Due to popular demand

I've had a few people asking how I got that steal of a deal yesterday, so let me explain a little bit. It's going to be hard, because it was hard enough for me to learn from "professional" couponers, haha.

First thing I did, was in the Wednesday's mail, I received 2 coupons from Albertson's called "doublers." They allow you to double any coupon you have up to $1. So that gave me an additional $2 off the value. So if you missed those coupons, I heard there are 3 more coming out in Sunday's paper.

Next, I went to this site here

It gives you a list of everything on sale, then the price if you have a coupon. When the coupon says $2/1, it means you get $2 off when you buy 1. If it says $1/2, it means you get $1 off, when you buy 2. I just barely subscribed to the paper, so I don't have some of the coupons, but all of the ones that say "print" anyone can print those off. And you should print 1 coupon for every item of that, which you buy.

For example, I bought 2 Jolly Time popcorns, so I printed 2 of the coupons. It will let you print 2 coupons per computer.

On that list, I went to the bottom section that was grayed out, because that's an even better deal, since Albertson's is doing, buy 10 participating items and get $5 back immediately. Also the stars on the left tell you how good of a deal it actually is.

So I ended up using 5 coupons I think, then 2 of the doubler coupons, plus the deals that were already going on and that's what I got!

Sorry if this is confusing, it was very confusing for me too, and still kind of is, but I'm trying to learn. Feel free to email me if you have more questions (tiffaustin88@gmail.com) But here's another deal I'll be doing today on the Softsoap from Target (I'd do the Gillette one too, but I don't have the newspaper coupons yet):

DEAL

Here are the websites I look at for help:

Pinching Your Pennies

Frugal Blog

GOOD LUCK!!! IT'S SOOO MUCH FUN!

A success!

So... my wonderful friend Penny has started showing me how's it done. That's right... I'm learning to use coupons! According to my previous post I am trying to learn to save money on groceries. It seems like a no brainer... it's free money for heaven's sake! And since I had no responses, I needed to look for help elsewhere :)

Well, this was my first shopping trip. It may have not been the absolute best deals, but I definitely did good for a first timer!! Here's what I got:

Normally:

Jolly Time Popcorn $4.99 (each)

Refried Beans $1.29

South Beach Diet Fiber Bars $3.99 (each)

Kraft Pasta Salad $2.29

Mac and Cheese Cups $1.19 (each)

Bagel Bites $2.39 (each)

My total:

$5.29

That's a savings of $23.74!!

I'm going back tomorrow to do one more round with other items :) I'll check back then.

Coach Austin

Josh is officially the new assistant coach for BYU Lacrosse!! I'm so excited for him! It was a big decision, because of his work and the time commitment, but we both felt good about it! It's not going to be as big of a commitment as we thought either. He would have practice MWF for about 2 1/2 hours, and then any games that they have. But I would be at all the games anyways, so it's just like 7 1/2 hours per week that he'll be gone.

This is such a great opportunity for him and I know he'll do AMAZING!! The boys will love him and I know he'll enjoy spending time with the guys. They'll also probably have about 3 road trips which will be totally fun and I'll probably tag along.

Just thought I'd share the news!! Here's the official announcement:

www.byulacrosse.com

COUPONS!!

So, I've really wanted to learn how to use coupons strategically and cut down our grocery bill. I tried this about a year ago, but when we lived in our condo, the paper would be left in front of all of the units and somehow the paper never got to me. Go figure. So I cancelled the subscription and haven't tried starting again for a long time.

Well, a few of my friends at work say their wives do it and have cut their grocery bills in 1/2 and have a solid food storage. So that's my goal. I want to get to learn the coupon system and figure this whole thing out. I've checked MANY websites such as www.grocerysmarts.com, www.pinchingyourpennies.com, etc. and I've tried to read the tutorials on how to do this, but I'm still confused, haha.

If anyone has a good way of learning, or knows how to do this well and could teach me, I'd be FOREVER grateful!!!

I haven't subscribed to the newspaper yet, but that will be my first step...

I'll keep you posted.

Summer Rain

So it's been raining, I believe, every day of June (except yesterday). This is June Gloom at it's best!! Anyways, we were down in Provo last weekend and met up with some of our favorite people, Marshall and Jen, and we went out to dinner. We went to this wonderful Mexican place on Main St. in Provo called Joe Veras. One of Josh and my favorite places to eat. It's kind of a whole in the wall, and not many people know about it, so it's always slow, but has great food! Anyways... after dinner we decided to go play some frisbee golf up behind this mental hospital. The clouds were overhead, but we thought we could get a few holes in before it started raining.

