Still Tired....But Feel a little better!

Obviously I'm still tired since I'm doing this late, which was not the plan. This week has just been a hard week. But late or not, I had an absolute blast this morning with my kids. We went to Lowe's and they had safety saturday and the build and grow clinic. Every 2 weeks they have a build and grow clinic where kids get to build whatever item Lowe's has chosen and they get to do it for free. It was so much fun. They got to build a fire truck, and there was a big fire truck there. They also got fire hats, shirts that say arive alive, and buckle up on the back. They had so much fun. I also got to put those Drunk Goggles on, which my husband video taped and it was quite funny. I've never had so much as a sip of alcohol in my life, so my husband thouroghly enjoyed seeing me like that. You can sign up to do this every week. You can either go to http://www.lowes.com/, and search build and grow, or you can go to this site http://lowesbuildandgrow.com/ChooseAClinic.aspx. It will tell you what they are doing the next time. I highly recommend doing this with children. It is so much fun. They also go to sit in the firetruck and I of course took a picture. I think what Lowe's is doing is amazing. There are some families that can't afford to buy there children new toys, and this is a good way for them to do something as a family and for the kids to get something too absolutely free. My kids love it, and I'm grateful that they can do it. I can afford to buy them new things, but I teach them that they don't always get what they want. It's fun for them to do this and have to work to get the new toy. They have to build it themselves and they really enjoy it. Enjoy the picutres below.....

Tired....

So I haven't been getting much sleep lately because my 11 month old feels the need to be like a newborn. It can be very exhausting. He must be growing. He wakes up all night long wanting his bottle and acting like he's never eaten a day in his life. Well, it catches up when I don't get any sleep. I've got so much going on in the next week. I have 2 events that I have to be at, one of which is a charity event. Both of them I'm a vendor. I have a PTO meeting. I have to start planning my sons Halloween party at school because I'm his room mom. The list could go on and on.

Somedays I feel like just laying around all day, but don't have that luxury with being in school, having children in school, and having children that need my attention a lot of the day.

I had a nice night last night. I got to hang out with a friend of mine and watch the premier of Grey's Anatomy. It was kind of nice to be kid free for a while and just hang out. We did our hair, snacked, and just had a fun Girl's night! Those are the kind of breaks that mom's need sometimes, but that we rarely get.

This is obviously just a general post since I'm exhausted and writing about miscellaneous silliness.

So, what are everyone's favorite TV shows? If you even get the chance to watch anything. I have a whole list of shows I enjoy. I have to DVR all of them and watch them when I get the chance. I enjoy watching Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Desperate Housewives, Entourage, True Blood, Dexter, The Sopranos, The News, Wheel of Fortune, Any Game show. I obviously don't have any time for all of this, and my DVR is constantly full of stuff.

Until next time.....

Still no keys....

So for those of you who read my earlier post, I still have not found my keys. I had to have my mom come and get me on her lunch, take me to Roper Honda, wait for me to get a practice key and then take me home. I then had to do some nonsense to my car to get it started and couldn't turn it off until I got back to Honda for them to program a new key for me. Luckily my husband used to work there and they were super nice and gave us the employee price so I wasn't paying $80 for a new key. Then my sweet and awesome mama took me out to dinner at Olive Garden to relieve my stress. It worked!! So I though I would talk about organization, and then I decided I didn't want to stress about reading about being organized when I obviously was so not organized at all today. So I'm going to do that next week. It will also be before Friday!! I think this week I will stick to the persuasiveness of making you all coupon. I know you love to read about it!!

