Monday, August 29, 2011

Amused

Today while at Trader Joes a guy roughly about the same age as me stopped me and asked how old Delaney was...he asked because he had a 3 month old little boy and wanted to know when his baby could sit up in a grocery cart...made me laugh inside. :-)

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Obsessed

Just a little PSA to start: I do realize some of these are not moods...just go with it... ;-)

Over the last few months I have become more and more obsessed with couponing. My friend Rachel at work helped me out a lot and learning how it works. I also went to a very helpful talk one night too about it. Believe me I am not an Extreme Couponer by any means but I can see how people get into it so much. It is an adrenaline rush of sorts-a natural high. My best outing was a few months ago when I spent $.77! It was awesome! Geoff thought I had spent $60-75 when he saw the size of the bag. I don't have that great of deals most of the time but I feel like if I am doing something it is better then nothing and it is just being smart about spending the money. It has also taught me to not be as brand loyal which is hard because we are pretty brand loyal people but I am willing to try and if I don't like it I will go back. For example we used to use Bounty paper towels. Good product. I have now tried Brawny, Viva and Tuf too. Tuf I think is Walgreens brand-I got it for $.59 a roll the other week on sale. We go through a lot of paper towels (which I need to figure out a way to lessen that) but I thought that if I could get them for $.59 a roll that would be huge! Those paper towels are terrible! Not very durable and I ended up using more just to clean up..so I won't be doing that again!

Now when I go to the grocery store I save on average $30-40 which I think is pretty good. The nice thing about our grocery store here is they double coupons up to $.99! They didn't do that in IL so that helps! I try not to buy anything now unless it is on sale and I have a coupon or at least it is on sale... Same with Walgreens. Though now that have accumulated a decent inventory in certain products I feel like I am starting to just buy stuff to buy stuff and this couponing might not be working out as well...I need to start watching myself better and asking myself if we really need said item at the time. I am looking for excuses to get out the house and couponing gives me that reason though I need to be more diligent about a budget.

The whole idea on couponing is items only go on sale in a 12 week period once so stock up when it goes on sale. This week I am going to go pretty minimal. I have enough Register Rewards from Walgreens that I should be able to go shopping for "free" and maybe still have some for next week.

As I get my good deals I will post them here to share!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Hesitant and Indecisive

Well as I start this blog it has been almost 2 months since my husband Geoff, our two young children Delaney (the baby 11 months) and Penny (our furry child the Schnoodle 23 months) and I moved from Illinois to Ohio. It has been a learning experience and a good challenge for us. Looking back at our lives together it seems that Geoff and I never do anything the easy way. I guess it is just not in our nature. I am excited about a change of scenery and we were needing the extra space so Ohio has offered us that opportunity plus the experience for Geoff to have the job title he has been wanting for a couple years now. I do miss my friends, family, co-workers and what was my "normal" life but I need to take this experience and grow from it. Already I know I am a much stronger person then I was 6 months ago. Being a single working parent for 2 months will do that to you!

I am hesitant to start the blog because I want to make sure I follow through on a commitment. Time is not something of a luxury these days so I am not sure if I will be able to do this often but we will see. Maybe this will be therapeutic for me.

I am indecisive because I can't make up my mind sometimes! I had like 4 different names for this blog and I am still not sure about the name but I just needed to commit to something or this would never get started. I had even started another blog title and had decided I already didn't like the name before I got started...I don't know where it comes from but I will strive to work on that too!

I am calling it Becca's Different Moods because I will try to keep that as a theme of my posts. I was inspired by a book I read Delaney often. "Happy Hippo, Angry Duck". It talks about different moods and how they change day to day. And it is okay because tomorrow is a new day so your mood can change.  Having completely changed my surroundings and being home now with a baby and a dog all day gives me even more time to think... It has been a roller coaster year for sure in events and moods.

I hope you enjoy my blog!