Couponing, because Vince Asked

Okay, so it's been mumble*threeyears*mumble time since my last update of this blog. And maybe I should get back on the horse, if anyone out there is/was still reading.

But, it's a handy way to share some couponing tips with folks who are interested, so here goes:

First: my recently posted savings are a bit unusual, since I am working my way through "spending" coupons for free food items from a local grocery store. They run a promo once each spring where they sell small chest freezers (5.0 cubic feet) for $200.....which is about what the same freezer goes for at Home Depot or Lowe's. BUT, if you buy it at the grocery store, they give you $200 worth of coupons for free....freezer food. A lot of those items are not things that we normally buy and use, but hey, free food, so we'll get it and eat it eventually.

That's not the kind of couponing I'm going to write about, because that is a once-and-done deal for our family. I'm also not going to talk about the extreme couponing that you see on TV shows. Lots of those people stock up on things years in advance of when their families will use them, or simply take advantage of finding things for free, and then donating the excess to local shelters or food banks. No, the kind of couponing that I'm going to write about is the system I've developed that work for Brian, the fur-critters, and I. We're a small family, but we've got a fair amount of storage, which lets me stock up on things that we do use that will store long-term, while lowering our grocery costs fairly significantly. We try to buy a lot of our fresh food locally and freeze it. We are a "medium" on the scale of all-fresh to all-prepared foods. We'll buy store bought pasta and spaghetti sauces, but add our own meat/veggies to the sauce. We rarely buy things like Hamburger Helper and make our own pizza at home rather than buying freezer pizza.

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Set yourself up for Success

1) What grocery stores are near you? How many of them are you willing to visit in a week to save? Are there any stores that offer added bonuses like coupons off your next order, or gas points? Are there any stores that you just hate shopping at, that make it not worth your time to go there, no matter how much money you save? Do any stores take competitor's coupons? Which stores double coupons, and for how much? Which stores give you credits for bringing your own bags and which don't? For example, we have three local grocery chains--one is near Brian's place of work, and two are across the street from each other. All three are within five miles of our house, so it's an easy, short trip. Two of the stores offer gas reward points--spend X-much money, get Y-much money off your next gas fill-up, and the participating gas stations are also on our commute and routinely have competitive gas prices. One of them makes me mental, though, because the customers are rude, the produce is yicky, there's never enough cashiers on duty, and one of their shopping carts attacked me in the parking lot last week when it tangled with a pot-hole, leaving me limping all week and sporting a spectacular bruise on my knee. All of those things make that particular store not worth it to be part of a weekly rotation, but when staples go on sale, I do make stops there.

2) Figure out which things you're brand-loyal to, and which things you are omnivorous about. We don't really care about which brand of spaghetti sauce we eat, so we stock up on whatever is on sale with a coupon. On the other hand, we do prefer some name-brand cereals to the generic store-brands, so those we watch closely for sales.

3) Figure out what days your store flyers cover. Two of our stores go Friday-Thursday, and one goes Sunday-Saturday. Make sure you know when the deals start and stop.

4) Scout your stores over a couple of weeks, and figure out when the store is empty. I prefer later Saturday evenings and early Sunday mornings for shopping. Your mileage may vary based on your community, church/synagogue attendance, and days that sale flyers start.

5) Figure out how you will organize your coupons. Some people use 3-ring binders with baseball card sleeves. Some people use recipe card boxes. I use this coupon organizer, which velcros shut, has unlabeled dividers, and fits in my purse. I made sections for each store that I shop at, then categories of coupons, then a slot for Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons, one for department stores, and one for restaurants. My pen and shopping list fit inside fairly easily. What works for you might vary.

6) Get your hands on print coupons! Subscribe to your local paper. In print. Yes, really. Most papers will have a subscription option for just Sunday, or for weekends-only delivery. Figure out which one gets you the Sunday Paper coupons, and do that subscription. It's generally cheaper to subscribe than to just go to the gas station and buy a paper every Sunday. Plus, when your subscription runs out, the papers will usually cut you a deal on a reduced subscription price to renew.

