I made an online purchase with a company I have purchased from in the past, although it has been a couple years. I submitted the order on July 9.

I remembered to use Ebates and found a 20% off coupon which help off set the shipping they added of $6.99. My total was to be $22.50.

As of Tuesday, July 15 the order was still showing as processing! I was shocked, since it had been nearly a week since I ordered. I sent an email to the company, asking when the items would be mailed and stating my disappointment in the slow service.

The next morning, they had apologized without explaining and credited me the shipping cost of $6.99. Now I only owe $15.51. As of this morning I can see the items have been shipped, with expected delivery of Tuesday July 22.

I'm glad I inquired and that they have compensated me for the slow service. I don't expect I will purchase from them again, however. They are plenty of other sources for the items I bought.

Do you agree that waiting nearly a week to fill and ship an order is slow?

We had met our spending requirement for the Southwest credit card a few weeks ago. I had just paid the entire thing off, too. I was waiting for statement to close, points to be awarded (and then redeemed), and then close the account.

My husband had charged two nights at a hotel to the Southwest card. All good until a coworker realized he was charged for extra rooms. A phone call to the hotel to confirm the entire groups charges. My husband could not confirm the charge for his room was on the right card because he no longer had it in his wallet. So they reversed the charge on the Southwest card and he had it charged to our Wells Fargo Amex.

He was trying to do the right thing, but it really was all okay. He didn't need to do anything. After the charge is reversed we are short by $95 of meeting the requirement. I charged $5 yesterday at Walmart, and signed my daughter up for the ACT exam in September for a charge of $38, so I need to spend another $52 before the statement closes in about a week. It should be no problem as I know I need gas for my van and we need to purchase rock for our landscaping.

I was thinking I could charge these, make the payment for the new charges and request a refund of the hotel charge in full which is over $200. But I realized the card likely won't let me make a payment if I already have a negative balance. I just need to make the charges needed (with our regular spending) and then request the $100 plus that will remain as a credit balance. I may not be able to do this until the card is closed.

The hotel charge that is now on the other card will get paid with the credit balance received and our regular spending cash that I would have spent on the things we buy anyway, but charged to the card. Make sense?

A complication to the whole process, but it all works out in the end! I think my husband panics about charges sometimes. If he could have texted me while on the call with customer service I would have been able to verify that the card the hotel charged was correct. But he didn't do that. I'm not just mad, but I do need to keep track of where we are and get it all corrected.

Fun times with the credit card rewards!!

We have some areas of our yard where the grass doesn't grow well, or is completely dead. This is mainly along the house and on the north sides. We have wanted to get this spruced up for ourselves as well as future buyers.

My husband wanted to hire it out. I was willing to hear the estimate. The one guy he called never called back. Haven't seen them in the neighborhood lately either.

I decided that since it was primarily dead, that the areas were soft because of so much rain, AND the weather was cooler that I would dig these areas up today. I got them all done in less than 4 hours! Maybe it was less. The old grass is in yard waste bags to be picked up next week.

We will get plastic edging to match what already exists, weed block, and rock for the areas I dug up. This equates to 80+ feet of edging and over 150 sq ft of rock. The rock will be the most expensive part. My labor is free compared to hiring someone.

We are going to look at rock prices tonight and hope get the project started or complete this weekend. It seems my husband is all up for it now that I did one of the hardest parts.

Do you hire yard work out? Do you do your own? Do you even have a yard?

I paid our Verizon bill with my US Bank card so we can get 5% cash back. On this card you get to choose categories, and this quarter cell phone bills was one option for 5% back.

I'm now waiting for the statement to close, so the rewards will post. I will then have the rewards post as a credit, and pay the balance. The reward money will go to the mortgage!

I thought the statement would post yesterday, but it didn't happen. Sometimes you just want to pay a bill. Of course, I can pay the bill, but then the rewards would need to wait. I'll just wait a little longer for my rewards.

Do ever feel annoyed about getting a bill paid? Or is it just me?

I have a Pinecone survey waiting to be completed. That means I will have $3 to apply to my snowflake goal.

I redeemed Bing and Swagbucks points for Amazon gift cards awhile back. They have posted to my Swagbucks account and I have added them to Amazon. Ten dollars waiting to be spent!

I got my bathroom painting done yesterday. I do have some touch ups to do. The next project I will be working on is to make decorator pillow covers for my sister.

