2011 Review Extravaganza......July to September

I'm taking part in this 2011 Review Extravaganza from over at Mimi's Place, Living in France.
Here is the link to The Rules.
If you want to take part go read the rules and then link up each Friday in December.
And to read the folks participating, go click on the Extravaganza Button on my side bar.


Onward to my 3rd installment of the  Review of 2011...the July to September months.

JULY

July was a very busy month here!

We started out the month at the halfway point of 2011.  I did a check-up on my progress toward my GOALS for the Year.

The Garden started off Doing Great!

I continued earning some Coin on the Side.

I tried to become an Amazon Affiliate.  This didn't work out very well as once it took effect, I could only post titles and no content on the blog.  I then posted about 20 titles in one day trying to get it to work.  HERE is one of those posts......HERE is another one.  Funest day ever!

I finally held another Stockpile Sale.  Here is the work I did to get THERE.

AUGUST

 I did a little DIY in the Kitchen in August.  Homemade Breakfast Sausage anyone?

 Who could not love CUCUMBER P*RN?

Can you believe we held another Stockpile Sale?

We saw some more Decluttering P*rn this month.

We waved goodbye to Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Holly when we dropped off our Daughter to college for the first time.

And I ended the month talking about my Artistic Past.

SEPTEMBER

I dug out the trash and got #2 son's room cleaned.   Most unusual garbage found?..... 52 Plastic Spoons.

Just into the month and our area was hit by the worst Flood since Hurricane Agnes-The Flood of 2011.

I reminisced about being Mortgage-free in one breath and  having our house insurance cancelled in the next because I lost The Bill. bleh

I talked about the End of an Era-my Rite-Aid Pillaging.

As part of my effort to get rid of the rest of the eBay stock I had hanging around, I decided to hold a Garage Sale-styleToy Sale locally.  I spent a large amount of time prepping for it like HERE.

We ended the month with a Lightning Strike!

What is in store for us after this?
Check back next Friday for Part 4 in the Series, where we dissect October to December.

Sluggy

You Can't Take Me Anywhere!

We finally got the whole family in one room long enough to take Daughter out for her Birthday meal.
Of course, as is her bent, she picked the most expensive restaurant around here to celebrate in.

We've never been to a Benihana-style teppenyaki restaurant before.
You know....you sit at a table with a grill in the center and a chef cooks your food in front of you....a chef who makes it an entertainment by telling jokes, singing and throwing knives in the air.

So the five of us sat at a table and the meal began.
Now everyone in my little family has a great sense of humor.  We are sarcastic but we aren't demonstrative and boisterous when it comes to partying.....well MOST of us aren't.

But once the chef started squirting sake into my mouth from the big squeeze bottle he toted around, let's just say I was feeling no pain after about 3 quirts. ;-)
Or as he kept saying, "Mo' sake, mo' happy!" lol

Now that my kids are grown or almost grown I can let my hair down a bit and be the wild party girl of my distant youth....much too their embarrassment.

The almost 16 year old wants to disown me.
The 19 year old told Facebook and appears to be proud of me.
The almost 21 year old wants to go do shots with me this summer.

I am not a bad drunk.
I am a quiet drunk who gets the giggles and then falls asleep after a very small amount of alcohol.
I loosened up and got "into" the experience.
I laughed and clapped.
I caught veggies in my mouth as they sailed through the air at me.
I caught sake in my mouth as it sailed through the air at me.
It was great and controlled until the chef pulled a rubber chicken out of the top of his toque.

That's when I lost my proverbial shit.

I got so tickled I couldn't stop laughing that contagious laugh that makes everyone else laugh.  And then I see everyone else laughing so I laugh harder until my stomach hurts from laughing and I have tears rolling down my legs(yes, Judy, that's for you!).

Of course when you haven't eaten anything substantial and you've had SQUEEZE BOTTLE SAKE SHOTS for a half an hour and you can't hold your liquor, well.....it's not a pretty picture.
But it is HIGHLY amusing to all around you!

Hubs made me take my chopstick training wheels with me(a plastic thing to keep the sticks from separating that Asian people give to their toddlers to teach them how to eat with them).  I had one gifted to me earlier this year by an Asian woman at a restaurant who felt sorry for my lack of skills.

