Why I Have Been So Quiet........

If you are reading this, I am very grateful that you still take the time to read my site!!  I know over the last couple of months, I have been pretty quiet.  I would like to tell you why, and to let you know that it was hopefully only temporary!!

This past September, my dad had his 3rd major heart attack.  He needed quadruple bypass surgery.  He was in a terrific hospital but sadly it was 45 minutes away from me.  We spent a lot of time driving back and forth to visit him.  He did very well with the surgery, and recovered well.  

In October, I started to have some more medical problems myself.  I spent a lot of time in doctors offices before I was diagnosed with Bladder Prolapse.  I wont bore you with details, but it was very painful to deal with, and sitting down was not much of an option.  

In December I went in for surgery to fix the prolapse.  It was a complicated surgery and involved 6 separate incisions.  Recovery time took over 6 weeks, and I am still having issues 4 months later.

Come February, we thought things were going to calm down for awhile.  We were sadly mistaken.  My dad started having stomach pains, and went to the doctor.  They found a tumor on one of his Kidneys.  The tumor turned out to be cancerous.  He scheduled surgery to have the whole kidney removed on the third week of April.

On the second week of April, I started to have severe abdominal cramping and pain.  It progressively got worse over a three day period, and my Husband finally made me go to the hospital.  I was diagnosed with Gastroenteritis, and Bacterial Colonitis.  I ended up being hospitalized for five days.  

My poor family had to spend one week visiting me in the hospital, and then the next week visiting my dad.  

I am still having some complications, but I am getting better.  My dad is doing really well too.  Even though we had all these scares, we are both still here!!

Thank you for sticking around with me these last couple months, and I have some awesome things in store for you in the next couple weeks!!  

Stay tuned!!

This post is written by Sarah Coulsey . She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.

Driving 101

Last week, my Dad was in a car accident.  Luckily he was able to "walk away."  He is extremely sore, and now has to be monitored in case of issues with his stints in his heart.  He is of course extremely upset about the car.  It was totaled, as you can see from the pictures below.

My Dad was hit by a guy who blew a stop sign doing over 50 mph.  It scares me how close I was to almost loosing my Dad over something so ridiculous.  I have always been a firm believer that people should have to re-take their drivers test at least once every couple years.  This just cements the thought in my head.

I have compiled a short list of driving rules, common sense, and just some rules I feel should be laws.  If you have any others, please let me know in the comments.  I don't want to see this kind of "accident" happen again.

1. Abide by the speed limit.  Yes I know we all go over every once and awhile.  I usually drive around 70 in a 65 (I hope no cops are reading this!!) but those limits are laws for a reason.  You need to be able to stop in certain situations, and speeding makes it a million times harder to stop.  

This also applies to slow pokes.  If you want to be out and about for a leisurely "Sunday drive" do not drive 15 mph or less under the speed limit.  It annoys other drivers who are not able to be leisurely, and statistically causes more accidents then speeders.  How about go for a walk instead.  Living in New England, we get the leaf peepers.  Taking a walk up a nature trail in the fall is a lot of fun.

2. Read and abide by street signs (i.e. STOP signs)  Again those are there for your safety and everyone else's.  Not knowing the area is no excuse for missing signs.

3. When making a left hand turn, you should be as far to the left as you can get.  The same goes for right hand turns (stay to the right.)  Don't be a jerk and block the whole road, especially if it is a busy road and it's going to be awhile before you can turn.  Again this annoys other drivers and can cause useless accidents.

4. Drivers on the highway already have the right of way.  People who are already doing 65 mph+ have the right away (common sense) so be careful when entering a major highway.

Now here's the unofficial rule that everyone should follow.  If you are on the highway, and you see someone trying to get on, move over (if you can safely.)  On-ramps are designed so cars can get up to highway speeds before entering.  Nothing is scarier then trying to get on a highway going only 20 mph.  Be nice and keep everyone safe.

5. DO NOT SPEED IN SCHOOL ZONES.  Speed limits in School zones are usually between 15 and 25 mph depending on the area.  If it is a heavily congested area, then you should be going even less.  Kids do not always pay attention, and you being the adult with a 3000+ lb piece of machinery under you should always be aware of your surroundings.  I have seen and stopped many kids from almost getting hit at my sons school.  I was very happy the other day when I watched our local police dept bust a women for driving too fast in the school zone.  

