oops I did it again!!!!

Dear My Favorite Grocery Store,

I appreciate the wonderful opportunity you gave us today to use our coupons against your sales to save over 65 percent on our grocery bill…I humbly look forward to getting more food for less money at your location. Oh an please tell your rude manger that I will follow his rules and will still save a fortune!

Sincerest Thanks,
My Family!!!!

So still think I’m crazy????

This is what I got today:

7 – Cheerios (around 10 oz box)
4 – Trix (around 11 oz box)
7 – Coco Puffs (around 11 oz box)
9 – Hamburger Helpers variety
4 – 2 liters of Ginger Ale
1 – Ring Pop (okay so we didn’t really need this)
2 – lunch makers for the trip home in lieu of stopping
10 – Jars of mixed Kroger Peanut Butter
5 – Bag of tortilla Kroger Chips (we love chips and salsa)
6 – boxes of hefty freezer bags (10/10 is a good deal!!!)
4 – packages of Bic Pens 12 packs
4 – packages of Orbits Gum
2 – Pillsbury cresent rolls
2 – Grands Biscuits
2 – Garlic type bread rolls
2 – cinnamon rolls
4 – 2 liters of 7up
2 – sticks of lady’s speed stick!
150.37 total cost before sales, coupons and etc.
97.09 in savings
53.28 total out of pocket expense

in total we bought 77 items for roughly 69 cents each!!!!!

So what do you think now?????

I’m shocked, but challenged enough to do better!!!!
Now moving onto the CVS ad before I fold the laundry. Also need to fix the problem of where in the world to up all the cereal!!!! We already had about 20 boxes b/c IGA had their 3/3 a few weeks ago.

look at this deal....

After seeing Kathy Spencer on the news a couple of weeks ago, she got me thinking. We are a single income family of 4 who struggles and can totally take advantage of the savings and ideas here to help us keep our heads above water.

So I put it to the test….with my bonus from work (I am a fast food manager) we decided to stock up on some paper and some other office supplies at Staples:

on 8/4 we bought a new printer (since it was cheaper to buy new than to buy ink) This one had a fax, scanner and printer all in one for 69.98, this was a lot, but the ink is a lot cheaper and in the long run this will be a savings for our family. (also this one has 4 cartridges and the old one had two, that means that we will get back and extra $2. for the extra two cartridges when they need to be replaced!)
So in this weeks ad, they had the exact same printer in there for 10 dollar less. I called the store and asked them about thier policy, they said to bring back in my receipt and they'd refund the difference.

While we were there we took advantage of some of the other savings in the ad and a clearance item:

computer desk 16.50 (clearance from 69.98) – 1.38 for using my card = 15.12
2 lolly pops (kids were really good in the store) 1.98 – .16 = 1.82
2 calculators (one for shopping one for the house) 7.98 – .66 = 7.32
2 reams of paper (1.00 ea after mir) 9.98 – 7.98 rewards – .84 card = 1.16
2 supreme matt photopaper (1.00 ea w/q) 29.98 – 27.98 – .17 card = 1.83
5 filler papers .01 each = .05
2gb thumb drive (1.00 after mir) 9.99 – .84 – 8.99 = .16
post-it notes (I'm a huge fan!!! HUGE FAN!!!) – 5.29 (free after mir) – .44 -5.29 = .44 profit
ink pins 1.99 – .08 – .99 q from ad = .91
highlighters free after mir = 4.99 – .43 – 4.99 = .43 profit
so basically besides the big purchase of the desk, lolly pops and calculators the biggest total is the tax of 3.83.
They also had a wonderful coupon for $5.00 off if you spent $50 or more….sooo my grand total after I get my rewards back is: 26.33!!!!! And I got a new desk!!!!
Thanks to all of you, you have opened my eyes a bit more!
Frugal mom of 2…..Katy

Can you imagine how excited this makes me! I must admit though, it is hard to do when you don't have the liquid funds. I know that we are going to use the rewards

exciting day.....

