weakness

since i buy my own birthday gifts, i bought myself a nice notebook with a 3 inch ring and a handle and everything zips up all nice and neat. i also bought the pages used for baseball cards, which i will fill with coupons. i still have a few days left on my amazon prime trial, so i should be receiving it tomorrow or friday.

i am sure once i get used to it, it will save me a bit more money, i hope it pays for itself within the first month.

so i don't feel deprived, i also got a set of philosophy cologne, with some       3-in-1 gel and perfumed lotion. i saved 20% on it during a special promotion drugstore.com had last month. i love the 3-in-1, it's the best to take swimming and only have to take one bottle to the shower and use for everything.

i also love their vanilla birthday cake and lemonade scents. i have a bottle of gingerbread man- which smells like gingerale- that we use for the dog. before you decide i'm crazy, keep in mind this is a big bottle that they sent me free when i signed up for their email letter, or maybe it was my birthday, i don't really remember now. so, no, i'm not spending $16 for dog shampoo, i'm using some free stuff. i also have eggnog and cocoa fudge but i am not crazy about those. i wonder how my if my dog would like to be a nog dog.

i did some computer work today and earned 2 really pretty cut glass platters, 2 bingo game and mancala game for my grandkids, and had a great lunch. today i sat with a woman whose son had given her a desktop when she asked him for a typewriter. she gets confused and can't remember what is the internet and what is not the internet. she keeps mixing up windows and world wide web.

if i had a typewriter, i'd give it to her.

if i had a smartcar, i'd drive it to her house and give her a typewriter.

drug-free shopping spree

my husband was let go from his job yesterday morning, before he punched in. we both suspected it was coming, business has been way down and something had to give. they also ditched half of the sales people.

but he got a call last night from someojne he works with, and a car battery blew up in one of the worker's face and burned him severely. the worker who got hurt was doing my husband's job. so i am very thankful he was let go before his shift started, not after.

he went to an all-call for a major corporation today and got his resume in. he had planned on going anyway, but now he has more motivation. they said they would be calling him next week!

he will apply for unemployment and it will come out to about the same as he got with his hours cut. i just need to find something to fill in the holes.

i went thrifting last week and found a few pieces of anti-bellum silverware. i am going to sell it but i am trying now to figure out if i should sell them as tableware or silver by the ounce. tableware seems to be the way to go, and if i list each at 9.99 and get that, i will be a happy camper. there are three that are special and i will be keeping those until i am sure of what i have here.

today i went with a friend shopping, a male friend of my husband's. he wanted advice on buying curtains and it was fun. we picked out some cut ones, as well as rods and tiebacks. then we hit sonic happy hour. my husband has been teasing me about my "date".i had known him since i was 1, so if i were going to actually date him, i would have done it before now. and definitely before i got married! ut we get along great and it's fun to get out with someone who looks at as much crap as i do. we also bought him a few more things for his house, on clearance:

• new bed sheets for a queen bed, $13
• extra set of matching pillowcases, $3.50
• 12 towels, $3.50 each (he is moving his dogs cage into his bedroom and  needed something to put under it. he will use his old towels for that purpose and restock with the new bright white ones.)
• a pack of 18 washcloths, $2
• a couple of white face towels to put out in the bathroom, $2 each

my husband doesn't like to shop, so he was more than happy for me to have company.

and yes, it is the same friend with the cocaine problem. he has been going to aa meetings for 3 months now. he was going to hang out with us tonight, but he is getting his 90 day chip tonight. i offered to go with him, but he said not to bother. i think he is embarrassed. but i am making him a congrats card that i will stick in his car the next time i see him. i will just tell him how proud i am of him and how glad i am that we are friends.

he has a lot more cash now that he isn't snorting it up. so i guess we spent his drug money today. i am very pleased with his purchases and so was he. he was surpised at how cheap the clearance things were, and they actually match his decor. if it takes him buying a set of sheets a week to quit drugs, i hope he buys them. he is a lot of fun to be around when he isn't messed up and i hope he has seen the light.

so i guess today's frugal tip is, DON'T DO DRUGS! this message was brought to you from the clearance section at target and the letter "C"!

while we were out, we saw a red smartcar, but i didn't get a photo. he thinks i will get killed in it. he said it looks too much like a cozy coupe!

i ate chinese earlier today and had left-overs for dinner. my husband ate all his food at the restaurant. you know what he did....he ate my left-overs! he always does that! i can't even get pissed about it, he does it so often. i guess i need to hide them if i want to eat them.

his 49th birthday is coming up and i am having a little party from him. i was going to spend a small fortune on john deere themed party supplies, but now i am glad i didn't, since he won't have a check for a while. i can go after st. pat's and get the green stuff for 50% off! i can find yellow to add, like solo cups or napkins. it won't be as fancy, but i am making him a homemade cake and buying some frozen pizzas to doctor up. a party is still a party. i bought him a jd wallet, a jd a comforter set and an adult coloring book i found that has muscle cars in it. my sister bought him a different jd wallet and she is getting him a lowe's gift card, which i will get to use to buy flowers.

it also won't be a surprise party, as he will probably still be unemployed then. he is 50 next year and had told me he didn't want a 50th party. so i was going to surprise him with a 49th birthday party instead. that's out the window now.

i'm not going to get disappointed about this, it's only a minor setback. at least he didn't get a battery exploded in his face.

cutting up

lately, my husband has gotten into helping me coupon. he suts the coupons out he thinks i will use. the rest are sent into the circle. so if there is a coupon that the other ladies haven't clipped, i will end up wth a ton of coupons. this is a fun thing todo, and it's free.

