Another New Addition to our family!

We FINALLY got some goats. They are La Mancha/Nubian crosses. KAZI is the white one with the little horns. We haven't named the black and white one yet. They are sooo adorable.

Where has the time gone~

Wow, I realized today that I hadn't posted anything since the beginning of the month. Things have been so crazy. An update on my crazy life....we lost two of our chickens, Little Brown and Big Brown. We brought 2 new chickens home last Saturday. Its been frustrating because Jumper has been very territorial with the youngest one "velvet" to the point that we are worried. I didn't realize that chickens can be so mean.

Emily broke her hand during a soccer game. We will find out later this week if she will need a different cast. This is her 3rd broken bone, 2 Christmas' ago she broke both of her bones in her right wrist. This girl just doesn't slow down. Its been debateable whether or not she will be able to compete at fair this year with her 4H club.

My son Tyler turns 19 in two weeks and will graduate with his class in June so we are quite busy with graduation parties and activities.

We keep putting off tilling the garden because of the weather. I've been so excited since we moved in last January to have this garden and now to have the delay is killing me!

Well enough about me, I'd love to hear what everyone else has been up to?!

Our New Addition UPDATE

About a month ago I blogged about our exciting news of having a new member added to our family. My daughter was able to get her first horse out of the generosity of a co-worker of my husbands. Fast forward a month, we had to put Lady down on Monday. It was heart breaking for us. What we thought was a gift from someone we somewhat knew turned out to be a scam so to speak. Lady arrived to us full of energy and playful. She was the SWEETEST girl. However, after about 48 hours of being at our house she developed a limp and things went down hill from there, her energy and livliness was GONE. You could see the sadness in her eyes.  She lost more weight (she had already needed 100 lbs put on her when we got her) and was now limping on both hind legs that had started to swell. Anyway after consulting with many different people we came to see that there were issues with Lady that had been hidden from us, (its beleived that she had been given horse 'drugs' to mask her medical issues) she was in a lot of pain and after a lot of thought, we found that it was the right thing to do for her. Emily (my daughter) will not give up on her love of horses, but there has been a lessoned learned here and unfortunately it was done at the expense of my daughters heart.

We've had a lot of snow!!!

Life has slowed waaaaaaay down for me because we've been snowed in.  Here is some of the beauty that we've had around the last week or so. At one point we had about a foot of snow. We finally got off the hill yesterday! WHEW

A Plate of Cookies for a Goat....no REALLY!

I can't remember if I mentioned it when we first moved in to the new house, but after about our first week here, our neighbors Lacey and Andy came down and welcomed us to the neighborhood with a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

Unfortunately, I wasn't home at the time but Rob and Emily were. My first question to Rob about the cookies was...."what kind of a plate did she bring?" my thinking was that if it was a normal dinner plate, it would give me an excuse to go up to their house and introduce my self while returning the plate. However, they were sent on a paper plate. I'd been busy after that and hadn't gone up to meet the new neighbors. Last week after having 2 fire and rescue trucks in the neighborhood (a few of us neighbors were burning brush) Andy showed up at our house with some more cookies and this time on a NORMAL dinner plate. Well you know what this means.....MY HUSBAND RAN INTO HER AND TOLD HER MY THEORY!  Curses.... Anyway it was very sweet of them, so today I baked a batch of my own cookies to return with their plate.

Lacey and Andy are two pretty neat people. I think we have a bunch in common and they are about our age. Anyway, as we were talking about photography and our neighbors etc, we mentioned that Beavis (their goat) was currently down at our house hanging out with LADY. After all was said and done, he ended up trading a plate of cookies for Beavis the goat.....I tell ya things like this only happen in the country.

New Addition to our family!

Last weekend my husband and I were able to fulfill our daughters life long dream (ok she's only 13 but she has been asking for this since she was 2!) we got her a horse!!! Her name is Lady and she's just the sweetest!

 I'm sure that you all have noticed that I haven't been posting deals very much lately. To be honest, I just haven't had the time. Since the move I now drive almost an hour both ways to work, pair that with my already long hours and new horse/chicken responsibilities and it makes for a tired Coupon Fairy at the end of the day. My family is very important to me and I don't want to take what little time I have each evening that I can spend with them away. So going forward I will post things as I go but cannot promise that I will have a post each day. I truly enjoy my blog and don't want to completely give it up. Things might change a little bit and may not be focused mainly on couponing but on my new life in general, which of course still includes COUPONS!   I think that this new approach to my blog will be refreshing for me.

Well I lost the competition...

Well, I've lost the competition between myself and my little sister Jamie. She came in at the last with an almost $2k savings on flights etc to Hawaii! I'm really proud of her. I don't have an accurate end of year total for myself, during the move I was in such a hurry I threw out the last of my receipts. This coming year I plan on using a savings tracking program that Happy Money Saver has posted. It looks pretty good!  Anyway, once Jamie decides where she wants to go for lunch/dinner I'll have my bet paid off....I'm curios where she'll pick?!  We've started the bet over, I REALLY wanna kick her hiney this year!

