eric135

Some gave all; all gave some... Happy Memorial Day

 In memory of all who have served to make this country great. 

Some gave all... All gave some...

Happy Memorial Day

 

Extreme couponing... well not so extreme really...

Much to my room mate's chagrin, I've picked up a new hobby... couponing. I've tried couponing years ago, but I gave up on it because I couldn't keep track of the coupons, their expiration dates and I usually left my coupons at home forgetting to bring them with me when I went shopping. It didn't seem to me that the effort was worth the minimal savings, plus I was buying items that we didn't use or need just because I had found a coupon. 

So then I spent a few days researching the whole concept of couponing, how and why it works, and how to best apply coupons to save money. I've joined a great website, PracticalSaver.com, and have used it to learn about couponing.

How coupons work and how to get the best deals

• The main idea is to amass a collection of coupons, but time their use for when stores place items you usually buy on extreme sales. Don't just use the coupon the first week you get it. Yes, you can use them to save a few cents here and there, but the major savings (75 - 80 - 90 - 100% or more off) comes when you amass your coupons and then use them at the proper time.
• By combining the use of manufacturers' coupons, store coupons, store doubling/tripling coupon value, and weekly sales, you can combine these savings and get really low prices, possibly even for free.
• Nationwide, there are three main coupon sources. They are coupon inserts that come in the local Sunday paper. They come from three sources: Smart Source (weekly), Red Plum (weekly) and Proctor & Gamble (first Sunday of month). The cash cow here is to get as many copies of these inserts so that, when the sale of your desired item(s) happens, you have many coupons that can be redeemed in combination with store coupons plus loyalty card savings. 
• There are sites where you can print coupons (the ones I am using now are coupons.com and coupontom.com but there are many others). You can trade/swap with family and friends. Then there are extreme couponers that will go on ebay and buy a bunch of coupons. I've also watched YouTube videos of folks dumpster-diving to find coupons.
• To save the time, energy and effort of finding local sales that correspond to a recently printed coupon, many couponers utilize web sites that do this research for you. They will print lists every week (I think the universal sale ad publication day is Wednesday morning) and then note which ones also have coupons. So, let's say your store has a major sale on Tide Laundry Detergent 28 loads marked down to 2.99/each. The web site will indicate this is a great deal, and then say something like "5/8 SS" which means there is a coupon in the Supersaver insert that came out 5/8 (in case you aren't continuously clipping -- many couponers keep these inserts intact and clip only when the sale happens). This is the key to cashing in with coupons. You'd go find that coupon, which might have that item/size on sale for 2.00 off. You go to your store, get that item (maybe you're getting an even better deal via your loyalty card) then you give them the coupon and get that jug of Tide for 99 cents that usually cost you 5.99. Sweet. I personally use PracticalSaver.com because the owner of the site, Kara Rozendaal, lives in my area and covers Fry's Grocery along with the other major grocery stores I know.
• Obviously, the Time Suck here is that you will need a system so you can find your coupons without tearing your hair out every week. Based on the hundreds of YouTube video's, there are two main camps: folks that clip as the coupons come in versus those that just save the inserts organized so they can find it and then clip it. 
• Then among the folks that clip as we go, you need a binder or box of some kind to keep track of the coupons. 
• Then you need a system to create your shopping list, coordinating it with the weekly ads from your store and the coupons you have.
• Then you need a system to weed out expired coupons.

Stockpiling

• This is where our natural tendency to hoard can become a problem. The point here is that you are buying many/most of the items you usually use but only when they go on a major sale. These sale items rotate (anywhere from every 2 to 6 months). So the extreme couponers are not going to buy anything until it goes on a major sale. So they don't buy Tide by the bottle, they amass coupons and, on the day the Tide goes on sale, they go get 4-10 jugs for 2 bucks. That's the key.
• You will need space to store and organize your stockpile of items.
• There are extreme couponers out there that have stockpiled ridiculous amounts of stuff - enough razors to shave you, your wife, your kids and your three Irish Setters every day for the next 200 years, that sort of thing. I personally think this is going to far but that's what some of them are doing.

What I do: 

1. I plan to get most of my coupons from the three inserts in the Sunday paper, and then print coupons from coupons.com and coupontom.com (the second one is where I go to find a coupon for a specific item, and it also has a nice feature that identifies newly added coupons). I guess I'll keep the inserts around (yes with stuff clipped out of them), but I'm thinking I don't want to buy stuff we don't use, so I might stop this later.
2. I number my coupons from 1 to 1000 in no particular order, and store them in a coupon accordion file in numerical order.
3. When I get to 1000, I plan to start over at 1 and toss out the coupons 1-100, thus I should only be keeping coupons for about 3 months.
4. I keep a spreadsheet in Google Docs that has the item number along with the item name and limitations so that I have a list of all the coupons. I have a column that identifies major groups (meats, bread, spice/condiments, cleaning, toilietries, etc.) By using the sort functions, I can get this list in groups and subgroups so I can find coupons very quickly.
5. I also record on the sheet coupons I have applied to my loyalty card via the store's web site. I shop at Fry's Grocery (part of Krogers) and I can "clip" coupons and the coupon is automatically applied when it's scanned at checkout.
6. Every week, I look through the weekly ad for my grocery store and enter those sale items we usually use into my sheet. When I sort, I can see which sale items match coupons I have. If I'm going to use the coupon(s), I have the coupon number so I can pull out the coupon(s) and bring them with me to the store when I go shopping. 
7. For non-sale items we need, I use the sorted list and circle items we need. I may use the coupon but I may not so that I can use the coupon for when the major sales happen, but if the coupon is about to expire, I am going to use it then. Here's a screen shot of my sheet (click on the image to view larger):
   
