Deal of the month

I have been waiting for a deal on my hair gel/shampoo/conditioner since that stuff costs so much.  The hair gel costs $2.97 a pop and I go through one about every couple of weeks.  Pricy stuff.

Long story short, I found a great coupon and asked my father-in-law to send me a bunch more of so I could get a great deal.  I combined the coupons with some awesome in-store deals and paid only $11.14 for all of this:

Except for the fact that we had a gift card to this grocery store from the church who give us some free food, so we paid NOTHING for it.  Let's look at the savings.

Normal Cost: $55.64
Cost to us: $0

Score!  Thanks to my father-in-law and some luck, I'd say we got a great deal. :)

Challenges

We've been having a pretty rough couple of weeks.  We took our car in to get an oil change and came out with $4200 worth of damage we needed to fix.  That amount was basically all of our fund we have been saving up for years for a second car (which we desperately need).

I spent a lot of time crying last week and alternating being mad at/having peace with God.  It's really hard because I have been meticulous about budgeting since we need another car so badly, but apparently this is God's way of stripping the control that I have been holding on to.  I don't like it, and I don't know what is going to happen next, but I'm going to have to trust God (gotta love it when you're forced to do something that you know you needed to do in the first place).

Anyway, I had been planning to write about a cool savings that we got before this whole car thing, and I think I should still write it.  One more post to come.

Fridge Art

I recently took down this picture from my refrigerator... (I colored it in my math class.  The kids didn't really need my help the whole time, so I decided to participate as well.  Note the comment at the bottom from the teacher!)

...and put up this one.

I feel like the schedule is hard to see, but it's the best that I could do.  We now have a plan for the semester!  Notice how much time Jake will be spending in the library.  Also note that I am only scheduled to work 40 hours a week!  (I told Dick's that I needed some time off.)  I will still babysit on a non-consistent basis, so that'll bring in a bit as well.

You will also note that we are exercising 5x per week (and hopefully will be doing an 8-min ab workout every morning).  I haven't done much exercise in the last couple of weeks because I am still battling being sick (I had a sinus infection that turned into bronchitis, and I've had that for quite some time now), so starting this schedule is a challenge.  Jake and I played racquetball yesterday, and it was super fun.  I had a blast.

And to answer your question that I am sure you were thinking (ok, maybe not): yes, I am VERY sore.  Racquetball really took it out of me, but I LOVE it. :)

The cleaners

I have a dilemma and I'd like some advice.  I got a dress to wear for a wedding, but it is dry clean only.  I haven't ever taken anything to the dry cleaners, so I was really nervous to take it in.  I had been talking for a while before taking it in about how I was nervous that they were going to ruin my dress.

Well, we took it in because I had worn it previously and I was going to take it home to Iowa to wear when we went to Circa 21 (which was VERY fun by the way!).  We went to pick it up the day before we left for Iowa, and there were some dark markings all over the dress that looked kind of like grease or something.  I complained about it and was told that it was probably from the cleaning solution and that they would run it again to see if they could get it out.  However, that meant that I didn't get to wear the dress in Iowa since it wouldn't be done in time.  I was bummed, but hopeful that they would be able to get the dirtiness out.

We got a call that the dress was done and that a manager had personally looked it over and it looked good, so now that we are back in CO we went in to pick up the dress.

There are still spots on it.  How in the world did the manager not see them?!

So now we have to wait until Friday until another manager is going to be in so that we can talk with them.  What I want to know is what kind of liability they have to replacing my dress.  I still have the receipt from purchasing it and the original tag.  We didn't have to sign any papers when we brought the dress in to the cleaners agreeing to anything.  The manager originally told us she would reimburse us for the cost to clean the dress and give us store credit, but if she says that again I don't know what to do.  I don't want store credit because I obviously will not be going back to this same store.  I also won't be wearing the dress again if they can't get the stain out...

Thoughts?  Anyone with prior experience in this area?  I hate when my first experience with the cleaners confirms my fear!