7) Check out electronic coupons. Redplum puts out the coupon flyers in your paper, and they also have a website where you can print more than one copy of the coupons you liked from the paper. Coupons.com SmartSource, RedPlum, and Val-Pak also have useful coupons for our family. Kelloggs.com and other manufacturer sites have coupons, but much less regularly. If there's a good local sale, though, it's worth the time to google for extra coupons. A word on electronic coupons, though: be careful that you're not spending more on ink and paper than you're saving in coupons. I always set my printer to draft black and white printing when I print coupons.

7) a) If you get REALLY in to couponing, you can buy coupons on eBay or sign up to participate in coupon trains where you send along unused coupons to people, and receive unused coupons from others. This hasn't been something that is useful for our family, but I understand that it allows monster savings if you're buying lots of consumable things like, say, diapers or baby foods.

8) Don't be afraid to take the time to ask for rain checks. Say tuna goes on sale, and someone cleans out all 300 cans of tuna at your store. Instead of checking back multiple times during the week, go to the Customer Service desk and ask for a rain check. Then you can buy the tuna on your next trip to the store even if it's no longer on sale.

Now you're almost ready to shop. The final steps are making a list, and organizing your coupons. The goal is to stack your savings: buy items that are on sale, and use a coupon to get a further discount. It's a little bit like a scavenger hunt, and a little bit like a memory game.

Writing the List
I keep several running grocery lists. One is the day-to-day things that we've run out of--milk, cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables, yogurt. These are things that may go on special, but rarely have coupons in the paper. The other lists I generate with the weekly store flyers. You'll find the rhythm that works for you, but I like to read the sale flyers first and see what's on sale at each store. Read the flyer carefully. Lots of things will be featured, but not actually marked down. Or, the flyer will show something on sale, but it's only $0.30 or $0.40 off. Lots of stores use BOGO to mean both buy one get one free, and buy one, get one half-off. As you get the hang of it, you start to know what is a significant discount, and what is just the store trying to drive sales of certain items. It takes me 20-30 minutes to go through the three store flyers and make a list of things on good sale at each store that we're going to stock up on. Once I have my store-by-store lists, I add the day-to-day things to the store list where I will get the most extra rewards for not buying things on sale, or to the list that has the brand/flavore I like/whatever.

Next, I go through the week's coupon flyers, clipping out coupons for anything that we use, whether I'm going to buy it that week or not. If I find a coupon for something that is already on my list, I make a mental note to get duplicate coupons online for the item.

Finally, I go through my coupon organizer, putting in the new coupons, discarding expried ones, and pulling out the coupons I'm going to use for the week. I sort them by store so I have my fist full of coupons all ready to go when I get to the store.

Going Shopping
When you're ready to attack, go to the store in the mental mindset that you're ONLY buying things on your list. I always forget things on my list that I think of as I'm shopping, but that's an easy way to have your bill creep up. Whenever possible, I try really really hard to simply stick to my list. I try not to walk up and down every aisle, but only go SPECIFICALLY for the things on the list.

If I'm buying multiples of things and I have a coupon, I note that down in my list. Be as specific as possible in your list, because it's easy to mis-read the fine print on the coupon while you're shopping. For example, this week, my list read: Cascade Pods: $3.99/20 pk, plus $1/off 2 + $0.20 off.

Loosely translated: the Cascade pods were on sale for $3.99 for a pack of 20 pods (or 20 loads of dishes in the dishwasher). Regular price was 4.49. I had one coupon for $1.00 off two packages. I had a second coupon for $0.20 off a single package. We're not picky about brand of dishwasher liquid, and only buy the pods when they're cheaper than the liquid stuff. Turns out that the sale on the pods of $3.99 each made them cheaper than the liquid in a bottle. The $1/off 2 brought the price down to $3.49 each on two of the packages. The second coupon, $0.20 off, was doubled at the register to $0.40, which brought the third package down to $3.59. So, all told, we saved $1.50 on the store sale, and $1.40 with the coupons, or a total of $2.90, on enough dishwasher chemicals to keep us cleaning dishes for at least two months. We have plenty of space to store the pods, so it was a win for us.

