Discover the Meaning of Easter

Discover the Meaning of Easter

An EGGcellent day!

Today is a gorgeous day outside! The trees are all in bloom, bursting with pinks, white, purple, yellow - what a perfect day for an Easter egg hunt! This is the very first year we actually took the kids to my work for an egg hunt. In years past, we would always go to Grandma Jan's work, but she is retired so we decided to give my hospital a chance. It was a great time for the kids and free!!! Chase even found one of the only 6, special eggs, that if found, would give you an extra prize! We figured this would be his last yr to partake in such festivities, so that was great that he found a special egg. Brooke was like an egg machine. She filled her basket to the top! Besides being very windy, it was fun. Mike thought the Easter bunny they had there, looked like it was choking....I guess he was in the right place if he was :).
Today is also the day I married my wonderful, handsome husband,17 years ago. Today would be a gorgeous day for a wedding! My gift to him was that I have lost my voice, so no nagging today, at least not that he can hear:).
Last night was our Good friday service at church. It was such a moving and powerful night of worship, and testimonies. My sister and I watched the Passion yesterday afternoon also. What an emotional, very hard to watch movie. But it serves as a reminder of what Christ went through for US!!
Tomorrow, we will go to church and then head to my parents house for Easter brunch and another egg hunt with all the cousins! I pray that you all have a blessed Easter and that you see new life all around you in the spring blooms and your loved ones.

To paint or not to paint

Awhile back I finally crossed another thing off of my lengthy to-do list. I sit around my house and look intently at the walls, windows, closets, etc and try to decide how to change things up or make them look better. Lately, I was looking at my fireplace. As you can see from this pic, there has only been a brick "mantle" if you can even call it that.
I have been wanting to add a very simple mantle with the scrap wood in the garage. Here is the finished product.

I know it is just very simple and plain, but it helps the fireplace have a little more prescence in the room. Thank you to Mike, my wonderful hubby, for helping me with this project. Of course I got the usual response at first, the ever popular eye-roll, but I reminded him how much I loved him and flashed him a smile. Now, I need your opinion. Should I paint the fireplace brick white also??? We do build a lot of fires. Please leave me a comment with your vote :) Thanks!!

latest savings

Sorry if this is torture to some (most) of you, but I find saving money exciting and somewhat a challenge I have now placed on myself. I am learning the tricks of the trade. One big one is KNOW exactly what you are going for, and try not to get anything else extra. Also, you have to enjoy going to a lot of different stores, even if it means getting one or two things at each just to save save save! I went to Walgreens yesterday and bought a few things and this is what I paid for each after using coupons and in-store sales. Crest $2.29 - $1.50 off Walgreens coupon-75Cents manufature coupon...= .54Cents each! Deoderant $4.49 each. Walgreens special buy on get one free, plus $2.00 off when you buy 2 (I had 2 of these) so each deod cost me $1.00. Body spray $4.79..I had a buy one get one free coupon, and a $3.00 off when you buy 2 coupon and they let me use BOTH!! Love Walgreens for that fact. They let you stack coupons. So each spray cost roughly .90cents! Excedrin Migraine on sale for 2 for $5.00 and I had a coupon for $2.00 off and one for $1.00 off. So each box cost a dollar. Have you found any good deals this week?? I always keep extra of daily items on hand (I learned this from my mom years ago) That way you can only buy items when you have coupons AND they are on sale!!

I am in love......with coupons

I know, i know, this sounds really sad. But I have recently been hooked on coupons and saving money. I have a lot of new favorite blogs and websites that I check daily. They have awesome coupons, free samples, weekly deals, etc. I have recently joined some sites that ask your opinion on products or ask you to take a survey...and you can earn points towards a gift card. Anyway. Today is thursday. Okay. Well, it is one of my favorite days of the week now. It is the day I go to the grocery store, because as many of you local girls know, you save $10 on your $50 purchase at Shop and Save. The thing that I love now, is that the past 4 weeks, they let you do two separate $50 purchases, so you save 20 bucks without trying!!!!! Plus I always look at the weekly ad to see what is on sale and what I also have a coupon for. That equals almost getting some products for free!! It does take doing some homework, but well worth the effort! I also mark a "C" on my shopping list by the item i have a coupon for. I then arrange my coupons to the order the items are in the store. For example, bread is in the first aisle, so my bread coupon is first. It becomes a little cumbersome holding your coupons, pushing the cart, crossing off items from your list, and keeping a running total of money spent, but again well worth the effort! Today, in particular, was a good savings day. With the 2-$10 off automatic savings for spending 50 and 50, plus $34.36 in coupons, and $33.58 SRP (money saved just by shopping at Shop and Save, their daily low or in store sale prices for the week) I saved a grand total of $87.94!!!! I spent $121.40 and our weekly budget is 130.00, so now I am under budget :) I am sure this isn't exciting to anyone else out there, but I was so thrilled, that I had to write it down. Here is the actual receipts to prove my savings :) What good deals did you get this week? or what deals do you know about that you can share with us??


