Thankful for the rain, but glad to see the sun...

Over the weekend we got about 1/2 an inch of rain. Not much, and we certainly needed every drop. I wasn't too thrilled that we had four days of gloomy, gloomy, gloomy, however! It is back to sunny skies today and a bit warmer weather, which is good.

I didn't get as much done these last few days as I was hoping to (some tummy troubles), but I am happy to say that I did find some more deals, and will be heading to Target and Cub today with a friend. Can wait to see how I do at both places!

The kids have taken notice of my recent coupon mania and frugal frenzy. My daughter has even helped clip some coupons, but my son was the vocal one...he said "Mom, you sure are going crazy with those coupons - I think you're the coupon queen!" I chuckled a bit at that, and decided I am going to make this into an educational experience for us all. It will be good for the kids to learn how to save and find the best deals on things they desire, too. Maybe I'll even design a curriculum based all on saving, couponing, and thriftiness so that we can help our family save money in every way possible. The more I think about it, the more I am excited to implement something like that! I have a couple more weeks before our next break, so I think I better starting making a plan....any ideas, please share!

More savings...

I found us more deals today. We saved $146 on items we needed from Menard's, Kohl's, and Sears. It's such a great feeling to know that we're being wiser with our money and the way we shop.

Menard's had a lot of rebate items we could use so we stopped there first. Then we went to Kohl's - they had BOGO on summer clothing, and Jeff needed more shirts. He was able to get four and we only paid for two! At Sears Jeff bought three pairs of jeans that were on sale - for $65. He got the three pairs of name-brand jeans for only $15 total - we'll get $50 of the $65 back in a rebate coupon to spend on more clothes for Jeff at Sears later on. What a blessing to have found these great deals!

My first coupon shopping trip

Last night we went on our 'first' coupon shopping trip at the local Cub Foods. Being as it was the first one, I don't have all the tricks down yet, but I must say I feel pretty good about saving a total of $87.78! The cashier also gave us more coupons for a future visit, AND we got coupons for 2 BOGO Twins Baseball tickets! That's probably another savings of $20 or more, since it has to be tickets purchased in the lower reserved section.

Back to our receipt and the purchases. We bought 87 items, so it was just a little over a dollar saved on each item - not bad! I am aiming to get better at this, however, and am really starting to see a plan working itself out. Jeff picked up an index card box for me last night with plastic separators for a better way to file my coupons, and I've decided for this first month we are going to put any savings we make on purchases into a separate checking account that we haven't been using. After one month that money is going to turn into my grocery shopping money, and I'll just keep putting back into it whatever savings I get each time. I'm going to see how far I can stretch it before I need to replenish it with another month of shopping from our regular account. I am so excited to try this concept out! It will be very interesting to see how far I can go!

I just realized this morning that I have been saving money for awhile as well when it comes to our vitamin/health needs. I've purchased several times from two websites that always seem to have great deals going on...vitaminwarehouse.com, and vitacost.com. You'll find both of them in my websites list on the right side of this page. I just purchased some Silent Snore for my husband today for 40% off at Vitaminwarehouse.com. Can't beat that!

Good Stewardship part 2

Okay, so I've had roughly 36 hours to totally bury myself in websites and blogsites that have some of the greatest tips for saving money, and I tell ya, I'm pooped but very excited at the same time. I spent the majority of my free time the last two days printing coupons, signing up for freebies, buying 650+ coupons on ebay (my sister and I are splitting them) and going through three different grocery store ads to figure out what's on sale this week and what I already have coupons for. I pulled out my old coupon folder and wiped the dust off, and now I just need to come up with a system that will work for me. Right now I have them in folders according to the months they expire, but I'm not sure I like that. I'll have to play around with it a bit after I get my share of the 650+ coupons!

As I've been doing all this work, I've also been thinking as I do my chores around the house what things can we live without - do we really need so much stuff? I've already sold a fair amount of items on ebay...music CD's we don't want anymore and lots of homeschool books. I keep wondering what else would sell on there, and need to spend some time soon getting more stuff listed. Then there's the rummage sale we NEED to have just to get rid of all the extra clutter we've accumulated. I'm hoping we can really do a thorough clean-out of the house soon so that we won't have to have another rummage sale for a few years!

Here's another thing we've been doing already to save money. For several years now we've already saved lots of money on clothing. My generous sister has supplied my kids clothing as hand-me-downs from her kids, so we haven't needed to buy them much at all. My husband finds t-shirts and other shirts he needs at either Kohl's or Walmart on sale or clearance. He is also able to spend a certain amount of money each year supplied by his boss to purchase polo tops, sweatshirts and jackets with his work logo, so that also helps. And for me, most of the time I wait for Mondays and shop our local Savers. Mondays are $.99 Mondays, and they have one color tag for $.99. Several years ago I had lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers and needed a new wardrobe because nothing was fitting. I purchased a complete wardrobe - 125 pieces for $125! Since then I've gone back several times when I've needed other pieces of clothing and still go for the $.99 deals. Lately my husband has been giving me Coldwater Creek gift cards for Christmas and Mother's day, so I have stocked up on some brand new clothing as well, but even then I only buy clearanced items and get several items for the amount on the card plus they send out coupons for $25 or $30 off a $100 purchase. For this last Mother's day my husband and kids gave me a $100 gift card, and I had a coupon for $30 off, plus another $10 for completing a survey. Then I went online to their clearance shop and bought $140 worth of clothing and got it for the $100, so $40 worth of free clothing! I was very happy with my good buy and got some great summer clothes.

Soooooo.....I want to know...what are ways that you save money for your family? Do you clip and use coupons? Do you watch for sales, send in rebates, frequent thrift shops? Rummage sale? I'd love to hear from you!

Saving money = good stewardship

If you'll notice on the right hand side of my posts I have several blogs I follow and favorite websites about saving money. These are hard times for all of us, and there are so many women out there trying to save their families money. These are awesome sites and I highly recommend them!

I want to be a good steward of our money as well, and do the best for my family I can, so I'm starting to cut coupons again and watch for deals at local stores. This morning I spent over an hour pouring over some of the blogsites looking for coupons on things we use in our household. I found several, and I also signed up for lots of freebies and free samples of things. I'm pretty excited about my finds! These ladies have worked hard to be so helpful for the rest of us, and I commend them, and thank them heartily.

My next step is to see what's on sale at our local grocery stores, and try matching the coupons I just cut out with the sales. I know it's going to be a hard process to get started, but I am willing to do it to make our money stretch farther, and in the process glorify God because I'm being a good steward of His money.

Art Project?

My kids helped me paint the picnic table and the swingset today.


They both turned out really nice - a chocolate color. So, my question is...can I call this an art project for homeschool? Both of the kids worked very hard so I think they deserve the credit. Our back yard is really starting to look nice. Just need the trees to grow now!

Apple cake

Today was our first day back to homeschooling after a two week break, and the start of our summer session- shorter hours, more fun things to do/learn. We were supposed to be watching a "Good Eats" video from food network for our kitchen basics subject, but for some reason only the audio plays and not the video, so we decided to do some of our own baking instead. We pulled out Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here For More Food" book, and the kids found an apple cake recipe that we could make. They took turns reading the ingredients and instructions (Alton Brown is quite thorough in his explanations of why we use certain ingredients and what they do, and I absolutely love the way he lays it all out so the kids can understand it), and got out everything they needed. I helped with the stuff they couldn't do (like the food processor and a few other things), but they did a great job. They learned why the creaming method is used in some applications, how it works, and how to measure in grams, ounces, and cups and spoons. And they had fun, too!