First time hubby starts port

O.M.G. tonight was my husband, Craig's, first time to try and start my port.   Oh geesh!   He did get it on the first try, but I thought he was going to push it through my whole body.  He was pushing so hard......the nurse said, "ok, now try the saline flush and let us know if it burns."  I said my entire arms hurts right now, I can't tell if the saline burns or not.  The one blessing in this is that at least I have a husband that cares enough to do this for me right.   He cares enough to be my nurse every day.  That is a blessing.  So today was the start of his "Lymie" nursing career.  Thanks hun!

Fighting for my Life

Not many of my friends on facebook or instagram know what I go through on a daily basis, and many of them don't even know that I am fighting for my life everyday.  For the past twelve years I have been battling a devastating disease called Lyme Disease.   Recently it has moved into the Chronic Lyme stages and things have gotten drastically worse.  I have been in active treatment for the past 13 months and have suffered major set backs and am still no closer to a cure.  I just got word from my LLmD that my CD57 dropped to 37.  That was a big blow to my treatment.  I was up to 103 and then down to 73 and now 37.  Kinda hit a downhill spiral I guess you could say.   From now on I'm going to be vocal about this very lonely disease.  I will not hide it anymore.  I am out and I am fighting!   2014 will be the year I beat this awful bug!

Is it just me?

Wow,   I have taken some time off from blogging, never stopped couponing, just took a break from blogging about it.  I am now going to "vent".  I subscribe to a few different couponing site and FB pages, but I am getting frustrated with the negativity out there.  There seems to be a negative stigma about couponers.  I read so many posts and comments about couponers clearing shelves and hoarding all the inserts and stealing inserts and being sneaky with products and sales.   WTH  Why is this?  Why is everyone so perturbed about couponing.  There are a few of us out there that coupon for a good reason.  There are a few of us that don't clear shelves and don't steal inserts.  Believe it or not, some of us actually have big families and are supporting them very well with coupons.  My family in particular donates MANY of our couponed items to church or to the military, so we buy lots and lots of one thing at a time.  Not every couponer out there is so selfish people.  Quit the negativity and quit the couponer bashing.  There are 6 people in my household and I often donate to my church, to the military, to the firemen, to my sister, to my sister-in-law, and to my mother-in-law.  When I buy 20 or 30 of something I often order it from the stores and don't clear the shelves all the time.  Now, I know you guys are thinking that I am taking the comments personally, but I am speaking for everyone.  None of us need to pass judgement on any couponer that we see out there.  I know that I get some dirty looks when I am in the stores, from people that I don't know.  They are judging me all the time.  We can never and should never judge anyone.  We don't know theor story, we don't know their reason for couponing, nor do we know how people they are helping to support.  People......please put your judgements aside and look within.  By automatically judging those people and approaching them with negativity, you are being just as ugly in your heart.  So stop, talk to them, find out their stories before you bash, or blog, or judge.  Enough about that....move on.

OK, so coupons CAN pay for your school supplies too!

Today was a daunting task.....school supply shopping!  Ugh!  I absolutely HATE school supply shopping, HATE IT!  I have been to two Walgreens, and two Walmarts today just to get it all done in one day.  I have three girls and thank the Lord they are not picky about what color they get or what brand it is.  I got 75% of our shopping done at Walgreens - I used my coupons and shopped the sale ads, not too bad, I only spent $38.   I was impressed there.  Then headed to Walmart - they were out of everything we needed.   So, headed to another Walmart.  For Saturday ONLY, Walgreens has Keri body lotion on sale for $.99 after the $5 register rewards.  For any of you that know me, I don't like doing Register Rewards, so I price matched at Walmart.  On my second trip to Walmart, I found three of these lotions on the shelf, well I snagged them.  I bought the remainder of my school supplies (construction paper, glues, and colored pencils), then price matched the Keri Lotion, and then used a $2 off any Keri Lotion coupon.  YES!  The Keri Lotion was a money maker!  I made $1.01 on each one!  The lotion was regular price $5.97, and I price matched it at $.99, then used a $2 off coupon.  My bill should have been $11.48, and I walked out only paying $3.83!  Woohoo!  Score!  See..... coupons can help you pay for your school supplies too!

One two three...recon mode!

