I’m married to a penny-pincher. He’s always on the hunt for the best deal. And his habit has rubbed off on me. So much so, that I suggested our newest adventure: couponing!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am now one of those people in the supermarket checkout line, the ones you dread being stuck behind. Don’t worry, though, we have committed to keeping our coupons organized so the checkout process is as painless as possible.

So how does this “couponing” thing work, you ask? Isn’t it time consuming and complicated?

We’re just learning how to do it. It might end up being time consuming. It might get complicated. But if it saves us the amount of money it has saved other people, it’s worth it to us. Because we have stuff we need to pay for! We’re currently finishing the room that is going to become Husband’s office, which we’ve been able to pay for but it’s been a bit of a stretch, and next spring we’re going to be landscaping the front and back yard. And in the future, we’ll be replacing all the carpet in our house, finishing the bathroom attached to the office, finishing the basement, and hopefully upgrading some general fixtures and things around the house. It’s a lot, and to us it doesn’t make sense to go into debt for it if we don’t have to. So we’re doing everything we can to start saving up towards those projects.

Hence, couponing.

There are a few ways to go about it – watch deals online, find blogs by couponing families, use coupon websites, and good old fashioned cutting coupons out of the newspaper. We’re doing all of these things. We started getting the Sunday paper, because they have the best coupons. We get circulars from all the local grocery stores, so we compare coupons to sales. We save coupons for things we might get in the future, and watch for them to go on sale. It might take a while for us to get the system down and start knocking a big chunk off our grocery bill, but if we can stick it out, it will be worth it.

It means a lot to me, too, that my husband is so supportive of and excited by this idea. He works hard to provide for us so I can be a stay-at-home mom. He’s doing his absolute best to manage our finances and he’s doing a great job. I know it’s a burden on him, and I know it stresses him out sometimes. So as the mistress of our household, the person who is basically in charge of what goes on in our kitchen, it’s the least I can do to contribute towards lessening that stress. So I can spend part of my Sunday afternoon clipping and organizing coupons. In the grand scheme of things, that’s really no big deal.

Because the way I look at it, being a stay-at-home mom doesn’t mean I just get to sit on my duff and play with the baby and sip coffee all day long. It also doesn’t mean my marriage is some caveman-ish hierarchy. My husband is a good, kindhearted man, and he is an excellent head of our household. He makes it easy for me to be under his covering of authority. And one of the reasons it’s easy is because he demonstrates a lot of respect for my opinion and for the job I do every day of taking care of our baby and our home. That makes me want to demonstrate respect for him by being a good manager of our house, and contributing to managing our finances by being wise with our meal planning and groceries.

That was totally not where I intended this post to go. And now I’m feeling convicted. Because I’m not a perfect household manager – far from it! But now I’m feeling motivated, so I’m going to go re-do my chore chart (which is on a marker board and was working great for about a week before my nephew decided it would be fun to play with and erased most of it) and get moving today. I love my husband, and I want him to feel respected and loved in return. And when he walks in the door after a long day at work, few things make him light up more than a clean kitchen or a vacuumed floor or a pile of freshly folded clean laundry. See, he’s sort of a neat freak, and I’m really not (really not!), so it blesses him when he sees me make an effort to take care of our house so that we have more time to spend as a family on evenings and weekends.

So today, thanks to this little entry about couponing I wanted to make, I’m going to start fresh. Beware, dust bunnies! Watch out, dirty laundry! Here I come!

This went down just a few minutes ago in our kitchen as I handed the baby to my husband after dinner:

Me, jokingly: “Baby, barf on Daddy!”

Baby: *BARF*

Daddy: “That’s not funny! You’re gonna get it one day – he’s gonna barf in your MOUTH!”

Me: “Hah! He already HAS!”

Daddy: “Crud, you’re right…never mind…”

We hit another milestone this weekend. Well, I don’t know if it’s technically a milestone, but it was definitely a first.

Mommy got called out of church service to get my baby from the nursery.

