Who let the cat out?

D snores. Loudly.

Once when we were camping with friends, they thought a bear was in our campsite. Not kidding. They were 60 feet away in their own site, and could still hear him snoring.

When we lived in a townhouse, I could hear him while I was downstairs over the TV.

For years, I used ear plugs.

Now, I just sleep on the couch. The 1.5 inch thick solid oak doors between our bedroom and the living room do a passable job of blocking off the noise as long as I have the classical station playing.

This is a win-win because Josie likes to snuggle up at night. D hates it when Josie snuggles up with him. I've caught her in bed next to him with her paw around his middle. Many times, she likes to sleep under the covers, too.

 

What can I say? She's a very pampered house cat.

I love snuggling up with her at night. Her purring is the perfect white noise for me.

Most nights, Leelee keeps Steve in her room. He takes great pleasure in irritating Josie. He crouches down and stalks her, seeing exactly how close he can get before she gets angry and hisses at him. 

Sort of like an annoying little brother.

Or rebel trying to storm the castle and unseat the queen.

Last night, I was in my usual spot on the couch snuggled up with Josie. Sound asleep.

I had a split second of cat screaching MEOWRRRRR to jolt me awake before I had a chance to react. 

It was too late. 

Steve had encroached on Josie's territory (me) by jumping up on the couch right next to my head. Josie was sleeping on my shoulder, her paws draped over me. 

Insert kitty drama on TOP OF MY HEAD.

I ended up with claws to the hairline above my ear. I swear, for a split second I was afraid I was going to be the Weasley twin that lost an ear.

So at three in the morning, I found myself in the bathroom giving my ear first aid.

Mama was not happy.

D thought it was hilarious.

I took the girls to school this morning, came home and instead of menu planning and projects, I ate some chocolate and took a well deserved nap.

This week in groceries

I'm running out of creative post titles. My brain is still a bit fried from all the renovations we've been doing.

Plus, our huge news this week is we rented our other property! Craigslist really came through. We had so many people that expressed interest in the property, with money ready that I was pretty astounded. I hated having to tell people who loved it that someone else took care of paperwork first. 

Totally loving not having to make two house payments.

I was so elated I splurged at the store this week. I made two trips and one of them, I only saved 60 percent. In my defense, I bought many items without coupons because no coupons are available for them, pretty much ever.

My other trip was far more successful, with my normal 75 percent savings. It's real, honest couponing.

For $18 I picked up:

6 voila meals
1 bottle syrup
2 dark chocolate cookies
1 lb strawberries
2 county crock
2 Near East side dishes
2 mac n cheese (the fancy kind)
2 silk protein smoothies

The sad part is, all those voila meals...it's only 2 meals for us! But, with the coupons, my cost for the meals ended up being about $5 for three of them. That is a great price for feeding a family of 8! It's still well less than $1 a serving. I'll pair them up with some 50 cent salad and $1 biscuits. Maybe even have some free brownies for dessert :D

Growing up the blog

I love participating in these challenges. It gets me thinking about my goals and what I want to do with this blog.

Years ago, it started as a place to just share my thoughts on things. Now, it's completely different! I almost don't even recognize what the blog is now. And, I have readers that aren't family members! It's pretty crazy.

One of my biggest goals this year for the blog, I've already accomplished...buying my own domain. It is a bit ridiculous that I waited so long to do this. All it took was a credit card. But, it was a huge mental barrier I needed to cross. It's like I finally took the training wheels off.

I also plan to revisit the whole advertiser/sponsor thing. I don't want to make a ton of money on the blog. Just enough for a new pair of shoes or something. A new pair of Stuart Weitzman shoes would be nice. Maybe these lovelies.  But of course, I'd happily settle for these or even these.  My plan to obtain the shoes was thwarted earlier this month because my one "advertiser" decided that my dramatic jump in visitors to the blog was due to "suspicious" activities. It could never be because I started blogging with a purpose.

So, if someone would like to clue me in on getting sponsors, that would be all kinds of awesome.

