Kate minus Jon and the 8

About a month ago some friends and I went to see Kate Gosselin speak at Roswell United Methodist Church.

Tickets were just $5 for balcony and since I have been following the show for a while now I really wanted to hear her speak in person.

My neighbor Kelly and I rode together and met up with friends from my small grup Nicole and Jennifer as well as Nicole's friend Allison. We ate some dinner and then headed to the church.

It was pretty crowded although the church was fairly large, but suprisingly it did not completely fill up, there were still spots in the balcony.

Many of us were wondering what she was going to speak about esp. since recent rumors have been circulating about Jon and Kate separating.

Some pictures came out recently of Jon at a bar with some college students while he was away at his mom's taking care of her. Since then the media has been speculating all sorts of things and still is I think.

So we were all curious if she would mention this at all, which turns out she didn't.

Mainly she spoke of "their story" from when she and Jon meet, having the twins and finding out they were having sextuplets and she also answered some questions about the show.

She shared how her faith has always been a part of their story and leaning on God for strength through the trying times and the good times.

Afterwards she signed autographs and signed copies of her book. Kelly and I decided to wait out the line and I got my book signed. It was very quick but we got to speak to her for just a moment as she was signing and we also got to get some up close pictures while we were waiting in line as well.

Here are some pictures from the event.

Home improvements

There are always little things I think of that I would like to do to our house, I guess that is never ending.


I have a list of things that I at some point I would like to do in regards to decorating/changing some things up.

One thing I have wanted to do for a long time is paint our breakfast nook.
I thought about this soon after we moved in, just to give the living room/breakfast area a little something.

Our living room and breakfast area flow together and it would take so much to paint our entire living room, but the breakfast nook is a pretty small area, so I thought it wouldn't be too hard to paint it.

We searched out colors and bought three small sample sizes of different shades of red.
Originally I thought I wanted to do a tan/beige, just a little darker than the color of our walls now, but after thinking about it more and with my mom's thoughts as well I wanted to do something with more color to make it stand out.
So I started looking at reds.

After trying out three small sections on the wall we picked the red that we liked the best.

Now, note to anyone wanting to do red, b/c it is so dark and bold if you start with a white wall you must first do a coat of primer and then most likely 2 coats of the red.

Thank goodness it was a small space b/c an entire red room could take quite a while with doing three coats.

I think it turned out good and we even found some cheap art from Old Time Pottery to complete the look. I also picked up some fake lemons and red apples to use as the centerpeice and replace the green apples I had before.

Here is the completed project:

Several things to post about and couponing!

So, I realize again it has been over a month since I have written.
I have several things to post about from the last month or so.

Several things in upcoming post include:
A home improvement
Kate Gosselin
Family wedding
Our trip to Vegas!
My new obsession, couponing!!

I want to also change up my background but that will have to wait until I am at home seeing as how my computer at work is giving me trouble in doing this.

Because this is fresh on my mind today and I am very excited about this, I wanted to blog about my new hobby:

Couponing!

After reading many other blogs about couponing and all of the money that people save, I have started to pay more attentions to the weekly coupons and sale ads.
Not that we haven't used coupons in the past, but there really is a art to getting the most out of your coupons and getting the most savings.

For the last several weeks Matt and I both have been looking over the ads to see what's on sale and also collecting the weekly coupons.

We try to find the things that we use on a normal basis first, and then always check out the BOGO items at Publix.

Typically the two stores we shop at are Publix and Walmart.
Generally we shop at Walmart for most things b/c it is cheaper than Publix for things we typically use.
We go to Publix for the BOGO items b/c this makes items even cheaper than Walmart at times, and when buying produce and meat.
The great bonus to the BOGO items are that you don't have to purchase two items to get the price, you can purchase one item and get the half off price, which is great.
Latley we have started checking out Kroger b/c they run lots of great sale's as well.

So to the couponing..

There are two sites that I really like that are dedicated to coupoining/saving money:
couponmom.com
southernsavers.com

Couponmom.com has many links on the site and updates its coupons weekly. You can print them out and there are usually 6-7 pages of coupons. There are some silly coupons mixed in, but most are very useful.

Southern Savers.com is a website that list the weekly ads for Publix, Kroger, CVS, etc.
For example, with Publix it list all of the BOGO offers for the week and then out beside the item on sale it gives a printable coupon.

Sometimes it will refer back to a coupon from a previous weeks coupon circular from the paper, so to take full advantage you have to keep all of the coupons from previous weeks, of course until they expire. I file mine in our file cabinet and have a separate hanging folder for each week, then just toss the ones I haven't used when they expire and that frees up a folder for the next weeks.

There are many other sites out there these are just two that I like.

So on to my best week ever in couponing:

So we shopped at Publix and Walmart this week.
I wrote down all of the BOGO offers that I wanted to check out and then made my list for Walmart to get all of the other items needed:

My grand total at Walmart before coupons was $77.25, my total after using coupons was $64.56!I saved roughly $13 by using coupons, and these were all items that we use.

Some of the best deals I got were:

Italian Dressing- $.08! , had $1.50 off coupon
V8 Fusion- typically $2.98- $2 coupon made it $.98!
A second V8 coupon for $1 off, making it $3 for 2 bottles of V8 Fusion, and its great for you!
A free pack of gum
Trop50- Tropicana OJ with 50% less sugar- usually $2.98, with coupon $1.98.
2 cans of Pringles- $3, with coupon $2 for both
$1.10 total off of two boxes of Hefty zip bags
Poptarts- 2 boxes for $2.64 with $1 off coupon
Carpi Sun- box of 10 pouches- $.87 with $1 off coupon.

Those are just a few of the items saved on.

At Publix we got some more great deals too. I saved $6.75 in coupons and $11.64 on the BOGO items.
Here are just a few items purchased:

A free bag of Fresh Express Salad with the purchase of a Sargento Salad Finishers. Then if you mail in a rebate you end up getting the bag of finishers for free! So a total of $6.19 in free items.

Yoplait Kids Yogurt- 6 pack- BOGO which puts it at $1.40 for one, then a $1.50 off coupon makes it free with $.10 overage!
So they paid me to buy it! Even though it's kids its normal flavors and just the right amount for what I like.

3 boxes of Mueller's Pasta- BOGO item- with $1 off 3 box coupon it made them $.65 ea.

2 boxes Quaker Granola Bars- BOGO item, usually $2.99 ea, with coupon $2.25 for both, so roughly $1.12 a piece

So I spent $90.56 and saved $31.45. This is at least 2 weeks worth of groceries minus little things we will have to pick up here and there.

So as you can tell I am very excited about the coupon game, and trying to save some money, casue I mean, who can't afford to save money.
I have also realized I am officially an old married lady now. :)