Why I *hate* extreme couponing

I REFUSE to say I extreme coupon.

I do not spend hours POURING over newpapers.  I don't pay people to clip my coupons for me.  I don't load two carts to the brim and use hundreds of coupons to get everything for free and then let it sit in my house for years.  I think people that do are sick.

Why in god's name would I want to have 87 bottles of bodywash stockpiled?  It'll go stagnant before I could use it all.  Or worse yet hordes of food I'll never eat.  No.  Sorry.  Just no.

I intelligent coupon.  I buy what I need within my means.  Yes, that includes extra that I know I'll use in the future.  And I always leave some for others. 

Example:

Total before savings: $90.90
Total savings: $41.09
Total after savings: $49.81
number of coupons: 2

Yeah.  TWO.

Now disclaimer: This is not an ordinary shopping trip.  This was an inbetween trip.  Notice the lack of gallons of milk or eggs or anything "fresh".  Those we buy as needed so they rarely end up in the huge trips.  This was sheerly me going through the circular and finding things we use on sale. 

Like body wash.  Let's talk about body wash.  I had one coupon.  Granted I could have printed up more (I *heart* you coupons.com) but I only had the money for one. So let's break down how this works:
Original price: $2.69
Bonus card discount: -.20
Coupon: $.75 off
Doubled at: $1.50
Final price for body wash: $.99
YEAH

Now, I know I totally could have printed a bunch more coupons and gone hog wild, but why?  I only need one.  I have half a bottle left.  And I'm working within limited means.  See? INTELLIGENT couponing.

I also try to use in store deals to the best of my advantage.  For instance nine items in that picture were free.  NINE.  FREE.  God BLESS Tops meal deals! :) How they work, you buy a pack of chicken and you get fixins for free!  Genius system and whoever thought it up deserves a medal.  And equally what I love is that I can paw through the bin of chicken to find the smallest pack.  There's only 2.5 people in my house that eat dinner, so why the hell do I need a $25 family pack for?    I can get at LEAST three dinners out of that pack.  The breakdown there is:
Cost of chicken: $17.68
Items I got for FREE with chicken: 2 liter root beer, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, Bush's Baked Beans, Hunt's Tomato Sauce, Pepperidge Farm frozen Tuscany bread, Fresh Express bagged salad, 1 lb. thin spaghetti, 1 lb bag of mozerella cheese and 1 gallon of lime sherbert.

BRILLIANT SYSTEM!

My other coupon was for the laundry detergent.  They were buy one get one for FREE and I had a dollar off coupon.  I normally don't buy laundry soup because I make my own.  They ended up both packages for $4.96 and I got 40 loads worth.  That's a whopping 12CENTS per load.  Coupon. Well. Spent. 

**EDITED TO ADD** I use this site to help me decide what coupons I can and should use while shopping.

So what's my point here?  You don't have to go nuts to save money.  You don't have to horde your toilet paper like a dragon sitting on gold.  Just use your head people :)

(Oh, and btw, I bought the beer with my bottle returns.  THINKING.  I does it!)

Reasons why it SUCKS to be a Mom

I have a love/hate relationship with being a mother.

If you are my friend on facebook you are already VERY aware of this.

And I'm pretty sure that every woman has these feelings. But guilt makes most of them shut that face.

Luckily I have no shame and I don't fart sunshine 24/7.

1.) My child will be the MOST active and MOST demanding the day I have amazingly bad pms/cramps, or a migraine, or am on my deathbed with sickness. Every. Single. Time.
Days when I AM farting sunshine she ignores me for the dogs.

2.) Her baby gates are trying to kill me. I can't even tell you how many times in the past year I have half asleep caught my foot on one and toppled face first, ass over tea kettle into the hallway while just trying to make it to the bathroom to take my morning piss.

3.) On the topic of pee, because I had a baby, I now pee if I sneeze too hard. Awesome.

4.) The underpart of your foot, the fleshy arch is hands down one of THE most sensitive areas on your body. So of COURSE that is the area of your body that finds the only pointy toy your child has. Usually it's a shape with corners from her box/sorter thing. Or one of those wooden puzzle pieces. Plastic grip facing up of course.

5.) When you are starving to the point where your blood sugar has dropped and you are shaking and sweating she will NOT eat. No matter what you put in front of her. Of course, you must assure she starts eating before you do. It's what mom's do.

6.) In the early days I would go 7 hours without a bathroom break. Sneezing at that time was a game of urine roulette.

7.) One word - Elmo.

8.) At 2am when you are trying to put together a bottle with one eye open, chances are you are going to spill the breast milk ALL over the floor. And then cry. It's how these things work. Meanwhile the baby is STILL screaming. Like she has been for four hours.

9.) Her tiny bursts of complete irrational anger. Over things that can hurt her. Like when you won't let her play with tin cans out of the trash. Or stick the end of power cables in her mouth. How DARE I want to keep her alive.


(I wrote this MONTHS ago and never finished it.  I fished it out of the edit pile this AM and played urine roulette reading it.  I hope you enjoy.  Here it is, unedited.)

I live with a midget dictator

Oh.  Two years old.  Land of "MINE!" and "NO!" and "GIMMIE!".

Where the fuck did my sweet baby go? 

The Terrible Twos ate her and spit out this short asshole. 

And before you get all offended that I just called my child an asshole, let's clarify something...

Let's say you're hanging out with your friend Joe.  You get up and get yourself something to drink from the kitchen.  As you sit back down, Joe wanders over and  yanks the drink out of your hand and says "MINE!" at the top of his lungs.  Asshole, right? 

Or let's say you pull out your laptop to check your email.  Joe comes over and again, yanks it out of your hand and screams "MINE!" at the top of his lungs.  ASSHOLE. 

