score one for frugal

not in the food waste category - i haven't cleaned out my fridge since that first post three weeks ago.  oops.  coming soon, though.

in the clothing category, though, yes!  scott carries a soft leather briefcase to work and school - he has his laptop in it daily, and schoolbooks to read on the train on class days, so it gets a workout.  we got him a nice leather bag a few years ago, and it was working great until a few weeks ago when the little leather tab that holds the d-ring for the shoulder strap snapped.  not so useful without a shoulder strap (it does still have handles, but super cumbersome, especially on school/train days).

we went back to the outlets this weekend, were totally misled by signs that said, "final clearance!  70% off lowest ticketed price, whole store!"  sounds like that'd be 70% off of everything, right?  nope, just clearance items.  the first bag scott picked out was $120 after any discounts, the second bag was $70 but on the verge of being too small.  we went ahead and got it, but my thrifty self wasn't thrilled with the solution - why were we paying so much money for a bag that may not even be a good fit?

i was looking at the old bag when we got home, though, and got to thinking ... might this be fixable?  i took it to the tailor across the street from us on monday, and lo and behold - yes!  but at what cost?  $14.  kid you not.  (i had to run home to grab the d-ring, and when i got back the guy said, "okay your total will be $21."  since he had told me $14 literally 5 minutes before, though, he honored his original estimate.  i felt kind of bad because i want to support a local business and i know they need to earn their living ... but you can't change your price like that.)

so, after this fix and a nice polishing by me (the leather's looking a little worn), his old bag will be good as new, for a savings of $56 over the price of the new bag!  holla!

quinoa would insist you call it dude

it should be no surprise that my personal favorite resolution is always one to do with cooking.  i made a chicken stew with butternut squash and quinoa (via pinterest) last night that was yummy, but oh so time consuming!  (i nixed the kalamata olives in the recipe because i'm a midwestern girl who only likes generic canned black olives.  it was still good.)
in case you were curious about how to best prepare butternut squash, a handy tutorial can be found here.  (i think part of why my stew was so time consuming was that i steamed my squash on the stovetop and it took forever - plus i needed the same pot to cook my chicken.  steaming it in the microwave and simultaneously poaching my chicken on the stovetop would speed things up mightily.  plus, not having to look up a tutorial on prepping squash.)

also, in case you are curious about quinoa, i found this little gem.  personal favorite quote, "if it were a movie, quinoa would star a flip-flop wearing jeff bridges and insist you call it dude."  the page does have some handy tips on cooking and recipes in addition to a few funny paragraphs about how awesome quinoa is.

in addition to last night's stew, i also set aside some nice steamed squash cubes for the dino.  he needed an early bedtime last night and thus didn't get to try any, but lunch today for sure.  he's been doing an awesome job of feeding himself lately.  mum mums, puffs, fried banana slices, oatmeal from a spoon, bits of dirt off of the floor ...

___

unrelatedly, i went with a friend yesterday to a local cloth diaper store that's having a big 1/2 off sale, and while i didn't get any diapers, i did have some good finds!  my personal favorite was a dino piggy bank in blue for $10 - so cute and so perfect.

biggest kind of splurgey purchase was a super duper baby/kid carrier for hiking (the deuter kid comfort iii) for $140 ... originally $280 there (or $288 on amazon or $299 at rei).  a lot of money that i hadn't necessarily planned on spending at this point, but such a smokin' deal on a great product!  it's apparently one of the lightest carriers on the market, but really nice and padded with good storage space, and mats loved the vantage point on our test walk last night!  snowshoeing and hiking, here we come!

i also got him a pair of babybanz for $7, a new swim diaper for $6, and christmas and birthday gifts for kinley for $15.  whew!

savers

one thing that the frugal girl is always talking about is the great deals she finds at goodwill.  we don't have a goodwill super close, but we do have a savers!  i'd been meaning to go there for a while to check out the baby clothes (i've gone once or twice before, but always only to get things like tacky christmas sweaters), and finally found my impetus in needing a fleece sleeper for mats before our camping trip last weekend.  i found the sleeper i needed and was super impressed with the deals to be had - and, even better, i saw a sign for 50% off everything in the store on labor day!  without further ado, my haul of 12 month sized goodies that i hope will fit mats for this winter:

7 - t-shirts/onesies
2 - long sleeve t-shirts
1 - monkey shorts outfit that will likely be seasonally inappropriate but that i just couldn't resist
4 - sweatshirts/sweaters/track jacket
5 - pair of pants (including 2 pair of jeans!)
2 - pair swim trunks (one for this winter, one for next summer - at $.50 each, why not?)
grand total: $20!

i'll have a few more things to pick up as we approach winter (like more long sleeve shirts, some sleepers, and probably a real winter coat), but i think i'm a committed savers shopper for the foreseeable future.  maura said that the kids clothes weren't in nearly as good of shape as the baby clothes (makes sense, since babies are substantially less active than kids), but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

new camera

so our 6-year old point-and-shoot camera finally died.  i think it actually died on our chicago trip last september, but i haven't used it since then and finally got around to troubleshooting it last week.  it had been turning itself off when you would try to take a picture, even with brand new batteries.

