Walmart shopping trip

It has been a while since I have really gotten some great deals with coupons or anything, so it's about time I got some good things. I have heard many times that there are people that don't go shopping unless they will be paid to shop. That is a little extreme to me and hard to believe that they will get everything  they need and be paid for it every time. I just try to do the best I can with what I have. Like this week, I really needed milk and cheese and I tried to print coupons for them, but my printer is out of ink, so it printed, but nothing appeared on the paper, so there goes a couple coupons I missed out on, oh well. But, we got some really great coupons this week in our 5 inserts we got! One of my favorite was $8/2 covergirl face products. This was a wonderful mney maker for me at Walmart. Here's what I got:

Might be kind of hard to see, but I got 16 cans GV tomato sauce (.25 each), 12 cans Spaghetti Os (.50 each price matched from Lee's caselot sale), 2 cans S & W chili beans (.69 each price match), 2 Tresemme mousse with bonus ($2.48), Aquafresh travel size (.97), 4 Oral B glide dental floss ($2.47), 8 Covergirl facial sponges ($2.94), and 1 bag cotton balls.

Before coupons my total was $52.67, after coupons I only paid $9.46!! That's around a 90% savings, not bad at all!! I love when I save so much money like that!

Here's the skinny and where to find these great coupons:

Oral B complete satin floss - SS 9/11, $2/1 = .47 each
Covergirl any face product - P&G 10/2, $8/2 = $2.12 overage for every two
Campbell's Spaghetti Os - DishSS 9/11, .40/2 = .30 each
S & W beans - RP 9/11, .50/2 = .44 each
Aquafresh toothpaste $1/1 = .03 overage
Tresemme styling product - RP 10/2, BOGO = $2.48 for both (I told the cashier the wrong price on these, they should be $3.33, I will go back and make it right, just know when you go, they are $3.33!)

That's the skinny! There is also a coupon for Scrubbing Bubbles one step toilet bowl cleaner kit - Dish SS 9/11, $4/1, these are $3.97 at Walmart which makes them FREE, but they were all out when I went, so I will kep checking back. Hope you have as much fun shopping and saving money as I do, it helps my family so much!

If you want to learn about saving money with coupons, please let me know and I can teach your friends and family how to save lots of money! It's not hard and doesn't take much time the Grocery Smarts way!

Produce co-op

What do you think of when you think of "co-op"?

A few years ago, my husband's sister-in-law was involved with a co-op. They did a lot of dry foods that they could get in bulk for much cheaper than in the store. The blueberry muffins were sooo good! I bought cocoa powder through them one year and still have some left. Although I am getting to bottom of the bag. That was probably about 6 years ago.

Then a couple weeks ago, one of the young women in our ward was telling us about her home schooling group who she said was their co-op. Much different co-op than I am used to.

Now, I run my own co-op. I call it the Mountain View Produce Co-op, because we have a very beautiful view of the mountains from my house. I had tried off and on for about a year to try to get a "bountiful basket" from a produce co-op, with much stress. I always got on their website to late and therefore had to miss out or try to pick up at a location much to far from my home, or I would forget altogether. It was quite frustrating and I hated having to go to the store each week and decide what produce I could afford or wanted. My family eats a lot of produce, especially lately when my husband and I are trying to lose weight and eat better. Plus my boys love to come home from school and grab an apple out of the fridge. I always felt like I was spening too much money on things that are a necessity in our home, and if you knoow me and know how much I like to find a bargain and shop with coupons, you understand how hard it is for me to buy produce.

In my attempt to find good produce buys and try to get a bountiful basket, I wished that there were some way that I could just have all the things I wanted delivered to my door for me. Well, ask and ye shall receive... I follow the utahdealdiva.com where she finds good deals and is just amazing at saving money, she is also somewhat of a collegue of mine in the Grocery Smarts business. Well, I read on her blog one day how to start your own neighborhood produce co op and it was very inspiring. Thus started my adventure of the Mountain View Produce Co op!

I knew that I needed at least 12 to start but preferred 24. I set the goal to start and have our first co op delivery date Wednesday, August 16, whether I had 24 or not. So having this goal in mind, I set out to find people who wanted to save money as well as have fresh produce every other week, as I did. I talked to everyone, starting with friends, neighbors and people from church. I even asked my chiropractor! Thanks to some effort from me and some good friends who asked people that they worked with, the Monday before I had my 24 people! I couldn't believe it, I was so excited!

Among trying to find people, I knew I needed to find a company that would work well with co-ops and would have the best produce. I started with one company, who another co-op used, and then checked into another. These are wholesale produce companies that deliver all over the state of Utah. I decided upon using Joe Granato Inc. Their produce is delivered on refrigerated trucks and comes fresh. They seemed like a great company and I felt good about going with them.

I must say, I have been very pleased with everything so far. Granato's has been very easy and wonderful to work with! They have helped me every step of the way and whenever I have a problem, they have been great to help me through it! They definitely know produce!!  The selection is great! The quality has been great! And I have definitely learned a lot about produce!

Our price is $16.50 per basket and we get a good variety. The picture below shows what we got this week. We got broccoli, spinach, carrots (2 bags), potatoes, nectarines, green apples, raspberries and green grapes (not shown they got eaten last night for dinner.)

If you ask me, I don't think I would be able to get this much in the store for what we pay through the co op. I have a wonderful group of people that go in on this with me and for most of them it is great to get a lot for so little and also the conveinence of picking it all up at one place and not having to decide at the store what you want. I take many suggestions from our group and try to accommadate every one I can.

I have learned many things about produce. 1...how to make green leaf lettuce stay crisp for two weeks, 2...that you shouldn't store apples with other fruit, it makes the other fruit spoil faster, 3...celery is mostly water and can be crispy again if soaked in cold water. 4...broccoli stems CAN be eaten! And they are very yummy! And 5...salads are best with more veggies!

This has been such a huge success for me that I started an "off week" co op as well. Now I have A week and B week. We are working to get the B week up to 24 and I'm hoping that soon this will happen, there is so much more variety when you have more people.

Thanks to all my wonderful friends in the co op, I have learned so much and I love seeing each of you each time you come and to see you all get excited about produce!

Huge thanks goes out to Joe Granato Inc. and especially Kurt Jeffs there who has helped me all along the way and dealt with my stresses and complaints (which have not been many thanks to his help), and thanks to all the staff and drivers that are so great to deliver and be there to help! You are wonderful!

Freezer Cooking!!!

It has been the week for freezer cooking! I think Mike smoked some chicken thighs for me last Thursday so I could shred and freeze it, then I got some chicken tenders that were on sale the other day and just diced and cooked them on the stove top. I have plenty of chicken now for meals for the month, which I love! Then Wednesday I froze some green beans out of the garden for dinners. That same night I made up some salsa, we love salsa at our house! Thursday I did some more green beans for the freezer as well as pinto beans for the freezer to make refried beans or just add to taco dinners.

Today I had my wonderful friend Kami over to bake with me. I needed to make a potato salad for the ward campout tonight, so I didn't get more beans done like I was hoping, but Kami made some very yummy, EXTREMELY easy pumpkin cookies (they have 3 ingredients), I cooked my potatoes, and then made pumpkin bars and monkey bars that smell great! I got the recipe from the Utah Deal Diva, who got it from Woman's Magazine. They are very easy to make and I plan to freeze them and pull them out before the kids get home to give them as their after school snack. Love it!

Next I plan to do more pinto and black beans, breakfast sandwiches, and "pop tarts" from the Utah Deal Diva. I also plan to start making actual freezer meals soon to. I would love to do a freezer meal swap as well with friends and neighbors. That way we all make a little, but leave with some great variety! So much fun!! I have done this in the past with my mother-in-law and sister-in-laws and have enjoyed it. Here is a picture of the pumpkin bars:

sorry, the picture turned out weird...

Hello, Hello my wonderful friends!

Wow, what a week, I have been wanting to post all week but have been so busy! Wednesday was the first day of school for my kids! YAY! It was a very wonderful day! So quiet, for the most part, my kindergartener doesn't start until Monday, but he is pretty quiet.

I decided that I need to start a new goal for some cleaning in my house. My aunt told me about a website that helps you clean. Not literally, but they help you organize your life and your cleaning. The first thing that she tells you to do is to shine your sink. When your sink is shined you don't want to dirty it again. She then says to not let it get dirty, so no dishes piling up in the sink. She even says to put a bucket under the sink to have family members put their dirty dishes or put them directly into the dishwasher. So I started this endeavor and I want to share with you how happy I am that my sink is clean! I told my hubby that night that I don't think my kitchen has been this clean since we moved in! So as embarrased as I am to show you this, I have pictures to show and prove that this can be done. This is what my kitchen looked like before the cleaning:

As you can see, I have just STUFF all over every inch of counter space, including school supplies, fruits, veggies and many dirty dishes. I don't know how things can get so out of control so quickly. It doesn't take long at my house. I decided to start by actually doing my dishes and putting away items that don't belong in the kitchen, like the school supplies. I made it through all the dishes and had the kitchen looking pretty nice, then I decided to use the dehydrator and dry some zucchini that my parents brought me. I made some zucchini chips to eat with dip, very yummy. I also had a box of tomatoes, pictured above, that were ripe and needed to be made into salsa, so I made two small batches of salsa this day as well. I did a lot that day and only ended up sitting down for about 20 minutes total all day, I stayed really busy and felt great! I also made biscuits and gravy for dinner, with homemade biscuits, so I dirtied and cleaned many times that day. But at the end of the day, my kitchen looked great and I was so proud of myself!