6. Do not ride too closely to the person in front of you.  This one drives me nuts.  I can not stand when some jerk comes riding up behind me (way too fast I might add) and then has enough nerve to stay so close to my bumper that I can see his/her pimples!!  If I was to slam on my brakes, you are automatically at fault, no questions asked.  Do you really want to risk that??  Plus, because it annoys me so much, I will slow down even more.  Oh so now you want to flash your high beams at me or honk??  Well that just makes me nervous that I am speeding, so I slow down even more!!  Enjoy!!  My favorite bumper sticker of all time stated "Unless you are a hemorrhoid, get off my a**!!

7. Do not slam on the brakes when you see a cop.  Hello, if the cop is using radar, you are already caught by the time you see him, so lets make it more obvious by slamming on the breaks.  Now I know some people are trying to be nice, and let the cars behind them know about the cop ahead, but again, it's too late, and you shouldn't have been speeding to begin with.  The absolute worse is the people who slow down to 50 mph in the left lane of a highway.  Why??

8. Pets in cars-

  a- DO NOT PUT A PET IN THE BED OF A TRUCK.  Nothing, and I mean NOTHING makes me angrier then seeing that.  I have called many people into the police department for that.  It is illegal and just plain WRONG.  So much could happen, and no pet deserves that.

  b- Do not let your dog hang out of a car window.  Yes I know they love to feel the breeze, and I am not saying keep the windows up, but I watched a women the other day almost loose her dogs head because she came close to another car with her dog hanging out the window.  It is not safe.  I have also witnessed dogs jumping or falling out of the car.  Why risk your pets life??

  c- Do not leave your pet in the car for long periods of time.  Especially in the heat of summer or the extreme cold of winter.  Again if I see you do this, I will call the cops on you.  I will also break your window to get the pet out.

I hope these rules/laws will make you think twice before you get in your car again.  I want everyone to be safe out there, and I do not want to loose a family member or friend because others can not drive properly. 



This post is written by Sarah Coulsey. She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.

4 Year Anniversary!!

Wow it is hard to believe but today is my sites 4 year anniversary!!  
Happy Anniversary to the Dog in the Bathtub, and thank you everyone for making this site a success.  I couldn't have done it with out you!!




This post is written by Sarah Coulsey. She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.

When To Say Goodbye

All opinions in this post are 100% my own.  I value your opinions, and I welcome them completely (even if they are not the same as mine!!)  What I will not tolerate is name calling or mean comments.  Please do not make them.  

The end of last week was extremely tough on us and I would not wish it on anyone.

Our little girl Sammy is 13 1/2 years old.  For a dog, that is a senior citizen (she would be about 80 in human years)  Most of her life she has had breathing issues.  Chronic bronchitis, and a collapsing trachea.  Over the last couple of years she has also gained an enlarged heart, narcolepsy and nasal cancer.

For the most part Sam is still pretty healthy (I know that sounds wrong) but it's true.  She eats and drinks fine, uses the potty fine, and still acts like a puppy sometimes.

Thursday morning (1:30 am) Sammy woke up coughing.  If you haven't heard a dog cough before, it sounds similar to a goose honking.  She has a hydrocodone cough medicine that we give her when her cough gets bad.  It helps to relax her, which then helps open her airway.

The last time Sammy had an episode, she completely stopped breathing.  We rushed her to the vet.  She was sent to an emergency vet after that, and then sent to Tufts Medical Center.  All they did for her was put her on oxygen, and give her a shot to help open the airway (a shot she has gotten before and then been sent home.)  That day ended up costing us over $2000.

So on Thursday we played the wait and see game.  We kept Sammy as calm as possible, gave her cough syrup through out the day, and called the vet.  They said to try giving her Benedryl.  Nothing seemed to be helping.  Friday morning as I was taking her with me to bring Ben Jr to school, she stopped breathing.  It only lasts for a couple of seconds, but feels like hours.

Even though I knew what was going to be said, I took Sam to the vet.  Before we got there, she started acting more like herself and was coughing a lot less.  The vet suggested x-rays to see what was going on.  The x-rays showed that her trachea was almost completely closed off.  The vet was going to discuss Sam with another vet, and get back to us.  He said that with her age and other health problems, he didn't think there would be much he or anyone could do.  This visit cost us $250.

