Trypanophobia

It's that time again and I am dreading it.  Maybe dreading isn't the word.  I am the biggest baby when it comes to getting shots.  Blood draws and IVs ... piece of cake!  But when the nurse told me I needed my Tdap to complete the adoption physical I couldn't decide whether to burst into tears or find a way to fun out of the clinic while she left the room to get it ... or both.  I was that kid that had to be held down by both parents when it came time to get a shot.  In fact I would walk around the house with two screaming ear aches and not be able to swallow because I knew the second I told my parents I would be at the pediatrician getting a needle in the arse.  Oh did I leave that part out?  Not only did my pediatrician prefer to inject all antibiotics so as to not have to rely on the parents to administer them but he also believed in giving them all in the rump.  From the sneak attack from behind to the ripping off of the band aid to the sore cheek for a week ... what's not to love right?!  So when my recommended course of action now involved a Lupron depot shot once a month for 6 months I freaked.  This confused my husband since I have since had to give myself 4 injections in the abdomen for various fertility treatments but allow me to clarify.  Those too were a HUGE production and the tiniest subcutaneous needle you've ever seen.  This was an intramuscular right in the rump.  Instant flash back to being held down in the Panda room ... suddenly sweaty and sick to my stomach.  (Are you wondering how I would ever have survived childbirth?)  So my surgeon tells me she will have them administer the first shot in the hospital while I'm still out from surgery.  PHEW!  That only leaves 5 conscious injections.  So I wake up from surgery and the nurse says "Now before you leave we need to give you the shot your doctor ordered."  WHAT?!?!!  Well you read that post and it turned out okay.  My first shot in the office on the other hand ... that was a doosy!  I still can't sit comfortably and now it's time for number two.  So while at work today I get to thinking perhaps I am overreacting.  I never saw the shot the past two times so maybe the needle isn't that big.  Yep you guessed it ... I googled an image.

Oh my achin' you know what ... Guess I better make sure my big girl pants are clean for tomorrow :P

Up to Speed

I had planned to blog a bit yesterday but unless you are living under a rock I imagine you heard things got a little crazy in Packer nation last night!

 Between the last few minutes of the game, the post game commentary and interviews and cracking up over the hilarious related Twitter posts it was hard to concentrate on anything else. 
What have we been up to lately?
Our last rummage was not as successful as the first but we expected as much being limited with no signs for advertising.  We did however meet lots of great people in our neighborhood and got some excellent history lessons from the original home owners.  Our favorite rummage patron was a 91 year old gentleman who bought all of our children's books to donate to recent teaching grads who arrive in their classroom to discover there aren't any books and cannot afford to supply them out of pocket. 

How amazing is that?! We kept his contact information in the hopes to round up lots of children's books free of charge to help his cause. What an inspiration :)  If you live locally and want to contribute email us!

This past weekend also marked the end of an extended stand off between me and my sewing machine.  I have loads of amazing fabric and just as many incomplete projects but for some reason I just could not bring myself to sew anything.  So last night I decided enough was enough and here is the result!

So cute right?  I am officially inspired again so it's time to keep sewing.  In all the free time I have lol.  It is an enjoyable way to help pass the time while we wait to hear from the agency.  I hope everyone had a fantastic relaxing weekend and that our fellow cheese heads have managed to calm down in the last 24 hours.  ;)  

The sun will come out Tomorrow

Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun!

Currently the weather man is calling for this tomorrow,

We however are choosing to be optimistic and plan to rummage regardless.

So I hope you don't let the weather discourage you because we have some great donations looking for a new home at your named price!

If you joined us the first time we are rummaging at a new location.  Click here for details and visit our Facebook page for sneak peek pictures!

Puppy Love

While things have been pretty busy in our home with multiple rummage plans it hasn't been busy enough to distract us from the waiting.  Now that our profile is on the agency's website there is truly nothing more we need to do but pray and wait and pray some more.  Seeing all of our friends, family and even complete strangers get excited for us has gotten us even more excited and we are beginning to wonder if the "is today the day?" butterflies will ever go away.  We are just plain excited now.

