Money Raves and Rants
Mar. 5th, 2013 02:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameRave #1:
A couple of weeks ago I ordered some seriously lovely lingerie from www.hipsandcurves.com - it was a big splurge that (Grant and) I would do over in a heartbeat. They've very well reviewed around the web, in blogs and videos, as being Agent Provocateur-level awesome, but plus sized. I called and talked to someone about sizing questions (top vs bottom sizing, particular proportions, how various things run) and she was very nice and helpful, we tweaked my existing order, and everything fits great.
Best of all! There are current coupon codes better than anything I've ever seen them offer before.
RMN15 for $15 off of $100+
RMN30 for $30 off $150+
RMN75 for $75 off of $250 or more (all good til 3/31/13).
Also, upon ordering, I found that they offer $5 flat rate US shipping - and my stuff arrived 4 days after I ordered it :D I may or may not have been eagerly refreshing the FedEx tracking page every minute until it arrived.
I've never owned non-practical sexy lingerie before. If you haven't either, GET ON THAT RIGHT AWAY. I was totally blown away by my reflection in the mirror, and my husband approved x10. It was very, uh, inspiring for both of us ♥
I will definitely be a return customer, albeit yearly or something else within the realm of sanity like that.
Rave #2:
I am falling in love with Marshall's. Do you know how they have a gourmet and foodie type aisle of non-perishables, and several aisles of quality kitchenware, all dirt cheap? I've gotten some of my le creuset there in years past, and it's definitely the best place to get a really nice $6 everyday sort of bra or a $3 6-pack of wool blend trouser socks, too (well, not those aisles in particular) - but yesterday! Yesterday I got:
-20 0z (<---!!!) pump-top bottle of fancy-natural olive oil soap that smells like oranges...REAL oranges. Slightly bitter, pithy ones. Every time I wash my hands I'm back in my Nana and Pa's backyard, trying to make a cup of juice from their stubborn-sour tree with my sister (both of us in bathingsuits) $3.99
-9 oz jar of herbs de provence (FROM FRANCE) that doesn't expire until 2016 (sometimes expiration is a concern in this section). Chicken and vegetables roasting currently, white wine on standby... $2.99
-big, 12 oz jar of 4 ingredient (oranges, water, sugar, fruit pectin) marmelade for my pre-existing overabundance of chicken thighs $4.99
-pyrex glass 4 cup measuring cup (because mine has had unreadably invisible markings for years now, and is also chipped sharp these past months...)
-14 oz jar of tomato sauce, ingredients being plum tomatoes, roasted red peppers, olive oil, salt, Cabernet Sauvignon - Ananda and I are going to be roasting eggplant and mushrooms to eat with it and some shaved parmesean, tomorrow, for lunch... $3.99
Rave #3:
Because we stuck it out and waited through our 4 year AT&T contract, it was finally time to be able to get free and ultra-discounted upgrades for our phones with a renewal - I am super happy about this! Grant has been carrying around an Android with a shattered screen that does things like open audio books when he tries to play music and go straight to voicemail for incoming business calls, for the past 6 months. I've been feeling like I'd love to update my iPhone (it was a 3) for camera quality. I was still really happy with it otherwise, but since it's my primary camera these days I get kinda twitchy about it when I look back through my lj and see all my kid-pics looking dull and grainy for the past however long. One day I was sitting in the very back of a big class next to someone with a 5, and she zoomed in on the board every few minutes to photograph our notes as the teacher rapid-scrawled, and I sat there with my mouth open because if you try to zoom the camera on the 3 it turns into blur almost immediately. Now, I can do things like take pictures of a full page of my own writing notes and then easily zoom in later to see my handwriting without any loss of clarity. It's kind of amazing. This phone also has a front view camera so that Grant and I can video chat on our phones when he's travelling (you know, always). And, it's thinner, lighter and generally fits in my painful hands more easily. Grant got the Samsung Galaxy S3 and while it is truly AWESOME, it is way too big for my tiny little hands with the joint issues I'm having. My phone is itty bitty next to his, actually...
