Delicious Sunflowers

Isn't this cake gorgeous? Just like last year, my sister made me a beautiful birthday cake. This was a sunflower ice cream cake, and this was all that was left by the time it got in front of my camera. I had a wonderful birthday. My dear boyfriend took me out to dinner yesterday and bought me a super snazzy pink coat. We went out with my family for dinner tonight at my fav restaurant - Macaroni Grill and then chowed down on cake. My parents gave me a beautiful strand of black pearls and my sisters bought me a bunch of gorgeous scrapbooking supplies. But more than the gifts, I love spending time with my boyfriend and family.

Only one more year until I have to update my profile on my blog. Sigh.
The kitties were thrilled with the brown paper Panera bag my sister wrapped my gift in. As I type this, Mousse is romping around inside, enjoying the delightfully crumply noises it makes.

What a shopping day, let me tell you...

We started out at Rite Aid. I was buying milk, 2 Scotch tape dispensers, 3 Air Wicks and a RA razor. I had a $5 off $25 coupon and coupons for all the items. The cashier scanned all the coupons, except for the Scotch coupons, which kept beeping. He called a manager over, she overrode the coupons and then said to me - your total is too low, let me "fix it" for you. Umm, what? She said I shouldn't have been able to use the $5 off $25 coupon because the total after coupons wasn't $25 and that I had too many coupons. Fine I said, I will buy these items at another store. She goes - no, that's ok, I just have to "fix it". Umm, by fixing it, if you mean you want me to pay more, that's not exactly my idea of a great solution! I got my coupons back and we left.

Then we went to CVS, where I bought:

• Garnier Nutritioniste lotion $12.99, used $1 coupon (9/13 SS, 10/11 or 11/8 RP) = $11.99
• 2 Garnier Nutritioniste cleansing cloths $5.99 each, used two $1 coupons (9/13 SS, 10/11 or 11/8 RP) = $9.98 or $4.99 each
• Got back $10 EB (WYB $20 of Garnier, Limit 1) = $11.97 for all three
• Used my green bag tag, $1 EB, $1.59 EB, $4 EB, $5 EB and $10 EB and $2.06 on an egift card I bought

Except for the $10 EB, all of the EB's beeped saying they weren't for my card, but they had my name on them. Weird! And even though I told the cashier I was using an egift card, she kept trying to enter it as a coupon, so obviously it wouldn't scan.

Third time's the charm, right? Then we headed to Staples for some free Duracell batteries. I wanted to use a 10% coupon DBF received in the mail and since he didn't have his Staples rewards card on him, we had to enter in the phone number. The cashier rang me up, scanned my coupons (10% plus $1 manu coupon), put them into the register and then couldn't figure out how to do the rewards number. He called over a manager who voided the sale. Cashier rang me up again but then couldn't get the coupons out of the register. Manager dude came back over and told me I couldn't use both coupons, even though they had both scanned just fine the first time. I got my coupons back and we left empty-handed. What a day!