   When planning my shopping, I would find a sale item ("sale" in first column) with a good coupon(s) (a number in column 1). The items with "FC" in column 1 are coupons I got from Fry's web site. Since they would be applied before any manufacturer's coupon, if I had both an FC and a manufacturer's coupon and I wanted to use the manufacturer's coupon, I'd have to go and remove that electronic coupon from my card before I got to Fry's. So when I sorted my list, after updating with this week's sales, I see that Ketchup is on sale and I have a coupon, and we need it. 
   
   For me, using this spreadsheet is the way to go, because I am good with computers and I am very comfortable with how Google spreadsheets work. The advantage for me is that I can print this list, or I can view it on my cell phone, my Kindle, or any other internet-capable device. If I didn't like computers, I'd have to go with a binder, or a box with tabs, but then I'd have to sort and organize and purging would be more difficult.
8. As I become more experienced, I'll try to save up my coupons and only use them on major sales, but since I'm just starting out (with very few coupons -- about 50 for the first week), I'm spending more time accumulating coupons and organizing my sheet.

My First Week of Couponing: I've only just started, but we went shopping this morning and, with the information I've learned plus the few coupons I have so far, we lowered our grocery bill from $80.65 to 41.25. Not bad, but I am pretty sure my numbers will improve as I amass more coupons and build enough of a stockpile to buy only at major sales. 

Thanks to Kara at Practicalsaver.com , for all of the information on her website and Youtube video, upon which most of my couponing stragegy is based!

The Avengers

 We saw The Avengers the other day. I think the movie runs for two hours and 15 minutes, and the last half of the movie makes the first half worth it (a lot of character development, not usually my favorite part of the movie). 

• Robert Downey Jr: I wonder what it must have been like, being a "regular size guy" acting against such huge muscley slabs of man meat. No doubt, his character was as kick-ass as all of them, and his acting is easily on the order of ten times everyone else on the screen, but still.
• I still see Thor as Captain Kirk's father.
• The airship design, dependent on four rotor blades, the failure of even one of which would bring the huge thing down... they needed to seriously re-think that design. I mean, if three of four airliner engines stop, they can still land the plane.
• The whole lethal bow-and-arrow thing just hasn't been working for me since Legolas did it successfully in FOTR. I don't care if they make them blow up, you'd be better off with a fully automatic gatlin gun.

Overall though I really liked the movie. You can totally tell Joss Whedon directed the movie, with the clever lines and spot-on comedy bits.

Stay through the credits, there is an Easter Egg at the end.

 

America's Got Talent: I really liked Howard Stern!

 My room mate literally forced me to watch the season premiere of America's Got Talent. I had stopped watching the show, especially during last season. I just found the show to become very offensive. I remember Piers Morgan hitting the buzzer "just to see if you'd mess up." He did this during acts where performers could have gotten injured. From that point on, I had judged the show to be too negative for my taste.

Then they announced Howard Stern would be Piers' replacement. I've never been a fan of Stern, and thought the show would take an even more negative turn.

I was in for a pleasant surprise. I found Stern to be an excellent judge. Even when there were horrible acts, he remained respectful and even positive and funny. I get the feeling the producers of the show realized it had become too negative. The difference is noticeable. At any rate, the show is back on my viewing list.

One other thing I noticed with this premiere. There haven't been as many sob stories. Don't get me wrong, everybody cried, and with the tears came vivid stories. But in years past, it seemed the only way to get to the last show was to either have a crippling disease, have a parent with a crippling disease, or had a loved one that passed away due to a crippling disease. Not so much this year.

Yeah maybe I'm jaded. Just sayin'. 

I've been reading online reviews of the show. The ratings aren't as good this year, and now folks are suggesting that Stern "may be too nice." So chances are, he may (either on his own or at the instruction of the show's producers) get nastier. Once that happens, I'll stop watching.

My boyhood home in Hopewell, VA, in Pen&Wash and Pastels...

Hopewell, VA
Pen & Wash
5.5" x 8.25" sketchbook

I was playing around on Google maps and looked up the house my family lived in from 6th grade until my Junior year in college. My room mate and I have been going through some serious bouts of nostalgia, which, for me, is a totally alien experience. I've never been beholden to the past in any way. I can't imagine going to my high school reunion (or college, or nursing school for that matter). But last night, I wondered what this house looked like and remembered that Google maps has pictures.