All moved in!

Well today my husband hauled our last load out of the old house. He promised me today that I have 1 week to get all my overstock put up or he'll be throwing it out. HA, I don't think he knows who he's dealing with. I don't have very much anyway. Not like some of the other bloggers I know  =) AnywayI now have to find an internet provider. Apparently Qwest isn't the phone service provider out there and the only internet service that I have found so far is 'dial up'....I THINK NOT! lol Like I said last Friday, I will continue to post as often as possible until we are up and running at the new house.

I'm moving!!!!

I am in the process of moving this week. I will continue to post however it will be on a more limited basis for the next week. We are finally gettin out of the inner city (so to speak) and headin out to the woods. Peace and quiet FINALLY!!!! Thank you all for your support and kind words over this last year. I truly enjoy running this blog and meeting so many neat people. Again....THANK YOU!

Christmas RUSH!!!

I'm sorry I haven't posted more the last few days. With Christmas fast approaching I've been busy with family and work. I'll try to post as much as I can as I have the time this coming week!

YTD Savings 11.27.10

WOW, Jamie sent me a text today with her ytd and competition savings so I decided I'd total mine up to. I've had a stack of receipts sitting on my desk for 1.5 months and figured I better dig in.  YTD I have saved $10,329.71 YTD and $9,487.94 for our competition! For those of you who have been following this blog long will remember that Jamie (my sister) and I have a friendly competition to see who saves the most on groceries etc for the year. At the end of the year the loser has to take the winner out to dinner....

Keep your eyes peeled!

During my lunch break today I headed to 7-11 as I do most days (yes I know not very frugal but I'm not perfect as I'm sure no one is) any way as I was walking back to the register from the cooler I noticed a tear pad for $.50/1 Ben and Jerry's. I snagged a few and it dawned on me that you can find coupons in the most unlikely places. So the next time you're out and about, keep your eyes peeled you never know what treasures you'll find!!!

Lack of Posts

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, I haven't been very excited about many of the deals going on and like I said before this is a crazy week for me. Tomorrow I'm heading off to Elma with my sisters and will be back on Sunday. Look for more posts as soon as I return! For those of you located in Vancouver, the Mill Plain and Andresen has a TON of items on clearance through out the store!!! Check it out if you have time!

About The Coupon Fairy~

I thought that I would take a moment to tell you all a little bit about myself. I am married to a WONDERFUL man (Rob) and have 3 amazing kids. Terra is 20 yo and is out on her own. Tyler is 18 and lives with his dad. Emily will be 13 in December and is the only one of the kids that still lives at home with us. I am not a stay at home mother, I have a full time job that sometimes gets me in trouble with hubby because I tend to put in long hours. I started using coupons 2 years ago when I noticed how much money my sister Jamie was saving. She taught me about stacking and I was HOOKED! (you will notice our YTD savings to the left, we are having a competition to see who saves the most money in a year)

About 6 months after I started couponing I decided to start this blog. First and foremost please know that I DO NOT make any money off of this blog. I DO NOT get paid from any sites ie, cellfire, shortcuts, coupons.com, Amazon etc, that have those incentive programs to advertise thier site. I did look into this at one point but found that I just don't have the time for that. Yes, you will see deals that I post for many sites but I am not getting paid to due so. (disclaimer sometimes there are referral sites like groupon etc that give you referral credit when someone snags a daily deal you have referred them to, but ANYONE can do that there are no contracts etc and it is a one time only deal) Above it all, I started this blog for the simple reason of passing on information to a few of my friends and family.

You will not find me running around town trying to get all the free stuff I can get etc. like I said before I work long hours and like to spend my free time with my family. I don't have time to pick up items I won't use just to mass donate items to different charities etc. I do have one group for teen parents that I donate to from time to time as I myself was a teen parent. Out side of that EVERYTHING that I get goes to support my family. That includes both of our grown kids. I've found that its nice when they come over and say 'hey mom do you have any deodorant' or 'mom I'm outta toothpaste' and I can walk into my storage room (yes its a room, I kind of over took what my husband intended to be his MAN CAVE when Terra moved out) and grab what they need and throw in a couple of fun things for them too. Now, don't get me wrong I am not against donating etc, I simply don't have the time to chase it down. I am in more of the mind set that to help some one help themselves is much more powerful than always doing for them.

Boy I sound like a GRINCH, but I assure you I'm not.

I have made many friends along this journey of frugality and am very glad that I've found this way of living. I truly feel that I am a better person and am happier than I have ever been, though I owe that to my husband who has opened my eyes to so many things. I have learned to slow down and enjoy life. I hope that all of you can do the same.