i discharged and fully recharged my batteries last weekend, and was able to take a few pictures when i put them back in.  i turned it off and let it sit for a week, though, and it now powers down as soon as you turn it on - with the lens out!  very sad.  i do have my lovely dslr, but it's nice to have a smaller camera on hand for easier portability for traveling and long hikes.  in particular, though, with matson coming soon and scott being designated photographer of freshly-newborn matson, i think it's a good idea to have an easy to use camera alternative.

thus, i spent the last two days scouring camera reviews on amazon, consumer reports, and cnet.com (my favorite go-to spot for tech product reviews) ... and we bought a camera last night!  if you know me at all, that is pretty much record-breaking turnaround time on a buying decision.

i was debating between the canon sd1400 is, which consumer reports picked as one of their "best buys", and the canon sd1300 is.  they are essentially the same camera, both rated "very good" by cnet.com and with glowing customer reviews on amazon, with the slight difference that the 1400 has 14.1 megapixels where the 1300 has 12.1 (not a huge deal with the size of the pictures that they take), and the 1400 has slightly better video - a feature we're unlikely to use a great deal.

i vacillated between the two (and approximately 45 other cameras) and finally decided on the 1300 on sale for $110.  yesterday afternoon, armed with my $30 office depot rewards card and $20 off coupon and excited to get a nice camera for $60+tax, i went to officedepot.com and clicked "add to cart" ... and got a pop up saying that it wasn't available at that price any longer!  grrr.  i spent the rest of the day re-researching cameras, finally deciding to go ahead and do the 1400, which would be $130+tax after my discounts.  i decided to sleep on it, though, and talk it over with scott.  we had to return a dvd last night, though, so while we were out, we decided to drop by the office depot down the street from us to look at their cameras in person ... and lo and behold, they had the 1300 in store for $110!  hooray!  final price was $66 after discounts and tax.

today i'm going to utilize my amazon prime membership and get a case and a good memory card for it (memory cards are atrociously expensive at office depot), bringing our total cost for the whole camera package to ... $86!  great bargain shopping if i do say so myself.

saturday's dinner cost breakdown

i think it's worth mentioning that both of the dinner recipes i made this weekend (refried bean tostadas and salsa chicken)  came from my hunt for inexpensive dinner ideas!  my rough cost break-down to feed 8 adults and a 3-year old on saturday night:

• salsa chicken: total cost: ~$13.20, cost per adult: $1.65
• chicken: ~$6 (actual cost unknown - had chicken breasts in my freezer, and i have no idea how much they each weigh, but i typically get chicken for around $2/lb and i used 4 chicken breasts)
• salsa: $1 (used 1 jar of generic salsa on sale for $1/jar)
• cheese: $1.50 (shredded half of a large block of cheeddar that i think cost around $3 total)
• green peppers: $3 (might omit these in the future and just get a better salsa, though)
• black olives: $1.50
• sour cream: ~$.20 (bought a tub for about $2.25, but we used a small amount)
• spices: minimal cost, used what i already have at home
• refried bean tostadas: total cost: $5, cost per adult: $.63
• tortillas: $1 (doubled the recipe to make 12 tostadas, used a whole 12 pack of tortillas that were on sale for $.99)
• refried beans: $1 (used leftover refried beans in the fridge and another 1/2 can that was on sale for $1, but i'll use the price of the can since i now have new leftover refried beans)
• salsa: $.50 (1/2 jar of generic salsa)
• cheese: $1 (high estimate - shredded the other half of my large block of cheese, but we have quite a bit of shredded cheddar left over)
• sour cream: ~$.50 (again, used a small amount overall)
• tomatoes: ~$1 (chopped up some roma tomatoes that i had on hand to put on top - have some leftover)
• other sides: total cost: $10.25, cost per adult: $1.28
• guacamole: $6 ($1/ea for 3 avocados, a few roma tomatoes on sale for $1/lb, and some cilantro that i had going bad in the fridge)
• chips: $.75 (we keep these on hand, bag of la favorita costs $2, we used less than half)
• rice: ~$.50 (total guess, we keep rice on hand, and i have no idea what the bag cost or what percentage we used)
• salad: ~$3 (bag of greens with some veggies on sale for $1.50, added some green bell pepper and carrots that we had on hand)
• total cost of the whole meal including sides: $28.45
• total cost of the whole meal per adult: $3.56

and really, the cost per adult is actually high as we have lots of leftovers: 4 of us had dinner from it last night, and scott and i still have a few lunches/dinners left!

for january, i have $2 left in my grocery envelope at the end of the month - which means so far so good on my quest to keep my grocery budget in check! i just went shopping last week, though, and am pretty well stocked up, so i'm going to try to drop my grocery budget to $300 in february to prep for march when i'll have to be feeding both of us 3 meals a day from home.

i'm trying to figure out how to balance stocking up on items (especially meats) that are on a good sale with what we actually need for that week or two weeks.  i guess to a certain extent, the trick lies in making sure that if i stock up on steaks or pork chops, that i plan meals that actually use up those items, rather than buying them and then not using them for months at a time.  (meats we freeze, at least, so i guess it's easier to stock up on them - produce, not so much.)  how much stockpiled loss-leader frozen meat do you really need in your freezer, though, before it's just not worth it?  i think that in general, i still need to work on being more strategic with my menu planning.

