March Showers

In March, my sister hosted a most wonderful bridal shower for me to celebrate the upcoming wedding. She was a gracious hostess and provided all the food and desserts one could possibly want. Since I have so many photos (courtesy of Mrs. Weiss) I think I will let them do the talking.


The spread. My sister made all the appetizers and food which were delectable! We had homemade bread, chicken riggeis, shepherds pie, roasted vegetables, and Utica greens plus shrimp, fruit skewers, and cucumber cups. YUM!

Everyone's invitation had some instructions with them which asked them for two things. One - to fill out a recipe card for me. This was great! I have made a few things from there already and I am looking forward to making more. The other was to send photos in from my life. She compiled this board for me.

Of course then there were presents. She even wrapped all the ones that came to her house so I was able to "open" them all. :)

After they were all opened, my friend Kara presented me with a "hat" of bows. It was quite silly, but fun at the same time.


After present opening came the grand finale which was dessert. Everyone just stared at the selection for about 5 minutes not wanting to eat it because it was so pretty. I of course have gotten over being bashful about eating food and after enough time for photos and appreciation had passed, I jumped in and helped myself to a nice smattering of desserts.


Needless to say this was a huge hit with all the ladies. They are looking forward to when I might have a baby shower because they enjoyed themselves (and the food!) so much. It's not for a while, but nice to know people would want to come. :)

All in all I think it was a pretty fabulous day. Much thanks and appreciation to my sister and her sous-chef Wayne (Favorite Brother-in-law) who did everything to make it a success.

Coming Soon

I have taken quite the hiatus from my blog, but in all fairness, I had some good reasons. I have been postponing my return until I get some thank yous taken care of and put away the mounds of things that seem to have accumulated around our house. However, I thought a pulse check might be nice for those of you who do check this page. Updates are coming, it's just taken longer than expected. :)

Hmm...

Yeah, bright and sunny and raining for our wedding day... Oh well. :P

Girls Night

Friday night was an official girls night out. It's been a while since I had one of these, so it was long overdue. A couple of co-workers/friends of mine and I decided we were going to go grab a bite to eat and then see the musical HONK at my old high school.

We decided to keep it real local and eat at the famed B-ville diner located in downtown Baldwinsville. This place is known for it's retro diner style, decent prices, and their pies. Heidi and I got talking about pies starting at about 10am on Friday morning and it proceeded to remain on our minds for the remainder of the day. By the time we got there, we were tempted to skip dinner all together and just gorge ourselves on pie. That would have been heavenly. Instead we ordered food and then got pie after. I tried their peanut butter pie - it was to die for. Heidi and Jenn both went with apple with ice cream on the side. I just can't do any apple pie unless it's my own. I am an apple pie snob.


We made it over to my high school to watch their musical HONK. It brought back so many memories for me. For the four years of high school I was involved in the musicals in some way, shape, or form. The first year I think I mostly just hung around helping where ever I could and eventually found my way to the spot light crew and spent 3 years helping there. My senior year I decided to change it up a bit and went over to the pit band. That was a lot of fun and I had front row seats! I had never heard of this musical until we found out it was what Phoenix was doing this year. It's based on the tale of the Ugly Duckling. I thought the high school did a wonderful job with putting it on.

The girls and I decided pie night needs to happen more and since high school musicals only happen once a year, we will have to find other activities to fill in for that part of the evening. :)

Fun With Cats

Just an average night in our house. Torturing Sparky for all the 3am wake ups to escort him to the food dish to show him we fed him at 1am. Also, check out my new PJ pants. I <3 them!

You Saved $$$ Today

I love a good deal. I have in fact blogged about good deals I have gotten in the past because they are usually awesome and I want to share. I am convinced that nothing is actually worth the full price it's usually labeled with. There might be rare exceptions, but I think they are so far and few between, we will pretend like they don't exist.

Yesterday Rob and I had a big day running errands. We went to Micheal's, Target, and Wegmans. It's kind of a risky move for a Saturday following a snow storm, but we braved the crowds anyway armed with a shopping list and fist fulls of coupons. At Micheal's we had to get two frames; one for a frame that broke a while ago and one for a collage photo our friends gave us for Christmas. Micheal's had a sale going for 40% off frames and then an additional 25% on top of that. So we bought two frames and some ribbon for the wedding for what one frame would have originally cost us. Not bad!

We moved onto Target where we were only going to pick up some healthy and beauty items because they are usually cheaper here than at Wegmans. (I love my Wegmans, but it's basically true for all grocery stores.) While strolling the aisles at Target, we found they had a lot of things on sale and even found a few target brand coupons hidden in the items (like an Easter egg hunt!) which is great because we can use them in conjunction with manufacturer's coupons. I think on one set of items we bought we actually made money on. Combine the coupons with Rob's discount and we saved over $20 which was almost half our original total. Wohoo!

Wegman's also proved to be pretty rewarding with our coupons and discounts and bottle returns. Not as much as the last two, but I think we did pretty good. What I wish Wegmans was able to do was display the amount saved by buying their brand item instead of the name brand stuff. Most of the time even if I have a coupon, it's cheaper to get the Wegmans brand item, which was almost never the case in GA so it's taken some getting used to.

In total we saved almost $50 on our trip out getting the things we needed. I just can't imagine going out without coupons and hunting for good deals. Then again, I also know there are people who are much better at this game than I am, but so far I think I am doing ok. Here are some sites that I find really helpful when trying to find a bigger discount on something (especially retail stores).

For the crafty types, signing up for AC Moore and Micheal's online will get you coupons in addition to what's in the paper. My sister passed on a 60% off coupon to me from Micheal's that I printed out about 10 of and used them to buy wedding supplies. Huge savings.

Retail Me Not - Great for buying from retailers online, plug in the name of the company and see if there are any deals active
Coupon Mom - Printable coupons for groceries
Coupon Album - Similar to Retail Me Not
A Full Cup - Signed up for this recently, but haven't figured out how to really work it. I guess you can trade coupons you have. I think you can also search, but I haven't had time to go back.
Target - As I was explaining to Rob what I was blogging about, he informed me of this site. Better late than never. :P Also, if he goes with you, he is worth 10% off. :)

So go forth and save!

My Laptops

When I am home sick, it's a party in my lap.