Queen of Tweens - Money, Manners, and Make-up

Monday, February 7, 2011

32 and 18 - what does this have in common?

How do you sum up nearly 18 years in one simple blog? I am not sure but I am going to give it a try!

Well, I am 32 years old and I have been with my high school sweetheart for almost 18 years! This is our story!

We met in high school our freshmen year and went on our first date the last day of our freshmen year.

We went to many many high school dances together - glad I still don't look like I did in high school with my high 90's hair!

AND we had a few proms we went to as well!

Against lots of advice thrown our way we got married in 1996 only 2 weeks after graduating high school.

Michael joined the Army to provide a stable home for us! Little did we know that we would soon be moving from East TN to nowhere Kansas! In October 1996 Michael graduated from basic training and we set out to build our first home in Manhattan, KS.

I am so proud of all the things Michael accomplished while in the Army! He served 8 years active duty with multiple deployments including Operation Noble Eagle and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In 8 short years we moved 7 times between Tennessee, Kansas, Country of Panama, Puerto Rico, back to Kansas, and finally back home to TN. During that time we worked through many changes within ourselves, our marriage, our jobs, and started our beautiful family with Cody joining us in 1998 and Haley joining us in 2000. I could go on and on about what a fabulous soldier, NCO, leader my husband was but that could be an entire book!!

We were so lucky to live in some very gorgeous places!

I wish our kids could remember the fun times we had when we lived overseas.

It amazes me to look back at all the pictures and re-live all the wonderful memories we have shared so far with each other, our friends, and our kids!

In 2007 we moved to the HOT state of Arizona and relocated once again!

I sure love my husband! We still act like we are 15 sometimes and I can't remember life without him!

It's a wonderful feeling to know I am sharing my life with my best friend, a fabulous father, and the strongest man I know inside and out!

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ME Time!

I am sure if you are anything like me finding time for yourself can be quiet a challenge! I know that working full-time outside the home and having 2 kids, a household, a husband, 2 dogs, and a cat can be exhausting at times (but totally worth it)!

I try to find time for myself when I can. I know most moms feel guilty about taking time away from their family to enjoy some alone time but sometimes we just have to fit it in where we can!

I really do enjoy my work and I feel very lucky to work at a place that really has some cool above and beyond perks that many companies do not. We all have gripes from time to time but I really try to stay positive and think of the awesome things my company provides. For instance...

My work is so awesome when we moved into our new building they made room for a wellness center. It isn't anything huge but they have all new equipment and there are 3 cardio machines. I am so lucky to get some ME time by taking a 15 minute break or going down on lunch or even before or after work! I think it is great because once I leave the building I am headed straight home to the kids and I don't want to have to leave them to go back to the gym and feel guilty about more time away from them.

I spend so much time at my work like so many of you, I try to find time to take snippets of time for myself. We have a really cool lunch room with a HUGE TV and rarely do I get down there but it is there and I try to every once in a while.

I also spend many hours in my office at work. I finally though - I spend so much money on our home and making it look nice (which is great!) but I actually spend more awake time in my office in then anywhere else and I decided I was gonna do it up nice! I struggled but since I work in a very laid back environment I decided I would make my office a FUN office!

I have games, a magic 8 ball, finger bowling, all sorts of fun de-stressing stuff in my office!

I also hung a spring rod and added some colorful curtains to my office because all the walls are white and boring. I have even had comments that it's funny how my office looks like a college dorm room! Well that wasn't exactly what I was going for but it got the job done. It is lively, colorful, and FUN! I am very productive!

I know how hard ME time can be! But try to find the time when you can sneak it in, gain some sanity, and remember the small things that make you happy!

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” - Herman Cain Quotes

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Sunday, February 6, 2011

FREE - Football - Fun!

Who likes Free? Who Loves Football? Well I love both and today has been a great day! For those of you that are frugal and like football today would have been heaven! I love watching the Superbowl and I am taking this time during half-time to write about all my FREE stuff!

I love to be frugal and organized! I will show you some places I am organized and then again there are totally some areas I need to work on!

I went to Fry's today and I bought 295.36 worth of groceries and after all my coupons and mail in rebate I spent 107.57! That is a savings of $187.79!!

As you can tell this is one area that I need to re-organize. But this is what happens when I have my kids help and put up the groceries.

Remember the trick for being able to save this much money really takes some prep work and some time but it is very worth it in the end. I made the mistake of going on Superbowl Sunday so I just said a lot of prayers while I was in the store. Fry's is running their sale through this Tuesday where all coupons are a dollar, they are accepting manufacturer coupons and they are also running this mega 10 sale. So I always search out for the competitor coupons (especially Target they have awesome printable coupons) I then couple it with the manufacturer coupon and then try to match it to the special sale. I know today alone, I was able to get 2 tubes of Colgate toothpaste, 2 toothbrushes, a cup of yogurt, a therma heat pad, and 2 Digiorno Pizzas, and an 18 packs of Miller Lite totally for FREE! The goal now is to have everyone not eat all the extra food and actually spread it out so we will truly save more money not just eat more!

I love to be organized and I love to label things. I decided to help with the food and to try to help with getting dinner made I bought a white board and we put the menu on the board by week and also put everyone's appointments so Dad can help see who has what when to help me out since we both work full time.

This is my fluid working calendar - we update as needed to keep everyone up to date and try to stay organized!

I also work to keep my cabinets as organized as possible. Because my kids are older I am able to keep our medicines not locked up. We don't have anything that would be overly harmful and my kids are aware that they don't get into even the OTC without permission.

I find this helpful to locate someone's medication when they start asking for stuff. Now that Haley has some asthma issues I think I am going to have to break their medications apart to keep it even more organized.

It seems that everyone has a catch all drawer or closet. I have one as well and I working to keep it as organized as possible. We keep all the normal stuff like sheets and stuff but it also houses the kids board games and all the extra stuff we have. That way when the kids run out of toothpaste they know where the extras are. The ones you see in the picture are the free ones I have accumulated through coupons.

Of course I am sure you notice the labels too! HaHa! I love to label things I feel like it gives everyone in the house a sense of where things to go because it seems unless they have a visual reminder they just lay stuff everywhere!

Well good luck if you are trying the couponing thing out! Or just trying to get organized. I will try to reveal some of my other crazy OCD traits! Hope everyone enjoyed the game - GO PACKERS!!