Good clearance, bad clearance :) April 30, 2009

So, I’m still shopping the deals and have accumulated quite the hoard emergency stockpile of toiletries. Without even trying, I have so much crammed in my little storage closet that I will now pass up deals on hair products, deodorant, toothpaste (oh, my–the TOOTHPASTE I have), makeup, etc. unless it is literally pennies. I’m still scared of Walgreens (mean employees), so I stick to CVS for this stuff. Read on to see how to shop the clearance rack–immediately followed by how NOT to shop the clearance rack.

Day 1

They just keep putting the deodorant on clearance! I can’t help it. Dove is my preferred brand, but I’m lucky in that I can really use anything.

(Q = coupon)

Dove Deodorant, clearanced to 1.20 (used $1 Q)

Dry Idea Deodorant clear x 6, clearanced to 0.82 (used 6 $1 Qs)

Dry Idea Roll-on, clearanced to 2.25 (I bought this to take care of the overage from the other Dry Idea Q, so they wouldn’t “beep” at the register)

2 Aleve Travel (love these), clearanced to 1.25 each

CVS Pen-size spray hand sanitizer (have you seen these??? It’s my new favorite thing!), 1.79

Used 6.00 worth of Extra CVS Bucks, and scrounged up 68 cents to pay the rest!

Good, right? So, here’s how I blew it! Not really, as I’ve been trying to get a “kid birthday gift” stash going. I always feel like I’m buying these at the very last minute, which results in spending more money and typically not buying the good gift that I really want to buy anyway because I don’t have time to think about it.

Also, I will buy almost any little journal notepad/journal if it’s on clearance. I know this about myself, yet I started looking anyway. Not smart.  I make too many lists every day, and I like them to be on pretty paper, dangit. However, I probably shouldn’t have started in on all this, as I spent more than I should have. Oh, well. Now I’m stocked, and I can’t wait for Baby Girl to see the little Crayola kits. My mom thinks I never let her do anything fun (and I SO DO!), so there.

Day 2:

Hairbrush (the thing I actually needed), 5.99

Crayola Color Explosion kit x 3 (1.00 each, regular price is 5.99)

Cars/Princess Crayola Color Explosion kit x 4 (2.00 each, regular price is 9.99–really???)

Post-it Notepad x3 (1.00, regular price is 4.59)

Journals x 2 (1.00, regular price is 5.19)

Markers (49 cents, regular price is 2.49)

For a total of (gulp) $24.09. Total impulse buy. Don’t be like me. Resist the clearanced oh-so-lovely school supplies. You’ll be glad you did. Maybe I’ll go color myself a picture to make myself feel better.

…and, if you did happen to lose your mind and buy 7 deodorants in a day, OF COURSE you would come home and find this in your mailbox:

That’s a full size Dove Deodorant “sample” and a STACK of $2 coupons to share! It promises to make my underarms “visibly smooth.” I know you’re all dying to look at my underarms.

Wow! Yardsale Success April 28, 2009

I cannot express how sad I am that I have no yardsale photos for this post! Each morning, I set out the camera right before setup, intending to run back in and grab it so you could see our yard FILLED with all the donations. Turns out, our neighborhood brings out the hardcore yardsalers (is that a word?), and I never even had the chance to snap a picture. They were waiting in their cars (politely) and swarmed the yard as soon as we gave the thumbs-up. From 7 to 2 both Friday and Saturday, we stayed busybusybusy. I knew things were going pretty well because we sold several of the big-ticket items on Friday, but all those (what seemed like thousands of) little 25 and 50 cent items really added up. I was all about the bargains and got openly mocked by my family because I pretty much just shouted “Fifty cents!” whenever someone would ask how much something was. Several sweet friends stopped by just to give us some money for the adoption fund, not even to buy anything. Other yardsalers just told us to keep the change (a few dollars here and there), one woman came back just to give me 5 dollars (“Oh, I didn’t know it was for a BABY!”), and another woman brought me a brand-new baby outfit to sell that she had just bought at another yard sale!

Beyond my wildest predictions, we raised just over $2,000! I am so excited to add that money to our special account. Lots of people have asked what our “goal” amount is. Actually, we didn’t really have one we had discussed, so I just started telling people the first thing(s) that popped into my head. That’s logical, right? Ideally, we want to start the adoption process (I’m defining this as actually completing the homestudy all the way through to having our “profile” available for expectant parents to consider and waiting for a match) debt-free. This is BIG, as we’ve never saved this amount of money before–probably because we were never this motivated! From what we’ve read and learned so far, we are setting this goal at $10,000. Yikes. That’s a lot of zeroes. We are almost halfway there at this point.  Anyway, as we get closer to that number, we will reevaluate what we need. Depending on lots of factors, including whether the agency operates on a sliding income scale and where we fall on that scale at the time, this could be all we need. It could also leave more to be raised. We are so excited, and I even have a mental picture of this little one already. Granted, I pictured Baby Girl with dark brown curls, so–whatever.