So today we bought a new printer, it also has a fax ability as well. Why is this so exciting you ask??? Well now I can print off coupons online, then I can get the points for the coupons and then I can get free gift cards with the points. So now I'm gonna look up some coupons and work on getting some stuff for free. I can't wait to to post my savings.....I want to totally save a ton of money and support my family!

Gonna try something new...

For the next month we are going to catagorize what we spend and keep every receipt!

We'll have to start tomorrow since I'm sure that Duck didn't save his receipts. The purpose: To see what we are spending, what we are spending it on and what we are wasting!!!!

Anyhow, back to my exciting trip to Menards: We went in with the sole intentions of buying the green algea house remover for the north wall of our house. I didn't realize that it was a mail in rebate for the full purchase price! DARN IT. I would have rather have paid the $1.00 for it or something like that. Anyhow, that means that we had to buy 10 dollars worth of stuff. So this is what we bought:

1.00 Gummi worms: didn't need
6.00 Green envy house wash: purpose of going in there
3.97 Dishwasher magic: really need to get this done more often
2.99 potting soil: okay didn't really need but can't find the peat pots and want to start fall
garden
1.78 dry erase makers: so these are one pack for work and one for home....makes my life easier.
5.98 Cuddlies...okay so thinking that these would be cheaper than buying fleece and might be
nice I took the plunge and bought 2 at this price.
0.99 3 pair canvas gloves: will help protect my hands from poison ivy this fall.
1.00 jelly beans: another non-essential
1.69 chocolate cluster - another non-essential but Duck was a good boy in the store!
27.18 is the total with tax
15.00 off from prev mail in rebates
12.18 paying out of pocket
7.78 coming back in mail in rebates

today UM gave us another rebate that he doesn't intend on turning in so that will be another 6.00 coming back to us. I think that all in all, we should have not done all three candies...maybe one or two tops, the dry erase markers will make my life a bit easier, but weren't a necessary item. The dirt, well it is bug free so I can bring it inside. The cuddlies will have to prove their worth, but I think they are going to be a good investment even if they only make it as a blanket and not a robe type thing. So we could have done without 9.67 leaving a total of $2.51 due with $7.78 coming back in credit...Something to think about next time. On a happier note...we are going to buy a printer. This will allow me to print off coupons and take them to local stores to help with the grocery bill. We'll see how well this works I want to do better, get more and share more.

toodles!
me.

What's on your agenda...

Here's my agenda....
After the meeting tomorrow we will be starting upstairs.

1. go through my closet
2. go through Duck's closet
3. go through our dresser (since we share a large on this will take a bit of time)
4. move the folding table out, put the shelving unit in it's place and move the big desk dresser back into our room opposite of the shevling unit.
5. clean up the rest of the room.
6. clean up the hallway, go through the picture frame tote and sort, go through Smiley's future clothes tote, put the the LHM clothes with the rest.
7. finish going through the boys closet, put in the boys bed. Clean the rest of the room
8. go through books on the bookshelf again, purge, purge, purge!
9. remove the border in the livingroom.
10. Go through stuff in side table drawer
11. clean out the couch that eats everything.
12. Deck scrub the livingroom floor
13. Fix the entertainment center
14. scrub crayon off the front door
15. sweep front porch and pull weeds in flower bed
16. clean front porch walls and door including frame
17. clean out filing cabinet
18. put up backing on the kitchen pantry
19. clean off kitchen table, put side table drawer in the kitchen next to boys desks
20. clean out cabinets above fridge
21. clean out cabinets next to fridge
22. clean out cabinets above stove
23. clean out cabinets next to stove
24. clean out cabinets in corner cabinet
25. clean west wall counter tops.
26. clean east wall counter tops
27. clean microwave counter
28. clean out cabinets above sink
29. clean out cabinets above dish washer
30. clean off shelves on south wall.
31. organzie pantry shelving
32. clean out cabinet next to sink
33. clean out all drawers
34. clean off tops of cabinets
35. deck scrub diningroom and kitchen floors
36. move fridge
37. move deep freezer
38. finish laundry
39. move dressers into laundryroom (see the whole idea of this is simple. The clothes get washed, get dryed, get folded and get put away immeadiately. Therefore they don't sit around)
40. clean out the cabinets and clean off shelves.
41. clean out dresser already in there.
42. clean out the cabinet above toilet and sink.
43. clean the walls and ceiling
44. scrub tub, sink and toilet.
45. clean off back porch
46. clean basement walls and shelves.
47. knock down all cobwebs and spray for spiders
48. put up insulation boards and pipes.
49. insulate window sweep and scrub floor

