Couponing WIN!

As you, my three valued readers, may know, I now coupon. It's a hobby.

Today was perhaps my best shopping trip thus far. I will spare you, gentle reader, the gory details, but instead focus on the highlights.

Items gotten for free (yes, I mean free):
6 Betty Crocker Pouch Potatoes
2 Temptations Cat Treats
2 Yakisoba Noodle Meal Things

Items for nearly free:
13 cents each, 9 Hormel Chili with Beans
24 cents, 1 I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray
49 cents each, 3 Bags Birdseye Lightly Sauced Veggies
88 cents, 1 bag of fun-sized Nestle chocolates

The final score is as follows:
Total value of items: $77.81
Total Out of Pocket: $20.65
Total Savings: $57.16
Percentage Saved: 73%


Praise God for He has given me success!

-Helen


P.S. For those interested in the details, the how can be found here: mycouponcollege.com
Time invested: between 5 and 7 hours (keep in mind that this is my hobby, not just for the $$)

Controversial, but effective...

When a porn store opened in Uniontown Indiana 3 years ago, 35 protesters decided to take photographs of all the patrons and post them on the internet. The store has closed and is now up for sale... and has lowered their sales price.

http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2009/08/26/truckers-pictures-taken-when-they-buy-porn/

My questions are about the Christlike-ness of this tactic. This is apparently not illegal because they have been doing this everyday for more than 1400 days in a row. On the other hand, where is the line between love and rebuke? Between loving the sinner and hating the sin?

Should the Coalition for Life adopt similar tactics?


It's important that you review their methods on their website before you comment.

Swiffer Wet Jet: Product Review

As some of you may know, I'm a bit of a sucker for coupons (thanks, Jackie), so you will not be surprised to learn that when this Sunday's paper had a coupon for a free refill with purchase of a Swiffer Wet Jet Starter Kit (up to a $7 value!) I was intrigued. This intrigue, combined with a few hours of free time in the vicinity of Target, resulted in the purchase of said highly-marketed cleaning system. Target also had a store coupon (which I filched off a bottle of Cascade) for an additional $1 off the starter kit.

In addition to the perceived savings, my reasoning for the purchase is thus: Since 1) I now have approximately 15 square feet of moppable floor (the rest of the linoleum having recently been converted to wood), it seems unlikely that I will ever go to the trouble of filling the sink and wringing the mop for such a small space and 2) the floor in need of mopping happens to be the bathroom floor, it therefore follows that unless I want to instate a "shower shoes" policy for my entire bathroom, I had better come up with some other way of cleaning the floor.

Enough talk, on to the rating!

Ease of use:
Excellent. This rating does not include opening the rather cryptic box that the product came in, or the time it took me to find four AA batteries with which to power the sprayer. Really? It takes FOUR batteries to make a glorified spray bottle work?

Effectiveness of cleaning:
Excellent. The floor looks good. The scrubber pad and the bonus scrubber on the edge of the cleaning head work well.

Cost effectiveness:
Eh, not so much. The mop (let's be honest here) is $20, the cleaning solution is $5 for a refill, and the extra cleaning pads are $20 for 36 (which I just looked up on Amazon, having not anticipated this particular expense), plus the cost of BATTERIES for a MOP... Let's just say that they aren't losing money with these coupons. Although there were 5 $1 off refills coupons in the box, just to be fair, so the first 5 refills are only $4 a bottle.

Hygenic-ness:
Lovely. There is a long stick between you and ugly.

Versatility:
Variable. The pad doesn't fit between the base of my pedestle sink and wall, but they do have a cleaning solution for wood floors.

For the visual aid portion of my review, I contemplated exhibiting before and after photos of my bathroom floor, but I can guarantee that no one wants to see such a graphic before picture. That and the camera batteries had already been shanghaied by the WetJet. To protect our weak-stomached readers, I opted for an after picture only, although I did compromise by including the cleaning pad for comparison.


Would I recommend this product? Meh. Depends on your personal ratio of laziness/germiphobia to tolerance of buying endless pricey refills.



Be sure to tune in for our next coupon-induced product review: Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

Art... Expensive, yet Edifying

So today we bought "school supplies" for Matt... which for two college-level art classes costs approximately $265. Yeah. However, while we were spewing money at Hobby Lobby, I found a lovely painting (ok, ok, it's only a print, but still!) for half price! So $50 of birthday money later (thanks, Grandpa!) we are the proud owners of a lovely piece of art... in addition to roughly 10 million "different" pencils.

Coming Soon:

Pictures of the new floor!!

Maybe tomorrow.

Probably the next day.

Wait, it's already 10:40pm? Hmm.

Happy Anniversary!

Three years today! It's interesting to see how far we've come from those days of marriage counseling. If you haven't watched the video below, today would be a great to see it, in honor of our marriage! Hurrah!

Marriage... or should I say "Mawage"