We went home, and Sam got worse.  You could clearly see she was having a very hard time breathing.  She was coughing again, and her eyes turned very cloudy.  We called the vet back, and after speaking to his colleague, they both agreed that surgery (which was the only option) was not wise because of her age and other health problems.  We were told that the best thing to do would be to say goodbye.

As the day went on, Sam got even worse.  Ben and I thought it was time.  The last thing we wanted to do was have her suffer.  She did not deserve that.  We called each of my family members and they came over to say goodbye.  We were selfish enough to want her with us as long as possible, so we decided that we would take her to the vet the next day to give us more time with her.  She wasn't in pain, and with the cough meds, she was somewhat comfortable.

Saturday morning we woke up from a very fitful night, and just felt down.  Sammy has been our baby for 13 years.  She has done everything with us from working to vacations.  She is not a dog to us, she is our baby.  We just did not want to say goodbye.  

Sammy woke up clearly better then she was the day before.  She was coughing a lot less, and was acting more like herself.  We called my family and they came back over.  We all watched her get better over the next couple hours.  Being a Saturday, we only had until noon to make a decision.  Ben and I decided to wait and see how she was doing over the weekend.  If she got worse again, then we would go back on Monday.

Here it is Tuesday, and Sammy is acting like her old self.  She is eating/drinking/pottying perfectly fine, walking around, and coughs maybe two/three times a day.  Nothing like before.  Her eyes are not cloudy anymore, and she was even playing with her favorite toy again.  I don't want to jinx it, but it seems like she is on the mend.

I am very glad that we did not go back to the vet on Saturday.  To me it would have been a mistake, and we would have lost her much sooner then we should have.  Of course we still live with the day to day fear that we are on borrowed time, but as long as she is herself and not in pain, we are keeping her with us.

Have you ever been faced with a tough decision like this??  How did you come to your decision??  Did money come in to play at all??  For Ben and I that is a huge factor as well.  I sound horrible saying it, but her medical bills are extremely over priced and we just can not afford anymore.  If we had agreed to the surgery, it would have cost over $4000.  For her cancer, they wanted us to give her chemo, and that would have cost us over $10,000.  What is the dollar amount for life though?? 

This post is written by Sarah Coulsey. She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.

Till Death Do Us Part, Or Until We Don't Want To Be Together Anymore?

Before you read further I want to say that all opinions expressed are 100% my own.  You may agree, you may not (I will not hold that against you!!)  I welcome any and all points of view.  I will not however tolerate any rude remarks, name calling etc.  This is a topic that I know will cause issues, so I just wanted to state that ahead of time!!

As Ben and I approach our ten year wedding anniversary on the 20th of this month, I have gotten to thinking more and more about how many people I know who have made it to their 5 year anniversary or longer from my generation.  Sadly I do not know of many.

I met Ben when I was 18 years old and he was 22.  I knew right away that we were going to marry.  Yes I sound like a sentimental fool, but I just knew.  I was young and so was Ben.  We were told by many to wait and not rush into things.  After only 9 months of dating, Ben asked me to marry him.  Looking back now, and going by just numbers (age) I think we were very young to be thinking of these things.  I would question my children immensely if they were the same age and telling me they were getting married.

Now at the time of our engagement, Ben's older Brother was getting married the next year, and we did not want to take away from their special time.  So we planned our wedding for three years later.  That is a three year engagement we had.  We were together four years before we got married.  That is four years to get to know each other, and to call it quits if we had wanted too.

Around the same time as our engagement, many of my friends of the same age were getting engaged as well.  Some of them "had to" because they were expecting a baby, and others were in love.  Thinking back, there was at least 20 friends tying the knot at the same time.

Out of those 20 friends that got married, how many are still married now??  4.  4 out of 20 are still married.  There are a couple reasons why they are not still married.  The most common reason that I have heard from them as to why they are divorced is because "it didn't work out."  One of those "it didn't work out" marriages was from a friend who was married 5 months.  Seriously 5 months??  Come on.  We hadn't even used half of our wedding gifts by then.  How could we know if it would work out or not.

