This & That...My Silly Life

I have started watching The Real Housewives of New York and New Jersey. These shows just baffle me! Surely these women have more things going on in their lives than gossip and hanging around, but maybe not... I would like to see some of those ladies come on down to Franklin County North Carolina, they wouldn't last half a day I am sure of it!!! I can't even answer the question why I watch these shows but I think I am just in awe of the lives they lead. In their defense I did see them make some pasta sauce to can for the year, but other than that I just laugh at them. I guess living in a small country town is a totally different type of living. I sure ain't dressing all cute, having tea with friends and getting manicures.

I guess my life just wasn't made for reality tv. I was thinking of this because today when I got home from work I went right to work at home. It never ends. Here I go pulling out the push mower to do my part of grass duty, by the time I was done I was dripping in sweat, but that was just the beginning of my evening of work. Then it was over to the pool to start vacuuming, and working on that surely people in a high society have pool boys...not me! Oh and most interesting I wade through the dog pen to feed and water the beagles. The highlight of my day...a country pedicure! This would include sinking in the muddy garden to put baskets on a whole row of tomato plants. I wore flip flops :) That's the closest I will be getting to a spa(LOL) Last but not least at 8:00 (I get home from work at 4:40) I am in the kitchen cooking chicken, boiled potato's and green beans. Yep that's my reality, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Most days are not quite that busy, but this time of year there is a ton of work to be done. I still have to clean the house, finish with the pool since my vacuum decided to break today, more work in the garden and I have some flowers and bushes that are begging for my attention. This weekend we will be bringing home 4 new beagle puppies who will also demand my love and attention. And so the story goes...

Yep, I am not glamorous nor prissy or anything else extremely girly. I am just a country blue jean and t shirt wearing kind girl that don't mind getting my hands dirty. My husband sure got lucky when he married me because I am a hard working wife :) He is just the same. For everything I do, I think he does twice as much...maybe its a competition that I am unaware of ;)

So I wonder...are these reality TV shows really reality? Who lives like these people? I don't know anyone like this, then again I guess people like that wouldn't really hang out with someone like me.

Garden Time!!!

Since I was talking about the garden earlier I thought I would show you our lovely mud pit. At least we have a few dry days in the forecast!!!

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I had a great mud foot massage today :)

Last, my harvest of peas from Tuesday. Not fun to pick or shell, but they were some good looking peas which made me happy. Today my legs are killing me from squatting to pick them. At least it was a good work out...LOL

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I often wonder why I try to make plans, it seems they never go as expected. This weekend has been one thing after another and I am almost glad it is over!

Saturday I had to get up at the crack of dawn to get Winston to his friends house so he could go fishing. Then I decided to help Mark in the garden and pick some of the peas. As soon as I was 1/4 done, the bottom fell out, and here I was picking peas in the pouring rain. I am SICK of rain at this point!!!

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The first peas to plucked from the garden :)

Then we venture out to the cookout. Hang out with friends and enjoy some good food for a little while and what happens??? The bottom falls out!!!! So everyone is under shelters or in thier cars for over an hour. Well it pretty much rained off and on the whole night so it was a wash out, but we stll managed to have a good time.

Super Doubles at Harris Teeter has been really great this time around. I have shopped almost every day and have gotten some great deals! Hope everyone got the chance to get out and get the things they needed.

Here's to the start of a new week. I am looking forward to this week being over since we are looking forward to a long weekend ahead :)

I am so excited!!! Today after work I went shopping at the Harris Teeter Super Double event again :) Such a great day of savings I was jumping for joy when I left the store. I spent $30.37 and saved $77.25, or 72%. You may wonder why I am so thrilled over 72% savings and let me explain. First of all our meat stock is low so I am trying to replenish that... I bought 4 packs of chicken leg quarters, a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk which I had NO coupons for!!! It was an awesome day at Harris Teeter. I ordered coupons online the other night and hopefully they will be in the mail tomorrow so I can get the other items I need. I am going to stock back up on dog food and coffee and a few other things once my coupons get here.

