Layoff Smirnoff

Cute title eh? It rhymes and I want to drink one badly.

Okay, I’m not feeling good right now. I think I’m getting my son’s virus or I’m just sleep-deprived, the stinker likes to position himself at the bottom of the bed and I kept on transferring him so Yiek and I won’t accidentally kick him. We need a KING bed, now!

This morning I received news that my teammate’s contract will end in 2 weeks. The manager reasoned “budget/cost cutting” and I am naturally scared shitless because I started 1 week later than him. I get heart palpitations everytime the manager calls my attention lest he tells me bye bye contract. I’d like to be optimistic and hope to the high heavens that my being an ex-fulltime employee here will work to my advantage and of course my cheaper rate. I tell you I am CHEAP come now come all buy my services, I am good at eating hotdog and bananas. Can give referrals if needed. Tee..hee.

Ok seriously,it’s not easy to look for another job these days and to top it off I have to pay for 6 weeks worth of daycare attending or not. It doesn’t help that the stinker’s daycare cost more than our monthly rent! Must get serious with coupons *eyebrows meeting tounge out..full concentration while cutting the coupons*.

Store brand vs original

~ Also posted in my other blog (after I find the time to copy).  ~

Next Sunday’s CVS would be challeging as I spent all my extrabucks yesterday. I had to buy Caleb’s prescription and Tylenol, there is a printable coupon but I was in a hurry and my toddler would not allow me to use my laptop anyway; it’s either he’d step on it or close the darn screen. So, I let go of “$1″ savings and headed to CVS. I had to add additional flavoring for his antibiotics (2.99) because he hates the original flavor. Arg!

The CVS coupon machine printed $1 off any store brand pain reliever coupon, on top of that their store brand was $3 cheaper than Tylenol. I read and compared their ingredients and there were two chemicals that were not in Tylenol. I find out I don’t want to risk using store brands for my son so I closed my eyes and bought the much more expensive Tylenol. I was really thirsty and really, really wanted to drink Coke because we had sinugba for dinner (yummy! husband’s recipe). 0.5 liters of coke ran for 1.59, I looked over and saw that the 2 liters Coke Classic was on sale 2 for $3. It wasn’t cold like the 0.5 liters one, so I chuck my thirstiness and waited until I got home, put in some ice and drink the darn coke. Arg, sometimes I hate being thrifty minded takes the fun out of buying impulsively LOL!

I have some deals that I want to do at Shoprite but do I even have the time to go tonight? Time is my enemy in getting good deals. Tsk