The girls and I need to do some shopping. They have a couple of semi dressy events coming up. I think we will look for dresses and hope for some clearance!! I'm also planning to treat them to lunch out since our errand will correspond with lunch time and it will be out of the way to drive all the way home after our first appointment today. The frugal me should just pack a lunch, but we rarely eat out, so I'm going for it.

As mentioned before, my husband is on the promotion list for Major. We are still waiting for orders that make it official. They are often issued at the first of the month. It didn't happen this month, so hoping for August! The plan is to save the money, but I need to figure out if some of that pay increase should be put towards retirement.

My only sale this week was the Box Tops. I didn't get items listed on Ebay on Tuesday night like I planned. There is a box of things ready to sell. I will try again soon to get more listed.

See? Random thoughts! Have you found a good clearance deal lately? Have you sold anything or found a little money (snowflake) recently?

I'm still pining for a new stainless steel fridge. It isn't a need at all. We went looking a couple times in the last few weeks because of great sales going on this time of year. I was amazed at the Energy Star cards on the appliances indicating the cost per year. Some refrigerator's were less than $50 per year to operate!

I started to wonder how much our current fridge cost to operate. I had noticed our library had

Kill a Watt meters available to borrow. The meters calculate how much energy an appliance uses.

Turns out our fridge uses .08 KwH per hour. Over the course of the year, based on our electric rates, our fridge costs $89 a year to operate. Clearly not a lot more than the new refrigerators, but almost twice the amount!

I went even further to calculate that the fridge we were looking at uses 474 KwH per year. For us that is $61 a year, so our true savings is about $28 a year. It would sure take a lot of time to recoup that savings if we bought a fridge for $1000.

I have the meter checked out for the next 10 days. I think I will look into a few other things we have plugged in to see what our energy hogs are. I'm not sure exactly what the results will show or if they will be worth making any changes.

Have you used a Kill a Watt meter? Do you know how much energy it costs to run your fridge? Would you replace a fridge just to save $40 a year?

I hate to say it but school shopping will be upon us before we know it. I try to do some of the shopping online during the summer clearance stores have this time of year. That gives us a few new items to start back to school when it is still hot.

I try to remember to use

Ebates before I get to the site, but sometimes I'm shopping and about to checkout before I remember. In that case, I close the tab with my shopping cart still full and to to Ebates. I find the store I'm shopping at and Ebates pulls their site up for me. Most of the time, my cart is still there, but this time I'm logged into Ebates to get cash back on the purchase.

Most recently, I have used Ebates to make purchases through Vistaprint for my daughter's business cards, Snapfish to order photo prints, Redbubble for my daughter's birthday t shirts and GNC for my husband's vitamins.

Don't forget to check out online shopping for vacation needs, too! I always find it hectic to be shopping before a vacation, and it seems shopping for some things online limits the stress of running to multiple stores.

Okay...thanks for listing to my reminder! I plan to get at least ONE thing listed for sale today to start off our SA Selling Challenge. Do you have anything up for sale?

My youngest daughter is 14 today. I'm making cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and the smell seems to have awakened her.

Her gifts were primarily purchased online. I spent just about $100. The all arrived on time and were on her list, so I expect she will be very pleased.

She is a low key child, so I don't expect we will be doing a lot to celebrate. She wants spice cake with cream cheese frosting, which I already purchased. There will be pizza for dinner. All the things a typical teen loves, right?

Since we always have a birthday to celebrate after the holiday it seems to extend the holiday celebrations. I hope everyone had a safe Fourth!

The Capital One 360 Independence Day offers expire at midnight EST. So this is your last reminder if you are interested. Here is

my post on the details.

In other news, all is still good here after the storms and losing power on Monday. We even were confident to leave town for a couple days. We spent money on gas and two meals, otherwise we were treated to meals by my parents. We got to see all of our family at various events and even took time to go to an art museum that now offers free admission.

Now that we are back, I need to catch up on laundry and paying first of the month bills. I hope to have some updates about snowflakes, and mortgage balance soon.

Have a super Independence Day tomorrow...and be safe!!

I use

Ebates, when I remember, when I'm doing any online shopping. A little rebate for going through their site as you shop on another site is EASY!