For our first 8 years of marriage, we really did not fight much.  Don't get me wrong, we did have some arguments, but nothing major.  Shortly after our 8th anniversary (right before thanksgiving to be exact,) Ben was laid off from his job.  We were devastated.  We had finally reached a comfortable place in life.  We owned a home, had money in the bank and in savings, had started to save for retirement, and were just comfortable.  Then it was all taken away.  

Ben was given a severance package (his accumulated vacation time, and a bachelors degree bonus) but that was it.  Not a tremendous amount of money.  He was also able to get unemployment, but that was only 75% of his pay, and it took three months before that started.  We counted every penny, and started religiously clipping coupons.

No matter what anyone says, the job market is HORRIBLE!!  Yes Ben could have gotten a job at a fast food place, but that would never cover all of our bills.  All the jobs that came available in the same salary range (which were not many) as what he had, were highly sought after and Ben kept getting "we're sorry" letters.  For a little while, we were ok.  We cut back on a lot of things, but we still had the unemployment coming in and Ben has had a part time job with UPS for 10 years that brought in some income.

After awhile, the unemployment checks became smaller (by 50%.)  At that point we had no other options then to use our savings.  Then our retirement money.  Nothing made us feel worse then knowing that everything we worked hard for was gone.

After a year, Ben finally was given a job that actually paid more then he made before.  I HATED the job right off the bat.  Ben was working 10 hour shifts over night, would have a two hour commute each day (most of the time longer because of the winter weather,) and when he was home he was so tired that we barely saw him.  The worst part was that he would only see Ben Jr two days a week (because of school.)  

Beggars can not be choosers, so we tolerated it.  When this new job forced Ben to have to take a leave from UPS, it was the final straw for me.  UPS is where we get our health insurance.  We pay nothing, and have almost 100% coverage.  With my health problems and two kids, it scared me to not have insurance.  

Ben and I differed on this subject.  His opinion was that he would get insurance through the new job, so we didn't need UPS anymore.  Plus he did not want to work 14 hour days not including the commute.

My opinion was that we knew UPS's coverage, we paid NOTHING for it, and the new jobs insurance would not take effect for 3 months.  A lot of bad things could happen in that time if we did not have insurance.  Plus the new insurance would cost over $400 a month when we currently were not paying anything.

We fought over this A LOT.  We actually went a month with out talking.  We only spoke when it was kid related.  It put a HUGE strain on our marriage.  I spent many, many nights crying myself to sleep.  At one point I screamed at Ben and gave him an ultimatum.  Either go back to UPS or I would leave him.  

Ben went back to UPS, and actually told me he was glad that I would not let him quit completely.  He realized that the health insurance was/is worth it.

Unfortunately shortly after he went back to UPS, Ben's new job took a huge loss, and laid Ben off.  Yes that is our luck, getting laid off twice.

Even though I threatened Ben with leaving, never once did I honestly want too.  I knew we would eventually work things out.  I just had to do something.

My point in all that rambling is that we are now hitting 10 years, and are still going strong.  Even with a pretty bad couple of months, we would not call it quits.  We both believe in our vows, and take the "till death do us part" part very seriously.   We love each other very much, and will always work things out.

I truly believe that one of the things that aids in an extremely high divorce rate is the fact that couples are not working things out anymore.  It is much easier to just call it quits and get a divorce then it is to take a stand and fight for your relationship.  

A friend of my sisters was engaged to be married.  Three weeks before the wedding, she started talking about how if it didn't work, there is always divorce.  Two weeks before the wedding, her would be groom and herself started saying that they could always bring another person in the bedroom after awhile, because the sex just has to get boring.  Less then two weeks before the wedding, they called it off stating that they knew they could each probably find someone better.  In this case, it was good that they called it off before the wedding, but this scenario has be asking "Do all couples go into marriage thinking these thoughts?"

I am not going to state figures for divorce rates.  You can see from my examples of friends that it is pretty high.  I just want to know why?

I have loving examples in mine and Ben's families that proves marriage can last.  My parents have been married 34 years.  Ben's parents would have been married 44 years this year if my Father in Law had not passed away.  My oldest Brother in law just hit 12 years.  All four sets of our Grandparents had hit 30+ years or more before their spouses passed on.  In each and everyone of these marriages, they couples are/were happy.  It is not a marriage for the sake of marriage.  They all had hard times like we did, and they worked it out.

