The one where purchasing an iPhone is a money saving venture. Sorta.

I love my iPhone.  I may have mentioned it occasionally.  I'm not entirely sure how I managed to survive the first 36.57 years of my life without one.  

It tells me which direction to go when I'm lost.

It tells me how many calories to eat.

It tells me what groceries I need to buy. 

It tells me the weather.

It allows me to set my DVR to record, even if I'm sitting miles away at a restaurant and I suddenly remember that I haven't set up to record the season premiere of American Idol.

It allows me to stay connected to Facebook and Twitter, 24/7.

It can even make phone calls!  

I sleep with it.  I take it to the bathroom with me.  I never, ever, ever put it down.

My iPhone and I, we're besties.

But in the spirit of saving a few dollars here and there, I also use my Phone for some serious couponing. I mentioned before that Kroger, my grocery store of choice, has an app that lets you load coupons directly from your iPhone onto your Kroger card.  You can do this in the store, even.  Last week when I was doing the grocery shopping, I loaded $5.75 in coupons from my phone to my card as I was shopping.  Every little bit helps pay for my data plan, ya know...

There are also several other apps that I use regularly to help me save a few bucks.  Here are some of my favorites:

RedLaser - this app uses your iPhone camera as a barcode scanner, then goes out searching for better deals on what you just scanned.  Lemme give you a for instance.  When I was Christmas shopping, I used it to scan a particular toy that I was looking at for zj.  The app searched both online and in nearby retail stores and told me to get myself in my car, drive myself up the street to Target, and save $10 on it.  Pretty nifty.

The Dealmap - this app uses some sort of magical GPS mojo to know what you are near, and it searches for coupons at restaurants and retailers near you.  Today I found a 20% off coupon for your entire purchase at Michael's, and a buy one get one free deal at Subway.

GeoQpons - this is another magical app that knows where you are and finds coupons for you to use.  Some currently features deals are a coupon for 25% off at The Children's Place and $7 of an oil change at Jiffy Lube.  Really, there is never any reason to pay full price for anything.  Except maybe your iPhone.  You'll probably have to pay full price for that...  Anyway, moving on...

Cellfire - you can use this app in conjunction with your loyalty savings card at approximately 30 grocery chains.  You can register your loyalty card to the app, and download coupons directly onto your card from the app.  I see a future that does not contain paper coupons at all.  Yes, I'm psychic.  It's just one of my many talents.

foursquare - Ok, this one isn't exactly a coupon app.  It's more of a social networking meets GPS kind of thing.  Think Facebook places, where you can check into different venues, but WAY cooler.  I mention it because I have probably used this one more than any other for money saving purposes.  When we were Christmas shopping, RJ and I went to an outlet mall, and about 1/3 of the stores offered some sort of discount just for checking in there.  We saved 10-25% off at most of the stores we shopped in by opening foursquare, checking in, then showing the cashier the coupon code on the screen of our phone.  Also, some places offer special deals to the Mayor of their location.  The Mayor is the person who has checked into that venue the most.  For example, Rally's offers a free milkshake to the Mayor every day, and Pizza Hut offers a free large order to the Mayor with each pizza purchase.  I say if you're going to go there anyway, at least get all you can out of it...

Whew!  It's been fun, but I'm tired.  I have exhausted my bag of money saving tricks, so now you can go back to reading some of the great money-saving blogs out there, and I can go back to posting pictures of my cute kids and writing blog posts about getting drunk.

Twitter - it's not just for stalking celebrities, you know.

Less than a year ago, I wrote a post about how I was not smart enough to use Twitter.

Oh, what a difference six months in a house with no job and two boys under the age of four makes.

So, I started out by following some of my favorite bloggers and famous people and I'm not the least bit bitter about the fact that Nathan Fillion never ressponds to my numerous tweets.  Even though I know he must see my 300 tweets every day.  Every. Single. Day. He WILL notice me eventually.  HE WILL.

I'm certainly not a Twitter expert, ya know, like our President - Really? Our President tweets?  I'll bet our founding fathers never could have predicted THAT - but I'm learning every day.

And in the spirit of making my gadget addiction screen time productive, I've found some great peeps to follow who help me save money. 