Oh yeah, one tip. If you do go to shop n save and split your order into 2, make sure you save all the items you have coupons for till the 2nd ring, otherwise if you just throw everything up on the line, your cashier may not take the time to sort which items you have coupons for and not. My sweet cashier today, told me "you did a great job" saving with all those coupons, but he also said he'll have to remember me in the future (I guess to avoid me) :)

For more savings fun head on over to SUPER SAVINGS SATURDAY where you can check out lots of other links to great sites where people are saving a ton of money too!!!

WHEW!!

WHEW!! What a night, day, evening, it was yesterday! I am tired to prove it! I worked the night shift on tuesday. I usually have a period of time where I get pretty tired and long for my bed around 3am at work. But this past night shift had me yearning for rest for a lot of the night. It is almost a feeling that you just want to scream, because your body is crying out to be at rest, but you must walk the long hallway of the hospital yet again to answer a call light, pass a pain pill, help with breastfeeding, check an IV, take a baby to the nursery, help someone who is throwing up, or needs another ice pack, or assess and weigh a baby, or give it a shot, or go answer yet another call light, or get a new admission settled in, or do all your computer charting on all the things you just did......sometimes, it seems endless. I know I was in more of a funk than usual, because the hospital had a 'Winterfest" for us at midnight, yes, midnight. We were like kids litteraly in a candy store. They had fruit with chocolate fountains flowing, so you could drench your healthy bite in lucious chocolate. They had these little dessert parfaits...to ...die..for. Then to top it off they had a Candy Buffet!! Probably about 50 different kinds of candy to choose from. I chose all things I thought the kids would love. So even though i didn't eat from the candy buffet, I DID have 2 choc covered strawberries and 2 mini parfaits.....THAT was what put me in the funk. It made me crabby and tired about an hour after eating it! Oh well. I survived, but just barely, i tell ya :)

Anyway....I got home from work, took the kids to school and then headed off to sleep, until it was time to get up and put a smile on (without much makeup) to run my monthly Club HOPE meeting with 45 young kids. Two words....1. Soda 2. tylenol Luckily, I got a second wind and it went well. We had a guest speaker for part of the meeting and she brought 2 dogs with her to show us some trainig tricks. After the meeting ended at 5:30 I headed straight to Heaven on Earth, I mean McDonalds, and grabbed yet another hugo soda. At this point I just had to keep going. If I sat for even a minute, it would be over. And we had an awesome night at church ahead of us yet. Our church is in the process of possibly having another local church join with us. So we were having a night of worship with the members of that church tonight (last night). All I can say is WOW!!!! It was the pick me up I needed!!! WHAT a night. We sang praise and worship songs for 2 hours!!! It was more like attending a concert, with the amazing band. Members from our worship team and theirs combining their talents. They also played all my favorite songs!!! I am hoping we can do that once a month from now on, it was that amazing!! We got home at 9pm and I got Brooke into jammies and bed, then I was off to the couch...I had to catch up on American Idol....I made it till around 10 after putting Chase to bed....then fell asleep. WHEW!! What a tiring 24 hours that was.

Use whatcha got!

As many of you know, we have been on a budget around here...really and truly on one for the first time ever!! As a result, that means that one of my favorite hobbies is gone......shopping. I love to go to places like Pier 1, Kirklands, Bed Bath & Beyond...really anywhere...to browse. In the past, the browsing always led to a purchase of some sort. Let's face it. Shopping gives us women a high of sorts, doesn't it?! Well, I can only go to the stores if I NEED something and have a SPECIFIC item in mind, with a coupon too. I know myself too well, and know that I am tempted to buy pretty stuff. So, what's a girl to do?? I now "shop" my own house. I have been sitting in each room of our house, and really taking a long look at how everything is arranged. In turn, I have found a need to change things around, just to "change things up a bit". Really, when you think about it, we love to buy something new, because we are tired of all of our stuff. But when you simply move furniture from one room to another, change out pictures in frames, paint frames a different color, maybe even CUT YOUR DRAPERIES and hang them on a rod you've had in your basement for years (yes, i just did this last week) the first pic is "before", you instantly have something "new" to look at, using your old stuff. I recently simply turned my kitchen table horizontally in the room, from vertically...and I love it that way. I also took the buffet table from the kitchen and moved it behind our desk in the living room. (Our desk faces out like in a real office setting. ) I love the buffet there, and it allowed me to move a lamp from the family room to place on it, instantly giving us a little sitting area to read in. Yesterday, we started the work of adding some scrap wood from our garage, onto our brick "mantle" to make it bigger and give it more of a presence. I have been thinking about doing that for about 6months now, and finally got around to doing it. Tomorrow I will paint it, and then post a pic. Organizing the closets last weekend felt good too. Again....free. What items can you move from room to room to give you a different look in your house? If you don't like it move it back, right?! Use this time inside, during these long winter months, to look around and get some of those things that have been on your mind done, once and for all. I promise, you will feel great!! Plus, once the weather turns warm, your attention will turn to the yard and flowers.....Let me know what you are thinking about moving around and post pics!!