another bump

another bump in the savings calculator on the right! YAY!

it's tax time!

i did our taxes last night and was pleasantly surprised.
We expected (hoped?) to at least break even, or maybe owe less than $300. Instead, we are getting almost $2500 back!
So $400 of that has been earmarked as "fun money" for us, since we've kept on track so well.
I've spent my $200 on something fitness related, so that i can use it and improve my health while i'm at it :)

March

Well, I updated the downpayment ticker on the side... we're getting there pretty quickly!

Still waiting on word from the house, so we'll see. We've scoped out several other houses, and none prompted an offer, so we are still REALLY hoping for this one to come through. This coming monday will be 5 weeks of waiting. Ugh, don't they know i'm NOT this patient normally?

I bought a stroller yesterday. It's sort of against the rules and sort of not. I needed it for training for the 3day, and since I bought it, I'm selling my other 2 strollers. It made yesterdays training walk 100,000 times easier. I made it 3 times as far and stopped b/c i WANTED to... not b/c the kids were fed up with bumps and wind, and my arms weren't tired from holding a cup and pushing a stroller that doesn't steer straight. It was lovely.

Woohooo

Woohooo! Check out the ticker to the right! Big chunk of our downpayment is done! YAY!
Just a little more to go!

and the wallet continues to bleed

ughhh, I hate that we are able to save money for something specific (downpayment) but then big expenses keep popping up for the family. Jr has to get his registration for his car done today. That's at least $100 gone. To follow the $40 he spent on inspection this weekend, and $1301 on car repairs last week. Ughhhh.
On the up side, though, we've socked away $1000.00 in one week. Score! This will be atypical for us as we don't normally have that much money coming in at one time, but I had a few deposits come in, as well as JR winning a few hundred dollars from the superbowl (and he finally got it last week)

It has been one week since we put our offer in on the house in Corinth and no word back yet. We were told it would take about 5 weeks. Lord help me... if I can last that long, I'm sure my nervous system will be shot.

ENTER TO WIN

So I'm going a buzzreport for Chilis with their Guiltless Grill. Their GG menu includes items that are under 750 calories, so they are good for dieters.
I have a set of 2 FREE GG entree coupons to give away. It's like a free date night :)
All you have to do is comment on this blog entry and I'll contact you to get your address :)

PS: if you're involved in this campaign, PLEASE don't enter. Let someone else get a freebie :)

I know this is unrelated

but WAHOOO!!
I FINALLY lost the .2 lbs I've been busting butt for the last 3 days, and I'm down into the 142.xx range. I was dying to break out of 143.


well that weird. it cuts off the right side. Anyways, it just says "14lbs" as the end goal.

reuse it

Lily is outgrowing a lot of her clothes, so i've taken to re purposing some clothing *I* have that would make some cute outfits for her. I made her a dress this week that was super cute on her, as well as a pair of thermal PJs. I plan on trying something new today, so I'll share it when it's done.

I was going to do couponing this morning, but I'm out of ink, and don't feel like breaking our PJ day pact of not getting dressed in order to go buy more. So tomorrow, I'll pack up my empties, take them to staples for my $3 credit, and go buy some new ink. Ugh.

big news on our frugal year

we're about to break our frugal year.
we put an offer on a house today.
When we finally get it (which we will... i'm trying to think positive, LOL) i'll be sure to post pics.
But for now I'll just say it's a beautiful 2 story brick home in denton county with 4 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.
We really hope it goes through, so please keep us in your prayers.


On other news, I had a successful trip to Albertsons last night.
Our bill was $102 and change after a $57 and change savings (we used coupons for EVERY item we bought except for 3: Laundry soap (i'm allergic to most, and the kind i need to use doesn't have any current coupons), bread, and poptarts (brendan's favorite).
Every other item had atleast one coupon for it, and several items were free. YAY! :)


Also today, I got my coupon package in the mail that I'd posted about before on here. Looks like some pretty good coupons in there!


Also, we'll be starting our savings account fresh in a few days. We took Jr's car in for some brake work that needed done, and it ended up costing us over $1300. Ugh.