weekend via recipe review

we had a super fun weekend: my parents came into town, i had my baby shower, scott and my dad installed closet doors and put together the crib, etc.  with the furniture in and the rug down, the nursery is finally starting to really look like a nursery, which is so fun!  the crib kit was missing one bolt, so i need to contact them this week - we finally got a crib mattress this weekend ($82 after tax at walmart!), but we're waiting until the bolt comes to put the mattress in.  we also played boggle, and not only did i not win, but i lost to scott (and to my mom, i think!).  i blame pregnancy brain.

and, of course, since we had company, i spent a lot of time cooking!  friday night, we had cooking light's slow cooker beef stroganoff and steamed broccoli, saturday for breakfast i made cottage cheese pancakes which were amazing, and for dinner, we had friends over in addition to my parents, so i made guac, cooking light's salsa chicken, and refried bean tostadas.  sunday, we went out for chinese for lunch and had leftovers for dinner.  i'd made the beef stroganoff before and knew that it was a good solid recipe, but all of saturday's cooking was with new recipes - all three were big hits and definitely keepers!

of the three, i think the cottage cheese pancakes were hands down my favorite - a coworker gave me a tip this morning that they freeze well, so you can make them ahead of time, freeze, and microwave them as needed.  you can count on finding some cottage cheese pancakes in my freezer before matson comes!  they're a great way to add extra protein and calcium to your breakfast, even if you're not otherwise a fan of cottage cheese.  the cottage cheese made the pancakes a little denser than normal, perhaps, but in a really yummy, filling way - and the cottage cheese all seemed to melt into the pancakes so that there weren't white chunks as you cut up your pancakes.  the cinnamon in the recipe also gave it a great flavor.  honestly, i can't recommend these highly enough!  we had them on their own, but i think a fruit salad would go perfectly with them.

the refried bean tostadas were also really good, super easy, cheap, and reheated well.  (i think they're intended as a main course, but i'd probably need to add a little ground beef to them to get that one past scott.)  you bake tortillas in a muffin tin for a few minutes, throw in some beans, salsa, and cheese, and put them back in the oven to heat up - no actual cooking involved!  the most challenging part of that recipe was making sure that the tortillas (which you stuff into muffin tin holes) had enough of an open bowl in the middle before you heat them up, to make it easier to get beans and salsa once they're a little crispy.

the salsa chicken seemed to be well received, and it was so easy (brown up chunks of chicken breast, throw in a pyrex, cover with salsa and cheese, and bake for ~10 minutes) i'll have to experiment with it some more.  i didn't think it had a ton of flavor, but i use my own spices rather than a packet of taco seasoning, and i think that i just didn't use enough spice for the amount of chicken i had.  plus, i used super generic mild salsa - i think going with a medium spiciness rather than mild would help, in addition to maybe getting a better salsa.  (or using a fruit salsa, as they recommend!)  worth playing with, for sure.

refi, baby!

yellowstone was last week, and it was so fun!  i went in with basically no idea what to expect, and was very pleasantly surprised.  we stayed at a camp site right next to the grand canyon of the yellowstone, so lots of tall pine trees and waterfalls and rivers in the area.  hands down our favorite area of the park.  we did a day over in geyser country - old faithful and all that - and it was neat, but not a very comfortable place to be, if that makes sense.  a) the geysers smell like sulfur, which is gross, b) watching the ground randomly jetting out steam and hot water and seeing mud "boiling" is cool until you think about why it's happening, at which point you remember that you're on top of a gigantic volcano.  there are some truly breathtaking places up there, though!  and, i saw a bear for the first time in my life!  actually, five of them.  one set of mama grizzly and her two babies just off the road, one grizzly from a really far distance, and one black bear (which allegedly had another one with it, but i only saw one at a time) on a nearish hillside.  also, lots of elk including a massive bull elk, some deer, tons of pronghorn antelope, and herds of bison.  i highly recommend a visit to yellowstone - they have great roads with amazing sights very accessible to the road, plenty of good day hiking trails with

the highlight of this week so far is that we just locked in to refinance our house!  when we closed on our house at 5.875% two years ago, we thought that was amazing and were so excited to get such a great rate.  a coworker refinanced earlier this summer and said she's saving a fair bit of money, so i started looking up rates through our current mortgage company and bankrate.com - i was slightly overwhelmed with the multitude of info, though, so we e-mailed the mortgage broker we'd used when we bought the house, and he just locked us in at 4.375%!  all in all, it should save us about $260/month since we will hopefully not have to pay mortgage insurance anymore - wow, right?!  even paying closing costs out of pocket, we should officially be saving money within the year.

the boring list

haha!  i was just reading a column on msn listing out the top ten "boring" (reliable rather than flashy) vehicles on the road.  while i've expressed my deep-seated love for my forester, apparently it makes the list, with the following commentary:

If the rally-romping WRX is Subaru's wild child, the Forester is the nurturing big sister, always thinking of others and their well-being. Man, that's boring. And so is the Forester. While the redesigned model is clearly "better" than the old Forester in terms of performance and appointments, the former model's quirky, Subaru wagon vibe has been washed away, replaced by a generic crossover design. There's nothing bad to put your finger on, but not much of a pulse, either.