One of our neighbors from years ago installed a huge water fountain in their front yard. My god was it an eyesore. I saw in Google maps that it has since been removed. But other than that, most of the old neighborhood is unchanged except for the fact that peach trees I watched my father plant as saplings are twenty feet tall. The two trees in our front yard are huge now. But architecturally, the house is unchanged. 

Looking at the house, I remember the window in the upper left corner, and the small window you see on the side, led to my bedroom. The two windows below were to our living room, where I spent many hours practicing classical piano. Looking at the house in google maps and then rendering it in art really brought back some memories:

• teaching my younger sister how to read, and having "classes" in math and reading
• my sister's enormous collection of naked barbie dolls (she'd take the clothing of many dolls to make a "wardrobe" for one doll)
• my youngest sister's athletic skills even as a young girl
• mass-producing eggrolls when my Dad was president of the Kiwanis Club, in order to sell to make money for the club (Kiwanis always sold egg rolls when Dad was in charge, the Lions Club always sold funnel cakes)
• going to my sisters' ballet recitals -- in a small town in the South, these recitals were major productions for the community and everyone was there
• the disasterous summer when my parents decided to sign me up for the neighborhood baseball team -- and when I used to pray to the Lord for rain every Saturday (he rarely produced, and I don't know if I've ever forgiven Him)
• having to "crank" my youngest sister's portable crib. We'd take turns cranking it up, and it would click - click - click and keep the bassinet rocking for hours
• riding the riding lawn mower to cut our grass
• the two parakeets we kept cooped up in a tiny cage... our family really should not have had any kind of pets, but we made several poor attempts at it, leading mostly to mysteriously disappearing pets over the years
• incredibly awkward afternoons when pornography or issues of Teen magazine went up in smoke via our wood stove

Oh those were the days.

Here's the same house as above but rendered in Rembrandt soft pastels:

Bob Ross... ; Godshill...

Well that rally didn't last very long. It didn't feel right from the start (April 25 2012). After Investors Business Daily called the beginning of the rally, none of the stocks I was looking at took off, and several fell. I personally think any rally at this point would be suspect unless the market indices take a noticable downturn from here. Cash for now.

I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos. I've had a fascination for watching instructional videos about watercolor and painting in general. With our most recently purchased internet-connected television, I'm able to watch YouTube (in full 50" glory) directly from the TiVo screen. I've been watching more of these then I have of regular television.

It reminds me of how much I liked watching episodes of Bob Ross' Joy of Painting on public TV. In an interview, Ross said that his technique was not "fine art" in the academic sense, because what was important was not the final product, but rather the creative experience of the artist. 

I really like that. 

Bob Ross NY Times article...

Godshill
Watercolor
5.5" x 8.25"

 This painting is my answer to the most recent "watercolor challenge" at Wetcanvas.com. I worked from a reference photograph, taken in a village called Godshill, somewhere in England. I'm particularly happy with it because I am not very skilled in rendering buildings. It's nice to see that all the websites I've read about two-point perspective have actually paid off - the buildings appear to be rendered accurately. I sketched the buildings' edges and roofs with Faber-Castell watercolor pencils, and handbrushed everything else using my usual pan paints.

More painting

Random scene... inspired by Fountain Hills AZ

Watercolor
Moleskine watercolor notebook (opened)
Pelikan paints

I had dinner a week ago with my Brother in Law, Adam, from Maryland. I had worked a night shift the day before, so after an afternoon of sleep, we were off to Fountain Hills to enjoy an evening of tapas at a wonderful restaurant: Sofritas.  

It has been a while since my last visit to Fountain Hills, and the evening was so inviting, eating our meal over the course of three hours on their patio, I decided to come back the next morning to do some plein air painting.

I didn't do anything really spectacular, I was sort of freaked out by the number of people walking around, and felt too self-conscious, so just quickly did a watercolor sketch of some trees, and experimented with the mountains to my right. But it's my first attempt to paint "across the fold" in my watercolor, for a more pronounced landscape look. 

I have the weekend off, and my recent order from Utrecht's Art Supply had arrived: a set of soft pastels and a pad of pastel paper. I plan on breaking them in soon.

Three tomatoes...

Watercolor
9 x 12" Arches Cold Pressed paper

As the weather turns to more Spring-like conditions, my room mate's thoughts once again turn to the cultivation of tomatoes. Last year, he had a couple of plants and he ended up with 3-4 tomatoes the size of small grapes, but they were indeed delicious.

This year, on a trip to our Fry's Grocery Store, he spotted a couple of tomato plants drying out in front of the entrance. Didn't look like anyone had been watering it. So he took them home and he's been watering them. We now have 4-5 green tomatoes about the size small plums. They haven't ripened yet, and thankfully, the weather has not yet turned so hot that they turn into hay. So we're hoping for a good harvest -- or at least a few tomatoes a bit larger than grapes.