when the money is deposited into our account we will buy

1. stringers for the stairs and put it up,
2. 2 sheets of drywall and possibly insulation
3. paint for the livingroom

the rest will go to bills.

That will cover the inside of the house. I want to scrub the north wall for the algea and clean out the small and large garage. I also want us to get the compost taken care of as well as around the fence.

Well I must go to bed for a few hours, I have to be at work at 9 pmish and work until like 2 or 3.

Tata/

How many clothes do we actually need???

So I posed this questions to my wonderful husband....He's what he has asked for:

3 pr of work pants
4 pr of casual pants
3 meeting pants/jackets
5 work t shirts
5 work long sleeve shirts
3 work sweaters
5 casual shirts
5 casusl long sleeve shirts
5 casual sweaters
2 pr of pj's
10 pr socks
10 pr undies...

So now I need to work on this list for myself an both of the boys.

We have decided to fix the basement stairs, this will mean that once this is done, the deep freezer, washer and dryer will all go downstairs. This will leave plenty of room in the pantry for the dressers to be brought downstairs and put in there. We will also put up hanging lines in the pantry, this will be basically a family walk in closet. All the clothes will be in the same place, and no need to run up stairs to change or whatnot. It will also help the clothes get put away instead of dropped, rummaged through and tossed around by 2 children and then have to be rewashed...AGAIN! We will also be sealing the basement as well as possible and getting the furnace down there. We will be moving all the wood over to the house in October, his will help us put it down the hatch faster and easier.

Well I've got 3 trash bags full of clothes and toys ready for the yard sale. We are doing 2 stack, one for the yard sale and the other for LH. We'll see if we sell anything, if now...it'll all go to friends and FC or LH.

a great few days...

While not much has gotten done around my house in terms of cleaning perse, we did get a lot done...well Duck more than me.

9477 - 9327 = 1288 - wow that's exceptional. That's even with a new dishwasher and running a ton of laundry and dishes. GREAT!!!!

Duck got the dishwasher put in the stove put in and both wired, the shelves put up in the window seat and the shelving unit upstairs assembled. That's great! I got 30 tomato plants planted, 15 or so beans, 3 zuch, 3 squash, 4 cabbage.

Got a lot of plans this weekend.

Field Service
put all laundry away
move our room around
go through the boys clothes and pull out winter
go through our clothes and do the same.
Take all stuff to goodwill
can veggies, veggie soup, bean soup, chili and possibly beef stew.
wash all the canning jars the are left over
weedeat the yard if possible
plant more veggies if possible
take care of the eggs

Okay
I need to go to bed, I have to get up early.

Toodles.

Today.

What a mostly productive day. Took a 15 min nap that changed my day. I got over 1/2 the garden planted. The only things left are the onions, pleas, cucus, corn, asparagas and peppers. I'm going to plant more beans and tomatoes also when they grow a bit. I didn't make it to the meeting unfortunately. I'm finally getting ahold of this schedule that I'm working. Duck got the wood cut for the shelving unit in the window seat, got the dishwasher unloaded and is working on the wiring and getting it installed, getting the wiring done for the stove, got the screen window put up and helped me a lot in the garden. Have I ever told everyone that I have a wonderful husband. Tomorrow we are going to finish the massive cleaning, we have all the laundry done, it just needs put away and then the det ailed cleaning like the windows, dusting, cracks/creveces...yah know the annoying stuff. We are also looking at purging a lot. Since we have company coming this is as good of time as any. Well 2am comes really really early.Good night all.

