Coupons

How dull is it to hear about someone else saving money with coupons, or whatever?  Well, actually, I don't find that sort of conversation all that dull, but in a third-person 'put yourself in someone else's shoes' type way, I can understand why it would be.

I'm mentioning this because I've started clipping coupons occasionally, and today we're heading off to the store and getting what I think are some really quite good deals.  99 cent toothpaste, for example.  I'm not a huge fan of coupons for food because I find that most of the food is very over-processed, but coupons for toiletries and cleaning supplies are great.  I struggle with the desire to 'stockpile' necessities, and the equal and sometimes stronger urge to throw away everything I own and live a minimalist life.  I think, I hope, I'm achieving some sort of balance.

I try to live frugally, while still having a good life, and I think we do fairly well at that.  I know that I have the skills to run this house on very little if necessary, but I also know that forcing my family to live in 'survival mode' for the sake of saving money is mean spirited.  And yet, I do enjoy aspects of the frugal life a lot.  I like making the 'best' decision - finding the best price or even choosing to spend more with the knowledge that a product is higher quality.

My competitive nature wants me to push myself, and I have to find grace in life and realize that the struggle to be the best at saving is as bad as wanting to be the best at anything.

World Day of Prayer stuff, church, my children.

Well, I announced in church this morning that the World Day of Prayer is on Friday, and hosted by the United Church this year.  We need to bring two readers, and I gamely volunteered to be one of them and hope that someone else will stand up as the second so I don't have to start calling people and asking them.

Trying very hard to keep the focus on our big vacation in 10 days - we're heading off on a 12 hour drive to see relatives and shop for summer clothes and other things that are difficult to do where we live.

Also at church - a large, gooey, celebratory cake which reminded me of that passage in Lauren Winner's book Girl Meets God.  Perhaps I am meant to be an altar guild member forever.

Saturday

Oh my word I just discovered that I'm supposed to be posting for seven days, not five.  Seven.  Which means that today, which I assumed was my last day of inflicting inane ramblings on the poor folk of facebook is, in fact, not.  I need to think of things to write about for another two days.  People, I'm not that interesting.

I woke up this morning, after having slept in until an embarrassing time, and David asked me if we could have company for supper tonight.  Now, I'm almost always up for company.  No, that's not true, here's the deal: when you don't have children entertaining consists of looking through lots of cookbooks and spending an afternoon shopping for food and possibly even a few days cleaning depending on how important your company is.  And then you all have a lovely long visit and eat all sorts of things and enjoy yourselves.

When you HAVE children, you can only cook in shifts, because otherwise whomever is in the kitchen is attempting to move around whilst dragging the dead weight of a toddler clinging to her legs asking for cheese/a drink of water/ cuddles/ more cheese.  "Oh how sweet' the childless among you coo; no it is not sweet.  It is, in fact, very far from sweet.  Your options are baby gates or a spouse who can effectively distract.

There is also no point whatsoever in cleaning anything because, as my living room can currently attest to, cleaning lasts 3.2 seconds.  And I'm not talking 'well we'll need to re-fluff those cushions' type cleaning.  There is currently a torn apart bun all over the floor.

This means that the only real option is so serve something from the slow cooker, arrange for the children to leave the premises for the majority of the day (or at least just before company arrives) and tidy everything by throwing it into the playroom.  I've been told that this changes as the children get older - but I can't see it from the trenches.

So, the company.  We're having it, and this company falls into the 'I'd like things to look and taste nice' camp, as opposed to family or friend company where my hope is that they like pizza.

I think I've decided to try and make my mother's recipe for zucchini stuffed chicken, and then serve that with something totally store bought, possibly even a store bought dessert.