Coupon Club

A couple of friends and I just started our own coupon club. (We even have our own blog).

Or idea is to swap coupons with each other and share tips about saving money at the stores in our area. We also plan to share CVS extras and collect our expired coupons to send to service men and women overseas.

We had our first meeting this week and it went pretty well. I think everyone had a good time and gleaned a little information. We hope to implement some games and challenges to add to the fun of bargain hunting.

Does anybody have a similar group that they belong to? What types of things do you do? Any suggestions on how to make our group a success?

For lots of Frugal Tips check of Frugal Friday here.

OK, Now I'm Curious

Hello? Are you out there, bleaders (that's blog + readers, for those of you who missed it the first time)?

Ever since I got Google Analytics (thanks, Travis) I have been monitoring my blog's traffic. I have to say...there are a lot of you out there reading the meaningless junk I put on here, amazingly enough. I have bleaders from all over the world, literally. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty big in Malaysia. Yep. The bleader there spends an average...an average...of 9 minutes on my site!

OK, geeky tech people please don't burst my bubble and comment just to let me know that it is probably just bouncing from a satelite, blah, blah , blah or something like that. I'd rather be happy in my ignorance believing that there is some women in a hut in Kuala Lumpur trying to figure out how far it is to the nearest CVS.

I consistently have between 30 and 150 readers per day but I rarely hear from more than 2 of you...unless of course it is a LOST post...which doesn't count because that will be over for 7 months starting next week. Sometimes I unbelievably have over 200 people visit my site on a given day...usually Kitchen Tip Tuesday or Works for Me Wednesday. And yet my comments are still 0.

Who are you?

Why do you come to my site?

What do you like?

What do you dislike?

You're not all related to me......are you?

April Showers Bring...May Showers

Rain, rain go away.
My little ballplayers need to play.
Or at least practice for goodness sake!

We are starting to get depressed. The endless rain has spoiled all of our plans recently. All of Cainan's t-ball practices have been cancelled so far and Ryker has only had 1 of the 6 practices he had scheduled. The trip to the water park was off and so was a picnic at school. The garden is soup and the dog is so muddy he hasnt' been inside in days...poor thing.

Well, at least it is sunny today...so far.

As Cainan observed this morning, "Hey, one nice sunny day in a row."

Ladybug Tea

If you live in the midwest...and maybe other parts of North America...you know that the first few warm days of spring bring on the ladybugs.

I call them ladybugs. I'm sure that is not their technical name but if I ask Brian what the technical name is he'll give me the 10 minute kingdom, phyllum, genus, species report and I just don't feel like it right now. So....for our purposes in this post they will be referred to as ladybugs.

These little buggers can get in the tiniest holes and then climb to the far reaches of a room and pile on top of each other in the corners. When you've got 20 foot ceilings, like I do, it's a problem.
You can vacuum them up every day (if you can reach them) but they just keep coming back.

They fly around and bounce off of the lights all evening and in the morning they are covering the floors and counters. And, on top of that, they give off a horrible smell when threatened or frightened. Oddly enough they find the vacuum cleaner to be both frightening and threatening. As well they should.

In short...they are a nuisance!!

But, amazingly they don't taste bad.

My cat and dog eat them all the time and my toddler snacks on them occasionally too.

I always thought they (the pets and toddler) were crazy, but as it turns out their flavor isn't as potent as their odor.

As Brian made my tea one evening he remarked, "Eww, I've got to empty this water out. There are like 5 ladybugs floating in here. You really ought to keep the spout covered on this teapot."

The funny thing is I had already made 3 cups of tea with that water that day and hadn't noticed anything odd about it at all.

So all you adventerous tea addicts out there, give it a whirl. Ladybug tea! Who knows it may be good for the memory or relieving joint stiffness or regrowing hair? If only it straightened spines I would be harvesting those little babies like you wouldn't believe.

Please don't ever drink tea made of insects (dead or living) without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball a medical professional.

For other (more inspiring and helpful) ideas go to Rocks in My Dryer.

Color Memory

Because it was a deal at CVS, I recently bought some Herbal Essences Hydrating Orchid and Coconut Milk Shampoo.

I haven't used HE shampoo for several years but I used to like it a lot. Don't get me wrong...I still like it, just not the color.

It came in a pretty, curvy, aqua bottle. But when I squirted some in to my hand it looked just like a certain dandruff shampoo for your "Cabeza y Hombros". (Look it up...it won't hurt you to increase your Spanish vocabulary.)

You know the color. That milky aquamarine color that all dandruff shampoos use. Orchid and coconut milk shampoo should be white, beige, ecru, purple, perriwinkle, lavender, wysteria or tickle me pink...but not dandruff shampoo blue-green.