Another recent deal: We like pierogis. A LOT. We eat them at least once a week, usually with kielbasa. It's a quick meal that we can eat on a week night with about 20 minutes of prep. Our preferred brand of kielbasa is Hillshire Farms. We generally stick with Mrs. T's pierogis because that's what is stocked at our local stores. The paper had a coupon for Hillshire Farms $1.00 off any sausage. It also had a coupon for $1.00 off any 3 Mrs. T's pierogis. I went online and printed duplicates of both the coupons. Our local store put both items on sale in the same week. They had both for BOGO, or 2/$4.00 pierogis and 2/$6.00 sausage. I ended up buying 4 kielbasa with 4 copies of the coupon. The pierogi were a little more insane, since I had to find a lowest common denominator of the sale (BOGO) and the coupons ($$ off 3). The math went down like this:
Kielbasa BOGO--savings $3.00 on each pair x 4 = $12.00 saved. In addition, $1.00 coupon x 4 = an additional $4.00 savings. Total spent on Keilbasa: $12.00. Total saved: $16.00.
Pierogi BOGO--savings $4.00 on each pair x 3 pairs = $12.00 saved. In addition, $1.00 coupon on 3 x 2 = an additional savings of $2.00. Total spent on pierogi: $10.00. Total saved $14.00
OR, Total spent: $22.00, total saved $30.00.
.....and whenever we have pierogis and keilbasa, we end up with a leftover meal that I can take for lunch the next day. So, for $22.00, we got 4 dinners for the two of us and 4 additional lunches for me, or a total of 12 meals for $22.00, give or take whatever actual side dishes we make for dinner that night. Not too shabby.

Sure, our freezer looks insane with a huge stack of boxes of pierogi, but they keep well long-term in the freezer and we'll eat them eventually. That also gives us the wiggle room that we don't need to re-stock on something that is a staple of our diet until it goes on sale again, when we can clean up again by stacking store sales and coupons.

There are a zillion places on the web you can learn about couponing. What I have learned is that there's a zillion regional variations in types of deals that stores give, extra incentives that your store might have, and types of coupons that are most prevalent in any given region. Still, taking those tips and meshing them with the reality of our storage, our food usage, and our local stores, I've been able to start saving 30-40% on the regular, with occasional trips that save us upwards of 60%. My grocery orders look a little insane on the belt--like the time we bought six packages of toilet paper, a tube of Neosporin, and six jars of spaghetti sauce, and nothing else. But, it frees up enough cash to make fresh local produce viable within our budget.

I have been spending a bit more than our usual weekly grocery run for the past few weeks, since we're getting up and running and stocking up on staples. I fully expect our grocery bill to shortly come down to between $50 & $100 a week (or even every two weeks) now that we have the storage for dry goods, canned goods AND frozen food. That makes it easy to stock up on meats, too.

I also find that, though this takes up several hours on a Saturday evening and Sunday morning, that's time I'd be spending parked on the couch anyways. I'm just multi-tasking in front of the TV now or spending a few extra hours out of the house when I'd normally be running weekend errands anyways. Because I can cook out of my pantry and my freezer for most of the week, I spend very little extra time at the grocery store during the week, even if I've been lazy and not planned the meals for the week. I don't have to fight the rush-hour just-need-a-few-things lines when I'm tired and hungry and prone to buying anything that looks good, which makes our meal choices more responsible AND more economically sound.

There comes a point in each grocery store marathon where I'm tired, and getting ready to junk the final store list and just get everything I need at this place so I can go home and get on with my other chores. To combat that tendency towards laziness and exhaustion, I do several things:
1) keep a snack handy so I don't start buying junk food in the store. Low blood sugar + grocery shopping = misery.
2) After each store, I inspect the receipt to see how much I've saved. I write the spent / saved total on each shopping list.
3) When I get home, I total everything up from all the stores into one giant spent / saved list. Then I occasionally brag about it on Twitter.

What we'll eventually start doing is transferring that amount of money saved into our savings--towards nice dinners out or towards our next vacation. We're not quite there yet, but that's on our horizon. Brian still thinks I'm nuts, but he's much amused by how much pleasure I take in seeing that savings total go up and up and up.

So, you'll eventually develop your own system, but this is how it works best for us. Hopefully you've found a few tips that will help you join in on the savings party, too. Be careful, though--it's easy to become addicted and even obsessed. However, I'd argue that as long as you're buying things that you genuinely will use, it's a worthwhile obsession to have.