I did have my dehydrator out still, drying zuchini and the fruit bowl on the counter, but otherwise very clean, especially for my kitchen. If you are at all interested in how to start your cleaning habits and goals, check out flylady.net that is where I got my inspiration for keeping my kitchen clean, now on to the rest of the house!

Seriously I have not posted in almost a month and a half?! This is crazy! I am such a slacker sometimes, but I have also been very busy. July was full of camping and lots of family fun! I also participated in a bike ride for Parkinson's Disease. It was just very busy. Now we are into August and we getting ready to send back the kiddie to school. They start next Wednesday, I can't wait! Oh and the kids are excited to.

We started a neew adventure this past week that has worked out pretty good so far. We got a cat! Not a kitten, but a cat. He is older which is nice, as well as declawed and fixed. He doesn't seem to like the kids much and will just hide all day, but he comes out at night and will be with me and Mike, although Mike seems to not like cats at all. Oh well.

So for young women's last week we wanted to do something with the girls that they could make but not have to turn on the oven. So I decided on waffle iron cookies, homemade ice cream and hot fudge sauce. It turned out great and they were very yummy. So here is the recipe for waffle iron cookies:

Waffle Iron Cookies

2 eggs beaten
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 cup flour
3 TBS cocoa

Mix sugar and melted butter with beaten eggs. Add vanilla. Stir in flour and cocoa. Pour in waffle iron 1 cup at a time. Cook 2-3 minutes. These are so yummy but very sweet, so you might want add a little salt so they aren't quite so sweet. But enjoy they are one of my favorites and very easy to make!

Pineapple cherry delight

As you know I love to make up and try new things. I was wanting to make something fun for father's day and wanted jello but it was much to late to make it. I decided to try to make a jello dish my aunt makes and it turned out pretty good. Try it for yourself.

Pineapple cherry delight

16 oz fat free cottage cheese
Small tub fat free cool whip
Large box sugar free cherry jello
1 can crushed pineapple, drained

Mix together, serve immediately or refrigerate.

The cherry jello and pineapple are just yummy together. Hope you enjoy it. Half of my family did, but most of them don't like cottage cheese.

Cream Cheese Bars

One of my favorite treats that I don't make very often is Cream Cheese Bars. I love making bars because you just put it all in one pan and bake instead of making each individual cookie. These are super yummy and you can't eat just one. The last time I made these I sprinkled butterscotch chips on with the filling and we loved it!

Cream Cheese Bars

crust:
1 yellow cake mix
1 egg
1/3 cup oil

filling:
8 oz cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350. Mix together cake mix, eggs and oil until crumbly. Set aside 1 cup of crust mix for topping. Pat rest of dough lightly into a greased 9 X 13 pan. Bake  for 15 minutes. In a separate bowl, beat together cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice and egg until smooth. Spread evenly over baked layer. Sprinkle with reserved crust mix. Bake for 15 minutes loner. Cool and cut into bars.

Yummy Curry

So in learning some new ethnic recipes, I have learned a few new tidbits as well. I got a recipe from a friend of my hubby's who served a mission somewhere where they serve Thai food, not sure where. So he makes Thai food often. I finally made it to a restaurant to have some Thai food, it was delicious! I have loved curry since the first time I had some with a family friend of Mike's when we were dating, and we make it every now and then, but we have just used the curry bars that you buy in the store. I wanted some authentic curry, so when I was back with my brother-in-law's family my sister-in-law made some curry from coconut milk, Tahi peanut sauce, chicken and curry powder from Bah-Rain (sp). I loved it and so wanted to try some for myself, here is the recipe that I came up with and it is very close to the yellow curry I had at the resaurant, Mike said he even liked mine better. Yay for me!

Curry

4 chicken breasts chopped
2 cans coconut milk
1 bottle Thai peanut sauce
3 TBS curry powder
1 bag of oriental veggies

cook chicken with olive oil, add frozen veggies to thaw. Meanwhile, mix coconut milk, peanut sauce and curry powder in a bowl. Add to other mixture when veggies have softened. Serve warm over rice.

Something I learned was about the difference between curry powder and curry paste. Most recipes call for curry paste, which gives it the truer Thai flavor, whereas curry powder gives you more of the Indian flavor. I also learned that it depends on where you get your curry powder, or what brand you use, makes a difference as well. I had some McCormick curry powder and some that I bought in bulk at Winco. Even just smelling them, there is a huge difference!! I opted to use the one I bought at Winco because it had the stronger curry smell as apposed to a sweeter turmeric smell that the other had. Like I said, it was very yummy, with a little spice to it as well. The only thing I would do different is to add some chopped potatoes to it as well, that is how the restaurants serve it, with them in the sauce. Also this makes A LOT of curry sauce, more than enough to feed 6 of us, with seconds for Mike and I, so I think it will serve at least 8 - 10 people! So adjust the recipe as you need, or just serve it for your next big family get together!

Tis the Season for summer fun and GRILLING!

I went shopping last night to get some much needed milk, cheese, eggs and essentials. I started at Smith's hoping to get the Kandoos flushable wipes refill packs free, but they were out, but I did find some milk on mark down because they expire this weekend, plus Yoplait yogurt are .44, good price, and hamburger buns, bananas and cucumbers. Then I went to Winco to get the FREE things that they sent out coupons for (ketchup, hamburger, hamburger helper, pork and beans, and soda), I also got ground turkey, cheese, eggs, blueberry muffin mix, and my favorite find: Bar-S hotdogs! They were marked at .68 each, used the $1/2 coupon from the RP 5/22 and paid .36 for both, really good price! And we use these for grilling all the time, they are pretty good. Also watch for condiments and grilling items to go on sale soon, since it is that time of year and you can score some pretty sweet deals on the necessities for summer!

Well, I am finally home and back to my normal life. My vacation was so much fun and very relaxing. The time difference was hard to adjust to and Addie kept waking up at 6 o'clock there, which is 4 o'clock here, so I didn't know if she would adjust back very well, but so far it has been much better. Virginia is such a beautiful place. I'm glad I decided to go in May instead of later. The humidity was about 60% which wasn't to bad, but I could tell a difference. It was very warm and nice, even when it was raining. We were able to go to the beach on the Naval base and see the ocean. We even got to play with a few sand crabs, which totally freaked me out. They would move every time a stepped and scare me. Addie has been kind of shy around people, but she volunarily went to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.

If you ever get a chance to go back there, take it, it is worth it.
Enjoy the pictures.

I am very excited for this week! I am going to be leaving town this week all by myself, well, me and Addie! I am going to be flying to Virginia to visit Mike's brother and his family. It will be a lot of fun! I am nervous to fly by myself, or rather with a one year old, but it will be ok. So in the meantime I am finishing up some shopping, since it will be a couple weeks before I make it out to shop again. I went to Smith's this morning to pick up some things that they didn't have Friday and was able to get a few things, but they have been out of Reach toothbrushes and that is something that I was really needing to buy. But I bought 10 boxes of pasta and a crest kids toothpaste and they paid me 18 cents after my coupons, love it!

My Rite Aid shopping was a lot of fun today too. They have Buy One Get One Free sales all over the store this week, plus some other great shopping deals! I only paid about $6 for everything pictured! I did have $12 in +UP rewards from last week that helped to pay for this so the $6 was what I paid after all coupons and +UP rewards. This is the bonus to buying things there!

Rite Aid shopping trip: 2 pkgs. napkins, 2 boxes Kleenex, 2 Viactiv, 2 Got2B stylers, 3 Similac ready formula, 5 Tylenol precise heat patches, 24 chocolate bars, 4 Starburst and 2 packs of gum!

I can't believe it has been so long since I last posted! I am such a slacker, or not, I'm just very busy! I've had some pretty good shopping trips lately but I am very much looking forward to the big Smith's trip I have planned tomorrow morning! Smith's has some really great deals on their mega ten event this week! More FREE pasta! BBQ sauce (it is almost summer time), FREE body wash and toothbrushes, cheap almond milk and mayo. For a full listing visit www.grocerysmarts.com passport g84aab. I love shopping and this helps me feel like I can buy what I want and need and not spend a lot of money on the items I get. Want to go shopping with me and see how I do it? Just let me know and we can arrange a time. Happy shopping!

New coupon lists!