once the coupons are cut, i put them in a file box in alphabetical order by brand name. i know most people do it by catergory, but here is my logic:

if i am looking for lysol toilet scrub, i have to go through a lot of coupons for other toilet scrbs and they all look the same. however, if i file them by brand name, i can quickly tell what the brand name is and what the shape is, so to me, it is much easier to find.

bonus: the coupon has a picture on it, so i can hand some off to my husband and say, "go find this please" and thanks to the picture on the coupon, he now knows exactly what it looks like! that saves me a lot of time. i also a send him to the home fragrance aisle with a bunch of glade and airwick coupons and tell him to find someting he likes.

another good thing about him cutting the coupons is that he keeps with thing we have coupons on, because he has seen it.

i have come across several blogs where the women claim that the binder system is much better and easy to use. you get those baseball pages and put one coupon in each pocket. it's supposed to be fast and easy to use, which means you save more money. i think i am going to look into buying a system. i can always sell it.

a lightbulb goes off over my head!

i have put up some old entries from another blog. they are listed in the 2009 archives. it's not a lot but it's better for them to be there than somewhere out in the interwebs. at least here, they tell a part of the story.

so far, i have been good about not going to the old haunt of mine, the total snarky witch-fest website. but it's tempting.

i drove to the rotten town and did my grocery shopping. i think i will call this town "cracktown", and the other one "richville". so, i drove to cracktown and did my grocery shopping, and while i had a $100 bill set aside to do the monthly shopping (we fill in with about $15-20 dollars worth of food on friday nights at the tiny store near our house- by the time you figure in mileage, you can buy up to $30 and not spend anymore there than the discount place), i spent only $85. i used quite a few coupons, but i did  a lot of price matching and there were a few things they even paid me to take home. before coupons and in-store savings, my total was $143. so i saved about $58!

$58!

i think i will shake down $58 from the family budget somewhere and put the $58 away for my smartcar. i should do that as well as figure out how much i have saved by not getting a drink when i go out to eat.

wow, i think i have something to send the smartcar people. i have an ad campaign whereby they let me use a smartcar and i can only use my coupon savings to pay for gas and maintainenece. yeah, and if i don't have enough gas for my smartcar, i have to ride the hoopty 1962 schwinn hollywood bike you may have seen as my avatar.

oh wait, my severe arthritis may be a problem here.

unknown component

it's 3 in the morning and i am up looking for food.

what is wrong with me?

they paved paradise and put up a walgreen's

before i moved to the sticks, i lived in one of those towns that has torn down everything with character and replaced it with some type of chain franchise. then they suddenly realized, "hey, we need history!"  so they leave one block alone.

yeah, like a street out of mayberry in the middle of new york.

the idiot mayor even named the one old street "olde town" despite the fact that it was misspelled.

the chains continued to grow. soon the town had chili's, applebee's, starbucks.

and wal-green's.

lots and lots of wal-green's.

i think the rule is, you have to be able to see another walgreeen's from the one at which you are standing. 

on my way to shop at target, maybe a 5 mile route, i passed 6 walgreen's. SIX! if there was a good special, i would stop at every one to purchase whatever sale item i needed.

one year i bought 24 lbs. of hershey's bar s that i made into candy, and i think after i used all the coupons, rebate rewards, store specials and what have you, it was only $6. a quarter a pound for chocolate.

now the closest walgreen's is 16 miles away, in the same shopping center as taco bell and target. across the street is a starbucks. kroger is across the street on the other side of the parking lot.

if i go fifteen miles the other way from my house, i find a wal-mart that closes at midnight, a crappy dollar store, lots of cutesy gift shops that cater to the buses of antique-seeking red hatters, a lot of antiques stores full of broken crap, a wendy's, a sonic, the kfc/taco bell, a waffle house and a popeye's chicken.

i think a walgreen's is required.

just think, i could drive my smartcar right around the drive-thru!

cheap thrills

i made it to walgreen's last night- those rebate rewards were burning a hole in my pocket! i had $11 to spend, so i got 3 bags of dove promises- milk chocolate, dark chocolate and meltaway center chocolate. i also found hubby a treat on clearance- reese's creams!

when i checked out, i got a surprise- a $5 rr for spending $10 on hershey's chocolate. more money for chocolate!

the reese's creams were a hit with him. they are wrapped in a loose package. they are square, not round. he loves them. the only problem is that they were on last chance clearance- which we all know, means it will never be seen on the face of the earth again. i'm still looking for the a-1 garlic steak sauce from 2 years ago.

i found some toddler clothes on clearance at target for my niece's baby. a cute striped shirt was .75 and a sweet pink hooded sweatshirt was $1.25! they were back in the corner of the store where they had been selling bulk packages. i also got a BIG box of frosted flakes for cheap.

since i was at target, i went ahead and got what i could in the way of groceries. but they were out of gallons of regular red-top milk, i had to buy a half-gallon instead. they had 1/2 lb. blocks of cheese for $2, so i got some sharp cheddar and pepper jack cheese. i also bought triscuits and chiken-n-a-biskit crackers for my husband ( they are like club crackers rubber with chicken bouillon) at $2 a pop.

i picked up my rx refills while i was there and got a $10 gift card for the new one i dropped off to have filled. i like to save the gift cards and spend them on something i really don't need. i bought a cute little metal patio table that folds a few years ago and it's on my front porch right now. otherwise, i buy jewelry, stationery/pens or things to use for gifts.

i seem to have this obsession for paper. even though my son is grown, i still buy school supplies when they are on sale in september. i give them to my niece's children or the church. i have a shelf full of blank notebooks and journals, most bought on clearance, because they make great gifts. i guess i think i could write MY NOVEL if only i had the right notebook.

i also covet pens. but i don't have the big daddy of all pens- a montblanc! i could never bring myself to buy a $100 or more pen, but when i publish my first novel, i will buy it for myself.

but the first thing i am going to buy is a smartcar.