Painting and Pussycats

Whoooooeeeee, it's been a long time.

To sum up:
Brian got laid off in July. We were homeless in September. We closed on a house in October and moved in just as soon as we could. It needed a LOT of work. We're still wading through it. Brian laid a hardwood floor while I wrote my portfolio for National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

The rest of the house we're working on room-by-room after the initial painting binge and laying carpet in the bedrooms in October and November. Everything is lingering in the 85%-done range, but we're knocking things off little by little.

This week was spring break. We did a lot of work on the house. And adopted a pussycat from a local shelter.

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We have a front sitting room, divided from our back living room by a galley kitchen and dining area. We do most of our living in the back, which needs a significant amount of work, so we decided to focus on getting the sitting room finished first.

First, let's cast our minds back to the way the house used to look...........







Glance back up there and REALLY take in the dingy yellow walls, the hideous awning windows, the nasty old 60s linoleum tile.

The first part of the transformation was the windows. We ordered them just before New Year's, and they were installed in February.

The guys were supposed to be here between 8 & 9.






No guys.





STILL no guys. And no phone call.

So I called the office, and they let me know that the guys were running late. Nice of them to fill me in.

FINALLY they showed up, at almost 11:00.

There's windows on that thar truck!





Didn't take them very long to get to work tearing a big hole in the house. They started in the back living room, and did one set of windows at a time. Then they worked their way around to the front sitting room.



























Then we decided we were going to paint. We picked out a nice neutral tan color that looked dirty and cold once we got it on the walls. 25 paint samples later, we decided that the public areas of the house would be green, and we'd repaint the office to be not-green.

This past weekend, we did a LOT of painting. Then we committed a lot of hangings.

I give you the after:















We love it so much, and it's given us so much hope! This place WILL feel like a home, eventually.

I've painted the first coat of paint on the entry way and down the hallway, and part of the kitchen. This evening and tomorrow around school work I'll put on the second coat and get going on the trim on that. Next up is the dining room and whatever parts of the kitchen I can reach without an epic ladder.

We have a lot of hideous wallpaper to strip in the living room yet. Then we can patch and paint and hang the curtains back there, too.

We can't wait to get it done.

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Here's the still nameless kittyface.

The first hour or so he was hanging with us in the bedroom, being all social. Then we tried to introduce a dog to him and he retreated to the closet. The TOP SHELF of the closet. When it appeared that he wasn't coming down any time soon, I stuck his basket up there so at least he had something to snuggle down in.















Yesterday, though, he decided to make our bed his fortress of solitude and hung out there for a significant part of the day.









This morning he was pretty comfortable with the bedroom door open and the doggies sniffing him through the gate, so I brought the dogs in one at a time to get better acquainted with him. After a while, we had some serious inter-species diplomacy going on.

First, Quinn made some peace with him:












"I haz a kitty!"


Then, Pulu decided she could be calm and not-spazzoid enough to come visit, too.














Here he is, lounging after I kicked the mutts back out of the bedroom.





After the Great Peace Summit, I took Mr. Pants to the vet for a check-up. He is 7 lbs of healthy kitty, give or take one ear full of ear mites. Poor itchy boy.

While we were at the vet, he discovered that if he headbutted the seam in his cardboard carrier hard enough, he could squeeze himself out through the resulting openings. Didn't take him long to reproduce the trick. I was planning to go get him a proper kitty carrier after the vet's appointment, but I ended up bumming one from the vet for the trip over to the pet store and back. Heh.

After we got back from the vet today, I locked the dogs in the bedroom via the doggy gate and gave himself the tour of the rest of the house. He's been exploring and settled in to hang out on top of my grandmother's table next to my grandpa's Ugly Lamp (tm).

Now everybody's loose in the house together and co-existing pretty peacefully. Catbutt even got up to chasing down a big ol' buzzy-fly that was hanging out in the house this afternoon.







He really, really, REALLY needs a name. Nothing quite seems to suit him yet, but he's just now starting to explore the house and show us his true personality.

