My Stockpile

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My couponing total for the summer is over $600. Not too shabby.

On the show Extreme Couponing, the women are IN.LOVE with their stockpiles. I can understand. They worked hard to amass 72 bottles of hand soap. I don't have that kind of space or patience for turning a whole room in my house into a grocery store.

HOWEVER....It is impossible to do extreme couponing without gathering a stockpile. You just aren't maximizing the savings potential if you don't use all the coupons you have to score that good deal. I certainly don't have the mass quantities of coupons that the people on the show do, but here's what is in my stockpile

9 boxes of brownie mix (It was almost 15, but even though they were 50 cents a box, I couldn't justify having 15 boxes of brownie mix, so I gave the rest of my coupons to a lady in the aisle)
10 boxes of cereal
8 toothpastes
7 toothbrushes
8 men's body wash
8 sticks of deodorant
7 each shampoo/conditioner
9 boxes of tampons
6 bottles of laundry detergent

I'm pretty pleased with this because it is all stuff we use. I don't have 132 bottles of Frank's Hot sauce hanging out in my pantry.

Anyone want some brownies?!

Wordless Wednesday

NYC - A little late

For our anniversary I planned a surprise trip for Joe and I to NYC. Neither of us had been, but we both really wanted to go. We flew in Saturday morning and spent the day wandering around Times Square, 5th Ave and the Fashion District. We went to Top of the Rock, which is the observation deck of 30 rock and got some amazing views of the city.

We had our Concierge make us reservations at Tribeca Grill which is co owned by Robert De Niro. The food was good, but maybe not the greatest for the price.

Sunday morning we got up and decided to wait at the TKTS booth in time square to get tickets for a Broadway show. We really wanted to see How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying which stars Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette. The show was FANTASTIC! I have season tickets to the touring Broadway shows that come through Columbus, and they just don't compare. After the show, we joined the throngs of people waiting to get Daniel and John's autographs. We weren't nearly close enough as you can tell by this attempt to get a picture of Daniel. It doesn't help that he's only like 5 foot 4 or something.

Before the show we had spent the morning and walked around Central Park. It was really amazing that in the chaos of the city there was this beautiful space that was so quite and peaceful. I can definitely see the draw of living somewhere near the park

Our flight left Monday evening, so we spent the day down in the financial district. We saw all the construction happening at the World Trade center memorial site. Obviously there wasn't much to see with all the fencing up, but we got to look at it from above, and it was really moving to think of all that happened at that spot. We saw the Stock Exchange building as well. Then we walked around the South Street Seaport and took in the views of the Brooklyn bridge.

We wrapped up our day with pizza in Little Italy and some shopping.

It was a great trip and so nice to spend some time together for our anniversary.

Extra! Extra!

I've been MIA since Joe and I went on our anniversary trip to NYC. I'll post about that soon.

While we were gone Harper stayed with my parents. True to form, she decided to pick when I was out of town to put all of our tireless hours to good use.

Read all about it...I have a WALKING baby!

My parents took a video of one of her maiden voyages so we didn't totally miss out.

Her new favortie past time is chasing the cat. She's not as quick as he is, but she always gets her man.

5 years ago today....

I married the greatest man in the world.

Happy Anniversary Joe! I love you!

Couponing Tip #3

The Boss Coupon
In my opinion the best coupon you can get is the 75 cents off coupon. The reason I love this coupon is two fold...
1)Most grocery stores double coupons up to 99 cents, but the highest coupon in that range I've seen is 75 cents, so it's the most amount you can get doubled.
2)A lot of times when something goes on sale, it will be a two for three dollar sale.

Combining those two reasons gives you the opportunity to get many free things.

Just last week Kroger had toothpaste 2 for three dollars. I had two 75 cents off Colgate. In no time at all I had two free tubes of toothpaste in my cart.

This is why I think the 75 cents off coupon is the boss!

Baby Got Back

Those people that know the real me know that given a few alcoholic beverages and a karaoke machine the only song I will belt out is the Sir Mix A Lot classic Baby Got Back.

I have my own dance moves. I know all the words. I have back...

Today I received proof that my daughter actually has some of my genes in her. For the first time ever she danced in the car.

To my anthem.

Wordless Wednesday

String Cheese

As Harper gets closer and closer to taking those precious first steps by herself we often hear the phrase "she'll do it when she's motivated." Joe and I agree that is probably true, but we thought we could encourage her a little by setting up a motivating situation. Few things motivate my dear daughter more than food, especially cheese. So we came up with the brilliant idea of threading chunks of cheese and tying the string across the room so Harper would be forced to walk if she wanted to eat any of the cheese.

The threading process.

Harper's futile attempts at reaching the cheese without letting go of the chair.

The sad state of things when she realized that there was no reaching this cheese.

Needless to say, we were not successful. So I guess we'll just have to sit back and wait for our baby to "put on her big girl underwear" as her Aunt Em would say and take off walking.