Bargain Shopping and Great Blessings

So I don't claim to be an all-star bargain shopper. I'm not. I just don't have the patience for it. Well, we're saving for a big vacation, and that means pinching pennies! Well, while I'm not a pro, I feel pretty good about what we bought last weekend.

A couple of weeks ago we bought ground beef (93/7) for $1.99/pd. Considering that it's usually more than $3, I was pretty happy. When we saw the same price at Albertsons this week, we knew we'd be stopping by this week. We got to Albertson's the meat had to be sold by the next day so it was 99 cents a pound! I was thrilled. We also went there for pasta sauce, because they had Ragu for $1.00 a bottle. We eat pasta, and other such things made with pasta sauce all the time. So we grabbed 20 bottles. And that was it, we headed to the check out, and when we were done the cash register spit out six coupons for $2 off our next transaction. So I went back today and bought twelve packages of pasta -- FOR FREE! I know I spent money to get it, but for me, it's pretty good!

In other news, two of our friends received a great blessing this week ... a baby! They haven't been able to have children of their own, and yesterday they brought home a precious little girl, whose mother is going to let them adopt her. They start the legal paperwork tomorrow, so be in prayer for them until the guardianship, and then the adoption are finalized. In the meantime, I'm shopping for baby stuff!

Christmas Time is Here!

Steven and I are very excited to be celebrating our first married Christmas! Tomorrow is our half-iversary ... we'll have been married for 6 months!! We bought our first Christmas tree (my little 4 footer wasn't really working for us), and spent some time shopping and picking out some new ornaments and some outdoor decorations. We know it's silly, but we decided to go ahead and put lights out on our porch/balcony. I love seeing lights outside! I'll update with pictures of outside and of our little Christmas village another day. For now, here's the tree and ornaments!

First, the tree and the presents I (finally!) finished wrapping.

And the obligatory first Christmas Ornament. I knew I wanted something personalized, and it took me awhile to find something I liked. That resulted in this being one of the last ornaments to make it onto the tree!

We also picked up an ornament for Foster when we bought our personalized ornaments. We knew this one was perfect when we saw it, since our dog can hear the treat jar being opened from across the apartment.

Our pastor talked a couple of weeks ago about how his wife decorates for Christmas. He said that they make it a point not to focus on the baby so much that they forget about the sacrifice that came later. For that reason most of their decorations are crosses. I hope to find a new cross ornament every year to add to our tree. Here's our first!

Anyone who knows Steven knows how much he loves football, especially the Cowboys. We, of course, had to add several Dallas Cowboys ornaments to our tree. Because our tree is decorated in Blue and Silver (to look wintry and snowy of course), Steven has decided that it's a Dallas Cowboys tree. He's wrong of course, but believing that seems to make him happy!

The rest of the tree is decorated with ornaments that I've been collecting since Suzi and I got a tree in college. I'll try to post more of those with the rest of the decorations we put up later on this week. Last but not least is our angel. Ever since I was little I have loved the big, ornate angels, and I found one this year that I love!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

November Resolutions

So, in order to avoid the horrific-ness that is holiday weight gain, I recently started a new diet and exercise plan. So far it's all going ok, but it's hard not to eat bread!! I love love love bread. I'm already seeing results though, which is major motivation!

I also found out last week that my temporary job would end last Friday (the 30th), so I'm on the job hunt again. It's really frustrating, especially because I loved my job so much!

In the meantime, I'm playing housewife, which should (I hope) mean pictures of the new place soon! Especially since it's not so new anymore!