Success!

So one of us spent the Easter holiday basking in the Florida sunshine while the other stayed here all alone ):

To keep myself busy I cooked, ran around, laid by the pool, etc...

...and then Sunday I extreme couponed...and SERIOUSLY succeeded. Here is what is pictured above:
- (4) 3-packs of Soleil Razors
- (2) 100 count boxes of Splenda
- A massive bag of Stayfree maxi pads
- A Yakisoba mac and cheese dinner
- A Voskos greek yogurt cup
- (2) Luster teeth whitening tooth paste (normally $8 each)
- A Smart Balance skim milk
- A package of Hormel Naturals smoked ham
- (3) tubes of Crest toothpaste
- (2) full size Dove men's deodorant
- (3) travel size men's/women's deodorant
- (2) bags of M&Ms
- (4) Reach flosses
- A bag of Always pantyliners
- (2) 2-packs of Purel laundry kits
- A Wet-N-Wild nail polish (I forgot to put it on the table!)

Now the funniest part about all this stuff is first of all, I don't use men's deodorant, maxi pads, or pantyliners. I also don't even eat Splenda because I'm allergic to it...but it was at the same store and I was buying other things and its FREE!!! So why wouldn't you take it? So we will probably open up a store at our apartment and give away the stuff we don't want...or trade it for bottles of wine, chocolate, etc....

How much did all this add up to?

$64.80

How much did I spend?

$.13

yes, that's 13 cents....

Couponing Part Two

We basically just owned Publix & Kroger...The cute little girl at the checkout watched as the total kept plummeting with every coupon she swiped...all she could say was "wow, you uh sure have some good coupons".

Kroger we walked out without paying for anything. That's where the random deodorant and Yakisoba meal came from. It's next door to Publix and we knew they were free so, why not? Yeah that was kind of weird...going to the register, it ringing up as them owing us $. 25 cents (Kroger doesn't pay you if you save in the negatives apparently)...and we walked out with free stuff.

On to Publix...see the 4 4-packs of YoPlus? We didn't pay for those (normally $2 each)...
- Chobani $1.33: we paid $.40
- Triscuits $3: we paid $.50
- Idahoan Potatoes $1.25: we paid $.37
- Kraft Singles $3.49: we paid $1
- Kraft Shredded Cheese $3.79: we paid $.66

Total: $40.58 (including the Kroger stuff)
We Paid: $7.48

This was AWESOME.

Our First Extreme Couponing Adventure

I'm sorry, but have you seen this show?!? Ok, so we got sucked in because one of our cousins is featured on it...but when we saw it, we were hooked. We aren't quite sure why we watch things on reality tv and then always decide that these ridiculous shows are awesome and we must participate in whatever activity is being thrown at our faces that very moment. As is the case with Extreme Couponing.

The first week's episode featured a quite fashionable and young mom participating in the above activity with her son and best friend. Now, you may not know much about couponing, but when you find out what it is you basically feel idiotic that you have spent your whole life paying for items in stores. These people get everything for free, or even get paid to take things out of stores...it doesn't sound possible, but it is. So we are obviously young and have so many things we could be spending our hard earned cash on besides groceries and toiletries and toilet paper (hey now, you know that charmin is expensive!) So what did we decide to do? Yep, try the couponing thing out for ourselves. We're too young to get the Sunday paper, so we settled on four dives into newspaper recycling bins by our house and printing coupons offline. (We didnt actually get in the dumpster, we just pulled out the top 50 newspapers or so) We clipped the coupons, waited for this weeks circulars to appear online, and made a plan.

We decided to hit up Publix, because it had the best weekly deal offerings. Now the way that it works best is actually to use stores like Publix. Publix offers about 20 items Buy One, Get One (BOGO) every week. They also accept coupons from any competitor store and they will double your coupons (swipe each one twice) if they are $.50 or under. So for example, if Crest Toothpaste was $2.00 and BOGO, Target released a Crest $.50 off one tube coupon, and in Sunday's paper there was also a $.50 off one tube coupon you would get 2 tubes of Crest toothpaste for free...2 tubes of toothpaste $2.00 (BOGO) minus Target's coupon swiped twice (-$1.00) minus Sunday's paper coupon swiped twice (-$1.00) = $2.00 - 1.00 - $1.00 = FREE!!!!

Extreme Couponing shows you people going into stores, racking up $1600 grocery bills, and walking out paying about $7.00 total...we aren't exaggerating. One of our cousins does it all the time. So naturally, we had to try this. We wanted to do it on a small scale, so we devised a plan and set out. Now right before we left for the store, we had a malfunction with our computer and couldn't print out our coupons...so we ended up only being able to use the ones we already had. We'll show you what we got, how much it cost, and how much it would have cost if we had gotten our coupons from online.

