Hunting for Treasures

Do you ever feel like you have gotten so behind that it is useless to try to catch up? Like you want to just call a do-over and start from scratch? Me too, but I am way too damn OCD for my own good. I have been frantically reading posts thinking to myself, "Self, are all of these lovely ladies Wonder Woman or something??" How the heck y'all (I stole that from you southern belles) manage to go on all of these adventures, edit and post your photos in a timely manner is beyond me. In my defense I AM growing a person, work full time, AND have an insane 2 year old that doesn't let me even get a breath, so I guess that gives me a little leeway. At least that's what I tell myself. And if you saw my house, I would hope to get major points for choosing to blog rather than clean. There's always tomorrow for that.

I am going to cop out and do a couple weekend posts and then save what I should have written for my Not Me! post (last week because that's how far behind I am) for tomorrow. So here goes...

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Saturday I was on a mission. The object of this mission was to go to as many yard sales as possible on our "treasure hunt". That's what I told Natey is was so he would not flip out from being in and out of the car a million times.

Stop laughing at my ambition. Yes, I did get a wee bit excited when I started planning this adventure. I went on Craig's list and looked at every freakin yard sale in a 15 mile radius and then highlighted the ones that sounded the most promising in gray. I mapped them all out by distance away from my house and we headed out with the help of my best car friend, my Tom Tom GPS! I only got about half way through the list and I was disappointed in much of what I saw. I was also ripping my hair out at the two boys I had in tow. Next time I'm rocking this quest alone. They survived 2 hours with me and then I dropped them off at our friend's house while I made 4 more stops by myself. Thank God I did because the last one was a 20 minute quest of looking through bags of baby girl clothes and they would have lasted 8 whole seconds, I'm sure.

Here is a tiny sampling of some of the cute things I found at the last one. I ended up with an entire bag of clothes 0-12 months for $20 bucks! They are all in really great condition and good brands and I got a ton of stuff. Disregard the grape juice stain on my table cloth. Um, I said move on!
Nathan's treasures for the day were 2 Spiderman figurines for 0.50, a standing microphone toy that claps for you and cheers for $2 and this Diego step stool for the bathroom for $3. The lady even threw 2 books in for the same price too!

My tuck and run find (as Raechel would call it) of the day were these 2 bird cages for $6! I am going to incorporate them into the baby's nursery. They are so sweet and whimsical and I am stoked to use them.

I also got a bunch of kids books for 0.50 each and a leather case for my ipod for $2. Mostly I was proud of myself that I didn't give in and buy crap...I have a habit of doing that. I didn't feel the need to buy something at every stop and left quickly to continue my quest if nothing caught my eye. These finds topped off a great Craig's list week, in which we scored a "Best Chairs" brand upholstered swivel glider and a toddler bed for Natey on the cheap. I say it was a good week.

Show me the Money!!!

Saving money. It is not a resolution, but a necessity these days. I have been going over and over our bills wondering how it is that we spend this much money. It is amazing how the amount you spend increases just as soon as the amount you make increases. When we lived in an apartment we spent about HALF of what we spend now! I knew home ownership was expensive, but it is ridiculous how much our house costs us. I guess we aren't that bad off considering we have no credit card debt. We nipped that in the bud a few years ago and will never fall into that trap again. That being said, I still stress every month about how much our bills are and how much we have coming in...which is about to shrink by 200 bucks a month. Ugh...

I have been looking for ways to cut back on the spending and I feel I am making small changes that will make a difference over time, but it's still not enough. One of my short term goals was to cut our weekly grocery bill by $50. I managed to cut $40 out this week by planning around the circular and clipping coupons.Some of the things I have done in the last couple weeks are:

• Changed most of the lights in our house to CFLs


• Stopped getting coffee at Dunkin Donuts


• Had our boiler serviced and he fixed a few things that were costing us extra money


• We put film up over a few of our leakiest windows to keep the cold air out


• Downgraded our cell plan (actually got more services but fewer minutes since we weren't using near the amount we had in our plan anyway)


• Have been trying to be vigilant about not going out to eat


• I cancelled my hair appointment (saved about 100 bucks right there)


• I subscribed to the Sunday paper so I can clip coupons for the market


• I planned this week's menu around the store circular (sale items) instead of picking dishes and shopping for them.

So, I think I have made a good start. There must be little tips and tricks that you have that could help me out. What are your favorite money saving tips? Also how much money do you spend on groceries a week? Please help a girl out! Oh, please don't suggest cutting off the TV either...I tried that and almost had a mutiny on my hands!