i'm pretty sure they're referring to the new 2010 forester as the generic crossover design and my '08 model as having the "quirky wagon vibe".  (for the record, i love the wally's styling, and think that the '10 models are pretty stunning.)  oh, and out of curiousity, just checked kelley blue book - if i were to sell wally right now private party, i should be able to make about $3,000 more than we paid for him!  (i'd probably have to get the non-functioning cd changer fixed, though.)  the article made me laugh because i can see the validity in their point, but i'll take boring and lovingly reliable any day.

bargain hunting

in case you're curious what i decided on scott's ipod situation, i opted for choice "d) none of the above": a newer shuffle for his birthday, procured (used) for about $20 off on ebay!  i decided on this largely because i'm curious what features the new nano will have - specifically, if they'll add a built-in app for the nike+ like they have with the touch and iphone 3gs.  if they do, great; if not, they'll still have dropped the price on the current 5th gen nano to close it out - either way, i can get scott a nano for christmas either at current price or (likely) lower, and if we want, we can sell the birthday shuffle on ebay.

bigger bargain, though: a hiking pack!  i've been in debates about this for a few months - constraints on my pack purchasing have included 1) the fact that i'm short and have a small-ish frame (ie, men's sized packs don't fit me well, and a good fit is kind of key for longer hikes), 2) i have a dslr i'd like to be able to take hiking - but i also want to be able to fit things like layers and water into my pack, and 3) i'm picky.  i'd been leaning toward a lumbar pack for ease of use with getting camera in/out and the fact that they allegedly work better for women since the weight is around your hips rather than your shoulders - center of gravity and all that.  anyway, in my recent infatuation with amazon.com and their wishlist feature, i've been stalking the mountainsmith lumbar packs for a while now, and today happened to notice that the price range on the recycled tour pack started at $34.37.  the only color they had for that price is the cobalt blue which may not have been my first pick, but hey, those packs normally retail for $70 (although amazon seems to have them for $58)!  for 40-50% off, i'll take not-my-first-color-pick.  plus, free shipping and free returns, so if i get it and hate the color or find it won't work for me, no biggie!

next up on my list is finding an inexpensive neoprene camera sleeve (i'm envisioning the dslr inside the neoprene camera sleeve, and then rigging up velcro to keep the sleeve in-place-but-removable inside the pack) and i'll be ready to go for our summer adventures!

sunshine times eleven

we had a positively blissful weekend.  in eleven parts:

1. i learned that wd-40 can fix almost anything.  cases in point: we spent 20 minutes trying to screw a fresh blade onto the lawnmower but it kept sticking - lathered it all up with wd-40 and voila!  also, scott ran over a sprinkler head with said lawnmower, and it turned out that he broke not only the head, but also the plastic stem that connects the head to the sprinkler lines a foot into the soil.  part of the stem was broken off inside the little junction, and pliers alone weren't able to unscrew it - add wd-40, though, and scott had it off within minutes.  (which was doubly awesome because then we didn't have to pay the sprinkler guy to come out and fix it for us.)
2. i found my broom after 3 weeks of being without and was able to give my floors a good sweeping - the dust mop just can't do everything.
3. we finally caved and signed up for trugreen.  we have just had a super weedy yard, to the point where if it had been a week or so since scott mowed, i'd be embarassed to be seen out there even picking up mail because of all the dandelions.  scott's opinion was that trugreen is an unnecessary expense and we can do it ourselves, but as we currently don't do anything about it on our own, i figured that we need some professional help to get our lawn on the right track, and we'll see next year if we want to take it from there.  sadly one of our next door neighbors doesn't do anything about her weeds, so i'm not sure how much good it'll do with all of her weed seeds still infesting our yard ... but it can't hurt.  their first visit is today.
4. we got wally's oil changed and tires rotated for a grand total of $23.xx!  since we faithfully take all of our service to firestone, they sent me a gold club membership for free in the mail a few months back which entitles me to free tire rotations (although i'd get that for free from the tire shop we use anyway), and i got a coupon for a $20 oil change from the back of a grocery store receipt.
5. we turned the heat off on saturday morning and haven't had it on since then - plus we had the windows open all weekend and got to enjoy lovely warm, sunny smelling fresh air.
6. i finally got my vegetable garden planted!  two cherry tomato plants, one regular tomato, one zucchini, one yellow squash, one green bell pepper, and one red bell pepper.  i also finally took back my dead basil plant to home depot and got it replaced with a living one, and picked up some petunias and moss roses for my front porch planter.  i feel sort of like an odd mother hen over my little veggie garden now - i got home after dark last night (had dinner with some girlfriends) and went outside to check and make sure my little plants all survived the crazy windstorm we had yesterday, and this morning got ready earlier than i normally do so that i'd have time to water my garden before leaving for work.  we'll see if i keep it up for the next two months until they start to give us fresh produce.
7. i had a $30 pre-paid gift card as a rebate from buying my contacts lenses earlier this year, which paid for my flowers and veggies - i bought some miracle gro, too, though, and paid maybe $8 out of pocket!
8. we enjoyed chicken tikka masala with naan for dinner on friday night, and grilled steaks to go with fresh corn on the cob, steamed artichokes, and baked potatoes on saturday night.  (sunday night we had salad.)
9. we watched the last king of scotland on saturday night which was intense but really good.  sunday night post-suns victory we caught up on our tivoed episodes of lost; we still haven't seen the series finale - sniff sniff - so don't ruin it for us!
10. i went grocery shopping on sunday and actually stayed on budget with groceries this month!  i guess dave ramsey's cash method really does work.
11. i made a mid-may resolution to like yard work, and so far so good.  i don't naturally love working in the yard - i see the benefit of it, but when i think of things i can do with my free time, yard work just doesn't ever spring to mind.  similarly, i've historically had the same attitude with things like reading the bible and exercising.  i see the benefit and i know i should do them, but i just have other things i'd rather do.  i found that once i put my mind to enjoying them and seeing legitimate benefit in doing them, though, it's not as much of a struggle.  so, i'm going to attempt the same practice with my yard.

