I was just looking through our list of books on the right and I KNOW we're missing some (like the one we (or at least you all) read in August). If you see one is missing, please post it for us all! :)

Oh, and Jenn, would you mind posting the name and author of our book for this month?

Coupons, coupons...

Ok girls, here are the sites I use to set up my store deals with coupons.

savvyshopper.com Here I signed up to get a weekly email and these are local stores. You can also just go to the shopping wizard and search by store. This site will often give web addresses to other coupon sites such as coupons.com, cellfire.com and shortcuts.com. The last two are sites for Smiths where you enter your fresh value card # and select your coupons and they go right on your card, so when you check out, the discount is applied. There are also product sites (like scrubbing bubbles or whatever) which give coupons for just their product. On these sites where you have to enter your email address, I use an alternate one because I think they probably send lots of junk mail.

I also use savingwithshellie.com. On this blog stores are listed on the right side of the page. This is where I get my Walgreens deals and I normally search Target and Walmart as well. This girl is in Texas, so sometimes the prices are a little different than what she has posted.

Once you start getting the Sunday paper, it takes a few weeks of clipping coupons before you can get all the deals from these sites. I organize my coupons in categories like Drinks, Meat, Condiments, Dairy, Cleaning & Laundry, Baby Items, Personal Items (shampoo, make up, deodarant, etc.) Then I put the ones that are going to expire first in front. Once I plan my shopping list, I pull out all the coupons I am planning on using so I don't forget any and the checkout is smoother. If I'm at the store and I see a product marked down, I go through my coupons and try to match them up (I can especially do this at Smiths with the Managers Markdown, I've gotten many free yogurts!)

I hope this is helpful to you guys. It does take some time, and some practice, but I have definitely seen it's payoffs, and I love feeling like I got a great deal. Nikki, If you could post (or comment) the coupons sites you go to, that would be great!


Emily

So, my worst fear of having the responsibility of choosing the book club book has come true - that I pick a book of fiction based on the little bit I know of it, and it turns out to be totally inappropriate. Arg. I didn't realize how many of the stories are about sex and death. Anyway, I hope you have all procrastinated reading it until this week. I'm still not done, but here is my updated list of stories to avoid:
Happy Endings
The Boy
Iguana Hunting
Disappearing
A Lover's Ear
The Verb To Kill
Bigfoot Stole My Wife
I am only up to "Family Album" now, but I'll post any others that I come to.
Next time I think I'll stick with non-fiction :)

OK, I apologize, but I feel the need to warn you on a couple of stories in this book, since I was the one who chose it. I only read a few of them in school, and now I've found a couple that you probably will want to skip. So, I hope actually that none of you has started reading yet!
One to absolutely avoid is "The Boy" by Joyce Carol Oates, and another red flag would be a pretty bad word on the second page of Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings." I'll keep you posted on any others I come across that need censoring. But the nice thing about short stories is that you can skip a bad one all together and not miss out on any part critical to the rest of the book.

Thanks everyone who came last night - it was so fun to have an excuse to hang out outside and woman-talk :) So... here is our next book - an anthology of short-short stories called Sudden Fiction International. All the stories have fewer than 2000 words. I was thinking that when we meet next at Caroline's (I think we decided on August 28th) that we could all have our favorite 2 stories picked out to discuss. Here is a link to the book on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0393306135/ref=sr_1_olp_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248458107&sr=1-1

"The List"

I decided to post "The List" on our blog so that we all know what order we are in. We can use this post as a reference when I forget to bring to my planner.

Lindsey

Nikki

Emily

Kelly

Becky

Caroline

Jenn

I think Caroline and Becky switched at sometime because their names were erased and then switched. I can't remember why???

News

So....

We're coming back to Utah!

But we need a place to live. And in my opinion, apartment hunting = worst form of torture in the world. I think I'm too picky. But is it really picky when you're deciding the place you're going to live for the next while? Ok, maybe it is picky, but is that a bad thing? I'll let you decide. Here's a general idea of what we're looking for:

• A place with character (which, in my book, usually translates to being an old house)
• A place with no character (which usually translates as being new) but will let me paint the walls
• Somewhere between Provo and the point of the mountain
  
• Preferably a house (not a basement!)
  
• If not a house, then an apartment that is not close to being a basement that will let me paint the walls
• 2 bedrooms
• A kitchen that has space for 2 people to be mixing things at the same time
  
• Rent that isn't higher than around $800
  

Any ideas? Do you have any friends that might have any ideas of places for rent?