Only a little late: Spring Break 2009

I just realized that I NEVER posted anything from spring break this year. This is from my paper-and-pen journal on our way to the airport, with pictures and links along the way. Our life list and pictures are thrown in for fun at the end. This was our second run at the Buena Vista, Texas, area. This is a prime birding location down at the tip of the boot-toe in Texas, because migrants need to decide if they're going to follow the Rio Grande or the East coast. Tons of birds get pushed in/down by disturbances in the Atlantic / Gulf of Mexico, which means that lots of exotics make their only appearance in the US in this 200-mile stretch of border towns. Plus, it's warm in April, while we're usually ducking snow storms on our way out of town on Spring Break.

We got a whole mess of new life birds, which is pretty impressive. In what now totals just over seven days of birding in the region when you combine time from our two trips, we got better than 100 new life birds. Which is even more impressive.

There was a lot of time spent in the car this trip, and that got overwhelming because this wasn't supposed to be a driving vacation. We flew down there and stayed so we'd have more time to bird. Our location was what we thought of as centrally located, but we found ourselves driving 30, 50, 70 miles to get to the next birding spot. It made for what felt like late nights and shorter birding days.

It was sunny and gorgeous most of the week. This was a welcome respite from the stormy weather we'd been having for most of March and April. Seriously, who turned on the blizzards at the EQUINOX!?!?!

We went to a lot of places we'd birded before. We also went to some cool new places that we'd like to visit again at other times of the day or with different weather conditions. There were a few places that we visited before that we didn't get back to, as well. So, in summary, we will probably go back down there again.

The bed and breakfast that we stayed in was really rather nice this time. We both agreed that it was farther from where we did most of our birding. On our last day, we went out to South Padre Island, which, it turns out, was HOPPING for rare species and protected birding spaces. We could have stayed at the KOA Kampground on the Island for the same price as the B&B, so we're thinking next time we'll do that. Camping on the ocean. YES.

We rented a small SUV for this trip, and it worked out fairly well. We really liked the Dodge Nitro that was ours for about ten minutes before we realized it had temp tags that were set to expire the next day. We didn't like the Chevy Equinox we had next because it had all sorts of chrome in the cockpit that reflected into our eyes as were were driving around. Plus the windshield wiper squirter was broken, so even though there was plenty of wiper fluid in the reservoir, we had bugs all over our windshield. Remember that opening scene in Men In Black when there are bugs splattering all over the windshield of the truck? Yeah, the highway was sort of like that. Which made birding from the highway ..... difficult.

A brief stop at the McAllen airport the second day of our trip saw us switching into a Toyota Rav 4 that was pretty acceptable for the rest of the trip. We still wish we would have had that Nitro for the rest of the trip. That was a pretty sweet ride.

We had our customary run-ins with border patrol while we were down there. Lots of the birding places are right along the Rio, and are just dirt access roads that run down to the river. The Rio Grande River is only 100 yards wide at a lot of these pull-out picnic places. A strong arm could huck a baseball straight across the water with little problem. We would often cruise down to the river only to have a BP agent follow us a few minutes later to check on us. I'd guess that they see as many birders as they do coyotes down there, since they didn't seem to be surprised to find us there with our binos. One or two guys even asked us if we'd seen anything good!

The last time we went down a path to the river, it was supposed to have superlative birding. We parked under a tree next to an old picnic table to eat our lunch. We were going to leave the car, and walk back up the road to an old defunct RV park that is still maintained for birding trails. While we were sitting there eating, we spotted the green kingfisher, a bird that's eluded us two years in a row. Brian snuck out of the car with camera in hand to try and get a picture of it. As he was lining up the shot, the bird flew. And Brian realized there were four guys on the Mexico side of the river with sniper rifles. He backed away just as slowly as he could force himself to do. I didn't start to freak out until I got my binos on them and realized that the guns weren't over their shoulders but in their hands. Of course, if they'd really wanted us dead, we wouldn't be here anymore. So that was exciting.

(and also high on the list of stories that we will not be telling my mom) (oops. Mom, don't have a heart attack. It was months ago. REALLY!)