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This is a picture of the items I brought home for $30 bucks :)

The new pump is hooked up and the pool is running like a champ. Hopefully I will have it cleared up by next weekend so we can enjoy a long holiday weekend by the pool!

This will probably be my last post for several days. I have a busy few days ahead of me. I am watching my brother tomorrow, Sunday I have to take him to his baseball game, cookout Saturday, cleaning and getting the pool ready, super double shopping and Mark has a softball game Monday night...ugh so much to do!!!!! So I hope everyone has a great weekend. I will see you on the flip side (LOL)

I am going to talk about a ton of different things we have going on. It seems I can never get the time to talk about everything I want to so tonight you will get a blog post full of several random things. Sorry, but I hope you enjoy it either way :)

Graduation

Last Friday my sister Jayme graduated with her associates degree in Human Services Technology. Don't ask me the details I have no idea what you do with this...help humans(lol) We all know graduations are boring as all get out and it happened to be a 90 degree day...lovely Not to mention it started @ 6:00 on a Friday when folks work! I made it and saw her walk across the stage. I must say I am super proud of her, she has been working on this off and on forever and I think we were relieved that she finally accomplished this goal.

So being the mean person I am I was sick of everyone talking up my little sister. All I heard is Jayme has been working so hard to get here, she paid for it by herself, she worked and went to school...blah blah blah I finally asked my Mom what the big deal was. Why did I ask this? Well I graduated with two associates degrees in 2 1/2 years while living on my own and working two jobs. My Mom got mad at me...LOL I was just trying to make the point no one made such a big deal out of my graduation WITH TWO DEGREES. Really I am proud of her though :)

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Jayme @ Graduation

I have been wanting to go back to get my bachelor degree forever!!! I am not worried about the work, it's something that I want for myself. Once again I am checking into schools thinking I can maybe take 1 or 2 classes and take my time. No rush this is something I want to do before I have kids. After checking out the schools I just want to cry! $315.00 a semester hour??? Are you kidding me? I am not rich!!! If I remember correctly most classes are 4 credit hours so that means 1 class cost over $1,200.00 well at that cost I will never be able to get my bachelor degree. I will keep looking maybe I can find a better price...can you price haggle with colleges (LOL)

RELAX

Finally Mark and I took a day off from all of weekend chores to enjoy a day at the lake with some of our best friends. The boys went swimming, but us girls were having no part of that. The lake is still freezing! We really needed the day off. We have the best group of friends in the whole world and I love them all dearly. What a great day just relaxing on the boat :)

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Mark and Josh trying to talk us into swimming

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Dusty decided to join them and they had a secret meeting under the boat...LOL

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enjoying the water and company of good friends

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Mark and I :)

Pool Woes

After trying a million things to try to save the filter to our pool we have failed. Our pool is our vacation spot since we are poor folks so we had to break down and by a new filter today...and I was crying as I watched my budget for next month fly out the window :(

We went to the pool supply store today and decided to change from a sand filter to a cartridge filter. It is the new thing on the market and to be honest the sand filter is a pain in the butt anyway so we will see how it works this weekend. Luckily we got a GREAT $300.00 discount since our pool was bought from that store. Lucky for us we were close with our neighbors before we bought the house from them and we had all the information on the pool. Since we have been unable to run the pool it is so nasty looking. I am hope I can have some pictures of a new sparkling pool on here very soon!

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The new filter (yay) and my sweet husband who put it together tonight...he is the greatest!

Super Doubles @ HT

Quick coupon update from my shopping trip at Harris Teeter. This week is super doubles where they double coupons up to $1.50. This picture is all the items I bought, but there are also 4 coffee creamers that I couldn't include since I had to leave them in the fridge at work today. I spent $29.67 and saved $66.04 or 70%!!! I am going to make a few more trips this week, but I have to wait until the coupons I ordered from the clipping service come in :)

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Super Double Deals!!!

Other things...

