Happy Thanksgiving!

I have so much to be thankful for this year and I want to post it now before I get crazy busy.

First and foremost, I am thankful for the blessings and love God gives me every single day.
I am so thankful for my children who are my greatest love, happiness, pride and joy, my mom, who I love dearly, my brother Danny who is always willing to help me with anything,  the rest of my family, the opportunity to go to school, my family's and my health, and for allowing me to meet and spend time with my sweet cousin Debbie last week.  (I will write more on that soon because it deserves it's own post.)
Something else I am so thankful for? That this semester is almost over.  Thank you God!

Happy Thanksgiving!  And may God bless you today and always. 

Aunt Connie

A week ago today, my mom spoke to my Aunt Connie by telephone and my mom grew very concerned for her because my aunt sounded very ill.  My mom instructed my aunt's granddaughter to get her to the hospital immediately.  My beloved aunt was admitted to the hospital and unfortunately, died the next morning.  Just like that, she was gone.  No one was more shocked than I at the horrible turn of events.
I have so many memories of my sweet aunt and I will sure miss her.  Aunt Connie was my  mom's sister.
Everyone I'm related to that went to Texas for any reason, always stopped by Aunt Connie's.

My mom, my kids and I left Wednesday to attend her funeral and I was flooded with memories of her beautiful smile, her laugh and her hugs.  A slideshow played at her service and literally 95% of the photos of her were taken in her kitchen and she always had a huge smile on her face.  It made sense to see all those pictures of her in her kitchen because everyone that ever came to her door was invited in to eat.  Always.

I saw all of my family except for maybe a handful.  She had so many people that love her so very much.

I ask that if anyone reads this, please pray for my mom and all of her siblings.  Pray that God heal their broken hearts and that they find comfort in the memories they have of their beautiful sister.  Pray for her daughter, Diana, her son Sammy and her 7 beautiful grandchildren.  Pray they always remember the love she had for every single one of them.
And pray for eternal rest for my aunt.

I love you Aunt Connie.  Rest in Peace.

1946-2011

Time Capsule!

This semester has been, somewhat stressful.  Ok, let's be honest.  It's been brutal.
Everything was ok until my French professor fell while I was handing in my homework...yeah.  Complete wipe-out!
Well, she's HATED me ever since.  I think she blames me and I'm not too optimistic about passing the class, unfortunately.
Oh well...
So with less than a month left until this semester is over, (Thank God!) I can't tell you how happy I am.  Although I will surely miss the rest of my classes.  I love the others.
Well, tonight, the hubs and I hung out in his man-cave.....(the garage.)
And we put Pandora on.  And I'm lovin' it!!  I set it to Paul Davis.  And it's nothing short of Wonderawesometastic!  (Yes, that IS a word!..just in case you were wondering.) (:
Here's Paul Davis' classic, Sweet Life:




What a beautiful song.  Thank you Paul for bringing me such sweet memories with your beautiful voice.  Rest In Peace...
We may or may not have spiked my Sonic Strawberry Limeaide.  I'll never tell....cause it's a school night and all...
I seriously feel as though I've been placed, very carefully, mind you, in a time capsule and shot straight back to the late 70s and early 80s.  Ahhhh.
We've listened to this:




Yvonne Elliman.  She's awesome.
Here's Randy VanWarmer's hit:




Just When I Needed You Most.  Classic.
 We also heard this:



Samantha Sang.  I tell ya...there's nothing quite like 80s music.  Nosireeeee. (:
Pandora knows what I lOvE and was so wonderful in placing this in the queue:



OMG!!!
We heard some Hall & Oates (of course), The Eagles, Dan Fogelberg, Toto, Billy Joel, Journey, Foreigner, Stephen Bishop,Chicago and of course, REO Speedwagon:



Take It On The Run.  Makes you remember EVERYTHING from your youth...
How about Chicago's Love Me Tomorrow:



Love Me Tomorrow by Chicago.  Wow.
This takes me right back to my early teens.  Best music ever.  I seriously am blessed to have spent my teen years listening to the best music ever made.  Not kidding!

If you were lucky enough to have grown up with such great music, who can forget this classic by Styx?:



Of course, I couldn't post my favorite songs without mentioning this beautiful song by the one and only,Meatloaf:




We also heard The Bee Gees.  I wasn't able to post their videos because for some crazy reason, they are blocked.  Boooo.
Thank you Pandora!  I love you for that trip down memory lane.  Takes me back to that magical era I called middle school, hanging out with my bestest friend Eleanor.

Gotta go....got school tomorrow and it's past my bedtime (:
See?  I told you.

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Bonafide Addict!!

I've posted a time or two of the fact that I do not watch television.  Never.  Ok, well, the word "never" is maybe a little strong.....how about 99.99% of the time?  Better?  I think yes.

Well, a couple weeks ago, during our move... (yes, I know I have not posted of that either, but I can explain :()
In another post.

Back to my original story:  for a couple days, my washer & dryer were not connected.  In fact, they were not even in the house.  So what did I do?  I went to do laundry at my moms.
Yes, I was too cheap to go to the laundromat.  And my mom was at work anyway.