At our church, when you check your child into the nursery/Sunday school, you’re given a number. In order to pick that child up, you must present the number. They also use the numbers to notify parents that they’re needed by putting the number up in the corner of the screen in the main service. Numbers pop up usually a couple times during the service. Sometimes I glance around to see if I can spot the parent slipping out to go get their kiddo.

So it was pretty surreal when I was looking at the screen and realized “Oh! OH! That’s OUR number!” My heart kind of flip-flopped for a second. I shoved my journal and pen with which I had been taking notes at my husband, grabbed my number tag, and probably left a breeze in my wake as I rushed out of the sanctuary.

I knew only one thing: My baby needed me.

One of the nursery workers was sitting with him at the check-in counter in the main hallway. As soon as he saw me, my baby burst into tears and practically scrambled out of the nice lady’s arms towards me. As soon as I took him, he quieted and snuggled deep into my shoulder.

Can I just say, I LOVE that feeling? No matter what’s wrong, Mama makes it all better.

The nursery lady explained that he had thrown up and was running a low fever. Isn’t it weird how kids can be just fine when you leave the house and illness seems to come out of nowhere? We think he might (finally!) be teething – that would explain the fever. And he tends to throw up when he’s really upset or stressed out. Poor little guy.

I took him and got Husband from the service (luckily we were in the back row), and we went home. Gave the baby a little Tylenol and put him down for a nap. He was totally fine an hour later and remained so for the rest of the day, was just a little clingy with me.

And then came “bedtime snack” time.

And he barfed all over me as I picked him up to feed him.

Oh joy.

Back to square one.

But he seemed fine after that. He ate his snack and went down for bed like a champ. Slept like a rock, and is back to his happy, bouncy self this morning.

Kids. What a mystery.

But I’ll never forget that moment in the church hallway, when I took him in my arms and he snuggled into me like that. How precious. I cherish those moments. I always will.

I’ve been spending more and more time in this thing I call Blogland – and I’ve gotten a much better idea of what I’d like my blog to look like! And here it is! For now, anyway. Who knows when the urge to do a makeover might strike me again!

Look for a few more changes and some new additions coming soon…

These things take time, though, because I have no clue how to do any of it, and really, if I tried to learn I’d probably forget everything in about 24 hours because my brain just doesn’t work that way. And I’m okay with that. After all, I’m married to a Supergeek. Why should I give myself a headache trying to learn something when he not only is really good at it, but he enjoys it?

So anyway, that’s what we’ve been up to this morning! We’re having a pretty good birthday weekend, if I do say so!

Last night, we made the first of many transitions.

We bought the next level of carseat for the baby.

And I’m a little pouty about it. Even though I know the next phases of his life will come, and come quickly, I’ve gotten used to where he’s at. So a little piece of me is sort of mourning right now.

It had to be done, though. He’s probably at the weight limit and definitely at the height limit for his infant carseat. His fat little feet are hanging over the edge. And we want our baby to be safe. Safety is of very high importance to us (as it should be!). So off to the store we went, in search of the perfect Level 2 carseat for our little guy. We ended up standing in the carseat aisle at Target in a semi-heated argument for a few minutes. Until Husband whipped out his Smartphone and began searching the internet for any clues as to what our best option would be. In the end, we went with the option we felt would be best for our baby, and we feel secure that we made the right decision.

It never ceases to amaze me how many products are out there for babies and young children – all proclaiming to be the best, or at least comparable to each other. It’s so confusing! I remember putting together our baby registry while I was pregnant. It took us weeks to finish it. It probably wouldn’t have taken that long if my husband weren’t such a stickler for research. He’s determined to get the best for the best price, and 9 times out of 10, he finds it. I could spend hours scouring the internet for a good deal on something and come up empty handed, but he’ll find it in two minutes or less. The man has a gift.

