Blueberries anyone?

My favorite food is blueberries. My favorite meal is breakfast, likely because most of the ways I know of to eat blueberries are for breakfast. Although, I do have to admit that I eat them for snacks, too. Also, just because they are there, because I want something sweet or "just because".

Here are some of my favorite ways to eat blueberries, which I make as often as possible.

homemade waffles using krusteaz waffle mix, with cool whip and berries on top

Our special 4th of July cake, a devil's food cake (from boxed mix) with cool whip as icing and berries to make it look like a flag. The kids had a blast helping to make it.

They also had a blast helping to eat it. This is Addy and Evie enjoying our special 4th of July cake.

Yogurt parfait with Greek God's brand greek yogurt, honey flavored, with muesili and berries on top. This one has cool whip on top, too.

Yogurt parfait without cool whip on top, same recipe as above.

One of my favorite places to be during the month of July is Berry Patch Farms. I like it in fall, too, when they have pumpkins, but throughout the month of July, blueberries are in season.

You see, I am a foodie. And blueberries are my favorite. And Berry Patch Farms is my favorite place to get them. Berry Patch Farms is a pick your own farm. They do not ever spray pesticides on their blueberries, so its perfectly safe to pick blueberries off the trees and eat them as you go. They encourage you to when you get there. They provide the buckets, bags and berries and they mark the trees that have poison ivy on them so that you don't get unwittingly exposed to that ick. You pick the berries and pay $2 a pound for the ones that manage to stay in the bucket long enough to be weighed. The girls and I spent an hour there 2 weeks ago while we were house sitting. We went at 7:30 at night so Izzy wouldn't have any issues with the sun and we had a blast. The girls stayed with me, Addy served as the foghorn to let us know if we came within 10 feet of a pink ribbon (poison ivy indicator), we ate about 3 lbs of blueberries in the process and took home 1 lb, which means our outing cost $2, 5-10 minutes for the trip there, another 5-10 for the trip back and was the perfect outing to help the kids fall into exhausted sleep as soon as we got home. Which was bliss for me :)

We Buy Gold. . .

Have you ever seen those signs that say "WE BUY GOLD" and wondered how that works? Well, I used to wonder. . . now I know.

Let me preface this by saying I don't particularly like jewelry. And I especially dislike gold. I prefer silver and always have. All of which my husband knew. And yet, somehow I wound up with a pile of jewelry -- most of which was gold. I guess that should have been a sign right there that something was wrong, but when you don't WANT something to be wrong, you don't look for signs that something is wrong. And now, I'm kind of glad that he got it for me.

Last Friday, I got sick of seeing it. I'm never going to wear it again and there is NO WAY I would jinx my kids with it, so I decided to get rid of it. Well, that's easier said than done and I couldn't afford to get cheated since I have 4 kids to raise and next to no help from their father, so I decided to visit a couple places before making my decision on who to sell it to.

The first place I went to had the "We Buy Gold" sign. It was Southeast Gold Buyers. It seemed legit. They had to buzz you in the door, paid you via check, and they even do "gold selling parties" which are like tupperware parties, only you get a bunch of your friends and their gold together and you all sell your gold. . . and that's when it started looking pyramidal. See, if you have a gold party, you get a percentage and bonuses, etc, etc, etc. . . So I sat down with a nice, pretty, friendly sales associate named "Kaley G." (at least, that's what she wrote on my card that she gave me). First, she waved a magnet over my jewelry to make sure none of it was magnetic (which would mean it was mixed metals and not pure gold/whatever). Then, she separated out the different types (10k, 12k, 14k, and sterling silver), then she weighed each (I had 6.6 of 10k, 4.8 of 14k, and 28.4 of sterling silver according to her scales) and gave me a price. Her first price was $148 which was including a 20% add on coupon from online. I said thanks, but I'm going to get another offer or two before I sell to anyone. At which point and time, she became a car salesman --er car saleswoman. She called her boss "to see if she could offer me a better price and save me gas and time driving around town to get better offers." Her boss said she could go up to $175. I said thanks again, but I was still going to get some other offers and she made a last ditch offer of $200 and told me that she could beat anyone else's offer by 10% as long as that didn't bring the price up more than $50 from where it was now (so max of $250) and she could still give me the $200 if I came back before 6 pm that day. At this point, I have a screaming baby and a very bad taste in my mouth from the whole experience because, let's face it, "selling" to me seems synonymous with "lying" and I'm not a big fan of that. Don't tell me you can only give me $148 and that's a good deal because that is including 20% more than your usual pricing and then turn around and tell me well actually you can go $175 then well, actually $200, then well, actually 10% more than anyone else up to $185. I'm not going to bite and I'm probably going to get angry with you for being full of bull. So I leave, hoping that I can find someone else that will give me more and I won't have to deal with her bull again.