This week I purchased two t-shirts for my youngest daughter for her birthday next week. I purchased from RedBubble, but not before I went through Ebates to get 2.5% back, which amounted to $1.15. I also used a coupon code that gave me 10% off my order so that helped defray the cost of shipping. I still spent $50, but she will be VERY happy with these as they were specifically requested and on the top of her list.

I also purchased a family photo we took last year on my parents land. We used it on our Christmas card. As I was taking it off my fridge, um this week, I decided it was a really good picture and we should have it enlarged to put on our wall. I logged on to Ebates and found that Snapfish offers 10% rebates on their orders. I ordered an 11x14 print that I will pick up at Walmart today for $6.86 plus tax. Ebates is giving me $0.69 back.

Right now I only have $3.04 in rebates, but over the last couple years I have been using them I have earned over $65 in rebates. Those small little rebates add up!

There are other shopping sites that offer cash back, but Ebates seems to be the one that works for me. I think I have used Shop At Home in the past. It is a good idea to check another site to see if the rebate is larger or if they have a store that one site doesn't have. And if you use a rewards credit card for making these online purchases you are getting even more benefit for your purchases online!

Do you use a online shopping rewards site? Do you use more than one? Which one is your favorite?

I had to go to the store to buy a specific item this morning. I ended up buying three because I could get a $5 Target gift card if I did. This is something we will definitely use, so not a big deal to stock up.

I will count that $5 gift card as a snowflake and send that $5 to the mortgage since Target will give me $5 off my next purchase!

Snowflakes are all around us if we take time to notice! I hope to get a post up this week about my sources of snowflakes and other ideas for you to look into. Did you find any money recently that you can put towards your snowflake goal?

I put a new post on

Your Organized Friend about my new cleaning task today.

I used up the $60 in referral credits that were applied to our USAA credit card this weekend. We originally had $7.70 charged before the credits were applied. That left $52.30 that I was able to spend!

I spent $39.58 at PetSmart for cat food. I was very tempted to adopt a 10 week old kitten for $25, but decided now isn't time for a kitten!

We also stopped at Subway for lunch today. I spent $18.46 for that splurge. We also like our trips to Subway.

($52.30)
($39.58)
($18.46)
__$5.74

It looks like I will still owe the credit card company a little cash. The money that I spent and I would have owed except for the credit will be sent to our mortgage as part of our pay down goal.

We used $6.98 in Amazon credits (earned from Swagbucks and Bing) for some movie rentals this week. I'm matching those purchases with cash towards the mortgage as well.

That makes for a whopping mortgage snowflake payment of $66.98. Can't complain about less debt! I'm mean who would!!

Our oldest daughter is an artist. She has taken classes at school to learn Photoshop, Illustrator and other programs for which she has earned college credit. She was given the opportunity to borrow a drawing tablet from school this summer, so this moved up our time line for getting her a computer. The original plan was to get one before she left for college NEXT year.

We purchased a Mac Book at the local community college, which has discounted new Apple's computers. They were having a sale and took another $50 off, and the store doesn't have to charge sales tax. Our outlay for the computer was $1239. On Apple's website this would have cost us $1499 plus tax.

This is the most we have ever spent on a computer, but we feel this is a great investment for our daughter, it should allow her to use her graphics programs (which she is purchasing) with plenty power and amazing picture quality. We are excited that she has this tool that may be a key to her future career.

I put the purchase on my new Southwest Rapids Rewards card for which I need to spend $2K to get the 50,000 rewards points worth $500 in gift cards. I also charged the Adobe Creative Suite that my daughter is purchasing for $240, so clearly we are getting REALLY close to meeting that spending goal. In fact, by this weekend we should have that complete since my husband is charging some travel expenses. Easy!

This is our first Apple computer. My daughters use them at school. Are you a die hard Apple computer owner, or do you own a PC?

We did some spending at Lowe's yesterday. Well first I returned a $25 item I didn't need. Then we went looking for curtain rods for our master bedroom. We found what we were looking for and used up the rest of our Lowe's gift cards we received from our spending a few months ago on one of the Southwest Rapids Rewards Visas.

This whole year I have been matching money we spend on 'free' gift cards with a payment to our mortgage. The thought is that we would have spent this money anyway on the items. I can't send a gift card we earned toward the mortgage but I can send cash. This latest Lowe's gift card we used in full was $50.

