PS: I'm planning to hit Jewel again tomorrow! Shhh!

Nesquik milk x 2 = FREE
Suave conditioner = FREE + overage
Ragu pasta sauce= FREE
Jewel bread= FREE + overage
11 boxes of Swiss Miss= $1
5 boxes of fruit snacks= $1
Johnson and Johnson baby powder x 2 = FREE + overage
Colgate Total toothpaste= 99cents
Planters cashews and almonds x 4 = $4

Total expected out of pocket: $6

Weeee! Cross #1 off the list

Just ran to Jewel at lunch (lucky me we got told to go home for the rest of the day to celebrate an office accomplishment).  I managed to hit a nice, quiet Jewel and grab items from the Conagra (Swiss Miss), Betty Crocker (Fruit snacks), YourBucks (Nestle) and Kraft (Kraft cheese) deals. My total out of pocket for everything below was a whopping $5.39.

Not bad for a newbie. Combined with all my other shopping I did, I bought $125 worth of groceries for $34. That's a savings of 73%.

AND I got another $35 off in coupons for my next purchase to boot!

Plans in the Works

Juggling multiple projects right now, but the three big ones:

1. Jewel
I've got to get to the Jewel today to do a few deals on items I want and need. I won't be spending hours there or wiping clean any shelves, just snagging a few good deals that we can use or donate to church. My big thing to plan is lunch for the weekend. Lunch is the hardest meal for me. I am at work during lunch most days, so I grab a Healthy Choice or Lean Cuisine from home. But that won't work at home. I'm sick of sandwiches. Sick of soup. Sick of hot dogs. What a rut!

2. Trip planning for DC in June
I wrote to our congresswoman in January to arrange for tours. I was pleased to see an envelop from them this week with confirmations for our tours of the US Capitol, the Library of Congress and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. I had to go online myself and book the National Archives self-guided tour (the docent-led tour was sold out). Now that the biggies are taken care of, it's time to figure in all the little specialty museums the kids want to see. My MIL sent me a nice little book (Fodor's Around Washington, D.C. with Kids, 5th Edition (Around the City with Kids)created just for children visiting DC. I had the kids mark which ones they are interested in. It turned out most ALL of them (plus the national zoo which we need to work in for one day).

3. Windows and Doors
We need to begin researching new windows and doors for the house. Am sooo not looking forward to that (looking forward to it being done, but not the cost, stress or aggrevation). I have a lot of windows. A lot of them.


Here's the cover of this little book if you see it in stores. It's really very good.

Is 111 boxes of Swiss Miss enough to claim dual citizenship?

Something to consider. I do like Switzerland

But I digress...there is a sale starting Thursday at my Jewel grocery store. It goes a little like this:

Conagra (the manufacturer of such fine merchandise as Wesson Oil and Hunts Pudding--both with a shelf life to rival polystyrene), is offering $10 back on a $25 purchase. The $25 you spend is based on the normal (shelf) price of Swiss Miss hot chocolate mix, not the sale price. The shelf price is $2.49 and it's on sale for $1 starting Thursday. The trick, you see, is the SPREAD (I feel like a Vegas booky).

11 boxes x $2.49 =  $27.39 but I only pay 11 x $1 = $11
I get back $10
net net 11 boxes for $1.

Rinse and repeat 10 times.

I don't need 111 boxes of hot chocolate, but the church could use it for Fellowship. And 111 boxes for $11 isn't a bad deal, no?

Yeah! It's fixed

Curse you faulty flow switch valve! I don't know what you do but you won't be causing me grief anymore.

$70 later. Still getting a text message and email every 30 minutes but the temperature is going up at least!

The Not So Hot Tub

We took a cruise a few years ago and I will never forget "Goofy's Not So Hot Tub" for children on deck. I think Goofy's hot tub was warmer than ours is right now.

I'm sitting here waiting for the service man and then I really need to get into the office. The hot tub is on our deck, or I should say IN our deck, as it sits flush with the deck floor. It's an older tub, about ten years old, and nothing fancy. It was back in 1998 a Home Depot "special." We would never have bought a hot tub, but it came with the house, and like a puppy, it requires attention. For all intensive purposes, it makes hot bubbly water, and that's about it. These newer models I've seen in hot tub stores have digital displays, TV's, stereos, even WiFi in them. Ours doesn't have more than a set of bench seats around the edge, and maybe ten jets (new models have hundreds of jets). But these are merely accessories. The prime purpose of a hot tub is to keep the water hot, and ours doesn't.

Every once in a while it stops heating. The water is all swirly in anticipation, but the little red light stays solid, calling (I'd like to think DESPERATELY) for the damn heater to kick in. John, my personal home technologist, rigged the hot tub up to a heat sensor and it records the heat in the tub wirelessly on our home weather station (don't ask) and into a chart. We can watch the water heat. Except right now it isn't heating. In fact, the hot tub is paging me every 30 minutes to remind me that the temperature has dropped below 90 degrees and won't I please come and help it.

That's right, my husband has the thing tied into the cell system. It pages us when in distress. Starting, say, 3am when this problem occurred and every half hour after.

It emails me, too, in case I'm not paying it enough attention.

See, it really is like a puppy. A super, high tech, 82F puppy.

This, that and a sick kid

What? No image Marie for tonight's dinner? That's because tonight's dinner is beef stroganoff, and despite a strong proclivity to wanting to use the crockpot, I've never done beef stroganoff in a slow cooker. Add to this the fact that my recipe for in it a slow cooker calls for canned cream of onion and cream of mushroom soup, both of which I don't have on hand. So it's the old fashioned, stove-top variety for me. I'll even pat my beef stew meat dry before I brown it (Julia Child will be so proud of me!).

We did get in a lovely dinner with friends on Saturday night at one of our favorite local French restuarants. I forgot to take photos of all my meals (and frankly it would have been a pretty weird looking thing to do) but I did sneak in just this one for you. Beignets stuffed with chocolate ganache and red rasberry dipping sauce.

It was yummy. I don't think I have to tell you that.  I ended up having the same thing I'm always getting there: mixed green salad with toasted rounds of goat cheese, steak frites and dessert (above) although truth be told I never eat more than a third of the entree (the rest came home) and John ate most of my dessert (and regretted it the next day).

Sunday was supposed to be pretty easy but William fell ill with a stomach virus/fever. It came on from nowhere and I am pretty sure he must have caught it on his field trip Friday to the Adler Planetarium. Poor thing spent all Sunday and Sunday night lying on the floor of the bathroom (we moved the TV in there, and he was comfortable on pillows and blankets). Standing up made him sick. It was better to keep hm lying down and he did not want to move.  He didn't go to school today but is eating and watching tv and much more like himself. See?

Lastly I am beginning to see signs of spring: namely an increase in the number of days where we actually see a little sun (like once a week if we're lucky). But it's just enough to make Mr. Ficus come back alive. I told you he would (ok, I had my doubts afer he dropped a gazillion leaves) but I just have to remember to breathe.