Here's our treasure pile...minus one bag of Dove chocolates because SOMEONE couldn't wait until we got home to start eating them ::cough, cough::

- 6 boxes of Special K cereal: regularly $3.95 each, we paid: $1.30 each
- 2 cans Pam cooking spray: regularly $3.19 each, we paid: $.89 each
- 1 Airwick double pack refill oils: regularly $5.50, we paid: $2.99
- 2 boxes of Triscuits: regularly $2.99 each, we paid: $1.50 each
- 2 bags Dove chocolates: regularly $4.24 each, we paid: $1.62 each
- 2 Tropicana orange juices: regularly $4.00 each, we paid: $2.00 each
- 2 50 count Mentos gum: regularly $3.29 each, we paid: $1.14 each
- 10 Chobani yogurts: regularly $1.33 each, we paid: $1.00 each
- 2 bags Alexia buttermilk biscuits: regularly $3.39 each, we paid: $1.42 each
- 2 boxes Duncan Hines cake mix: regularly $1.83, we paid: $.64 each
- 2 boxes Quaker chewy granola bars: regularly $2.99, we paid: $.75 each
- 2 boxes NutriGrain bars: regularly $3.49 each, we paid: $1.25 each
- 2 Dial hand soaps: regularly $1.59 each, we paid: $.30 each
- 9 Bird's Eye frozen vegetables: regularly between $1.79-$2.39 each, we paid: $.21 each

Grand total before coupons and discounts: $125.33 ($62.67 each)
What we paid: $51.29 ($25.65 each)

Now, three things did not get the coupon usage of our online coupons. Those were:
- Chobani: an additional $.60 off each yogurt (-$6.00)
- Triscuit: an additional $1.00 off each box (-$2.00)
- Alexia biscuits: an additional $1.00 off each bag (-$2.00)

That would have made the Chobani $.40 each, the Triscuits $.50 each and the Alexia biscuits $.42 each...and our grand total only $41.29 ($20.65 each).

We don't know about you guys, but usually we are the ones paying the full $125 grocery bills. On this trip alone we had the opportunity to save about 68% (had our printer worked). Why wouldn't you want extra money??? We sure as heck do!

Fellini's

2809 peachtree road ne - atlanta, ga 30305

Today was beautiful out...pretty windy, but still a gorgeous day to be outdoors. We decided to go to lunch at a little place called Fellini's. There are a few locations in Atlanta, but we decided to go to the one on Peachtree right near us. They have patio seating and supposedly delicious pizza so it was a no brainer.

You walk in and it's completely casual. There was a counter with a girl and a cash register and an obnoxiously large sign with their menu posted above her. As you can see, the prices are great and they offer everything in single sized portions. This is awesome because we hate when you go to pizza places and they only offer medium and large pizzas. You then get forced to settle on ingredients that everyone likes so you can all split the same pizza. Not here. You have the choice to order one of their created pizzas or you can basically build your own.

We took the liberty of trying their "created" pizzas so we could judge whether you should stick to those or making your own. We ordered the vegetarian, the white, the hawaiian, and the special. (we figured the spinach and mushroom would kind of be like the veggie...with less veggies)

After you pay, you get your drinks and then either sit inside or head out to the patio. We obviously went for the patio. They have a beautiful fountain and over 20 tables outside. The tables aren't on top of each other so you don't feel like your neighbor is eavesdropping on every word you say. Our pizzas probably came out in about 5-10 minutes. We ordered a total of 4 slices to split between the two of us, making it two slices each.

Here is the veggie. We were really happy to see the green olives on the pizza. A lot of places don't carry green olives. All of the veggies were crisp and fresh. Good flavor for a veggie, especially after we added some red pepper flakes.

Now here's the pizza they are famous for: the white pizza. Although it's called white, it still comes with red sauce when you order it as a slice. Chunks of fresh garlic, multiple kinds of white cheeses and italian spices sprinkled on top. This pizza is phenomenal and you should probably try it...even if you're normally a meat pizza kind of person.

This here is the hawaiin. Fresh ham and pineapple and just the right amount of sauce and cheese. This was definitely tasty.

Last but not least, the special. This slice is loaded with pepperoni, mushrooms, italian sausage, onions, meatballs, green peppers, black olives, green olives and extra cheese. It was a lot of toppings for the crust, so we ate it with a knife and fork. The meats were all delicious and distinguishable and the pizza just had an overall perfect taste of agreement between the toppings. An excellent "everything" kind of pizza. The crust was also seasoned really well for all of them, the kind of crust you can eat on it's own with no dipping sauce.

Here's one of our little sample platters. We were each able to finish about 2 and a 1/2 of our mini slices, equating to about 1 and 1/2 normal slices. A guy could easily put down 2-3 we're sure, but 1 slice and maybe one of their side salads would probably be good for us next time.

Don't worry, we took our extras home and a few hours later they made excellent cold pizza leftovers. yum.

Oreo, Reeses and Snickerdoodle Themed Cupcakes

We went a little out of control today...it's not our fault. We were challenged last week to take 24 whole entire hours and just relax...do only the things we wanted, spend time with only people we truly love and just take some time to let ourselves reset. We've both had pretty crazy lives lately and running around constantly really wore us down. So today we spent our time doing the most delightful things. We started off with brunch at Park's Edge and then headed to our pool for about an hour to get some sun...and then we decided to bake...a lot.

