Couponing

I love saving money. Who doesn't? Over the past year I have totally changed the way I use coupons. I have always used coupons, but now I am an extreme couponer. I used to only buy what I needed for the next two weeks, now I stockpile groceries and household items.

Here are a few examples of why I love couponing.

I got all the above groceries, plus an unpictured bag of 50lbs. dog food, at Publix and Kroger. I paid $30.12.

These are from Publix, Kroger and CVS. I paid $11.96 for all this and I got $27 in ECB to spend on my next trip to CVS.

Last night I bought 20 (12oz.) bags of frozen veggies, 2 tubes mascara, 6 ramen type noodles, 2 boxes of Smart Balance Butter sticks, 2 YoPlus yogurt 4 packs, 3 cans Publix cream of mushroom soup, small jar of pickle spears, Ritz crackers and Crackerful Crackers. I paid $3.07. Half of that was tax.

Check out my favorite sites for couponing!

Southern Savers - Jenny's site is very organized and tells you exactly what coupons to use. And you can print your shopping list directly from her site!

I Heart Publix - this site gives weekly deals just like Southern Savers, but she often adds unadvertised deals that she finds in the store.

Coupon Mom - I use this site to search for unadvertised deals as well.

Money Saving Mom - Crystal has lots of great deals as well as inspiring posts on being frugal.

What are your favorite couponing sites?

Menu Plan Monday

Last week went pretty well and I hope to finish my ingredients list this week. I also hope to post a few of the recipes that I've been making soon. Most things, I don't have a recipe for because they are passed down from my family or I make them up every time I make them.

This week will be a little different because we are headed to the lake to meet up with some old high school friends and their families. So on Friday and Saturday I am only responsible for part of the meal. On Wednesday we will be having Breakfast for dinner. I love doing that! Also, I would usually split my Enchiladas to make two meals for my family and freeze one for later, but since we will be sharing I won't do that this time around.

On to the menu:

Monday: Pot Roast, Potatoes and Carrots

Tuesday: Grilled Pork Chops, Corn on Cob and Pasta Salad

Wednesday: Eggs, Bacon, Grits and Toast

Thursday: BBQ Sandwiches (Using leftover roast), Potato Salad, Chips

Friday: Salad

Saturday: Garlic Beef Enchiladas - these are a little bit of work, but so worth it.

What's on your menu this week?

Remodeling Progress

Well, we are making progress. We have gotten all the wood on the wall. After a lot of caulking we have also started to prime everything. Unfortunately, the Mister has to work during the day and on some weekends so more progress may be slow going. But I love it, already it looks much better than before. I cannot wait to see it complete. I am having a little trouble deciding on a color to go above the woodwork. But that is another post.

For more DIY goodness be sure to check out A Soft Place to Land.

Works For Me Wednesday

So most of you may already know this, but a ten year old at church showed me this a few months ago and it has become very helpful.

I own an iPod Touch. And did you know that if you press the power button on top and the home button that is front and center at the same time and release quickly you can take a picture of whatever you are looking at on your iPod screen? Go try it right now, I'll wait.

How cool is this! My poor Mister! I keep taking pictures of things I want him to do and emailing them to him. When I decided I wanted to do this to my hallway I snapped some photos of my inspiration and sent them his way. I cannot wait for my birthday and Christmas roll around so I can send him screenshots of all sorts of goodies.

So am I the only one who did not know this?

For more great tips check out We Are THAT Family.

Coupon Organization

I was reading this post the other day over at Jenny's blog, and it got me thinking about how I organize my coupons and why. I am definitely a "keep my whole insert" type of girl. Since I have gotten more serious about my couponing, I have made the switch from cutting all my coupons to keeping the whole insert for a couple of reasons. First, I get a lot of coupons. Mr's job allows him access to tons of unwanted Sunday papers and he is all to happy to make his bride glow by bringing her a stack home almost daily. Second, I have four kids and that limits the amount of time I have to actually cut coupons. On Mondays I check out Kroger's deals and make a list of all the deals I want to take advantage of. I make sure to list the item, the flyer the coupon is in, the value of the coupon and the final price after store sale and coupons. On Tuesdays, I file my many inserts because I usually get the biggest stack on Monday night. I also cut my coupons for Kroger and file them in my coupon organizer. On Wednesday I list my Publix deals the same way I do Kroger's then I cut them out on Saturday morning so I am ready to head out and get my deals on Sunday or Monday evening. I spend 30 minutes or less each day on my couponing this way. When I cut all my coupons I would easily spend 4 or 5 hours on a Sunday afternoon cutting and filing. I do sometimes miss out on closeout deals because I don't have a coupon box with every coupon in it but I think the time I get to spend with my family instead is a pretty good trade off. How do you organize your coupons?

Menu Plan Monday

Life has become quite hectic around our house, increasingly so since B Man has learned to crawl and pull up. This has forced me to rethink my meal planning strategy. I have always planned meals out since I was a teenager, (Thanks, Mom) but it seems that my system needed some tweaking since I was still finding meal time somewhat stressful.

So I decided to pick 24 meals that I regularly see on my meal plan. That gives me a different meal for Monday through Saturday for a whole month. I left Sundays open because we often go out to lunch, have potluck at church or have leftovers on that day. If none of that is on our agenda I figure Sundays will be a great day to try a new recipe.Also, I only listed the main dish since I hope to be adding sides from whatever is fresh from our garden or on sale that week. After I had my 24 meals I put them on a four week calender. This week I will do the meals listed on week one and next week I will move on to week two and, well you get the picture.

Next, I would like to get a list of all the ingredients needed for each weeks meals. Since I try to stockpile my groceries to get the best deals, I am hoping having a complete list of the entire four weeks ingredients will help me to snag some great deals on the thing I will need.

On this weeks menu:

Monday: Spaghetti and Salad

Tuesday: Meatloaf, Smashed Potatoes and Roasted Veggies

Wednesday: Pinto Beans, Mac and Cheese, Sliced Tomatoes and Squash

Thursday: Ham and Rice Casserole

Friday: Hot Dogs

Saturday: Grilled Chicken Salad

For more menu ideas check out The Organizing Junkie.

Remodeling

We have been in this house for about a year and a half. We have already finished the basement, minus the flooring. And now I have the Mr. working on redoing our hallway. Which is sort of strange for me considering that we lived in our previous home for seven years and never even painted the walls.

Anyway....Currently the hallway is about a quarter of the way done. I meant to get some pictures prior to our start but forgot until we had a few boards already up. Here is what it looked like (sorta) before we started.

Hopefully there will be lots of gorgeous photos of the completed project by next week. And hopefully they will look like this hallway that Diana and her crew remodled.