Although sometimes they help me spend money, like the other day when I had absolutely no plans to purchase any clothes for myself any time in the next three years and then I saw a tweet from Family Friendly Frugality that included a link to a coupon from Old Navy.  The coupon was good for an extra 25% off clearance items, plus free shipping on orders over $50.  So...  I ordered 13 things.  All for me.  But, the great news, the total for my order was just a little over $65.  Now that's a good deal.

Family Friendly Frugality is by far my favorite money-saving twitterer? tweeter? to follow, and often links to things like free fries or $5 off your total purchase at Family Dollar.   Go forth and follow her.  Do it now.  You will thank me.  No really, go ahead and thank me.

You're welcome.

Some of my other favorites, in no particular order, are:

Freebies4Mom focuses on stuff that is, well, free.  Who doesn't love free samples coming in the mail in their cute little individual sized bottles?  Also, she often links to great posts like this one about how to handle it if your coupons are rejected.  Good stuff.

DealSeekingMom is another great all-around gal to follow.  She features everything from printable coupons to online deals to free samples.

MoneySavingMom managed to save enough money to pay cash for her family's house.  I'd follow her just on principle alone.  Also, for the coupons she posts.

Also, don't forget to follow your favorite restaurants, retailers and brands.  Many post "Twitter only" deals and coupons regularly.  For instance, I follow my local credit union, and a few months ago, they ran a Twitter contest for money saving tips.  I sent one in, and won a $100 Visa gift card.  I also follow nookBN in order to find out about the free e-book title that is available for download every Friday.  

See?

Twitter is totally NOT a waste of hours of your life.  It's a necessity.

My upcoming fifth and final post in this series will explain all the reasons why buying an iPhone is a money-saving venture.  Trust me on this.   I've been brainwashed by the Apple corporation.  I know what I'm talking about here.  

Facebook - it's not just for stalking your high school crushes anymore.

Ok, so the next time your significant other is all like "What are you doing on the computer?" and you're all like "I'm just checking Facebook" and he's all like "Again? Really?  Are you leaving flirty messages on that bald guy's Wall again?  Get off the *)#&$( computer and do some *(#$(* laundry or something" and you're all like "Seriously?! You think I'm going to do your laundry now, you &*#*&" and he's all like "Well, you better" and you're all like "I want a divorce" and he's all like "Fine, I don't like your new haircut anyway, and your a$$ is the size of a house" and you're all like "Well, I've been sleeping with the mailman" and he's all like "The mailman is 80 years old" and you're all like "Well, at least he UNDERSTANDS me" and he's all like "What are we fighting about again?" and you're all like "Facebook" and he's all like "Oh, right," instead, you can say, "I'm on Facebook so I can save our family a bunch of money, darling" and he'll be all like "Oh, what a lucky man I am!  You are the sun, and the moon, and the stars. You complete me."  I'm saving relationships here, people.

Or whatever.

But there really is a point to this.  There are ways to make your constant refreshing of your News Feed daily Facebook check-in work for you, and to save you a little money to boot.

For a long time, I only used Facebook to stalk the mean girls from high school and to take secret joy in how miserable they had all become to catch up with old acquaintances.  It was fun for about a minute.

And then I realized there was a whole other (another whole? - I can never remember) use for it.  I began to "Like" some of my favorite businesses and brands, and - AMAZING! - I began to get notifications of sales, deals, coupons, and free samples, right there on my Facebook wall, right between the pictures of somebody's kid and the rants about someone else's politics.

After a lot of trial and error, and Liking and then Unliking? Disliking? many, many, many things, here are a few of the things that I have found to be the most beneficial.  Go Like these things right now.  Thank you.

Hip2Save - From the website of the same name, the Facebook feed is flippin' awesome.  Every day, I get dozens of of links from them to high value coupons, free samples, great online deals and more.  It's a great smattering of things, and most days I use at least a few of the deals they offer up.  I have been signing up for a lot of the free samples listed here lately, and when the samples arrive, they are almost always accompanied by a high dollar value coupon.  Score!

Southern Savers - Dedicated to saving money specifically on grocery/household items, Southern Savers focuses on retailers in... the South.  Although I don't have access to all the stores featured, I do regularly find deals and coupons on things I can use at Kroger and Food Lion, and they also offer a lot of links to free samples.  

