Saving Strong!

Well as many of my friends know I love to save money. And I love to share with people in learning how to save money. I do that in large part by shopping the sales and clipping my coupons. I had to apologize to Rennie on Friday night, because it had taken me so incredibly long to get my stuff together for my first real grocery trip in a month. Yes, when I went on my blogging hiatus, that was not the only thing that got put on the backburner. Fortunately, my cupboards were well stocked and we could coast through that month without too much trouble. This is also the reason that I really needed to be organized and get as much as possible to restock (we were completely out of cereal)...but back to the story at hand, my time spent in preparation was not in vain.

I walked out of Kroger with all of this:

And it only cost me $41.24!!!

Here's what I got:

5 Cocoa puffs
3 Total Cereal
2 Trix
3 Hellman's Light Mayo
2 Strabucks Frappuccino (total splurge but still cheaper than going to Starbucks)
2 Nature Valley Trail Mix Bars
2 Fiber One Cereal Bars
1 Lipton Tea
2 Breyers Ice Cream (such a small package these days, it's a shame)
1 Activia 4 pack
2 Mountain 2l
1 Pepsi 2l
1 Nature Valley Granola Snack Mix
2 Reynolds Baking Cups
1 Clabber Girl Baking Powder
1 loaf of multigrain bread
2 loaves sesame seed italian bread
1 demi loaf
1 4ct sesame seed bagels
1 Uncle Ben's Ready Rice (FREE)
2 Sargento String Cheese
2 6ct Klondike Bars
1 Smithfiels Bacon (FREE)

Total before sales & coupons was $135.96 for 70% savings. I was so excited and that doesn't even take into account the regular price on all that bread since it was marked down. Usually I bake my own sandwich bread, but I picked up a bunch of markdown breads since I needed italian bread for Sunday dinner. Whatever I don't use, I'll just chop up to throw in the freezer for stuffing mix.

I owe all of the awesome savings to these sources: Kroger Mega Sale, Sunday newspaper insert coupons, internet printable coupons, shortcuts.com, cellfire.com, Kroger direct mail coupons, hotcouponworld.com and Rennie (he would run to the other end of the store for me when I forgot something).

I'd love to hear what you were able to score. I'm also glad to help you learn to maximize your savings too, so let me know what you need help with and I'll do my best.

Hiatus from blogging...

Well, I was off to a good start with this blogging endeavor and then I had to put a lot of things on hold and get down to business on the 5th Annual White Elephant Gala. Whew! It has been such a busy month, but all the efforts paid off. Virginia Chapter ASID was able to bring in over $12,000 through the event. Half of that goes to the Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity. I am so proud of the crew that we had working to pull this together. What an incredible team! I hope to add some pics from the event, when I can get my hands on them.

Just in case you wondering what I picked up this year at the auction. I won a gift certificate to Keep Good Company (I'll show you what I got later once I get things up in the house), a four piece cordless tool set for my man (maybe he'll let me use it on occasion) and check out my new chair.

The chest you see in the background is from the 3rd Annual White Elephant when I got hooked on this event.

Tada!

Here is the foyer and....

here's the kitchen!

I LOVE IT! It finally feels like my kitchen. We still need a few things up on the walls but that's an easy fix. Enjoy the pictures. See the before kitchen in my previous post http://bowmanlot31.blogspot.com/2009/07/welcome-to-our-lot.html.

Everything All at Once

So I have yet to master the concept of changing just one thing at a time (that's probably why I find myself often overwhelmed)! Here are my recent changes and projects.

Painting the kitchen and foyer--in progress and should be on deadline for company arriving tomorrow after church.
Dealing with a few nagging excess pounds--due the current disarray in the kitchen I have not been as careful about what I've eaten the last 3 days and nor have we taken a walk once this week. We will have to recalibrate on Monday.
Starting a blog--I've wanted to do this for a long time! Why now when I should be at the grocery store or painting the kitchen and cleaning the house, I don't know.
Getting organized--I've written down a daily schedule with some basic for everyday. Also need to recalibrate on this one-since I've been mostly missing rather than hitting the target.

