New Restaurant.com Code...

Hey guys! Y'all know how much I love dining out for TWO DOLLARS! Here's another chance- Restaurant.com is offering $25 gift certificates to your favorite restaurants for 80% off- that's $2!! 

Click here to stock up- 

Now Save 80% Off with every order of $25 Gift Certificates. Use code DINE and pay $2 thru 2/28/09.

Most of the gift certificates require you to spend at least $35 in order to use them, but we actually liked that part when my husband and I used ours because we both got the most expensive things on the menu, plus dessert! And since I knew I was going to have a big meal, I saved half of my entree for my lunch for the next day. Really, it's a fantastic deal. Get it while you can!

Another outlet for me...

Hello my loyal beautiful and thrifty readers, so happy to have you stop by again today! I have an exciting announcement- I have started a new blog. It will remain completely separate from this one, as it is a completely different style and contains topics that are worlds away from anything beautiful or thrifty. But the more I blogged on here, the more I realized I needed an outlet for all of my less beautiful, less thrifty thoughts and ideas and general observations on life iteself. 

To be truthful, at times I just ramble.

Anyway, my new blog is called "Making It Up As I Go" and the web address is www.kaseymakingitup.blogspot.com. If you don't mind a bit of wackiness, peculiar humor, and completely random topics, then stop on by and check it out. :-) I actually started it about 3 weeks ago, so there are a few posts up already. 

Thanks for keeping me on the radar, and as always, I enjoy all of your comments and kind support!

Spiritual Sundays: A Hardhead Humbled

Image from www.yenra.com

Last week I was reading this post at a friend's blog, In This Small House, and I left the following comment: 

Thanks for the prayer reminder! I have really been struggling lately with feeling lousy with my pregnancy and just feeling like life is one big juggling act and in my desperate attempts to keep all the balls in the air I end up dropping them all instead! The one nagging feeling I've had is, "Duh, you aren't PRAYING, girl!" But for some reason there has just been this block for me- my brain goes a million miles an hour trying to keep track of everything I need to get done and my personal prayer and scripture study just get squeezed out by everything else. (gee, I don't suppose that could be the adversary, could it? nah...) My goal for this week is to make my personal morning devotional the priority- it will be the first thing I do once I am up and dressed. No computer until prayer and scripture study are done! It's time to put first things first!!

Thanks for the kick in the butt and the extra motivation!

So this week I stuck to my word, and do you know what? It actually worked. All those problems I mentioned- feeling lousy, not getting things done, etc.- well, it's like they were just lifted. Every morning I sat down at my desk in my office with my notebook and my scriptures, and I started with a heartfelt prayer. Then I began to read. I'm working on the New Testament- one chapter a day, and as I read I've been jotting down notes with any thoughts, insights, or questions I might have. It is truly amazing how much the words in the scriptures can help you if only you read. I had been feeling frustrated with some people in my life, and I read the words of Matthew 7:1-2:

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."

Wow, God sure is smart, and He sure knows how to get His point across to me! And to remind me how important my example is to my children, and how much my scatter-brained frustration affected them, He gave me Matthew 5:19:

"Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

And this one pretty much addressed the struggle in the comment I made on my friend's post about trying to juggle it all- Matthew 6:24 and 33-34:

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon...But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself..."

Each day I couldn't help smiling as I read these verses that the Lord had so thoughtfully placed before me. He knows me and the daily struggles I face, and here He is telling me it's okay, don't worry. Just put first things first and everything else will fall into place.

But of course, I am a hardhead, so I needed to test that theory. My husband had to work yesterday morning, so I decided to get some much-needed extra cleaning done around the house. Somehow my personal morning devotional got pushed aside as I enjoyed the slower pace of a Saturday morning, and before I knew it, it was 11am, the kids had been fighting nonstop so I had sent them to their rooms, and I was downstairs in an angry funk madly vacuuming. That irritating little voice in my head kept saying, "Morning devotional, morning devotional, first things first, did you think to pray?" Well, I was annoyed.

Finally though, my inner light broke through my dark clouds and got the best of me. I put away the vacuum, went upstairs to check on the kids, and asked them each for 15 minutes for Mommy to do her morning devotional. When I was done, I brought the kids downstairs and we had our family morning devotional. Then we played games and read stories until Daddy got home. The change in atmosphere was remarkable.