Living Rich With Coupons Another great grocery/sample/deal site, this Facebook page is quite a bit more interactive.  Submit deals yourself to share with others, or follow the step by step instructions about how to save big with combinations of coupons, sales, rewards, etc.  

Also, don't forget to go Like the the individual pages of grocery items, retailers, and household items you use regularly.  By doing that, I have scored free fries from Wendy's, free shipping AND 20% off from Kohl's, and a coupon for free chips from Ruffles.  Other great things I've snagged via Facebook include buy one get one coupons from vitaminwater and some free batteries from Energizer.  And that's just the stuff I can remember :)

So go forth on Facebook and Like the hell out of all the stuff that you, well, like.  

It will probably save your marriage.

Next time, I'll help your Twitter addiction become a money-making venture.

Disclaimer: No conversation like the one above has ever taken place at 154 Hidden Court.  But I hear things, ya know, because I live in the world.

Free Shipping!! Limited Time only!!

After working a retail job for 17 years or so, I'll be the first one to tell you that online shopping is the way to go.

No long lines.

No impatient shoppers.

No cranky retail clerks who have been dealing with long lines and impatient shoppers.

I did 75% of my Christmas shopping online last year.  I do 75% of my clothes shopping, both for me and the boys, online as well.  Ditto household decor and pretty much anything else I can.

It's just so mush easier, especially since I'm sitting in front of my computer all the time anyway.

But that's another story.

So anyway, as I hove done more online shopping, I have gotten a bit savvier? more savvy?   better at it.

Nearly every major (and even most minor) online retailers offer an option for a coupon code at checkout.  Some places, like Kohl's and Old Navy even offer the option of stackable codes, which means that you can use more that one discount on the same purchase.

Oh gosh darn, I don't have that nifty code, I'll bet you're thinking.

Too bad.  Sucks to be you.

Or wait, you could just go to my new favorite site - RetailMeNot, type in the name of the online retailer you are planning to use, and get a code for free shipping, a percentage off your purchase, or specials on specific items.

I know, it sort of seems like cheating.

I worked through that issue and decided that retailers must know this is happening, ergo, it is ok.

There are a lot of other sites that offer coupon codes, but RetailMeNot is my favorite.  But if they don't have a code for the online retailer you're looking for, try one of these sites:

Coupon Album
Coupon Craze
Coupon Cabin
Current Codes
Coupon Mountain

There are a million more sites like this, but I've found these to be more reliable than some of the others.  A word of caution, though, be careful of the sites that only offer click-throughs promising discounts.  If you can't copy and paste the code yourself, you might want to skip it.

That's it for today.  Next time, I'm going to validate your Facebook addiction.

You're welcome.

Prices slashed! Everything on sale!

There are a blue million great coupon and money saving blogs.

This is not one of them.  I have never aspired to that, and I'm not about to start now.

However, I do love a good bargain.  More than most.  But I'm kinda inconsistent about bargain shopping, and occasionally - ok, more than occasionally - choose convenience over cheap.

I clip coupons, dutifully, every week.  Then usually forget to use them.

I refuse - REFUSE - to be one of the crazies dedicated people who stand in line for 89 hours to save $40 off a flat screen tv.

But I also refuse - REFUSE - to pay shipping for anything I purchase online.

Also, I am a member of every membership rewards loyalty card program in America.

Inconsistent, I know.

Try living in my head for a day...

Anyway, over the past six months, I have re-dedicated myself a bit to the whole money-saving venture, and I treat it like a game.  How cheap can I get a pack of t-shirts?  Can I get something at the grocery - GASP! - free?  It's a challenge, and I'm super competitive, and I like to win.

I know.  Clearly I need more hobbies.

But now, you, faithful readers, get to benefit from what I have learned.  Over the next few weeks, I'm going to share with you ways to save money while shopping that require minimal effort on your part.  Pull up a chair, and let me regale you with my wisdom.  Or at least save you $.40 on juice.  Whatever.

Today's focus is on saving money while grocery shopping.

Here goes:

I do a bit of grocery shopping at Wal-Mart (sad, I know) and Meijer's, but 80% of my groceries come from Kroger.  Why?  Well, it's conveniently located, it's well-stocked, and it's usually not crowded.  Those are my top three grocery store criteria.

