Lamentations 3: 22-23 ~ “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

I'm thankful for a Lord and Savior that is full of compassion, mercy and grace!
I'm thankful for a healthy family!!
I'm thankful for this time of year!
I'm thankful for spending time with family over Thanksgiving!
I'm thankful for a sweet niece that has made a lovely header for my blog!!

Many thanks to Laurel Wreath for hosting today’s Thankful Thursday!
Blessings to each of you - be thankful!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas on the Seedlings blog!!! I want to thank a Wonderful niece for the design! She has helped Spruce us up!! I promised her that I would be more current with our post!!
Thanks Flibby it looks wonderful!!

NEW HOBBY!!!

I bought the above things over the last 2 days from CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid. My out of pocket expense was $35.48. I saved $70.19. I have $31.49 coming in rebates or Extra Care Bucks. That's like $3.98 for all in the picture!!! Not bad!

I also went to Publix (the items aren't included in the picture because some are already in our tummies!) spent $24.49 and saved $45.21. The lady behind me couldn't believe it! She went on and on about how much I saved and how many bags were in my buggy! A total of 7 bags! Dory was a little embarrassed that she was being so loud!!

I have been considering trying The Grocery Game! If you aren't familiar with TGG, it is a way of matching coupons with store sales.

Most stores have a sales cycle, generally a 12 week cycle. The inventor of the Grocery Game, Teri Gault, has tracked the sales cycles (and now has a team of folks all over tracking the local stores).They have a database that tells them when an item has hit a rock-bottom price. Some items are on sale at one time but will have an even lower price later on--this is called a "phantom sale." When an item is at it's rock-bottom price, you as a shopper are to stock up, try to buy 12 weeks worth of that item, so that you will have all you need till it hits that rock-bottom price again. They also have a database of coupons that come in the Sunday paper, combine those coupons with those rock-bottom prices and you get AMAZING savings--sometimes you even get stuff for free!!!
The price of the list is generally $10 for one store for 8 weeks, plus an additional $5 for each store after that. BUT....the first month is your trial month and is only $1 for as many store lists as you want!!!!
The list comes out once a week and is really organized. Black items are fairly good prices but not rock-bottom, so if you NEED something that is black, go ahead and get it. Blue items are rock-bottom, so stockpile these items. And Green are items that are free!!
If you want to try the one month trial for only $1 and see what you think! If you feel generous and want to give me credit for the referral, put this email address in Lynnomartin@hotmail.com. For every 3 referrals, I get some free weeks off the list. BUT, I am not telling you about this for the free weeks!!! I'm having a wonderful time saving money and wanted to share it with you!!
Here are a few tips:
1. It may be good to get extra Sunday papers.

2. Find a way to organize the coupons that works for you!

3. Start saving!!!

HAPPY SHOPPING!

Email Address:

lynnomartin@hotmail.com

A Not So Typical Day

This morning I woke up on the run!! I threw the clothes from the washer into the dryer! Started a new load of clothes in the washer and turned on the dryer. It didn't sound right :( . I didn't have time to do anything about it then, so off I ran!

When I got home I called a very special friend who just a couple of weeks ago called to tell me she had just repaired her washing machine!! I told her what was going on and she directed me to this nifty fix-it site!!! We figured out what was wrong, my dryer belt had broken. She encouraged me that I could fix this!!! After her prompting I called a local store and they had the belt in stock!!

Once I bought the belt it was time to take the dryer apart!! Me taking a dryer apart?? Would it ever be put back together?? Would it really ever work again?? Taking the dryer apart turned out to be pretty easy!! After looking at the inside for a while I couldn't figure out how the belt went around the pulley :(. Off to the phone to call my trusty friend! She came right over and after several minutes and a couple of trips to the computer she figured out how it worked!! We had the belt installed and dryer put back together within minutes :) ! Now time to see if it worked.... I pushed the button and NOTHING.. What now?? What have I done??? Then it hit me.. it wasn't plugged in!! I plugged it up and pushed the button PRESTO IT WORKED!!!

The price of the part was $16.15. I've estimated that if we had called a Sears repairman it would have been $75 for a housecall, $100 labor, and $20 for the part... That is a savings of $ 178.85 :). I've told Eyeore that my friend and I need a trip to Starbucks for saving him big bucks!!! That or either a new outfit! So how was your day????

Our garden is growing...here are some pics.






This is a flower on the cucumber plant.

Our boat. The one next to it is also a Royal Caribbean ship, but it's alot bigger!!!This was taken from a restaurant overlooking one of the pools.
The island of Coasta Maya

Sophie and her snails that I mentioned in my earlier blog.

Coasta Maya

We saw this sign in the bathroom...I thought it was funny, so I took a picture.