We got through about 3 holes and then it started raining pretty hard. Jen and I retreated back to the car to stay dry and the boys tried to finish out a couple more holes. It got pretty bad, so they came in and we all just sat in the car and talked. It was so much fun and just nice to be able to get out and spend some time with friends.

Here's a picture of Josh and Marshall sitting in the back of Marsh's car while Jen and I were in the front too seats. Oh, and before some guy who works for the mental hospital came up, very rudely I might add, and told us this was private property and we had to leave. He claimed there were signs all over saying it was private property, but he was clearly mistaken. We looked EVERYWHERE for one as we drove out and not once did it say private property. Oh well... we still had fun :)



Also, yesterday Josh had his annual Overstock Lagoon day, so I took a 1/2 day and went up with Josh to Lagoon!! It was the most perfect day to be there and his company pays for everything! The skies were clear and it wasn't too hot. We rode some rides, went to the company lunch, and then went to the water park that's there. We also found $20 in the water, so we pretty much made money just for going :) I can't wait for it to actually be summer finally and not pretend summer with all this rain. booooo

Reading the classics

So I've decided there are many books out there that I have never read that are classics that I've always wanted to read. So my new goal is this... I have made a list of books that I would like to try and read. I don't have a timeframe, because I don't want to feel rushed, but I think I'm going to buy the books as well to start our own library of great books. So I've started with:



I've made a list of about 25 books for now. Many of these are books I may have read in school, or should have read and didn't, lol. A few books on my list:









If anyone else wants to join along with an informal book club, let me know and we'll go through the list. Either way, I'm still really excited about this and hope I can become a little more cultured and possibly increase my vernacular :)

(P.S. This is mainly for Steph... I updated my other blog, finally, haha)

Madrid, Spain Day 3

The last of today's posts and the end of Madrid. We only had a partial day today because we flew out to Barcelona later in the evening. We decided we really wanted to go to the temple while we were there and luckily we had a chance to do so. It was an extremely unforgettable and truly amazing experience. The temple is for all of the residents of Spain, Portugal and the southern part of France. When we went there weren't many people there and they actually did the entire session in French. It was interesting to be the one's wearing headphones for translation, haha. I'm so glad we went. After the temple we went back and got ready to go to the airport where we took the hour long flight over to Barcelona.

Madrid, Spain Day 2

I'm on a roll, why stop now. Here's Day 2:

Today we wanted to do a lot of site seeing in the city and get to know what Madrid was all about. Surprisingly enough not too many people spoke English out there. We were able to get by, but felt much less touristy while in Spain, it was neat. This is what we saw.

Me

Plaza de Espana

This used to be in Egpyt, but because they feared it would be destroyed, they gifted it to the Spanish and had it relocated here about 70 years ago. Really cool!


Overlooking the city

Hot chocolate and churros, YUM!! This was this mid morning snack, and churros actually originated here. Imagine that.

Plaza Mayor where Vantage Point was filmed


So many cute streets

This is the King of Spains' official residence. Why can't I be a king?

Retiro Park... really beautiful and peaceful park in the middle of the crazy city (reminded me a lot of Central Park). We walked around and even rowed a boat around the lake in the middle of the park. This park used to the King's private gardens, but then eventually opened to the public





Something cool in the middle of an intersection

A plaza in tribute to Christopher Columbus

Last but not least we went to the Museo del Prado that had lots of artwork from the likes of Raphael, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and some Spanish painters, Goya, Velazquez and El Greco.

Madrid, Spain Day 1

So here it is:

The first day we flew from SLC at 4:40pm and flew for 11 hours over to Paris. We had a small layover of only about 45 min. and then boarded a different plane that would get us to Madrid.

Us at the SLC airport ready to go!



Once we arrived in Madrid the first thing we did was find our hotel to put our things down and make a game plan





We decided we wanted to try and go see a bullfight while we were there. We figured when in Spain... do as the Spaniards right? So we went to see if we could get tickets. They have them almost every night so we were hoping there were still some seats available. There were! So we bought our tickets and then went to find somewhere to eat since we still had an hour until it started







It was incredible! It was really sad at first because they kill the bulls and they never even stand a chance, but it was an amazing experience. We saw about 6 bulls and then it was over. After the fight we just walked around the city until we got too tired and went back to the room. Here are some sites we saw while strolling...