I have had a Kroger Plus card for years, and always thought it was a bit of a scam... You know, a way to raise prices then make you THINK you were saving money with your card.  I thought that, until I found out that you can load coupons, directly onto your card, from the Kroger website.

Here's how it works.  Go to www.kroger.com and click on Digital Coupons.  You will be asked to create an account with some basic information and with your Kroger Plus number.  Then, click away!  As you click on the digital coupons, they are automatically added to your Plus card.  When you shop at Kroger and swipe your card, the savings are automatically deducted.

For a lazy couponer like me, this is perfect.  I just go onto the website once a week or so, and add coupons to my card for anything I buy, ever.  Then whenever I shop, the amount gets deducted.

It's like magic.

Also, I found out last time I did this that if you have a digital coupon for something, you can also use a paper coupon on top of that, if you remember to bring it with you.  Which I did, that one time.  And since Kroger doubles coupons up to $.50, you can save a bunch of money if you pay a little bit of attention.  Or not.  I got one of those giant bottles of Tide laundry detergent last week for around $6.00, totally by accident.  I know, I'm really lucky that way...

It gets even better.  If you have an iPhone, Kroger offers an app that is free to download and that lets you do exactly the same thing.  Except you can do it from your iPhone, which is way cooler.  Anyway, you register the app to your Plus card, open the app, click the coupon, and Voila! - you save some money.  This is especially cool because you can do it WHILE walking around doing your shopping.

Also, Cellfire is another great website that lets you load coupons directly to your Kroger card.  I haven't used it as much, but my initial trial has been positive.

Ok, that was easy, huh?  Come back later this week, and I'm going to tell you why you never have to pay shipping costs on anything you buy online.  Ever again.

Spontaneity.

Spontaneity.

It's not a word I use much.

Seriously, I had to look it up - like in an actual PAPER dictionary - to figure out how to spell it.

I was so far off, spell check wouldn't even help me out.

For those of you who know me in my real life, you know I'm something of a planner.

It comes from a bit of anal-retentiveness years of working crazy hours and multiple jobs and my control freak nature sometimes going weeks between days off and trying to raise two kids and a terrible case of ocd maintain a household and occasionally, just occasionally, sleep.  Some might have said I was a bit, ahem, tightly wound.

There simply was not enough time left over in my life to be spontaneous.

If I wanted to have lunch with someone on a Thursday then I had to make sure I knew the date at least a month in advance in order to get it on the schedule.

Really.

However, when I quit my job to be a stay at home Mama, I decided that I would make a LOT of changes to my life.

I took up running.

I got a new look.

I started going a lot more places, both with and without my kids.

Oh, and I made a plan to become more spontaneous.

It's not as easy as it sounds.

It's hard to let go of a lifetime of structure and planning.

But I'm definitely making strides.

I feel more relaxed than I ever have.  I don't stress about the housework, or if the kids are dressed just right (or at all), or what I'm going to be doing next Tuesday at 3:06pm.

My life is starting to feel... easier, I guess, now that I'm just letting things happen instead of trying to plan for every single thing.

Just the other day, I put a half-cooked dinner in the fridge, called the sitter, dropped the kids off and went out to dinner.  All in the span of 30 minutes.

Another time recently, I put the kids to bed, left RJ in charge at home, and went grocery shopping - alone - at 9 at night, even though everybody with any sense at all knows that grocery shopping should only be done between the hours of 5am and 11am.

It's a start.

I don't think that the tendency to want to plan my work and work my plan will ever disappear completely.

But when it's 4pm, the breakfast dishes are still in the sink, the boys are still in their pjs, I haven't done any personal grooming of any kind, dinner hasn't even been thought about, and zj says "Mama, PWEASE read me another story?  Just one more?  PWEASE?" I'll probably say yes.

Oh Willie, try to keep yourself out of trouble, ok?

As most of my friends and family members are aware, I am a huge Willie Nelson fan.  

Even after he cut his hair and now looks like an ugly old lady, I persist in listening to his music, even the weird Reggae stuff, on a regular basis.

I'm a Facebook fan.

I follow him on Twitter.