Coincidence? I think not.

I won't say I've learned my lesson, because as we all know, the Lord usually has to teach us the same lesson over and over again- sometimes for our entire lives- before it finally clicks. But I have definitely received a boost to my testimony of the power of personal prayer and scripture study, and I know that the more I continue this good habit, the more I will be blessed by His guidance and care.

Can I give you one more quotation?

In the March Ensign, there is a reprint of a talk by President Marion G. Romney in which he states,

"Oh, for the glorious day when these things all come naturally because of the purity of our hearts. In that day there will be no need for a commandment, because we will have experienced for ourselves that we are truly happy only when we are engaged in unselfish service." (or in my case, unselfish devotion to God)

I would challenge each of you to take on this experiment for yourselves, if you haven't already. Start your day with an invitation to the Lord to have Him by your side, and I promise you- I know this from personal experience- He won't let you down.

The Deal Diva Returns...

Just a few of the items I got at Kroger today: 

- Egglands Best Cage-Free Brown Eggs, on sale $1.54 - $0.35 coupon (doubled to $0.70) = $0.84/doz

- Goodys Headache Powder, on sale $1 - $1/1 coupon = free

- J & J butterfly bandages, on clearance $0.83 each - $3/2 coupon = free plus $1.44 in overage

- Hershey's bars, on sale $0.50 - B1G1 coupon = $0.25 apiece

- Reeses Whipps, on sale $0.50 - $1/2 coupon = free

Incidentally, if this was all I had bought, my total would have been $2.08. If I had bought more of the butterfly bandages I could have brought it down to $0.64!

Okay, so I'm not exactly a "Deal Diva" but it does feel good to get back in the groove with my couponing and deals shopping! I ventured out to Kroger today, and I snagged $42.95 worth of groceries for $19.78. If it had been strictly my deals, then I would have done better, but we needed some apples and bananas (we seriously go through about 7 lbs of these a week!!) and some lunch meat, so I had to spend just a little extra. 

Luckily, I stumbled upon an awesome and very easy deal while I was there- the first aid aisle had blinkies for $3/2 Johnson & Johnson First Aid products, which as any deals shopper knows is a very good coupon, as many J&J first aid products are priced around a dollar. So I tried to stand there inconspicuously as I waited for it to spit out the coupons, one at a time. I didn't want to be too greedy, so I only got 5. :-) However, as I was standing there attempting to look nonchalant, I took a quick scan of the shelves to see if there were any J&J products priced low, and wouldn't you know it! I found boxes of butterfly bandages clearance priced at $0.83 a box. Sweet! So I grabbed a couple of boxes and threw them in my cart, and enjoyed the additional $1.44 in overage at checkout. *Sigh* I just love it when that happens...

Anyway, that was a nice boost to my trip (especially after Monkey and Starlet each threw individual screaming fits and I had to drag them back to the front of the store and take away their little carts and put all our stuff into a big cart so they would quit running into people and slamming into things- quite unpleasant). It's nice to feel like I finally have the desire to get the deals again, and I'm looking forward to my CVS and Walgreens trips tomorrow! :-)

The Sprit of Elijah: The Greatest Story of All is Life Itself

A photo collage of my father as a boy and his mom and dad (my grandparents) in the 1950s. My dad converted all the black and white photos to color, so it's almost like they were taken yesterday! Pretty cool.

Today at church I was blessed to be able to sneak away from the children for a bit to attend the weekly women's class in Relief Society. The topic for today was the Spirit of Elijah: 

"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." - Malachi 4:5-6

In the LDS Church, we typically think of the Spirit of Elijah as being connected to family history work, the idea of "the fathers" being our ancestors and us being the children. As they reach out to us, so must we give them respect and honor by reaching out to them through researching our family history and making it possible for those who have passed on before us to receive what we believe to be vital holy ordinances that are essential to their salvation.