Now, I don't remember if I have ever told you, but my mom's TV is on all of the time.  So as I did laundry,  I couldn't help but watch TV.  The TV was set to whatever channel this is on:

 I know it's TLC, but I do not know which channel it is. My mom has that show to record automatically whenever it is on.  (Again, since I watch television maybe 1 hour a month, I don't know the technical word for that, but I know there is one.)   I also can't tell you what channel TLC is to save my life, but I was intrigued.  Very much.   How intrigued?  I actually sat through FIVE episodes!  Yes, 5!  And I was instantly addicted.  So much so, that I got right up, looked for my mom's Sunday newspaper and clipped every single coupon from the inserts.  I did!
I wasn't sure what to do with them to save money, other than saving their face value, but I was on a mission to learn.  I've actually learned some things already, although my knowledge isn't even in the same universe as those expert housewives on the show that end up with a grocery total of $1,300.00 and only pay something crazy like $3.52, but give me time (:

Yes, I admit:  I am now officially a coupon fanatic.

Tita decorated a binder for me: 



She titled it "Honey's Coupon Binder" (:
And because I'm very visual, an accordion file just will not work for me to keep my gazillion coupons, so I went to Office Depot and got some clear card holders for under $5, for a pack of 10 and it works for me. (Each sheet has 4 -3x5 pockets.)
So now, my binder looks like this:





and, this coupon junkie actually invested in this:



Yes, I'm THAT serious!  I am now the proud owner of a paper cutter! Yay!
The binder is for the manufacturer's coupons and the accordian file is for the coupons from Target, Walgreens, Safeway and King Soopers.  Pretty neat, huh?

My hubs, Tita, my mom and my brother and I spent 3 hours yesterday completely gutting 17 newspapers of coupons! We bought 8 newspapers and my mom bought 9.

After all that work, you're probably wondering if we've used the binder already to save lots of money...right?

Uh....yeah!  This is what we did.  And please remember, we were couponing virgins who really didn't have a CLUE what we were doing, but we were willing to give it a shot.  I figured, what do we have to lose?  Absolutely nothing.  We needed those groceries anyway, and we never use coupons, so it didn't make a bit of difference.
Our budget was $200 because with midterms, sick kids, snow days, etc., our cupboards were almost bare!
On the way to the grocery store, I told the hubs that my goal was to save $20.00.  (Big goals, huh!?)  I told him I would be happy if we saved 20 big ones, and he agreed.
So this is what we did.  I know I have TONS to learn still, but again, this was my first attempt:

1.  This last weekend, if you spent $75 at Safeway, they were giving a $10 coupon that you could use on your next purchase.  So I told the hubs that I would go buy groceries, separate it into 2 transactions, so we would get TWO $10 coupons.

2.  About 3 weeks ago, my mom gave me a $10 coupon she received in her mail for Safeway because she never shops there.  I remember I took it, but was sure it would expire before I remembered to use it.

3.  I took my binder full of both manufacturer's AND Safeway coupons.   We got to the store at almost 11 pm because a)  I was frickin' nervous, b) I didn't want to hold up the checkout line with tons of people behind me in line, and c) I would have died of embarrassment if I didn't do it right and had irate people behind me.

Well, it wasn't as hard as I thought.  My total was $ $220.87.  (Gulp!)  Over our budget by $20.87.
I scanned our Safeway card and I felt the rush you feel when you're at a casino and the slot machine stops on the three 7s.
Then, I nervously handed the cashier my coupons and voila!  The same rush!  Instant high.
 Thank God my addiction is to save money, rather than something like gambling!!

It was very exciting to see this:

My total before was      $220.87
My total after coupons: $128.64
Total Savings:               $  92.23
That's right!  I saved 41% of my total by using coupons and my Safeway card! (Ok, this is where the hubs and I did the happy dance!)

Oh, and the register spit out TWO $10 coupons for next time!  All I have to do is 2 transactions (one for $50 and the other requires me to spend anything over $10, so I spend $11 and I pay $1.  How's that for awesome? 

I am very happy with my purchase and in my opinion- successful. (have I mentioned that already?!)
The only thing I did not like? My kitchen counter looked like this:

Not any more though.  I got those babies filed away now!

Oh, and wanna see our new family picture?

I will post once a month to tell you how much dinero we've saved!

Something else I'm excited about is that with some of the money I saved, I bought an old, ugly table and 2 even uglier chairs at Habitat for Humanity and we've already done some work on.  I'll post those this week!

Have a happy Tuesday!!

Déjà vu!

You probably know that Colorado was blasted with another snow storm last night...right?  Well, we were.
And you probably remember my post from last week's snow storm...right?  If not, you can read all about it right here.

Last week it started snowing pretty heavily on Tuesday evening, and continued snowing

A-L-L      N-I-G-H-T         L-O-N-G.

We got so much snow, in fact, that it caused lots of schools (and a few universities!)  to declare a SNOW DAY on Wednesday.....which, of course, resulted in lots of kids, and some (cough, cough) adults (cough) pure happiness because we had the luxury of sleeping in (:

Well, here we are one week later, and the snow started up again last night.  Which was Tuesday!  So the kids' school closed again today!  The kids' school closed because of a power outage, and they figured the kids probably wouldn't learn much.....in the dark.  And with no heat.
So even though school is out today because of the power outage, technically today is STILL a snow day because we have tons of snow outside again (which caused the outage) and the kids are home yet again. And it's Wednesday...  Hence, the blog title.

Oh, and the university didn't declare today a snow day; however, they announced to stay home if you "feared your safety"....Uh....HECK YEAH!!!

It was a bummer that even with all of the snow, the hubs still had to work today....boooo.

Oh, well.  I have some homework to do before Monday that I could work on right now.  Naaaaaaaah!.........................I think I'll pop some popcorn and climb back into bed with the kiddos and have a "Back To The Future" marathon! HA!
(:

Have a great day!!