CVS 7-22 and the lost sandal

Originally posted at my other blog but sine I feel like it was a funny experience I am reposting it here.

~~~~

I don’t have pictures for this deal since this was done last Tuesday and I’ve already used the items. We went to my Mom’s nursing classmate last Tuesday, had an impromptu dinner at Bbq Pit (A filipino-owned restaurant/turo2). Caleb was such a handful that night super!

I figured since I’m already out, I might as well go to CVS and get the ALLI deal I’ve been wanting to do. Yiek was so sure that he knew were the CVS was but it turned out to be the wrong store (Walgreens – a competitor) to top if off our GPS was not working so I had to use my handy dandy IPhone to map the nearest CVS store. When I was about to go inside the store, I found out that I have lost my other sandal! I don’t trust Yiek to do the deals so I had to go to the store wearing his shoes. I felt like Ronald McDonald because he is size 10 1/2 men and I am a 7.  Immediately, I went to the flippers section and chose the cheapest blue slippers that I can find. I had a hard time making this deal because I picked out the wrong pill count, so I had to complain to their dear manager and it took a long time for the deal to push through!

For this deal I got
- 1 90-count ALLI starter kit  (49.99) an FDA approved diet pill … yes I am desperate!
- Two SOBE flavored water (Buy 1 Get 1 – B1G1)
- one flippers (2.99)

I used the ff. coupons:
- 10 off ALLI pills
- B1G1 SOBE – so the SOBE water was free!
- 10 off 50 purchase (a CVS coupon)
- 3.89 from previous ECB

I paid : 28.50 and got back $10 ECB (an estimate since I lost my receipt). To date this is my biggest OOP since I started couponing but the ALLI deal was such a steal and I really need to lose weight anyway.

Great Deals, new blog

I’ve notice that all I’m blogging about are deals that I made. I can’t help it, I am just so amazed by how much I can get just by saving coupons and planning it right. If I had know about this early, imagine how much I would save. I love blogging about my deals so much that I am creating a new blog and to avoid letting you read about my hu-hum boring deals because you can’t relate.

Click myniftydeals here.

CVS 7/19

I am inez with what I am doing, never ending “object not set to a reference” and my team lead is pressuring to finish these my codes. Massive-headche from debugging. I need a break so I am sharing with you my CVS deal of the week. For those of you not from the U.S., CVS is a pharmacy come convenience store much like our Mercury and Rose Pharmacy back at home. Every week they would publish deals i.e. Buy 1 Get 1 (B1G1) offer, discounted prices and best of them all free Extra Cash Buck (ECB or what I call CVS money). If you pair them up with coupons and sometimes $X off $XX purchase (which I sometimes send on my email) you can really get a good deal! The trick to saving at CVS is to roll your ECB/CVS Money meaning you use the ECB that You got from your previous purchase to purchase the new one. Gets?

Here is my CVS deal for this week:

- 6 SOBE Lifewater (only 5 in the picture, I drank the 6th one it was gooood!)
- one 6-pack Duracell “AAA” battery – one 4-pack Duracell “AA” battery – one Speedstick deodorant (this sale can’t be seen on their shelves but it was advertised to their ads)
- one Zantac 150 8-pack tabs (not on sale and the reason why I went CVSing, because I figured I need to buy this anyway why not make the best of it)
- 2 chocolates (that I got just to make my purchase $30)
- 2 Nesquik milk – one pack of pantyshield

Total Before coupons: 30.xx (can’t tell you the whole amount it’s not shown in the receipt)

Total After coupons, ECB and $5 off 30 promo: 2.96 and I got 3.89 worth of ECB/CVS Money

My ECB wasn’t really much on my standard, I could have gotten more but there weren’t that many deals this week. I really wanted to buy ALLI diet pills because I want to augment my so-called-diet, they were on sale this week but my oh my vultures emptied out the shelf. Grrr! and to think it was still Sunday, the first day of the advertised deal!!!! I’m going to call the store I want to buy those pills!

P.S.

Caleb really liked the SOBE flavored water he kept asking for “Ji-ji-ji”(Juice) and signing “more”, he even threw a tantrum and grabbed my hand to steer me to the kitchen. Haha!

Grocery Pick-up Happy

This is what happens when I don’t plan ahead of time, I go crazy with grocery shopping and I just pick up anything. I am bad with grocery shopping in fact I get high while grocery shopping, it’s my addiction. I am beyond my 50 per week limit, last week I went overboard by $3++ which isn’t so bad but this week I went overboard by $10 and I still need to buy a sack of rice for $13-15 so I will be overboard by almost half of my weekly budget.

We were lacking a lot of basic items on our pantry and what was suppose to be a 8-10 item list became 30+. Eeer! Way to go Claire! On my basic list is garlic, onion, tomato, bell pepper, ground pork, cauliflower, bread, yobaby yoghurt, decaf coffee for Ria and orange juice. All this will only cost me less than $20 but no, I had to pick up bing cherries because they were ridiculously cheap (1.49), johnsonville hotdog (I tasted it last Saturday and it was delish), hotdog bun (because I bought hotdog duh!), yobaby drinkable yoghurt, beechnut cereal and biscuits (for caleb’s baon & breakfast), juicy juice individual pack juices (they were on sale), quesadilla bread (I was hankering for some quesadilla, darn I was hungry while shopping), Mott’s apple juice (I not only bought 1 but 4 eeerrr), starbucks ice cream (free so no complaints here), tomato paste (just because) and organic pasta sauce. See? I was pick-up happy!

I feel bad actually after all of them were rung up and because I only saved $17 in coupons (real total was 75+); I promised myself not to go inside any and I mean ANY grocery store next week. On the upside though, I got passport pictures for free at CVS! I would have wanted to do their photobook deal (Free and they were really, really cute) but I just did not have the time to sort through numerous pictures and I really mean numerous because the hubby is trigger happy moreso now that he bought a VERY expensive D700 (I still can’t get over its price and I can’t believe I allowed him to buy the darn camera).

Help I need sleep

I think I am getting dizzy with coupons, last night I was trying to cut my internet coupons and put them in a photo album but half way through I got tired and stashed all the coupons in the album. I think I will never be as organized as I want to be, the most I can do is organize it per store, me thinks that it’s too much to organize per category. Couponing takes a lot of time, something I am sorely lacking.