okay, in retrospect, it sounds like we had a very work-ful weekend.  which i guess it was.  it was also just so gloriously peaceful and sunny and warm, and we got to enjoy being outdoors and didn't have any outside obligations (other than that scott had to go in to work for a few hours sunday afternoon).  it was nice, and oh-so relaxing.

heart amazon

i love amazon!  i just ordered an svga cable to hook my computer up to the tv to do things like watch hulu.com on tv for $6.99 including shipping, an audio cable also for computer to tv usage for $6 with free shipping, a wirless rain sensor for $45 with free shipping that will be eligible for full rebate from our water company, and two filters for our vacuum for $8.15 each with free shipping.

for comparison, bestbuy.com listed a comprable length svga cable for $45, had a shorter audio cable for $9, and the reason that i haven't changed my vacuum filter in close to two years is that the filters at target/walmart cost $15-20 each which made me cranky.  that's a savings of approximately $55 total!

now, off to watch lost.  we decided that we're doing nothing but laundry and lounging today.  so far, we're on target!  (slept in til 10am - love it.)

slightly less cheap phone service

our magic jack is back in working order, by the way.  we started using it at the beginning of january, i think, and at the end of march i noticed that the little blue power light in the magic jack that was flickering.  hmm.  i found that if i wiggled it down it would power off, or wiggled up the power would stay on.  i tried using electrical tape to hold in the "on" position, but finally it just refused to power on any more.  right, i wasn't thrilled.  scott contacted customer service and ordered us a new one ($20 since the old one had a physical defect), and we're back in business.  we had kept the old magic jack plugged straight into my computer, but it's like 2.5 inches long x 1.5 inches wide, and i think it got bumped around on my laptop often enough that the usb connection broke.  so, learning from our mistake, we got a 10 foot usb extension cord and now have the magic jack safely extensioned away and taped into place on top of the little power cord box for my laptop.  so far so good, and if you ever decide to give magic jack a whirl and use a laptop as your primary home computer, i highly recommend the usb extension cord route.

is droughtish a word?

my blog has gotten boring and neglected and for that i apologize.  i think its writer needs a mental revamping.

in the meantime, while i miss hardwood deciduous trees and the bright greenness of spring and early summer in the midwest, can i just say that there are some pretty huge benefits to living in a slightly-droughtish region?  specifically: water rebates.  awesome!  $150 for an high efficiency washing machine, which we took advantage of; $125/ea for 1.28 gpf (gallons per flush) toilets (the general standard since the late 90's is 1.6 gpf, and from the 80s to that point was 3.5 gpf ... before that i think it was 5, 6, 7 gpf depending on the decade), $50 for a wireless rain sensor for a sprinkler system.  amazon.com happens to have a toro wireless rain sensor for $45, so we'll get it for free after our rebate, and lowe's has qualifying toilets for as little as $4 over the rebate price!  yes, i made a spreadsheet, why do you ask?

two of our toilets have had some running issues (which i discovered via our water bill, when i noticed that we were using about 3-4k more gallons of water per month more than we had been last year this time), so scott took approximately 8 trips to home depot, lowe's, and ace, and spent three afternoons trying to fix the toilets.  one seemed like it was fixed only to start running again as soon as we flushed it, and hasn't stopped since, and the other did well for a week or so before we noticed it.  consumer reports suggests that 1.6 gpf toilets are worth fixing rather than replacing, whereas older 3.5+ gpf toilets should just be replaced ... but if we can get a whole new toilet for $4, why not just replace them both?  (one of the toilets is a 3.5, the other is a 1.6.)  my current pick is actually for a toilet that's $35 over the rebate cost as its flushing is rated better, but still, two new toilets for $70 is not too shabby - we'll see what scott says.  in the month since we turned off the running toilets, our water bill went down by 4k gallons, which saved us about $10, by the way.

in other news, some friends posted this link on facebook earlier today that made me laugh because i am a grammar nerd (even though i never capitalize my blog).  the rest of the site also made me laugh, but has some language going on, so if you're sensitive to that stuff, you might just stick with the alot post.

