I was not expecting this when I woke up...

A few days ago my friends cashed in an awesome deal. Free brand new furniture. Somebody they knew had just bought a show home that was going out of business and they got it fully furnished and didn't want most of the stuff. The only stipulation for my friends was they had to move it themselves.

So Mster was already planning on spending the afternoon playing with their daughters and when I talked to my friend this morning she asked me if I wanted some of her stuff. She only wanted me to offset some of the rental truck expense and a king size mattress that they would have to buy.

I went over this afternoon with a general idea of what she was selling but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. First off her husband just wanted to get rid of it all. So they sold me everything for 300$. They also packed it into their rental and moved it to my house and unpacked it for me because Cster was at work. They just kept giving me more and more things.

All in all we got:

A full dining room set that sits 8 (6 chairs and a bench). The table is regularly a rectangle but extends to a square and a hutch to match. I also got all her linens to go with the table. I also got some wall peices that went with her dining room set.

2 couches. A love seat and big sofa(with a hidabed!!!) with all the matching pillows. (Her house is very put together and everything matched and looked great.

An end table

A weight bench complete with weights and bar.

A double stroller

2 matching tables lamps

A kid size table with chairs

I'm so overwhelmed by all this new stuff that I should be working to arrange and declutter and clean so I can fit it all in nicely but after the stress of figuring all that out I just want to lie down and rest and look at my old dining room set that is now in my living room.

This is all too much for a pregnant woman.

Coupons

Something I learned about coupons...

I've never been one to use coupons. It was always my opinion that going through all the coupons you get and clipping four 25 cent coupons for your entire grocery order was just not worth it. But, I have been converted. Its been a slow process. My friend taught me a months ago how to use coupons the best and I thought about it for a long time and then finally this month jumped on the bandwagon. I will now share my coupon wisdom with all who read.

The coupons only work for me because of a free site called www.couponmom.com. You have to register but all it involves is giving your email address and creating a password and I've never gotten any spam (that I'm aware of) from the site.

Once you are registered there is a feature where you can go to your state and pick the stores they've already figured out coupons for. In my state there are 2 stores that work. They also have national stores like Walmart, Walgreens, Target, Rite Aid, etc.

So here's how it works. The couponmom people figure out what coupons you should use, when you should use them and where you should use them. It matches store sales with your coupons (from the sunday paper) and gives you the most sale for your coupon.

Here is a real example that I did a few weeks ago:

Safeway had Betty Crocker Icing on sale Buy 2 get 3 free. The total came to 4$. So that would be $4/5 icings before coupons. I had a 50cent off coupon. Safeway doubles manufacturers coupons so that made it $3/5 icings. Then (and how would I have ever known this) the icing containers had 20 cent coupons on them that you could take off at the register. Remember that Safeway doubles so that totals $2 off (.20XdoubledX5icings) So in the end I spent $1 for 5 icing containers.

If you you read that and think its too confusing to figure it all out (which I do) but couponmom does all the work for you. You just look at their list, organize it the way you want (I always organize it by most % saved per item) and then go from there.

Some of you may say why would you need 5 containers of icing but I do have 2 kids and I am trying to have some food storage and you never know when you have to make cupcakes and .20 cents a container is cheaper than making it your own.

There are numerous times that you end up getting items for free with all the different discounts.

The one thing to think about when doing coupons is what kind of food do you buy. I don't buy a lot of prepackaged food. I dont' buy sugar cereal (If I had gotten coupons in January I could get sugar cereal for $1/box this week) so I probably don't save as much as a family that buys more of that type of product but where I do always save is on cleaning supplies and toiletries.

And that is all.

Its not as easy as you may think

Throwing up the entire contents of your stomach while not being able to breathe through your nose. Its not as easy as you may think.

You know things have been rough when...

You finally feel so much better that you not only vacuum your carpet but haul out the carpet cleaner.

Remember my previous post where I said I had a head cold, its totally still there. Usually any normal human being would be on the couch with their hot beverage and nyquil tucked under their arm but not I. I decide that since I don't feel like throwing up, I'm going to carpet clean.

PS - I sold another 64 hair clips today. I need to do a total count but I think the clip count is over 200 sold easily. Yeah!!!!

The Definition of Irony

Finally feeling like you are not pregnant. Finally not wanted to throw up at the most ordinary things...

only to get a stupid head cold.

Booby

Mster is learning how to read and write. So far her writing has just been her name and her families names but today she made some "progress". While I was putting Lster down for a nap she asked if she could have some paper. When I came down she told me that she had written "booby". And she had. I checked her paper. She wrote booby. I asked her what booby meant and she apparently doesn't know. Congratulations Mster you're a writer.