There was a lot of aruging with the GPS unit, which made our lives mostly better. There were a lot of places that provided lousy maps or directions for how to get there, and since those places were off the beaten track, a few times our GPS didn't think we were even on the road. After a bunch of by-the-seat-of-our-pants navigations, though, we've got a big list of places saved in our address book for next time.

We didn't run into local birding friends on this trip. We did, however, run into a few folks more than once. It worked out really well, because the first set of ladies directed us to a feeding station we'd missed, where we found the buff-bellied hummingbird that we'd been hunting. At another place, a gentleman pointed out a bird that turned out to be a blue grosbeak (even though he'd thought it was something else--he was an enthusiastic German birder in a touring RV that we played hop-scotch with a few times at one of the parks. A few other guys helped confirm some shorebird IDs that Brian and I were mostly convinced about, which built our confidence in being able to ID shorebirds (we both share a weakness there). Birders on SPI were very friendly and happy to give tips of where to go to see different things on the island. We passed a few of them viewing something through scopes and pulled over along the side of the road. There we got a good look at the Aplomado Falcon. We'd gotten a good glimpse of a pair of them earlier in the day, but they'd spooked when Brian got out to warn the birders behind us of them.

One of the birders we ran into mis-identified the Tamaulipas Crow at the Brownsville Dump. Still, last time we'd wanted to go to the dump and not had time. So this time we did. We spent an hour or better there, marveling at the profusion of birds swarming around the active work zones.

We were both totally entertained. There were all of these "unofficial" birding hot-spots that have rarities. Those places are accustomed to birders showing up for birds instead of the normal business, and many of them have maps that they'll give out with advice on where to go. There are all of these funny birding codes: "pull through the first fence to the caretakers cabin. Honk twice. If nobody comes, proceed through the second fence, park and start your walk." Things like that. The Brownsville Dump is one of those places. The guide book said, "pull up to the left of the office and show your binoculars, they'll wave you inside."

In reality, when we arrived, the guy said, "Oh, good! Let me give you a map!" and slid one out through the cashier-night-drawer. He explained all about where we should go and where the best viewing was. He was incredibly friendly for a sanitation worker dealing with what was probably his eightieth car of birders for the day! We went away empty on the crow, but got some really good looks at Chiuahuan Ravens. We also got a big kick out of the fact that we're probably the only two people we know who would stop and have lunch on vacation in a landfill. Heee!

The guy who though he'd seen the crow at the dump also told us that the Tropical Parulas were still at the highway rest-stop. Brian and I altered our route on our way back to the airport to go through the rest-stop, and realized that we'd done some good birding there when we'd driven down two years ago. We crossed the highway and beat through the bushes a little bit and found our Parulas, the last bird for the trip.

We got to the San Antonio Airport in time for a massive line of thunderstorms to cut straight across all of Texas. We're talking replete with tornadoes and golf-ball sized hail. FUN! We stood in line for a dog's age at the airline counter to try and see if there was another flight line that would help us avoid Dallas-Fort Worth airport. We found out that it didn't matter that our flight was delayed out of San Antonio, because our flight from DFW to Philly was straight up cancelled!!!! The lady punched about a zillion keys on her workstation and finally hooked us up with a completely different route home to my folks' house. We ended up going to Chicago, then hopping airlines and coming in to Harrisburg.

The net result was a 11:30 pm rescue from my dad at Harrisburg Friday night, and my folks taking us down to Philly on Saturday afternoon to retrieve our car.

And thus ends the mis-mash account of our spring break trip 2009 to Mission, Texas, to see all the awesome migrating birdies.

Here's our list (in slightly chronological order):

Hermit Thrush (me only)
Golden Cheeked Warbler (hellooo, endangered species!)
Long Billed Dowitcher
Mottled Duck (me only)
Least Grebe
Laughing Gull
Buff-Bellied Hummingbird
Gull Billed Tern
Least Tern
Greater Yellowlegs
Green Kingfisher
Painted Bunting (me only)
Audubon's Oriole (I called this one and was VERY proud of myself!)
Swainson's Warbler
Louisiana Waterthrush
Red Crowned Parrot
Mexican Magpie Jay
Royal Tern
Bonaparte's Gull
Black Crested Titmouse
Wilson's Plover
Sandwich Tern
Ruddy Turnstone
Willett
Tennessee Warbler
Aplomado Falcon
Chiuahuan Raven
Caspian Tern
Common Paracque
Olive Sparrow
Black Throated Green Warbler
Blue Capped Viero
Blue Winged Warbler
Nashville Warbler
Swainson's Thrush
Baird's Sparrow
Black Skimmer
Glossy Ibis
Neotropic Cormorant
Tropical Parula

Here's some of our best shots. Also: CAUTION!! There be snakes below!

