Saturday, April 23, 2011

i always saw in you my light and my strength

well, another month has passed without an update. i think about updating a lot, if that counts, haha.

so much has happened since i last updated. lots of changes at work. we've done some restructuring and i think it's really paying off. i'm in a better place and building my confidence back up but theres still work to be done. we're in a good place now though and i'm happy to be a part of it.

on the home front theres been a lot going on too. but no wedding planning, haha. the credit card hasn't even been taken out of the envelope for the jewelry store. you'll all know when we're ready to move forward :)

even though i'm not getting married yet, one of my friends did. it gave us the opportunity to get away from town for a while and head back to hot springs. we missed that town. ate lots of good food, did some shopping, played in the mineral water. but most importantly got to be there for one of my friends on her big day. the venue and ceremony were absolutely beautiful! out on lake hamilton. craig and i had a great time. lea looked amazing!

i had something catch me by surprise that night though. after dinner we go outside to get the dancing started. she and kyle, her husband, share their first dance, aww, yay, happy. then they call her father to the dance floor for the father daughter dance. i go from being perfectly normal and happy to hysterical almost immediately. even i couldn't believe it. i mean, i knew it was coming (the dance that is). i saw her father walk her down the aisle and made it through that ok. all of the sudden it just hit me and i told craig i can't do this. luckily we were outside and i could slip back into a corner where craig let me cry into his shoulder. it just hit me so fast and so hard. i hadn't cried that hard in a long time. i didn't expect it to effect me like that.

honestly that's always been one of the hardest things for me to cope with. little girls dream of having their daddy walk them down the aisle. they dream of that father daughter dance. i imagined my father crying as we got ready for the wedding. in middle school when that song, butterfly kisses came out i imagined us dancing to it at my wedding one day. how could my daddy possibly NOT be a part of my wedding day.

so as craig and i have looked forward to our future that's been a big question mark to me. i told craig during our first year together that he had to ask my dad for my hand. that's just the way it is. i don't know if he ever did but daddy gave me his blessing one day on the way home from one of his dr appointments. he said he was so glad i had finally found a good man. he thought craig and i were good together. since dad's death my future wedding has been a big question mark to me. how will i handle it when i get married? will i have an episode like at lea's wedding? who will walk me down the aise? should i go alone? what do i do about the father daughter dance now? how can i honor his memory without being overly sappy or bringing the mood down? lots of questions i don't have to worry about answering now, but things i think about none the less.

i did some research online one time and found lots of bad ideas, haha. but as i got ahold of myself at the wedding i could actually take in that moment and the song she chose was actually pretty perfect. she played faith hill's "there you'll be". it was a song i'd never thought about but i don't think it could be more perfect for a girl who's father is no longer physically here (although i'm sure she means it much differently). i've thought of the song often since. and since the day after her wedding marked 6 month since he passed, it's weighed heavier on my mind in the quiet moments. his funeral was 6 months ago today.

and easter makes me think of him too. dying eggs at his house. when kyle and i were little, our parents hid our easter baskets in the house as our first thing to find. that's a special memory for me. something i want to pass down to my kids. once we were too big to dye eggs easter hasn't really been a big deal for us anymore, but it's still fond memories from childhood. the last easter i remember spending hunting eggs was with him out at the lake house. fun times for sure.

in totally unrelated news, to paid for the aforementioned future plans, craig and i have really been needing to tighten up our spending. hands down the biggest thing we spend money on is food. between my working late and us eating out (no fast food-more expensive) and our spontaneous grocery store trips that involve only buying low fat (more expensive), no fat (more expensive), healthy (more expensive), organic (more expensive), whole foods, our food bill was a little out of control. a few weeks ago brookshires had a sale on several items we use a lot, buy 1 get 1 for a penny. i went and stocked up on a few things and saved $50. i was pretty proud of myself. well then i saw that show "extreme couponing". it was like, a personal challenge. i HAD to do that. not all crazy like those people, but if it worked on a big scale, it would work on a small scale. i HAD to save lots of money on my groceries. i just had to. so that sunday i bought 3 newspapers. it looked like my work had already paid off because in each paper was a coupon for $5 off my dog's $28/bag dog food (have i mentioned it's also expensive for animals to not eat junk food). $5! i wanted craig to go get more papers but he said no. i picked up another 3 papers last sunday and this week craig and i made our first big, money conscious trip.

the key to making coupons work is saving them and a) only buying things on sale and b)only using your coupons on sale items. that way you get the most bang for your buck and never pay full price for an item. stores put items on about a 6 week sale cycle meaning that every 6 weeks or so, items are are their lowest, rock bottom prices. when they are, that's when you strike!

see i always looked at that $.25 off coupon and thought, big deal, a quarter. but, if an item is on sale then you take that $.25 coupon to a store that will triple it, you might end up with something for free. a lot of stores douple coupons up to say, $.30 and double from $.30-$.50. until that show, i never saw that coupons could really work. they really can save you money! we saw someone this week get like $1800 worth of stuff and walked out paying less than $15. its fascinating to me!

now don't get me wrong, theres a fine line between genius and insane and those people have crossed it. one lady buys cat treats and doesn't have a cat. another lady buys diapers but doesn't have any children. coo koo for coco puffs. and why someone would buy 65 bottles of mustard is beyond me. i don't think i'll use that in my entire lifetime. but, if you go and buy 6 weeks worth of something, just enough to get you through to the next sale, then voila! you're saving money!

so on our first big trip, craig and i went looking for sales. we only bought 3 items that werent on sale and only bought sale items if they were a good enough deal. some items advertised as a sale were only $.01 cheaper than their normal price. you have to pay attention! and we didnt buy anything we dont want, need, or use. we had an overflowing buggy. we went a little canned goods happy, but the del monte ones were on sale 5 for $3, even the no salt added ones. then the skinner pasta was on sale for $.89/bag and for some pastas that meant half price. all in all we save $91 (32%). we were really pleased with ourselves. and i only had 2 coupons that time! imagine if we had more coupons!

well then i had a few coupons that will expire soon for kroger (you can load coupons directly onto your kroger card) so we went to use them. while there we saw they were having a 3 day special on brisket ($1.49/lb) that made the briskets half off. well we love to grill so into the basket 2 went...on the kroger trip we saved a little over $50 and upped our savings to 37%.

then today, i'd been thinking about what to make for easter dessert tomorrow. i bought some refrigerated pie shells on sale at brookshires so i wanted to make a pie but all the pie recipes i saw were for graham cracker crust type pies. but i remembered brookshires had those on sale and we passed on them the last trip. i also knew they had cool whip on sale because we also passed on it and all these pie recipes called for that too. and since i needed some cheese for the bread i wanted to bake i decided to go pick up a few things. i bought only sale items again and saved over $25 finally bumping my savings to 40%!

i love it. we have plenty of food stocked up, something craig has been wanting to do. he's very interested in self reliance and being prepared for an emergency of the biggest kind. so into it i almost bought him a rotating can storage system for our anniversary. well, after this week's sale we bought one of the shelves. i've always loved it because i'm a sucker for organizational gadgets but buying lots of canned goods on sale really forced us to find an effective way to store them. it's a little one so i'm not going all food hoarder on you guys, but we definitely have enough corn, peas and green beans to keep us from buying anymore for like, the rest of the year, haha. also got some storage bins (using my bed bath & beyond coupons!) for our pasta and baking goods because 4 bags of whole wheat flour can be hard to store, haha. im looking forward to seeing this make a big difference in our bottom line too!