I suppose the big winner here is Annie, whose pull-out keyboard samsung phone was glitching so badly that it basically turned off every time she sent a text. She's got my iPhone 3, now, in it's otter box even.
My favorite thing about this entire shift is that NOW I can count on her having her phone nearby and charged 100% of the time, rather than having to say, "Do you have your phone?" whenever we leave the house or I drop her off anywhere.
Aaron, having burned through (damage and loss) 3 different $10 Go-Phones over the course of our contract, no longer has a number at all. We'll try again next time it comes 'round.
Rants - ALL ABOUT KID EXPENSES, GAH!
-Isaac outgrew his school uniform pants to such a point it could no longer be denied...along with his underwear, and his sneakers and Crocs, and socks. Cha-ching, $150 even at outlet stores...
-Isaac had a birthday (which is awesome - he turned 9 and I can hardly believe that!) and between the chosen menu for the day (for the whole family), his cake and candles, his presents (next Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, lego idea book, more legos, a good jump rope since he's reached the outer limits of what he can do with his ultra light dollar store one, and a couple of toys for him and Jake to shoot water at each other with) - about another $150
-and he didn't have a party, and Daddy wasn't even in town on the day (singing via Skype), so he wanted to go with Jake and Elise to Jumparoos once G was back to take them...that's $30, but Grant took him out to breakfast one-on-one first ($20) plus gas to get there, plus Annie and Aaron getting hungry while we're there and they're bored so I hand them a ten to go grab food at the food court, and then everyone else is STARVING and we're like WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN -
-but that's how it is, all the time. One trip to a restaurant all 7 of us - $90, drinking water, no dessert, oh yeah THIS is why we don't do this anymore...so let's go to a non-BJ's grocery store just this once so we can hurry and get things for tacos and WHOA OK that's apparently a $60 bill now to get good ground beef, avocados, lemonade to drink, cheese and black olives and tomatoes and lettuce and salsa and tortillas and wow, let's never ever shop one meal at a time non-wholesale again :p
-cello strings - DUDE!! Who could have guessed it's like $120 to replace cello strings?? Those are NOT top of the line strings, either :/ I found out before Christmas when Ananda told me her teachers said she needed new ones and it was mid February before they were replaced (at which point visible fraying and skinny spots were becoming ridiculous) since, you know, they cost $120, and Christmas O_O
-$20 so far on Aaron's obsession - building his own Deadmau5 head (glue gun, sticks, styrofoam balls for eyes, foam board for the ears, other glue for papier mache...he still needs a 14" beach ball, stretch velvet and who knows what else).
-$70 because A&A have outgrown their pads and helmets at a time when they want to go to the skate park and join junior roller derby and so on, and she has these new skates I found at ~*such*~ a good price and she paid for with her own saved allowance... they need teen/adult sized gear now, and the brain-stem-covering stunt helmet styles rather than normal vented bike helmets.
-Ananda is drawing all the time and has burned through another sketch pad and turned at least her black colored pencil into a nub, and learned via YouTube that for GOOD shading and smudging you need SERIOUS colored pencils, and she's seen when I show her that some people are making art on massively huge sketchpads...so I go price them at a "discount art supply store"...and a big old sketchpad with 24 prismacolor pencils is (wait for it) $72.
-and she needed new underclothes pretty badly, and ran out of body wash, and used up her razors, oops there goes $100 O_o
-we've had $20 in TOOTH FAIRY expenses in the past couple of weeks, and $10 for a field trip for Isaac, and $15 for another haircut for him, and one night Grant set up the projector on the deck so we could watch movies and then we spent like $30 without even trying on snacks to go with it, at WD? Yeah.
It gets kind of intense. I'm kind of freaked in general by the amounts of money coming in AND out, lately, since his last raise and as the kids get bigger and our regular bills increase and so on. I feel very blessed and a little overwhelmed and pretty glad that I'm (hopefully) going to be working post-degree by the time they're all becoming adults that would like help with, you know, massively enormous impossibly expensive things.
It's just so big and real and wut, that we are planning things like selling our house, an interstate move, applying to universities. Sometimes it still surprises me that the world is just right there to get all mixed up in, and I can really just DO things if I want to.
