Are we there yet?

Friday, January 15, 2010

Grocery Shopping

As a fairly budget/money conscious person I have been frustrated at the amount of money we ~~waste~~ spend on food each month. I get especially mad when it seems like we never have any food in the house.

As I do when any problems face me, I turn to the brilliant people of the web. Do you know how much money people are saving (and blogging about) at the grocery stores just by clipping coupons and shopping sales? It's insane.

So I took our last two Sunday papers that were still sitting around and clipped all the coupons. Then I matched it up with the sales fliers. Last night, Pat and I tackled the store.

I realized a few things. First, I need a system to organize the coupons. Second, it's best to do this type of shopping when the store is empty (we were there around 8:30). Third, we have been wasting SO MUCH MONEY!!!

Last night we shopped smart. We did not buy one thing that wasn't on sale. In addition, I had coupons for a lot of those items. Score!

We walked out of there spending $62.90. We SAVED $51.39 between sales and coupons. Awesome.

In addition, we shop at Shaw's which gives us a gas reward of $0.10 of per gallon on our next fill up and we use our Discover card for the 5% cash back.

So, being the anal accountant that I am, I set up a spreadsheet to track all this saving I plan to do this year. I can't wait to see what I'm able to do once I set my mind to it!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

New Endeavor

For quite some time now I've been kicking around the idea of selling the chocolates that I love to make so much. After some ~~pushing~~ encouragement from my coworkers, family and friends I've decided to give it a try.

Starting for Valentine's Day I will be willing to ship my homemade customized cake balls, chocolate covered oreos and peanut butter cups. That's provided that I get any orders, of course.

Over the next week I am going to work on getting pricing put together and thinking of a cute name (any suggestions?) as well as packaging and shipping methods.

While I am starting for Valentine's Day, I intend to have my chocolates available year round. I will be testing the proper shipping methods out in the warmer months where melting chocolate could be problematic.

If anyone is interested in learning more about them now, please feel free to leave a comment here and I'll be sure to get back to you.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Christmas Decorations

We had a wonderful holiday season in our new home, complete with three different parties. It was a ton of fun, but I'm also glad all the entertaining is over! Here are some pictures of some of my decorations.

Houses on top of the TV. Also our new decoration for on the wall also.