*** google tells me that "semiarid" is the word for which i'm looking, which is too bad as droughtish is a cool word.  it also informs me that colorado is in an overall wet period currently, with the last real dry spell being in '00-'03.  duly noted.

weekend review

we made it to kinley's birthday party on saturday night - so fun!  our friends lori and aaron came up a bit earlier in the afternoon and hung out at our house with us for a bit to catch up before the party. maura's sister brook and her family were there, as were mike's mom and step-dad, so it was a small party, but still a good time.  we got to eat kinley's favorite foods, which consisted of macaroni and cheese, calzones, lil smokies in bbq sauce, and fresh fruits and veggies - very diverse, no?  it is amazing to watch 2-year olds open presents, by the way.  brook's oldest boy's bday is today so maura got him a few gifts to open while kinley opened her presents, and between the two toddlers, it was like a whirlwind of shredded paper and flying boxes and squeals of delight.  sadly the two cute outfits we got kinley were nowhere near as big a hit with her as the giant legos and babydoll outfits she got from grandparents - alas.  maura liked them, though, which counts for something!

also this weekend, i finally bought myself a food processor!  i've been debating the purchase for approximately 3 years, and had purchased a small 1-2 cup food chopper at wal-mart a while back in an attempt to convince myself i didn't need an expensive kitchen appliance, but hated it and thus never used it.  in reading reviews of food processors on consumer reports, though, i found that kitchen aid and cuisinart food processors are basically ranked the same - but bed bath and beyond has a $20 mail-in-rebate on their kitchen aid food processors!  so between a b3's 20% off coupon (which doesn't exclude kitchen aid - i was surprised!), a $24 in-store credit leftover from christmas, and the $20 mail in rebate, i got this normally $200 food processor for $115 + tax, which is 44% off.  awesome!  i haven't used it yet (although i should have last night - i had to chop two onions and a bunch of celery and cilantro for the pioneer woman's thai chicken soup), but i'm very excited.  homemade pesto here i come.

i've been fighting a cold for the past week, and apparently my body decided to add a stomach bug to that last night.  i made dinner, started feeling gross and took my temperature to find it at 96.15*.  what?  i then spent the rest of the night curled up on the sofa under three blankets, with a bottle of pepto by my side, a packet of saltines on my lap, and watching my gilmore girls season 3 dvd.  by the time i went to bed, my temperature was a normal (for me) 97.6*, but this morning as i was getting ready for work, it was up to 99.4*.  i took some tylenol and headed to work anyway, and so far i'm surviving the day.  i'm tired and my tummy still hurts, though, so i'm debating canceling tutoring for tonight ...

breathe

am i the only person who feels like it's been a few months since christmas, not almost-three weeks?  goodness.  i feel like this year is flying by, but i suppose that realistically it's not.  (not that i'm complaining, but i think the 50* sunny weather with a feel of spring in it is adding to that feeling.  i'll change my tune come the march/april snowstorms.)

we did end up getting a new washing machine last weekend - on friday, i called the repair guy and he said he thought it was likely the drain (or something like that) and would be about $160 to fix.  long story short, we hit up three scratch and dent appliance places late saturday afternoon and ended up with a top loading high efficiency fisher & paykel elba machine from the sears outlet that was on the rebate list - and better yet, it was only $450 before rebate, bringing it down to $300 (plus tax) after rebate!  yes, i would absolutely rather been able to continue using our old washer, but i think this was a good decision given the circumstances.  we did a few loads of laundry tuesday night, and so far i give it two thumbs up.  it's not quite as sexy/flashy as a shiny front loading machine, but it's efficient and it works - cycle times are a few minutes longer (and certainly shorter than a front loader), but drying time is shorter because of the high rpm spin cycles.  and, you know, it does its job of cleaning our clothes and hopefully lowering our bills.

this week has been an odd mix of responsibility and fun: actually mostly busy at work, which is a nice change of pace; lots of fun evenings out - tutoring monday, then hanging out with miranda to watch gilmore last night and meeting girls for coffee tonight; but conversely not much time at home so i feel like i have projects lining up there, and that i want a night to just chill at home with scott.  this weekend is the missions retreat for church, with meetings friday night and allll day saturday - then after church sunday, one of scott's former coworkers is coming over for some help with a project (he's still consulting for them), and we're hosting small group that night.  i'm currently trying to remind myself to breathe and enjoy life as it comes, rather than looking to the next event or trying to find a week with no plans on the calendar.

save money to spend money

subtitle: efficiency, a decision making process

goo got me a few seasons of gilmore girls on dvd for christmas (yay!), and since scott's been working a lot of late evenings with his new job lately, i invited her over on tuesday to hang out, have dinner, and watch some gilmore.  as she is recently graduated from college and her main income is babysitting, she's free during the days, and decided to get here early to do her laundry.  that's clearly fine by us ... but then i got a call from her around 4pm asking why our washing machine wasn't draining.  ummmm - i don't know??  i told her to fiddle with it, try to drain it on a different cycle, etc, but otherwise she'd have to wait until close to 6 when i get home.  alas, still no draining by the time i got home, and i couldn't get it to work either, so we ended up wringing out her towels and bath mat by hand (she washes on cold - brr!) and putting them in the dryer for like 3 hours, then bailing out the washer with a plastic pitcher, a measuring cup, and a turkey baster.  sweet.