So I have decided that I will start to type up a list of all the coupons in the different inserts each week. This will help me, and you, be able to find and know if you have certain coupons in those inserts. There have been a few times now that I gone to someone's coupon blog and it lists a coupon that is a really great deal paired with a sale, but when I go to find it, I can't find it. So instead of flipping through the whole booklet over and over again to try to find a certain coupon, I can now just pull out the paper in the front and see if it's on the list. How excited are you?

Now this list will only contain coupons from the Ogden Standard Examiner, which is the paper I get, so unless I happen to get a Salt Lake Tribune or Deseret Morning News, there may be a few missing, but you can always write the missing coupons on the bottom.

Coupons will be in alphabetical order so they will be easy to find on the list to see if you have it. I will also list the coupons from the insert that are restraunt coupons. You CAN save money while going out to eat and other things around town as well.

....so I tried to insert this, but could not figure out how, I'm still blogger dumb. So if you would like to get this each week, please leave your email address, or just email me at abunnell81@gmail.com with the subject "coupon list" I will get it to you as an attachment that you can print. Hope you are all excited about this!

Love my mail!

Look what I got in the mail today! Covergirl products and coupons from Bzz Agent (I'm a Bzz Agent) and then some samples of wisk, secret clinical, coffee creamer, biscoti, and gum tools, plus coupons, as well as coupons for Enfamil. Lots of fun, love free samples, they usually come with coupons to use with sales to get things for way cheap!

Tenders taco casserole

For all those out there that like fish, like our family does, here is a yummy fish recipe. Even if you don't like fish, try it, you really can't taste the fish.

Tenders taco casserole

8-10 frozen fish tenders
1 15oz can chili beans, drained
1 8oz can tomato sauce
2 TBS taco sauce
3 tsp chili powder
1 tsp garlic salt
2cups coarsely broken tortilla chips
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup sliced green onions with tops
1 med. Tomato, chopped
1 cup or more shredded cheese
Shredded lettuce (opt.)
Chili peppers (opt.)
Taco sauce (opt.)

Preheat oven to 375*. In a saucepan, heat frozen tenders, beans, tomTo sauce, taco sauce, chili powder and garlic salt to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Place chips in ungreased 9X13 dish. Pour tender mix over chips. Spread with sour cream. Sprinkle with onions,
tomato and cheese. Bake uncovered for 20-25 minutes. Serve with shredded lettuce, chili peppers and taco sauce if desired.

Now I don't drain my chili beans. I just cook it all together. It makes in have more sauce. This time I used Tabasco sauce for the taco sauce. It was quite spicy and very strong so I wouldn't recommend that, but I have used a Louisiana hot sauce and it was really yummy. Let me know what you think of this one.

Smith's mega coupon deals!

Went to Smith's yesterday and got a few things. We love the Fiber One granola bars. They are low in calories, high in fiber and are a great quick snack. Through today Smith's has had General Mills gereals and granola bars on sale. 4/$10. Then you get a $5 gift card back to use on your next purchase, so it's like paying 4/$5! Pair that with coupons and you have a killer deal! So we are not big fans of Natur Valley granola bars, we don't care for the crunchy kind, but they have a new one that is called a granola thin. There was a coupon in Sunday's paper for 75 cents off 1 box. I decided to see if they were part of the sale. I was very pleased when they were. I also got Nestle chocolte chips 2/$4, but had a $1.50 off 2 coupon, plus they were supposed to print a $3 catalina on four. For some reason I didn't get the $3 catalia I got two $1 catalinas. I knew I should have gotten the $3 catalina so I mentioned it to the cashier and she ended up giving me cash back and then let me have the catalina's as well. It was a great deal!

So I paid $14.22 (with tax) for 12 boxes of granola bars, 8 bags cocolate chips and 2 dozen eggs! Really great shopping trip!

I also took my friend and we went to Walmart last night. In Sunday's Johnson and Johnson Smart Source, there were two coupons for Reach toothpaste or floss. Right inside the first page, one is $1 off 1, the other is $2.50 off 2, take them to Walmart and get better than free dental floss. The smaller floss at Walmart is 88 cents, so use the overage on the coupons to help pay for something else, like milk that is ways to expensive!

Italiano Soup

1 lb. ground turkey
onion
12 cups beef broth
2 cans Italian tomatoes
2 cups uncooked macaroni noodles

brown and crumble ground turkey with chopped onion in pot. Add beef broth and tomatoes. Bring to a boil and add macaroni noodles. Boil until noodles are done, about 10 minutes. Can serve with some parmesan cheese.

We loved this soup! I tweeked a recipe that I had to come up with this. Really quick and easy and a good way to use some of the many boxes of pasta from the sale a few weeks ago! The only thing we would do different next time is add Italian ground turkey instead of plain, it has more of a spicy flavor like sausage.

It's been a fun few days. I got a new toy this week! For a long time now I have wanted to get a laptop so I could sit anywhere and write stories or play games or be on the Internet. Well then I discovered Apple! Mike has an iPhone that he likes and the kids like to play games on it as well as myself, and he can do the Internet and all sorts of other things from which is great. Well in still wanting to get a laptop, I decided an iPad would better suit my needs. I started looking and found a really great deal on a refurbished first generation. I absolutely love it! I've had so much fun adding new apps and being able to do anything on the Internet! I even have the scriptures now plus lots of books, lots of fun! it will be great when I travel next month.

So anyway, we were able to go on a little vacation this last weekend for spring break. Mike gets hotel points and we are able to stay in hotels for free. We decided to go to Holiday Inn express in west valley city. They have a little water park in it with a big water slide. The kids had so much fun. We came home Saturday to water in our basement, due to the excess ground water. We have been trying to dry it out since then, I hate water! Saturday was a great day for soup! We stopped at Macey's to get some produce and I decided potato leek soup sounded good. I looked up a few recipes and decided to make up my own. Here it is:

Potato Leek Soup

About 5 med potatoes chunked
3 med size leeks
10 cups chicken broth
1/2 lb. Bacon cooked and crumbled
1 tsp. Marjoram
Salt and pepper to taste
4 TBS butter
Bay leaf

In large pot melt butter. Cut leeks lengthwise twice and chop. Add the butter and sautee until limp, about 5-7 mins. Add potatoes, chicken broth and spices and cook until potatoes are tender. Add bacon. Serve hot. Can add red pepper flakes for spice.

Very easy and nice and warm for those cold spring/winter days.

Easter Shopping!

I have never really been one for Easter. I love the holiday and all that it reminds us. But I haven't been all that keen on the Easter Bunny. My children have been deprived, but I don't want them to think of it as another gift giving holiday. They have only ever gotten a few things. One year we broke down and got them 4 piece outfits from JCPenny. They looked so cute, until we got to church and decided they didn't want to keep their ties and vests on. Oh well. This year I didn't want to do anything big. I want to be able to focus on the spirit of the season and teach my kids about our Savior and help them to understand the resurrection more and what the Savior has done for us. In trying to keep with the spirit of the season, the boys all desperately need new jackets to wear to school, since it still cool out. We will be going away this weekend for spring break, so we will try to find some then. Otherwise they each have a bucket they put out and I will fill the cute robot eggs that I've had for a few years now and hide them in the living room, but they don't get much. I want to keep our family focused on Christ.

My easter steals this year will nice and fun. Walgreens advertised Color Wonder sets in their ad 2/$3. There is a $1/1 coupon in Sunday's paper. There was also a coupon for $2/1 color explosion and one other crayola coupon with it. I cut them all out because it easy enough to cut them all at the same time, and went to Walgreens. When I got there I asked someone about them and she pointed me in the right place and said that they had color explosion kits to but I had to buy two for each coupon so that it went through ok. I was fine with that, the more the better. I ended up getting 15 kits and paid $7.95 with tax! That's 3 kits for each of my kids! Then I went to Rite Aid. They had their easter candy on sale. I ended up getting 6 Hershey's centerpiece chocolate bunnies, 2 bags Reese's eggs, and 2 bags Cadbury eggs (one of my favorites!). I don't know exactly how much I ended spending, there were other things that I bought and I love the +UP Rewards, because I can roll them into transactions and get a lot of things for dirt cheap! (If you would like to learn how to shop at Rite Aid please let me know and I can teach you!)

So my Easter baskets are done, I just need to find jackets. Does anyone know where to find good, nice jackets for cheap? Please let me know.

HAPPY EASTER!!!

What is Luck?

Do you ever feel like you are just the most unlucky person in the world? Recently I have felt a little like that. I love to blog hop each day to find the best deals and recipes and coupons. I love this and there is always giveaways that catch my eye, so I will sign up for them. I have yet to win any type of giveaway, and there are others wth so much luck that win more than one each day! Even with Houseparty.com! People I know are always getting chosen to host parties and the one time I aparantly did get chosen, the email was sent to my junk box and I never recieved it so there were no more spots left. Grrr. I don't know what to think of all of this. I try so hard to win and to be the best at whatever I am doing and can't seem to quite hit the mark.

