October Savings Update

I can't believe that November is just around the corner!! November means Thanksgiving is soon. Thanksgiving means Christmas is soon. Christmas means 2009 is almost over! Where has the year gone?!?!?

Here's the update on our budget for the month of October. We came in $3.46 under budget. Not a lot, but every little bit helps, right?

Total Savings for October (coupons, sales and under budget): $150.52

Total Savings for 2009:
$1544. 23

Holy cow, that's a lot of money!! Thankfully, our pantry is stuffed, our fridge is full and the freezer is overflowing with good food. Our goal for Thanksgiving is to only buy things we absolutely have to have for the meals I've planned out (trying to plan meals around the things we already have on hand to keep from buying even more food) or things that are very cheap or free or things that we need for gatherings for the Thanksgiving holiday. This should cut our grocery bill in half, which means more money for... Christmas shopping!! Yippee!!

She's Here!!

I'm finally an aunt!! Little Miss Reagan wasn't supposed to make an appearance until Thursday the 29th, but due to Staci's blood pressure we got to meet her a few days early! Thanks to the ever increasing drama surrounding flu season, I only got to see her for about 2 minutes while she was in recovery. Thankfully, they're headed home today and I'll get to spend tomorrow lovin' on her!
Here's a little about her:
Reagan Marie Ensley
born October 23, 2009
6:12pm
9lb. 9oz.
19 inches long
Blue eyes
Lots of dark brown hair
Chubby little cheeks
Cute as can be :)

Here she is with her Auntie Sarai. Proud aunt? Nah, not the least little bit :)

Grammar Snob

Thanks to my mom, I'm pretty grammatically correct most of the time. Because of this, I am often turned off by improper use of common words. I realize that there are several words/phrases in the English language that don't make sense or that we just don't understand the correct way to use them. Before I get to the main point of this blog, I have to pause and tell a brief story that nearly sent me over the edge.

One morning, I was doing my daily facebook stalking and ran across a status update that read "wondering why her dad said "up and Adam!" while she was growing up and who Adam is?"

Adam? Really? Does that even make sense? NO! The correct phrase is "Up and at 'em". No need to bring Adam into this. You can imagine my horror.

So...back to the point of this whole post. In all my blog browsing and post reading, I come across quite a few blogs on home/decor/furniture makeovers. 99% of the time, these makeovers really have taken items from drab to fab and deserve all kinds of magical wordings and sound effects to get the grandeur of the new and improved item across. However, about 3 out of 4 times, the blogger misuses a very common word used in every day language:

Wa Lah.

What? You don't know what that word is? Let's try this one:

Waa La

Or this one?

Wah La

You mean you can't tell what that word is? Oh, that's because IT'S NOT REALLY SPELLED LIKE THAT!! How about Voila (and I realize that it usually has a little ' above the a, but I can't seem to get that to happen here)? Ahh, better. I know that, especially here in the south, we tend drop sounds off of words and sometimes even change the word entirely. My point is this: Southern or not, if you're writing for a blog to be published for the world to see from now until eternity and will be read by hundreds of people every day, you should pay attention to those little red squiggly lines underneath some of the things you type. That usually means that either you're typing my name (which is never recognized as properly spelled) or the word is misspelled. You be the judge...but then again, I guess that's the problem, isn't it?

Call me a grammar snob if you will. Just know that I'd rather be known as the girl who can't stand incorrect grammar than the one who uses it.

September Savings Update

I've added the numbers for September over and over and over again and couldn't figure our why we were so far over budget. And then I realized that I bought groceries 5 times last month, instead of the usual 4, and there was a random receipt that got added to the stack because it wasn't included in the August calculations. However, even after being over budget, we saved a LOT, so I'm thankful for that! Here's where the totals stand as of now:

Savings (via coupons and sales) for September:
$256.04

Total Savings (via coupons, sales and under budget amounts) for 2009:
$1393.71

With Christmas coming up, I am not entirely sure if we'll make it all the way to $2000 saved this year, but I'm crossing my fingers, eating lots of pb&j sandwiches and hoping for the best! Check back to see what happens!