And in the meantime we are loving our time together and our four legged babies.  As you can see Bella is eating up every last moment before she has to share her mama.

Rummage Take 2

If you missed us the first time no need to fret for we are rummaging again!  We had so many fantastic donations and such wonderful support that we have decided to repeat our rummage fundraiser!

Rummage number 2 is scheduled for this Saturday September 22nd and Sunday September 23rd!
Please visit us at Don and Amanda Adopt on Facebook for location details and a sneak peek at some of the great items for sale!  Like our page while you are there for updates on our journey.  Remember its name your price and no reasonable offer refused!

www.

We are live on the world wide web!

 

Check out our mini online profile and be sure to share with friends!!

Praying this brings us one step closer to realizing our dreams of parenthood!

Adventures in Couponing

The best way to save money is to clip coupons for the things you buy every day!  Seems like a piece of cake right?  Turns our its kind of an art and the tips and tricks are endless!

We made a rather significant lifestyle change when Don decided to take on the challenge of completing an Iron Man triathlon in 2011.  We went from buying what looked good or was on sale to shopping the exterior of the store and staying away from boxed or processed foods.  We switched as many items as we could afford to organic to try and eliminate the toxins in our bodies.  Our typical grocery trip looks like this ...

 

It didn't take long for us to notice the difference.  We felt awesome!  We weren't fighting mid day hunger and our bodies weren't fighting us.  The only downside?  These products are more expensive and unfortunately you don't find coupons for produce, dairy or meat from the deli :( 
This meant I needed to really buckle down and use coupons on every other thing possible! I found that Target seems to be the easiest place for me to get the best deals and save more than I spend.  This is a fantastic feeling!  Target makes it even easier now that you can print coupons from their website and apply a manufacturer and a target coupon to the same item!  This weekend was another hugely successful Target trip allowing me to stock up on toilet paper, paper towel, bath and body products among other things.  I got a little ahead of myself and put things away so quickly once getting home that I forgot to take a picture for this post.  Since I think pictures make blog posts much more interesting I will have to use another successful trip as an example.

I got 13 rolls of paper towel, 12 double rolls of toilet paper, 4 boxes of tissue, 6 packages of on the go tissues, 5 deodorants, 1 container of Charmin wipes, 7 body washes, dog treats, foundation, 32 makeup sponges, 3 razors, 1 shave gel, 1 dish soap, 1 Febreze air effects, jelly beans and 2 mini spray bottles = $54 at Target after coupons!

The money we save on the products we would have bought anyway goes directly to our adoption fund.  Happy Couponing! :)

One call, that's all

Please help to save the Adoption Tax Credit! If congress does not act the Adoption Tax Credit will expire on December 31, 2012 You can help by calling your memeber of the U.S. House of Representative's. You can reach your Representative by calling the U.S. Capital Operator at 202.225.3121 and ask for your Representative's office. You can find your Representative's name by visiting http://www.house.gov/representatives/find then enter your zip code.

Counting our Blessings

I cannot even begin to describe how blessed we feel following the success of our rummage!  We were blown away by the number of people who donated their clutter.  In fact if we are being honest there was a slight panic that set in the evening before.  Our garage looked like this ...

And our sun room looked like this ...



And because we live in the "Pleasantville" of Southeastern Wisconsin where they make a million rules to discourage rummage sales, we were having the sale at a friend's house.  This meant every single item had to be transported the day/night before the sale.  But with God all things are possible and he made it happen!
The morning before we were as ready as anyone with this much stuff and only 2 hours to prepare could be.

And then people started to arrive and name their price!  We were able to offer some fantastic deals while getting that much closer to our goal of fully funding our adoption.  We have some truly amazing people in our lives.  Thank you hardly seems enough.



Speaking of amazing people I cannot forget to mention the friends who not only made this day possible but also kept me entertained every step of the way!

(Playing dress up, sporting our new shirts, testing out kid toys)

 

If you did not have a chance to come out and view our fantastic selection of donated items fear not for we will be hosting a repeat!  Location, dates and times to come so please stay tuned!!