The evening is rather fuzzy in my mind so I have NO clue what I am doing in this photo(yes, it's not very becoming of me, but what the hell)....or is that even my hand holding them?  I just don't know.
Notice however #2 son trying to conceal his uncontrollable laughter at his inebriated mother who he has never seen tipsy before.

And here is the Birthday girl and her surprise dessert...

She's either impersonating the chef who called me "little mommy" by the end of our session, or laughing at me not being able to stop laughing or laughing at me trying to lick the sake off the table when it spilled or laughing at me trying to string a rational sentence together.
At any rate, she is laughing at me.

And no, I didn't abandon my family and go sit at the next table when our chef and his squeeze bottle of sake moved over there.
I do have SOME dignity left......maybe.

Being with my family was fun but I think next time I'll rather take some internet friends when I go.  I know some you reading this would make wonderful dinner companions at a place like this.
And I promise to behave.....unless of course, the chef has a rubber chicken in his hat.

Sluggy

Rambling Thoughts on Serial Layaway Benefactors, Gifts for Children & Our Society

There are articles circulating online about how people are going into random KMarts this holiday season and paying off complete strangers lay-away accounts for them.

I guess when people think about layaway they assume that these are people who don't have enough money to buy something and take it home right away.  Instead layaway users have to put items on hold and pay in small weekly increments over the course of the layaway until the full bill is paid.

Use to be, "back in the day", layaway was the bastion of those lower on the socio-economic ladder who couldn't obtain credit cards... this was the poor man's answer to the credit card.  And often layaways didn't get redeemed when weekly paychecks didn't stretch enough to cover necessary bills AND the holiday layaway gifts.

While many who are economically disadvantaged in this recession have embraced the return of the layaway(and cross their fingers that they'll have enough cash at the end of the paycheck to redeem their holiday loot), there is also a segment of society that isn't necessarily on the same rung of the income ladder, that also takes advantage of this method to obtain store bought goods....that group would be the frugal and the "anti-credit card" set.

Layaway can be a wonderful tool to buy without tapping into your savings upfront and tying up your ready cash.  Face it, for many people taking savings to pay for gifts would be easy to do, but a tad risky.  Say you used your emergency fund to buy Christmas toys for the kids and then you had a REAL emergency?  You'd have no funds to fix the immediate crisis in your life.
By putting toys on layaway, if you are disciplined and make your weekly payments, you pay your bills on time AND end up with toys for under the tree.  If that emergency happened whilst you were laying away the toys, and you ended up not being able to afford them after paying for the emergency, you'd just loose a small fee you paid to open the layaway account and any balance you had paid on the toys would be refunded to you.  You'd still have no gifts but that's a much saner price to pay than having a pile of gifts while being evicted from your apartment because you used your cash and now can't pay your rent.
It's a much more sensible way to try to obtain the 'wants' at the Holidays without going into massive debt.

On a side note(which has little to do with my main point here), there was a part in the article that I found disconcerting......(I've X'ed out her last name and city as to NOT embarrass her because she SHOULD be embarrassed by this.)

"Dona XXXXX, an Xxxx nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to tell her someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son. “I was speechless,” XXXXX said. “It made me believe in Christmas again.”"


WTF?!?!
I don't care if the person who laid away this lot of items brings home a 6 figure salary or barely clears $200 a week working part time as a dishwasher, NOBODY'S 4 year old kid needs $200 in toys at Christmas!
There.
I've said it.
I'm the big bad old meany Scrooge woman.

I don't know.....that part of the article was very disturbing to me.  And she's a nurse, so she isn't rolling in dough anyway...why overspend like that?  Is she trying to buy her kid's love?  Is she trying to raise the next Veruca Salt?

Do the majority of parents in this country think this way?.....spending that much on a 4 year old?  If so I know why this country is circling the crapper.....

I just think that OVERGIFTING your child at a young age(either in number of items or amount spent on them), sets up unrealistic expectations as they grow.
$200 spent on a 4 year old.
Then when they are say, 10, there is pressure on the parent and expectation by the child of what?....$500 worth of  "stuff".....$1000?!?!

Having lived through the "kids and Christmas" years I feel I have some wisdom on this point, and can give the new moms and dads out there some advise when it comes to spending on kids at the Holidays.

I hear all the time how "it's our child's 1st Christmas and we want to make it SPECIAL for them!".