So I am traveling this week and bought a paper in BlueRidge, Texas today......they have four inserts in their paper!  WTH!  Why don't we have four inserts in our Tomball papers?  Why is Blueridge different?  I would have bought a bunch of papers, but they charge $3 for the paper in BlueRidge.   No thank you!  I am NOT spending $3 for more than one paper.    I also plan to do some recon work while I am here.  I am going to go by the Dollare General in town and look for the $2.25 Nivea Bodywash, and I will visit the Target and Walmart in McKinney.  Let's see if their stores are better than Tomball's. 

Reorganized my growing stock pile today

You know, I have taught many people to coupon and every time I teach someone they have the same issue.....they can't build a stock pile.  Now I know, stockpiling is not for everyone, but if you don't want to spent all your time hunting deals and browsing the grocery store, then you HAVE to stockpile.  There is no other way to truly benefit from couponing unless you stockpile.  The whole idea is to find the free or insanely cheap items, buy a ton of it, and not have to buy that until it goes on sale again.  If you only buy one or two or even three papers, then that is all the free items you're going to get.  Think about it.  I buy twenty papers every Sunday that there are coupons.  That way, when I do find the free items or insanely cheap items, then I can buy 20 at a time.  For example....I bought 20 Wisk detergents a few weeks ago, I got them for $1.49 each, so I spent $29.80 for all of them, that's less than the $15 I used to spend on 2 Gain detergents.  I have four kids, so we would regularly spend over $30 a month on detergent, which is why I bought 20 Wisk detergents.  That will last for for a LONG time, then I can mark that off my shopping list for months!  That is the idea behind a stockpile.  Find an item free or cheap, then stock up, that way you can mark that OFF your list for months and months!    I will never pay for toothpaste again, ever.  I have over 50 tubes of toothpaste in my closet right now because when I found them for free I bought every one that I could.  That way I won't run out before I can find them for free again. 
       I reorganized my pantry stock pile today.  It was a big task, but I enjoyed every minute of it.  I love seeing the fruits of my labor.  I completely emptied out my pantry, cleaned all the shelves and put everything back all nice and neat.  It was definitely a moments of pleasure for me.  I know that sounds weird, but I love seeing right there in front of me how much money I saved my family.  Everytime I find an item for free it makes me feel like I have accomplished something for my family.  That is one less item that my husband has to worry about paying for.  One less thing.  I love it.  I want to teach everyone to stock pile.  I want to teach people how to have piece of mind and feel at ease.  I am including some pics so everyone can see and enjoy.  Let me teach you to do the same. 

     Once your stockpile starts growing and has all of the essential items, then you don't have to go shopping all the time.  All you have to look out for is free or insanely cheap items.  My grocery list now only includes things like fresh meat and fruit.  Everything else I already have from stockpiling.  I love it.  Here are the pics

We are WAY stocked up now!

Today was an EPIC COUPONING day for me and my girls!   We started the day at Dollar General and as soon as we walked in we found the Degree Men's deodorant on the $1 rack!  I used the $1 off any Degree Deodorant coupon and that made them FREE, I bought 22!  I knew this was going to be a great day!  We shopped and shopped at Dollar General and found some great deals.  Example - Ragu pasta sauce, on sale for $1.50, used the $.50 off one coupon and got them for $1, bought 24.  My total bill should have been $122, after coupons I only paid $53.  I was uber excited. 
Then we headed to Walmart.  I usually only do one-stop shopping and price match everything, but I had heard about $.25 Nivea at Dollar General and it wasn't in the ad so I had to go check it out.  Anyhow, the Nivea was NOT $.25 after coupons.  Not sure where they found that, they were going to be $.75 after coupons at my Dollar General, so I didn't get them.  It's funny how cheap I can get!  Anyhow, headed to Walmart to browse.  Notice I typed "browse".  I ended up getting $322 worth of groceries!  Nice browsing right!  I usually focus on personal care items and don't coupon too much in the food department, but today I decided what the heck, here goes nothing!  I focused in on only things that I had coupons for, which is kinda hard when you have kids with you.  All I heard was "can I have this" the entire time we were in there.  I did end up paying retail for a few things, but oh well.  They weren't ridiculously expensive, thank God my daughters like Ramen noodles.  I bought them three cases of 12, but they were only $.28 each, so that didn't bother me too much.  I ended up only spending $189 out of pocket, so I was still very pleased.  I did lock up the register again!  That happens everytime I go in to Walmart with coupons.  I think I may be on a first name basis with the CSMs.  Oh well, all is well in the pantry tonight, we are stocked up, the kids are happy, hubbie is happy that I saved so much.....all in all, great day shopping!