Not all is lost...

I helped Duck finish up his paper today, he had to get to 4 pages and I have a nack for extending the words a bit. We paid the water bill, pulled out money for all the other bills and pay them tomorrow, I also paid the insurance for the next three months. We looked for lawn mowers today becuase ours would not start, neither the rider nor the push. Now my yard is taller than my neighbors and I still don't have a mower to take care of it. I hung 4 loads of laundry out, and maked out the garden. We are extending it to be a true 24x40 Gonna look over the final lay out tonight to make sure that it is going to work and fit. The green beans are starting to wilt a bit, now it is going to be nice on Wed and rain on Thur. I didn't make it out today in FS with the intentions of getting the yard cut and more house work done. I need to run and put the dishes on the wash cycle, I'm going to run all the clothes upstairs and start folding. I will also have the boys clean up the livingroom...just as soon as we are done with dinner. I'm having grapefruit (which is making Sunshine gag and nearly throw up by just eating it, thanks hon) and chili cheese dogs, Smiley will have CCD and pineapples or apples and Sunshine will have nuggets and an apple. Duck has already left for school so this is a good time to get more house work done.

I'll do a reading later probably after we all take showers.

TTFN

missed a day....

Today's reading will be high so I am going to read it now and then again later.

8612-8575 = 973 ...now that's what I'm talking about!!!! And that is not running on an solar or wind. The K1 heater seems to really be doing the job. Even though it took 25 dollars to fill it up it has lasted for what 4 or 5 days. It will make it through today and more than likely one more night if needbe. I'm thankful to see the temps starting to rise. The is good for starting the garden outside now. I need to weather the plants a bit and then get them into the ground. I will also transplant the lettuce plants, when we looked at them today they are getting really really big. Duck also got the wire rack set up last night. We will finish hanging the lights and get it ready for the hydroponics setup.

I'm doing a bunch of laundry today so I need to get to it. I'm thinking that if it gets over 50 or so I may hang the clothes out. Duck will install the stove after I get the area all cleaned out which will only take a few minutes. I'm going to pull out he bread maker and make some banana bread, and I'll do potatoe soup on the electric skillet. I have about 15 loads of laundry (we are doing all the covers, sheets and pillows since we've all been so sick. I also have to do a few loads of dishes and then I will be bringing in the the canning jars. Okay, well time to get to it. I'll do a reading tonight to see how bad it gets.
toodles..

Katy

The day is beautiful...

Smiley is laying beside me fighting sleep, he is so tired he couldn't walk straight outside. Sunshine built a brickman (yah know a man made bricks not snow). I think that the cops stood us up. They still haven't showed. Duck is missing yet another day of school, he is still hacking up a storm and has little voice. *GRIN FROM EAR TO EAR* Okay it isn't that great he is cranky. I hand tilled about 1/6 of the garden today. We are still going to have to get a tiller since we are tilling new soil this year. The boys kept pick up the wiggles (worms) and putting them into the compost bin.

I think that todays reading is going to blow us out of the water. I'm not sure that we can recover it this month. So far in 18 hour it is 8436 from 8402 which is 2125 per hour, I haven't ran but on load of laundry and no dishes. It was really cold last night inside house. We ran the space heaters all day and night and all morning. I don't think that the one in our room shut off, I'm pretty sure it has a broke temp thingy. We need to replace it this year. Duck also left the water heater on all night.

The lettuce, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are peaking their heads out. I'm so very excited!!!