A few last things... I have been begging for rain for our garden and boy did I get my wish. We had rain Friday, Saturday and then the bottom fell out Sunday and Monday. Our garden was severely flooded so Mark and I had to go outside in the pouring rain and dig trenches to keep the plants from washing away. The garden was totally submerged water. It was great fun...j/k! I told Mark he should be glad that he has a awesome wife who will dig ditches in the pouring rain. I am sure he already knew that :) So from now on I think I will stop begging for rain!

Hope everyone is ready for the weekend. We are excited that the yearly J&J birthday pig pick'n is this weekend. A yearly even where we cook a big, play games, dance and hang out until the wee hours of the night. I am so ready for this...can't wait to hang out with the besties and have a good time. Yee haw!!!!

Since I have decided to make an honest effort to put my top match up's from each store on my blog, I just wanted to say a few things about coupon shopping. Coupons can be fun but you could become easily burnt out by all the weekend trips here and there trying to grab all those deals.

I know I can do better with coupons. I could probably end up saving 80% most of the time, but honestly it is too time consuming. When I was saving the maximum amount I was spending at least two hours a day going between sales papers and coupons and then working major math magic to make sure I was doing everything the right way. I have more time than most...I have no children to take care of so my evenings are what I want them to be, but for most people that is just not the case. I still save a ton of money at least 60% each time I shop, but I spend a lot less time working on my deals. I find that is my happy medium and sometimes I save more. Right now I have cut out all my drug store shops because I am so stocked with shampoo, body wash, deodorant, toothpaste and all those other personal care items that there is no need to spend time tying to get something I have 20 of...LOL Stocking is good, and it also allows you to take a break for awhile. Now I am just grocery shopping and that is good! I have three deep freezers, a large walk in pantry and a bedroom dedicated to stocking so I don't feel the pressure to hit the grocery store if I don't feel like it. Trust me no one here is starving!!! My main advice to everyone is to start slow and be satisfied with the money you save. Every trip is not yield a great saving event, but who can complain about 60%?

I just want everyone to realize that. So I will post the deals that I would personally run after and a few other good ones :) And that is what you will find here. I am not going to post the whole ad, just because something is in the ad doesn't mean its a good deal! Good deals are all you will see. Enjoy :)

It's me again. I am promising to help everyone with the coupons and shopping trips. If you look to the right you will notice two new links under the Pages label. Coupon 101 which you can find some tips I use to help folks get started with coupons and you will also see the Coupon talk and Match up tab. Under Coupon talk I will try my best to give you my top grocery store picks for the week and the coupons that match up with those sales. Keep checking because I usually don't see the Lowes Food or Food Lion paper until Thursday. Also feel free to post comments on special deals you may find while out shopping. Let's all help on another! Lets see if we can slash those grocery bills!!!! Yippe :)

There is nothing better than the country in the spring. Well I think every season is best in the country, but spring is my favorite time of year.

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Beautiful, today I came home to see my first day Lilly had bloomed. My favorite flower and I have a small flower bed full of them, can't wait until they all bloom. I have been talking about the garden and just to get an idea of how we do it out here in the back woods I took a picture of the whole garden today. Sometimes I don't think people understand that this is a real garden! It kinda looks like a pile of dirt since we can't get any rain!!!! We plant pretty much everything from seeds so some have not sprouted at all and others are barley poking out of the ground. Please BRING ON THE RAIN...our little corn stalks are trying to burn up already :(

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You still can't see the whole garden with that tree blocking it

Can't find a garden like that in the city :) So it's the time of year where everyone is breaking out the pig cookers and grills and just enjoying the nice weather. A warm evening where everyone can hang out side and enjoy a beverage, play corn hole, reminisce on old times, and just enjoy each others company...I LOVE it!

So I was talking about the pool yesterday. Here is a picture of our disaster.

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So we are going to try one thing with the filter, and if that don't work we are heading to the pool supply place this weekend. Ugh, I can already hear the wind blowing away my budget for the month...

How about a RANT?

