This & That...My Silly Life

I have had so much fun shopping and spending money the past few months. I love new things! Since the begining of the year we have bought a new trailer, bedroom suite, mattress, my chairs which arrived today, several new bed linens and some decorating items. I still have some things I want to buy. I have my eyes on a new set of curtians and some framed art for the new bedroom, but after a lot of thinking I have decided it can wait for awhile. I hate for a room to be half compelete, but I need to concenrate on getting my savings account back to a comfortable level. For me this means NO more shopping :( I have decided to skip buying prennials for my flower beds this year and every other expense that I can spare. This makes me sad, but it needs to be done...so that's the story. Back to being super frugal for awhile.

Since I can't spend any money I guess I will show a few of the things I have put in the bedroom. It will be awhile before the decorating is complete.

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New lamps from Kirklands...I love that place!

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The new little seating area. These chairs are so awesome I am so glad I decided on these the pattern is perfect.

I am so glad the week is half way over! It is going to be a long few weeks comng up at work, but hopefully they will fly by. I am looking foward to the weekend. Can't wait to go and watch Mark and our friends play thier first game in the softball tournment Friday night.

Well I think I'm going to call it a night :)

So I must be in a typing mood today. I was just thinking about some family shout outs I need to make :) We all have families...some are normal, some are crazy but at the end of the day you just have to love them. Here are some things that make my family the best.

My sister has made it her mission to help me get coupons. Ahh how I love her. She works at a nursing home and a lot of her residents get the Sunday paper, and since they are not going out shopping she gets the coupons for me on Sunday. In my mind I see her sneaking around stealing coupons from their Sunday papers, but this is not the case at all. Luickly she is awesome at her job and her residents love her so they take the coupons out of their papers and save them for her. How great is that? Not only do I love my sister, but I love her residents as well they are so thoughtful :) I guess I need to make them some little gift baskets in the near future!

Winston (my brother) came by the house last week with his report card. At the begining of the year I made a deal that every time he makes the "A" honor roll I would give him $100. This kid is really breaking my bank! He proudly brought me his report card this week and of corse he is on the "A" honor roll yet again. Seriously one "B" isn't so bad...LOL Geez he will be getting his money when I get paid this week :) I am so proud of him, he is into everything. He is on student council, national honor society and plays sports and anything else he can join. He is so much like me when I was in school. For a 14 year old he is truely amazing and wise beyond his years. Must be from growing up with two teenage sisters. Everyone loves him and he is just an all around good kid. I hope he keeps up the good work, even though it makes my bank account sad!!!!

My mom has lost 20 lbs since the begining of the year. Yay for her! I know it is hard to do at 50, but she has stuck to it and she looks great. She called me Saturday to say she bought some new jeans over the weekend...size 6 Good job Mom just rub it in... I need to loose 10 pounds so I can get a size 6 too...LOL I am not willing to give up my junk food.

My wonderful husban never lets me down. I just know he is the best husband ever, at least in my eyes :) This weekend while I was out shopping he went to my Moms house got her car and changed the oil for her. Did anyone ask him? No he just wanted to do something nice for her. Not that cutting the grass every week, power washing the house and do random handy man work isn't enough. My Mom loves Mark so much she thinks he is the best, and she is right!!! He works so hard. Mom and me joke about how he is always working around the house. Fixing stuff, cutting grass, working in the garden, staining the decks, washing the cars, changing oil and last week he had to put new brakes on my car. I don't know what I would do without him :) Not to mention he puts up with my craziness every day. I am so thankful to be blessed with his awesomeness!

My inlaws... Well some people do not like thier inlaws, but I love mine. Believe it or not Mark and I are pretty close with our families. My Mom basically lives in the backyard. Her place is right behind out house. Marks Mom and Dad live about 1 minute down the road. Marks parents are great. His dad buys me a Sunday paper every week and when I wake up I go to my door and it is there waiting for me. They are always doing little things for us. I love it!