Our home is a freakin’ mess! A jungle and I don’t have the time nor the strength to clean them all up. Boxes, toys and papers are everywhere. HEEEELLLLLPPPPP…it’s having its own life!

It’s not the neverending chores that’s getting me, it’s the lack of sleep! For the past 5 days or more, Caleb has been getting up on an ungodly hour and had been kicking us and disrupting our sleep, moreso with me because he wants my attention and I’m the one who has to get up to prepare his bottle. I’ve been getting at most 3 hours of sleep per day. It is sooo bad that every minute of the day I want to crawl to the bed and just sleep. I CAN’T do this, I am just soooo exhausted. Blogging is my only way to keep myself awake, I can’t even think straight. Parenthood hah who said it’s easy and I’ll beat them to a pulp.

Where can I buy time?

I am so freakin’ busy these past few days that I am badly considering taking a day off, salary for that day be damned. Ever since I started working, I barely have “me” time. We would get home at 7 PM, I’d cook(sometimes Yiek cooks for me), prepare Caleb for sleeping and then wash the dishes. Sometimes like yesterday, I have to cook thrice; Caleb’s dinner, our dinner and then Caleb’s baon. By the time I am done it is already 11:00 PM and I barely have 10 minutes to relax. Yesterday, I vowed to clean as you go so I was multitasking like crazy while cooking and decluttering which seems to be never ending and organizing things. Damn that was tiring. Today, I’m planning to do some grocery shopping and file for my advance parole, tomorrow organize pictures so I can get the free photobook from CVS and do produce grocery shopping, Friday go to CVS to claim the photobook. Throw in some cleaning, cooking, washing dishes in between all that and lack of sleep to boot.

Mornings are a crazy rush too even crazier that the evenings. I wake-up, prepare breakfast for Caleb and Yiek, cook Yiek and Caleb’s baon if the dinner last night was not enough but rice is always cooked in the morning (Yiek is O.C. with how fresh his food is), prepare all of our baon/things, take Caleb’s bath, dress Caleb up, take my bath, if Yiek is procastinating I iron his shirt/pants so we wouldn’t be late (I know we can iron in advance but that is still a work in progress) and then rush to the office.

No wonder I am so cranky!

Seriously, where can I buy time? Back to work which becoming crazy too, so many tasks!

2nd Week of July Weekend

This was a full week for us, Wednesday I celebrated my 30th birthday with a quiet dinner at Cheesecake Factory. The price is not quiet though and I had to wince when I got the bill, to date this was the most expensive dinner and we didn’t even like the food that much. I think we ordered the wrong entrees but anyway with entrees that start at $15 it should have been spectacular but we weren’t impressed, the serving was big though and as such we were too full to eat dessert (their specialty) so I just ordered one delish cheesecake for take out. Caleb also was such a handful during dinner, he’d shout and demand for whatever he fancies. He was throwing a mighty tantrum when we wouldn’t let him ride the car stroller because we were $1 short. Grrr! He was also shouting and making his body hard from cheesecake factory to the old navy store that some people had to avoid us, hah! screaming toddler and wearing a dress & high heels is not a good idea at all. The only saving grace was that I got $23 worth of old navy clothes for me for $3 or make that 2.84 because I had a $20 coupon from my last shopping trip. Also, since it was my birthday I got 3 free lipgloss from Sephora. Wee!

Saturday, we attended a baby shower and had a nice time making chika, of course the makulit baby had to have accidents, he scraped his knee and feel from the chair head first which had him screaming hell. I save a lot on our baby shower gift and I mighty proud of having done so! It’s not everyday you can save $14 for a big box of diapers and wipes. Yes! I’m getting good at this.

Sunday, we went to the NJ State Fair but it was too hot, so we were there for only an hour. Caleb had stomach problems when he drank the lemonade there, he was vomitting from h20 poisoning we guess which had us vowing that we will never let him drink juice if we are not sure of the water source (we always use distilled water for him). We then went to Pandan Cuisine and had a nice Filipino dinner. I t forced Yiek to stop at CVS so I can do some shopping. I got Gilette Fusion Razor (perfect timing since Yiek is out of mach3 refills), Tylenol Arthritis Tabs (I know someone will use this back home), 2 notebooks, 1 glue, 1 scissor (because they were giving free school supplies so how can I resist  free), Scott 12-pack bathroom tissue and 1 coke. I paid 1.84 for all of that because I had CVS money to burn from my last CVS shopping trip. Truth be told, I could have paid only $0.30 or less had I not bought the coke but darn I was thirsty from the hot, hot weather. I could have also save my $6 CVS money from the bathroom tissue but we were out of those and I can’t very well use leaves as tissue can I? Although Yiek had tried that out of desperation I wouldn’t. The cashier was really shock at how much I saved and she even said “damn, how did you do it?” when it printed $11 worth of CVS money. All in all a good but tiring weekend, next weekend another party to attend to. Our weekends our full nowadays because summer is short here in NJ a lot of activities are occurring every weekend so we are making the most of it.

Thirty

Today is my bday if I were in the Philippines so, no sense in denying it, I’m 30 and proud of it! My checklist when I was a teen was simple, get married , have a kid before 30 and be filthy rich.  I may not be filthy rich (I am just a middle class ngarag but still pretty mom thank you very much!) but I feel as if I have everything I could ever ask for. Some may want to be a manager or CEO or someone BIG before they turned 30 but I found out, I am not cut out for that. Yes, it’s quite bongga to have your peers ohh and ahh at what you’ve accomplished but I’ve realized I want my life to be simplier.  I discovered that I’m quite content with taking care of my little family, I may not be the best homemaker because I was spoiled rotten by my parents and Lola but I do try to keep my home in tact, not clutter free (I’m working on it!) of course.

So to me, congratulations for living 30 fruitful years ! Now, I’m off to make my “before 40″ checklist, it’s quite ambitious really but I have 10 years to do them so I’m not in a hurry.