homeade popcorn

soooo you were expecting a baby update. but no. what brought me back to the blog was the best popcorn i've ever tasted. and we made it home-ade. HA. why did we do this? a couple weeks ago i decided to get rid of my microwave. because "anything that gets that hot without fire must be from the devil." (ellen) haha, i don't know, maybe cooking food in the microwave is bad for you, maybe it's not. i mainly did it for the counter space. and i honestly haven't even missed it. hello, you can reheat everything on the stove or in the toaster oven. my only issue with no microwave was popcorn. we love popcorn. and we could no longer press our 'popcorn' button and have it ready in 2 mins and 30 seconds. so. last night at the store we bought some organic popping corn and tonight i used this recipe to make it on the stove top. the only thing i changed was that i used coconut oil instead of canola oil like she has in the recipe. it was AMAZING. (and by the way, i am loving coconut oil right now to cook with. it's delicious and allegedly really good for you. read about it here.)

okay, enough about the popcorn. here's some pics of the babe. :-)

and here are her 2 new achievements:
this week, we were sitting together and she was staring at her hand which was balled up in a fist. then she opened it up wide like she was giving someone a high five, and then she put it back in a fist. she did this a couple times. i watched her discover her hand! #2 is that yesterday i was holding my cell phone up to take a picture of her and she wouldn't take her eyes off of it. wherever i moved it, her eyes followed it. and that was the first time i'v seen her be able to follow something with her eyes. it's crazy watching a person do things for the first time.

verity at four weeks

now that i have a child, i am amazed at people who have children and still manage to blog. who has the time? not me. right now i often feel like i'm sleepwalking through my day. a LOT of days i find myself sitting on the couch in my sweatpants, having just made my coffee and eggs and it is noon. and i feel like i have not done anything yet. except fed and changed a baby of course.

anyway, i'd like to write more but i'm simply too tired. here are some pics of our sweet daughter with her grandma and great grandma. enjoy.

she's here

so on wednesday, my due date, i wrote a little prematurely that there was going to be no baby that day. i think i wrote that post about 7 am. and at 1:30 pm, my water broke. at 4 pm i started having contractions. and at 12:30 am on thursday morning, our baby daughter, verity pearl flanders was born. wow. here she is:



we got to the birth center at about 6:30 pm and my midwife lisa gave me some unfortunate news- no i was not as far along as i thought and no, i was not gonna have the baby in the next hour. she suggested we go walk around and get something to eat. so we went and walked through a nice neighborhood close to the birth center. it must have looked hilarious to people to see a very pregnant women having contractions on the sidewalk in front of your house. not to mention all the joggers that passed by us and a nine year old boy on a skateboard who i must have terrified. i mean, i was really having contractions. i threw up in front of someone's house. good thing we don't live in that neighborhood. then we went to food lion to get some snacks. had a few contractions in there. again, must have looked hilarious to people shopping in the store. i felt like i was about to die. but little did i know it was just the beginning.

we got back and a couple hours later, lisa checked me again and said i was complete and whenever i felt like pushing i should push. YES. this was music to my ears. and i felt like pushing. i pushed for about 2 hours. which felt like an extremely long time. with the help of mark, the most encouraging and amazing husband i know, and three excellent midwives, and god's grace and strength, i delivered her at 12:35 am thursday morning without any pain medication or epidural. it was thrilling.

today

so today is a big day. it's our 3 year anniversary. and also, i am due today. although i am pretty sure there is not going to be any baby action today. pearl seems to be taking her time. so we will probably go out to dinner at mama ricotta's to celebrate 3 yrs of marriage and i will order a salad and an entree AND a dessert and people will ask me, "when are you due?" and i'll say, "today," and they'll give me a wide-eyed look like, "wow, shouldn't you be at home in bed waiting for that baby to pop out?" i've been getting that look for the past week. people are so funny. as if being really pregnant means you shouldn't go to parties or to the grocery store.

i will also probably go to harris teeter today. twice. i mean it's super doubles week, and if i miss out today, i might lose my chance.

when i call people (i.e. my mom) i've started opening the conversation with, "hi, don't worry i'm not in labor." last week i called mark at work and he was with a customer but he answered and said, "are you okay?" and i was like, "yeah, i'm fine, you don't have to answer your phone when you're busy, i can leave a message." and he says, "uh, denise, you're 9 months pregnant. i have to answer my phone."

so any day now people, any day.

my husband's quirks

i figured now's as good a time as any for updating you on some of mark's quirks.

whenever he does laundry he sorts like items together even if they don't actually go together. for example, towels. there are bath towels and kitchen towels. he puts them all together, and whichever there are more of, that's where he puts them away. so i frequently find our bath towels and washcloths in one of our kitchen drawers. and i find our kitchen towels in our linen closet with our bath towels. i have learned to be okay with this.

so he also puts all white socks together. mine AND his. everytime i go to my sock drawer and can't find my white socks, i remember, oh right, he puts all the white socks in his drawer. i cannot figure out why he does this.