Again, here’s where photos would be helpful. We still have NINETEEN boxes of great items leftover. I am planning to donate them to another local family who is planning their own adoption yardsale next month. Isn’t that cool? Truthfully, we could have another sale, but we’re just too exhausted to do one anytime soon.

If you are reading this and have adopted domestically, would you please comment or send me an email? I know some people are comfortable sharing the dollar amount/cost of their adoption(s) and some are not. Frankly, I’m so thankful for all the blogs I’ve read that do disclose this information, though I know it’s a complicated thing to share. It does help those of us at the beginning of the process who are trying to find a point of reference!

Wordless Wednesday April 15, 2009

After the Storm: Tornado Relief Benefit April 14, 2009

You can read more about this on Andrew’s site, or on Facebook. Come join us for an awesome night of worship with 180 Degrees Ministries  at Journey Pointe on Friday, April 17th. The event starts at 7:00pm, and Journey Pointe is located at 1267 Middle Tennessee Blvd in Murfreesboro.  See you there!

O’Hare, I am not your fan April 11, 2009

Hey! Sorry for the hiatus. Turns out my real life sometimes gets in the way of the old blog. Never fear,  I have several posts floating around in my head.   For people who rarely leave the house, we’ve  been traveling a lot lately! Andrew and I took a quick kidlet-free weekend trip to Iowa (What? Corn is romantic…) so he could lead worship at a church there. Then, we packed up and drove to Destin for a much-needed family vacation. If you’re keeping score, that would be approximately four years since we took a real vacation. We are wild animals.

So, more on those trips later. This post is solely dedicated to our return trip from Iowa to Nashville. Yep. It is that long of a story, folks. To fully appreciate the complete absurdity, you must first know our original travel itinerary (aka The Plan That Never Was, or Why Snow is Bad):

• Leave Cedar Rapids airport @ 6:40 pm Sunday (37 min flight from CR to O’Hare airport)
• Arrive in Chicago
• Depart Chicago 8:30 pm
• Arrive @ Nashville airport 9:40 pm Sunday

Now…can you sense what is coming? Because I sure didn’t. Notice that, in this imaginary fairy-tale plan, we actually leave Iowa and arrive home on the SAME DAY. Simply amazing. All I can say is PRAISE JESUS that we didn’t have Baby Girl with us. I would probably be bald from stress, or dead from the poison the flight attendant would surely have slipped into my complimentary drink. Here’s what actually happened:

• Sunday, 5 pm: Arrive @ Cedar Rapids airport
• 6:10 pm, board plane
• Sit on runway until 8:30, first waiting for the plane to be de-iced (probably important), then waiting longer because O’Hare was closed for all landing planes due to sleet
• Finally take off (remember, 37 min flight)
• 9:05 pm, arrive in Chicago
• Sit on runway until 11:15 waiting for an available gate
• Laugh at pilot telling Jeff Foxworthy jokes (really) and flight attendant trying to get everyone on the plane (all 8 of us) to get really drunk for free (no one did)
• 11:15 pm, finally get gate
• Miss connecting flight by, oh, 3 hours
• Book on 7:10 am flight to Nashville
• Get offered reduced rate at nearby hotel and think this is a good deal
• Switch to 8:10 flight so we can get one more hour of sleep
• After missing the first 4 shuttles to this hotel because we refuse to shove other people, realize that everyone who was on American Airlines is being sent to this same hotel
• Also realize that the hotel is sending the same 8 passenger van each time, and there are about 40 people still waiting
• Do the math on how much sleep we’ll get and decide to “sleep” in the airport instead
• Switch back to the 7:10 flight
• Embarrass Andrew by trying to track down the “newspaper guy” so I could buy 2 of the previous day’s newspapers that were stacked up for recycling (there were FIVE coupon inserts this week, people!). I was successful, by the way.  I probably could have been successful more quickly if I had just taken them, but I’m afraid of mall and airport cops.
• Camp out on some chairs (chairs equipped for our comfort with lovely steel bars in between), not sleep, and arrive smelly and disheveled for our flight the next morning. Unfortunately, we had a lot of company who had arrived at the same decision.

From there, everything was just smooth as silk.