Never overlook the small things. I know our families can be a pain sometime, but luckily I have been blessed with a great Husband, Mom, Sister, Brother and in laws. they can be aggrivating and difficult at times, but I couldn't imagine a day on this earth without them. Families come in all different varities, and over the years they can change but be thankful for the ones you have and hold dear to your heart.

So my new bedroom suite has arrived and I have been so busy. Moving clothes and trying to get everything in it's right place. Easier said than done. I feel like my house is still in transition, but soon everything will be perfect. I can't wait to show off my room to everyone once it is finshed. I have started getting all my decor together and for me this is always a giant task. I always have a vision in my mind yet can never find the perfect items. I thought I wanted a green and brown color scheme, but it has now changed to a brown and blue color scheme. At least Mark likes the blue :) I ordered two armless chairs yesterday to make a sitting area in the bedroom. I can't wait for those to arrive on my door step. So for now you can only get a sneak peak at the bed. I have hung a few pictures and bought the cutest brown and blue lamps. So this area is complete!!! I will update with new pictures as I get the other areas finished.

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Here is this wall and it is complete...so cute :)

So after the chairs arrive I will have to take a break from my decorating. I am out of money :( My poor little savings account is on it's last leg so I have to take a break from my spending. What can I say, it's a process. I wanted to start on my next project which is refinishing my old bedroom suite. This is going to have to wait a few weeks as well. However I do have a new project that won't cost me a penny...yay! My super shopping skills are going to work for one of our friends :) He is in the market for a new bedroom suite and mattress and has asked me to help him find a great deal. I LOVE it! Oh and I think maybe he will decide to paint his house soon, so maybe I can just work on a project for someone else. I have already priced one bedroom suite for him so I am excited. I love doing stuff like this so I am always willing to help!

Speaking of great news about my mattress I bought over a month ago. Mattress Firm has a price match guarentee so I have priced matched the mattress yet again. I have gotten an extra $208.00 off the price!!! So this mattress was orginally $1500 and we have ended up only paying $780.00 for it...how great is that? I can tell you I will sleep easier knowing I saved even more money.

So that is the scoop on all of that stuff. Other than that I have been getting flower beds ready for the spring, and trying to get this house organized. We have some busy weekends ahead. Mark is playing on a softball league so I will be going to those games on Friday and Saturday. It seems like there is always so much do to on the weekend. There is never time to just rest and relax, I guess I will get some rest when I get old...LOL

Well hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the beautiful weather!

I am a little late on getting my monthly totals together, but it has been a busy couple of weeks. So tonight I finally had the time to sit down and see me grocery savings for the month. It was an ok month. I am not to excited about my savings but hey 69% isn't that bad. After it was all said and done I spent $314.94 and saved $724.95. Not too shabby. I can always do better :) I didn't do any drug store shops this month. I have so much shampoo, body wash, tooth paste and medicine I have cut out my trips to the drug stores for awhile. I need to use some of my stock first.

I hope to save more this month. Actually I really don't plan on doing too much shopping unless something wonderfull comes up. I have pretty much everything I need so I am going to take a break from the all day Saturday shopping trips running from store to store. The weather has been beautiful and I want to spend more time working in the yard and spring cleaning. Soon I will have to start working on getting the swimming pool ready which I am not looking forward to. So I am taking my full stock room as a hint that I need to use some stuff up and stop chasing after the deals for a couple of weeks.

On to a few other things... I want to take a minute to talk about some random things that I am happy about right now!!! My new bedroom suite that should be arriving any day. Everyone buys new furniture from time to time, and we all know it is a big investment. Being a savvy shopper I want to pass my knowdlege to others to help them make smart purchaeses. We usually think of the mom and pop shops as having the highest prices, but when it comes to furniture that is usally not the case. When you are looking for new furniture I would advise to set a day aside to go to several stores and get an idea of what you want to buy. Take pictures of the items you like in the store so you can look at them later for future reference. I also take pictures of the price tags so I know how much the sets are from store to store. After you pick out what you like get the manufactor code and start calling local furniture stores to check pricing. It's that simple! Let me give you an example... When we moved in our house I wanted to full size reclining couches for my living room. I went to the Ashley Furniture Homestore in Raleigh and found what I wanted. I called a local furniture store and saved $400 a couch at the local store. These big stores with the large show rooms have a huge overhead and they pass those extra cost onto the consumer. Plus all the sales people work off commision so they rarely budge on pricing. Most mom and pop shops are run by families and they are not commision driven and they have smaller places and less overhead which equals great pricing. Also the mom and pop stores will often try to undercut thier local competition, so if you have a better price from another store you can use that as leverage. I am buying my bedroom suite from Woods Home Furnishing in Louisburg, by far the best price and great service. So if you are looking to buy something check them out, I highly recommend them :)