It was no different when it came to baby gear. And with the mass amount of information out there, it took a lot of time for him to figure out which brands we should select for which products. I’m very glad we’ll never have to do a baby registry again! In fact, I’m thinking husband and I should sit down together and write a comprehensive analysis of our baby-gear search for other new parents, in hopes of lessening the confusion of the baby registry.

Because it IS confusing! We thought our wedding registry was hard? Hah! The wedding registry was a piece of cake! But when you’re shopping for this little person whose life you have complete responsibility for, the game changes. Priorities are different. It’s not about what will look good with your décor – it’s about safety, durability, and usefulness. And those are things you can’t necessarily see when you’re standing in the store, holding two comparable products next to each other.

Especially carseats.

Which is why I am so, so glad husband has a Smartphone! About ten minutes into our conversation on the carseat aisle at Target, I found myself lamenting “Why didn’t we do the research on this before we went shopping?” – it had kind of been a last-minute thing, since we won’t have time to do it for almost another week and our rapidly growing child needs a suitable carseat now. And in a moment of genius, Husband grabbed his phone, went research-crazy, and rescued us from the quagmire we were in.

Thank goodness for that mini-computer-esque phone he carries on his belt! I’ll never use one – I prefer to keep my technology rather simple, thankyouverymuch – but I’m grateful that other people can harness the power of the Smartphone to make my life easier.

Okay, well, I’ll never use one except to play Bejeweled. As long as Husband lets me steal his phone to play Bejeweled from time to time, I’m good.

Ah, cloudy mornings. I love cloudy mornings. Somehow my cup of coffee seems to taste better on a cloudy morning. Cloudy mornings just beg me to get a big mug of coffee and curl up on the sofa with my laptop and blog. Even if I don’t necessarily have a specific topic to blog about. But the atmosphere of the cloudy morning beckons! I must blog!

I made a discovery last week – “The Pioneer Woman”. People, this woman rocks my socks. And apparently she is the most amazing cook with an enchilada recipe that will destroy your kitchen and ruin you for any other enchiladas you will ever have. My husband has been informed that her cookbook is on my Christmas list. I’m not normally a specific “This is what I want for Christmas” type person – usually I just let my husband go wild. He loves giving gifts and is always spot-on with what he selects for me. And I’m pretty easy to shop for. I like clothes, shoes, and kitchen stuff.  But this? This cookbook? Oh yeah. It is on my list. My one-item list.

Speaking of gifting occasions, this coming Friday is our birthday!!! And no, I don’t say “our” just to be cute or to sound like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings (creeeepy…) – it is literally OUR birthday. My husband and I share a birthday (2 years apart). It was one of the first weird parallels we discovered about ourselves on our first date. We even got out our drivers licenses to prove it! We always have so much fun celebrating our birthday together. It’s definitely an event!

Things got kicked off over the weekend with a special date on Saturday afternoon. We were spending the day up in the mountains with my husband’s parents, who were camping in their trailer. We ate lots of good food (they spoil us rotten!) and took the baby on his first fishing trip. So fun! We have pictures galore, which I will post later, as they’re on my husband’s phone and I need his help to get them to a place where I can post them within my limited computer capabilities. But trust me, they’re great pictures!

Shortly after we arrived at the campground, my husband’s parents informed us “You have a date this afternoon. A date with some wolves!” As a birthday present, they sent us to the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center for a tour! And they got to play with the baby. Which is, of course, always a bonus for them. The four of us had gone to the wolf center 2 years ago during a camping trip, and we loved it. Especially my husband – wolves have always been his favorite animal. So we were thrilled to go back! The wolves are such beautiful creatures. The best part is at the end of the tour – the entire group howls, trying to get the wolves to answer, which they typically do! It is so…majestic. The first time we went there 2 years ago I actually got very emotional when the wolves all began to howl together. They’ve had a few new additions and changes since the last time we were there and we had a blast!

And when we got back to the campsite, the baby did something he’s never done before – he reached for me and when I picked him up, he snuggled into my shoulder and stayed there for several minutes. He missed me! It melted my heart a little bit.