I'm counting this $50 as a snowflake too. This puts our total snowflake earnings for the year at over $3K, specifically $3,033.82!! The goal is $4K for the year so I'm clearly WAY ahead of schedule. I'm not sure if I will revise the goal, or just see how far I shoot past it!

How far do you think I will get on my snowflake goal considering I'm already 75% to the goal 6 months in?

I made a large principal payment on our mortgage debt yesterday. My plan this entire year is to send $275 each time we are paid on the 15th of the month. So far I have been able to do this every month this year. I added $18.86 to that payment, which is money I have accumulated in snowflakes this month. Not much, but it adds up!

We made a purchase on Craigslist last night. I have wanted an entertainment center for our basement television since we moved in almost two years ago. We have tried many different pieces of furniture we own and currently have the tv on a too small cart. It works, it is free, but it isn't quite right.

We purchased this upgraded entertainment center for $125. It is only six months old according to the previous owners. It is not solid wood, but for our needs it is perfect. I'm not even bothered by the little water damage on the top. All other entertainment centers I've been interested in were over $300 so this is a significant savings. Once we are feeling better we will make the switch.

Despite being sick, earlier this week, and still recovering today, I have been able to stay a little organized. I wrote about this on

Your Organized Friend yesterday.

Did you make an extra payment to your mortgage this month? Do you sell on more on craigslist or buy?

I am under the weather. It started Monday night with a scratchy throat, and now lots of congestion and just plain out of energy. Even after sleeping 12 hours. I think my daughter had the same thing last week. She is still coughing.

Last night I texted my husband (on my new smart phone) to get 'pkts of vitamin c' at the store after he worked out. Darn auto correct changed 'pkts' to 'lots'. Instead of one box he came home with two. The two boxes both had smaller boxes of 10 pkts attached. The smart phone that is suppose to save me money just cost me money! We will use them all at some point, but I didn't need that many right now!

I sold a book on Ebay last night. I officially have zero items listed right now. If I get my energy back by Sunday I hope to get some more things listed!

That is all for now...I will check back in when I'm completely recovered. Right now it is time for an afternoon nap.

We rarely dry clean anything. Nearly everything we own is washable, with some exceptions. My husband's dress uniform is the most common to go in for cleaning, but that is less than once a year.

A few months ago, I realized my daughter's have wool coats. And they have never been cleaned. One is only a year old. The other might be three or more years old. Oops!

I made a reminder on my calendar for the beginning of June to get them dry cleaned in preparation for winter. The reminder worked like a charm. I remembered to take them in and pick them up. Oh, I also took in my husband's dress overcoat, too.

Eek! The bill for dry cleaning three coats with tax was over $48! I could have bought a coat for that. I did look for coupons in advance and could even see that this particular store hasn't offered coupons for coats in the past. I am glad I had it done, but in hindsight, I might have waited on the newer coat.

I tried to charge it on my new Wells Fargo Amex card, but the card reader the associate used, had a handwritten sign that read, Do Not Take American Express. I had to point it out to her when it beeped and she went to swipe it again. I ended up using the Southwest Rapids Rewards card instead.

Do you get anything dry cleaned? Where do you find the best prices or coupons? Do you avoid dry clean only clothing? Have you been unable to use your American Express card recently?

I checked the spending progress on our Wells Fargo American Express card, we have spent over $2200 of the $3000 requirement. I like that this card actually tracks the progress for you on the promotion. I was not able to use the card for a couple of our regular bills. They process Visa, Mastercard and Discover, but not American Express. Boo. However, I'm not too worried about meeting the requirement. My husband has travel this month and we expect to buy a new or used Apple Mac for my artist daughter. She will also be getting Photoshop.

Once we get to $3K on the American Express, we will start using the Southwest Rapids Rewards Visa. That should be arriving very soon. I'm glad I decided to apply when I did, as the timing will be perfect.

How are those of you doing with your new Wells Fargo spending requirements? Has anyone received their reward yet?

Spending seems to be high for us right now. Band expenses, getting new phones, items for the yard, and a few spring clothing items.

I want to go looking for curtain rods for our bedroom and maybe new curtains. (I thought our old ones would work, but they are not wide enough...should have left them with the old house I guess). I also wouldn't mind some spring clothes for this smaller body I seem to be getting with losing weight. I decided that for this week, just this week, I can wait on those items. We have really already spent all the money we set aside to spend this month. I don't feel those items are worth using our savings for.