First off, if it's your kid's 1st Christmas then they are obviously under 1 yr. old.  A baby will NOT remember their 1st Christmas so the only ones these parents are making it SPECIAL for is themselves and maybe the Grandparents.
Get over it.
Yes, your baby will eventually see their 1st Christmas in family photos or videos, but they won't have memories of this time.  So don't kill yourself and your bank account going overboard with presents and stuff.
Give the babies lots of attention, some shiny stuff to look at, some nice music to stimulate their senses and take lots of photos/videos!
That's all they NEED.

If you feel the need to spend, buy some savings bonds or put some money in their 529 accounts as it's a much better way to spend on their Holiday.

I have found that it's appropriate and much more sane to gift your kids an equal number of presents as their numerical age.
A 1 yr. old or younger needs 1 gift/toy.
A 2 yr. old can handle 2 toys.
A 3 yr. old?....3 toys.
Up until the age of 5 or 6, this works well.
And I don't mean CLOTHING here.....it HAS TO BE A TOY!

Limited toys means the child doesn't go into sensory overload and you avoid meltdowns on Christmas morning.

If the relatives and grandma/grandpa won't take no for an answer and limit the number of gifts, then spread the opening through out the day.  Or better yet, throughout the week, by giving the child a new present to unwrap each morning after breakfast or lunch or dinner.

In fact, since most grandparents of small children do tend to want to overdue the gifts at Christmas, if I had it to do over again, I'd not buy any toys for my kids at Christmas and just use the Grandparents gifts up until a certain age. 
This would give you plenty of toys for the kids and help you parents save a few bucks and put it into savings or toward a down payment for a house or pay off some debt.  Young families tend to be more apt to be struggling to move up the economic prosperity ladder anyway, so any savings on spending is a good thing for the whole family!

Limiting the number of gifts/toys also helps the child to appreciate the ones they do get.  There is nothing worse than a jaded 6 year old, surrounded by a pile of spent wrapping paper and toys grumbling 30 minutes into the Christmas morning melee that they are bored with nothing to play with.
And yes, I know because I have seen this....not My kids but someone else's little brat.lol
And yes, they were a brat but they didn't start out as one....it took 5 years of bad parenting & 5 Christmases of overindulgence to get that way.  ;-)

And give age appropriate gifts always!
Only one time did I NOT follow this advise.  The year my oldest son wanted a Nintendo Gameboy Color(back in the day).  He was wild for this new Pokemon deal and as he was a good reader in 1st grade Santa got him one with a Pokemon game.   (And yes, he only got 4 Santa gifts that year as those 2 were quite expensive.)
His younger sister, who was in Pre-K, wanted everything he wanted and was also into Pokemon.  She however couldn't read well enough yet to use a Gameboy, but we knew all heck would break loose if Santa didn't bring her one too with the same game.
So I bought what was at the time an expensive electronic device for a child who was not old enough to fully use the thing.

But.....it worked out well.  Because even though she couldn't read well, it helped push her to learn quicker so she could play this game.  Plus her brother would assist her in reading the screen as they would sit side-by-side and play them.
And the oldest also benefited from this arrangement, as he had trouble following directions at that age and would often get worked up.  His sister, ever the calm, logically minded child, would help him follow the exact order of the game's progression.
This, at first, ill conceived purchase helped them with teamwork skills.
Happy, happy accident....oldest learned to follow directions better, sister advanced to reading earlier and both of those electronic toys were cherished and lasted many many years.


Sluggy

December Food Spending Week 3, Meal Plan Week 4

Last week's meal plan is in the books.  Here is what actually happened....

SUNDAY--Roasted Chicken, Carrots, Onions, Red Potatoes

MONDAY--Kielbasa on rolls, Grilled Onions

TUESDAY--Hamburgers on rolls,Mixed Veggies

WEDNESDAY--Spaghetti and Meatballs, Salad
THURSDAY--Leftovers

FRIDAY--Chinese Take-out
SATURDAY--Squash Casserole, Barbecued Chicken Legs

The eBay thing cranked down a notch last week(meaning a bit fewer sales & I started slacking off on listing new items), so I was able to do a little more actual cooking.

We didn't do the Birthday meal for daughter last week, doing this week....other than that we pretty much had things as planned.

The roasted chicken made a dinner and 3 lunches for me(chicken salad sammies).  There were leftovers of the Spaghetti/Meatballs and Kielbasa.  We still have leftover barbecue chicken legs for this week.