Okay gotta run...

Yet another long day....

So I opened this morning. NO one called me to tell me that I didn't have a prep person, D said that she didn't have my number nor access. To top it all off, another mgr changed thier schedule totally screwing me. The deal is simple, if I get to leave for my meeting, I can come back and help during truck. If I don't I have to drive nearly an hour away and can't come back for truck. I thank B and D for helping me make it to my meeting...I only wish that other mgrs would help out.

I'm getting sick, my throat hurts, my chest hurts and I am exhausted. After tomorrow I will have worked 46 hours this week...not my idea of fun. While we need the money but don't I really would rather not work that much, it makes for little time for my faith and my children. The baby is still sick, he is cought, well both of them are. We started breathing treatments to help break up the stuff in their lungs. One is crashed out and the other seems as if he is going to. I took a few hour nap today, thankfully! The time change has screwed everybody up in one way or the other...mine is sleep.

I'm really really really sad about my plants, it has now been determined that it was the children who used scissors to cut the plants for some unknown reason. They are nearly a total loss and I will have to start over tomorrow. I will use the peat pots again since the germination time is nill.

We have decided that as long as I use the gym, I can sign up. This will be a month to month thing. As long as I still go, I can keep paying the dues.

Daily reading is 8025.. That's 41 kwh or 1708 wph. better!!!! It was cold today so the heater was running and the dryer a bit. It is vital to keeping the usage down by turning off the water heater off...

Well I must go, I need to go back to work in about an hour...not sure how long I will be there.

busy, busy, busy....

So obviously I have been really busy lately. We have picked up A LOT of things for various projects around the house. We are getting going on those tonight and get a few done this week. Hopefully that rain will stop by Tue and I can go out into the garden and do some hand tilling. Wed I hope to build the cold frame and get the lettuce plants under them atleast. The beans are growing by leaps and bounds. I have also taken down the sorting table that I had all the starts on, it seemed as if they got a lot more sun when they were all on the table next to one another. Also the beans got a lot more sun.

I still have yet to clean all the canning jars that we bought, just haven't had the energy or the time. That is my biggest goal for this weekend. I also want to get the rack up, the grow lights mounted, the shelf moved from the boys room, get our bed moved, get the 220 times installed, get the bedrooms completely cleaned, ALL the laundry done, the front porch cleaned off and yard and start on the basement. We have an apt on Tue afternoon and I'm going into FSM tomorrow.

Last night we found some killer deals at Wally World. $3.00 for a pack (6 and 7 per pack) of boys undies...okay so what's the bid deal right? They were 6 per pack before the clearance. Sunshine will not need undies for a couple of years. Today I bought some of those topsy turvy things, I'm disappointed in the fact the they don't come with seeds. How much do seeds cost really? Worse than that..I can't find any seeds for strawberries. So in the one that is suppose to be strawberries, I will put leaf lettuce and the one that is for tomatoes I will put some roma's in. On another note I did see that Lowes has asparagus, which I'm really surprised. It was a good price, but it just takes so stinking long for those to grow it is unreasonable. Work has been fun, Sat we were busier than I have ever seen, or we were just so short handed we felt it! All in all it has been going a lot better for now...not sure how long that will last.

Well it is off to cleaning and purging, I'm sacking all the stuff that needs to go and getting rid of it to those who need to take it. I also am going to start sorting the boys present bags for the convention. I've been buying misc here and there, toys that are on clearance, puzzles, playdoh, crayon etc...stuff they'll enjoy.

Hopefully I will have more tomorrow!

Katy

Working upstairs today....

We moved all the plants upstairs, I'll try to post some pics if I get them. I'm really rather depressed today at some news I rec'd. I really hate it when people degrade my parenting. Last time I checked they were my kids, since they aren't abused and they aren't bad children. We don't have conventional teaching as most in the day in age. We don't do anything without our children and again we are told that's wrong. (well there is only one thing that we do without our children...but to keep this G rated, it is left up to mommy and daddy time) Why is it wrong? Why would we have children if we didn't want to spend time with them? In 12 yrs Sunshine will be 18 and will be off doing his own thing...infact I probably don't have to wait that long, I'm probably looking at 9 or 10 yrs....why waste a minute with them now?

