After my fourth trip to the store in a month for cat food, I have decided that it is time to start buying larger bags. Those small trips add up quickly in both time and money. It doesn’t matter the store, it will take an hour to get either a few or fifty items.

We have a Sam’s Club membership and use it mainly to buy tires. We just don’t have a lot of room to store a lot of stuff. I now believe that I can find room for some bulk items. When you run out of toilet paper, then you have to go to the store. I hope that buying in bulk items like cat food, dog food, and toilet paper that my trips to town will be greatly reduced. I find that the trips to the store aren’t as annoying as it is to lose a couple of hours of productivity.

In January we will start buying more in bulk. I did buy a 16 pound bag of cat food that should last two months. I was worried about having such a big bag of cat food without being able to seal it. Today is a warm day, so the ants are out in full force. This large bag of cat food will be the mother load for them. Luckily I remembered I had a large Ziploc bag that I can use.

It will hopefully keep the ants and the dog out of the cat food. Buying in bulk may be more expensive up front but it should save us some money in the long run.

This past week I have been cleaning our house and thinking of last minute Christmas gifts. We have friends in Dallas, TX who are super hard to buy for. One gift I think would be really appreciated is the gift of clean.

I was checking out local carpet cleaning Austin and the company The Steam Team. They look to offer several cleaning options. The Steam Team can clean up after natural disasters like storms and fires. It is an option and something they could use. Their green carpet cleaners Austin that I know they will appreciate.

The gift of clean for Christmas could be a really good idea. It could become a tradition and would definitely make shopping for a gift easier. They have been interesting in finding a household carpet cleaner Austin. The holidays are hard enough so making gift buying simple is a great solution.

Brought to you by your friends at The Steam Team

It was a busy weekend. We had a wedding Saturday and then Sunday we went to the Ren Fest. Both were fun events. Our friends who got married had sort of a non-traditional wedding. Sure, they tossed the garter belt and bouquet, but there were some things they incorporated that I had never seen when it comes to weddings.

The bridal cake was not the traditional white cake. It was chocolate. There might have been a layer that was butter/yellow cake. It was a chocolate cake with raspberry icing, and it was very good. Their cake topper was beautiful and not the traditional bride and groom. The party favor was two six-sided dice that had their names and the wedding date. Both were nice touches since it totally fits who they are.

Their wedding was at a local hotel. The staff served the food, cleaned up after guests, and set up for the wedding followed by the reception. This is a great idea since decorating can be so stressful. Why not let someone else do it?

Weddings are fun because you really get to see the couple’s personality. Everything was simple and elegant – not too much decoration on anything. The bride didn’t have a veil or wear any jewelry. Her dress was gorgeous even though it contained no frilly stuff like lace, flowers, etc. It was a beautiful wedding. The bride and groom were extremely happy, and a good time was had by all. We have friends who are getting married next May, and they will have a theme wedding. I can’t wait for that one.

We have a new family member. Meet Moo – so named because of her black spots. Rae calls her Moo Princess since she will definitely be treated like royalty. Rae is really into princesses right now, so it’s not surprising that she has given her puppy a title.

She is in indoor puppy for now. She stays some outside especially when Rae is playing with her small toys. I thought this dog would have to be in the house 24/7 but Rae is fine with putting her outside. It makes it easier to get adjusted to having a puppy in the house. We have a lot of clutter, so we have to watch her every minute. Hopefully having a puppy will give me the motivation to finally clear the clutter. I do find it harder to do housework with her inside since she is always biting my slippers or pant leg. I’m sure she will grow out of some of that.

Having an indoor puppy is almost like having a newborn. We put her in a crate at night. She usually whines at least once during the night. That’s a whole lot better than her first few nights when we were up 3 -4 times.

The whole family is enjoying having a puppy. She is going to be a good dog – loving and not too playful.

Last week was a rough one around here. Both Rae and me were sick. She was sick the first part of the week. I began to feel bad about Friday or Saturday. Yesterday I was still pretty wiped out, so my dear sweet husband stayed home to take care of us.

Although I had to ask him to do it, he cleaned the dishes and cooked supper. When he does the dishes, he cleans the whole kitchen. He did a great job, and I’m so glad to have those dishes put away.