Instead, I have decided to work on things at home that don't cost any money. Already this morning I pulled out previously purchased paint and put one coat on one wall of our bedroom (it is an accent color). I will do the other coat in a little while. I will spend some time working out, which is free or already paid for. I have some organizing tasks I want to complete, which also require no spending. And I have an item I previously purchased at Target I need to get price adjusted, as well as return an item to Lowe's.

I think I have enough things to keep me busy this week and out of the stores buying things. I will still likely buy the items, but just wait until we have spending money again on the first of June. It doesn't hurt to wait.

In other updates, I sold a book on Ebay. And I have another Pinecone survey payment coming in. So a few more snowflakes to end the month of May!

Has your spending been higher than it was a few months ago? Do you find spring and summer to be more expensive than other months? Are you waiting to make any purchases?

It's been over three years since we upgraded our cell phones and the truth is they still work. Although my husband's smart phone doesn't hold a charge too long. We have waited awhile to upgrade because my husband has had the grandfathered unlimited data plan with Verizon and he loves to stream radio while he is at work. His habits will be changing with our new plan.

Now I suppose some may wonder why we didn't switch to Ting or Republic Wireless. Trust me, I wanted to try it. In the end however, my husband travels EVERYWHERE and we needed a phone and plan that will give him the service he needs to do his job while away from home. It also seems that the Sprint network those companies use doesn't get very good reviews or service in our current area. It turns out we are willing to pay the premium for the service Verizon will provide.

In the end we signed a two year contract, and picked 'free' smartphones for all four of us. We tried to purchase at the store. However, the free phones weren't free at the stores. We left and came home to upgrade our phones online. For right now our out of pocket cost was $120 plus tax, since each phone had an upgrade fee of $30. We were aware of and expecting that fee.

We have picked a data package of only 4GB for now. We can switch it at anytime if we need more data. I checked with my sister and her husband and they used 1.7GB last month with two adults. The phones will try to switch to wifi when available, so I expect when we are at home they will be running of our internet connection which will keep our costs down. We do get a 15% discount on the price of data because of my husband's military affiliation.

So for now our cell phone bill is increasing by $70 a month, which is a result of adding three smartphones to our plan. I'm sure many of you on Ting are dropping your jaws. I know I completely get it. It is a lot of money. I know we can afford the costs, so I'm not worried. I'm hoping in two years, there will be new options for us that make better sense then the premium service we are paying for with Verizon. I will say we have had super service, rarely a dropped call or inability to connect when and where we want.

Oh, if you are curious we ended up with three LG G2 phones, and one Moto X. We have 14 days to try them and switch if needed and they should arrive on Thursday.

Do you think we made a big mistake? When did you last change your cell phone plan? Do you have a smart phone?

In the last four days expenses have popped up, one I was aware of and two I was not. Marching band expenses to be specific.

First, band camp is $50 and covers various things. I knew this one was coming...although I was forgetting about it truthfully. This fee is due June 6.

The second expense is a result of my daughter being chosen as a section leader for band. She is required to attend a leadership conference in July as a result. This is $55 and due May 30.

And finally, the big band trip for spring break 2015 has been announced. They are going to Walt Disney World. A deposit of $200 is due June 2. The entire trip is estimated to be $1,599, with fundraising opportunities available. We also have a little money, likely less than $50, in her account from past fundraisers that will be applied.

Ack! That is $305, which I had nearly zero advance warning about. A little irritated. I have the money, but what about parents who might have an issue with the short notice. I suppose they may make accommodations.

Have you had any big unexpected expenses pop up this week? Are you expenses due soon? Did you go on a trip when you were in school?

As I stated before, I wanted to check in with Wells Fargo to make sure we would still be eligible for the rewards offer even though we already have an American Express credit card and have earned a reward through them. I do not have an official statement from them, but I did see these two screens on the Wells Fargo Rewards site for our account.





In my opinion this confirms the offer stands and should be honored if we meet the requirements stated. This is Wells Fargos program not American Express, thus the difference some people may have experienced not getting more than one reward bonus with American Express.

As soon as I hear anything else from Wells Fargo I will let you know.

Our new Wells Fargo American Express card arrived in the mail yesterday. It was shipped from the next state over thus the prompt receipt. We have already used it!