Okay, today was a bad day. I am still really upset and not sure how to approach it. While I think that I will ride this one out, in the mean time I'm not sure what to do or think. I'm really tired, my eyes are sore and hurt so bad. I am just dumbfounded.

This afternoon we cleaned the spare room and set up the plants inthe window, they perked up today so I'm thinking it will be good lighting for the starts and the hydroponics. Now I just pray the boys leave the plants alone. I will put in a grow light so that I can have the 16 hours that they want. We will go get the tubing for the hydro systems this weekend (mon or tue since I work in retail). I think that I have enough buckets to start and I will order some offline as well since I want to use the right mesh pots. If I can grow all my own lettuce that would be great! That will free up a LOT of room in the garden to plant more tomatoes. We are also going to build a hoop coldframe.

Goals/Plans for this weekend (done by Tue)

Fold and do all laundry tomorrow (fri)
Finish up boys room (Sat)
Laundry Room (Sun)
Kitchen (Mon) Hydro system
Livingroom/Hall (Tue) solar stuff

Okay I need to go, I see a shower and motrin in my very near future...

Me.

Day two and the funk...

Day two of potty training has been a success. While Smiley is still really upset he can't wear a diaper he is really looking forward to getting cars undies. I tried to clean a bit today and it worked well, I got some done. I know that this house doesn't get dirty or messed up all at once, so I can't get it all clean at once. We are working on a schedule that will be good for all of us.

Today we got our gas bill...ouch! It was over 200 dollars. This isn't going to be a good week at all. We will just have to watch it.

I'm starting my diet in the morning, this will hopefully be the one! I've been in such a funk lately, I have no energy no nothing. I'm feeling rather depressed and just down, I need to get this done, this weight off and get more motivated to get things going. So I will make a rewards list for myself. This way I have something to work for other than loseing the weight. Something small but rewarding all the same. We'll see how it works.

Odd day.

Today seemed to be an odd day. Work was odd, people are cranky, but I'm sure they will get over it. Came home, got the boys ready, Sunshine didn't fight as much as he usually does and at the meeting they wouldn't stop talking, so we went to the back room. After the meeting we stopped for our treat at work and our order was so messed it it wasn't even funny. I had to end up going back in to get a partial refund since we were overcharged and still didn't get the food we were even rang up for. Hum... When we came home we hung out as a family and now I'm cleaning and Duck is doing homework.

On another note the tv ran for 3 days without interruption soley on the power provided by the sun and wind. It is obvious that we need more batteries and need to set the windmill up on a pully system. The solar panel isn't producing as much as I'd like to see, but we have to reset it as well. MJ had it set to power his batteries a different way, since we use the box with it, it needs a blocking diode which will stop the drain on the batteries when there is no sun. We are also working on the solar heaters, I hope that we can get those done soon. I still didn't get the carpet cleaner, I want the wide one and I'm willing to wait.

This is the plans for the next week.

Get the dryer reverted
Get the water system hooked back up
Get the rain barrels delivered
Get the plastic up on the windows
Get the curtains put up.
Get garden pulled and tilled
Get the wood to the basement and the heater
Get JM solar heater built.
Get the wood cut for the beds
Get the carpets cleaned.

Okay well that's a lot for one week, so here goes. I'd like to at least get 1/2 of it done.

Toodles.

Not as productive today.

