Some days I win, but not entirely (Sunday total)

I was feeling earlier like this week was sort of a win on several fronts. For one thing, I've been able to get rid of a couple of things that I was in a quandary about. I knew they had to go, but I wasn't sure what was the best way to deal with them. The first is an exercise ball that I won last spring through the health program at work. I already have one that I sit on at work so I thought, cool! Now I'll have one at home too. But I never used it. It's been sitting on a shelf collecting dust for most of a year. My coworker was asking me about them the other day and mentioned that she was probably going to go buy one, so I offered mine to her and she accepted. The second thing also went to my coworker: my health textbook from this past semester. She and her sister are going to be taking the course. I'd missed the deadline to sell it back to the bookstore and wasn't sure what I was going to do with it now. This works!
I've also been feeling like we need to declutter in terms of all the gift cards we have: family have given them to us for birthdays and Christmas and even our wedding. Kohl's, Bed Bath & Beyond, Sears, Barnes & Noble.... Most of them are lying on my desk, needing to be used. So, we're using them. We're headed to Sears today to buy a grain mill attachment for the KitchenAid (Shane's idea--he wants it for his beer making) and a pasta roller attachment. I was also going to talk to him about the BB&B gift card, since there are a few kitchen items that would make our lives easier.
I also used my Kohl's gift card the other day. Or rather, tried to. Apparently it didn't go through (why? WHY?!) so I just ended up spending $50 of my own money. >( Argh! Annoying. You might think, well that just means you can buy more clothes! But I picked out the two things that I felt I really needed right now and that I really liked. (That is hard to do when you're shopping online!) Plus, it's just irritating to check your credit card statement and see that you accidentally spent money where you weren't meant to. I'm not sure if I'm going to call them, or if I'm just going to let it slide. I am pretty lazy....
For Christmas, my mom sent us some lovely socks, and some food mixes. We used the soup mix on Friday night for dinner (tortellini soup--yum!) and I made the blueberry scones mix yesterday. It turned out to be perfect, since I had a friend drop by in the early afternoon and I was able to offer her fresh tea and scones while we chatted. :)
I also made tons of bread yesterday. Two loaves of whole wheat with some ground up flax seeds (the first time I've tried that and it was good--the heat degrades some of the omega 3's so it's not as healthy as you'd hope but some of them are still present, and it adds a lovely flavor), a giant loaf of white bread for Shane, and some buns/rolls because we made burgers for dinner. About half of this got frozen, since there's no way we can eat it all before it goes bad. But now we have "emergency bread" for weeks when there's no time to bake. With the symphony starting up this week, and "The Music Man" coming up in March, there will be a lot of those weeks soon.
As far as the grain mill goes, I was poking around on the farm & garden section of Craigslist the other day and saw that someone was selling wheat berries for $1/pound. That's not bad, actually. Since we're already going to get a grain mill, why not check it out? That's cheaper than the wheat flour I've been buying, by a lot. But I want to make sure that not only would the wheat be edible (it could just be meant for seed) but that it's non-GMO and hopefully grown with organic practices.
I've been absolutely obsessed with this music video lately and I just had to share it. Watch it, love it.
So, our Sunday total: $40. We actually bought very little food this week. Some apples, a little bit of wheat flour, some bacon, some chicken. And the meals that I've planned out for this week use things that we now have in the house. I think the only thing we might need more of is milk.
One thing I found odd at the store yesterday was the price of water filters. I keep a pitcher filter at work because the quality of the water on campus is AWFUL. It greatly depends on the building, but since mine is quite old, it's atrocious. Even if you make coffee or tea with the unfiltered water, it just ends up tasting like the nasty water. I haven't replaced the filter in a long time so it's past time for a new one (despite me extending the use of the filter by cleaning it out with vinegar regularly). The price of one filter is $8, the price for two is $12, and the price for three is $15. Which pack do you think I bought?