Author Archives: Sheila

Catch up!

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It feels like forever since I have had a chance to sit down and blog! But I am excited to say that I think***Hope**** that is going to change. So this post will be a random list what I can think of that I need to write down post! I am waiting for my tub to fill with hot water so I can enjoy a LONG LONG bath and hopefully a phone conversation (uninterrupted) with my BF.

I just checked my menu plan for the week and realized that I had Pork Chops down for Wednesday but that will not be happening as there are only 2 pork chops in the freeze. This week is a hard week because although we have PLENTY of chicken, that is about all the meat we have. Friday evening we had “Cabbage Rolls” which are by far my favorite cabbage dish and I will be making again so I am going to move the chimis to Tuesday since they will be a heat and serve dish after me working. I just have to remember to get them out of the freezer. I actually have a new cook book from Pamper chef so I may try something out of there as well.

We have decided that instead of buying a temporary sink for the new bathroom, on the day of inspection we will move the one from our bathroom to it. After the inspection is complete we plan on re-financing and buying the sink we want then. So at this point, we need $300 for a new hot water heater to be ready for our “Certificate of Occupancy.” I am hoping/praying that our State Income Tax Refund comes in this weeks so that we can get this ball rolling.

Matt and I attended a free “Financial Peace University” class today. The good thing was that it gave us some time to talk in the van. We have decided that we have to make an emergency fund a “MUST” so starting this month I am going to deposit $100 in it prior to paying bills and as soon as we get able to make the budget then we will stash anything extra in it until we have the $1000 that is recommended. We also talked at length about me working more and I think that Matt understands he is going to have to “sacrifice” some of his work time in order for it to work. This is a huge adjustment in his way of thinking but I hope it works.

I have been able to “find” some awesome deals this weekend. I made a trip to Food Lion yesterday and because of couponing I was able to purchase 1 gallon of milk and 2 packs of Oreo cookies for $1.63 but in reality I also spent $72 first to be able to do this deal. I am hoping that we can greatly reduce our food budget this month and it appears that will work but with a 5 week month that may change. Our neighbors were throwing away a dresser and nightstand that we decided to get. The dresser will end up being Zach and nightstand is ours and we may decided to go with a “wrought’ iron bed frame for the new room. The night stand is really cool so if we can find a bed to match that will be awesome.

Zach decided that sitting up was not enough of a milestone and is now able to crawl across the floor. He is also very difficult to get down for naps and bed so I am hoping that will get easier in the next few weeks. Currently he has been crying for 30 minutes. I am thinking that I will go and hold him and see if I can get him asleep before he wakes up Kendall.

Zach’s Surgery

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I am so far behind in blogging, I can’t believe it is the 8th of April. I seriously think I have lost the past 7 days. I think this entitles me to skip a monthly recap for March, but did actually do one in my head sort of.

So I decided that I need to blog about the most important thing I should remember about this week, Zach’s ear tube. I may or may not catch up on some other things later this week but for now this is what you get. We (Zach and I) went for pre-op on Monday and learned that we would need to be at the hospital at 6:15am on Wednesday. Matt and I had been talking about how to arrange it and that was the deciding factor. Tumble Tots is closed this week and so someone was going to have to stay with Lily and Kendall as well as get Haley to school. My dad volunteered to ride with Zach and I so that made things a little bit easier.

I woke up at 5am on Wednesday got dressed and had to wake Zach up to change him. We arrived at the hospital at 6:05 and waited less than 5 minutes before they took us to the Outpatient surgery unit. Pawpaw sat in the waiting room because it was more room. The staff was awesome. Zach did not even need an IV. He was under for less than 10 minutes. Zach left me around 6:55 with 2 RNs. Erica D. came out to speak to me and the doctor was back to tell me everything was a success at 7:11am. I did have a chance to call Matt and then sent a text when surgery was over. Erica brought Zach to me around 7:30 and stay and talked with me for about 15minutes. At around 8am Pawpaw came back because he was getting worried. I had told him 30-45 minutes after surgery we could go but they made us wait an half and hour after he came back to me. We left the hospital around 9 am.

I am a little concerned as Zach has a bad cold with a low grade fever but I will watch him and see what happens. I did give him Motrin yesterday for a the fever combined with his not feeling good. I definitely think the tubes were the best choice. The MD told me that he did have more fluid behind his ear drums, so if we had not been on an antibiotic, I am sure we would have been back at the doctors. We have to put drops in his ears 2x a day for 10 days but other than that he is awesome.