Day 2 to come...

Weekend Update

We all had a great weekend these past few days!! Wish everyone else was there (Steph, Jay's fam, Scott's fam), but we did have tons of fun! It was sooo nice to see my parents and Rob came up too which was great! We pretty much just hung out, had a BBQ, played bocce ball, played games and of course went to Charlie's blessing. Everything went so well and the Mike did a great job with the blessing. I didn't take any pictures from this weekend.... lame I know.... but I know Becca did after the blessing, so I may snag some pictures from their blog once she posts.

Other than that, I just booked Josh and my trip out to Texas for a family reunion on his side of the fam! I can't wait! It's going to be so much fun and luckily we had some travel rewards so we only had to pay for 1 ticket! WOOHOO! It's in July and we'll only be gone for about 4 days.

An update on the doctor... so I met with a nurse on Friday. The office had closed for the day, but she met me in there after work, because timing is everything and I had to be seen that day. I went in and found some bad news... (hopefully this isn't TMI), but I have a cyst on my right ovary. So the first thing the nurse said was I needed to go on birth control for this month to help it go away. (Of course the last thing we wanted was to prevent pregnancy, haha). But she said she'd call the doctor and see what he wanted. The doctor said I had two options: I could either go on birth control and try AI next month, or go through with it and hope the fertility pills don't make the cyst any bigger. If it did get bigger, I would have to go back for that same surgery I had last year (a laparoscopy) to get the cyst removed. I obviously don't want that of course, but I also don't want to wait another month to start all over again. I asked the chances of it getting bigger and he did say it was rare. He said most likely it will stay the same or go away, but as long as they know the cyst is already there they can work around it. So, I decided to go through with it this month and try AI. I just started the pills yesterday and take them for 5 days. Then this weekend I go in to get checked again. So we'll see what happens then. I just hope and pray this thing doesn't get bigger because going through that surgery again would be hell!!

Anyways, I hope and pray everything will work out, but I know everything happens for a reason and I just hope I can continue to stay positive through this process. Josh has been such an amazing support and of course he's going through the same thing as me, but it's nice to know we're on the same team and we can work through this together.

I WILL POST TONIGHT ABOUT OUR TRIP FOR SURE!! NO MORE EXCUSES!!! SO CHECK BACK!

Yikes

I am so sorry for promising a post on our trip and then, uhhh... not actually doing it yet, haha. It's just that there's so much to post about that I know it'll take awhile, but I really want to document our trip :) I have a lot of pictures, they're all on Josh's laptop, so I'll put those on a disk and then upload them to here and give you an idea of our week in Spain.

So this weekend my dad and mom are coming in town and I'm soooo excited!! I can't wait to see them and spend some time with them. Along with them, my brother Rob will be here too! YAY PARTY!! Mike and Rebecca are blessing their baby on Sunday so that's the occasion. My parents are staying with us so I've been trying to get things cleaned up and all ready for them.

We officially completely finished ALL the floors, stairs and all!! And it looks AMAZING!! I'm so thrilled with the way it turned out and can't believe it was all done by pretty much just Josh. I tried to help :) I've also hung a few more things on the walls of our place and we also got a BBQ and a bistro set for our balcony. It's so cute up there!! We've only had the BBQ for like a week and we've already used it 3 times. I love BBQing stuff, it's so much easier and usually Josh is doing it, so less cooking for me, woohoo!!

Let's see... we rearranged our office and also added a futon to the room, for seating and sleeping for guests :) Our place is continually coming together.

More news, I go to the doctor today to start the month long process of getting ready for artificial insemination! I am so happy we can finally try this because 2 months ago we were supposed to, but looooooooong story with the doctor and they messed up and we didn't end up getting to try it. I was SO sad and cried a lot because I keep thinking, we've been trying for 2 1/2 years now we have to wait ANOTHER month because of your stupid mistake. Anyways... then we couldn't try last month because of our trip, so we finally get to try now! I'm really excited and the chances are better but not great, so I'm not getting my hopes up, but we will see what happens.

I will start taking some feritilty pills in the next couple days to help the chances even more. Keep your fingers crossed!

More updates to come of 1. our trip 2. my parents visit 3. pics of the floors/house