Another issue I see is that people want to get married because they want a wedding.  There are all those shows on TV showing brides and how the weddings have to be perfect.  Then you see them a year or so later and the marriages did not last.  They did not want a marriage.  They wanted a big party!!

So with all of this said, I truly want to know why marriages are not lasting.  

I am not judging anyone by any means.  I just really want to know.  If you don't mind talking about it, please leave your thoughts and stories in the comments below.



This post is written by Sarah Coulsey. She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.

Sleep Study

I am right now writing this from my local hospital. I am having a sleep study done to see if I have sleep apnea.

Not sure how they can get a true reading when I am not in my own bed, with my Husband next to me, but we shall see.  I look really silly don't I!!!

I am hoping that they do find that I have Apnea.  It would explain a lot of troubles I have been having lately!!!

At least there is a good movie on TV!!  I get to watch Iron Man!!!


 
This post is written by Sarah Coulsey. She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.

Google Reader Closes Tomorrow!! Follow Me On Bloglovin!!

Tomorrow is the last day for Google Reader.  I still do not understand why they are getting rid of it, but it's going to happen. 

To keep following my site in a reader, I highly recommend Bloglovin!!  It is easy to use, and will keep you receiving information from your favorite blogs (hopefully mine is included!!)





This post is written by Sarah Coulsey. She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.

My Holiday Weekend

Ben and I bought our house six years ago. We have done a lot of minor and some major repairs over the years, but the newness factor of fixing up the house wore off.

Anyone who owns a home knows that money is always an issue with home repairs, and so is time.  Don't forget to throw in the kids too!!

We were really good at tackling projects that first year, but now not so much.  Until this past weekend.

We have an older home (1920) and the front and back porches are getting old.  They were painted at some point, and over the years the paint has worn out and started to chip.  A small section of our front porch had some water damage years ago and it was never taken care of.  We noticed the damage when we first bought the house, but we set that problem away for another day.

With the kids getting older, they need more room to play.  What is better then the covered large front porch!!  Especially when its rainy weather, they can still go outside and play.  We also don't want our house to look like we don't love it!!

Being a holiday weekend, we figured it's the perfect time to start working.  We didn't realize ahead of time that Mother Nature didn't want us to work!!

Saturday and Sunday of the weekend rained non stop.  No way were we going to use power tools in the rain!!  So we had to wait until Monday to start the project.

We managed to get quite a bit done that first day with the larger floor sander.

Yesterday we spent all day with the next level of sander.  This one was for getting all the paint against the house, and in hard to reach places.

Ben ran the machine, and I palm sanded and scraped the hand railings of the porch.  There were at least 5 layers of paint on the banisters!!  It took brute force to get the paint off enough to smooth it out.

A couple years ago we had gotten new windows for the house put in, and I had to sand down the window sills as well.

We only had to make one trip to Home Depot for supplies.  We brought Doug with us.  Can you tell where he is??

Today we have a little more sanding to do, and then tomorrow we can start staining and painting!!!  Almost done!!

Have you taken on large home improvement projects before??  What did you tackle??


 
This post is written by Sarah Coulsey. She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.

"What Do You Do For Work?"

"What do you do for work?" is a common question I get a lot.  Every time I see someone I haven't seen in awhile, or even when I go to the doctors I am asked that very question.

This is a very tough one for me to answer.  Not because I am embarrassed by what I do (I LOVE IT!!) but what do I do??  What would you call my job??

I ask myself this question many times a day.  There is not one single job title I can give myself.  According to my taxes this year, I was just Self Employed.  All though that is true, it is not enough of a description for me or for others.

I have many job titles.  I am a Writer, a PR agent, a Product Reviewer, a Website Owner, A CEO, A Brand Ambassador, A Member of the Press, and even though I do not think of myself as one anymore, I could also be called a Blogger.

Why do I not like the term Blogger?  Simply to me, a blogger is someone who writes about themselves in a diary like form.  You can read Wikipedia's definition here.  Yes I do write about myself and my family, but it is not my primary goal for my site.  

What is my goal you ask?  I write and post about what interests me, and what interests the people who read my site.  That is a wide variety of things.  I have readers who love how I post coupons and shopping deals, others who like my Disney posts, and a lot who love my reviews and giveaways.