Being sick did put me behind on the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I didn’t make 31 posts for October. I may try again in December.

I also have a couple of reviews and giveaways for November. I plan to start the first one tomorrow. Both are pretty cool products.

So hopefully tomorrow we will be better. Or at least have more get-up-and-go. Being sick does put a damper on plans.

Tonight I cooked my first dinner from the E-Mealz low carb menu. It was a Mediterranean chicken with garlic vegetables as a side. I have to say that it turned out pretty tasty.

It was really easy to cook – which is always a plus. I would say it was a success. My husband ate it and seemed to like it. I thought the vegetables turned out pretty good especially considering I have never cooked that many vegetables by themselves.

The next meal will be Monday night. This week’s menu sounds very tasty, so I’m looking forward to many good home-cooked meals.

It is a shopping trip my mom had been planning to take for weeks. The day finally rolls around. We load up and head out in search of bargains galore. The night before I had used my debit card online and made sure to put my wallet back into my purse. My purse sat on the couch/bed in our living room all evening until it fell off landing bottoms up. My husband returned my purse to its original spot shortly thereafter. My gut told me to double check the contents; a quick glance at the floor didn’t reveal anything that out of the ordinary.

As I am getting ready to make my first purchase of the day, I start searching my purse for my wallet. It is nowhere to be found. Luckily I keep my cash in a coin purse and was able to buy what I wanted. I only carried a little bit of cash, so I had to pass on a few items.

I knew I should have checked closer for my wallet last night but I assumed that it was in there. This just proves to me the importance of listening to that small voice inside your head. It is okay to ignore the voice in certain situations like when someone cuts you off in traffic. Your voice might say to speed up and give the driver a piece of your mind. A lot of times the voice is spot on. If I had just taken two seconds to check for my wallet last night, then I would have been assured of having it today.

I would love to say that I will act when my inner voice tells me something but probably not. This is a lesson I seem to learn every few months. One of these days maybe I will learn to follow my gut instinct.

All week I had been waiting for Sunday night and the LOST series finale. It’s been bittersweet watching this last season knowing that the end is coming. I will not go into a lot of detail about the finale or the last season so as not to spoil it for anyone – including my husband who has only seen a few episodes from season six.

From reading tweets and Facebook updates, it seems there are quite a few who still are as confused as ever about LOST and weren’t happy with how it ended. Maybe they should have chosen one of the ‘alternate’ endings.

But as a series finale, it did answer some questions and left a few hanging. I figured they couldn’t answer everything because it seemed no one knew all of the answers. After watching the finale, it took a few hours to digest just what had happened. My first impression was I didn’t like the ending but after thinking on it, I like it better. I think you can take away from the finale that ‘it’s all good’ for our castaways.

This summer I hope to watch all of the seasons again. I do think that about around season three that the writers might started to stretch out the series since I remember when it premiered that it was supposed to be a three year TV show. So that’s my big summer plans – watch a TV show that I’ve seen every episode but want to watch again for clues.

One of our favorite wedding gifts we received 15 years ago was a picnic basket. We used it on almost every trip. The top finally started to unravel and even though I still use the bottom of the basket, I’ve been looking for a replacement. I found a lovely basket at a second hand store for $5.99. It needed a slight repair as one of the handles was missing its wooden holder. But being resourceful, I was able to come up with a solution.

After trying a few different ideas, I thought of using a bottle cap. I had picked up a few bottle caps a while back for crafting purposes. This one looked the best and was also red – matching the basket lining. I cut down a chopstick to hold the handle in place. Then I sanded the inside of the bottle cap slightly for a better super glue hold. Within a few minutes, the glue had set. So far no problems. We’ve made one trip just fine. And if anything should happen, I have plenty of super glue and can always find bottle caps lying around.

I love finding a good bargain and being able to fix problems for free.

Does your dryer ‘eat’ socks? Well, apparently the dryer isn’t the culprit – it could be your washer. While washing, some times socks get pushed to the bottom of the tub and get wrapped around the agitator of the washing machine. You might want to check there – although it might not be that easy – for those missing socks. If you prefer not to have to take your washer apart, place your socks on top of the load of laundry. This way they are less likely to wind up at the bottom of the tub.

Other ways to keep your socks from going MIA include pinning them together and/or placing them in a laundry mesh bag.