scott and i tried the washer again the next day, and still no draining, but there is a discernable "click" where you can hear the washer try to switch to draining, but then nothing happens.  we called sears first off as it's a kenmore, but they wanted $130 for the service call - no thank you.  i googled around trying to find a less expensive option, but none of the appliance repair places i found listed their prices on the web.  my parents suggested that one of their local appliance places has a $15 service call fee, which gave me renewed hope to look around.  then this evening, i remembered the local news guy who gives his seal of approval to reliable/affordable companies around the metro, and went to his website to see if they have listings of companies he endorses - lo and behold, they do!  one of them is an appliance repair guy who will give you a free over the phone diagnosis and estimate, and according to the reviews on the web, he's very willing to give you his honest opinion about fixing vs replacing.  i'll be calling tomorrow.

very relatedly, i started shopping around for washing machines this week.  i stopped into a scratch and dent place yesterday after browsing ads online, printing off consumer reports' ratings, and downloading the info on our water company's rebate on high efficiency machines.  at that point, i was pretty set on (if we do need to replace) a front loading machine because of the energy/water efficiency (ie, savings), but apparently there are also top loading high efficiency machines.  who knew?  they are apparently a smidge less water efficient, but have the same overall energy efficiency as front loaders.  and they're usually cheaper.  my first reaction was that if i wanted a top loader, i'd just go with craigslist and save my pennies for a cool (ie, front loading) machine down the road ... but then i realized that that's ridiculous.  yes, i did look at craigslist, but most of the h.e. machines are still pricey, you don't get a rebate on used machines, and i'd rather get something new and have somewhat more of a guarantee of a longer product life.  i could get a cheap standard top loader used on clist, but we're so not-handy that i really don't want to put myself in this same position in another year.  plus, the outlets have some great prices on new machines - the shop i visited the other night had a top loader h.e. machine for about $379 after water rebate.

not to mention that i finally installed our magicjack, and not going to lie, it's pretty awesome.  literally plugged it in, typed in our info, and i was in business.  we got it in the mail a month ago and i kept putting off installing it because i didn't want to deal with troubleshooting it if there were problems.  anyway, the device was like $46 after fees, and provides me with free local and long distance calls for the next year, and will be something like $20/year after that.  we had been paying $27/month for local only to the phone company - i called and cancelled our service today.  so that's a savings of what, $280 this year?  sweet.

anyway, i figured that if we're saving $280 on phone service, and we'd probably save around $50/year on our electric/gas bill with a high efficiency washer, that's $320 that we're saving right there this year, so a $380 machine sort of balances out.  we'll see what free-phone-estimate appliance repair guy says tomorrow, though.

(in case you were interested about water savings between a standard machine and a high efficiency machine, it's about 40% savings per load.  wow, you think, that's awesome!  well, the realistic savings there is maybe 20 gallons per load.  say we do three loads at a time (lights, darks, whites), and we do laundry three times a month.  20*3*3=180 gallons of water a month that we save.  multiply that times 12 months in a year, that's 2160 gallons of water saved.  awesome, right?  well, environmentally, sure, it's fabulous and definitely adds up ... but financially?  i checked our water bill, and we pay $2.46/1000 gallons.  so saving 2160 gallons of water over the course of the year will save us a grand total of $5.31.  per year.)

for the bargain hunters out there

i give you: coupon geek.  i know there are a ton of coupon/bargain shopping blogs and sites out there, this just happens to be one that i've discovered in the past week.  some of her posts are freebies, some straight coupons, but most combine coupons with current sales, so that you can get things like swiss miss hot cocoa packets at target for free (which i just printed off).  have fun!

things to get excited about

1.  scott started a new job on monday!  he had been toying with the idea of moving on to a new job for the past few years (mostly because a larger company would provide more room to move up), of which i was generally unsupportive primarily because i don't like change.  (great wife i am!)  he was also toying with the idea of going back to school for an mba, of which i was more supportive because it involved less change, but it just wasn't happening at his old company.  anyway, this fall came and we realized that while the job market isn't amazing, overall it's a good time to move on, so he started putting his resume out there, looking online for job postings, and got set up with a recruiter.  he ended up finding this job through the recruiter - it's another financial analyst position, at a company that does i.t. infrastructure consulting.  i think both of us recognize the highs and lows of the job, but we're also both excited about the opportunities that it'll provide.  and yes, they do have a further education reimbursement plan, so hopefully he'll be settled in enough by next fall to start taking a class or two!  oh, and also - their current office is like 5 minutes from our house!

2.  i found my white scarf in the closet this morning.  i misplaced it probably two weeks ago, so i was very excited when i found it in there - it's the little things.