Or say Joe shits his pants.  He smells.  You tell him that he needs to get cleaned up, as he smells like crap.  "NO!" is shouted over his shoulder as he runs off to rub his ass on the couch.  ASS. HOLE.  

Toddlers are no different.  You just aren't allowed to call them assholes.  But face it, I'm living with a drunk midget with a speech disorder.  She topples over constantly and I barely understand her, and what I can gather is that I'm DOIN' IT ALL WRONG.

NO she does NOT want to eat the broccoli.
NO she does NOT want to put pants on.
No she does NOT want to brush her teeth. 
NO.  JUST NO.

And I'm not even going to mention that her latest trick is to grab a movie and SMACK me with it while screaming "NOW!"

Sweet Mary Mother of Jeebus, WHAT NEXT?  And the worst part is you can't FORCE a toddler.  I mean, you can try, but you will lose.  Period.  Or at least if you try to force MY toddler.  It just collapses into tears and screaming and beating your head on the floor.

The toddler gets upset too.

So what to do? Let her be a picky-pantless-sticky dictator? 

That's sorta where I am right now. 

Which let me tell you is NO fun at all sometimes.  Because I feel completely clueless and helpless.

And I am STILL refusing to read those damn baby emails.  According to one of them she should be factoring polynomials in her sleep by this point.  (Well okay, not really, but you get my drift.)  But really, they're no fucking help.

Time out?

You're kidding me, RIGHT?
I can't even get her to sit in place while eating.  And you want me to try that while she's sobbing?  WHO WRITES THIS TRIPE??

Yet again I'm convinced that these people either don't have children, or their kids are on 'ludes. 

So what do I do? I'm back to that.  I still have no fucking clue. We've tried asking.  We've tried telling.  Telling firmly.  Hand slaps.  One spanking.  GUH.

This parenting thing are HARD.

I don't really have a conclusion for this one folks, as I'm in the fucking dark.  Leave me some input, I'll keep you posted.

Until then I guess I learn how to goose-step.  You know, to show the toddler proper respect. 

*taps the microphone*

This thing on? 

Good lord people. 

Never ever ever will I EVER underestimate the full-time working mother EVER again and niether should you.  That decision ruined RUINED my year.  Came close to tumbling my marriage.  And turned my daughter against me. 

Fuck.
That.
Noise.

So it's time for my year of sacrifice.  Time to scrimp and save in a manner that we never have before.  Because we can't afford for me to stay home.  But by god I'm going to try. 

Wanna come with on this journey?

Good.  Thought so.

Buckle up Buttercup.

Let's get this show on the road...

Things I was going to blog about but failed

1.) Giftmas gift roundup and price total.

FAIL.

2.) The first day of daycare.

FAIL.

3.) The new year

**No picture, we didn't DO anything**

FAIL.

4.) WTGDDET

(yes I REALLY cooked from out of this magazine)
FAIL.

*sigh*

Having a job screws EVERYTHING up.

So I can't promise my blogging will get any better. I'm really still getting the hang of the new ropes. But I didn't want you to think that I'd forgotten about you.

But until I get all this shit sorted out...


Consider me under construction. Check back later :)

The best laid plans of mice and Alley

Didn't I have this plan?

To blog all the amazenuts things I was going to make for Giftmas?

Yeah...

about that.


I got a job.

Which is AWESOME.

I'm working about 45 hours a week.

Second shift mostly.

The toddler started daycare.

We only have one car.

Peeps, I have NO WORDS for how crazy these past two weeks have been.

Oh, and have I mentioned it's fucking CHRISTMAS??

So I'm sorry I fell off the blog horse.

But I have ACTUALLY been working on them in the off moments I swear :)

Though sadly I DID have to decide against baking bread for Christmas.

I made a choice this morning.

I had every intention of working my fingers to the bone in the kitchen and baking bread all day. Three or four mini loaves for each family. You should SEE all the flour I bought.

And then I popped down on the couch to watch a little bit of the Care Bear movie with my youngin. She turned around and looked up at me and said clear as day "I love you, Momma!" and snuggled into me.

I burst into tears and quickly decided that bread was not worth giving that up.

So you are going to be short a homedid.

I hope you understand :)

To compensate, I offer you pictures of my adorable toddler in her Christmas outfit.

Enjoy!






(OH THE HUGE MANATEE!!)

Love and face punches,
Alley

A Whole Family Homedid

I know, I've mentioned before how much I like homedids. I'm starting to sound a bit broken record-ish.

But THIS is the first homedid that our little Pickle participated in.

Again disclaimer...if you don't want to know what you are getting...


Supplies: Ornaments (purchased), paint, brush, glitter and ribbon (all had on hand).

So remember when I found the idea for the homedid crayons and I blew a gasket over the blogger? Well you can find my next homedid there as well.

But here's something I didn't think of ahead of time. Notice, the these she made CLEARLY look like snowmen.

Add in a toddler...



And things rarely go as planned :)

The THEORY was we paint her hand,


(I really am just a CRAP photographer. I swear she was WAY more into it than this.)

she grabs the ornament. And it looks like snowmen.



I don't know what you see. But I see a turkey. A snow turkey.

Beauty.

Undaunted I continued!

So from there, while wet I sprinkled on a generous helping of glitter. Waited for that mess to dry and then added sharpie written name and year.



Notice the DISTINCT LACK of snowmen shape.

In fact..the handprint faces the floor.

So I admit, not my finest showing.

I added ribbon to hang it on the tree...

and boom!

A snow turkey you can only see if you look at it from the bottom!



Eh, shit happens.

Cost breakdown:
Ornaments - $3.50 8 ornaments x's 2 boxes. 16 Total.
Ribbon, glitter and sharpie - free, on hand.
Per present - 32 cents.

...God I'm so good sometimes I even amaze myself...