Mommy Confession ~~ My yard is pretty!

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Imagine a person who has done absolutely nothing to her flower beds.  Did my name pop into your head?  If not, it should have.  I admit it.  I slacked.  BIG TIME!  I worried about my garden more than I did about weeding my perennial flower beds in the front of the house. 

Nothing bad happened.  They are perennial beds for a reason.  That way, I don't have to keep planting stuff.  Just do a LOT of weeding.  This year though, I just kind of gave up.  I let the weeds have their way.  It wasn't pretty.  I really wish I would have taken a picture of them before I started weeding. 

The slide show above shows what the beds look like now.  Last weekend I spent most Sunday on my knees pulling weeds.  5 buckets full and some colorful words later, they were done.  Then it was onto the mulch.  I spent a lot of last week looking a colors.  Yes, colors of mulch.  I narrowed it down to brown and red.  Both would work nicely with our house color.  In the end, I chose red.  It pops against our khaki colored exterior. 

I wanted to send a huge thank you to Lowe's for the awesome 3/$10 mulch sale they had this week!  I'm also very thankful for the fall like weather we've been having around here!  The cooler temps have been screaming for me to get the yard ready for winter.  Have you been getting ready for the fall and winter in the yard?  If so, share with us!  I'm always looking for new things to do/use in mine!

Mommy Confession ~~ I’m slacking, BIG time!

Yes, you read the title correctly.  I'm seriously slacking.  I don't know if it's the weather or what, but I've become a BIG TIME slacker.  How am I slacking?  Let's go into that. (You know I love my lists!!)

1. I haven't cut/clipped/printed a single coupon in about 2 months.  Really!  This is a HUGE deal for me.  Our monthly grocery budget was running about $200 a month.  In the last 3 months I've been spending double that!!  YIKES!!  I need to get this budget under control and get back to couponing! 


2. My stockpile is OUT OF CONTROL!  Mainly due to reason #1.  Along with my grocery budget goes my list.  Since I obviously haven't been sticking to the budget, my stockpile is paying the price.  I am overflowing in things like rice, yet lacking in the pasta department in general.  (it all goes hand and hand doesn't it?)


3. Menu Planning.  I'm usually really big into planning a menu.  I do them weekly (because monthly is just too large a scale for me).  This ties into the grocery budget thing too.  When you shop without a menu, you buy random stuff that makes it harder to put meals together.  We've eaten out more this past 2 months than we have in the last year!  That's NOT a good thing for us.  ugh!


4. Laundry.  It never ends and that's all I'm saying :)


5. Reading.  Now, this may sound silly, but I "had planned" on reading with A every day this summer.  Know how many times we've done it?  3 or 4 maybe.  Not that the interest isn't there, but she'd rather play dress-up, or sleep, or torture play with Ren and CS. 


6. Organization. has. gone. to. poo.  Our house is pretty organized.  Usually.  Since school ended, not so much. 

So, what is the actual purpose of this post?  For me to see what I've slacked off.   I may be slacking off (according to me), but as a family, we've made a LOT of memories so far.  Summer just started, and there are many more memories to make.  Maybe I'll get caught up this winter, but the grocery budget is something that HAS to be fixed now.  Ah well, we can't all play in the summer!

Oh, and who is going to "help" me get back on my grocery budget track?  Mommysnacks.  Yup, she's the one person/blog site I go to for all things grocery savings!  Check out her site sometime! 

So, feel free to share where/how you're slacking, if you are.  If not, please share how you're staying on course!