Another goal is to start my own linky party. I need a theme, however. Still thinking on that.

The blog is also getting a facelift soon. I'm excited about that prospect. My dear friend who is an awesome illustrator is going to help me out.

Finally, I'd love to attend a blog conference. It's all part of the refining my vision and voice. It's writer stuff.

All in all, most of these goals are doable.

And I really want those shoes...

The Shades the Thing

or

A blue by any other name is still a blue

or

Honey, the wall color is different, even if you don't think it is.

 Sometimes just the right shade of paint can make a big difference in the feel of a room. I've never really cared for blue is a wall color before, but D really liked the blue in the dining room.

I just wasn't feeling that particular blue.

To me, it screamed baby nursery blue

Really hating the spoilers in the picture, but ...

it's totally not the same color.

It's a darker blue with a hint of purple. Reminds me more of a periwinkle.

The change was very small but it was absolutely the right change. The room gets a lot of natural light and I could go a darker shade without the cave feeling.

As a matter of full disclosure, we also replaced the flooring in the dining room. I mean, D was already tearing up the bathroom floor...what's doing one more floor space on the weekend?

This is the before..

That's vintage right there. I really wish we could have saved it.

But someone decided it would be a fabulous idea to pound hundreds of nails down from the linoleum (real asbestos backed linoleum) directly on to the 2 inch thick hardwood floors!

Feel free to sob along with me.

That meant we couldn't even get to the hardwood floors without going through a horrendous and expensive process.

We went with a cheap option for now: subfloor and vinyl. Tile is out of the question because houses like this tend to shift and that would mean cracked tiles, which would essentially just be throwing money away.

We're still trying to decide on more permanent floor options, but for now, it' works. The foot molding will go up soon and I'll do a proper reveal of the dining room changes.

injury

i do plan on posting more house updates soon but i managed to injure my right hand "long finger" as the doctor calls it and I'm in a splint. no idea what i did but it hurts to move. meanwhile i look like im giving everyone a not so friendly gesture LOL

and its wicked hard to type with. A

And I filling out paperwork really stinks when you are doing it with the non dominant hand.

What DO you do with all that cereal?

One of the big questions I get asked is what we do with items in our stockpile. Today, I picked up 28 boxes of cereal for $28. This will last us about a month.

The obvious answer to what we do with the large quantities of food we buy is eat it of course!

But, there are days like today where we get a little more

creative

 

The fun isn't just for the little kids

 

 

BTW: to get the cereals at this crazy low price, I took advantage of the Publix 50% off ALL Kellogg's cereal sale, and used several high value internet print coupons, plus two competitor coupons for $5 off total purchases.

A year's supply of tomatoes

There are only a few things I stock up for in preparation of the zombie apocalypse:

tooth paste
tomato products
Cracklin Oat Bran

The first two, mainly because I hate shopping for them. The cereal is because it only goes on sale twice a year at Publix and it's D's favorite.

Today was stock up on Diced Tomatoes day. I snagged 30 cans of tomatoes for a whopping $7! The breakdown is just about 25 cents a can! That's 85 percent savings for those doing the math.

Tomorrow, I go back to Publix for the cereal. It will only be about 70 percent overall savings, but Cracklin Oat Bran is special.  It never has a coupon for it and it doesn't go on sale by itself unless its part of Publix's 50 percent off all Kellogg's cereals. And I have a coupon for $1/3 Kelloggs cereals that expires tomorrow.

This is where tracking the sales really comes in handy. I knew these two big sales were coming up so I made sure to snag those particular coupons to match with the sale even before the sales were announced. I don't normally track cycles but these two, I remember.

I also did a  happy dance in WinnDixie today and texted a friend to let her in on a deal on Angel Food cake: Another product that is rarely included in sales. I snatched up the last three boxes for just $1.25 each! It would have been a better deal, but I hadn't been able to get my hands on the great cake mix coupon from two weeks ago. Oh well...There will be other deals :)