So the best part of this last week was my trip to Wal-mart on Sunday. This is how my reciept looked:
6 Boxes of Cereal
3 Packages of AA Energizer batteries(8 Pack)
1 Gallon of Milk
16 Tubes of Crest Toothpaste(Don't Judge me Yet)

Walmart paid me $1.31 after coupons to leave will all of this. This is how I did it.
I ad matched Ron's IGA for the Batteries, Milk and Toothpaste. The batteries were $2.99, the Milk was $2.88, and the Toothpaste was $0.49. I ad matched the Kellog's cereal to walgreen's which was $2.00. I had many different coupons that I used. They are as follows:

(3) $1 off Coupons for Batteries
(2) $3 off 3 Boxes of Kellogs Cereal
(1) $2 Off 1 Gallon of milk with purchase of 5 Kellogs Cereals
(8) $2 off Crest
(4) $1 Off Crest
(4) $0.50 Off Crest

On the Crest toothpaste is where I made my money. I made $1.51 on 8 tubes and $0.51 and 4 of the tubes. The other 4 tubes were free. So with all my coupons and ad matching, I didn't have to pay for any of this and got paid to walk out of the store with it. If you are still confused, you can ask me, or you can try one of these websites to help you out, http://www.commonsensewithmoney.com/, http://www.iheartwags.com/, and http://www.frugalfritzie.com/.

Just so you know, I did not keep all that toothpaste. My mom works in an administrative building, and yesterday I took my son with the wal-mart bag full yesterday and he went trick-or-treating with toothpaste. He gave everyone in her office a tube. They loved it and though it was so cute. He is 4 and absolutely loved it. I'm trying to teach him and my other boys about giving and donating. Anyime we can get something free or cheap that we don't need or only need 1 or 2 of I still get as much as I can and then we donate it. They love to help others in need.

Until Next Time.....

Scatter Brain!

Have you ever been so scatterbrained that you don't even know what to do with yourself? I am a very organized person, and I don't lose things. This morning has been the worst morning ever. I am an on time person. I don't like to be late. My son has to be at school by 7:40, and class starts promptly at 7:50. We get in the car at about 7:35 and I can't find my keys that I always put in my purse. At this point I start freaking out. I don't like to be late as I already mentioned, and I especially don't like to make my kids late. By 7:47 I call my mom to see if she can come get my son. Luckily, my mom works in the Webb City school district so it only took her a couple of minutes to get to my house. So, of course, my son was late to school, and I still haven't found my keys.

I don't know what is wrong with me, I'm not like this. My house may be a mess sometimes, but it is an organized mess. I always know where everything is. ALWAYS! I'm so upset with myself. My husband knows how I am about being late. I can't stand it. I don't even like to be a minute late.

I still can't find my keys. I don't have a spare set, because when we bought the car used, it didn't have the spare keys. I've had this car for 3 1/2 years, and that shows how often I lose the keys. I'm waiting for my husband and baby to wake up so I can look in the bedroom and i'm very much hoping they are in there. If they aren't, who knows what i'm going to do. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to leave here in 2 hours to go and pick up my good friends son for a sleepover this weekend. Why do these things have to happen on such important days??? I'm so frustrated right now. That is why I chose to take a break from looking for the keys in hope that it might calm me down a little. It has a little, but not much. I won't be calm until I find those keys.

I have a feeling my next post will be on organization, and some good ways to stay organized. I will probably be posting some sites that I find with those skills! Until next time......

Just a general post!

Enough about coupons for a couple of blogs. I know that you all love hearing about coupons and can't read enough of it, but it can get monotanous typing a lot about and reading a lot about coupons when you do it all the time. I want to talk a little bit about my family since I've discussed coupons so much lately and persuaded you enough.

I've been married to a wonderful man named Jon for almost 5 years now. He served our country in Iraq for about 9 months until he got injured and was medically discharged from the Army. I met him about 5 months later. I couldn't imagine my life without him, and I tell him all the time that I'm very grateful he served our country, but I'm glad he didn't do it when I knew him. I don't think I would have handled that very well. I'm glad he never has to go back. Jon and I have 3 beautiful boys.

Roman, 6, is in Kindergarten this year and is going on 15 and knows everything. Just this morning I told him that if he was so old he better get a job. That made him realize his age real quick and said he couldn't because he was just a kid. He is in flag football and loves it. He's bigger than most of the kids on his team because his doctor says he is the size of an average 8 year old. He's my snuggle bug when he wants to be.

Jaxon, 4, in in preschool and wishes he was in kindergarten like big brother was. He likes to be the center of attention since he is the middle child and wants to make sure every one notices him. He is so loving and gentle hearted. He loves to meet new people, and when he does, he introduces himself as, Jaxon Lincoln Hart. He wants everyone to know his full name and is very proud of it.