Sunday we went back up into the mountains to visit with my grandparents. Husband fixed a couple things on their computer (he’s awesome like that!) and we all played with the baby and then went out for lunch. Baby was kind of clingy with me, which is a new thing for him. But he warmed up to “Granny and Poppy” from a distance and played with them from my lap, giggling and grinning when Granny smothered his chubby cheeks with kisses.

So all in all, an awesome weekend.

And now this week, we begin…Pig-Out Week!

We discovered a couple of years ago that many, many restaurants have birthday clubs. You sign up online, and they e-mail you a coupon for a free birthday meal. We’re up to something like four restaurants and three ice cream places. I’ve pretty much reconciled myself to the idea that I’m probably not going to make any progress on my weight loss this week! But our birthday only comes once a year, so I’m going to enjoy it. Tonight we kick it off with dinner at Noodles & Co. on our way to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things we’re out of. I love me some Noodles! Pasta Fresca…mmm…

And things will culminate with a nice dinner date on Friday, just the two of us.

Which I am desperately trying to get my face to clear up for! I’ve tweaked my skincare routine a bit, and that seems to be helping. But it takes time. Nothing works overnight. Every time I try something new, I know I have to give it a few weeks to really see if it’s what’s right for my skin. But darn it, if I could just stop picking at it! After doing some pretty intensive research recently on adult acne, I realized I’m a chronic skin picker. I can’t look in the mirror and not pick at my face. If I have an itch on my face and I try to gently scratch it, I end up picking at it. And that ultimately spreads the infection and makes scarring worse. I have to let it heal. It’s hard. I catch myself unconsciously reaching for my face all the time. But I’m really trying to modify that behavior.

Finding what works for my skin is a frustrating journey – but I’m fighting the good fight, and no matter how discouraged I get sometimes, I’m not going to give up. There must be something out there that works for me! I’m learning more about my skin all the time – I have a pretty good idea of how my skin likes to be treated, so the field has narrowed in some areas and opened up in others, which makes it easier. What I’m doing right now has helped the massive breakout I was having go down, but if it’s going to heal completely it will take time. Time, and me not picking at it!

And now that I’ve practically written a novel for you, I’m going to go get my day started! Happy Birthday Week to meeeeee!

I don’t consider myself to be a domestic goddess by any means. But there is one thing I am definitely good at – getting clothes clean and making them last forever.

I have some slight OCD tendencies towards laundry. I do my laundry a certain way, and anybody else who messes with it does so at their own risk. When my husband and I got married I told him “I have one rule, and one rule only – do not EVER touch my laundry.” I have since taken over the majority of the laundry, and my husband has gotten pretty darn good at following my crazy little system when he helps out.

As narcissistic as my laundry habits may seem, they work. Our clothes last forever, the colors don’t fade, elastic doesn’t wear out, and things hold their shape. I’ve been told I need to share some of my secrets, so here ya go:

1. A great detergent. My favorite is Amway’s SA-8 line. It’s phosphate free, compatible with today’s high-efficiency machines, dissolves completely even in cold water, and doesn’t leave a strong scent on clothes (because to me, the only thing worse than dirty smelling clothes is a too-strong detergent smell). Oh, and it gets things sparkling clean. Even the baby’s cloth diapers are still white. I’ve used it for years.
2. A great stain remover. Again, I love the SA-8 one. I’ve never used anything better.
3. I wash everything – except cloth diapers, towels, and sheets – on cold. It keeps colors from fading.
4. Anything that goes in the dryer – except cloth diapers and towels – gets dried on delicate. It still gets dry, and the lower setting is easier on fabrics so things take longer to wear out.
5. A lot of our stuff gets line-dried. One of my wish-list items for a future home is a huge laundry room with tons of racks for hanging clothes to dry. See, my husband and I are tall people. Husband is 6’6” tall! And I’m no shrinking violet myself at 5’9” (although Husband swears I’m 5’10”). If our clothes shrink in the wash, it’s game over. There’s no coming back from that. So it’s important that we avoid shrinkage at all costs. Especially for Husband’s nice shirts he wears to work, and for both our pants. Pants get hung on a rack in the basement to dry, and we keep a healthy supply of hangers in the laundry room to hang up shirts and other items. I even line-dry some of the baby’s clothes, those particularly cute items I don’t want him to grow out of right away. And jeans always – ALWAYS – get line-dried.
6. Speaking of jeans, if you turn your jeans inside-out to wash them, they won’t fade as quickly. Interesting, eh? So all our jeans get washed inside-out and line dried. It works. I’m tellin’ ya. This method also works well for clothes with embroidery, beading, and screen-printing on them.