Our gym membership was expiring. We paid $750 a year and half ago and our last day for the membership was yesterday. We finally got a sales person to assist us last night. I say finally because it seemed every time we inquired in the last month, no one was there to help. We had been mailed a renewal offer of $750 for 12 months, rather than 18 months like our original deal. The sales guy tried to offer us two years for $998. Sure that sounds like a better deal, but it is MORE money and the odds are very slim we will still be in this town for another 2 years let alone 15 months. After much discussion and indicating we would go work out and talk about it, the tune suddenly changed to adding 6 months to our current offer. So same deal we had the first time we signed up. Honestly, I was hoping for LESS than $750. I really tried with the guy and I think I did get us what is right for us. I won't need to pay any more money before we move...unless we don't move (but I think the odds of that are slim). At any rate, we charged our gym membership to the new Wells Fargo card. Well on our way to $3000 in spending, with something we needed to purchase anyway.

I do have an email in to Wells Fargo to confirm that previous Amex reward offers won't exclude us from this one. The card is in my husband's name, thus the email rather than a call. I could have him call, but he would just be confused about the whole reason I'm having him call! We decided to use the card even if we are exempt from the rewards. My gut says we will get the rewards since this is technically a Wells Fargo program, rather than an Amex program.

Do you prepay your gym membership? Or do you pay monthly?

I sold two items on Ebay yesterday. A pair of shoes and a CD set. I'm still waiting for payment though. The gross amount of the sales was nearly $26. I want my money!!

We did some shopping at Kohl's this weekend. I used the rest of our Kohl's gift cards, so I need to get that money spent on gift cards sent to our mortgage. In this case we have used up $100 in gift cards from Kohl's.

I have two Pinecone payments totalling $6 in my PayPal account. I am waiting for my Ebay sale money before I send all that money to my checking account and then on to the mortgage.

We are finding more things for the garage sale. My husband and I went through an older tool box and found several things we don't need. We even found a rechargeable drill that no longer charges...will anyone buy that? I think it's trash unless someone knows how to replace the battery. Why store something that doesn't work, right?

Since I am mostly decluttering and staying focused on the garage sale, my organizing blog, Your Organized Friend has taken a back seat. However, I did post a little trick I have for

storing reusable water bottles today. You might also take a peek at my prior post, since there are pictures of my basement getting messy again!

I am waiting on our Wells Fargo American Express card to arrive. Fingers crossed it is today. Our gym membership expires today and we need to renew. We have been in talks with them hoping to negotiate a better deal, but the sales people are never there when we are to get things firmed up. I think they will let us wait a few days to pay on our new card if it doesn't arrive today. I also need to pay an electric bill and order photo prints for my daughter's art fair. It won't take long to meet that $3000 spending requirement!

Did you sell anything this weekend? Have you received your Wells Fargo Amex card yet? Did you do find any non working items in your recent decluttering?

I spent a portion of my afternoon pricing all those items in my basement that I have set aside for a garage sale. The sale will be next Saturday. I will still need to price the pile in my garage. I also expect there will be a few more things we find in the house to let go of. I will have the girls look at a few things today after school that I think they have outgrown. I also have a toolbox I need my husband to look through.

It does feel good to be letting go of some stuff. It really does help to dig deep when getting ready for a garage sale. That is likely where the stuff you don't need is lurking!

This is the first sale I have had in our new home and since it is city wide, I expect a good turn out traffic wise. I don't know what kinds of things people buy around here. It will be interesting to see! I'm also curious about how much my snowflake will be.

We have a music event tomorrow which will require about $7 or $8 to for admittance. I also have a feeling lunch out would be helpful for all of us because of the timing. Mother's Day will be low key. Just spending time together and getting some projects done is likely the plan for the day. I don't expect any gifts, as my husband has been out of town. I'm not sure it is even on his radar! I'm all good either way. I might be able to get him to get groceries with the kids though.

Will you have a garage sale this year? Does your place get good traffic, or are you in a bad sale location? Will you celebrate Mother's Day, or are you keeping things low key, like me?

Last week was so busy. I expect that it will take me a few days to catch up some financial tasks and get those posted to my blog. Thanks for understanding.

I used a $25 Visa gift card that I received from US Bank and I forgot to send the match into the mortgage, so I will get that done soon. We need to go shopping today for some clothes for our oldest daughter. Our first stop will be Kohl's so we can attempt to use the gift cards we have there.