A couple of weeks ago I ordered some seriously lovely lingerie from www.hipsandcurves.com - it was a big splurge that (Grant and) I would do over in a heartbeat. They've very well reviewed around the web, in blogs and videos, as being Agent Provocateur-level awesome, but plus sized. I called and talked to someone about sizing questions (top vs bottom sizing, particular proportions, how various things run) and she was very nice and helpful, we tweaked my existing order, and everything fits great.
Best of all! There are current coupon codes better than anything I've ever seen them offer before.
RMN15 for $15 off of $100+
RMN30 for $30 off $150+
RMN75 for $75 off of $250 or more (all good til 3/31/13).
Also, upon ordering, I found that they offer $5 flat rate US shipping - and my stuff arrived 4 days after I ordered it :D I may or may not have been eagerly refreshing the FedEx tracking page every minute until it arrived.
I've never owned non-practical sexy lingerie before. If you haven't either, GET ON THAT RIGHT AWAY. I was totally blown away by my reflection in the mirror, and my husband approved x10. It was very, uh, inspiring for both of us ♥
I will definitely be a return customer, albeit yearly or something else within the realm of sanity like that.
Rave #2:
I am falling in love with Marshall's. Do you know how they have a gourmet and foodie type aisle of non-perishables, and several aisles of quality kitchenware, all dirt cheap? I've gotten some of my le creuset there in years past, and it's definitely the best place to get a really nice $6 everyday sort of bra or a $3 6-pack of wool blend trouser socks, too (well, not those aisles in particular) - but yesterday! Yesterday I got:
-20 0z (<---!!!) pump-top bottle of fancy-natural olive oil soap that smells like oranges...REAL oranges. Slightly bitter, pithy ones. Every time I wash my hands I'm back in my Nana and Pa's backyard, trying to make a cup of juice from their stubborn-sour tree with my sister (both of us in bathingsuits) $3.99
-9 oz jar of herbs de provence (FROM FRANCE) that doesn't expire until 2016 (sometimes expiration is a concern in this section). Chicken and vegetables roasting currently, white wine on standby... $2.99
-big, 12 oz jar of 4 ingredient (oranges, water, sugar, fruit pectin) marmelade for my pre-existing overabundance of chicken thighs $4.99
-pyrex glass 4 cup measuring cup (because mine has had unreadably invisible markings for years now, and is also chipped sharp these past months...)
-14 oz jar of tomato sauce, ingredients being plum tomatoes, roasted red peppers, olive oil, salt, Cabernet Sauvignon - Ananda and I are going to be roasting eggplant and mushrooms to eat with it and some shaved parmesean, tomorrow, for lunch... $3.99
Rave #3:
Because we stuck it out and waited through our 4 year AT&T contract, it was finally time to be able to get free and ultra-discounted upgrades for our phones with a renewal - I am super happy about this! Grant has been carrying around an Android with a shattered screen that does things like open audio books when he tries to play music and go straight to voicemail for incoming business calls, for the past 6 months. I've been feeling like I'd love to update my iPhone (it was a 3) for camera quality. I was still really happy with it otherwise, but since it's my primary camera these days I get kinda twitchy about it when I look back through my lj and see all my kid-pics looking dull and grainy for the past however long. One day I was sitting in the very back of a big class next to someone with a 5, and she zoomed in on the board every few minutes to photograph our notes as the teacher rapid-scrawled, and I sat there with my mouth open because if you try to zoom the camera on the 3 it turns into blur almost immediately. Now, I can do things like take pictures of a full page of my own writing notes and then easily zoom in later to see my handwriting without any loss of clarity. It's kind of amazing. This phone also has a front view camera so that Grant and I can video chat on our phones when he's travelling (you know, always). And, it's thinner, lighter and generally fits in my painful hands more easily. Grant got the Samsung Galaxy S3 and while it is truly AWESOME, it is way too big for my tiny little hands with the joint issues I'm having. My phone is itty bitty next to his, actually...
I suppose the big winner here is Annie, whose pull-out keyboard samsung phone was glitching so badly that it basically turned off every time she sent a text. She's got my iPhone 3, now, in it's otter box even.