And one day back in November, my iPhone began to LIGHT UP with messages from friends, family, and Willie's staff.

Apparently, he had done gone and gotten himself arrested.

For marijuana possession.

Imagine that.

I dutifully followed all the news stories, finding out up to the minute information about his incarceration.

One article quoted the arresting officer as saying, "It's kind of surprising, but we treat him just like everybody else."

Really?

REALLY?

It's kind of surprising?

I have never actually met Mr. Nelson, and was a thousand or so miles away, but I could have told you there was pot on The Honeysuckle Rose (Willie's Tour Bus, in case you didn't know).  I would have bet the farm on it, actually.

A few days later, Willie was back in the news.

This time, for a good cause.

I think.

On his website, Facebook fan page, Twitter and every other social medium he could find, he was asking for his fans to make donations to the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office Christmas Toy Drive.

Oh Willie, you old dog.  After the tax thing a few years back, you sure have gotten good at playing the press, huh?

The Sheriff's department was inundated with donations in Willie's name.  

Go Willie.

A few of his more well-known friends took exception to the entire arrest.

Snoop Dogg said, "Willie Nelson is a legend.  Sometimes you need to back up off of certain people and have a certain amount of respect for your elders. And Willie Nelson is our elder ... If you got a problem with Willie Nelson, you got a problem with me."

Wow.  I personally would not want to be on his bad side.  

A court date has not yet been set, but I'll be interested in how it all pans out.  

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this:

By the way, this may be the most pointless blog post I've ever written.

You're welcome.

Drunk. A Southern tale of loss. I mean lost.

This post is an unfortunate by-product of my stalking Mama Kat and her Writing Prompts in an as of yet unrealized attempt to be one of the cool kids.  

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it."

William Faulkner 

I am a book nerd.

Always have been.  Always will be.

I was reading novels by age six, had read everything in my elementary school's library by age nine, and for many years, had a career in retail bookselling.

My house looks like a library threw up all over it.

My kids know that they can always tear me away from Facebook with a request to read to them.

I. Love. Books.

They smell good.  They feel good.  Sometimes, if you're really drunk and lick them, they taste good.

So it only makes sense that when I was in college, I took a lot of upper lever, good-excuse-to-brush-off-Physics-homework-because-this-is-for-CLASS literature classes.

One of my favorites was a Hemingway/Faulkner seminar, which was led by not one, but two of my favorite professors.  I had discovered the joy of William Faulkner in high school when I read Light in August for the first time.  Joy.  Pure joy.  Faulkner was brilliant, and tortured, and alcoholic, and even though I didn't understand two-thirds of it, I thought it was wonderful.

When my Faulkner class planned a trip to Oxford, Mississippi to visit Faulkner's old haunts and stomping grounds, I was in Heaven.  I felt so... smart.  So... in touch.  Clearly, no one had ever understood Faulkner the way I did.  It was like we were soul mates, and if being soul mates with a long dead Southern author of questionable mental facilities and obvious alcoholism was your thing, then I was your girl.

We spent the first day touring the old Faulkner homestead and visiting the gravesite, and dinner was at a quaint local restaurant where the Prof procured large amounts of wine for the mostly underage students - gasp!  After dinner, we were left to our own devices and were planning to meet up again at 8am the next day for breakfast and to visit the loveliest bookstore in all the world.  Having never been a drinker and feeling the effects of the wine, several of us decided to pay Steve, the legal-alcohol-buying-aged Teacher's Assistant, to go to a nearby liquor store for us so we could continue the festivities.  

Alcohol in hand, drink on, we decided to trek across town to revisit the cemetery and maybe sit around Will's grave and be brilliant and tortured.  

As an aside, I'm pretty sure TA Steve pocketed most of our cash and bought us the cheapest large vats of alcohol available, but that's another story.

Anyway, we made it to the gravesite, and sat around saying things that were brilliant and funny only to us.  After all, we were ACADEMICS.  "Yo Momma is a fish" was one particularly amusing anecdote that made its way around the group about fifteen million times - and by the way, have you ever tried to say "Yoknapatawpha" three times fast while drunk on rotgut whisky?  I thought not...  We sat for hours, sharing our liquor with Will (read: pouring it onto his grave), quoting his work, and finally around 2am, decided to call it a night.  We were on our way back to our rooms when the story gets fairly interesting, for me anyway.

