Conversation Starters!

So it's been a very long time since I've done a conversation starters with Zobmondo so here goes.

Here's the question:

Would you rather...

For the rest of your life, choose the same drink and the same meal to ingest every time you eat

OR

have someone else always choose what you eat?

My answer?

I've gotta have some variety folks! Let them choose what I eat. I'll just have to learn to be more adventurous. What's your answer?

KitchenAid..such a love-hate relationship

I broke down a couple of years ago and bought myself a KitchenAid Professional 600 6 quart mixer. I was so excited I couldn't stand it! If you know mixers, you know that I paid a pretty penny for this baby. I didn't mind because I wanted one so badly.

For an entire year I was thrilled with it aside from the volume of it. Lets just say you can't talk on the phone next to the machine when it's running. It's claim to fame is that it can mix up to 14 cups of flour at a time. I'm a huge homemade bread/roll/cinnamon bun/pizza dough/soft pretzel fan...anything involving yeast, really. My mixer gets a workout but it's okay because it's a KitchenAid, right? Heavy duty, right? Huh! That's what I thought. Literally 2 weeks after the one year warranty was up the stinking thing stopped working right in the middle of mixing dough. The motor ran but the mechanism wouldn't spin. Gears stripped. PERFECT! *SIGH*

I called KA customer service and much to my surprise they replaced it with a new machine! I was very impressed and my faith in the company was renewed.

After doing much research about my problem, I found TONS of others with the same problem! I guess they started making the gear box with plastic parts rather than the all metal that they claimed. At this point I figured it's all good because I've got a new one coming and another full year warranty on it.

Here we are 1 year and 3 months after I received this new mixer and guess what happened? Yup! Right in the middle of a batch of pizza dough. I cannot express to you how aggravated I was and still am. Not realizing it was 3 months past the warranty date I called KA again. The lady in customer service was very pleasant. She allowed me to explain what happened, put me on hold and when she came back on the line she explained to me that they would send me a refurbished model with a 6 month warranty.

Now am I supposed to be happy? afraid? I guess both? I'm very happy that they are sending me another one knowing that the warranty was outdated. I'm very scared that the gears will strip again. Part of me wants to sell it on EBay and buy a different brand. I just don't know. I do know that this should NOT be happening. It's not like I bought some cheesy floor model from WalMart! I suppose what I'll have to do is mix my dough and then knead by hand? I'll have to think of it as therapeutic.........

Al's Big Buys 3/2/10

So I had planned on taking a picture for you of my groceries this week and completely forgot. I don't know why, but I find it interesting to look at people's grocery pics. Here were the deals I got this week. SR is doing "dollar days" this week so they offer money towards your next shopping trip when you buy specific items plus free reusable shopping bags.

I want to first start by telling you of the opening conversation with myself and the young cashier. He said "Hi, how are you?" Me "Good, how are you" Him "Good and you?" I just thought it was slightly amusing. Then as he was scanning my coupons he called me a coupon warrior. That's a first..ha!

Oikos greek yogurt was on sale last week from $2.49 to 1.00. My store only had 3 kinds, plain (bleck), vanilla and strawberry. I was only able to get 8 because they didn't have enough in stock, so I got a rain check. Yesterday I used the rain check and got 32 more for free with my $1.00 off coupons. So in all, I got 40 of them for free.

Motts was the first dollar days deal I got. Their juice was 2/4, buy 5 and get $5.00 off your next shopping trip. I got 6 for $12.00 minus the $5 off my next trip = 6 juices for $7.00 plus a free bag.

Lysol toilet bowl cleaner on sale 2/4. I had coupons for .75 off each making them .50 each. I checked them out in 2 batches of 5 so I could get 2 dollar days deals with them. In all I got 10 for $5.00 and got $10.00 to use on my next order and 2 free bags. They paid me 5 bucks to take the cleaner and bags!

Green Works cleaners on sale 2/5. I got 3 dish soap and 2 all purpose cleaner minus my .50 off coupons, making them $1.50 each. Then I got $5.00 off my next shopping trip plus a free bag making them .50 each.

