Summer observations

I'm a science geek by nature and one thing I loved when I was doing research was crunching my data and looking at the stats.  This summer I've been playing close attention to both the little and the big things in our daily life.  I've been working on things such as couponing (more on that later), gardening (more this later too), and improving the overall efficiency of our household and I am aiming to see quantitatively how I'm doing. 

So in the past few weeks here are a few things I've noted...

In the month of June my kids ate 20 pints of blackberries, 12 pounds of strawberries, 5 melons,  and 2 lbs of grapes (they were only on sale once).

In a day's time the kids will eat 1 pint of blackberries, 2 lbs of strawberries, and/or 1 lb of grapes.

In a day's time the kids will also go through one 64 oz pitcher of juice.  

The kids go through nearly one roll of tp per day.

Occasionally I find myself obsessing over which stores have the best price on tp.

CVS and Walgreens are not such a bad place to shop after all.

On average, in a day's time every person in the house will go through at least two towels.

We are severely lacking in the number of towels we own.

Eggshells, coffee, fish, and rabbit poo are said to be excellent fertilizers.

Despite excellent fertilizers tomato plants will not produce fruit in consistently high temperatures.

Most new animated movies have a song and/or dance scene.

I really am not a fan of songs and/or dance scenes in animated movies.

Garlic and herb brie cheese (Alouette brand) is "da bomb".

Sun dried tomato mozzarella (Laughing Cow) is also "da bomb".

I take on average 4 pictures per day on my phone.

On occasion though, I'll take closer to 40.

Our dog Domino has a loathing hatred for dogs on the other side of the fence.

Our dog Domino is perfectly OK with dogs that are not on the other side of the fence...even if the dog she comes in contact with is the same dog...that lives on the other side of the fence.

Stivali means "boot" in Italian.

One of my favorite wines this summer is a sweet red called Stivali, which so far can only be found at HEB.

If I go to HEB for any one item, I also seem to come home with a bottle (or two) of Stivali and a box of sushi rolls.

I have had to limit my trips to HEB.

From May to July I purchased $60 worth of Sunday newspapers to collect their coupons.

From May to July we have saved over $1100 in groceries, toiletries, and other misc items. For some items we have purchased enough to both donate and last for the rest of the year.

I am on the fence for the word "toiletries"...sometimes it makes me cringe.  Sometimes it makes me smile.


And on that note I'll end this post!

We have three weeks till the start of school.  Can you believe it?  August is probably our busiest month out of the entire year so the next post could very likely arrive in mid September.  But I do have several things I've been meaning to write about and so so so soooo many pictures that I've wanted to share so I will be working hard to get a few more posts in before the crazy kicks in.