Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Have a Great Lord’s Day!

MotherHen — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:58:14 +0000

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Gifts in a Jar

MotherHen — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:09:14 +0000

I love gifts in a jar.

Every time I have ever received one of these cool jars I have loved it to pieces and felt like it was such a neat, personal kind of gift.

Ant they’re so easy to make!

I can’t wait to get started!

Here’s an extensive list of “jars” and all the instructions. Here’s a bunch more. And here’s even more.

This is gonna be fun! I’m liking the looks of:

Which ones intrigue you?

Linked to:

Frugal Friday

The Menu for 16 March-20 March I can’t tell you how great it feels to...
The Menu – March 23-29 I have a cold, again. So, I appologize for...
Gifts and Greed I must confess. I watched tv a few days ago. ...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’m so blessed

MotherHen — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:35:14 +0000

It started out like a regular day. I had high hopes to get a lot done. I blew some time on the ‘puter (before breakfast!) and then got the ball rolling.

We had a good breakfast. Oatmeal and muffins.

Then I had a “hormonal moment” of grumpy-ness. Not over the top, but still, no fun. I think the thing that bull-dozed me over the edge was that I’m not making much progress on the cobweb situation. And I happened to mention the floors to Tex.

That boy got busy and took apart the whole family room, cleaned it and put it back together again. He even took the curtains down and washed ‘em! I am sitting in a room SO CLEAN IT SPARKLES! I may go blind from the cleanliness in here!

Then I gave him a long overdue haircut and he gave him a long overdue shave. Now he looks as smart as my family room!

Win-win, right?

Well, guess what the littles were doing while I gave Tex his haircut.

Go ahead guess.

Nope!

They were makin’ the huge-est, wonderful-est, I-have-tears-in-my-eyes-from-all-the-love-they-put-into-it patio sized love note for me!

Tex had to get on the roof to get a photo of the whole thing!

Haircut Day It’s been forever since I gave the Cowboys haircuts. And...
The Plan – part 4 – Housecleaning and Philosophy House cleaning Ha! This place looks like it’s been...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Shopping with Faith – part 2

MotherHen — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:16:11 +0000

The ABCs of Coupon Shopping

I am a shopping dolt. If there is a way to use coupons to make things cost more, I can do it. But my friend, Faith, can bring home car-load after car-load of products from CVS, Target, and Walgreen’s (Wags) using coupons and either:

spend very little money
spend no money at all
spend no money and also bring home gift cards given to her by the very store where she “bought” all those products jamming up her pantry!

I know! Sounds illegal, huh?

Well, there are tricks to this “coupon magic” and Faith shares them freely with everyone she knows. She even takes her friends to the store and shows them how. And now, for the seventy-leventh time, she is helping me.

First and foremost, you must, must, must start buying the Sunday paper. At least one copy, more is better. If you have a big family like me, you might want to buy three or four copies. You don’t need the daily paper, just the Sunday. Save all the coupon inserts.

Next, you want a printer for your online coupons.

Hot Coupon World is the place to start. Before grocery shopping, check their forums. Select the grocery stores link. Your grocery store is likely listed. The current (and past) weekly ad and the coupon match-ups for online coupons and the coupon inserts from your Sunday paper will be there.

When you are buying things other than grocery and drugstore items go to SlickDeals. It’s a great place to do research or find deals.

The sites to check for Walgreen’s, CVS, and Target deals are:

While you can get most of the same info on Hot Coupon World, these sites tend to whittle the info down to just the really cheap deals and free stuff.

You need to organize your shopping trips by deals. It’s a different way of shopping. You can’t walk into a drugstore and just shop your list and check out all in one go. Pretty much, each deal needs to be a separate transaction. Start small, one or two deals for your first several trips to the stores. Analyze what you want to do. Write it down, attach your coupons to your list with a paper clip.

When you come back home, study what you got, the coupons you used, the whole thing. It’s a whole new skill you are trying to learn. You gotta study. Sorry!

When deals are rock bottom or free STOCK UP! It doesn’t matter whether you NEED an item or not. If it’s something you will use, buy lots of it when it’s cheap or free.

And when a blog says HOT COUPON then you need to print it right away… before all the available prints are gone.

I’ve written a few posts detailing some of my experiences with coupon shopping (with Faith’s help). You can find them here, here, here, here, here and here.

Really, you don’t have to read all of those to learn how to coupon shop, but there is some good info there and lots of links to some of the good coupon deal sites.

It has helped me a great deal to go to Money Saving Mom and read (and re-read) her articles about it.

I’ll leave you with these two thoughts.

The deals that work out best are those where you can combine a manufacturer’s coupon, a store coupon and a good sale price.
When you have a coupon that is a buy one, get one free, and the store is having a buy one, get one free sale, BINGO, both items are free!

Shopping with Faith – part 1 My friend Faith is such a whiz-kid when it...
Thoughts on Coupon Shopping I just want you to know, I was gonna...
Coupon Shopping – It Can Be Done …in which my dim bulb shines a bit brighter! Change...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Shopping at Sam’s

MotherHen — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:59:41 +0000

Faith is such a generous friend. She got me a temporary membership to Sam’s Club! I’m so happy to find groceries at a cheaper price than I usually pay.

You see, in out city we pretty much have one chain grocery store. Years ago, when groceries were oh-so-much-cheaper than they are today, our HEB undercut all the other stores in town until they couldn’t compete and they all folded and left town.

And now, our HEB is not so cheap anymore, with no real competition left. So, shopping around isn’t such a real thing in San Antonio. Now you see why shopping at Sam’s was so exciting!

Not everything was cheaper, so I’ll be starting a price book. So far the things I liked a lot at Sam’s were:

butter
minced garlic
cashews and peanuts
sour cream
shredded cheese
dead chickens (just for you Kimarie)
pure vanilla!
saltines
animal crackers

See the soldier in front there? Yeah, he’s not life sized. But that is the biggest pkg of animal crackers I’ve seen in my entire life, so I had to buy them!

I have to give HEB a little credit. the milk, eggs and toilet paper are still cheaper there.

Here’s a cool thing that Kimarie told me about. You can do your comparison shopping online. Got to the Sam’s Club website and do the search for a store thing, and you can see all the prices and product sizes. Very easy. I’ll just sit right here with my HEB receipt and make my price book. Too easy!

Linked to:

Coupon Shopping for Dimmies No, it’s not a typo, I just don’t like calling...
Thoughts on Coupon Shopping I just want you to know, I was gonna...
Shopping with Faith – part 2 The ABCs of Coupon Shopping I am a shopping...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.