he is a man of extremes. for example, somewhat recently he decided he wanted to eat healthier. i said, okay, and made some recommendations, such as not eating two bowls of ice cream every day, not ordering chicken alfredo when he's out to lunch, etc. he said, "no, i need something harder than that." so he decided to go vegetarian and went and bought a bunch of vegetables to start making "vegetable smoothies." i consider myself a healthy eater, but his "smoothies" were disgusting. they looked like puke. (by the way, this phase lasted about 2 weeks.)

another extremes example - last night he thought he was starting to get sick, had a stuffy nose, etc. I recommended nyquil. He was like, no, I'll just eat some garlic cloves. So he ate three garlic cloves. PLAIN. that was his remedy.

he surprised me the other day though at his attention to detail in one case. i recently ran out of my usual shampoo, and bought a different kind (pantene pro-v) that i used to buy all the time. literally, the first day i used it, he says to me, "did you change shampoos? you're hair smells like what it used to smell like when you lived at the fountain." and yes, he was correct. after one day of the shampoo he could remember that the last time he smelled it was FOUR years ago.

how to shop at CVS

so i have gotten completely sucked in to the world of saving money. maybe i have been influenced by my money-saving husband. i'll let you know when i come up with my own business idea; then i'll REALLY be mark flanders' wife.

anyway, i want to tell you how to shop at CVS because some of you have expressed interest. basically, you can shop at CVS for all of your household items and toiletries and get most of them for FREE or extremely discounted.

here's how it works:

CVS has a loyalty card, like a VIC card at Harris Teeter. It's called an Extra Care card. Go into CVS and get one. You have to scan your EC card when you shop.

Every week CVS puts various items on sale and offers Extra Care Bucks (ECB) back when you buy them. for example, this week, Oral B toothbrushes are on sale for $4 and when you buy one, you get $4 in ECB. This is basically store credit that prints out at the bottom of your receipt. You can then use the ECB to buy whatever you want, even another Oral B toothbrush to get you more ECB.

So you walk into CVS, pay $4 for a toothbrush. Get a receipt for 4 ECB. Walk back and get another toothbrush, use your 4 ECB to pay for it and then ANOTHER 4 ECB will print out at the bottom of your receipt.

So the idea is to combine coupons and ECBS to make things free.

Here is what my trip to CVS this week looked like:

I started with 7 ECB from the previous week.
Transaction #1
I bought:
(1) Oral B Cross Action toothbrush $4
(2) Pantene Shampoo and Conditioner $3.49 ea
Coupons I used:
-.75/1 Oral B Cross Action PG 2/21
-$3/2 Pantene Products PG 3/07
-$7 ECB
Total Due: $1.21
Get Back $6 ECB ($4 from Oral B, $2 from Pantene)

Transaction #2
I bought:
(1) Gillette Fusion Razor $8.99
(1) Tide Detergent $5.97
(1) Tide Stain Release $3.99
Coupons I used:
-$4 off Gillette PG 2/07
-$1 off Tide PG 2/07
- $3.99 (free Tide stain release when you buy Tide detergent)
-$6 ECB
Total Due: $3.96
Get Back: $5 ECB ($4 from razor, $1 from Tide)

Transaction #3:
I bought:
(2) Pantene shampoo and Conditioner $3.49 ea
(1) Dawn dish soap $0.99
Coupons I used:
-$3/2 Pantene Products PG 3/07
-$5 ECB
Total Due: $0.56
Get Back: $2 ECB (from Pantene)

After tax the amount I spent was about $6.50 and I ended up w/ 2 ECBs to use next week.
Value of the items: $37.92
That is about 80% off.

AND here's the really good part: I am still learning how to do this, so it will get even better. I want to get to the point where I don't pay for anything. I am learning how to do this through Jenny, the lady who writes www.southernsavers.com and she notes on her website that in the Spring 2008, her Current CVS savings was – $757.89. Total spent in cash for Spring 2008 - $15.68. I mean, are you kidding me?

Go to her CVS-ing guide here: http://www.southernsavers.com/getting-started-guides/how-to-cvs/.

get your groceries 70% off

here's how:

super double coupons at harris teeter. they are my new favorite thing/addiction. normally ht doubles coupons up to .99 but this week, during "super doubles" they double coupons up to 1.98. Thus, if you have a coupon for 1.98 off of something, you actually have a coupon for 3.96 off of something. i know.

let me share what i walked away from harris teeter with on wednesday:

soft scrub cleaner (free)

soft scrub extra strength cleaner (.99)

2 cans planters mixed nuts (2.50 ea)

quaker oats (.45)

smart start cereal (.09)

2 glade plug-ins (both free)

diced tomatoes 28oz (.99)

suave lotion (1.14)

2 suave deodorants (both free)

italian sausage (2.95)

4 bunches of asparagus (2.50 total)

3 bell peppers (1.25 total)

bag of spinach (1.99)

16oz mushrooms (1.49)

whole grain bread (1.85)

borden cheese singles (.19)

6 dannon yogurts (.33 each)

2 johnsonville summer sausage (1.27 each)

the retail value of all of this was $96.28. and i paid....drumroll please...$25.96. if you have not taken up coupon-ing, please, i beg you- join me. (see www.southernsavers.com for how to do it.)

later on in the week i also got these items completely FREE: aquafresh toothpaste, 2 wholy guacamoles, 16oz sour cream and 2 bottles hot sauce. and 3 lbs of ground chicken for 50 cents.