Going Private

When we used blogspot I didn’t want to go private because then the people we wanted to read our blog would have a hard time getting to the blog. We would have to collect everyone’s email address and send invitations. You also can’t subscribe to private blogs on blogspot. I don’t know about you but I don’t have time to visit your blogs everyday to see if you posted something. Then if I do visit once a week and still don’t see anything new I wait even longer to visit your blog so I depend on readers to tell me when you post something new. If you don’t use a reader and you read more than a handful of blogs then you really should look into using a reader. I recommend google reader.

I think I have figured out a way to go private and still allow you to get the feed. I guess we will see with this first post so if you subscribe to us and you are seeing this in your reader then go ahead and visit our blog, register (if you want to leave comments or visit our physical blog), and leave a comment. Also, while you’re at it, if you haven’t visited my (micah’s) other blog feel free to visit at http://www.micahstubblefield.com

Is it tag season?

Both Sarah and I got tagged so we will both do it

8 Favorite TV Shows ( We don’t have cable so we don’t watch a lot of TV )
  Micah Sarah
1. The Office Cosby Show
2. Seinfeld Biggest Loser
3. King of Queens American Idol
4. Cash Cab Americas Test Kitchen
5. 20/20 John Stossel Curious George
6. Biggest Loser Seinfeld
7. This Old House King of Queens
8. Deal or No Deal This Old House

8 Things I did yesterday

Micah Sarah
1. Run 2.5 miles Laundry
2. Attend Career Workshop Made Breakfast
3. Overseed Lawn Play with kids
4. Grocery Shop Grocery Shop
5. Attend Co-worker’s Party Phone calls for Primary
6. Frozen Yogurt Date Night
7. Weigh in for 6 lbs loss Weigh in for a 4 lb loss
8. Prepare Lesson Get everything ready for 8:30am church

8 Things I look forward to

Micah Sarah
1. Waking up Micah coming home each day
2. Going to Sleep Weekends
3. Playing with kids Good weather
4. Holidays and Traveling A Blue swimming pool
5. Becoming Self-sufficient A Garden
6. Ice Cream Vacations
7. Learning Bedtime
8. Millenium Haircuts

8 Favorite Restaurants ( We don’t eat out very often. Fast food sometimes )

Micah Sarah
1. Burger King Paradise Bakery
2. Taste of China Chic-Fil-A
3. Cafe Rio Tempanyakis
4. Tempanyakis Macaroni Grill
5. Cheescake Factory Cheesecake Factory
6. PF Chang’s Fazoli’s
7. Ruby Tuesdays Rosa’s
8. Subway Subway

8 Things on my wish list

Micah Sarah
1. DSLR Camera Travel
2. Big Screen HDTV Living room furniture
3. A good pillow Happy Kids
4. A house that magically takes care of itself Lose Weight
5. More Job Security Time for hobbies
6. To Travel To bake nonstop without consequences
7. Good health and fitness No Worries
8. Self Control Be more Christlike

We tag nobody but if you want to do this. please consider yourself tagged.

Custom Video Games for Toddlers


Jackson has been really showing interest in playing games on the computer. The problem is we don’t have many games that are easy enough for him to play. We just have the games that game with the computer. Well I work for a computer game developer so I looked into making Jackson his own game. Here is the criteria I made. I wanted him to be the character, I wanted it to be easy, I wanted it to contain other things he enjoys. He also doesn’t have a grasp of points or levels or game over so this is just for fun with no rules. Here is what I have after two short evenings. As his skill improves I can make it more difficult. He hasn’t played the final version of the game yet so I will keep you posted on what he thinks of it.

http://www.stubblefields.org/jackson/SuperJackson.zip

Save the file to your desktop and extract it. Then run SuperJackson.exe To Play just use the arrow keys to move around and the space bar to throw balls at the ant.

Update: This won’t work on a Mac and you need directX 9 for windows, which you can get here…

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en

Okay, so we got tagged. We had to pick the fourth picture in the fourth folder of our picture folder. Here it is. This is The Super Fan ready for a BYU football game circa 2002 – months off the mission and a little too high on life. Now that BYU is good I struggle to even get myself to listen to the games online and refer to this era as the “good ole’ days”. Hmmm we tag Eugene, April, Debbie and Hannah

Budgeting For Dummies

In light of the failing market, warnings from our church leaders and general fear of a total meltdown we have been working on being prepared for whatever may happen. I can’t tell you how good it feels to have 8 months of food storage. Now we need to work on 4 more. Our pool is our water storage. We got a filter so that even if it turns green we can still use it.

The other thing we’ve been working on is living within our means. It’s tough to do when we often feel like we are sacrificing. I have a list of wants that is a mile long. I have to constantly remind myself they are wants and not needs. Anyway, what I want to talk about is our current interest in coupon-ing. We are getting pretty serious about it and have had some success. Most of the work was in getting organized but once you have a system and start accumulating coupons you start to run on auto-pilot. My biggest problem is that I love feeling like I’m getting a deal so I end up buying stuff I don’t normally buy or at times I don’t quite need it just to get a deal. In case you’re interested, here is how we do it. Please also share any secrets you have.

1. First, we subscribed to the Sunday paper which has quite a few coupons in it. Now Sarah’s mom gives us her paper too.
2. We made a coupon organizer which consists of a standard 3-ring binder with clear 8 1/2 x 11 page protectors. Each protector is for a different section of the store and they are in the order of the store we shop at the most. I also made a section for services and another for entertainment.
3. I made a shopping list with Excel that is divided into the different sections to correspond to the coupon sections.
4. Throughout the week as we think of things we need we add them to the list in the appropriate category.
5. Every Tuesday we get the grocery store sales flyers and I put these with the notebook so we have them when we’re ready to plan our shopping trip.
6. When we get a chance, we go through the coupons and clip the ones we think we’ll use and sort them into their appropriate categories.
7. Friday night we get our list, flyers and coupon notebook and grab all the coupons for things on our list and add things to the list that both are on sale and we have coupons for. As we go through the coupons we make sure to look at expiration dates and throw out expired coupons. On the shopping list I make notes by each item that has a sale and/or coupon to make sure I get the right brand and amount when shopping. I stick the shopping list and coupons in the front pocket of the binder and it is ready to take to the store.
8. When shopping I sometimes find items that have good sales that didn’t show up in the flyer and I have to try and remember if I also have a coupon and might have to rifle through the binder to see if I have a coupon but it is right there with me.

The results: The second week of collecting coupons we spent like $80 and saved something like $75! Of course, without coupons I usually save about $35 just by getting mostly sale items.

Then last week I got carried away and tried to use every coupon I could and spent around $180 and saved $100. I think I got too carried away so I need to be more careful and only get extra stuff it is a really really good deal.

As we’ve been more concious of looking for deals we start to notice what is a really good deal and what is just an okay deal. When there is a really good deal you have to just buy as much as you can and add to storage. I was thinking today that we should get a freezer chest for storing meat, produce, milk, etc. Milk has been really cheap lately (under $2) and I want to store a bunch for when it jumps back up above $3/gallon.

Hopefully this information wasn’t too boring and helpful for some. Post your coupon/grocery budget experience. Do you have a grocery budget? How much? We try to stay under $100/week which includes diapers, cleaning products, etc.