It was kinda a blah day, I'm really tired and I don't really know why. I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked, but I did get some. I canned 13 quarts of veggie soup In one I tried to put rice in it just to see how it would taste. I put three teaspoons in with one cup of mix and the rest juice, maybe next time I should only put in one teaspoon. Then I made a huge pot of potatoe soup, we have been enjoying the new receipe, tweeking it a bit. This time it is very spice hot. It was really good! I also cleaned out the deep freezer, I don't think I was very happy doing it. There were so many times where, just for a short bit of time, the boys had opened the freezer door and it had partially defrosted. Apparently the popsickles had defrosted and it all fell to the bottom. I had spent at least 30 minutes in the bottom with a hair dryer. It wasn't pretty!. I threw away a bunch of food. And I found that I probably have enough meat to last us until the end of the year. This is very good news for us, this means that I can focus on the veggies that we need, I'm going to start stocking up on frozen vegtables. I will be working on uniforms tonight as well as garden plot and schedules.

Night!
Katy

productive two days...

after work yesterday I didn't do the right thing. I feel asleep for about 30 min on the couch and woke up too late to drive to the afternoon meeting. So we started cleaning, I scoured one side of the kitchen and we ran into town to buy a new part for the dishwasher. It didn't work...surprise surprise. We put in this new expensive faucet, that was given to us, which don't get me wrong, we are very greatful, it is awsome, but you can't use a portable dishwasher with it. So the solution....we hook it up to the bathroom sink. Okay, so it's kooky, but hey it is working! This winter as we do every winter we will seal the back door up and keep the dishwasher back there. I'm going to be caulking all the window seals and trying to learn how to using my sewing machine. I've gotten quite a few of my 45 to do list things done, I still have quite a few, but I will work on them. Duck had to go back to school to see about getting into a lab tonight. This has been a touch semester, I thought it was going to be better, but it infact has been so much worse. I'm going to go get some soup started so that I can can it tomorrow after service. I'm also going to make some potatoe soup and take some to Sister Mil.

We used our broken new chainsaw that isn't broken, the owner just never put chain oil in it apparently. It works so good, I'm SOOOOOO happy. We cut up so much wood so far we have about 2 ricks, I figure we will go through a rick every week or every week and a half. Using that info, I think that we should have about 20-25 ricks of wood ready for this winter. We will also cut extra to sell next year. This should help supliment any income that we don't have. I bet we have another 4 or 5 ricks here to cut, and another 3-5 down the street to pick up. This is going to be a wonderful start! This means that we will only have to cut about 10 ricks which is about 4 or 5 trips to our friends. Then it will be back out early spring.

I'm also really starting to work on plans for my garden next year. I found out that the cups from work that have the dome lid will make perfect for incubators, I will start bringing them home when I use one. I felt terrible, I told B to call me if she needed me and never heard the phone ring, I feel like jerk. I'm so sorry, I feel bad, it has been rough all week, and I was hoping to make it easier for her and I failed her.

Today we hooked up a solar panel, it will be interesting, it should really starting helping our battery back up really well, and hopefully we can run the tv and dvd player off of it 3 or 4 days week, if not more. This will help us reduce the amount of power we use, which would be cool, we are really trying to get our electricity bill down below 100 a month. In fact I'm looking at how to tips on how to reduce the energy you use and I ran across this tip, which doesn't make sense...

Consider setting your water heater temperature at 120 degrees. Take short showers instead of baths. You can use 15 to 25 gallons of hot water for a bath. Showers use 3 to 5 gallons per minute.

Using the median of this theory, lets say the shower uses 4 gallons of water a minute...how long does it take for you to take a shower? Now, I know that most would consider me a freak, but I can literally take a shower from water on to water off in about 3 minutes if I hurry, longer if I'm taking my time and the kids aren't beating the door down. Now, I know for fact that my shower head only uses 2.5 gallons since we have a special one that is energy efficient. Okay..but back to the point, if I took a 3 minute shower at 4 gallons, that would be 12 gallons, good job, but let's face the fact, most people take at least a 5 minute shower if not 10. So at 5 minutes you will be using 20 gallons of water, at 10 you will be using 40. WOW, that's a lot more than 15-25, even if they only used 3 gallons, that's 30 gallons of water. Okay, enough with this pshychotic rant.

