Well, there might be. Someone like Monk(you know, the TV show with Tony Shalhoub) might be considered to OCD. But when it comes to DIY wedding invitations, I don’t think you can ever be too OCD.

That’s right, we were creative(and cheap), and designed and printed our own wedding invitations from home, with the help of Mr. Adobe Photoshop, and some fancy paper we got at Staples.

It only took me an hour or two to come up with the design(once I actually sat down to do it), and after at least five other pairs of proof reading eyes looked over it and could find no more typos, we deemed the design okay for printing.

We got our fancy border embossed paper for a mere $30 at Staples, and before we knew it we were done with the test sheets, and got down to business. It was so smooth, and I couldn’t have been more happy with how everything turned out. Here’s all 50 of the invitations laying out to dry at my parent’s house when were were all finished. They all looked awesome.

However (oh yes, there is a however), the next day on my way to work I got a call from my Dad, who tells me there’s something wrong with the invitations. No typos necessarily, but a double word.

See, no one read the invitation out loud. We all just skimmed it word by word, to make sure there were no misspellings, or typos. But, we didn’t actually read the invite the way our wedding guests would. As a result, the first two lines of our invitations read:

The honor of your

your presence is requested

Luckily, for some reason, I bought two boxes of the fancy paper from Staples, so I was able to reprint them on the same paper, as soon as I got back to my parent’s house. Needless to say though, I was a bit unhappy to realize that we would now have 50 useless, double your-ed invitations just hanging about, evilly reminding me how I wasted a precious $30 on the wrecked first batch.

After much huffing and puffing, my Dad was kind enough to shine a light of positivity on our situation. He reminded how only a few days before I was insistent on just having them all printed at Kinkos, because it would be cheaper.

Had I just send my design to Kinko’s, and had them all put in their perfectly addressed envelopes, I might not have noticed my annoying mistake until they had all been sent off. Which would have definitely annoyed me A LOT more. Thankfully, however annoying our little error was, it was easy to fix, and our invitations turned out perfectly.

So for all you brides to be out there, be sure to have as many people as you possibly can read your DIY invitations OUT LOUD.

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I hate buying textbooks with a passion, and I know I’m not the only one. A book can easily cost $80, no sweat, and if it’s my Art History book, up to $150. I go to school full time. That’s at least $300 on books, if I’m super DUPER lucky. Why on earth to people think that is okay to charge us so much ridiculously much, when the reason we are in school and having to pay for these classes and books, is because we are attaining a degree, and more than likely have yet to find a decent paying job? Then the school says “oh yeah, we’ll buy your books back” but for a quarter of the price, and in the end you still spent $80 on a book you wont read again. Joy.

But, there is a white knight in shining armour that has come to save all of us students in great distress: Chegg.com. It is pure awesomeness. I visited the site for the first time today to get AJ’s books for his classes, and spent a total of $60 on two textbooks, $70 including shipping. He can use them the whole semester, and has to send them back before June 6th, AND Chegg pays for the cost of the return shipping.

If you’re really desperate, you can pay for overnight shipping, but I think AJ will be okay with using the library until Tuesday, which saves us $25. Unfortunately, my book was unavailable, but it’s for History of Nonwestern Art, which I doubt is an extremely common book, so I understand. Overall, it was really easy, quick, and now I can still go grocery shopping later so we can eat food this week, without going completely broke.

I’ve also found that a good alternative to expensive, hard cover books, is ebooks. They don’t have all textbooks available as ebooks yet, but I did have the pleasure of buying my American History book as an ebook for only $20 from Powells.com. Coursesmart.com is also a good site for ebooks, where I bought my Online Spanish Lab code, AND ebook for $45. At the UCF bookstore, it cost $133.85 used, and $82 minimun just for the online access code. It makes me happy to know I saved a ton of money.

PS: Pic of Chegg found here, and my history teacher sounds like the teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (you know… “Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?”), which inspired me to write this post so I wouldn’t fall asleep.

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I know this seems like an odd title for a blog post, but I feel it fully illustrates how much we needed to go grocery shopping yesterday. And FYI, Chocolate Soy Milk is an awesome, delicious, chocolatley drink. Cinnamon Toast Crunch is also an awesome breakfast feast. But alas, together they are not so awesome, and  to be honest, make a slightly gross, and not at all satisfying breakfast.

Anyways, so we obviously really needed to visit el grocery store. I really hate going to the grocery store though, because I feel like it would just be better if I could train my body to survive sole on eating my money, since that’s literally what I’m doing anyways. Then I could just skip the going to the store step. But my body does not like this idea, so we still have to go to the grocery store and spend money on food. But I try not to spend tons and TONS of money on food, and the most helpful way I’ve found to cut costs, is by buying the off-brand instead of the name brand, which is usually a few bucks cheaper. So these are my top 5 nonbrand items to buy:

1. Cereal! It normally tastes pretty close to the name brand equivalent, and is still makes for a delicious breakfast, but costs me about half the price of the small box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

2. Milk! Why spend money on TG Lee when the store brand of milk tastes the same and is cheaper? It’s a no brainer to me.

3. Pain/allergy meds! They’re normally way cheaper, and do the same amount of work as Tylenol or Motrin, I promise.

4. Bread! Seriously, you can’t beat the $1 we spend on Target Brand bread that makes just as a delicious sandwich as Wonder Bread (probably even better since I hate white bread… It always jams itself to the roof of my mouth in a very unladylike fashion).

5. Cleaners! Target, Publix, and Winn Dixie brand equivlents of Windex, Clorox wipes, and Toilet bowl cleaner have worked just as good for me.

There are more things I love that are off brand, but I’m not gonna bore you by listing them all. Not all off brand stuff is awesome though. In my few years of grocery shopping on my own, I’ve experimented with a wide variety of nonbrand shiz, and I promise, it’s not all magical and wonderful. So I’ve also included my list of top 5 nonbrands to stay away from:

1. Pop Tarts. Probably the most disappointing off brand purchase I’ve ever made because they are super gross. Like way more gross than you thought cheap pop tarts could ever be. And all off brand pop tarts are gross. I’ve bought them at like four different stores in hopes of one having a decent tasting off brand, but none of them did, and I wasted my money.

2. Paper towels. Seriously just break down and buy Bounty or Braun, because even though they’re a little expensive,  one roll of them lasts twice as long as their cheap counter parts, and really saves you money in the long run.

3. Toilet paper. Same thing here. Except the nicer brands also tend to feel a lot less like thin newspaper. We’ll call that an added plus.

4. Dish washing soap. Brands like dawn also last infinitely longer, and tends to smell, and work, way better.

5. Dog food. The cheap stuff tends to be way worse for the canine kids, and the added preservatives they use can give small dogs more seizures. No bueno para perritos.

So there you have it. Some of my knowledge from first hand experience in the battles of off brand vs. name brand groceries. Other good ways to help save money when going to the grocery store would include not shopping while hungry (because then you will buy way more than you need), and making smaller shopping trips as you need a few things at a time (so you don’t buy too much, and then are forced to watch the food you bought go bad because you cant eat it all fast enough).

PS: Pics found here, here, and my computer.

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