Pictures to come!

Hey! For those who are wondering where we are living now, pictures are to come very soon!!!  The house is pretty much put together (just need to get some pictures up on the walls!). We are LOVING it!!! Oh my goodness, we are so blessed.  Despite the fact that the bills are pushed tighter together than ever, we feel so rich and blessed.  God is good!!! 

 

 

Now that I said pictures are coming, hold me to it!!  We've meant to take them a couple of times and it hasn't happened!!!  Tonight we'll straighten up and by tomorrow, pictures!  Ok???

It's closing day!!!!!

...and it's pouring rain!!!

Closing day on our house is TODAY!!! YAHOO!!!!  That means we move tomorrow (and lose the apartment as of Monday. Here's to hoping the 50% chance of rain for tomorrow holds off because we have to do it anyway... we'll just probably lose most of our help!!!

Here are some things that I will NOT miss about the apartment:

1- No more squeaky floors! (house has cement floors, no squeaking!)
2- No more worrying about scaring the downstairs neighbour to death by
dropping something (she's really sensitive -- we really may have scared her
to death!) --
3- No more stairs to the doorway! (house is completely one story living)
4- No more parking under a tree and being constantly speckled with
"helicopters" and bird doo! (house has a garage)
5- No more road being flooded when it rains (while this was amusing, it will
be nice to know we can get out -- even in the rain!)
6- No more laundry in the kitchen! (house has a laundry room with a door and
everything! no more dust in my kitchen appliances!)
7- No more running toilet every 20 minutes! (the apartment toilet needs new inards but we never had them come to do it)
8- No more having to remember to touch the dial on the dishwasher when it gets to the rinse cycle (at the apartment, the dishwasher is broken. It stops at Rinse and you have to nudge the button.  They are replacing it as soon as we're gone -- could have been a couple weeks ago, but we didn't want the hassle. We just ran it when we were home to "help it along"
7- I wish I could say no more ugly couch, but we've had to put buying a new
one on hold indefinitely. It'll come -- in its time.

We're pretty excited about the move (can you tell???)

TEN DAY COUNTDOWN!!

WOW!! The 10 day countdown has begun!!! I cannot believe it is happening so fast! (or that there is still so much to do!!!)

 

Of course, we've continued to peak in the windows...

The kitchen cupboards are in (bonus)

There is a fan in the living room as there should be (and the one they hung in the wrong place is still there... hmmmm... think it's too much of a bother to take it down??? I am fine with them leaving it there...)

The tile is down and grouted (spelling?) in the entry way.

The vinyl flooring is down in kitchen/dining room, laundry room and bathrooms

Grass is growing (and so are a few weeds.. think they'll take care of this before closing???)

 

 

Stuff we know is still to come:

Sinks in kitchen and bathrooms

Bathroom paraphenalia (rods, towel racks, tp roll holder, etc)

Closet/laundry room shelving

Installation of appliances

spot painting (a couple spots they cut through drywall never got repainted properly)

Switch out door to green door

Hang shutters

Clean sticker gook off windows

Mark backyard

 

I'm sure there is more that we cannot see from our window vantage point.  Hopefully 8 days is long enough to get it all done :) We do the final walk-through on Wednesday!!!

 

 

 

CVS for good :)

My CVS savings have been used for good already!  Hooray!!  I've told my husband to make sure that if I begin stockpiling too much, I am giving away what we can't reasonably use (our new home does not have a great deal of storage space).  Well, I've had opportunity to share my good fortune already.  Yesterday, it rained HARD where I live and our street flooded.  My guesstimate would be that it was a good 1.5-2 feet at its deepest points.  At first, cars were trying to get through it, until eventually the police got there and wouldn't allow anyone through.  Unfortunately for my new "friend", they didn't get there before she tried to get her little car across.  It got water logged and shut off mid "puddle."  We were watching the excitement from our second floor apartment window, and saw another couple of people help push her out of the road and into our parking lot.  I overheard them talking and heard her say that she had friends just up the street and she would call them.  So I didn't worry about her. She was taken care of. 

 

20 minutes later, rain harder, thunder and lightning louder, I realized she was still sitting out there in her car!  I told my husband I was going to see if she wanted to come up and dry off while she waited for whomever she was waiting.  Poor girl, when I got there, she was streaming tears, talking to her dad on the phone.  I'm very glad I did not assume she was taken care of.  She came up, calmed down, and dried off.  It was a good 45 minutes before her parents got there to get her and see what they could do about the car.  Unfortunately, it still wouldn't start, so she borrowed our internet to find some phone numbers for road side assistance and was on her way...