So I promised Miss Poppins that I'd blog more about my trip, so here it is. The second port we went to was Costa Maya. It was pretty, but you could definetly tell that it was a tourist spot!! There were alot of stores and Kiosk's(sp?) in basically this big circle. There were pools right on the beach. We got a table pretty close to the pools. It was really nice. Me and Madison both got Mexican dresses while we were there. Her's was red and mine's green!!haha We wore them to dinner that night and everyone seemed to like them. While we were sitting at the table just hanging out, Sophie(1 of my "cousins" 4 the week) who's 6, found some snails and then named them and made up a whole story about them. There was a daddy snail and a momma snail. It was really cute!!!


Me and Madison in Coasta Maya

Sorry I haven't updated yet...I just haven't seemed to have the time. The cruise was awesome!!! I loved it!!! The first few days we were at sea and that was nice. It was realtively warm and kinda wet, but still very relaxing. Grand Cayman was the first port we got off at. While we were there we went to one of the beaches, it was the furthest away from the town. There was a restaurant right by where we were swimming so when we weren't swimming we were sitting under the little awning of the restaurant. There was this little bird that came right up to us while we were sitting there and started chirping at us. The cab driver told us that we could walk back to town, it was only a 45 minute walk. We opted not to do that!!haha Our cab driver also told us that gas on the island is $6.50 a gallon. It kinda makes our gas price not seem so bad. On the island we saw a McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, and a Subway!! I thought that was kinda funny. We also went shopping. I got a pair of sunglasses that kinda look like the ones I had in Disney world.

This is the bird we saw at the restaurnt.

Silly me, I just remembered, my name was Dory!!haha I guess it really suits me...huh?

Ok, so I understand that we haven't updated in a while(now that I think about it, it's been about 4 months...I think), and I have no idea what I'm gonna write, but there have been some requests that we update so here it is. I'm just kinda making it up as I go and I'm a little tired as well, so I'm warning you now it could be a crazy mess. Let's see...I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go on a cruise, it's my 17th birthday present from my grandparents!! We're leaving out of New Orleans and we're stopping in the Grand Cayman Islands, Costa Mia(sp?), and Cozumel!! I'm really excited!! I've never been on a cruise before!! Neither has my mom, I think she's a little jealous. Supposedly its supposed to be in the 80's while we're down there, and I'm really excited about that. I don't do cold very well, so getting to go hang out in 80 degree weather sounds wonderful!!! I'm planning on taking lots of pictures and I'll post them when I get back. I'll be thinking of all of you. I hope you all have a good week.

Jesus loves you,
umm...I forgot my "code" name or w/e you wanna call it...I guess I'll just make up a new one. How does Jo Beth sound?

Today we went to Animal Kingdom where we saw Baloo, Jiminy Cricket and a pair of Pocahontas. We also had a rare Sully sighting. For a last ride a Disney World we all rode the River Rapids, but luckily none of us got soaked. That pleasure was left for the others in the boat. Tonight we are going to see the Hoop Dee Doo Review at Pioneer Hall in Fort Wilderness. In the morning we head north and home.

-Eeyore

The birthday celebration for Pocahontas continued today with a delivery from Snow White (balloons and a card). We also spotted Dory with Dory at Epcot today. We visited Epcot and MGM today so that Tink could get her fix (there is only 1 more day left you know). We also encountered the largest crowds of the trip so far (see picture). The Food and Wine Festival started today at Epcot, so there were lots of young adults enjoying themselves. We finally has a Pluto photo oportunity today also. Tomorrow is Animal Kingdow and the Hoop to Doo Review at Fort Wilderness. Saturday we travel home.

- Eeyore

Piglet decorated Pocahontas with streamers and confetti. You can see the streamers in this pic.
Pocahontas and Pooh
Pocahontas and I on Splash Mountain...her new favorite ride!!!

Me and Piglet
Mickey signing Pocahontas' autograph book.
Me with my Mickey ears.

Pocahontas blowing out the candle on her cupcake!!!
Cinderella's castle
Eeyore and Eeyore

Today we went to Magic Kingdom again. Lady Why pretty much summed up our whole day in her comment on the last post, but about the parade...Mickey didn't sing to her. While we were waiting on Mickey...aka...the parade, the crowd sang to her and a few other people whose birthday was also today.

They have a new thing in Tomorrow Land called "High School Musical Pep Rally". It's really cute, they do dances and songs from the movie and the invite everyone else to join along!! I tried to take some pics of Pocahontas dancing, but didn't get any good ones. Not only were there a bunch of little kids dancing, but Eeyore and I also saw a couple of (we think maybe 50 something year old) ladies dancing. Tink saw some grown men dancing and thought they were pretty funny as well.

Ok I think that's about it, but I'll post some pics on here for you all to see!! -Dory

Pics from Sarah Grace's birthday dinner at the Grand Floridian.