Logan, 10 months, is our fat baby, at least that is his nickname. He gets into everything and has started taking about 4-5 steps at a time. He is the biggest baby out of the 3 of them and we assume he is going to be huge. The doctor thinks so as well. I love to watch him learn new things every day and get so excited about them.

My boys are my life. It's all I know, because that is all that is in my house. Even a boy dog. I don't know if I could handle girls! Well, It's time for psychology. More next week......

Questions About Coupons

I had a few replies wanting to know about coupons. The first question I will answer is where I get all my coupons. There are many places that you can coupons. The first thing you want to do, so that you don't overwhelm yourself, is get the Sunday newspaper. Every week, the newspaper has different types of inserts that come in them with coupons. The only weeks you won't get inserts are the holiday weekends, like labor day. I didn't get any coupons this last weekend :(. I will be ok though, don't worry.

The inserts that generally come in the paper are; Smartsource (SS), Redplum (RP), Proctar & Gamble (P&G) and sometimes we have special ones that come out like General Mills. The P&G only comes out once a month and it's my favorite insert. With that insert, I have gotten many free and cheap razors, shampoo and conditioner and laundry detergent. We go through a lot of all of those items. The SS and RP generally come out every week and they have great coupons as well. The best Sunday paper to get in this area is the Kansas City Star. They have way better coupons than the Joplin Globe, because they are a bigger region. You can get the KC Star at Dollar Tree in Carthage, or at any Walmart, and Walgreen. I highly recommend getting the KC Star.

There are many other ways that you can get coupons as well. Here are some websites that are safe and that you can check out:
http://www.coupons.com/
http://www.smartsource.com/
http://www.redplum.com/

You can also email or send letters to many companies and they will mail you coupons. For instance, I really like Luv Diapers. I've used them for all my kids. I wrote an email to the company thanking them for a good product and a great price. They mailed me coupons for $2.00 off one package of luvs diapers. They sent me 2 of those. I was extremely excited about that.

One last thing you can do to get coupons is if you checked out and joined the blogs I told you about from the last blog, is they constantly update where you can get free samples. When you fill out that information for those free samples, they generally send a coupon with the sample. I definitely don't want to overwhelm with too much information, so I will stop here and save some more for the next blog.

I love all the questions, so ask away, and I will do my best to answer them all!

Is Using Coupons Worth It?

Coupons, are they worth it? Is it worth your time and effort? Of course it is, not only do I clip coupons, but I save my family, on average 50-75% of our overall grocery and personal needs bill. What? You want to know more, I can tell you more.

I started to coupon about 2 weeks after watching my first episode of extreme couponing. I fell in love, and had to do it! I bought one of those big binders, and made my husband go out and get me a bunch of baseball card holders that I could put my coupons in. My binder is organized by sections. For example, fruits is a section, cereal is a section, and so on. I don't think I could live without my coupons now.

Why should you do it? That's so easy to answer. You can spend as little time you want clipping a few coupons, or be extreme and save a lot of money. A penny saved is a penny earned.

How do I start, you ask? Well, do what I did, I got on all the blogs and starting reading everything there was to know about how to coupon. Nicole, I don't know what blogs to read. No fear, I will give you those blogs.

The first blog I checked out was http://www.thekrazycouponlady.com/. I learned so much from this blog. This is the blog that I chose to use her information on how to organize my coupon binder. You can go here http://thekrazycouponlady.com/beginners/ to find out all you need to know about beginning your life of coupons. I also like to use http://www.wildforwags.com/. Walgreens is the absolutley best place to go to get all of your personal needs items. They frequently have great sales and a program called Register Rewards which also frequently makes things free. The last blog i'm going to share (I have many more but don't want to overwhelm anyone) is http://www.hip2save.com/. A lady named Collin runs this site, and is fantastic. She knows how to get a beginner started.

Well, I hope this wasn't too much information, and I also hope by the end of this semester, I can convince some of you to use coupons.