Wraaaaa

And this is why we need new gutters...

Booooooo.

The Coupon Craze

I've been a little obsessed lately with the idea of getting organized.  My immediate organizational need was in the coupon arena.  I once complained that there are no worthwhile ads in our little Quad Cities paper and that has lead our dear friends and family from all over the country to send gobs of coupons to us every week.  I LOVE it but we get so many coupons that I've started taking them to the ladies at work just to get them off of my dining room table.  In fact we receive so many coupons that they were starting to creep off of the table to take refuge in just about every nook and cranny of our house.  I find them in purses and luggage that haven't been used in a year, our pockets in the laundry (usually between the wash and dry stage - yuck), random drawers and baskets, closets, car consoles, the recycling bin, and even in the bottom of the dog food container. 

Here is my solution... my coupon binder.

I'm seriously in love with this thing.  It has a divided pouch for each month so I can divide the coupons into food, health & beauty, pets, and cleaning sections.  I've also included in each month's section a calendar page and another pouch for cards.  There's a place in the back for stamps, return address labels, miscellaneous cards, note pads, etc.  Hopefully I'll save a ton of money and also have the added benefit of never missing another birthday ever again.  (there is a genetic issue effecting a few of my family members where we can never get a card to its recipient on time... OK, mostly this just applies to me but whatevs.)

The first official act of the coupon binder saved our family $530 on $680 of purchases in one weekend. Yep, we only spent $150.  Now Ryan is not as psyched as I am about the binder, but he's on board.  My honey-bunny looked for savings and used the coupons, too!  Here is the proof:

Ryan found a $519.99 coat that was marked down by $300 and then he used his coupons to get another $150 off.  He only paid $74.89 for his new coat.  (And yes, for those of you who say a deal is only a deal if you really need the item, he really needed a new coat.)

The rest of the savings were off the grocery bill (including the dog's grocery bill).  Gotta love that!

I'll admit that it took me about a week to get this binder put together, but now that it's done it takes no time whatsoever to maintain it.  I can't wait to see how much moolah this saves our family this year... assuming that I don't ditch it in a few months.  But with savings like ours this weekend I think it'll keep me motivated.

Banana Pants

This is Keely attempting to bribe us into babysitting overnight...

Apparently it worked...

Quiet Spot

What is this a picture of you might ask...

Well, I will tell you.  It is one of the greatest inventions of all time, the Quiet Spot.  We discovered this little nugget of genius on our trip to Austin when we wandered into a fancy-schmancy little dog store.  I'll admit that I just wanted to look at the cute doggie outfits, but we happened to stumble upon pure gold instead.  The Quiet Spot is a little neoprene pouch (ours is in stylish camo) with a reflective logo.  It holds your dog's tags and uses a Velcro closure to attach it to your dog's collar.  Once attached you can say bye-bye to that loud and annoying clanging of your pet's tags.

Let me just say right here that Smoke Dog does NOT share our love of this invention.  Contrary to popular belief, Smokey has been very well trained in a number of areas.  One of his rules is that he is not allowed to wake up his parents in the morning, so no barking, whining, whimpering, licking, jumping on the bed, etc.  Unfortunately, our little love is a smarty pants and for awhile now he has discovered that his collar makes a lot of noise.  A little shaky-shaky makes a big clangy-clangy and BAM suddenly Ryan and Becky are wide awake and ready to give him all of the attention he thinks he deserves.

I don't think I'll ever forget the confused look on his face when he tried to shake his collar for the first time after we attached the Quiet Spot and nothing happened.  I wonder how long it will take him to invent another way to wake us up without breaking the "rules"?  Until then we are going to enjoy sleeping in on the weekends.

TMI

Side Note:  Who knew that yoga clothes happen to be the most comfortable clothing on the ENTIRE PLANET???  And if you knew, why did you not share this information with me until recently???  I’m in love with yoga clothes and I might never take them off.  Yes, feel bad for my husband because he will never ever see me in anything except yoga pants/tops and a pony tail.  I could wear them ALL DAY and sleep in them ALL NIGHT.  If I could transform them into work clothes and/or evening wear then I would.  Oddly, it’s almost like being nekkid except without the annoying draft… and without the whole “creeping out your neighbors thing” when you accidentally walk by open windows… not that I do that… SERIOUSLY, I don’t…  but those people are out there (and you know who you are).

Ringing in the New Year

This year we were fortunate to ring in the new year with our "4th Annual New Year's Eve Party".  We had an absolute blast with our friends and family who came by, but we'll leave the pictures to your imagination.  However, we were also lucky to have had a visit from our friend, Steve, and one of my favorite snuggle buddies, Duke.

As you can see Steve is very enthusiastic about having his January 1st picture taken, and Smokey apparently has no problem cuddling up with his tootsies. (I've seen those things up close... brave dog.)

We've also just wrapped up a round of kitty sitting for our friends who took an extended winter vacation in Alaska.  (Disclaimer: Cats stayed at their casa.  Smokes would have had them for lunch.) 

This is Mr. Foster-Man... not pictured are his two much younger lady friends who were a little camera shy.  He looks a tad grumpy because he is totally out numbered by the ladies.  (I'm including this as proof that we're a multi-species animal loving family!)

Wordless Wednesday

It's About Time...

Honestly, we've thought about jumping on the ol' blog bandwagon for awhile now, but with no kiddos running around we just don't think that we're that darn exciting.  Seriously, who really wants to read about 2 stuffy married people with an old dog?  But with so many friends and family living a bazillion miles away we finally had to admit that we're now officially feeling out of the loop.

We LOVE reading up on all of our friends lives, so with the new year (and those darn New Year's resolutions) we decided to try to keep everyone up to date on life in our house... hopefully without boring you to death.  Wish us luck! 

Happy Blogging!