For some reason, and I'm fuzzy on the details - imagine that - I decided I needed to tell Will one final thing, and with an assurance of "Go on, I'll catch up," - famous last words if I've ever heard them - I split up from my group and backtracked to the grave.  I guess I told Will what needed to be said, and tried to catch up to my friends.

Oops.

It was 3am, I was in a cemetery in an unfamiliar city, I was drunk, and I was LOST.

Drunk + Lost = Really Bad News.

I'm not really sure what I did the next 5 hours.

I have vague memories of magnolia trees and unfamiliar street signs.

I have no memories of encountering anyone at all.

What I do remember is waking up the next morning, in my room, still drunk and running WAY late for breakfast.

I made it to breakfast, unshowered and wearing most of the previous day's outfit, drank some coffee and stumbled through the rest of the day.

No one from my group remembered seeing me after leaving me at the cemetery.

How I made it back to the room is, and always will be, a mystery.

But the good news is, I learned some really important lessons that night. 1) Never mix wine and hard liquor,  2) Never trust a TA named Steve to pick out your alcohol and 3)Never, ever wander around Oxford, Mississippi at 3am without a wingman.  

These are lessons I'll take with me to the grave.

Mine.  Not Will's.

If you give a girl an iPhone.

If you give a girl an iPhone, she might want to try some new apps.

So, her hubby might jailbreak it for her.

And if her hubby jailbreaks it, she might download 678 apps at a time.

If she downloads 678 apps, her iTunes account might blow up.

No, really, it might Blow. Up.

And if her iTunes account blows up, she might not be able to sync her iPhone.

And if she can't sync her iPhone, she can't listen to music.

And if she can't listen to music, she might get bored and download some more ill-gotten apps.

If she downloads more apps, her iPhone might become almost impossible to navigate through the pages and pages and pages of apps that serve no purpose whatsoever but were FREE become difficult to use.

And it that happens, she might moan and complain incessantly to her hubby that she can't listen to music OR sync her iPhone to the Nike site be sad that her iPhone is difficult to use.

And if she complains to her hubby, he might buy her an iTunes card for Christmas and INSIST she go legit so as to stop the constant whining.

If she gets and iTunes card and deletes the contraband software from her iPhone,

Chances are,

She's probably going to want to download some apps.





With apologies to both author Laura Numeroff and the fine folks at the Apple Corporation, who have nothing to do with the cost of apps, I hear.

Smells like home.

The other day, I was making spring rolls for our Christmas celebration with RJ's family.  There was much discussion in the J household about when to shower, whether to open the windows, what would need to be aired out, etc. etc. etc. because although those suckers taste great, they smell up the entire house while they're cooking.  Not in a BAD way, necessarily, just in a strong, Asian restaurant kind of way.  The smell lingers for days sometimes.  But they taste good, and they're totally worth it.

The smell of spring rolls cooking is one that RJ grew up with.

Me, not so much.  Different kinds of smells are more familiar to me.

For a whole bunch of technical, medical, proven reasons that I won't go into here, smell and memory have been closely linked.  True dat.

There are some smells that take me right back home.  Not home now, but the home of my childhood when things were simple and good and easy.  If only I could have known that then...

The smell of wood smoke is the first smell that takes me back.  That, and homemade biscuits and bacon, and cigarettes and tobacco hanging in the barn waiting to be stripped and bleach and laundry fresh off the line.  I can still smell the clover in the field and the new grass and the rotting leaves in the fall and the water in the creek near our house.

When I smell pigs in the summer, I think of home.  When I smell fresh cut trees and gasoline powered chainsaws, it takes me back.  Ditto cheap aftershave and a carful of kids on the way to church.

There are a million smells that trigger memories for me.

I wonder what my boys will think home smells like.  When they are all grown up and out on their own, what smells will take them back?  Probably baking rum cake, and Pledge floor cleaner, and pizza and popcorn on movie Sunday nights.  Probably homemade macaroni and cheese and CK Be, RJ's favorite cologne.  Probably linen scented candles, and Gain fabric softener, and chocolate chip cookies, just because.  And spring rolls.  Spring rolls will smell like home for them, too.