Mail Call!

I'm a bit of a dork, but one of my highlights each day is when the mail comes. Today was especially exciting because I haven't had a mail delivery this good in quite a while. Here's what I found in the mailbox today:

• The new Organize In Style booklet with over $35 in coupons! Coupons are enough to make me squeal with glee, but it gets even better...

• Another coupon, but this one is for a FREE bottle of Advil. Awesome!

• My two new pairs of glasses from Gogglges4u.com. I've been waiting almost a month for these to arrive. I admit, I'm a bit disappointed as they don't look quite as good on me as I hoped, but with my super savings skills I paid less than $50 for both pairs, and that includes the shipping. So in reality, it was a heck of a deal and I now have several pairs of eye wear to mix and match with my wardrobe.

• The best find of all in my mailbox today was TWO $50 Target gift cards! These were the rewards I chose when I redeemed my points from MyPoints.com. Don't know about MyPoints? You're missing out! With MyPoints all you have to do is sign up and they'll send you daily e-mails. For every e-mail you open and click the enclosed link, they'll reward you with 5 points. You can also earn points for: online shopping, taking surveys, playing games, even printing and redeeming coupons! I've been using MyPoints for 5 years and each Fall I redeem my points for gift cards so I can cut costs when it comes to my Christmas Shopping. It's like free money and takes very little effort. Sign up for MyPoints Here!

It's amazing what little things can make my day.

Hanging Garden Results

And so it is officially Fall, and I've realized I never shared the conclusion to my hanging garden experiment. I'm sad to say, the whole thing was not as productive as I'd hoped it would be, and I probably could have used the money I spent on the materials and the plants to purchase fresh produce from the local supermarket or farmers market.

In the end, the zucchini which started out promising, yielded one medium and one small fruit. I did however slice, bread, and fry it up. It was a delicious dinner one summer evening served alongside spaghetti. I'd hoped for so much more from the two plants, but the one that hung from the bottom of the bucket completely died before producing anything. The other started producing several small zucchinis, but they dried out and rotted before maturing. I was disappointed because I really looked forward to making some awesome dishes.

The pepper plants also didn't meet my expectations. I ended up with 7 or 8 very tiny peppers. I picked them and put them in the fridge with intentions to stuff them (not that they were really big enough) and from then on forgot about them. So, we ended up with a handful of tiny shriveled peppers. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

The tomatoes came out the big winner. We ended up with maybe a dozen or so, but they were patio tomatoes and so they were rather small. The few large ones that we did get ended up ripening just as we were leaving for our yearly trip to Iowa, and so my mom had the pleasure of enjoying those. Hubby did get to savor a few of the smaller ones on sandwiches or by themselves.

All in all, as hard as it is to admit, the whole thing was a big flop! I guess I just don't have a very green thumb. Does that mean I'm done with my container gardening escapades? Not a chance! I'm sure there's a better way to go about it, and so it's a challenge for me to attempt next year.