Just Because

I got the sweetest little surprise when I started up my laptop and opened a browser the other day.  Can you tell we are getting more and more excited as parenthood moves closer to becoming reality?  I have the best husband a girl could ask for … truly blessed.

Rummage For Adoption

Save the dates! 
The Calling All Clutter Adoption Rummage Sale to raise funds for our adoption is almost here!

It will be on Saturday, September 8th from 9-5 and Sunday, September 9th from 9-4.

Location: 2327 S. 73rd Street in West Allis, WI

All items for sale have been donated by family, friends and even complete strangers who heard our story and wanted to help.  I cannot tell you how grateful we are for all of the amazing items we received.  We have more pick ups scheduled for the weekend so make sure you plan to attend!

To clarify, we are not pricing the items for sale and are allowing you to name your price.  No reasonable offer will be refused!  We only ask that you please keep in mind the goal is to raise money while offering you fantastic items at a deal of a price! 

We also have the amazing opportunity to help my Friends for Adoption buddy Jillyan and her husband raise funds for their adoption by including their "Adoption is Beautiful" creations in the sale.  To see more you can visit her Etsy page here. (These items will be priced).

Here is a sneak peek of what we have to offer.  To see more items available for sale please visit our Facebook page and be sure to "like" us while you're there!

Meet Raffi

Intervention Part 3

I was about to title this post Intervention part 2 but it turns out I already wrote a part two so it seems I might be a little out of control when it comes to finding great deals.  In my defense a baby shower is not a given with adoption so I really want to make sure we have everything we need when baby C arrives into our family.

Eleven 8oz bottles, six 4oz bottles, all of the vents, caps, and spill proof tabs along with the cleaning brushes, drying rack, formula mixer and travel size formula holder retails for $110.00, paid $20.  Savings $90!!

4moms mamaRoo which is the coolest baby item yet!  Came with mobile but we likely won't use it. This was highly recommended by some mommy friends and essentially replaces a swing, your car, a rocking chair heck even your arms! And it works for baby too not just Build a Bear :)  Retails for $199, paid $100.  Savings $100!

I know what you are thinking here and no we haven't been matched and don't know that baby C will be a girl but this was a deal too good to pass up.  Ask my mom, she encouraged this purchase.  We got 6 bags (yes bags) full of baby girl clothes sizes newborn to 12 months, a Baby Bjorn, a bouncer (activity bar not pictured), and two activity toys.  The closet wasn't big enough so not everything is pictured and some larger sizes needed to be packed away.  It's near impossible to put a value on all the clothes but I can calculate the other four items, Baby Bjorn $80.00, Kick and Play bouncer $50.00, and both activity toys together are around $100 (cannot find exact matches as these are older models).  Retail total without 6 bags of name brand clothes $230.00, paid $75.00.  Savings of $175.00+!!



Of course we cannot forget about the possibility of baby C being a boy!  Some of these were free hand-me-downs but I did get the pictures below in a single transaction.

I got eleven onesies, six sleep gowns, and twelve one piece sleepers.  If we are pricing them at retail and assuming I didn't get them on sale or clearance, patterned onesies are sold in 5 packs for $26.00 at Kohls.  The name brand sleepers are around $16.00 each and two packs of Carters open bottom sleeper gowns are $20 again at Kohls.  Total Retail price $284.00, paid $22.00. Savings $262.00!

Animal Crackers jumperoo is too cute for words.  The best part?  It has giraffes on it!!  I was able to disassemble it to wash the seat and sanitize all of the toys and it looks brand new!  Retails for $120.00, paid $25.00.  Savings $95.00!!

I know, I know intervention is imminent.  I can't help it because the more you save the more you want to look for another savings score!  The worst part is I have gotten an expecting co-worker addicted now too.  Hey you can't knock a good deal :)

Now back to working in the nursery.  Its REALLY coming along and the giraffe wall decal arrived today resulting in squeals of excitement.  It has been torture waiting for hubby to get home and help me put it up.  Stay tuned for pics!