Week 9

Alright everyone, here I am making the big announcement, I am pregnant! :) That's right I'm in week 9 and I'm pretty proud of holding on to this not-so-secret announcement for so long. I found out on the day of my birthday party (October 23rd) that I was expecting. Brenan kept thinking I was just having period cramps and to not get too excited, but it just kept dragging on and on without any sign of Aunt Flo. So tested at 5 a.m. (I had to work early) and then proceeded to wake up Brenan and tell him. I told my parents that afternoon once I was off work and they were both delighted. Thus far things have been mostly easy, except for constant nausea, a minor flu bug that sent me to the bathroom a lot (not so much the baby's doing)/not eating very much, and the tell all sign: my small pants don't fit anymore. And right now, my fat jeans don't fit either. I have to use a rubber band for my smaller jeans to keep them on without squeezing the baby too much. I do have pictures of the baby, but I need to figure out how to scan them in to the computer, but I will  post them. So, hopefully I can keep everyone updated and keep pictures up. And we do already have our names picked out. Oh, and I'm due 4th of July!

Good ol' George W.

There is something about George W. Bush that I find endearing. All politics aside, completely, I think he is the kind of guy you could just go up and hug. He very much reminds me of the BFG (Big Friendly Giant). If you haven't read this book by Roald Dahl, do it. Do it now.














Somehow, I also fell in love with George W. through Will Ferrell's impressions. Classic. If you haven't seen him, youtube it. You will die it is so funny.

This was all brought on while I was searching for Glee on Hulu and ran across the President on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I watched the interview with him, and I tell you what, he knows how to be a joker. He was totally hilarious the entire time and I salute him for being a champ about being made fun of to his face. I feel like the citizens of the US don't know enough about who George W. really is and that they hold a bias based only on his presidency. I think he's super cool. If you haven't seen the Jay Leno show with the President, check it out. It's highly entertaining. Fast forward to the middle (abt 20 min.) to see the segment with the President.

Joy is...

Freshman year a friend named Spencer freaked out that I had never been to Einstein Bagel. I'm not from Utah so it's not that big of a deal to me, but to him it was almost sacrilegious. From time to time at Banana Republic our managers bring in Einstein Bagels, usually during the holidays as a "treat" since we're so busy. I always thought they were fantastic until Monday when Lisa brought in her left-over Einstein with Pumpkin Shmear. This is beyond fantastic. I could literally eat the cream cheese plain. Needless to say, I'm in love. I love pumpkin flavored odds and ends during the holidays but this is the best! Today, after buying my tickets to a special premiere of Harry Potter, I made my first trip into an Einstein Bros Bagel store. It was heavenly. I knew immediately that I needed a bucket of 13 bagels (which I froze; the trick is to individually wrap them, then put them in a freezer bag) and my 2 shmears. Pumpkin was a definite foot in, no doubt about that, but what did I want my second shmear to be? Sun-dried tomato & basil shmear had me at hello. Once I got home with my wonderful assortment of tasty bagels, I opened my box to discover I had received a $5 gift card for my next purchase. I think that this is the beginning of a wonderful relationship and I will be returning to Einstein Bagels soon. Very soon.
 
The ever fantastic eat-it-plain shmear

And it's cousin the close runner up

Savvy Shopping

So a few months ago I read on my friends blog about saving a ton of money when grocery shopping. Through the links on her site I found some awesome places to get coupons- both digital (loaded onto my Smith's card) and paper coupons. Some sites you can print out the coupons right away, and some send them to you. I usually consider myself a savvy shopper and will literally research tons of products at different places making sure that I get the right price. Brenan hates this. Yes it saves money, but it takes a lot of time to get what we're looking for. Luckily for me (and him I guess), I do most of the shopping without him. Some stores make it easy to get great deals. Hence this weeks blog. Smiths is having a sale where if you buy 10 participating items, you get $5 off. Fiscally, to get the best deal, you buy the cheapest items that are participating, bringing your total down. For example: pasta, Campbell's soup, Propel, Del Monte canned tomatoes, and toothbrushes were a grand total of fifty cents to a dollar each after the $5 was taken off. So, 10 items, $5. Not too bad. Wait, unless you have coupons. I went to campbellssoup.com and got coupons for $1.50 off 3 cans of soup. That's swell since I was already buying them. So I printed 4. That meant that 12 of my cans were FREE. Then I got coupons off of coupons.com and smartsource.com for $1 off Colgate toothbrushes. Fantastic, the final price on those bad boys was FREE. Oh and razors you ask? $5 off plus they were on sale for $2.33- I made $2.67 on that deal. But what about the toilet paper? Smiths online site lets you add digital coupons to your card, so my already on-sale toilet paper was an additional $3 off. Now here is the big grabber- when a coupon says $3 off 3 of x items, pick the 3 of x items that are the cheapest. Why buy 3 frostings for $4.50, when you can get a cake mix and 2 frostings for $4. Hello savings. Whenever it says that you have to buy x amount, buy only x amount and buy the cheapest/smallest participating items. 

It's a little hard to tell from the pictures what I got, hence the 2 views, but I will list it off for you:

32 rolls toilet paper, chocolate chip cookie mix, 2 frostings, 1 cake mix, 2 toothbrushes, 4 bags of cheese, 5 Propels, 1 box finish dishwasher detergent, Olay body wash, 4 packages pasta, 4-pack razors, 16 cans Campbell's soup, 5 cans chicken broth, 10 cans vegetables, and 6 cans tomatoes.

My total savings was $85.81 broken down: $25.30 in coupons and $60.51 in Freshvalue savings.
Grand total?? $24.53 for 60 items. Now that's what I call a deal.

On a side note, if you use reusable bags at Smiths they give you 5 bonus points/bag. That's $5 you don't have to spend to get points. Target gives you 5 cents off per bag.

Check out shopnsmart.com for more tips/deals.