fourth of july. pancakes and social anxiety.

i hope all you nice folks and a fun fourth of july! we a pretty crazy day. since james had the day off, we started the day off with a family pancake breakfast:

i was really excited about this, i havent had pancakes in MONTHS (partly because of a mystery stomach problem and partly because of this whole gluten-free thing), and i really wanted to try a different use for this mix. i didnt have quite enough mix left for the pancake recipe on the box so i had to kind of eyeball the liquid ingredients, but they came out looking and tasting like pancakes, which is more than i can say for a lot of gluten-free products. since this mix worked pretty well for pancakes and cookies, i definitely think well keep it on hand for special occasions. 

after breakfast we went to a really great barbeque/picnic at grace carson opc (its not our regular church, but a smaller, nearby church that our congregation is helping to establish so they tend to have overlapping events). we had tons of fun, swinging on swings:

eating watermelon and other picnic treats:

playing cornhole:

and alice was OBSESSED with playing in the sprinklers:

 after the picnic we went home for a nap and a costume change (i had forgotten to bring alice a bathing suit). and after nap we headed over to the beach for another party. and it was a really, really great party, with really great music and really great food on a really great day at a really great house on the strand. seriously. heres a picture of james and alice and alices friend leona having fun on a trampoline next to the ocean:

i mean, how great is that? 

the thing is, even though this was a party of mostly church people, it was a REALLY big party, which means it was loud and crowded and me REALLY anxious and uncomfortable. ive always had problems with social anxiety, but this party was particularly tough, because well, i dont have a church clique. i dont have regular group of friends, i mostly just hang out with my family. and no matter how hard i tried to mingle and be part of conversations, i just didnt have anything relevant to contribute, so i spend most of the evening with alice, james, and my mom. it wasnt a bad time, it was just really, really difficult and stressful. 

we ended up leaving before the beach fireworks started, because we were all getting tired and we had a LONG walk back to our car. this wasnt that big of a deal since none of us is particularly into fireworks, but as we drove home we noticed that there were probably TWICE as many (giant, totally illegal, exploding-in-the-sky-type) fireworks going on in our neighborhood than at the beach, so we still got fireworks. 

over all id say this was a successful holiday, what did you do for fourth of july?

its official!

i am oh so happy and proud to announce that the poverty luxe etsy shop is live! this day has been a long, long, LONG time coming and i am SO excited to share it with you guys! theres not much in the shop yet, but i pinky promise that there will be lots more in the coming weeks. 

heres what ive got up so far:


what do you think?

next up in the agenda is making a shop facebook page, so stay tuned for that announcement in the next few days. 

my 50th post. and second quarter coupon statistics.

first things first id like to take a few minutes to blubber about how this is my fiftieth (FIFTIETH!) blog post. seriously. fifty posts. this is a really huge deal for me because, well, when i started, i didnt think that anyone would even read it and knowing me it wasnt going to last, given that im lazy and unmotivated and quit everything i start. so of all the people that are surprised that this little blog is still going (and that people other than my mom are reading it), i am definitely the most surprised. i wish i had something more exciting to say about this, but im really just still in disbelief that its even still going. maybe my 100th post will be more special. maybe. 

anyways, back to our regularly scheduled programming... 

as you may have noticed, today is july 1st, which means that i had to clean out all of my expired june coupons:

today also marks SIX MONTHS of tracking my grocery savings (you can read more about it here). now since ive recently had to make HUGE changes to my diet and how i shop (read more here and here) , i was really worried that i wouldnt  be able to stick to our budget, or that couponing would become a waste of time, or that id have to give up my little game of trying to beat my saving percentage high score. well, im happy to announce that NONE of those things happened!

obviously my new dietary restrictions mean that we now require some pretty expensive staples, and that were spending a LOT more money on produce than before, however were also not buying any processed/packaged foods (which are actually much more expensive than fresh foods) so things even out. ive also stopped stocking up on "extra" food, and just buying exactly what we need for the coming week, so after just a few weeks i managed to keep our $50 a week grocery budget in effect, and have managed to come in under budget a few times. while im not really using that many food coupons (most of them are for foods i cant eat), im still using LOTS of target coupons (and their new cartwheel app, its my new favorite) and hardly paying anything for our household/toiletry-type items (also ive been planning our trips a little better so we only have to go to target once every 2-3 weeks). and despite all the little changes ive made to trim down our grocery spending, im STILL making great savings percentages! 

so here are the numbers for this quarter: ive used $240.25 in actual coupons, and saved a total of $738 dollars (an average of 37% savings per transaction). so while this is a little less impressive than last time, i feel its also worth noting that i am consistently spending less than i was before. and my total cumulative savings for the year (less newspapers and printer ink)? $1481.82. seriously. i dont even know what id do if i hadnt learned how to shop this efficiently (thanks mom!), because let me tell you, we do NOT have that kind of money.