Let me give you a little back ground on myself as to why I started this site.  Simply put, I wanted to enter giveaways.

In November of 2009, I read an article in a magazine about a site called Blog Giveaways.  This was a site I could go to to find a bunch of free to enter giveaways!!  I thought it would be a lot of fun to enter to try to win my boys things that I normally would not buy.  One of the entries you could get was to post about the giveaway on your blog.  So Sarah's Blog Of Fun was started.  I was kind of dorky back then (and still am!!)  Here is one of my first posts. 

After a while of entering and winning just a hand full of items I had a light bulb moment.  If others were getting to try these products and give them away, why couldn't I??

I started out by writing reviews of products I already use, or read.  Then I started pitching to smaller companies to see if I could review their products.  

After many, many months/years of building my audience (most importantly their trust,) and working my tush off, you get my site as it is now (I hope you like it!!)

My site has grown 10,000% since those days.  I am constantly trying to improve to make my self and my readers keep coming back!!

I review a wider variety of products, like Hoover Vacuums, and work with larger companies like Disney, Walmart, Mrs.Fields and even McDonald's.

I make money with my site now.  I am not a millionaire, but it is nice to get paid for working (which is what I do even though I have fun doing it!!)

I am always 100% honest on all product reviews, and anyone who knows me and/or reads my site knows that.  That is one of the reasons they come back!!

I will never EVER be ashamed about what I do.  I get to work from home so I can be with my kids, I get to travel (a lot of the time with my family,) and I get to try things from companies I never would have ever heard about or seen if I didn't have my site.

Yes I have gone on paid for trips (for example The Avengers Movie premiere in New York) but never once did I "Sell" myself to go.  Every post I wrote up about that movie, and my trip was written by choice, and was written because I wanted to do it.  If I had not liked the movie, or if I found something wrong with how things were handled, I would have said something.  I was (and still am) truly honored that Disney invited me to see that movie in a way I could only have ever dreamed about!!  With out my site, I never would have met and interviewed celebrities, or attended a red carpet premiere with said celebrities. 

When I receive items to review, if I do not like the item, I will not promote that I do like it (just to get free product.)  It's that simple.  If the item is something I don't like, but someone who reads my site might, I will still write about the item (that's my job,) but I am 100% honest in saying "It was not for me, and these are the reasons why!!"  No company or amount of money can make me say "Wow I loved it," when it looks, smells or tastes like poo (sorry I couldn't think of a better description!!)

Lately people that do what I do (no matter what you call them, bloggers or not) have gotten a TON of bad press.  People group us all together as "Mommy Bloggers" and say horrible things like "They are just bored housewives looking for free things."  The "big press" also say horrible things like "When a Mommy Blogger goes on a trip, they are just doing it to get away from their kids and get free stuff."

I can not (and will not) speak for everyone out there, but I will speak for myself.  

I DO NOT DO what I do just to score free things.  I do what I do because I love it.  I work for the items I get that are "free."  Isn't there an old saying that goes "Nothing in life is free."  

I hate, hate, hate (I can not say that enough) being away from my family.  That is why if you pay attention to the trips and places I go/visit, I almost always take my family (even my extended family) with me.  There are times when I can not take them (like most people who work outside of the home, you can not always take your kids with you to work) and on those trips I am on the phone with my family as much as possible (just ask my Husband who receives most of my 100+ phone calls!!)  My Family is my life.  They will ALWAYS come first.  

I can not stress enough to certain people out there that I am not a lonely miserable housewife, ranting my views to like minded people for free things and spends my days trying to escape my family.

I am a Mom who works and truly loves her job.  

I am a Mom who loves her family and hates being away from them, but understands that no job allows you to be with your kids 100% of the time.  

I am a smart Women who had an idea one day to start a company and I did.  I also made that company into a profitable business with a lot of blood sweet and tears!!

I am a Women who struggles with the day to day tasks of working, and raising a family.  

I am a Writer, a PR agent, a Product Reviewer, a Website Owner, A Brand Ambassador, A Member of the Press, and a Blogger.

Most importantly I am Sarah.  I am the owner of Sarah's Blog Of Fun.  If you do not like what I do, do not read my work.  I do not go to your job and call you names, I do not expect you to do that to me.  I do not criticize you for how you make your living, and I will not tolerate anyone who does that to me.