Another successful day

Today feels good. I just paid off another $680, which officially paid off 1 more credit card completely, and made a good dent in another. Yeehaw :)

That's a 90% savings

Softsoap - normally $2.79
Palmolive Oxy Clean Plus - normally $1.69
J&J Baby Wash - normally $4.49
J&J Baby Lotion - normally $4.49
Normal Total would be $13.46 or $14.54 with tax

My total today at CVS: $1.46

My deal on shoes!I

posted on DAM asking if anyone had any gently used 6-12m Robeez for a girl that they wanted to get rid of. No one did.
So I looked for sales (they are nearly $30 a pair normally!) and couldn't find any.
Today someone hooked me up!
On sale for $16.77
ROBEEZ SALE LINK

AND if you use coupon code DIAPERSWAPPERS you get $3 off (if yo buy one pair, that covers your shipping)

my blow money for the month

since we are doing the DR program, jr and i each get $30 of blow money a month to do with as we please. I used $20 of mine last night on a moms night out. Yummy margaritas :)

couponing

so i'm back in the swing of couponing. I've been printing coupons all week as I find them, and today I gutted my coupon binder and reorganized the ENTIRE thing with new tabs, and everything.
I've also started the 4 week $1 trial of the grocery game.

sell your books for cash

So I tried this today, but the only books I could dig out of boxes before the kids started whining were books they aren't currently buying.
http://www.cash4books.net/
Looks pretty cool though, you know?

Monday funday

I'm going to repurpose another shirt into PJs for Lily. She's outgrowing her old pj's at record speeds, so I have to make up for that. LOL

Also, I added some blu ray movies to frimp
http://frimp.net/user/reitzfamily/

wanna frimp?

in the spirit of buying things 2nd hand, I wanted to post a link to my frimp site. This will hopefully help other mamas buy things they want 2nd hand, and also help me purge and pay crap off.
I'll be adding more constantly, and i'll be sure to post whenever i do :)
http://frimp.net/user/reitzfamily/

*sigh*

I have a feeling I'm about to sink a few hundred dollars into my car. I wish we could just get our stupid emergency fund back up.
We have a decent chunk of money coming to us here in the next 2ish weeks, and that will built it up and pay off some stuff.
I did our budget today again, and realized that I totally forgot to budget in our renters/car insurance *banging head on table*.
I hate when I do shit like that. It causes so much unnecessary stress. Ugh.
Anyways, it's fine b/c we had a little wiggle room this month, BUT that wiggle room should have been in my savings account, dammit.

A crazy weekend

We had an INSANE weekend.
I was at the Zaza all weekend for an unwrapped event, so I was pretty much gone from Thursday evening until last night.
I did pretty good and didn't really spend money on anything other than work expenses (hotel, etc). We did, however, go out to dinner on Friday night (me, Jr, and the kids... I missed them. lol) at Chili's. But we make room for that in our budget anyways.
I thought I was going to blow it and spend a ton of cash of drinks at the bar during our wrap party on Saturday night, but instead the manager brought us complimentary bottle service with grey goose and mixers so I didn't spend a penny. YAY!
I also got some t-shirts and just junky clothes that my mom had (new, but not stylish enough to wear. LOL. Mostly things my grandmother found and sent her) and I'm going to cut them up today to re-purpose them. Lily needs some new pjs.

a little splurge?

So, I just got like $160 from a job the other day, and I'm thinking about taking my dear hubs out to dinner tonight. I'll behave with the rest of the money, but it'd be nice to get to actually eat out for once LOL

Plus I gotta go pay my danged cellphone bill

doing well! (and freebies)

I've been cash flowing everything lately. Which has ROCKED. The envelope system is working well for us.

I'm printing out coupons for this week right now, and came across these freebies


Quiznos is offering a coupon good for buy 1, get 1 sandwich.

1. Click here and sign up with your email address

2. Go to
http://www.quiznos.com/offers/specials.aspx?NRDONE=1&email=xxx@gmail.com
(replace xxx@gmail.com with your email)



this is $27 in coupons: http://www.startsampling.com/sm/100322/quickQuestion.iphtml?item=100322&source=mm10

this is $10 in coupons: http://freecoupons.eatbetteramerica.com/EBA1Coupon/Default.aspx?ESRC=431

and free suave, today only!: https://suavenomics.sweeply.com/

Week 1

Well, Week 1 was interesting.
We've added to our savings account, not bought anything "fun", not eaten out, and were frugal at the grocery store. We used coupons and got 2 weeks worth of food for just under $100.00.
Decent start. Can't wait until our BEF is saved up so I can start snowballing again.