We're going to be needing some tasty cupcake variations in the near future to share with friends, so we decided to practice on ourselves first. We made 3 different cupcakes:

Oreo Filled Vanilla Cupcakes with a Cream Cheese Frosting. Above is everything you would need to make these little delights. They use most of the same base ingredients and then each have one or two slight differences.

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes with a Brown Sugar Buttercream Frosting. You can make homemade snickerdoodle dough for the baby cookies and dough filling, but since we were making three different cupcakes and frostings from scratch, we decided we could cut a corner and used boxed cookie mix (doctored up a bit).

Chocolate, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough Cupcakes with a Peanut Butter Frosting. Obviously something had to satisfy our constant craving for the peanut butter/chocolate mix (:

If you want any of the recipes let us know...We did notice some things we need to fix for next time so that's why we aren't posting them up now.

For every recipe we creamed the room temperature butter and sugar together first for about 3 minutes and then we added the egg.

In a separate bowl we mixed together all of the dry ingredients called for by the specific cupcake. We then slowly alternated between adding this dry mixture and milk into the creamed sugar bowl.

After, we added in any other treats to the batter before scooping it into the 12 slot muffin pan. Like we said before, 3 tbsp. is the perfect amount of batter. We didn't, once again, listen to our own advice, and so some of our cupcakes exploded out of the cupcake liners.

After putting the batter into the cups, we added a 'hidden treat' to each one. Here are the oreo ones. In hindsight, this was not the brightest idea. The oreos were so big they didn't sink down into the cupcake batter! You'll see in the following pictures.

They also sucked the life out of the cupcakes. While they baked, all the moisture transferred from our delicious batter into these little guys. Next time we'll just use the crushed up oreos.

And here is the chocolate, peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie dough cupcakes.

These look so delicious.

Um, yum.

And this is what they looked like coming out of the oven. As you can see, the oreos just stayed on top, while the snickerdoodle and chocolate chunk peanut butter cookie dough sunk, leaving little dimples on the tops.

We then made all three frostings, loaded them into Ziploc freezer bags and let them chill in the fridge. After we cleaned up, we frosted and decorated them and they came out like this :

How cute are they? We made miniature snickerdoodle cookies and bought little oreos and reeses at the store.

From the outside...

Surprise! Oreos mixed in and a large oreo at the top.

Snickerdoodle! This was our favorite...

Hard to tell but that is snickerdoodle cookie dough in the middle!

And our reeses inspired cupcake...

Yes, that is homemade peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie dough in the middle...We'll use our favorite chocolate cake recipe next time because we like it better, but this was definitely still scrumptious!

Park's Edge

913 bernina avenue ne - atlanta, ga 30307

Park's Edge has a slogan - Inman Park's Best Kept Secret. We had actually never even heard of this place until it came up on Groupon yesterday. The menu looked delicious, they have good ratings online, they serve brunch and the Groupon was pay $15 and get $35 worth of food so we figured 'what do we have to lose?!'

We got there at about 1pm (Saturday) and it was busy, but not crazy. We got seated on the deck in under 5 minutes. Sitting outside is DEFINITELY the way to go. They have big trees overhead, so even in the summer it's highly likely that it's still a nice atmosphere. Our server came to our table immediately. She was extremely friendly and even offered to make us drinks that weren't featured on the menu.

We decided to go with their $10 bottomless mimosas/bellinis. We started with a grapefruit juice/champagne combination (one of the off the menu drink choices). After we finished that carafe, we moved on to the bellinis. They were both good (and VERY strong...which is a plus in our book). The bellinis were definitely our favorite.


Less than 5 minutes after our server dropped off the first carafe she delivered a basket of fresh, melt in your mouth, buttermilk biscuits and strawberry preserves.

We are dying to figure out how they made these! Scrumptious.

The preserves were fresh and not over sugary. They had big chunks of strawberries mixed in. We then decided to order our food. Everything looked amazing so it was hard to choose just two plates. They have french toast, which is one of their signature items, but we were both in a more savory mood so we tried things more on the meaty/salty side.

This is what we finally settled on. You can see both of our plates and the presentation of their food is beautiful.

First up, this is their chilaquiles & fried egg dish. It's almost like a spanish breakfast lasagna layered with shredded chicken, corn tortillas, spicy tomato sauce, sour cream, scallions, and queso freso (this melty, creamy cheese). It was so filling that it could have been split between the two of us. We weren't sure about the corn tortillas (since we prefer flour), but we ended up giving it a try and are so glad that we did!

Second is the crab benedict with smoked salmon. We saw a bunch of people with this on their plate, so we asked them if it was any good. They all were in agreement that this was their favorite thing on the menu....and after eating it we agree. This was amazing. Neither of us enjoys smoked salmon for breakfast usually...like bagel and lox...just not for us. But this was executed perfectly. It's an open faced buttermilk biscuit layered with tender crab meat, poached eggs, hollandaise sauce and smoked salmon. The salmon wasn't fishy and the overall combinations of all the flavors was delicious and not heavy at all.

When it came time to pay, we only owed $10 total...so that's an extremely affordable brunch considering we each had bottomless drinks and a full entree. We got back on Groupon and bought another certificate, and we plan to head back very soon.