So there you have it – my crazy little laundry world! It sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn’t that bad. A little extra effort is worth it to me if it saves us money by making our clothes last.

My husband wrote something that really resonated with me:

“I must admit, there is a sense of accomplishment each and every time I complete even the smallest task that improves the house or fixes something. It must be something built into us guys that we want to work with our hands to make things work… I am seeing the image of Tom Hanks dancing around the fire in “Castaway” shouting Me Make Fire! Yeah, I feel that way sometimes like when I managed to bring our front lawn back to beautiful green-ness for pennies – or one of many other countless victories.”

He loooooves working on our house. LOVES it. He gets mildly…okay, really obsessed with it. I don’t get it. I’d rather spend a Saturday or Sunday afternoon relaxing, going on a picnic, having friends over – but his first thought when a few free hours come up is “What can I do for the house???”. I didn’t understand this for a long time. I’d be all “Whatever. Let me know when you’re done so we can go have some fun.”

Then, he wrote this blog last night. And I read it this morning.

And now I get it.

It is hard-wired into my husband to enjoy these things. It is in his masculine nature to conquer, to “make fire”. And he wants me to dance around the theoretical bonfire with him. But I haven’t been doing that. He’s jumping around inside, beating his chest and bellowing “Me make fire!” in great excitement, and I’m sitting off to the side going “Okay, you’re done? Finally. Moving on.”

And he just wants me to dance with him for a moment.

So let’s dance around that fire, ladies! Let’s celebrate our husbands’ masculine nature, their innate desire to conquer, their need to celebrate even the smallest conquest. It doesn’t take much, just a big hug and a kiss (yes, even if he’s sweaty and gross!) and a “Good job, honey! You’re awesome!” and you’ll pretty much make his week.

I think I can do that.

Or I could let him build a big bonfire in the back yard….

Nah…

I have discovered a concoction that has rescued me from many a late-night snack attack.

We’ve been having a lot of brown rice lately. I almost always have leftover cooked brown rice in the refrigerator. I also almost always have snack attacks after dinner. And these snack attacks nearly always involve chocolate as well. Deadly combination.

One night, I began experimenting with my leftover rice during a snack attack, after having watched a chef on the Food Network make an absolutely decadent chocolate rice pudding.

You’ll need:

½ to 2/3 of a cup cooked brown rice

A heaping teaspoon or so of unsweetened cocoa powder (or more…)

A drizzle of honey

A heavy sprinkling of coconut flakes

Some milk – about enough to come halfway up the rice.

Put everything in a bowl and pop it in the microwave for about 45 seconds or until warm. Stir to make sure the cocoa powder dissolves in the milk. And then enjoy…yummm…I love it.

My husband also appreciates this, as it has saved him from many a late night chocolate ice cream run.

Being healthy is a journey in and of itself. When I was in my late teens/early 20’s, I was not healthy. I ate way too much – my friends called me “The Human Garbage Disposal”, and what I ate was so far removed from health food it wasn’t even funny. I went through periods of “dieting” and would lose those few extra pounds of padding that usually hung around. But I’d always fall back into my old eating habits, and back came the padding. I don’t want to say I was a yo-yo dieter – I just didn’t ever figure out how to balance my life in that area.