We are going to be setting up a new water system in the basement for the gray water system. Thanks to the rain barrels that we found for 5 dollars each, we will need to go get a few more before winter hits, I want two for rain, Duck wants one in the garage, one for the gray water system, one for Sister H and one for Sister W. This will be interesting, this winter we will put a water system in for the dogs that will hopefully allow them to have fresh nonfrozen drinking water. We'll see how this works out. In the mean time while building all the solar heaters, we need one for Sister M and 4 for us including the one for the dogs. At night we will just use the heavy drapes that I make., this way we can use the light during the day to light the house for free and let the natural solar heat in.

We also need to start the insulating project in the basement, never enough hours in the day or days in the week. We need to block off he crawl space after we insulate the floors above the crawl space, this will hopefully keep the bathroom, hallway and laundry room floors warmer. Since we don't heat those areas because the crawl space will be blocked off and it seems to waste more heat then receive we think it will help to wrap the heat pips and insulate not only the floor but to seal it off with insulation board. We are also going to put up plastic over the escape in the basement and plastic the window down there. I'm going to go ahead and plastic the boys bedroom windows upstairs and hang the new curtains and then hallway. I also want to make a door draft buster thingy, I need to find patter on them. I did find a pattern on sungglies or how every you spell it, I'm going to try to make one for each of us, and we are going to look into buying sleeping bags for our beds during the really warm night since we kick the heat down at night real low.

Duke energy which is where I also rec'd the info above on the water says:
Lower your thermostat temperature to the lowest temperature that is comfortable to your family. You may save as much as 3 percent on your energy bill for each degree you lower your thermostat. Reduce your thermostat setting at night and/or when you are away. A 10-degree setback for eight hours each day could save up to 9 percent.

We cut our from 70 to 64 at night, and to 54, which is the lowest setting it will allow us to use. Now, I'm sure your thinking that's cruel to make the kids sleep in a really cold house, keep in mind that we have a child save heater in their bedroom, have the upstairs rooms blocked off so the heaters will only heat the upstairs to 70 at night, we also make the boys wear warm pjs and give them twice as many blankets as we use and in most cases wake up in the middle of the night with all of us in the same bed.

Okay, I'm going to go for now, I feel like I'm rambling and I'm really really really tired.

Toodles....

Something very sad...

In works of building my own non-for-profit I've decided to collect current news articles showing the growing need to feed the hungry. Granted, the US doesn't have the "most" hungry people, but I'm small, this is local and I have to start somewhere right?

Here's an article that nearly made me cry. The most stunning comments were about the fact that we (as the world) can produce enough food to feed the world, yet there is still over a billion starving and too many to count dying from hunger, men, women and children, helpless. I was asked today how this was going to affect my lifestyle, my goals and such. Honestly...right now I don't have the time that I need to do too much with this, but I'm going to take the winter to work diligently on this and experiment with ideas to help thoes who are hungry. Anyhow, my number 1 goal is to serve Jehovah and Jesus Christ, in doing this my family of course is second as called out for in the Bible.

Okay...so here it is:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090916/sc_livescience/thescienceofhungerwhat1billionpeoplefeel

I encourage everyone to read this article. You will have to copy/paste it.

Toodles.

Update some things...

I picked up a few hours this morning and I'm exhaused. I should have gone to bed earlier. I think I felt a little bit of the benedryl this morning although I think the biggest crash was from drining the coffee and then stopping. I laid down on the couch this morning until the boys got up. Work seems to be going a lot easier for me.

I have a ton of things that I want to get done today that include a lot of things outside so I better get to it. I'm going to start in the laundry room, that seems to need the most amount of work right now. I'd love to get the new washer in and get it hooked up.

More later

Katy