Some more of Esme's birthday items arrived... it is stashed away. We scored a little something on clearance that she will like, too. I've got some more in my Amazon cart, one thing she had asked for and I just remembered it last night. I'm trying to get her nice things she asked for without going big budget.. we went bigger budget maybe than normally would have for her school start - but that has turned out really well. I know I could have spent a lot more on that but we planned it out pretty well.
I think checking the ads in the morning before we go to the store - and shopping at the K place as well as the W, is helping a little. I never did like the idea of having to go to two places, but Mark doesn't mind if there are a few good deals we can jump on and then stock up for later ie: peanut butter, frozen orange juice and shampoo etc.. I'm putting in receipts at three different sites for payback rewards, and they are not big rewards, but still something. And they add up. One of the sites is offering free photo prints for collecting points on something we already buy.. and I'm collecting photos for our family album, so that adds towards that goal. I started doing SavingsCatcher and - on things we have already bought - got a gift card that covered half of a tshirt I bought for Esme online.
Still forging ahead with the Amazon company, as well... that is what half of Esme's birthday presents were gotten on.
Esme and I went down to the lake yesterday, and saw what we thought were raccoon tracks. They were right next to the water. Then she came home and wrote her letter and made a drawing for her pen pal in Australia. She received a letter from him a few days ago. I had to push just a bit at the beginning but she sat down on her computer and wrote him a very nice letter in her own words. The map she drew of 'her world' (our property, the house and the lake etc.) was very good. I think he will like her response. His mom knows Esme was sick last week and that is why we didn't get it done then.
I had today off (and we did the shopping) and will have tomorrow off, too. And then the weekend.
I'm still in book 5 of Outlander ( I really think so...it gets hard to tell now).
Esme and I both got Toca Life on our tablets and she wants to play that tonight, if she remembers.
Pie Charts
I have been putting our receipts from last month into a spreadsheet and separating out the goods by category. I am trying to see what the ratios of dairy, meat, household, canned goods, produce etc etc.. are to each other and where we spend the most. I am also including the coupon information we saved on items. I have a whole month of data from September to work with and then can compare it to October as we go. I am hoping to learn some interesting things from this and also to develop a spreadsheet template to use going forward into a programming experiment. Doing all of those receipts on Amazon got me to thinking about this, ratios, percentages, change-over-time and also getting into searching for rebates, coupons and rewards that would stretch our money further for the same buck spent etc... It might seem like a silly pasttime - it would have to me six months ago maybe... but it has lots of avenues to explore and info to mine.
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