My favorite thing about this entire shift is that NOW I can count on her having her phone nearby and charged 100% of the time, rather than having to say, "Do you have your phone?" whenever we leave the house or I drop her off anywhere.
Aaron, having burned through (damage and loss) 3 different $10 Go-Phones over the course of our contract, no longer has a number at all. We'll try again next time it comes 'round.
Rants - ALL ABOUT KID EXPENSES, GAH!
-Isaac outgrew his school uniform pants to such a point it could no longer be denied...along with his underwear, and his sneakers and Crocs, and socks. Cha-ching, $150 even at outlet stores...
-Isaac had a birthday (which is awesome - he turned 9 and I can hardly believe that!) and between the chosen menu for the day (for the whole family), his cake and candles, his presents (next Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, lego idea book, more legos, a good jump rope since he's reached the outer limits of what he can do with his ultra light dollar store one, and a couple of toys for him and Jake to shoot water at each other with) - about another $150
-and he didn't have a party, and Daddy wasn't even in town on the day (singing via Skype), so he wanted to go with Jake and Elise to Jumparoos once G was back to take them...that's $30, but Grant took him out to breakfast one-on-one first ($20) plus gas to get there, plus Annie and Aaron getting hungry while we're there and they're bored so I hand them a ten to go grab food at the food court, and then everyone else is STARVING and we're like WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN -
-but that's how it is, all the time. One trip to a restaurant all 7 of us - $90, drinking water, no dessert, oh yeah THIS is why we don't do this anymore...so let's go to a non-BJ's grocery store just this once so we can hurry and get things for tacos and WHOA OK that's apparently a $60 bill now to get good ground beef, avocados, lemonade to drink, cheese and black olives and tomatoes and lettuce and salsa and tortillas and wow, let's never ever shop one meal at a time non-wholesale again :p
-cello strings - DUDE!! Who could have guessed it's like $120 to replace cello strings?? Those are NOT top of the line strings, either :/ I found out before Christmas when Ananda told me her teachers said she needed new ones and it was mid February before they were replaced (at which point visible fraying and skinny spots were becoming ridiculous) since, you know, they cost $120, and Christmas O_O
-$20 so far on Aaron's obsession - building his own Deadmau5 head (glue gun, sticks, styrofoam balls for eyes, foam board for the ears, other glue for papier mache...he still needs a 14" beach ball, stretch velvet and who knows what else).
-$70 because A&A have outgrown their pads and helmets at a time when they want to go to the skate park and join junior roller derby and so on, and she has these new skates I found at ~*such*~ a good price and she paid for with her own saved allowance... they need teen/adult sized gear now, and the brain-stem-covering stunt helmet styles rather than normal vented bike helmets.
-Ananda is drawing all the time and has burned through another sketch pad and turned at least her black colored pencil into a nub, and learned via YouTube that for GOOD shading and smudging you need SERIOUS colored pencils, and she's seen when I show her that some people are making art on massively huge sketchpads...so I go price them at a "discount art supply store"...and a big old sketchpad with 24 prismacolor pencils is (wait for it) $72.
-and she needed new underclothes pretty badly, and ran out of body wash, and used up her razors, oops there goes $100 O_o
-we've had $20 in TOOTH FAIRY expenses in the past couple of weeks, and $10 for a field trip for Isaac, and $15 for another haircut for him, and one night Grant set up the projector on the deck so we could watch movies and then we spent like $30 without even trying on snacks to go with it, at WD? Yeah.
It gets kind of intense. I'm kind of freaked in general by the amounts of money coming in AND out, lately, since his last raise and as the kids get bigger and our regular bills increase and so on. I feel very blessed and a little overwhelmed and pretty glad that I'm (hopefully) going to be working post-degree by the time they're all becoming adults that would like help with, you know, massively enormous impossibly expensive things.
It's just so big and real and wut, that we are planning things like selling our house, an interstate move, applying to universities. Sometimes it still surprises me that the world is just right there to get all mixed up in, and I can really just DO things if I want to.