I have a hard time booking the classes I want because I don't want to be pushy, but I also want so much to share my knowledge of saving money with everyone, I just want to shout it from the rooftops! Let me know if you want to host a class, I could bless you or someone close to you, you never know.

On the other hand...I am more lucky than I realize! About a month ago, my daughter misplaced her cute little brown leather sandal. I thought it was in the car somewhere, but after tearing the car apart and cleaning it, found that it was not. I didn't know where else to look, so gave up and considered throwing away the lone sandal. I decided not to in the off chance that it showed up. Well, lo and behold, my sweet husband found the mate to the lone sandal behind the entertainment center. I was extatic!

I am also the lucky mom of 5 wonderful kids; the wife of the most loving, thoughful, giving and unselfish husband; the babysitter for 3 of the cutest most fun girls; the friend of some of the most amazing women I have ever met who inspire me to be a better me; the daughter of parents who have always been there for me and have taught me so much and have been such a great example to me; the daughter-in-law to such wonderful in-laws who have helped me through many hard times and have not judged but loved me for who I am; the sister and sister-in-law to the best siblings I could ask for who keep me on track and remind that I am a daughter of God who is so loved; and I'm the Young Women leader of some of the most amazing young women in the world who have the most strong testimonies and love of our Savior! I am so very lucky and blessed to have such wonderful people in life to inspire me and keep me moving forward. My thanks and love go out to all of you wherever you are. May the Lord bless you and your family, especially at this Easter season!

Taco Soup

Here is one of my own:

Taco Soup

1 lb. taco flavor ground turkey, browned and drained
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can corn, drained
6 cups water
onion or dehydrated onion to taste cooked with ground turkey
1-2 packets taco seasoning
1 cup wheat berries
1 can tomatoes
1/2 can tomatoes and green chilies

This one is so easy! I just put everything in a pot and simmer until combined. You can also add peppers to this if you would like. If you don't want it quite as spicy you can leave out the tomatoes and green chilies and only use 1 packet of taco seasoning. We serve this with sour cream and grated cheese and crunch up totilla chips and put in or can use them to scoop up your soup. Wheat berries are also optional, I keep some cooked up in my fridge, and they just take on the flavor of everything else. We love spicy soup. Hope you do to.

Freezer Meals

I need to start doing more freezer things. One that we like to do fairly often and that is really easy is burritos. Here is an idea for some burritos:

Chicken
Place 3-4 boneless chicken breasts in med. saucepan.  Add 1/2 jar salsa and enough water to cover chicken. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until chicken is white all the way through (about 20 mins.). Remove chicken from pot and let cool until easy to handle. Shred the chicken and return to the pot. If chicken mix looks too thing, bring to a boil to reduce liquid.

Spread about 2 TBS. refried beans on a flour tortilla. Add 3-4 TBS. chicken mix down the center, sprinkle on a TBS or so of shredded cheese. Fold the sides of tortilla in a bit, then roll from the bottom. Repeat. Wrap each burrito in plasti wrap, then place all burritos in a large freezer zip-loc bag and freeze. To reheat, remove the plastic wrap and microwave on high until hot all the way through (time will vary).

Ground beef/turkey
Cook beef thoroughly and add taco seasoning (make as pakage directs). Assemble same as chicken burritos.

Burritos are very easy to make and are just like the frozen ones you buy at the store, but are much more healthy for you. And don't cost too much to make. Watch for tortillas to be $1/package or less, that is a good time to make lots of burritos! Have fun with these and get creative.

Here's another idea to make multiple meals at one time:

Purchse 4 fryer chickens or one 3 lb. bag chicken breasts. starting in the early afternoon, remove giblets from whole chickens, bake two chickens in a roasting pan at 325*, uncovered for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Or bake one thawed 3 lb. bag chicken breasts for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, covered. When they are done, de-bone and bake remaining fryer chickens. After the first two chickens have cooled, chop up about 4 cups meat for a different freezer bag and freeze for future chicken noodle soup (dinner #2) and 6 cups for future enchiladas (dinner #3).

Chicken seasoning for each chicken:
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp. thyme
2 TBS. rosemary
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
2 1/2 TBS. olive oil

Mix and rub all over chickens.
Chicken will be done when no longer pink inside and juices run clear.

Dinner #1: Baked Chicken
Chicken
Rica-a-roni
Veggies

Dinner #2: Hearty Chicken noodle soup
3 cans chicken broth
2 cups chopped carrots
2 cups chopped celery
3/4 cup chopped onion
1 chopped green onion
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup milk
4 cups water
3 cups cooked diced chicken
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 - 1/2 stick of butter
2 - 2 1/2 oz of futtuccine noodles (broken in half and cooked until tender)

Hear broth; add carrots, celery, onions and simmer until veggies are teder. Add cream chicken soup and milk. Add chicken and nooles. Add salt, pepper and butter.
This soup takes about 3 hours to simmer and thicken.

Dinner #3: Chicken Enchiladas
6 cups diced cooked chicken
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 (16 oz) sour cream
1 small can diced green chili's
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cups shredded cheddar/jack cheese
flour tortillas or corn tortillas

Mix soup, chicken, 1 1/2 cups cheese, and rest of ingredients together to make filling. Stuff into soft tortillas shells. Pour left over sauce over rolled up enchiladas. Add rest of cheese ove top. Bake at 350* for 40 minutes.

Do you have any freezer meals that you like to make? Care to share them?

Computer illiterate

I've decided that I realy am computer illiterate. At least when it comes to blogging. Trying to link diferent posts and put things in folders to make it easier for my readers to view things they want, like recipes only, it's kind of confusing. Does anyone have any suggestions on to make my blog more reader friendly?

Another good Smith's trip!

I finished my pasta shopping! Thanks to Smith's great sales the last couple weeks, I was able to get 60 boxes of pasta FOR FREE, plus I saved huge on other items that I bought with the sale as well. I love it when coupons and sales save me big!

Thanks to my cute neice I found out about another product on the same sale that is great price! My sister-in-law was chosen by houseparty.com to host a Philadelphia cream cheese party. (If you don't know what houseparty.com, goes check it out). So we all got a goodie bag with a $1 off 1 coupon for the new cooking cremes. I've posted a couple recipes using these, plus they come with recipes to try. So the sale is $1.99 each when you buy 10 participating items. I got 7 cooking cremes and used $1 off 1 from the party, $1 off 1 catalina that printed a couple weeks ago, and then 5 $1.50 off 1 that was in the 3/6 SS insert in the Sunday paper. So for all 7 I paid $4.43 plus tax for all.

What kind of things have you found at Smith's? Leave your comments and share with us all.

Our Financial Story continued..

Things started getting really tight and paying for things was becoming hard. We finally got our 4th son out of diapers and I felt like we were saving quite a bit by not buying those, but it still was hard to feed everyone and keep up with the montly expenses. When our youngest was 3 we decided we had one more child coming to us. We shortly found out we were pregnant again. I didn't know how I was going to start all over again. There would be 4 years between our youngest and the newer child. Diapers seemed like such a huge expense and then to think about all the baby food again and everything that comes with babies. It was a bit overwhelming. Not to mention the medical bills, again.

This pregnancy was much different than the others. I didn't get sick a whole lot, but I did have nausea everyday all day and would have rather thrown up than deal with that. We also wanted to avoid going into preterm labor again this time and the midwife that I was seeing at the time suggested progesterone shots. We decided this would be good, so I started having them once a week for 18 weeks. It was not the highlight of my week to say the least since they had to put it in my hip, which is painful. They seemed to work since at 37 weeks I ready to be done and she wasn't ready to come. Yes we were having a girl! Very exciting for us.

We knew this year would be the year for medical bills where I was having these shots each week at about $75/shot and then the birth and hospital bills, we knew we had to scrimp. We did plan ahead for this and had money each month taken from Mike's check and put into a flexible spending account. We put the amount we would need to cover the deductible and most of the out of pocket expenses for the year. So we knew that we would be ok on medical expenses there wouldn't be to much left over to pay in the end.

At this same time we had our oldest son who was diagnosed with ADHD and was seeing a counselor, psychiatrist and also on meds that were very expensive. It was a crazy start to a much more crazy year.

Our little princess was born the end of April. I wanted to so much to have a "vacation" in the hospital and just enjoy a few days alone. She was born on a Friday afternoon. It was nice since we had Mike's mom there that day so she was able to get the kids off to school and home and spend time with them. Mike was able to spend some time with me at the hospital. That night Mike left to spend time with the boys and to let his mom go home. They came that night to visit me. That night in the hospital was very lonely and hard to sleep. I had to get used to a new baby again. The next day Mike was with the kids alone so wasn't able to come visit me. I didn't know how much a hospital room could be so lonely. I got very lonely and kind of depressed and all I wanted was my family. What happened to wanting my vacation? I told the nurse I wanted to go home and after many reminders they finally released me after 24 hours. We came home and just enjoyed being together as a family and taking in this new baby girl that we now had.