Garbage Can Comformity

A few weeks ago my neighbour told me about a trash company that seemed to have a good deal on garbage pickup. For the same price I was paying now I would get one of their rolly huge bins (I was using a regular store bought one) and for a 1 time 10$ fee I could get recycling too. I thought I had just renewed my latest trash commitment so I said I would have to reconsider.

Then the wind storm to end all wind storms came on garbage day and we lost our garbage can. I searched the neighborhood but could not find it anywhere. So I checked my trash contract and realized I hadn't paid them yet so I could switch companies. Which I did. On a side note, later that afternoon I found our garbage can only to have to be stolen less than an hour later when I went back to go get it.

So the purpose of this story is share how excited Mster is for our new garbage can. We apparently now have the same garbage can as ALL her friends and she pointed out every other garbage can on our way to preschool. "Mom!!! WE HAVE THE SAME GARBAGE CAN AS THEM!!" She is beyond beyond excited.

The Baby Popper

Mster: I'm going to ask daddy to help me build something.
Me: Really. What?
Mster: Its a baby popper. And when its all done I'm going to paint it yellow and red.
Me: Nice. What's a baby popper?
Mster: You know a thing that pops out babies.
Me: Uh...how exactly does it work?
Mster: You just use it and pop out babies. Lots of babies.
Me: What are you popping babies from?
Mster: Cannons. Its a cannon. Daddy'll help me.
Me: Interesting.
Mster: We are going to have a brother, a sister, a mom and a dad and lots and lots of babies. You might step on them. Its going to be a REALLY REALLY big family.

Mster is Reading

Mster is reading. Sort of. She needs to be in exactly the right mood. She has to be coaxed. She has to sometimes be bribed but if the stars all align she will put the letters together (in the right order) and read.

The interesting thing with teaching Mster to read is that she has an amazing memory. AMAZING. I can read a story and she will remember the words in the story. So more often than not I will ask her what the word is and she will go back into that brain of hers and try to rememer the story word for word. She'll look at the picture and guess the word or she'll just remember the sentence from when I read it to her (only 1 time before). This last example happened last night. We were showing Cster her new talent. She was reading "but". It took some time but she finally got it and proceded to say "I hope he can play the harmonica" really slowly, as if she was reading. She had me thinking she was reading all the way until she said "harmonica". :)

I'm not sure how to tap into that memory ability to teach her because I've read articles that most adults don't actually read phonetically. They look at a word as a whole and guess what it is in the context of the sentence (we just do it really fast and have enough practise that we normally get it right).

I'm Finished.

I just finished reading Little Women. This may not seem like a very important thing to blog about but for me, it is. I have started Little Women more times than I can count. I've even started the movie and had yet to finish that one either. I don't know what it was about Little Women. I wanted to read it. I wanted to enjoy it. I felt that it was a book I would enjoy and yet I could never get past that first Christmas morning. Well, last week, I finished the whole thing and I loved the whole thing. Maybe its the pregnancy. I was so set on finishing the book that I asked for it for Christmas. Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. (well, once the sleeping pill set in I had to put it down but that's a different story) I'm proud of myself for the completion and a little ponderous as to why I had so much trouble before. I do have to admit that I'm still getting over Laurie and Jo not getting together. It was the right thing, of course, but I guess I have a thing for unrequited love.

Holy Bump

So today my sister-in-law called and asked if I had a bump. I told her "no. I just walked by a mirror and noticed it. The "bump". It like magically sprouted sometime today between 10AM and 1pm. Well, actually, maybe I just ate too much. I'm not ready to call it official yet.

Anybody got a Radar?

Mster was driving me a little bonkers today. She was obsessed with 2 topics and wouldn't stop asking the same questions over and over again. I realize part of it was hoping that the answer would be different and part of it was hoping to have a better understanding of what I'm talking about but it was still rather annoying. Here is the only one I can really type of and make sense.

Mster: Where are E and A?
Me: At the park?
Mster: Waiting for us?
Me: Yep. But we're almost there.
Mster: Are they sitting down while they wait for us?
Me: Mster, I have no clue what they are doing. I can't see them.
Mster: Well...we should get a radar that you can see anybody you want and know where they are what they are doing.
Me: Yep, that would be helpful.
Mster: WE COULD KNOW WHERE GRANDMA IS!!! (she was currently driving down to visit them and they couldn't bare the agony of waiting)
Me: Yep.
Mster: Mom, whats a radar?


PS: No walk. Too sick.