Month: January 2012

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Crazy Wardrobe Choices People Make

The show What Not To Wear is one of my favorites.  Sometimes I think seriously, are they really wearing that out in public.  People wear some of the craziest things.  Why on Earth would some one think it’s appropriate to wear short, stretchy pants, with holes in them, with a crop top, probably from the 80s, that shows their entire flabby stomach off, is just beyond me.  I saw someone wear this grocery shopping.  Crazy!  I was baffled that anyone had pieces like these left in their wardrobe.

I know fashion isn’t everyone’s strong suit but somethings really should be common sense.  I always ask myself if my grandma would be ashamed to be see me in whatever I am wearing.  If the answer is yes, then 9 times out of 10 I should change my clothes.  My grandma is pretty liberal too, but I consider her a great judge when it comes to things like this.

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Cutest Puppy Ever Stole My Heart

While walking through the mall today, I stopped by the pet store.  I normally go in just to look at all of the animals.  Today I saw the cutest puppy ever.  It was a baby golden retriever with the prettiest little brown eyes you could ever see.  This little guy smiled at me and I just had to hold him.  Puppy dog eyes get me every time.

I played with him for about 20 minutes before I realized I was getting really attached… almost too attached.  I had the store clerk put him back even though I could have played with him for hours.  He looked soo sad when he left my arms and headed back to the little cage he was in.  It broke my heart to see him stare back at me as though he was saying, “Why don’t you want me?”

I really wanted to take him home, but I couldn’t bring myself to make a purchase like that without the entire family with me.  Well, that and I don’t really want to have to deal with dog fur on everything we own.

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Renovating the Yard

This winter our yard looks kind of pathetic.  I hate seeing the grass look so dreary and dull. I wish the grass would stay green all year long.  I’ve heard of some products that keep your lawn looking great all year long but haven’t ever purchased anything special myself.

Even though we don’t really have to mow the lawn in the winter, it still needs to be taken care of.  I’m trying to convince my husband to consider maybe getting some kind of artificial grass.  We would have to make a pretty big investment to renovate the entire yard, but then it would always looks nice and would never have to be mowed.  Maybe we could sell our nice lawn mower and other lawn care tools to help fund something like AstroTurf.

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How I Plan to Save Money This Year

This year I really need to work on saving some money.   I started using a new website to track all of my spending.  It shows me exactly where all of our money is going.  I was a little shocked to see how much money we really spend going out to eat or on fast food.  I’m setting a budget for everything.  I know we can’t cut everything off cold turkey so I’m going to have us do a step down method for our spending habits.

Right now we spend about $500 a month of groceries.  I would like to get that down closer to $300 or less but I know we need to work towards that.  To start I’m setting  a budget of $400 a month or roughly $100 a week on groceries.  I think we can manage to cut back by $25 a week to start with easily, especially if I really work to use up what we have in our pantry.  The following month I’ll move it to $75 a week.  If we do really well with that I might even be able to move it down a little further but I’m not going to go crazy.

We’re taking a closer look at television and cable services along with movie rentals.  We purchased a few pay per view movies on demand this month.  This is really silly considering we pay almost $20 a month for Netflix, we just need to send back our current DVD  to get the next one on our list.  My husband and I are thinking about turning off our cable television because just about everything we watch is available online and we do have Netflix.  We pay about $100 a month for cable so that’s more money we could save every month.

I know groceries and entertainment aren’t the only way we can save but at least it’s a start.  I was able to easily identify these ways to save and will do some digging into other ways to save that I might not be soo obvious to me.

 

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Toy Organization

This weekend is going to be all about getting the kids’ toys organized. I found these great organizers that have three levels and multiple bins to sort and organize all of the toys the kids have.  The bins are multiple colors too so they match the decor in the kids’ rooms.

I’m tired of stepping on toys when I go in there so I’m having the kids help me sort out all of their toys. This might take all day, but it needs to be done.

Whatever does not fit in the organizers will be donated.  At the end of each night they have to make sure all of their toys are put up. No more messy rooms!

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Protective Phone Case Saves the Day

Clumsy has got to be my middle name with a big capital C.  I drop everything and run into things all of the time.  

I can’t even count the times I say ouch in one day.  I was coming down the stairs this morning and dropped my phone.  It fell down all of the stairs and beat me to the bottom.  I’m sure it would have been dead if it were not in the fancy, protective, silicone case I got for it.

I’m sooo grateful I spent the extra money on that case.  If I didn’t have it I bet I would be at the store right now paying to replace my phone.

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Clearance on Snowflake Chocolate

Hello, my name is Suzi, and I’m a chocoholic!  Chocolate is one of my weaknesses.   I can’t help myself when I see chocolate, I just have to have it.

I was walking through the aisles of my grocery store and came to the clearance section.  On the table was a huge stack of dark chocolate morsels in the shape of snowflakes.  They were marked down more than 50% just because they were deemed “holiday.”  I have no problem buying and eating chocolate in any shape, as long as it tastes good.

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Commercial Volume is Too Loud

Watching live television is starting to drive me nuts.  I can’t stand how the volume of the commercials raises considerably during the commercial breaks.   I find it insulting!  I can’t fast forward through them on live television so I watch them or am forced to mute them.  Sometimes it’s soo loud it hurts my ears.  It’s especially annoying at night when the kids are sleeping and the volume blares through the roof on a commercial break.

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Honesty is the Best Policy

Today I went out to run a few errands. I stopped off at the bank to deposit a few checks. I always check the amount of a check before I put it in the ATM. For some crazy reason when the check was scanned, the machine read it as being worth ten more dollars than what I thought I was depositing.

I thought it was really strange, so I pressed the button for the machine to return the check. I glanced at the amount again – I was right about the amount and the machine was wrong – and resubmitted it. This time it read the check correctly.  

I’ve always said that honesty is the best policy. I’d hate to steal ten dollars from someone do I quickly fixed the situation.