This post is written by Sarah Coulsey. She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.

Am I An #ExtremeCouponer And/Or An #ExtremeCheapskates?

I am frugal.  I will admit that freely.  I try to spend the least amount of money on things that I can.  I use coupons ALL THE TIME!!  Some things I buy I do not have coupons for, but I will use coupons as much a possible!!

When we get take out and they give little packets of sugar, ketchup etc, I keep them and use them.  I have a sugar shaker, so I open the little packets and add them to the shaker.  I do not like the artificial sweeteners, but if you mix them with regular sugar, you don't taste them!!  The ketchup packets are perfect portion size for little kids!!

I am also known for saving plastic silverware (especially spoons.)  Ben Jr takes a snack to school with him each day, and sometimes it's pudding or a fruit cup.  By giving him a plastic spoon, I do not have to worry about it being accidentally thrown away.  I do ask him to still bring them home, and most of the time he does.

When we stay in hotels, I bring home the shampoos, conditioners, soaps and coffee.  The shampoos and conditioners are perfect to use when you are running low at home (or low on money,) and they are perfect for camping!!  I also save any soaps (even ones that we opened,) and put them in a plastic sandwich bag.  Again these are perfect for camping and low money days.  Plus I HATE to waste anything!!

The coffee packets (even ones that are made for different coffee machines,) can still be used.  We open them and add them to our "who cares what it tastes like it's caffeine" coffee bag.  It's kind of fun because you never know what the coffee will taste like!!

For awhile I stored my coupons in envelopes with each stores name on them.  This worked for quite a long time, but now that I use coupons a lot more, I needed a better system.  

I switched to a coupon binder.  I filled it with baseball card sleeves, and store my coupons in there by section (i.e- canned foods, frozen foods, personal care etc.)  I take the binder with me everywhere.  

I have three local papers that I get on the weekends.  Two on Saturdays, and one on Sundays.  Most of my store flyers and coupons are in the Saturdays papers.  I spend about two hours going through the coupons and flyers to see what I will shop for that coming week.  Sunday is when I get my Target flyer.  If the coupons are worth it, I will get more.

I have three supermarkets that I shop at often.  Big Y and Stop and Shop are no more then ten minutes from my house (same town.)  I also shop at Price Chopper.  Here is where some people may think I am nuts.  Price Chopper and the Target I like the best are 30-45 minutes away in New Hampshire (I live in Massachusetts.)  Besides the fact that the stores are huge, well stocked and very clean, they are also in a state that does not charge sales tax.  By shopping at those two stores, I instantly save 6.5% just walking in the door.  I only travel the distance when I have large shopping trips that make spending the gas money worth it.  

I am also lucky enough to have CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreen's all within ten minutes of my house as well.  I can shop at those stores multiple times a week if I need too.

Now that you know a little more about me, I ask you, am I an Extreme Couponer, or Extreme Cheapskate??

I say yes and no.  To me I am both, but I am not what TV shows portray.  I will not buy 200 mustard's because they are free (and they do expire!!)  No one needs that much.  

I will buy 5 or 6 packages of Toilet Paper if it is on sale and cheap.  I will also stock up on things like deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, laundry detergent and bath soap.  These are items that have a long shelf life, and we go through a lot of them.  

When I say stock up, I have on average 10-12 bottles of each.  Enough to not have to buy any for awhile, but not enough to live on for the rest of my life, kids lives, grandchildren's lives, and great grand-kid's lives!!

I also donate a lot of items.  I do help my family and friends first, and then anything else I donate to local charities and food drives.

I do not walk into a store and expect to save 100%.  Unless you are buying one or two items, the chances of that happening are slim to none.  I do save on average 50-80%.  To me that is awesome!!  That money can now go to other things like bills, and even mini vacations!!

This is a Target trip I made the other day.  With coupons I saved over $140!!  All of this cost me $32!!

It is all items we will use, and that last awhile.  It is not a life time supply, but I think it is a terrific amount.

So I ask you again, am I extreme or just smart??

What money saving, frugal tricks do you use??




This post is written by Sarah Coulsey. She is a Wife, and Mother of two boys living in New England. This post may contain affiliate links.