One More Day...

Of work. Of 8 hour shifts anyway.

I have prayed several times this week to make it through my last three full days of work. And the Lord has answered. I've done just fine, which is more than I expected.
But I am looking forward to completing my last full day tomorrow.
My midwife has said 4 hour shifts would be reasonable from now on. I'm usually most needed Wednesday through Friday, and with next Thursday being Thanksgiving, I'm only needed two days. And of course there's the possibility that I'll have the baby by then anyway. But my midwife says I should prepare to wait :)

My evenings after work are filled with sitting on the couch :) I've been watching a lot of Netflix. Mostly bridal shows and Extreme Couponing. After watching several episodes of the clippers- I've come to the conclusion that Yakisoba noodles must always be on sale. I would say at least 2/3rds of the hauls I've seen included those high-sodium high-fat low-nutrition noodle trays. I am still impressed at their savings. But there's no way to be balanced in your nutrition without getting "overages" to buy fresh foods to fill in the gaps. Yes, you paid nothing for 93 bags of croutons and a bazillion boxes of pasta. But what the heck kind of menu does that make? I most admire those who coupon and then combine it with growing their own veggies and hunting their own meat. Otherwise your family is going to be eating a lot of processed crap, candy and condiments.

If you recall, a while back I took a couponing class and tried my hand at it myself. But honestly I found it too stressful. In fact, watching the hours and hours the extremists put into it stresses me a bit. Math is not my favorite subject and you need to be quite good at it to be extreme. Coming up with all the combinations for their transactions and watching the register like a hawk is enough to give me an ulcer. It really is a gift for those who can do it, and actually enjoy it!

A show that John and I watch together now is Shark Tank. We actually watch it on YouTube- so you can watch it too, for free. It's a show where inventors pitch their product to investors. But the investors are semi-famous, and there's a lot of good banter between them. We have seen some really neat products and some really stupid ones. And the same for the inventors :) It's nice to have a show to watch again, since most stuff on TV is too objectionable for us.

So now that I'm done with my pause on Extreme Couponing, I'll leave you to it and get back to my show :)
(One can only watch so much TV before your mind goes numb)

This week's grocery haul

So I now spend my Friday afternoons grocery shopping and then figuring out the savings and blogging about it. Yeah, that's what's exciting these days :) And it really does put me in a good mood!

So with about 2 . 5 hours of shopping and 4 different stores this is what I got! We won't talk about how long it took me to browse ads and print and clip coupons. Being new at this combined with having a very old and slow computer and printer... it was a tad frustrating. But anyway, that will hopefully get better as I get more experience.

The listing from the picture:

2 14oz Hillshire Farm smoked sausages
2 gallons 2% milk
4 lbs Oscar Meyer lunch meat
4 Wanchai Express dinner for 2 frozen bagged meals
4 Macaroni Grill dinner for 2 frozen bagged meals
4 8oz packages Kraft shredded cheese
2 10 count boxes Aunt Jemima frozen waffles
2 bags Fresh Express bagged lettuce
2 10oz tubs Sabra hummus
1 16 oz tubs fat free sour cream
2 roma tomatoes
1 pkg hot dog buns
16 oz Ajax dish soap
4 boxes Mueller's pasta- Free!
6 24oz jars Bertolli pasta sauce
3 16oz bottles Kraft dressing
3 cans Campbell's condensed chicken noodle soup
4 cans Emeril's "Bam" meals (mini ravioli cans)- Free!
2 cans Butterball chicken broth
4 28oz cans Bush's baked beans
2 10oz bottles A1 sauce
2 10oz cans Rotel tomatoes
2 McCormick grill mates seasoning
3 3oz spices (garlic powder, chili powder, minced onion)
6 boxes Quaker chewy granola bars
4 rolls paper towels

Original total without sales or coupons- 228.93
Value of sale items (BOGO, on sale etc)- 113.01
Dollars off with coupons- 52.46
Total spent 83.19
Total saved off retail 145.74
A 64% overall savings!

Also Publix was running a promotion to get a $50 gas card for $40 with a purchase of $25 in groceries. So I got that also! So I also saved $10 in gas!

Happy Friday!