As we discussed these ideas today, I started thinking about family history work, and in a way I often feel like there's just not much for me to do in the way of geneaology. My mother has worked tirelessly for years to research our family, and she has done a tremendous job. She has even created a beautiful book for each of her children with photos and stories of our ancestors. Then my thoughts turned to a conversation I had with my son in the car. I don't remember how the subject came up, but we started discussing my grandfather, who died when I was very young. I don't have many memories of him, but the few I do have are of a man who was kind, loving, and playful- everything a grandpa should be. I started telling my son the stories of things I remembered doing with him, and my son just kept saying, "What else, Mommy? What else do you remember about your grandpa?" Sadly, after only a few stories, I was out of memories. Here was my son, eager to hear the stories of his great-grandfather, and I had come up dry.

So I was sitting in Relief Society as many good sisters were telling these amazing stories of discovering their long-lost relatives, and I realized that sometimes we're so busy trying to assemble a family tree that we forget the stories of those just a generation or two behind us. How heartbreaking to lose the lives and stories of those we knew in the flesh! 

Also this past week I got this wonderful e-mail from my dad. It was one of those silly questionnaires about "Do You Remember When You Were in High School...?" and it listed a series of questions like, "What kind of car did you drive?" Most of these types of questionnaires get filled out by twenty-somethings like myself, for whom high school was hardly more than a decade away. But when I began to read my dad's answers (a man who is now in his mid-sixties), I couldn't help but smile as I began to learn things about him that I had never known, like a crush he had on one of his teachers, and how he went to Prom with one girl, but met another girl there whom he ended up dating instead! It just made his past so real to me, and it was absolutely a treasure to read things about him that I may never have known otherwise.

My parents are getting older. All of my grandparents have passed away, and my parents are my only link to their lives and their stories. I can't bear to think that my children might someday struggle to come up with memories of my parents- their grandparents. For me, the Spirit of Elijah means cherishing the lives of our loved ones, and recording our stories for the generations to come. It is literally turning our hearts to our fathers, and asking them to tell us the stories of our lives; it is making a record of special times and giving each person's life meaning through sharing their individual experiences. For me, it is keeping a journal so that someday my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will know who I was and what I believed and how my life turned out the way it did. Family is a gift from God; it is a powerful connection, our roots, and it shapes us more than we realize. We have an opportunity to learn from one another, and to see the past not as history, but as a prologue for our own lives.

May we each catch the Spirit of Elijah and truly turn our hearts to our fathers, that they might turn their hearts, lives, and wisdom to us. May we not allow their stories to simply slip away quietly into the night, lost in a haze of forgotten memories, but rather hold up their experiences as a beacon for us and the generations to follow. May we record and cherish those memories  and live our lives in such a way that we honor the lifetimes of those who have gone before.

12th and 13th Day of Valentines: Poetry and Games!

For day twelve I used my "wordsmithing skills" and penned a twelve-line poem for my love. I will not divluge the details of that poem as it is between me and my Valentine (and really, it might make you cringe with its 4th-grade rhymes!).

For today I am playing off the idea of Friday the 13th being an unlucky day and I left my sweetie a note that read, "Some say that Friday the 13th is a day of bad luck...let's test that theory tonight with a stay-at-home date night of fun and games. And you never know...you might even get lucky... ;-)"

Well, we've pretty much reached the end! For tomorrow I will just present my hubby with his "big" Valentines gift- a well-deserved gift card to his favorite sporting goods store. Oh, and I'm planning on making him a special breakfast of french toast (the french are very romantic, you know) using this decadent recipe. 

I hope you have all enjoyed these 14 days! I have been so pleased to read your kind comments about the nice things you've been doing for your sweethearts, and I hope we can all keep it up- not just during the 14 Days, but whenever our romances need a little boost. Remember,

 "Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving." -- Kahlil Gibran

For more love quotations, check out The Quote Garden. Oh, and in the past I have used quotations as one of my days of Valentines. Just so you know. ;-)

11th Day of Valentines: 11 Songs That Remind Me of You

For the 11th day, I "borrowed" my husband's iPod Touch and put a playlist on it that I entitled "11th Day." The playlist included 11 songs that remind me of him from our iTunes music library. They were songs we already had on there, I just put them into one playlist. Then I left his iPod where he could find it with a note that read:

1. Go to Music

2. Click on Playlists

3. Find the playlist called "11th Day." These are all songs that remind me of you when I hear them. I love you!

In the past I have done this by making a mix tape or cd, or even just writing down the titles of songs and quoting a few of their lyrics on a sheet of paper. Music is the language of love...