In the past month or so, though, things have dramatically changed for me. Something clicked. I made friends with the word “diet” again. But I call it a “quasi-diet”. I’ve been exercising more, and my body is responding. And it’s working. It’s working way better than I thought it would.

I have to admit, I caved this week and weighed myself on Thursday. I wasn’t feeling like I’d made any progress and was getting discouraged, so I hopped on the scale to take a peek at the reality. Shock! I HAD made progress! So something I’m doing is working.

What am I doing, you ask?

First, the “quasi-diet”. For me, this “diet” is not first and foremost about losing weight. It is about putting good fuel into my body, and not overstuffing my stomach. Whole grains, brown rice, more beans and less meat, fruit and vegetables as much as I can. By making my meals with these types of satisfying ingredients, I never feel deprived or starved an hour later. Because it’s about fueling my body, not depriving it of calories in a desperate effort to shed pounds. That switch in mindset makes a big difference.

And portion control, portion control, portion control! This is a HUGE problem in America! Restaurants serve us two or three times more food than our bodies need, and we eat the whole plate. And we do it to ourselves at home too. Especially with meat. But I learned a trick from another blog – only serve yourself half the amount of meat you’d normally eat, and mix it with something else. I’ll shred up half a chicken breast and mix it with a small serving of brown rice. And it’s still filling!

Another trick I use for portion control is to fix my plate completely before I go to the table. No extra food on the table for me to mindlessly put seconds on my plate. If I want a little more of something, I have to get up and go get it. But if the whole dish is sitting in front of me, I’ll pick and pick and pick at it until I’ve eaten twice as much as I actually need to.

And, of course, there’s the age-old dilemma of dessert. I love dessert. I’d eat it every day. But I needed to get through my head that excessive sugar is not good fuel for my body. I don’t never eat dessert – I just don’t keep it in my house. I enjoy reasonable amounts of dessert at parties or when I’m at someone else’s house for dinner. It’s okay to have a treat sometimes! But on a day to day basis, what I eat is about what is good fuel for my body. That switch in mindset has been a huge help to me.

Okay, I’ll get off my soap box on that topic for now…ahem…

Second, my exercise routine. For exercise to really start working for me, I needed to find something I loved doing that didn’t feel like a chore. I’ve never really liked going to the gym – 30 minutes of cardio on a machine is torture to me. I get so bored! It was very difficult for me to feel like I was getting any kind of results when I was just going to the gym, because I didn’t enjoy myself, so I didn’t push myself – I just kind of got through it so I could get out of there and go home.

Then I found Jazzercise. Oh, glorious Jazzercise! I love it. Cardio, strength training, calisthenics, all wrapped into a one-hour workout that flies by because I’m having fun. I’m surrounded by other women who aren’t dance professionals either, so I got over feeling self-conscious really fast. When I do Jazzercise, I feel strong and confident. I leave class feeling energized and fit. And my body has responded very positively to it! I supplement my two-to-three times per week Jazzercise class with Pilates for my lower body at home, and a couple other moves for my arms and abs I can easily do while I’m playing with the baby on the family room floor.

I think one of the primary keys to getting results from a workout is finding something you genuinely enjoy doing. For some people that’s running, for some biking, for some kickboxing, and for some (like my husband) doing the traditional gym thing. There are myriads of ways out there to get moving and strengthen your body – everyone can find something they enjoy.

So that’s kind of what I’ve been doing. But none of that would work if I hadn’t changed my mind about it, if I hadn’t gotten over the obsession with losing weight and focused first on being good to my body. Feeding it, nourishing it, fueling it, strengthening it. There are two Biblical principals here:

Romans 12: 1-2: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

If I am to present my body as a sacrifice to God, I need to take care of it. He gave me this body as a gift, and it is the least I can do to keep it healthy and strong.

And we are to not give in to the world’s impossible standards of what “healthy” and “beauty” look like. We can renew our minds to dwell on God’s truth and drown out the voices of the world.

Ah, Romans 12! What a great chapter. I’m working on a post – which might become a series of posts – about it. Look for that soon!