3.  we put up outside christmas lights for the first time ever this weekend.  (first we spent about two hours shopping around for lights - we wanted the big bulbed multicolor led lights: target had them but we wanted to get a price comparison, so we tried walmart, home depot, lowe's, and sam's to no avail ... then we found out they were on sale at target after all, whoops.  oh, and when we got home and i got out the box o' christmas decorations from the basement, i realized that i had purchased white icicle lights on clearance at walmart last year.  whoops again.  we put up the multicolor ones.)  i took pictures but have neglected to upload them so far - it's nothing too amazing, just your basic single strand along the gutter/peak all along the front of the house, plus a string of smaller multicolor bulbs looped around the iron rail along the front porch.  i think it's a good start, though.  we can worry about the pretty light nets for the bushes once we actually have bushes we want to show off.  i will say that having outlets on the front of our house would make this whole christmas light thing a lot easier, by the way.  also, i'm very thankful for having a husband who's not afraid of heights and thus is not afraid to climb up on the roof to string lights.  i climbed to the top of our 6 foot ladder to peek into a gutter to see if i could figure out why it was leaking and i got dizzy.

4.  we leave to drive back to illinois for christmas in two and a half weeks!  so exciting.  we'll be able to stop and see our friends matt and alison from college for a night along the way - not to mention the fact that she's pregnant and will be about 21 weeks by that point, so i'll get to see her with a cute baby bump!  i think we'll be back in springfield for 5 or so days before we have to drive back.  i'm looking forward to it as i haven't been back to my parents' house since christmas '07, plus they've been doing a bunch of fun renovations and redecorating.  (and it means that actual christmas is only three and a half weeks away!)

5.  we got a new tv on friday!  it's a jvc 42" lcd tv with a built in ipod dock.  ooh la la.  scott had been wanting a new tv for basically the past year and i finally told him this summer that we could save up for one for ourselves for christmas.  with my handy dandy consumer reports online membership, i looked through the ratings, this one got great reviews, and sam's club had it on a smokin deal.  we didn't upgrade to hd cable, but even without that, you can tell that it has a way better picture.  as in, when scott's watching a football game, you can see that the score in fact ends in a 6 rather than an 8.

6.  we got up at 4:30am on friday (yikes, right?) to get to sam's to see if they had our tv on an extra sale.  they didn't, of course, but we figured we were up, so we may as well hit up the black friday sales ... and got probably 75% of our christmas shopping done with, most of it on great sales.  yay!  i think we came up with some good ideas of gifts for people.

voice

now that we have paid $50 or whatever for qwest phone service to be installed in our home (+ $27/mo after taxes and fees), i think i have a brilliant idea for cheap phone service:

google voice is more or less here, and basically its function is to give you a single phone number that people can call which will forward calls to ring on any and all of your phones - home, cell, work, you name it.  that's kind of awesome because that means that people don't have to try each of your numbers individually to track you down.  the downside is that in terms of home phone service, you still have to have a landline.  in reading the comments on an article about the service on cnn, though, i came across a user who combines google voice with a magicjack and bypasses the normal monthly landline charge.  color me intrigued.

according to magicjack's website, you pay $40 for a little flash drive sized gadget that lets you plug in a normal home phone on one end and plug the device into a usb port on your computer on the other, and voila, home phone service.  $40 for the gadget and first year of service, $20/year after that and you get unlimited local and long distance calls plus call waiting and caller id.  there are pretty mixed reviews online - some people think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, others can't get it to work for the life of them.  but there's a free 30 day trial, apparently, so i think i might order one and give it a whirl.  there are definitely downsides - 1) we have laptops, rather than a desktop, which means that having our phone plugged into a usb port could be a little bit cumbersome; 2) the magicjack only works if your computer is up and running with good internet signal, but ours usually are.  if it works, though, it could easily save us $280-300/year - and would let us place long distance calls from our home phone.  add the convenience of google voice's free single number to reach us anywhere, and you've got a pretty sweet setup.

for sale

aha! i found the camera - in wally's back seat, where scott had stashed it for the road trip. that makes sense. i think i'll be able to get the bathroom finished up tonight, and if so, i'll take pictures and get them posted. i'm debating putting a clear coat of varnish over the white paint to seal it up, since i felt like my fingernails were nicking the finish already when i was putting new knobs on last night - in which case, it'd probably be tomorrow night that i get the bathroom reassembled and cleaned.

i finally got erma posted on craigslist - we're asking $950 obo, which is a bummer because bluebook would have been about $2500 if it weren't for the engine knock. i think we're willing to go down to about $600 (shhh, don't tell), below which we'd just donate her and take the tax deduction. hmm, i just missed a call and the person didn't leave a voicemail (i hate that - i'm not going to call you back unless you leave me a message so i know who you are and that you meant to call me!), but i googled the phone number and it turns out it was from "crazy tommy's" salvage shop. curious!

oh, and in case you're wondering if i still like the forester now that i have it - yes! dave ramsey says not to get "car fever" when looking at newer cars because you'll be happy with your car for the things it lets you do, the time you get to spend with your family, etc, not because it's the fancy car of your dreams. not going to lie, though, the forester is so the car of my dreams, and i love it. every evening when i walk down to my parking garage, i see it sitting there and just smile.

ooh, in the time i've been writing this, i've gotten two more calls - one guy totally tried to hardball me over the phone, which i didn't appreciate (lots of "hmmmmmm, wellllllllll ..." - grr), and then hung up on me when i wasn't playing along, but the other one was really nice and offered $700 if his mechanic uncle approves of it. we shall see!