Then I go to a jewelry store. Its apparently called "Gold Rush", but the sign just says "Jeweler" in big, green letters. Very creative. The man who worked there (I didn't get his name) did the same routine, checked for magnetism, verified the weights and types (Southeast Gold Buyers had actually put a 10k gold ring in the 14k gold pile), checked the stock market to see the current price of gold and gave me a price of $285. No haggling, no bull. I told him thank you very much, I am going to go a few more places, but I'm sure I'll be back because this is the best price so far. He was nice, polite, kind and he gave me a price of $35 more than Southeast Gold's "top price" -- even with Southeast Gold counting me as having more 14k than I actually had -- right off the bat without making me have to deal with a bunch of bull first. It was very refreshing and I thought it was cool that he used real time stock market info to figure out pricing.

Then I went to A&M Gold Company. They did the same routine as everyone else and offered me $300. So I told them I was going one more place and then would probably be back because they were the best price I'd gotten so far. The man was nice and polite, kind of a throwback, though. He used a calculator to figure out the offering price and he used it like my dad does (pressing enter a bunch of times when he's done LOL).

Then I went to Kaminski Jewelery. . . You know, "You wantski good priceski come in and see Kaminski." That was a really cool experience. I got to meet Carol Kaminski. She's the owner of the company and has been on billboards and in her own commercials for as long as I can remember. Meeting her was kind of like meeting a celebrity. She was so nice and down to earth, though. It was refreshing. They took my jewelry behind the scenes, but I'm sure they did the same procedure everyone else did, check for mixed metals, separate and weigh. They offered me $295.

So, all in all, it was a great experience. I probably could have haggled and got a the $300 out of Kaminski, but I didn't feel like playing games and had to drive right by A & M to get where I was going anyways, so I took the jewelry back to A & M and got my $300.

BTW, in GA you have to present a photo ID, sign your name and place your thumb print on the page with a copy of your ID and your signature on it to sell gold. Its a law apparently. I guess it makes sense as far as deterring people from selling stolen jewelry, but whether it makes sense or not, that is the process.

So if you are selling jewelry in the Woodstock area, I would recommend A&M Gold Company first, then Kaminski Jewelry, then Gold Rush. . . but don't go to Southeast Gold Company. They will low-ball you, lie to you and sweet talk you into thinking you're getting a great deal in the process. Sure, they have a A+ BBB rating. . . because their customers don't know any better. Don't be that customer and don't waste your time. A & M will give you twice what Southeast initially offers you, but really pretty much anywhere is better than Southeast Gold Company. And the sad thing is, they are all doing the exact same thing, melting down the gold and selling it to someone else. I guess that means the PSA of the day is be careful who you sell to. . .

Anyways, good luck and happy gold sales.

Thriftiness, Efficiency, and the United States Postal Service

Thriftiness according to the USPS is all about packaging. We've all seen the commercials about flat rate boxes -- "as long as you can fit it in and its less than 70 lbs, it ships all over the US for a low flat rate". But did you know that the same efficiency in shoving as much stuff as you can while remaining under the weight limit does NOT also apply to letters?

When mailing letters, folding efficiency translates to thriftiness and the reason for this is simple. When you mail a letter, it must not only be under the weight limit, but it must also fit through a specifically sized slot to be able to be mailed using just a postage stamp. So you must efficiently fold it so that it is as flat as possible to be able to mail a letter that is under the 1 ounce weight limit for 1 postage stamp.

Otherwise, your letter will be returned to you and you will have to bundle your kids into the car, trek to the post office, spending time and using gas, to pay a 20 cent surcharge so that a person will be kind enough to stick your letter in the appropriate place. Who knew people are so inefficient when compared to machines to warrant a 20 cent surcharge for a person to do the same thing a machine does? Go figure. Good luck and happy mailing to you until we meet again ;).

Adventures in Thriftiness -- Great deals at Kroger this week!

I just got back from grocery shopping and I am beyond psyched. They had chicken breasts and chicken tenderloins in 3 lb bags on sale for $5 a bag in the freezer section. Normally, the best price I find chicken tenderloins for is $1.99 per pound when Tyson tenders go on sale and I usually get a few of those. I got 2 bags of breasts and 2 of tenderloins. I would have gotten more, but I didn't think I had the freezer room for any more (and I was right). They are also doing a "buy 8, get $4 off" sale. Glaceau Vitamin waters are on sale for 0.75 each (after you get the $4 off) as are birdseye microwavable california style veggies and sargento cheese is at the same price per ounce as kroger brand cheese before you take the 0.50 per pack off (for the buy 8 get $4 off sale) so I was able to get brand name cheese for less than store brand. Can we say awesome shopping trip?!! So head off to Kroger and get some great buys. Or if you found a better deal on any of these items, PLMK. I love a good deal!!!