Life By Lindsey Rae

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. We did. It was pretty uneventful, however, as it was just the two of us at home all day. When you don't have any one else around, that's kind of how it goes; much like a normal day, I guess.
Christmas is a bit disappointing to me now that I am older, because, I feel like the commercialism of it is so terrible and discouraging. I almost wish we could just do it a different day and not have to participate with the rest of the world with all the ridiculousness that goes on. If we could keep it about what it is supposed to be about, that would be much more enjoyable. It almost feels like just another obligation when all you see is media saying we need to buy and buy and buy. This year, I thought it may have been extra bad, because on one hand I would hear the ads proclaiming all the things we "need" to buy and on the next, I kept hearing these stories on the news about people not being able to afford gifts because of the economy and then even that they were not able to get as much credit to buy gifts because of the economy! Crazy! I don't want to hear about it anymore. It would be much more enjoyable to turn on the TV and hear a story about Christmas and Jesus and not just Christmas and spending money.

But, speaking of presents and all that, I did get some good stuff. haha. I was excited. One thing I got (and just tried out today) was this compost tumbler. It has the ability, when used properly, to make compost in 14 days. That's not going to happen in this current climate, but, in the summer, it will be fun to get some compost for my yard. I like the idea of being able to reuse things (because I'm cheap). Plus, I've been doing lots of reading on composting recently and so I am ambitious about it. It would be exciting to get some benefits from it. I really enjoy watching the plants grow and it will be great to give them a little extra something so they can do better.

I would also like to try a small vegetable garden this year, so this will come in handy for that. Although, at this point, I don't have any idea where we would...or could...possibly put it. It may have to be more of a container garden for this first year, until we get the whole backyard completely figured out. The soil is so terrible and nothing but clay and gravel (and even some boulder sized rocks hiding under the first inch or so of dirt); I'll have to at least make a raised bed somewhere. I do have the one I've been working on recently, but I originally planned on making it a flower bed. So, I'm not sure. Anyway, whatever gets planted will now have compost to help it out!

Due to recent medical emergency in our household I have not had too much of a chance to post anything for awhile. I have been pretty busy lately with extra things. But, we are here and still alive and relatively well, all things considering.

And, I have recovered my missing diamond earing, which I thought I lost forever at the hospital. Not as important as just being here and alive, but, still good since it is always better to have two earings instead of one. :)

For Thanksgiving, Jerrod got me Cracker Barrel, which was pretty nice, because it's my favorite! hehe. Really. We brought it home, which was even better, because we didn't have to deal with all the people and could just hang out together and wear pajamas for dinner...or at least I could, since I didn't even have to go pick it up!

The weekend is over and I made out like a bandit with the sales. Nothing big and great; I mostly went to the drugstores and grocery stores and got a lot of free items with the sales. Actually, I profited on a lot of the things I bought, after I used coupons....In total, probably around $50-60. I mostly got a lot of hair and cosmetic products, soap, lotion, razors, chocolate bars, toothpaste, nail polish, cake mixes...those sorts of random things. I think in total, I got over $300.00 worth of free items and then got back nearly $130.00 in store reward dollars that are kind of like store coupons that can be used to buy any merchandise within the store....but expire...the unfortunate part. (The goal is to then take the store dollars and roll them into something else...by purchasing another item that will give you more rewards dollars. Only certain items do this that are special sales for the week or month. So, if they expire within 2 weeks to a month, and there is nothing that come up in that time, you end up not being able to roll them very well and not profit as much.) Anyway, anything I had to pay out of pocket (to cover tax on the free items or on the remaining balance on the nearly free items) I was able to pay with my gift cards that I had from store rewards for filling prescriptions at the pharmacy or by using previous rewards dollars that I'd saved up to use during the Thanksgiving/Black Friday sales.

I'm getting so sick of shopping! The problem is that I was sick of it before I started. But, what can I do? On top of the fact that there are things to get for Christmas, I also can't resist the fact that I now am aware of too many good deals and there is just too much things I know I can acquire for free or nearly free! I'd like to take advantage of that...it's nice to know you have extras of things you use so you don't have to buy it when you run out (and it's not on sale) and also, because I am hoping to donate some things to the food bank.
I read recently that the food bank is 80,000 lbs short on what they usually have or need to have or something like this. I don't know what it was exactly, but anyway, they need some donations.

But, I don't like going out in the traffic...and it's getting busy near my house, since we have the big retail area. And, I really don't like the customer service, or lack of it, that seems to be what you get at most places. I can only think of about 3 places that I actually feel they consistently have good service at. I feel like most places have more mean and grumpy people working there than usual right now! It's so frustrating to have to deal with that all the time. This makes a good argument for why a person should do their shopping online whenever possible.