Perdue Turkey Meatballs (my favorite) on sale for $2.21 minus my .75 off coupon making them .71 per box. BTW, I used Perdue ShortCuts Chicken coupons on these.

Clorox bleach on sale for $1.69 minus my .50/2 coupon made them $1.19 each, plus a $5.00 off your next order coupon making them .36 each and I got another free bag.

Bounce Dryer Bars on sale for $4.00 each minus my $1.50 off coupons made them $2.50 each. Then I got a $5.00 off my next order for a total of $1.50 each.

In all I got $160.27 worth of groceries for $60.58, a savings of 62%!

High Speed and a Shiny New Laptop!

So here on my road (you'd think I was in the middle of absolute nowhere!) we JUST got hooked up to cable last week..right in the middle of our blizzard. If you've recently switched from dial up to cable internet, you know exactly how my family and I feel. I can say honestly that it used to take me 20 minutes or more to upload ONE photo to the internet! I'll admit that we've been a little obsessive since it's so new to us. It still feels strange when I'm on the internet and the phone rings.

Anyway, we're elated and I can't wait to get my projects started that required high speed internet. I've stumbled upon digital scrapbooking and I'm looking forward to trying it out. I've always loved the way a well-put-together scrapbook page looks but lets face it, scrapbooking can be ridiculously expensive! Never mind storing all the tools, glues, marking pens, paper, embellishments...the list goes on and on I'm sure.

One of the things I need to get started in my new endeavour is a better laptop. I'm working on a laptop that was given to my son by his Aunt Heidi and it's good for surfing the internet and whatnot, but isn't good enough for the programs I want like Photoshop. Sooo....my husband being a LAN tech, helped me pick out a new one on a budget.

I searched for days and days and went from buying refurbished with only a 90 day warranty to getting a really good deal from OfficeDepot.com. I'm very excited to get my new one. Anyone looking for a good laptop for the money check out this deal from OfficeDepot.

Who knows? Maybe I'll start blog design!

SNOW!

My car during the heaviest part of the storm.

Our clothesline in our back yard.

My car the day after.

Across the street from my house.

We got a total of 14 1/2 inches for this round. We have another 10-20 inches on its way tonight and tomorrow. I love it! As long as we don't have to go anywhere...school gets closed, the kids AND the hubby get to stay home and I don't work so we get to stay home and enjoy the beauty of winter.

Al's Big Buys 2009 End Report

This is a little late but better late than never. I'm lovingly known as the coupon queen by several of my friends and my family. I stumbled upon it by accident one day while browsing EBay. I had always wanted to coupon but there were so many each week in the paper that were worthless to me so I never really did it. Until that one day.

What I do, basically, is on Friday's my local grocery store posts sales for the following week. I pull their circular up in one tab and EBay in another and compare sales to coupons available. YES, I buy coupons. In future posts I'll give you little tips that you can try that have worked for me.

So last year I decided to start saving my receipts from this store to keep track of how much I've actually saved. I don't have 100% of my receipts but probably 90%. Keep in mind when you see the numbers that I'm feeding a family of 5, 4 of them being male who are hungry all the time, and 2 dogs. I consider this part of my "job" as a stay at home mom.

I probably spent around $300-400 on coupons but they saved me a WHOPPING $4254.71! I got $8871.18 worth of groceries for $4616.47. I think that's awesome! I could probably not shop for 6 months and not run out of any toiletries, frozen veggies, cereal, paper products, spaghetti sauce, canned stock, and many more items.

I get very excited on Friday afternoon's when the circular posts and look forward to all the money I'll save this year!

My 4 Month Hiatus

I'm not sure why it's been so long since I last posted. So much has happened and I've had many perfect things to write about.

Anyway, I'm back. I decided that if nothing else, my children might enjoy reading these in the years to come. I've missed reading posts of my favorite bloggers. I get incredibly inspired by many of you, thank you.

Til tomorrow....