I made another Ebay sale and have some auctions ending today. They are all Buy It Now offerings, so I think this week I will relist to true auctions and just get them sold for the going rate. If they don't sell, then they go to the garage sale or if not sold there donated.

I need to start back on the decluttering this week. I have a couple days I will set aside to do some major work on the basement or the garage. I will decide which to do based on the weather!

Have you been busy? Are you playing catch up on your goals? Will you be decluttering anything this week? Do you have anything you are trying to sell?

Our painting project caused us to get take out twice yesterday! The kitchen was in complete disarray for lunch. The girls said their was nothing to eat. Probably true. My husband picked up Subway for lunch. Then I picked up Pizza Hut for dinner.

The problem was I didn't plan ahead for what we would eat during our big project. And this isn't the first time that has happened. It sure could have been avoided, if I had decided and shopped ahead of time for what our meals would be on painting day.

There will be some more painting today. We are going to tackle the stairway leading to the basement. The wall extends up and is visible in our living area. We will likely be reaching up while holding on to the ladder for dear life. But right after I write this post, I'm going to make a list for the store. We will have food to eat here at home today. No more take out!!

If you want to see the color we painted our kitchen/living area, I posted a picture on

Your Organized Friend. You also get to see my painting supply bin.

Were you able to get a task crossed off your list yesterday? Did you get take out? Was it planned or unplanned?

Remember those Ooma referral bonuses I received amounting to $100 on my US Bank Visa? Since I wasn't able to easily get US Bank to send me a check, I used the credit on my account to pay our electric bill of about $93, this month's Ooma taxes of about $4, and a trip to Subway for $9. Now I actually owe a little money to US Bank.

I will be sending that money I would have spent on those items to our mortgage since I had the referral money to cover them.

I haven't done much decluttering this weekend. I have tried to just keep up with basic tasks like unloading the dishwasher and putting things away after I use them. I have two new posts up on

Your Organized Friend that might inspire you to do a few things around you home, if you are interested.

I mentioned that I found several DVDs and CDs to get rid of in last weeks decluttering. I will be putting many of those on Ebay for sale tonight. I'm hoping for about $20 in sales if all works out. I will probably keep the listings going until the garage sale. If not sold by then someone else will get a pretty nice deal.

Do you get more decluttering done during the week or on the weekend?

We haven't received our water bill for the month. It generally arrives within 1 or 2 days of the first of the month. It is now the sixth of the month, and it has not arrived. I'm not very worried, but I need to know the amount so I can record the amount they will withdraw from our checking account on the 10th of the month. I sent an email this morning requesting the amount. I hope to hear something tomorrow when they are open.

I tackled some drawers in our bathroom today. It has been very tempting to do more, but I do have other things to do. A little everyday does make a difference. I wrote and posted pictures about today's decluttering on

Your Organized Friend.

Do you get your water bill by mail or email? Do you even pay for water?

It's the end of the month, and my husband's paycheck is pending deposit. I went ahead and recorded all the bills that automatically draft this next pay period. First is the mortgage payment of $1,415 which included an extra $103+ as a principal payment.

I also went online and made a large payment on our Southwest card. It was $961.70 to cover our recent Honda maintenance expense, our cell phone bill and other miscellaneous spending from last pay period. There is still a balance on the card. Much of that is some travel expenses by my husband. We should get most of the reimbursement very soon. I'm hoping tomorrow. Once we do I will send all that in and get the card down to zero again.

I set aside $50 for Christmas, $114 towards our auto registration and insurance, and the $57 for the 52 Weekly Savings Challenge. I wrote one check for a school field trip and another for a flute lesson later tonight. I will be getting cash out for allowances, and another future flute lesson. Oh yes, some of the cash I need to get is for my daughter's birthday. She received a check for her birthday and she wanted me to get cash for it.

At this point, I plan to send the check for our taxes late next week, around April 11. We have the $413 in our account now, so I can mail anytime. I'm just waiting as long as I can to pay! I will go ahead and right the check, and stamp and address the envelope. I sure don't want to forget to pay the government.

I'm waiting to hear about the $100 credit I have on my US Bank card. I want them to mail me a check, but I have not heard back yet. The credit is from those Ooma referrals I received. If they won't send a check, I will use the card to pay a utility bill and just take the difference to send to the mortgage.

Are you paid on the first of the month? Do you record all your bills for that pay period right away? Or only record when it actually happens?