We are so fortunate to have such wonderful family. For the first couple months, Mike's mom would come to help and each time she would bring me a box of diapers, which helped out so much! When I finally had to start buying diapers for myself, I realized again just how expensive they are. I would try to find them when they were on sale, but even then it wasn't much of a discount. I also found that some of the generic diapers gave little one a rash. This went on until she was about 5 months or so and then we had a coupon class for Relief Society one night. I had done this before and was excited. I had recently been thinking that I wanted to start couponing again, since I was paying full price for toothpaste again.

I went home and told Mike I wanted to do this again and he protested a little asking how much we really saved by using coupons. I told him that things would be different this time and that I would be choosy about I bought with them. I called the paper the next day and signed up (I should have ordered through the gal that did the class, I didn't know she got paid for my subscription). I was excited and ready to start. I got my binder file system out and started clipping. A few weeks later I hosted a class for the Coupon Gal and she showed us a much easier way to file our coupons and showed us the free website to help us organize our shopping list. I was excited and found out that the best place to buy diapers was Rite Aid.

This was about 6 months ago and I have been using coupons since and have been able to drop our monthly grocery budget to $400. Some months we have gone over but I try so hard each month to use only that money. I babysit on the side now so I get a little extra money, which is my extra money for groceries, when needed, or it buys clothes and things that we might need otherwise.

Thanks to coupons we thrive on $400/month for all food, diapers and household items. We have also been able to consistantly give our children each an allowance, as well as Mike and I each an allowance of $50/month to use for whatever we want. We finally feel like we are "financially stable" and have the money to live and do the things we need to. We do still have debt, most of which is medical expenses from our daughters birth and also the broken leg that one of boys received that summer. We have been more choosy on what we buy and the majority of our food expenses goes to fruits and veggies, so we eat much better than we used to as well. But we are much better off now and actually savings, unlike when we were first married over 10 years ago.

I now also work for Grocery Smarts, the free website that helps with coupon shopping. I teach other moms and families how to save money and thrive on little and stock up on food storage. Let me know if you would like to learn. I service Utah from Logan to Salt Lake. I hope now you understand how much coupons can save you and how much they can change your budget and your life. Please share this blog with your friends and family and hopefully we can inspire others together.

Our Financial Story continued..

The fellow student that split the intership with Mike graduated with his masters degree and left to pursue other jobs, leaving Mike open to be hired full time. He was offered a salary position, which we gladly took and in January moved to Brigham City to be closer to work so Mike didn't have to travel the canyon in the winter.

I loved the small town but only had a few options for shopping. We lived across the street from the Walmart there so I did most of my shopping there. There were times though that Smith's had some fairly decent prices, I would just watch the ads. We were doing great getting by on a new salary (a lot more than we were making). It was a sad day for me when I went to the health department and turned in my WIC packet because we didn't qualify anymore, but I new that now we didn't have to rely on government programs to get by we could do things for ourselves. So at the same time I was excited.

Then one day about the time my twins were 8 or 9 months old I had the overwhelming feeling that someone missing. I was such a strange and scary thought that someone wasn't there. I mentioned this to Mike and he said that maybe we needed to try for another child. I thought ok, we can start and have another a year from now. Well, Heavenly Father had other plans. By the next month I was pregnant again. I kind of scared and excited me all at the same time. I was going to have 4 kids under the age of 4. What were we doing? It obviously wasn't our choice, there was a greater power in charge of this that new I would be fine with this.

We decided that we needed to start looking for a home. We knew we could afford a mortgage now because of the new job and pay raise. We started looking for homes with 4 bedrooms so we had space for everyone and everything. I never realized how hard it was giong to be to find something. We found a home that was a twin home (connected to another home by the garage), which was on HOA property with no fences. We liked that the house was pretty much brand new and not that old, so we put an offer on it. There were a few things that we didn't like about it, like the bedrooms we split, two upstairs, two down, we couldn't have half our children downstairs, they were too little. And the fact there was no fence around our property, I couldn't just let the kids go outside and play when they wanted. We decided to back out of that one and keep looking. I was so frustrated thinking that we might never find what we want. I decided to start looking at homes that had 3 bedrooms with unfinished basements that we could add rooms to.

We found a house with a big backyard, all fenced in, with fruit trees, a garden area, sand box, and sprinkling system. There were 3 bedrooms all upstairs with a big family room and unfinished basement. It even had a walking cold storage. We were so excited and moved in as soon as we could. Little did we know that homeownership would cost more than the monthly mortgage.

We moved in when I was about 4 months pregnant. The ward was great and immediately Mike was given a calling. The bishop took pity on me and wouldn't let me have a calling being pregnant and having three other small children. Things were going well until Thanksgiving of that year. I woke Thanksgiving morning excited to spend time with my family. My parents were down from Idaho and we were going to spend time with them. It was quite fortunate that they were here with us, because I started bleeding that morning and called the hospital just for them to tell me to come in and be monitored. My parents were more than happy to stay with the kids.

Mike and I went down to the hopital and they monitored and checked me to see what was going on. I was only 29 weeks along and was in preterm labor. With my history from the last pregnancy they gave me something to stop contractions and got labor to stop. They did some kind of swipe test that determines if you will deliver in the next 2 weeks and it came back positive. They sent me home and said that my doctor would call me the next day but that I needed to take it easy. We went for Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's family and came home. It was nice to get away but I knew I needed to take it easy.

The next day my doctor called and said he wanted me to be on bed rest until further notice. I didn't know what to do. I had three small children that needed my help all the time. The oldest could help with some things, but he couldn't put the other two down for naps or feed them. I knew immediately I had to humble myself and ask for help, which is something I have a very hard with. I called the Relief Society president and told her what was going on. She made sure that I had women from the ward here each day to play with the kids and get them down for their naps. These women were such a blessing to me. I don't know what we would have done without them.

I was on bed rest and couldn't go out shopping and enjoy being out of the house, it quite depressing for me. Four weeks before my due date I couldn't lay at home anymore and I decided I needed to go shopping. So we went to Sam's Club where I got one of the motorized carts to go around the store, I was very embarrased, but couldn't do much walking. That was our shopping. Mike went to the store when we needed things, but most things were bought from Sam's in bulk. I don't remember much about what we spent at this time, but we were paying for insurance now and doctor's appointments were getting billed to us, which was a complete eye opener since we had never seen a bill before for our other children.

Our 4th boy was born 3 weeks early. Healthy and happy and was soon to be an important part of our family. We don't know what we would do without him.

When our youngest was about 6 months I felt like our budget was so tight with all the things we were trying to pay for, I felt like I needed to try to contribute where I could. Mike didn't really like the idea of me working and said that we really didn't need the extra money. I made the excuse that I just needed something for me. I decided to start selling Mary Kay cosmetics. I was the only girl at home and wanted some pink around. I wanted this to become a good source of income so bought the $2000 worth of inventory and started selling it. After a while I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere paying things, including my inventory, off. Mike said we could figure out how to work it into the bills and I decided to stop selling it a couple years later.

During that time, we decided we needed to finish the basement to allow our oldest to have his own room and also to provide me with an office to work in. We added two bedrooms to the basement and thankfully we did a lot of the work ourselves with the help of my dad.

After I decided to stop selling Mary Kay and just keep the discount fo myself and friends and family I new we still needed to save money but I didn't know how. Each year when we got a bonus from work we would add about $50 into our grocery budget because it just didn't seem to be going as far as we needed it to. It was around that time the a friend from church was telling me about coupon shopping. One of the other wards was having a class to teach you about it and said I should go with her. I went and got so excited when she had a display of items that only cost her around $2. I got so excited and signed up to get the multiple papers. I found a big zippered binder and bought the baseball card sheet holders. Every week I spend about an hour sorting the like coupons and cut them out and file them in this binder and then I would go to the store with this huge binder and see what deals I could find.

Most of my great deals I found at Albertsons, which is a store I swore I would shop at because they too expensive. Most of the things I was finding for good deals though were cereal, box meals, cake mixes and junk food that I knew we shouldn't eat. I didn't find household items all that often for sale. I did find toothpaste and toothbrushes for about 25 cents, so I was stocked on those, but not much else. I wasn't spending any less than I was before I started using coupons but I was getting more. I did this for about a year until Albertsons went out of business and I thought I wouldn't find as good of deals anywere else. I cancelled the papers and just started shopping at Walmart for almost everything, buying one thing at a time because groceries were so expensive.

We got to the point where we were going to up our monthly budget to $700 just so we could get the things we needed as well as food storage items. I still had a pretty stock up from doing coupons like cereal and toothpaste, so I thought we would be ok to buy things here and there. Then my stock up items started running out and I had to start paying full price for toothpaste. I can't believe how much toothpasts costs. It's rediculous!
To be continued...

Our Financial Story continued..