Now to my next love! Pampered Chef!!! I always thought the products were a little pricey, but I have been more than staisfied with all the items I have accumulated. I love the Deep Covered Baker!!! I work all day and I am tired when I get home. I hate spending hours preparing and cooking dinner, it's like having to work when I get off work(lol) So I bought my Deep Covered Baker about 2 months ago and I use this thing at least 3 times a week, it is marvlous. It cooks anything in the microwave and it is tasty. A whole chicken will cook in the microwave in 32 minutes! Yesterday I cooked a meatloaf in 22 minutes. I could not believe it, it takes a hour in the oven. So here is the other upside, no oven heating up the house durring these warm months and my light bill has dropped over $50 this month. This is one of the best investments I have ever made. My husband was skeptical at first about cooking all this food in the microwave, but he loves it too. I have ever herd him telling people how great this baker is and how great the food taste. Plus he is getting a tasty meal every night so he is happy and I am spending no time standing over a stove so I am happy to. I absolutly love this :)

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Deep Covered Baker meatloaf in the microwave in 22 minutes!

So enough of me pushing my favorite things. At the end of the day I just want everyone to save time and money. My time and money saving ventures bring me so much happiness :)

Well, we didn't get everything accomplished this weekend. We still managed to get a lot done so I am happy about that. Mark done a ton of work this weekend. He cut the grass, which is a task since he is so picky about how it looks. We have the greenest grass and the prettiest yard for miles thanks to the hubby. He baby's our yard! I am not allowed to cut grass because he wants lines in the yard and I don't do it right...LOL

Mark cutting his beloved grass.

Our front yard, it looks like it is time to mulch again :(
Mark also stained the decks...again. I know this doesn't sound like a hard task, but we have a ton of decking. We have wood walk ways to both the back and side door. We have a large patio deck and then the decking around the pool. Poor thing, he got that done and it looks great. I wanted to take a picture, but the deck is covered in pollen (yuck) so you can't even tell.
The last thing Mark got finished this weekend was a new dog pin for the beagles. These are our two rabbit hunting dogs Slim and Russel, hopefully we will be able to add 2 more at some point this year. Mark and my little brother really enjoy rabbit hunting and these two pups are the best, and they are cutie pies :)

Now to my projects. I was painting the bedroom. I ordered the bedroom suite today, and hopefully it will be here by the end of the week. Now the room is freshly painted and ready to move some new stuff in. I am so excited!!!

Getting started...
Painting is one of those things that is very time consuming and it takes a lot of patience. Painting and waiting I call it, it took all weekend to get this done since I have 2 coats of Kiltz and 2 coats of paint. Finally it is all done and this is the end result.

Right now we have moved almost all the old furniture out of our room. All we have left in our room is the media cabinet, dresser and bed. I put TV tables beside the bed for the time being. We didn't see the need to move our old furniture back in when we would be moving it out in a week. Today I hung new curtain rods, they are so cute!

Oh yeah, today I went to Wal Mart and bought some "Space Bags" these things are awesome!!! My hallway closest was busting at the seams with sheet sets and comforters. I used 4 space bags and almost got all my sheet sets and comforters in them...I was amazed! Now I actually have extra space in the closest! Check it out...

So both of these bags have 2 extra thick comforters and the big bag has the 2 comforters and 6 complete sheet sets. (WOW)

My hallway closest now, I can't believe I can open the door without stuff pelting me :)