.  This blog, being one of them. 

I am going to TRY to spend this week focusing on follow through.  At work, and at home.  Since it is Mother's Day, I am just writing a short note.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there. 

Friday - Taking Care of Me (sort of)

It has been a weird couple of weeks for our household. Spring break, getting back into the swing of things, state testing for all the kiddos and just a very hectic schedule at work. 

About two weeks ago I got a new phone.  An android.  Now I have been a fan of google for a long time.  I use google apps, google health, love their new recipe search and probably a million other things (like blogger...lol).  So I have been trying to figure out what works best for me, apps on my ipad or apps on my android.  Now I have an OLD ipad (yes I got it in September and it is already outdated) and it does not have a camera.  Most of the grocery list programs have those new scanners which I love and hate.  Even with my phone it is near impossible to get it to scan something.  I do not have 20 minutes to put mac and cheese into my phone.  Still all in all it is a nice feature.  I have an app on my ipad that I love for my coupons, but lets face it, the ipad is big and sometimes it is nice to carry it on your hip.  So I have downloaded every free list and grocery program that I have come across so far for my andriod.

So, this weekend is mother's day.  I am going to organize my coupons, write on my blog and relax.  Just take care of myself a little.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Monday - Menu Plan Monday

I thought I would try a new way to post my menu.  When I try to post it from the program I use plantoeat.com it gives me all kinds of errors.  Please let me know how you like this.  You should be able to get to the links from this calendar.