Black necked stilts: not new this trip, but one of my favorite birds....





Common moorhen hiding in the reeds:




Diamond-backed black water snake:





Red-crowned Parrots:





Least Tern (the little one!) next to a Laughing Gull:





Tri-color Heron:





Blue Grosbeak:





Painted Bunting:





White Ibis:





Ruddy Turnstone:






A Brown Pelican on South Padre Island:






What we think is a Man 'O War Jellyfish:





And a shot we took for my dad:

Tackling the Kitchen Part II, Plus CSI Final

Yesterday after Brian left for Indiana, I got to work on the tiles in the second half of the kitchen. These tiles were only slightly less hideous than the ones in the first half of the kitchen.

Unfortunately, they were actually installed correctly, which means that they were actually stuck down to the floor.

It didn't take me long to empty out the chairs and table and wine cooler. I took up the threshold that used to divide the two areas of the kitchen/eating area. Then I stopped to take a picture:





Some tiles were more stubbornly stuck than others. Some cracked away when I was trying to peel them up. I was battling the Revenge of the Lung Funk, so I gave up last night with the floor looking like this:





The only good part was that there were juuuuuust enough tiles left that I could hop-scotch across the floor without having to peel my own feet off the floor with each step. Pulu and Sara's dog, Mea, found out the hard way that they should stay out of the kitchen.

This morning I saw the maintenance guy weed-whacking, and he told me where to look in the shop for the paint scrapers I used last time. I scampered up there, retrieved a few tools, and was able to make some headway on the stubbornly-stuck tiles. (yes, that is black mold you see on the floor. I washed it down with bleach before re-flooring)






And what was Pulu up to while I was wrestling with those tiles? Lounging and defending the yard from marauding bands of squirrels.





Finally I got the last of the tiles peeled up and could vacuum up the worst of the debris.






The new flooring went down fairly quickly and started to look FANTASTIC almost right away.






Time to check on the big dog. Yup, still lounging.






Rats. Ran out of tiles. Time for a break to run to town. Took Sara with me, who also needed a break. We accidentally stopped for ice cream after we hit Lowe's. Much needed girl time!






"I guarded the yard while you were gone, mom."





Re-supplied with tiles, I prepared for the final push (I hoped).





The one thing about cheapy-peel-n-stick tile is that it's easy to custom-fit edge pieces with just a pair of stout kitchen shears.






Aaaand, a short time later, I'm done (sort of!)






Pay no attention to the final edge of the room, where I'm short 5 tiles. I'll pick those up tomorrow and then be able to put the threshold back down lickety-split!





I'm pooped!

Later this evening I'll load the kitchen back in. Tomorrow I'll pick up those last five tiles and call this project a wrap!

---

While I'm all posting pictures, I thought I'd share some of the shots from the crime scene final that my kids did in Forensics. I don't want to share pictures of their faces, but here's a few highlights!

(there is real blood in these photos, but it's all dried. It was bovine blood that we got from a supply house. But, skip this if you're sensitive!)






Oh dear, it seems someone has been shot.






I actually set up two separate but identical murder scenes--one for each team. The crime scene tape divides the two scenes so they didn't accidentally cross-contaminate their scenes.






Team 1 at work:







Silly perp, left footprints in the blood.














The victim fought back. He's got defensive wounds with blood and fibers under his fingernails!






The wound, shell casing, blood flow, and a little bit of the purple-magic-marker "lividity" that the kids used for time of death:






Looks like a .22 shell.






And they finally remembered to measure the footprints!






Whoooo! Team 2 found a suspicious white powder in the victim's pocket. Wonder what it is??





Their crime scene reports are due on Monday. I can't wait to see what they came up with!