What you get for $49.55

Bi-Lo

(2) Golden Grahams Cereal

(2) Peter Pan Peanut Butter

6 pack of Diet Coke

Crayola Crayons 24 Pack

Banquet Chicken Breast Nuggets

Cole’s Breadsticks

Mayfield Half Gallon Ice Cream

(2) Southern Home Rising Crust Pepperoni Pizza (Not pictured)

Red Potatoes

Strawberries 2 lbs

Tomatoes

Sub Rolls

Subtotal before savings - $58.39

Total Savings - $29.37

Total Out of Pocket- $31.73

Publix

Bananas

Peaches

(2) Hebrew National All Beef Hot Dogs

(4) Alexia Waffle Fries Crunchy Snacks

Honey Wheat Hot Dog Buns

Snapple Peach Tea 6 pack

Snapple Raspberry Tea 6 Pack

Hostess Powdered Donuts

Total savings - $27.39

Total out of pocket - $16.24

CVS

Schick Quatro Men’s Razor Refill

Schick Quatro Women’s Razor Refill

CVS Tampons

Colgate Total Advantage Toothpaste

Neutrogena Compact Foundation

Neutrogena Compact Foundation

(4) Snack Size Cashews

Total Saved - $55.10

Total Out of Pocket – $1.58

Total spent - $49.55

Could have spent - $161.41

Sha'Dynasty

We finished the floors

We'll we worked on Friday to get the "platform" area finished. It was the final step of the process before we move on to the baseboards. It was a bit of a challenge because it is a semi circle so we had to use some of our math skills. I think it turned out pretty good. We are going to wait until Friday to work on the baseboards, so that we can take some time to acclimate our puppy to his new home.

Also we scrapped the window seals and made that another task on our list. We are planning on repainting it again soon too.

Hardwood Floor Update

We are getting closer to completion with the flooring. We have completed all the floors in the dining room, living room, hallway, and office. We are doing the work on the "platform" area in our living room. We had to put a stair tread and a new riser on the step up so that took all of today. I just got finished staining the new stair tread to match the color of the hardwood floors. I hope that we will be able to put the flooring in up there tomorrow and then it is on to finishing the trim work in each of the rooms. This should be fairly easy, however we did a little damage to the walls and trim area when we took off the "old as dirt" baseboards that were on there. We will have to mend the walls a bit and then put the new baseboards and trim work on to create that beautiful seamless look.

Right now, I am going downstairs to watch the bachelorette. See ya!!!

My CVS Trips this week

On Sunday

Using my rain checks from last week I bought the school supplies that I planned to get.

2 - 1 Subject 100 Sheet Notebook $.99 each

2 – Clear School Glue $.99 each

2 – Plastic Ruler $.99 each

2 – 5 inch scissors $2.99 each

5 – Pocket Folders $.05 each

2 – Heath Bar Candy Bars $1.59 each (not pictured because Justin has already eaten both of them)

Total $15.35 before tax

Used CVS $3 off of a $15 purchase

ECB’s Used - $3, $7.50

Total after discounts - $2.02 out of pocket Oh Yeah!!!

Got back $13 in ECB’s as well as another CVS coupon for $3 off of a $15 purchase. I was so excited because I planned to buy some hair crème for Justin that cost over $16. I used the ECB’s and the CVS coupon to buy the hair crème with almost no out of pocket.

On Monday

I went to a different CVS to try to get the school supplies that are on special this week since the CVS from Sunday was sold out of everything already.

I only had $5 ECB’s to start with so I tried to group all my transactions into $5 totals and just roll the ECB’s to reduce my out of pocket total.

Transaction 1

PaperMate Pens 10 pack $.99

Vinyl Notebook $3.00

Memo Pad $.99

Total before tax $4.98

ECB’s used - $5 (I had to talk him into changing the amount to $4.98. I lots .02 in the deal. Most CVS’s do not have a problem doing this.)

Total due - $.00

ECB’s Received $4.98

Transaction 2

Papermate Pens 10 pack - .99

2 - #2 Pencils 1.99 each

Total before tax - $4.97

ECB’s used - $4.98

Don’t ask me why but my total ended up being $.46. I do not understand why, but I did not argue because I was basically stealing the stuff.

ECB’s received $4.97

Transaction 3

2 – Pack of Filler Paper $2.00

1 – Memo Pad $.99

Total before tax $4.99

ECB’s used $4.97

Total due $.19 (again I do not know how I owed that amount, something about the way they tax the items.)

ECBS’s received $3.98 and $.99. Oh Yeah!!!!

So for all the stuff I got today I spent a total of $.65 and I still have $4.97 in ECB’s for next week.

"Shady" at 3 weeks, 4 days old

Today we went to see Shady and took a few pictures. We hope you like them. He is 3 weeks and 4 days old. He has blue eyes and we are hoping they stay blue. We were told we could possibly take him home in about a week and half. Say hello to "Shady".

This are some of the pics from Thursday morning to today. We ended up tearing out all the joists and starting from scratch. We replaced thirteen joists with new 16 ft long 10 inches thick joists to provide awesome new support. The vent system you see to the left had been eaten on by vermin so we had to repair it as well.