I can't help myself, I haven't been mean lately...LOL For some reason I just have this on my mind so I am just going to throw it out there. I can't help but notice every time I go to the grocery store and other stores there are always people standing outside wanting money for something. It's a church group, girl/boy scouts, sports teams and a million different organizations. Seriously not to be rude but it really gets on my nerves. I buy girl scout cookies every year (a ton of them) and I hate to be attacked every time I leave a store to buy cookies when I have 10 boxes sitting at home. Saturday I was at Sams Club getting my pool chemicals I walk out the door to someone standing right in my face wanting to know if I will donate money to needy families. Who are these people? I say "no" and they look at me like I am the most awful person in the whole world. Ughhh, I just wanted to go on a rant, but I politely walked away. So here are my reasons. First of all these people don't know me, I could be in dire financial straights. I'm not but the point is why can't they just sit at a table and let you approach them? Secondly, I have no idea who these people are with and what type of families this money goes to. We give money to organizations, I donate food to the food bank, I donate clothes to goodwill, and I support school fundraisers. Not to mention my husband is a active Mason which supports the orphanage. We are not bad people! Yet this random person looks at me like I am the scum of the earth for not giving them a dollar...give me a break! The biggest problem is the fact that I get so TIRED of people begging for something ALL the time!!!! Hello...I go to the grocery store and the people in front of me buy $200 worth of groceries with food stamps and I just happen to be parked beside them and see they are loading them up into a new model Tahoe. What the heck? It's the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. Yet my mother who is a single parent and works 3 jobs can't even get a dollar of food stamps. Sometimes people are "needy" because they are LAZY and thinks the government should pay them to sit at home on their butt, while the rest of us go out and work for a living. Sorry, if that's the "needy" folks you are helping they can keep being needy.

I don't feel like giving my hard earned money to people who think they are too good to work at McDonalds and think that I owe them a hand out. My little bit of left over money will go to buying some groceries for my mom or helping her with some monthly expenses!!!! Don't get me wrong, I know their are good people out there who have had bad things happen and need help. As a matter of fact that was my Mom a few years ago, and you know who helped her? NO ONE, but Mark and I. Exactly my point to these people begging for my money every time I leave a freaking store!!!!

To be brutally honest, I get tired of everyone complaining about money. I often feel like people are giving me a guilt trip because they don't have money for something. They want my sympathy because they are broke. Well let me see here... People complain about not being able to pay their bills, but they go out and buy new cars or constantly go shopping for clothes or whatever. Sometimes I just want to scream out that it's your own fault! Stop wasting money all the time and you could pay your bills. If you didn't have that $400 a month car payment you could pay your bills. Duh! I want a new car, but guess what I don't want a car payment every month or to have to pay more money for insurance and taxes.

I can pay my bills every month. I can do this because when I want something I save my money to buy it and don't just take out a credit card. I can do this because I put a decent amount of money in my savings account when I get paid every other week. No debt besides our home. We live within our means and we manage our money. When you see me splurge on something, it's because I have spent months or years saving to be able to. No pity from me...so sorry!

Oh and I already know the statement that comes next "I don't have any extra money to save from my pay check". I agree that some people don't have extra money to save. I know for a fact it takes everything my mom has to pay her bills and it is very little left for the monthly expenses. That will change for her one day though...she does have a car payment because she had no money and had no car when she came to live with us several years ago. Actually my mom does save money in the summer when she works an extra job. I think it is ok to not be able to save money if you are trying to pay off debt. A few years ago we were not saving money because we were paying every extra penny to our debts and I was trying to pay my car off early. I paid my car off almost 2 years early because I worked hard to do so. You can always save a little bit even $20 is something. All I ask of people is before you beg or put a guilt trip on someone, look at what has caused you to get this way. If you are driving around in a car that isn't paid for or wasting money on needless items you have no reason to ask for pity. If something happened and Mark and I faced a budget crisis I could tell you the first things we would let go of... Cell phones, house phone, gym membership, Direct TV, Internet... if I had trouble paying the bills I could drop $350 off our budget in an instant on things that are NOT necessary. I think people today have no sense of what is a "need" and a "want". Get a clue!