Then I made 2 trips to the grocery store and Hubs stopped by Price Chopper for me.  In all, we spent $44.48 last year at the store.

I bought a chicken, ground beef, milk, pizza dough, crab rangoons, salad, a bunch of Pepperidge Farm cakes for the Holidays(on sale for $2 ea.) and beyond that I just don't remember without going through the receipts and nobody cares anyway so bleh. ;-)

Reg. retail of $83.11 so I saved 46.49% last week.

My Dec. food spending total so far through 12/17 is $101.57.  That leaves $198.43 for the month.

This week's menu.....

SUNDAY--Lone Star for steaks(holiday treat out)

MONDAY--Daughter's Bday Meal out

TUESDAY--Beef Stroganoff, Rice, Veggies

WEDNESDAY--Leftovers
THURSDAY--BBQ pulled Pork Sammies, Coleslaw, Corn

FRIDAY--Eggplant Parmesan
SATURDAY--Chinese food out(Xmas even tradition)

Not sure if the Eggplant will happen.  If the leftovers are still plentiful by Friday, it won't happen this week.  #1 son is home for 1 week and leaves the day after Christmas so he is pretty much dictating what I am cooking this week.  What can I say?....he loves my cooking and I don't mind making him some favorite meals a couple of times a year on the rare occasion he is home. 8-)

Items needed for this menu.....Mushrooms, Eggplant, Cabbage and a big hunk of Pork butt for the Cue.

I'll also pick up stuff(like pecans for pie and bourbon balls)for the Christmas Day dinner too this week.

 

Not sure what the shopping list for Christmas dinner is because I'm still trying to figure out what to serve.  I want something nice and substantial but nothing I have to slave over half the day in the kitchen.  Daughter is suppose to 'help' me but I'm not counting on it.

What is everyone else serving for Christmas?

 

I can't decide between a ham or a rib roast, hmmmm..... 

 

At any rate, the food spending will be high this week. ;-)

 

Sluggy

Rite-Aid on Saturday

#1 son has suddenly gotten interested in cooking and saving money on food and HBA items.  After 2.5 years in college and actually having to sometimes spend his own money on stuff that "isn't fun", but neccessary, he's receptive to using money wisely.  He also wants to get an apartment off-campus next year for his Senior year so he's going to have to start cooking for himself on a regular basis.  All the years when he was still at home and I TRIED to get him to learn to cook......NOW he decides he needs to learn.

So he drove me up to Rite-Aid on Saturday evening so I could show him how I work the drugstore magic and explain why I bought what I bought.......

3 x Peace Tea....#1 son wanted these.....99=$2.97
1 x Scope blast mouthwash...on sale, #2 son wanted this=$3.99
2 x Visine original ($5.49)w/20% wellness discount $4.39=$8.78 *bought b/c they gave overage
2 x Cookies on sale $3=$6.00 *wanted to get golden Oreos for #2 son but they were out
Subtotal...$21.74

Coupons Used
1 x $1/1 Scope mouthwash ManuQ=$1.00
2 x $3/1 Visine original IPQ=$6.00
2 x $1/1 Visine In-Ad Q=$2.00
2 x $2/1 Visine Peelie on boxes Q=$4.00
Coupon Total.....$13.00


$21.74-$13.00=$8.74
I used $8.50 in +Up Rewards, which left .24¢ +.08¢=.32¢ to put on my Rite-Aid gift card.

I received $7.50 back in +Up Rewards(2 x $2Visine, $1 wyb2 Cookies, $2.50 Scope, basically I am down $1 in +Ups and out .32¢ on my free gift card.

Then I noticed my Peace teas didn't ring up with my 20% wellness discount.
So I got .60¢ back on my gift card.
Which means I ended up spending -.28¢ on the gift card....so I am "down" .72¢ in +Ups and I "spent" .72¢ for all these items.

Now my store lets you use any peelies found on items you are buying, even if you are already stacking a Rite-Aid Q and a ManuQ.  You mileage may vary.  While we didn't 'need' the Visine right now, next Spring it will get used.  It was the right time to buy it for the overage to pay for the things that weren't free or almost free(the cookies).

#1 son "got it" right away, but I don't see him putting much thought into working a deal himself.
Some day though, some day......  ;-)

Sluggy