Today at Angel Food we looked over and he has learned to sit up off the floor alone. He will stay sitting up for about 5 minutes before falling over. He also woke up EARLY this morning and “talked” for about an hour before crying for me to come and get him! He currently has 2 teeth on the bottom only!

Monday Menu Post 4/05 and 4/12

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I am posting this one day late this week but am including two weeks in my planning. My life is ahead of me right now and I am trying not to stress! I am planning to get caught up on posting soon! But in the mean time. I just checked back on my plans for last week and we ended up eating Seafood twice on Tuesday We also had spaghetti on Sunday after our Harris Teeter trip with some bread sticks and cheese sticks. I ended up ordering Pizza on Friday. But that is the only time we ate out!

Plan for this week
Monday- Clean out the fridge night!
Tuesday-Hamburger Steaks with salad
Wednesday- Grilled Chicken (Matt) with slaw and potato salad or regular salad, pineapple for desert
Thursday- Tilapa (Broiled or saute) with some veggies
Friday- Chimicagas

Week of April 12th
Monday- Chicken Fried Rice(large batch with some to freeze)
Tuesday- Spaghetti
Wednesday- Pork Chops ( crock pot something or meal in one)
Thursday-Salisbury steak ( double/triple batch to freeze) rice and veggies!

Successful Shopping Sunday

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This is the picture of my “nap” trip to CVS on Sunday. I spent $23 and saved $71, 75% savings. I did split this up into 3 separate transactions. ECB were only given on the first purchase of diapers but because of the coupons I had ($3/1) and with rolling ECB. I decided to stock up. I only counted the drinks and diapers in when calculating prices because these are the items I would “normally” buy. The cost of diapers was at $0.08 each for all 5 packs.

My 3rd and final trip to Harris Teeter for Triples was this afternoon also. Matt decided that he and the little kids would go with me. He admitted he wanted to see how this was done. I was not expecting this to be as profitable as it was. I had a $4./ off shopping order from my second trip and was able to earn another $4 off by separating this into two transactions. I spent $26 and saved $56 for 69% savings.

For the day I spent $49 and saved $127, 72% overall savings.

At Harris Teeter this week I have spent a total of $95 and saved $172 or a total of 64%. I am very excited that the currently plan for April is only to buy Angel Food and things we run out of like Laundry Powder. This should let us reduce the grocery budget by $300 for the month!

Easter Egg Hunt

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On Saturday, the church, actually the young married couples SS class, hosted an Easter Egg Hunt. It was AWESOME! We were so surprised to see that it was an afternoon of fun. Enjoy the pictures!


Lily got an Egg painted on her face. She was not sure about even touching the bunny but later she did rub “Buddy” the dog!


This was one of Kendall’s favorite things ! She and Lily actually played together in this for a long time


Zach just “hung around” with his dad most of the afternoon. Lily also enjoy “tossing the eggs.

I had planned to upload a couple of other pictures but blogger is not working so I give up!

Monday Menu Post 3-29

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I am really like posting my menus on Monday. Last week we change things up a little bit because I had a ton of potatoes that were starting to go bad so on Thursday I made a huge batch. We tried the Dion mustard beef steaks from Angel Food. They were actually ok, I broiled instead of using the grill because it was raining. I took some of the potatoes to make a Shepard Pie for dinner on Friday. This actually turned out really good and we will have for lunch several days this week. I still have a LARGE bowl left so I am thinking of freezing or making potato cakes for a breakfast for dinner night!
I am also trying something new, typing it up on Saturday when I had some extra time and schedule to be posted on Monday. Let’s hope it works.

This weeks Menu:
Monday: Ranch chicken, sweet potato cassrole, and of course mash potatoes and slaw
Tuesday: Spaghetti and Garlic bread
Wednesday: Crock pot chicken with onions and carrots (slow cooker recipe)
Thursday : Pork chops (not sure how)
Friday: Breakfast for Dinner

Adventures in Couponing

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I have been debating how much information to put in this one post.. but think I have decided to keep this a general post of all things related to coupons and not include my actual trips today. I saved a ton at both CVS and Harris Teeter! I will share about these in a separate post so I can “link up ” on several of the blog I read! So this is a tidbit post!

Since posting pictures of my Harris Teeter trip on Wednesday, Lily has asked several times to see the picture. After the second time, I started wondering why…. So she looks at the picture and says “Mommy, where is THAT gum?” Since gum is a treat around here, I gave Matt a pack and hide the others. Lily has figured this out and since she didn’t know the name of the game to ask for, she figured out that she can look at the picture and ask where certain things are since she has proof I have bought them.