So now that you all probably think I am a horrible person I will just shut up. I can't help myself sometimes. I know I am not the only person in the world who thinks like this. Well hump day is coming to a end now, so we can all start to look forward to the weekend :) YAY!!!!

Another day in my little world. I have been super busy and super lazy. My motivation is seriously lacking lately. I think I have been living in my own little world and I need the alarm clock to go off soon! I don't think I have an action packed life by no means, but geez it seems like we always have something to do.

Here is what I have been up to... It's that time of year to start working on the grand opening of the pool. It's nice to have a pool to swim and lay out by, but I don't think people understand what a pain in the BUTT they are!!!! Our filter is leaking, nothing new... We knew this at the end of last year, but figured we could fix it with some epoxy. Think again! We are only able to run the pool on low, which means I am having a really hard time clearing the water up. I think a muddy pond would entice more swimmers than our pool. I have yet to seen the bottom and the water is a blue haze topped with pollen. I need to actually get in the pool to clean the walls, but that is NOT happening! I would have a full blown panic attack when my feet hit the bottom b/c I am sure it is slimy...yuck!!!! I am not sure what the remedy is for our pool at this point. A new filter (what we need) is $400.00, and that is an expense we need to spare, so I guess we will see what happens.

It is also garden time... Luckily so far the work has been on Mark, but soon I will be picking and canning it's alot of work, but well worth it. Our garden is quiet large and we really need rain to keep our little plants alive and growing. Below is a picture not long after Mark planted everything. We have 60 cabbage plants...LOL I can't wait for all the yummy goodness to make its way to my kitchen!

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Cabbage and Potatoes :)

A Family Day!

So I LOVE my little brother, he is growing up so fast. He is fixing to start drivers ed this summer, so I am trying to take in the time we have. I know soon he will be driving around and doing stuff with his friends and won't have as much time for his aging sister...LOL A couple of weeks ago Mark, Jayme (my sister) and Me all went to watch his baseball game. He is so darn cute!

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Winston and his team before the game

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Winston's looking for a home run!!!

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Winston's aging sisters :)

So beside the daily household stuff, and watching way too much tv this is what I have been up to. Who knew how exciting life could be...ha ha!

As I was saying in an earlier post the bedroom is pretty much complete. At least it is to the point where I can actually deal with looking at it every day. It needs a few more pictures and Marks flat screen tv and then it will be perfect, but for now it is livable by my standards...LOL

So here are the pictures...Yay!!!

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This is the vanity dresser, I chose this dresser because it was different and the extra drawers come in handy too :)

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The 5 drawer chest and the cute little picture...it looks really small in this picture for some reason

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ahhh, my favorite...the KING size bed! I get a great night sleep here, I barley notice that my wonderful husband is in the bed!!!!

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Up close picture of the curtains. The colors matched perfectly with my color scheme. They are quite girly and believe it or not no complaints from Mark!!!

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The seating area with a little accent table. It was hard to get a picture of the whole thing but there is a picture of the chairs in a earlier post.

So after loading these picture I realized I forgot to take pictures of the night stands and media chest. If I think about it I will add them later, it's too late to take pictures now since Mark is sleeping. Not to mention he would probably think I was crazy to be snapping pictures of furniture in the middle of the night...LOL

My favorite spot is the seating area, I absolutely love it! I go and sit in the chair and try to talk Mark into sitting in the other one, but he just looks at me like I am crazy...go figure! I have noticed that clothes seem to accumulate on these chairs. Not my clothes. Hmmm, I guess Mark thinks one of the chairs belongs to him and therefore he can use it as a clothes hamper. I can live with that, better to have some clothes sitting on the chair than in the floor :)

The other day I cleaned up our closet. We have a huge walk in closet and even with all the space it seems to stay a mess. I put two clothes hampers in there, one for white clothes and the other for colored clothes. I explained to Mark which basket to put the clothes in... He then told me he was not stupid...LOL I bet $100 when I go to do laundry on Friday there are white socks in the colored basket!!!!!!!!!!!! I think I have a mild case of OCD and this will drive me crazy.

