It Happened Again This Summer

Last summer time got away from me and I realized I hadn't blogged in an awful long time but I didn't make any excuses because I was having so much fun!  This summer I've had some valid excuses. In addition to the normal summer fun I've started a new, busy job and I've been dealing with a cough from hell for more than four weeks.  But as labor day nears I am back.

It's really important that my work environment be nice.  I once worked in a super old dilapidated building. It didn't have central air and all of the fixtures were straight out of 1970.  I like modern when I work.  I am so excited that my work space is in a nicely updated building with ample central air and plenty of parking space.  This is what gets me excited about work, go figure.  So, you can imagine my delight when I saw my office space for the first time.  It is a cubicle which I expected but it is super huge!  I was pleased to see two monitors since I've been using them for years and can't imagine having only one.  But these two are huge and on super cool swinging arms.  But the absolute best part...my own printer!  I think I'm easy to please!

I've also been totally loving the Freeport Summer Concert Series.  I loved Matt Nathanson on July 4th so much that I bought a ticket for his show at the State Theatre in November.  A couple weeks ago I saw Tristan Prettyman and this coming Saturday I am seeing Joshua Radin.  The following video is Matt talking about an older song of Matt's but one of my current favorites.

I also got a new laptop so I really no longer have any excuses not to be up to date on this blog!! Plus fall is almost here...

Relentless Belanger-Night Three

Relentless Belanger is a four night event with shows all over town raising money for Mark Belanger, a local musician, fighting cancer.  Night three was at Asylum.  Here he is with Mark Curdo and Brant Dadaleares.

The first band I made it to see was Whitcomb. They get their name and the inspiration of their lyrics from a poet in the 19th century.  But very loud rock!  I have bailed on their past two shows and it was definitely past due for their special kind of rock.  If you wonder what it sounds like when I go to a loud, local music show this clip gives you a pretty good idea.

A lyric sheet from "Tempest" was thrown into the crowd and I grabbed it.  I admit I've never paid much attention the the lyrics but they are quite artistic and I am more and more getting the whole poet Whitcomb thing.

Next it was time to be transported back to the 90's with the music from Tripe.  Leader singer Brant did back to back sets.  I admit I had forgotten some of the music but the moment it started playing everything fell right back into place.  I also must add that out of the woodwork appeared one of my 1994 boyfriends standing next to me.  So, it felt like being right back in the day good and bad : )

The set ended with bringing Pete from Twisted Roots onto the stage.  A bit of a teaser for night two.

Three Things that Made My Birthday Great!

My birthday was yesterday and I had the day off courtesy of my employer. I knew I was going out in the evening so I wanted to take it pretty easy during the day and get a few things done.  Here are only a few highlights of a pretty good day!

1) I cleaned my house.  On your birthday you say?? YES!  Lately I feel my house is never clean and being able to walk around a clean house was a definite present to myself.  My one tiny cat creates such mess that I feel I'm never on top of it.  There are little cat litter pieces everywhere.  He picks up his wet food and carries it around the house to eat so there are little dried pieces everywhere and my floors are always smeared with delightful grime.  And since lately he hasn't been eating that much most of that food ends up in the trash where it rots and festers.  I don't cook or eat meat at all so you can image my delight in having rotten meat-even the cat food kind-sitting around.  I don't know how people who have kids do it.  The mess must just be so much more multiplied.  Unless, wait a minute...are the kids cheap labor to clean up the mess from the pets?  Hmmm...

2) So once my house was clean I could move onto grocery shopping.  Again I hear you thinking "grocery shopping on your birthday??".  But LOVE to grocery shop!  When I shopped at Whole Foods I would literally spend hours making my way through the aisles checking out all of the beautiful foods.  Now that my wallet has cut me off from those shopping trips I get my rush with saving a ton of money on groceries by shopping sales and using coupons.  I love Shaw's because they have a very liberal coupon policy and they double coupons.  I've been saving around 40-47% each week.  That is from my regular grocery shopping.  It doesn't mean I buy a few greatly priced items and then have to go out and buy a bunch more stuff at about 5% savings.  I was completely excited when Shaw's announced that they are doing a trial through the end of the month where they will accept competitor coupons.  I didn't have much time to do a ton of research but I was able to use a Whole Foods store coupon, a few Target coupons and even a $5 off a $25 purchase Staples coupon.  My savings this week was 62%.  Yes please!  I really hope they continue the program after the month ends!

3) Ok, now onto the really fun part of the day. I prepared to headed down to Hampton Beach for a concert.  Here's a gratuitous selfie but really if this is what 41 looks like than I'm okay with being 41!

 I headed down to Hampton Beach and met up with friends and we found ourselves (as usual) front and center at the Stryper and Mike Tramp (of White Lion) show.  It was a crazy summer night party concert with a ton of energy and some really crazy characters in the crowd.  I have adored Stryper since 1986 but was actually more excited to see Mike Tramp who has a new acoustic album out and his voice is amazing plus he is very, very easy to look at.  Here is a snippet of him singing the White Lion song Tell Me.