Yesterday on our way home from the Easter Egg hunt, which was awesome! I reminded Matt that I wanted to get a paper with 3 coupon inserts this week. We literally checked 10 different paper boxes before locating a single local paper at 4pm in the afternoon. I was totally shocked but guess that someone has figured out that $.50 for the Saturday paper with coupons is better than $1.50 for the Sunday “big city” paper!
Speaking of papers, I am still currently only buying one paper but usually I get the majority of coupons each week from my mother and several of the ladies at church have started bringing me coupons as well. On Wednesday I received a whole envelope full, this lady sent them on Wednesday instead of Sunday because she knew I wanted to go to triples. Today I had someone else bring me diaper coupons! I am definitely becoming known as the coupon lady or as the lady who used ALOT of coupons!

Matt and the little kids all went to Harris Teeter with me this afternoon. He told me last night he thought it would be fun to go as a family. He actually wanted to see what I was buying and saving! I think he was impressed! He did say that his favorite part was watching the amount of tax go down with each coupon!

I am done shopping for the week and actually think that I may skip the Costco trip in April because of the stockpile we have now! I am excited! I do plan to go to CVS weekly depending on the deals but no more trip to Harris Teeter until Supers!


Random Thoughts

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I like to do little blurbs about our life and I also want to be able to sort blog post by labels so if I ever get some followers (don’t you want to be the first?) then you can skip the post that don’t interest you.

Matt bought and put up a new clothes line for me on Thursday. Clothes line have gotten to be expensive. So I determined that in order to make it “worth” the expense, I will need to hang up at least 100 loads of clothes this summer. So far, I have the 4th one on the line now and am planning to hang up a load of towels to decide if I can handle those on the lines. I LOVE sheets and in fact will hang them out even in snow! I remembered on Thursday how nice it is to hang “dress/causal” clothes up because they come out looking almost pressed! I refuse to hang out underwear or the little kids clothes ….too much work!

I was super EXCITED on Thursday to be featured on Caring with Coupons with my trip to Harris Teeter. I was hoping a couple of people would click over and decide to come back! I called Matt at work and Amanda at school to have them see it!

I worked 10 hours on Friday. This was an extremely long day for me and I really missed the kids. I was pleasantly surprise to come home and the house not totally destroyed, supper ready and the little kids feed. I hope not to do this again in the near future but am glad to know that I can handle it if I have to.

Zach has been eating ALOT, especially during the day and even waking every 3-5 hours at night. I was wondering if my milk production had slowed down and when I pumped yesterday after 6 hours I only got 3 ozs. So after talking to Matt last night we decided it would be best for everyone if we moved him to formula. Matt went to Walmart last night and learned that soy formula is expensive it was $15 for a week or less supply. I am planning to use up the rest of my stash and probably all of my quarterly ECB to buy up some. I also plan after a week or so to “mix in” one a day at first regular formula to see if he has an reaction. I am hoping that we can isolate better exactly what cause the reaction and not just assume it is milk. If this doesn’t work then Soy formula it will be! This morning it took almost 45 minutes for him to get hungry enough for a bottle. We are going to try several different ones today and hopefully by Monday get him straighten out!

Matt is hard at work in the big bathroom with plans to seal the gout, hang the door and finish the closet today. We also NEED to get our yard mowed and some outside stuff straighten up but we will see. The little girls have an Easter egg hunt today from 1-3 and my plan is to go back to Harris Teeter either tonight or Sunday for my final trip. It is busy but also manageable!

Harris Teeter 2nd trip

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I returned Thursday night to Harris Teeter for my 2nd of 3 planned tripped. This trip took a little bit longer and was more expensive but overall I am pleased. I spent $54.91 and saved $55.64 so a little over 50%. I ended up buying 14 more containers of baby food to use the coupon I received from the last trip. I also bought Graham cracker crumbs without a coupon to use for the desert Haley is responsible for this weekend. I did receive a $4 off my next order so that will be nice on my final trip. I need to sit back down go through and make a new list to make sure I use at least 20 coupons on the final trip. This trip will probably be the most expensive since I will be purchasing items that are not on sale but I have a coupon for that triples and are items that we normally use!

I did realize that I am ok with saving only 50%-75% because we like certain items and I would buy some or most just on sale for the same price or more without the triple coupons!