Speaking of crazy... I love my darling husband so much but he is so funny sometimes. I wonder if other husbands do things like Mark... For instance, Mark mentioned today at lunch "I am going to clean the kitchen this evening". I had to go to my brothers baseball game tonight so I knew I wouldn't have much time to get things done. When Mark makes statements like this I take it as April needs to clean the kitchen because it is a mess...ha ha I have asked him if that's what he means and he said it's not, but deep down I think it is. Even if he doesn't mean it, I will always take it to mean that! So today as soon as I walked in the door I went straight to the kitchen and cleaned up. In my defense the kitchen wasn't that dirty...I mean give me a break! I cook dinner, and sometimes I don't feel like wiping down the counters, putting away all the left overs, loading the dish washer and sweeping.

I love a clean house, but lately my cleaning motivation has been lacking. Work has been really stressful lately and when I get home I am pooped! I have been so ill and really I just need the down time when I get home to regain my sanity. My husband is such a hard worker...ugh he makes me sick sometimes. He gets off work cuts grass, takes care of the dogs, the garden, and other random things... Don't get me wrong I do my part too. I cook dinner, sometimes I will take care of the dogs and I help in the garden when he needs me too and I push mow the parts of the yard we can't mow with the zero turn. Still I always feel like I don't get enough done. I want my house to be spotless 24-7 and everything to be perfect. I have decided that my expectations of myself are way too high, but yet I still go to bed every day disappointed and feeling like I should have done more. Geez...why must I try to do a million things in such a short time? Oh well!

So that's it for tonight. I still want to put a post up about my triple coupon trips. Maybe later... Hope you have enjoyed my insanity for today :)

I have wanted to find the time to actually post a few things on my blog, but it seems the time never comes. This time of year is super busy for Mark and I. Keeping the yard up and our extra large garden that I hope to post pictures of soon. Since we haven't had rain in a few days and these 90 degree tempatures have threatened the survival of our recently planted items so we spent the evening walking 5 gallon buckets of water to the garden to try to keep some life in those plants...not a fun task! Hopefully we will be seeing some rain here tomorrow, I have my fingers crossed.

My last post was talking about how I was going to save my money and not finish my room. Blow that out the window... I couldn't deal with my room being half compelete so I went ahead and finished it, picutres to come soon. I am dreading my budgeting this money because it is already looking bad. No one to blame but myself, but atleast my room is compelete...LOL Not to mention it has been a million things to buy or hand money out for this month, baby shower, house warming gifts and then Winston and his A honor roll cost me $100. Geez, I hope nothing comes up this month because I am broke. Well not broke like I can't pay the bills, but broke for me means I might have to cut back what I put in my savings this month. Since my savings account is pretty low because of the furniture purchase this does not make me happy. I will have to do better.

The coupon scoop. Triple coupons this week at Harris Teeter, I made 3 trips which is pretty slack for me. Actually the deals were not items I use that often, but I did get some items I wanted for free or very cheap. Actually I have not been grocery shopping much this past month. I am stocked so well I have only shopped for the basics while hitting a few sales items here and there. Not very usual for me, but like I said Mark and I stay super busy this time of year. My monthly totals are in and I am actually pretty happy being that a few of these shops were with no coupons. My decided to have a nice steak, bake potatoe and salade meal which was like $30, so I am happy with my shopping for the month. I spent $169.64 and saved $265.85 or 60%. I have been slack with my coupons lately and I have really got to do better, but still 60% savings is better that full price :)

Well I just wanted to give an update on my list of failures for the month(ha) When I get the chance I will really get to work on this blog and get some pictures on here. Well I must go clean the kitchen and get ready for bed, believe it or not Monday is knocking on the door again :(