Working with a baby was hard. Even though we had such a flexible schedule it was still hard and buying the things that we needed was hard to. We kept slipping into debt and couldn't wait to get through school to get a real, good paying job so we could live.

We are so blessed with such wonderful family. During all of this Mike's odest brother was close by. We were able to join them for Sunday dinners and they had older girls that bacame our babysitters on many occassions. This helped out with money not having to worry about one meal a week and not having to pay for sitters. We had a family in our ward that we were really good friends with who would trade babysitting for haircuts and when we didn't need a babysitter, they would give up beef for haircuts, which helped out so much. His parents were beef farmers and had more than they knew what to do with.

When our oldest was around 18 months old I found out I was pregnant again. We were pretty excited, but they were due to be born in Sept. and Mike would be graduating from college that Dec. We had a hard time thinking that we would have two kids at graduation, we weren't planning that, but then again, can you really plan children? Obviously not, because on our first doctor's appointment we found out we were going to be having twins. We were very surprised and didn't know what to think of this.

This second pregnancy wasn't as bad as the first, but I still had sickness. I also got big very quickly, by three months in I was already in maternity clothes. During this time I was still working and taking care of my family as best I could. I knew that I didn't have to much longer to work before Mike would be done with school. He had told me that if I would put him through school, I would never have to work again. I could handle that, there wasn't much time left.

Mike decided to get a temp job to be able to help out a little with bills and food so that when our children came I wouldn't have to worry too much about work. In July I went in for a routine doctor's appointment. I told him of the pains and uncomfortableness I had been having. That day I stayed home and laid on the couch all day having contractions and pain. That afternoon I finally Mike and told him he needed to take me to the hospital that I needed to be checked out. He came home from work and took me up. They monitored me and checked me and I was in preterm labor. I was very scared and so was my husband. We called the leaders in our ward to let them know what was going on and our bishop and his counselor came and gave me a blessing. I was immediately calmed and knew everything would be all right.

The nurses called my doctor and pulled him away from his diner out with his family, I felt awful. He came and prepped me for a C-section just in case. I was only 31 weeks along and they had tried what they could to stop labor, but I was progressing so quickly they couldn't even life flight me to another hospital that more equipped for that type of delivery. Instead they decided to life flight my boys to another hospital.

It was scary and stressful trying to deal with that thought. A few hours later our 2 nd son was born. He was healthy and doing fine. Our third son was breech and the doctor tried to turn him. He would not turn so the doctor decided that since I had already had one that he would just grab the next ones feet. He was delivered breech (feet first) and had a hard breathing on his own.

They took care of me and took me back to a room. As the boys left they brought them to see me. It was so hard to see such little babies have to go through this. The first one went by air and the second went by ground. Once again we were so fortunate that we had medicaid and WIC! I did not see a single bill for any of this! I can only imagine how much this would have cost us. The boys were in the NICU for about 5 weeks.

They spent the first four weeks in Ogden, UT which was the closest town that had a big enough NICU for both of them. Ogden was about a 50 minute drive from Logan where Mike and James were. I spent the week in Ogden with the boys and would go home to go to church with Mike and James on Sunday and then I would head back. It was a long 4 weeks without my family. A lot of prayers were said and tears were shed during that time.

After 4 weeks we were able to get the boys moved back to the NICU in Logan. We didn't know how we would pay for this, they had to go by ambulance and that was a very expensive drive. We talked to the hospital staff and they said that Logan Regional was going to pick up the bill for the transfer. We were elated. We could finally be a family again. We were able to go back and the boys did really well. We were able to bring one home after another week and the other came home a few days later.

It was busy work and we were exhausted all the time. Our diaper bill just increased by tons though. We now had three kids in diapers! We had a wonderful sister who was the Relief Society president at the time in our ward, who was single. She was such a blessing to us. She took us out dinner one night and then showed up to my house one day with blankets, jammies, onsies and other things that we just didn't have, or have money for. We were so thankful for her generosity and love for us.

I never went back to work after that. I stayed home with my three children, and with a lot of help from friends, neighbors and family that came often to help, I made it through the first months of twins.

Our Heavenly Father had blessed us so much already, but he wasn't done yet. After the twins were home and doing well, Mike was asked by a fellow student to take part of his internship with Parker Hannifin (an aerospace company). He would be doing programming and working in his field. The plant was in Ogden and he traveled there when he could. The rest of the time he worked from home, which was nice for me to have him around a lot. He graduated in Dec. in computer programming and now we could start the beginning of the rest of our lives!
To be continued....

Our Financial Story

I read a very inspiring story from a fellow "co-worker" (she teaches for Grocery Smarts as well). Reading her story of how she saves money, made me think of my last 10 years of marriage to the most wonderful man! We have had our ups and down and finaniacially we have struggled through every year. We ar finally to the point in our lives where we don't have much debt, other than the medical bills from last year and the new windows that will purchase to be able to get our home to a point that is comfortable to live in. We have always had some sort of debt which has been really hard for me to think that we have this hanging over our heads. We have been counseled and counseled by our church leaders to stay of debt and that they weighs heavily on my mind every time we put something on credit. We are however very good about planning ahead as to how we are going to pay these things off. We are very fortunate to have such a wonderful job that pays very well. We are also fortunate to receive tax returns (we do have 5 kids) that have been very good. And then we receive a bonus every year in August, so we can plan our purchases around those dates and know that things will get paid off quickly.

I have a wonderful money savvy husband who loves to spend money, but has also realized over the years that is important for us to save money and specify what money is for. We have even gone so far as to have multiple bank accounts that have certain amounts deposited each month for specific things like, medical, auto, groceries, and savings. To me it is quite frustrating, but it makes sense and then we know how much we have to pay toward each thing.

When Mike and I were married almost 10 1/2 years ago, we started out marriage in debt with not discussion of how to get out, other than the occasional we discussion that we needed to get out of debt. We moved from our hometowns to Logan, UT so that Mike could start college at Utah State University. We found a little home to rent and we both signed up to work temp jobs. I had just recently graduated from cosmetology college in Idaho and was not all that interested in trying to test in Utah to get my license. I remember one morning getting a call from the temp agency at 8 o'clock in the morning, with a job for me at the hospital in the medical billing that could turn into a full time job. I turned it down, since she had woken me up that morning. I kick myself now, but realize that everything happens for a reason.

I then found a job working as a hostess at a restraunt. It was hard getting to work at 5:30 in the morning and working around old guys that like to hit on you. I couldn't handle that for very long and decided it would be best to take the Utah cosmetology test and get my license. It took me 3 times and $50 each time to pass the test but I finally did. I then got a job at a cut little salon but it was on a comission bassis, so needless to say it didn't pay hardly anything. At the same time Mike was working hard to pay the bills and keep us above water.

We had so much debt that just wasn't getting any smaller. Each week we would go shopping for the week for groceries and come home with over $100 in food and go back the next week just to do it all over again.We finally broke down and humbled ourselves and asked our family for help. We were able to get a loan from family to pay off our car, credit cards and the student loan I had. We were finally debt free, but not for long. We kept slipping into debt and not knowing how to manage our finances.

I quit my job and the little salon after a month because we just needed money. I got a job at another salon that was much better and I got paid hourly. Eventually I was even promoted to assistant manager which was a little better pay. At this time Mike was working full time and also going to school full time. He was struggling with keeping up with his classes and trying to work. On top of that I found out I was pregnant. Mike came to me and told me that he could not continue to do both that I would have to work and put him through school. I did not like tat idea but I knew it needed to be done. So Mike quit working to focus on school.

Being pregnant was awful. I was very sick and had to be on medication to help. I was always in the bathroom and had to just work around being sick. We were very fortunate at this time with only one job and my husband in school that we qualified for Medicaid and WIC. We didn't have to worry about medical bills and we were able to get milk, eggs, cheese and some cereal from WIC to help us out. My paychecks were able to pay our bills and whatever I made in tips is what bought our groceries, which some days wasn't much.

Sturggling with being pregnant and sick paid a toll on my work status and I ending losing my job the day before Thanksgiving. I was devastated and didn't know how I could take care of my family. It took me a while but I finally found a new job at another salon. It paid the bills that's all that mattered.

A few months later my first son was born and four weeks after he was born I was back to work, we couldn't do with out it. I was blessed with a boss who was very flexible with me and allowed me to work split shifts so that I could be home when Mike was in class and Mike could be home while was at work, so we very rarely had to get a sitter, which saved tons of money! Diapers were so expensive but I didn't think much of it, we always bought a box a Sam's Club when we needed them.
To be continued...