I don't know why it bothers me. That shampoo still smells like orchids and coconuts and it works fine but it just reminds me of being in the shower growing up and being out of my own flowery shampoo and having to use my dad's dandruff shampoo. That medicated smell....ewwww!

Does this type of thing bother anyone else?

It's just like when I painted Kinley's room for the first time and it looked just like a certain stomach medicine that tastes like pink chalk. Certain products have certain colors that are forever associated with them. You just can't help it.

Maybe I should write to Herbal Essences and let them know how disturbing the color of their shampoo is.

Maybe they'll send me a free sample...or coupons.

*getting pen and paper now*

Manic Monday

Go to despair.com for more great demotivation to get you going on the holiday weekend.

Indiana Jones, Hooray!!

Well, it's finally here: the most anticipated movie of the summer...at least in this household.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

(I tried to get the theme song to play on here as you read this blog but the code proved to be too complicated for my small mind. Hum along with me instead. Duh, da, duh, duh! Da, duh, duh. Oh, never mind. Just watch the trailer here. That should give you your John Williams fix for the time being.)

Anyway, I haven't seen the movie yet because I am a responsible adult with three children to take care of and a household to run. I can't just run off to midnight showings of blockbuster movies even if I have waited 20 years for them to play again. Oh to be young, free and stupid again.......or still, as the case may be.

Read on.....

Today, being a holiday weekend and all, I have a special guest post for you from my very own hubby. Enjoy!

Well Wednesday night (or should I say early Thursday morning) I did it.

A friend and I (thanks Johnny Gizmo) defied all logic and reasoning to attend the 4am viewing of Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Mr. Cary, a mutual friend and drummer in our praise band at church, and his family own a local theater, The Orpheum, in Hillsboro. This family and their three theaters are worthy of a blog themselves as $6 gets you in the door for a first run movie, popcorn and a soda, not to mention, friendly smiles, candy as you leave and leather couches to sit on while you watch your movie.

For this event, they held a 24hr showing of Indy. He had joked at church the week before that they didn’t expect a big crowd for the 4 o’clock show. "So why not," I thought. Crystal and the kids would be sleeping, I could see the show, and get back just in time to teach 1st hour physics the next day.

We drove up that morning at 3:30am, and settled in. The previews were good, a new Will Smith flick, Get Smart, and Kung Fu Panda, then the John Williams score commenced. The movie was very good, easily rivaling The Last Crusade. Harrison Ford, jumped right in where he left off as an older Indian Jones. Instead of the Nazis, the Cold War Russians are the villains. Shea Lebeouf gives a good performance as Indy’s younger sidekick and Kate Blanchet is a very convincing villainess. The effects were good too, lots of computer generated, but some good acting as well.

Overall it was a fun night, I mean morning. :) The theater even gave out coffee and doughnuts to the crowd of 40ish. We’ll definitely take the kids soon, as they are chomping at the bit to see it. Rarely a day goes by when Cainan does not dress up as Indy at some point, dog leash whip and all. Believe it or not, I even stayed awake until 11pm the next night.

Total stars 4.5 of 5

Free Movies

If you live in Illinois, Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin or Minnesota you can take you kids to see free movies this summer.

Kerasotes Theatres are showing children's movies free every Wednesday and Thursday morning at 10 am June 18th through July 31st. Admission is first come first served.

Click here for more details and to see a complete list of the movies showing at your theatre.

Head on over to Biblical Womanhood for more Frugal Friday tips.

Drinking Problems

Yahoo had an article the other day about how many calories americans consume through a straw.

Lattes, cappuccinos, milk shakes, smoothies and even vitamin waters and juices are chocked full of sugar and calories. My personal favorite, Chai, is pretty bad too.

But what is the most unhealthy drink in America?

The Heath Bar Milk Shake at Baskin Robbins. (Doesn't that sound good, though?)

2,310 calories

266 g sugar

108 g fat (64 g saturated)

According to Yahoo:

The 32 ounce taste explosion contains 66 teaspoons of sugar.

You would have to eat 11 Heath Bars to equal the number of calories found in one shake.

You would have to run for 240 minutes on a treadmill to burn it off.

I think I'll pass.

Freebies!!

Another part of saving money and/or living frugally is signing up for hundreds of freebies.

It is kind of time consuming (unless you can figure out how to make the "auto fill" feature work...which I can't) but it pays off.

Here are the freebies I have received in the last two weeks.

It is so exciting to open the mailbox and find all kinds of little packages full of goodies.

All of the frugal blogs I have listed in my sidebar will direct you to the best freebies around. Check it out!!