That's the update for today. Now seriously I've got some bargains to nab, painting to finish and cleaning to do! As usual I get no help from these two!

Crazy Project Timelines

I'm crazy, but my hubby still married me. He probably didn't realize what he was getting himself into though when he signed on for the job of 'til death do we part. Not my fault that he didn't require a full disclosure right? He saved some for me too, so I think that we're even. He said that I might have to get a new hubby when I decide to paint the kitchen cabinets, but I told him maybe my new hubby can just buy me new cabinets and that I was just trying to make the most of what I had and I wouldn't be doing that for a long time anyway.

There is nothing like having company as a motivator to make the next step on that project that is nagging to be finished! It's only been dropped in a pile in the corner of the room under the dust, cat hair and the mail that needs sorting for a few weeks or months as the case may be. (Side note we actually have been pretty good about the mail making it to it's designated location and sorting out the majority of the junk straight to the recylce pile--what a stress reliever.) The project at hand was/is to finish the painting from my inital move-in inspirations. Living room was the first one checked off the list and the guest bath followed shortly behind, but still needs some touch-up. We'll get to that eventually. After a few weeks off for camping and visiting with family we're back in the part-time paint business and the hallway got done quickly. We needed a good confidence builder and easy-to-get-back-into-project if you know what I mean. Back to the reality of peeling wallpaper, patching holes, sanding spackle, vaccuming dust and priming!!! We were up until the wee hours just to get the first coat of primer done and cleaned up. Can I say I love and hate oil based primers and paints. Good quality coverage and nasty messy cleanup. Thankfully Rennie took over the cleanup and I got to heat up some food. Why I didn't fix food before we started I don't know, bad call on my part.

So the timeline for kitchen and foyer painting project to be completed and not mention have a functional and clean kitchen for company on Sunday. Yes I said Sunday and today is Friday. My friends it is going to be a late night or couple of nights. Whatever it takes, I want it done. Wish us luck that we'll get it done, get a little bit of sleep and not be too cranky with each other in the process.

Welcome to our lot!

Well Rennie doesn't know it but the Bowman household is hitting the blog roll. I love reading blogs and often feel inspired so I thought that I might give the blogging thing a try. No guarantees on which direction this might take. Stay tuned...

Why Bowman Lot 31? Well it's our name and our house lot number where we live. I imagine that where we live physically, mentally and spiritually will be the starting point for most of my blogging.

So what is going on at Bowman Lot 31? Well we're still moving in and around. It seems like it might still be going on for a while, but my goal is that we'll be done unpacking boxes by Labor Day. That means my MIL is moved downstairs and all our stuff is upstairs and unpacked. We're already mostly upstairs it's getting my MIL's stuff downstairs into the mother-in-law suite. The holdup is that we need to clean up all the construction dust down there. This is probably worst part (IMO) about the whole renovation process. There is dust absolutely everywhere in the downstairs.

We are having friends over on Sunday so the goal is to finish painting the kitchen and get it back in working order. From there this is the plan:

1. Clean the downstairs of the layer of dust.
2. Move MIL's boxes and remaining furniture down.
3. Put out kitchen essentials, bedding & bathroom for MIL (since we packed her stuff she won't even know where to start so I feel like the very least we should do is get her a little start).
4. Take before pictures in the guest bedroom and then remove the border and paint.
5. Furnish the guest bedroom.

Order to be determined
6. Tackle the office/craft room (currently the junk/box room).
7. Paint the master bedroom
8. Paint the master bathroom.

Now that's just the big stuff! There's lots of little stuff that I hope we can get done too.

Here is a before pic of the kitchen (sorry for the stuff) so that you can enjoy some after pictures when we're done.