Our Financial Story part 2
Our Financial Story part 3
Our Financial Story part 4

Sometimes Smith's has some really awesome deals!! They are running a March mega 10 event. All Ronzoni pasta are on sale and I saved my coupons from the paper about a month ago, so I got 1 box oyster crackers (for Addie), 2 boxes Annie's organic mac & cheese, 3 boxes Rice a Roni, 1 box Pasta Roni, 8 jars Classico pasta sauce, 16 boxes Ronzoni Smart taste pasta, 10 boxes Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta, 20 boxes Ronzoni Healthy Harvest pasta, 2 pkgs. Kraft shredded cheese, 2 Sunny D's. So my total out of pocket cost was $9.65! But I bought 4 boxes of pasta more than I should have, I didn't have coupons for those, so I will take back 4 and get back just over $4, so in the end it will be about $5! This will feed my family for months to come! Does this not inspire you to use couons more? Let me know what kind of success you had at Smith's this week. I love their mega 10 events, I always save so much! Happy Shopping!

I know it has been so long since I posted last. Kids have been sick again and then I didn't have internet for 5 days straight, it was awful.

I decided I need to really lose some weight and stay in shape. I have been exercising now since the beginning of the year, but I guess I haven't really eaten that well since I haven't lost more than 5 lbs. and I just go up and down so much. I did Weight Watchers a couple years ago and decided I would try it again since they have a new fun program. It is different than when I did it last, but I am excited to start on the right path to a better me. I started today, so wish me luck. So for my recipe today, I'm going to share a favorite WW (Weight Watchers) treat that I got from a meeting. I love brownies and cookies and have a hard time stopping when I eat them. This is called Magic Brownie Bites, it has three ingredients, which seems weird, but try them, they are really good. They remind me of a Little Debbie brownie snack as far as the texture goes.

Magic Brownie Bites

1 brownie mix (9X13 size)
1 can black beans (w/o mexican seasonings)
water

Drain beans in collander. Thoroughly rinse beans and can - discarding all liquid. Return washed beans to their can (which is thoroughly washed out). Top off can of beans, to brim, with cold water. Puree beans and water in food processor or blender. Combine dry brownie mix and pureed bean mix. (DO NOT add oil or egg). Bake in sprayed 9X13 pan as box directs. When cool, cut into 72 rectangles. Each brownie bite is 1 WW pt.

I don't know exactly what the new points would be for this, I haven't figured it out yet, but even if you aren't thinking of doing WW this is still a great low fat, high fiber treat and you don't have to cut them this small, that's just what they recommend. Try it out and tell me what you thought of this recipe.

Mystery Package

I ordered something fun about a month ago. At gravyardmall.com you can order all sorts of things for pretty cheap. Every once in a while they have mystery boxes of stuff that you can order. I ordered a kitchen gagdet mystery box. I was kind of disappointed, since some of them weren't what I would consider "gagdets". The things I received are a small metal trash can, silicone round baking pan, silicone 6 cup muffin pan, silicone oven mitt, wooden spoon set, 4 wooden placemats, pizza cutter, set of 4 glasses (one was broke when I opened it) and the one I am excited for: ceramic fondue pot. Kind of fun, not too bad for the price I paid.

I am starting a new and fun adventure. I am now an instructor for Grocery Smarts. I am so excited to share with others what I have learned with coupon shopping. I will also be posting more of my shopping trips. If anyone is interested in helping me spread the word about saving money, let me know and we can arrange for you to hold a class for me to teach your family and friends how to save money.

The recipe for today is what we had last night, spaghetti, with a twist.

you will need:
spaghetti noodles
2 spaghetti sauce mix packet (we like western family)
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 can tomatoes
1 lb. ground beef or italian sausage (we use italian seasoned ground turkey)
1 container Philidelphia cooking creme Italian cheese and herb

Cook pasta, drain. Cook ground beef. Add in saucepan tomato sauce with 1 1/2 cans water, tomatoes and spaghetti sauce mix packets. Let simmer 20 minutes until thickened. Then add ground beef and cooking cream. Heat through. Serve over noodles with salad and french bread. Very yummy.

Wheat Cooking

My wheat cooking started today. Lots of fun! I started off by having some wheat berries this morning for breakfast. I have to admit, it was less than desirable. To make wheat berries, I washed 2 cups of wheat kernels (hard red wheat). I then put them in the crockpot with 4 cups water and cooked in crockpot over night. I just scooped out 1/2 cup to eat. I only added a little almond milk and a banana, it would have been better with some brown sugar or cinnamon. Then I put the rest in the fridge to use later. These can be stored up to 10 days in the fridge. For dinner tonight I made wheat stir fry, it was very yummy and since I made up my own recipe, here you go:

Wheat Stir fry

2 chicken breasts, sliced
1 tsp. ginger powder
1 tsp. dried chives
1 pkg. oriental veggies
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 TBS. cornstarch
1 cup cooked brown rice
1 1/2 cups wheat berries

Heat olive oil in pan. Add slied chicken breasts, ginger and chives. Sautee until done. Then add 1 pkg. Oriental veggies and cook until soft. Then add 1/4 cup soy sauce mixed with 1 TBS. cornstarch, stir. Add 1 cup pre cooked brown rice and 1 1/2 cups wheat berries heat through and serve warm. You may wish to add some salt and pepper to taste. Let me know what you think of this recipe and if you have any other ideas for wheat.

I have a friend who did take out from the Olive Garden for Valentine's Day. It sounded so yummy, but our nearest Olive Garden is at least a 10 minute drive, on a good day, so I gave her the knock-off recipe for Olive Garden alfredo that I have, I hope she likes it. So I will share it with you today. I got this from my sister-in-law, I don't know where she got it, but I do know there are many knock-off recipes for different restraunts. Have fun with this one. I even shake it up and add spaghetti sauce to it to make a pink sauce, which is very yummy. I will also make my own breaded chicken breast. Dip chicken breast in milk, then in Italian bread crumbs and just cook on stove top with a little olive oil untl done, one of my favorites.

Olive Garden Alfredo

1 pint heavy cream
1 stick butter
2 TBS. cream cheese
1/2 - 3/4 cup parmesan cheese
1 tsp. garlic powder

In saucepan combine butter, cream cheese and heavy cream. Simmer until all is melted and mixed well. Add parmesan cheese and garlic powder. Simmer 15-20 minutes on low. You ma wis to season with a little salt and pepper.

This also freezes really well, but when you reheat it (even if it comes out of the fridge), you need to reheat it on the stovetop. The butter separates from the cream and heating it in the microwave doesn't combine it. Have fun with this one. It is a favorite at our house and it's a lot cheaper than going to the Olive Garden to get it.

If any of you have been to Ogden's The Greenery restraunt, you know how good it is. We love to go there but don't make it often. They have the famous "Mormon muffin", they are so yummy! They are a bran muffin, so good for you, but to buy them at their restraunt, they are over $9 for 6 of them. Way to pricey for me. Well, our stake had some a few years back at a dinner, homemade. So here is the very yummy recipe. Just remember, this recipe make 6 dozen regular size muffins or 3 dozen big muffins. I made the whole recipe with regular and big size and then I put them in the freezer, they freeze well.

Mormon Muffins

Muffin mix must sit in the refrigerator over night before baking. Muffin mix will last one week, covered and refrigerated. Makes 6 dozen regular size tin cups or 3 dozen large tin cups.

2 cups boiling water
5 tsp. baking soda
1 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 quart buttermilk
5 cups flour (I used half wheat and half white)
1 tsp. salt
4 cups All Bran cereal
2 cups 40% Bran flakes
1 cup walnuts chopped

Add soda to boiling water and set aside. Whip shortening and sugar until light and fluffy, add eggs slowly, mix well. Add buttermilk, flour, salt and mix again. Add soda wter very slowly. Gently fold in cereals and walnuts in the mix.

spoon 1/8 cups into greased muffin tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes for regular size and 30 minutes for large size. Let cool for 5 minutes. Serve with favorite honeybutter.

Enjoy! These are my favorite bran muffins.

So I think my newest craze is cooking with wheat. A dear friend of mine gave me a book and video from someone that she knows who ordered 10,000# of wheat and has learned to cook with it over the years. Well, I don't have that much wheat but we did inherit pounds and pounds from my inlaws when they moved years ago, so I have slowly started to use it here and there but I feel that I need to try harder to use more. So you will start to get recipes using whole wheat flour, which can be purchased in bulk at winco for pretty cheap, if you don't have a grinder and wheat on hand. Good Luck.

This recipe I got from The Food Nanny and can be found on her website (thefoodnanny.com), but I just love this recipe. It is for pizza crust that we have made a couple of times. I have altered it a little because it was too sweet the first time we made it.

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

1 cup warm water
1 TBS. yeast
3 TBS. olive oil
3 TBS. honey
3/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour.

Mix all ingredients together. Makes 2 thin crust pizzas. Top with favorite toppings. We made a BBQ chicken pizza that was very yummy and canadian bacon, or we made a yummy chicken ceasar pizza.