 

But not until I gave her a big bag of M&Ms to melt her troubles away :)  Haha, I know it was small and didn't REALLY do anything to fix the situation, but it brought a smile to her face!  I'm glad we were able to be there for her, even if it was just a warm/dry place with tasty M&Ms while she waited for "real help" to arrive :) 

 

CVS and Walmart

Next time, I promise I'll write something interesting. For now, more deal pictures.

$0.29 cents. I swear. That's it. and I still have $3 in ECBs to roll for next week.

This isn't AS free... $6.76... But not bad for $23.38 worth of stuff :) And mostly because the Noxzema wasn't on sale, we just needed it. I have yet to see a coupon for it -- but I will continue to look!!!
4 weeks until we close on the house!!! There is still SOOOO much for them to do. I sure hope they finish it up on time because if we don't close that day, our financing falls through... Pray for us!!

Ok - so my math was a little off...

I guess I did a couple mistakes in my math before heading to the store. Here's what I ended up with:

2 Sunsilk shampoos ($3.49 each)
2 Dove shampoos (3.99 each)
1 Sunsilk Styling Aid ($3.49)
5 24-piece excedrins ($1.99 each)
2 Tru Blend Cover Girl Foundations ($9.49)
1 Breath Savers ($1.50)
2 large Hershey chocolate bars ($1.79 each)
1 Stride gum ($1.19)


Total cost out of pocket: $1.51.

And I came home with $5 in ECB to boot.

BONUS!!

Anyone wanna play???

(Hopefully something for men will be on sale next week...)

.... and all because I was out of shampoo.... this is really going to help the budget!!

If all works out properly this time

I've found a new game.  It's called "shopping at CVS."  It's a great game. The goal of the game is to use coupons and see how cheap (or how free) you can get stuff. 

 

Last night, I "played' and the first step went very well. I bought 5 boxes of Excedrin and paid ---- $0!!!!  Yup!  They were on sale for $1.99 and I had $2.00 off coupons!! So I got my limit (5 per household)  Best part, they have certain sales that give you "cash" on a card that can only be used at CVS.  So  these 5 boxes of Excedrin that I bought for free put $5 on my Extra rewards card :) 

 

Step 2 fell apart because the item that I wanted to buy was not in stock in either CVS store here.  So I went home determined to figure it out again.  And I believe I have.  If any "CVS-ers" are reading this, PLEASE give me feedback if you see something that is not working or if you know of a coupon to make it even better!!!

 

 

Step #1:

Buy

2 Tru Blend Foundation 9.49 each

Filler of some sort (hopefully going to find a filler with a coupon) - at least 1.02.  Basing my scenario on $1.50

 

Total purchase:  $20.48

Use: $4/$20 coupon                                                 -$4.00

        Cover Girl Buy One Get One Free coupon          -$9.49

        $1 coupon                                                       -$1.00

        $5 Extra Care Bucks that I earned from Excedrin. -$5.00

New Total: $0.99!!! out of pocket  (less if a good filler is found)

 

Get $6 ECB for each tru blend foundation (april deal)  = $12 ECB

 

 

Step #2 (new transaction):

Buy:

3 Sunsilk Shampoo/styling aid 3.49 each

2 Dove Shampoo @ 3.99 each

filler (hopefully filler with a coupon) - at least $1.45 - Basing my scenario on $1.50

 

Total purchase:

$20.05

Use: $4/$20 coupon                                                      -$4.00

        Buy One Get One Free on sunsilk coupon              -$3.49

        $1.50 sunsilk coupon                                            -$1.50

        $3/2 dove coupon                                                  -$3.00

        Use one $6 ECB coupon                                       -$6.00

New Total:

$2.06!!!!!!  out of pocket (less if find a good filler with coupon)

Plus, get $5 for spending $15 on Sunsilk/Dove

 

that leaves me with $11 ECB in my pocket plus only spending $3.05 for everything you see above. 

 

Anyone else want to play???

 

Special thanks to the numerous websites that have helped me figure out how to make this work!!  I'll give some props to them in a future blog entry!  You don't even know who you are, but you've been a HUGE help to our budget!!!