I waited around after the show hoping to meet Tramp.  I gave up and headed down to a local bar with some people to hear another band.  When I came back to my car a crowd was gathered waiting to see Stryper come out to their bus.  I walked around to the other side of the parking lot behind the tour bus and there was Mike Tramp getting into his rental car!  There was no one around him other than a security guard and a couple techies.  I got to meet him and got this picture:

So yes, it was a pretty fine day :)

ThredUP

I have fallen in love with a web site I discovered that sells quality, used, name brand clothing at great prices.  I was skeptical at first but I had a $10 coupon code to use so I placed a small order and loved what I received.  The clothes are flawless.  They do not look ever worn. Thredup has a very strict policy on what clothes they will accept to sell.
You can also get $10 to use: Thredup $10 free

I really need some clothes to put away for when I take my trip to Costa Rica in the fall.  I placed an order and once again was extremely pleased with the quality and value of the clothes I received.  Here are a few of my finds:

And this is the total for my order:

I went back on the site and browsed a little bit deeper.  They have TONS of stuff marked at $2.99 including new with tags items!  I believe this might be due to a change they are making.  I got an email that they will no longer be accepting items that they can't retail for under 6.00.  They were losing money on them.  But in the meantime they have marked down tons of older stuff!  Here are a couple of things that I'm waiting to appear in my mailbox:


This is a new with tags blazer for 2.99 and a new with tags blouse  for 3.49!

Ok, I spent a lot this order but I got 18 items including seven new with tags items! 

 So exciting!  Check them out: ThredUP

Relay For Life 2013

Last night was the York County Relay For Life.  We gathered early in the afternoon to set up our camp.  We had a horrible experience in the rain last time where it took us hours to set up and meanwhile everyone and our stuff was standing around in the pouring rain.  Thunderstorms and showers threatened us this relay as well.  It turns out that downpours appeared on the radar all around us but other than one 5 minute drizzle early in the evening and a shower around 2am when we were already holed up in the tent playing a game of Yahtzee, we remained completely dry.  Even driving home in the morning the streets of Portland were drenched.  I commented that nobody would believe us when we said we stayed dry!

Here are a couple shots of our campsite:

There was a short opening ceremony and then I joined my mother and best friend out on the track.  They are both cancer survivors.  My favorite part of relay is walking that first lap and seeing people lined around watching us walk by and clapping for them.

I also really enjoy the luminary ceremony when the lights are dimmed, the bagpipe player walks the track and the names are read of those honored.

There was silliness on and off the track:

At the last relay we were drenched when we took a team photo.  We really wanted to recreated that picture this year in a much sunnier setting:

And here is the entire Cacklin' Hens 4 A Cure Team!

Now THIS is a party!

Thursday night I headed to Topsham for a summer solstice party.  I had been invited before but this was the first time I was able to attend. To me a large party is like 10-15 people standing around with a drink for a couple of hours.  I had heard of large annual blockbuster gatherings but had never been to one.  Until Thursday.

I pulled up and started counting cars.  I lost track after about 35.  Later in the evening I couldn't help myself and started counting people.  There had to be at least 100 people including kids.  This was good for me as it's a bit easier to hide out in a large group and just sit back and be an observer.  There was a band playing so I lost myself in listening to them.  They were not some little amateur act but a real band who plays at weddings and clubs and such.  They were really entertaining!  They played a little bit of everything. Here are The Veggies:

There were also more hula hoops than I could count with children and adults all over the lawn hooping to the beat of the music.  I'm really sensitive to not taking pictures of people's children so I got the next few shots from behind and far away.

Later the band took a break so that everyone could engage in a silly string war.  Everyone headed to this nearby field and ran around like crazy until all of the silly string cans were empty. Someone had posted on the event page that afternoon about how the stores were selling out of silly string.  I thought that comment might be a bit dramatic but I now I realize it had to have been entirely true!

After all of the excitement I decided to wonder around their property. I knew they were right on the water.  A very short stroll led me to the most amazing beach I've ever seen.  The water was crystal clear, there were green islands in the near distance, and the sand was perfectly clean and lightly colored.  

I left just as it was getting dark as the band played on and people continued eating and drinking.  I got to see a few old friends and meet a few new ones.  It was the perfect start to a four day weekend!

Toying With The Idea For A New Blog

I am officially hooked on saving money by way of couponing!  I never thought that I could get any benefit from it so I have been absolutely blown away by the results!  I discussed how I got started here: Help With My Grocery Budget.  One thing that I've noticed comes up frequently when I talk to people is they express disbelief that given my vegan diet I can be successful in any way using coupons.  When I mention that every single week I use coupons for produce I actually get an open mouth stare.  Yet it has been amazingly easy to save great amounts of money of fruits, vegetables, organic brands, natural items etc.  I have subscribed to several blogs and while there is a bit of overlap I find that between all of them I seem to hit on most of the good deals.  However, I also find myself weeding though coupons for Hormel meat, Ramen noodles, and tub of margarine to find the little gems that interest me.  I searched for a  coupon/savings site geared toward a natural plant based diet and found nothing.  There are a whole lot of blogs about eating healthy and living a natural lifestyle.  There are a bunch of recipe blogs.  I couldn't easily find anything that showed ways to save money on these items.  It got me thinking of what might be involved in starting another blog devoted to that single topic.  It's one thing to do this little blog that only about a dozen people read and another thing entirely to try to create a blog that is intended to be "the real deal".  So, I'm exploring the options and what is involved and in the meantime I am going to share my deals of the week!

I got everything in the photo below for completely FREE!  It's about $20-25 worth of stuff and it's my haul from just the past week and without really doing any major research or going out of my way at all.  This just doesn't get old!

The photo below is an honorable mention of super cheap salad mixes.  These were just on sale for an amazing price of .97 cents each.  I had a coupon for $1.50 off two Fresh Express.  Folks-That works out to 22 cents a bag!!

So, I will continue to mull over this new blog idea and continue to keep looking for great deals!