We did not put the honey in the second time and it was much better, but experiment for yourself and make what you like. Let me know what you think of it

Wow it's been so long. Time gets away from you when your kids get sick and then you get sick and then it's tax time and everything else in between. Crazy. I do have a recipe for you though. I made these for my kids Sunday morning, since we have 11 o'clock church and don't get lunch. I usually make my kids a PBJ sandwhich beforehand so they have something to tide them over till after church. Sunday I just decided to make a late, big breakfast. So here you go: Peanut Butter Pancakes, yum, it smelled like I was baking peanut butter cookies.

Peanut Butter Pancakes

1 cup pancake mix
2 TBS sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup peanut butter
1 can (5 oz) evaporated milk
1/3 cup water

Honey Butter:
1/4 cup butter, softened (no subs)
2 TBS. honey

In a bowl, combine pancake mix and sugar. In a small bowl, beat egg and peanut butter; add milk and water. stir into dry ingredients until just moistened. Pour bater by 1/4 cupfuls onto a lightly greased med-hot griddle. Turn when bubbles form on top of pancakes; cook until second side is golden brown. Combine butter and honey in a small bowl. Serve with pancakes.

I actually didn't do the honey butter, I just used homemade buttermilk syrup (very yummy) but you can also serve them with jam like a PBJ sandwhich. Have fun with this recipe.

Recipes: pancakes & waffles

Something we really like to make and keep on hand is breakfast for our kids. It makes morning a lot easier and kids love pancakes and waffles. Following is the recipes that we use for pancakes and waffles that I got from Mike's mom (hope she doesn't mind). We make these in mass quantities. Make as much as you want. We usually do at least 4 recipes at a time, then we have enough for a few weeks (when they don't eat them everyday).

Pancakes

1 1/4 cups flour
1 TBS. sugar
1 TBS. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
2 TBS. oil
1 egg

Mix all but milk and flour. Add milk and flour alternating until smooth. Cook on griddle.

Waffles

1 1/3 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1 TBS. sugar
2 eggs, separated
1/3 cup oil
1 cup milk

Separate egg whites. Beat whites until stiff. In separate bowl, mix sugar, oil and egg yolks. Add flour and milk alternating. Mix. Add egg whites last and fold in. Cook until done in waffle iron.

Hope your family enjoys these as much as ours does. We shake up our recipes to and we have added banana, peanut butter, and chocolate chips to the batter. We also have tried them with wheat flour, very yummy. And fruit with whipped cream is yummy for a topping.

I have started the freezer meals, but I am taking a different approach than making full meals, which would be nice, but time and money do not allow that right now. So right now I am focusing on getting meat frozen and stored for future use. I was able to get 4 pork roasts for $.99/lb. on Saturday, so I have been cooking those for the last couple days. Tonight we will have pork burritos and then I will freeze the rest to use later on bbq pulled pork and more burritos. Thanks to a good friend, I also scored a killer deal at local grocer on chicken breasts. I bought them for $1.29/lb! You don't see prices like that very often. I bought about 74 lbs. worth but half will go to my mom. But I am going to freeze my portion. I want to cube and cook some to use in quick casseroles and salads. I want to also marinade and grill a bunch, we like that more on salad. Otherwise I just clean the excess fat off, and then I filet them and cut in half, to make 4 small pieces of chicken. The chicken breasts I have been buying are huge so to keep us from eating too much and being able to stretch our meat, I cut into quarters.

I hope you are doing well with starting your freezer meals. Let me know how it's going and if you have any questions.

Sorry it has been a few days, I thought I would let you think for a little while of how you would like to begin. Now to give you some ideas of what we do for freezer meals.

lasagna
enchiladas
burritos
any type of casseroles
soups
egg rolls
sauces
bbq pulled pork
sloppy joe mix
taco mix
pizza
mashed potatoes
baby food
cheese - must grate first
breakfast sandwiches
breakfast burritos
meatloaf
meatballs
hamburgers
stroganoff

This is just a few ideas of what you can do. To help you save time and money, buy meat in bulk. Cook up hamburger a couple lbs at a time with onion, then divide it out to make a couple meals of sloppy joes, a couple meals of tacos, use some to make a casserole. Get creative with your meals. Get some chicken pieces to cook and shred, then make chicken enchiladas (you can make completely to pull out and just cook or just freezer the filling and thaw to make fresh enchiladas), chicken burritos with beans and cheese, or any type of chicken casserole. One of our favorite meals is sweet pork burritos from Cafe Rio. We were able to get a knockoff recipe from a friend, so I will get a couple of pork roasts when they are on sale, put them in my crockpot with all ingredients and cook. There is always a lot left over so I will divide it out between a few 1 qt. freezer bags and freeze to use another time. Don't forget to label all of your freezer bags, otherwise you will forget what you have in the freezer and it will go bad before you use it.

If your family, like mine, goes through a lot of cheese, you know how pricey that can get. Buy cheese when it is on sale only! Cheese freezes very nicely but only when it is grated. If you can buy it for good prices already grated, that is great, just through it in your freezer. If you buy block cheese, just grate it first and put in 1 qt freezer bags to freeze.

If you made something for dinner and there is too much but not enough for another meal and you don't think you will use it with in a week, put it in your freezer to add to it later or make a new meal. For example, I made biscuits and gravy one night (we love breakfast for dinner) and I had some gravy left over. It wasn't enough to use for another meal for my family, but it was enough to make a breakfast pizza. I put it in a container and stuck it in the freezer and a couple weeks later we made breakfast pizzas.

I also will freeze sauces. We will make up a huge pot of spaghetti sauce and then divide it out and freeze in quart containers. We also have a knockoff Olive Garden alfredo that is very yummy that we make in bulk and then freeze. Another thing that is really good is to mix the two sauces together and make pink sauce, oh so good.

I hope I have given you some ideas of what to freeze. I will continue to post freezer meal recipes. So stay tuned for more.

Freezer Meals

I am going to talk about freezer meals. It is kind of intense, so just take it one thing at a time. First off, you need to decide how much you want to cook.

Do you want to make enough meals for one week, two weeks, a whole month?
Do you want to cook all in one day or split it up over a few cooking sessions?
Do you want to cook alone, with your spouse, or with friends/family and split the cost?

Think of how you want to do it, then decide what your family will eat. Gather any recipes that you love and you know your family will eat. You can freeze pretty much any meal there are just a few rules for some things:

Meat: freeze raw to use later. We have a grocery store up the street from us that I love to buy ground beef from. They usually have the cheapest prices and they come precut in about 1 lb. squares, so I just bring them home, put them in a sandwhich bag and then I can fit four squares in a one gallon freezer bag. When buying ground beef, I never buy less than 85/15 (fat content). This is usually the one that is on sale the most often. I will just cook it and drain it and then run water over it to get out as much of the fat as possible.
Chicken I won't buy unless it is less than $1.79/lb. Lately chicken breasts have been huge so I will cut them into quarters to make it easier to bag and use later, then I put them into 1 qt. freezer bags. I will also buy legs, thighs and quarters when they are on sale and put them in my crockpot to cook, then the meat comes off so easy and you can shred and freezer that for burritos or chicken soup. You can do the same with turkey, ham or roasts. And don't forget to save the stock to use in cooking or as a base for soups.
Meat you can also cook and freeze. Or if you have meat that is raw that has been frozen that you need to use, you can cook it and refreeze, but don't refreeze raw meat, it will not be good later.

Pastas: Do not cook pasta thoroughly when freezing it. You only have to cook it half the time because once it is in a dish and freezing and thawed, it will absorb more moisture as if it has been cooked the full time. If you thoroughly cook pasta before freezing it turns into mush when you thaw and cook it.

Veggies: Save money and freeze your own fresh veggies (especially ones out of your own garden). Just know how to blanch them so they freeze well. There are some veggies that don't need to be blanched, they can just be frozen: mushrooms, onions, peppers are a few. I always save some pumpkins at halloween (that we haven't carved) and cut them up, cook, puree and freeze then I always have pumpkin for cookies, cakes or bread that I didn't have pay much for.

Fruits: Most fruits you can just peel and throw in the freezer, in a freezer bag, of course. Use these in fruit cocktail, jello, smoothies or just to thaw and eat.

If you have food in your fridge getting old or bad, use the proper method and freeze it to use later, then you won't waste a lot of food.

Also, anything you see frozen in the store you can do yourself.

Try to plan your freezer meals around sales, you won't spend as much. I also love shopping at Smith's because they always mark down meat when it is a couple days from the sell by date. I am very choosy when I do this and only buy meat that looks good that I myself would eat. Then I will just bring them home and put in the freezer or cook immediately and then freeze. Also buy totillas and bread when on sale or clearance and freeze. We have a Sara Lee outlet here where I buy bread for 60 cents to a $1 so I will buy about 10 at a time and double bag and freeze them, then I always have bread on hand and don't have to pay over $2 a loaf and run to the store for just that, and end up buying more.

I know this is a little overwhelming, it is to me to sometimes. So maybe start out by just making a few meals at a time or if you make dinner every night just double it or triple it and put one or two meals away for another day. I do this a lot and mainly with lasagna. It's just as easy to make two or three at the same time as you are making one.