This was work that we did on Friday. Once we got going on the joists it went a lot faster.




This is the sub floor in the office. We ended up taking it up too and starting with the older sub floor hoping to make it things a little more level. It was a lot easier to take up than I thought.

This is the office after we finished it. We still have to do some repairing on the walls. When we took the baseboards off things got a little torn up. It is so pretty.


This is about as far as we have gotten in the living room. We had to stop at the area that transitions into the dining room because the floor is a little unlevel so we are working on it and should finish the living room tomorrow.

We are not young anymore. We feeling every bit of it. The past few days have been a welcomed rest. We are now ready to get going again and hopefully finish this by the end of the week. That is if we do not encounter any more obstacles. Please pray for us.

The Straw

Okay - So Melora has been dominating our blog and I wanted to write something I thought was both funny and inspirational. Well, it was funny to me at the time.

I was running late yesterday and was very thirsty for a McDonald's Iced Coffee (Hazelnut flavoring). I had been doing demolition at our home and was extremely hot and for lack of a better term, parched. I could almost taste the chilly, creamy, nutty flavor in my mouth. It had been one of those days and this was about to be a reward.

In short, pulled to the drive thru, ordered, had to do the whole pull up and wait thing because the coffee needed to be brewed or something.
As I turned to pull into a parking space I didn't see the large concrete parking bumper to my right and went UP and OVER the whole thing. I felt stupid and held my frustration at myself and with the supposedly 'fast' food service. Oh yes, I parked and waited and waited. I finally got out of my car and went inside. I was even nice to the people inside because I didn't want them to spit in my reward.

And finally, I had my hands on my heart's desire. And a free hot apple pie from the manager. Thanks God! That's pretty nice since I wouldn't see dinner til after 8:00pm.

I got in my car and drove off feeling awesome. I reach for the drink and fumble with the straw a little. And Oops! I dropped the straw between my seat and the center console. I think "no problem, I'll get it, this drink is SOOO worth the wait!". To shorten my story, I came to many red lights and followed this routine:
1)Delicately cram hand between seat and console
2)Push straw further down
3)Move seat forward (repeat steps 1 and 2)
4)Move seat back (repeat steps 1 and 2)
5)Put car in park at red light
6)move seat forward
7)reach clear around to back seat and feel around under seat
8)Repeat steps 1,2,5,6,7
9)Laugh
10) take lid off drink and take a sip. Realize it's just not the same as using a straw!
11)Ughhhhh! Ahhhh! "Come on!"

In the midst of all this searching I felt like God spoke to me and said,"Justin, the straw is the one tool you need right now and it is such a simple thing. You are so tenacious in your searching because you are thirsty. What if you were this aggressive about seeking me and reading my Word? Would you feel spiritually thirsty?"

I laughed at myself and continue to ponder this idea.
Hope it inspires you.



Matthew 6:33
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

John 4
¹⁰Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

¹¹"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

¹³Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

¹⁵The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

My CVS Trip this week.

For those of you who know that I am a huge couponer, I thought I would show my trip this week to CVS.

I "roll" Extra Care Bucks (ECB's) and this trip I got all of these things with a little less than $2 out of pocket. I planned to get more but they were out of several items. I got rainchecks so I will plan to get them next week and still get the same advertised deals. I am so excited to use all of the Febreeze since my house smells like dank air from the crawl space right now. I needed make-up badly. I really did not need to Dawn but it was such a great deal, I thought that I would stock up. If you are not a CVSer you need to start. You can so much stuff for free. Comment on the blog if you want me to show you how.

In the presence of chaos

In the presence of ugly there is a beautiful display in our front yard. I hope that you enjoy.

Holy Holy Floor -y

Here are some pics from the remodel adventure that we are on. We had a sinking area in the floor near the fireplace. We knew that something was not right underneath that was causing the sinking. So we went down to the crawl space to explore. Very quickly we realized we were in over our head. We called in someone who would likely show us what we needed to do. He said that almost all or all of the joists would need to be replaced. He recommended that we tear up the subfloor to get to the joists instead of going at them from below (about a three foot of space in the crawl space). So yesterday we set out to demo the floors. Below are some pictures of what our living room looks like right now.

The first picture is the floor when we started to demo today. The right half was done yesterday. You can see how it was pieced together. Several of the pieces began to crumble away as Justin continued to work his way across the floor.



You can see how the parts of each joists are broken off or cracked.



As Justin got closer and closer to the front door we could see that a recent patch job was very shotty to say the least.


This is a picture of six pieces of 2x4's nailed together hoping to provide enough support. However, without the sub floor onto of it, once it was removed it was worth nothing. Very shaky.


This is the span of the room. Twelve floor joist and all of them are very compromised and in terrible shape. We will replace all of them tomorrow.



This is a picture of the first floor joist that was causing the problems that caused us to start this adventure. Crazy thing is. Many of the other joists were in worse shape. I am not sure how the floor above it was staying up.