Weekly Online Exclusives

Here is this weeks online exclusive, for those of you who like to order online. The contour bowl and tray are both on sale for $39 a piece; which is an excellent price. Both of these bowls fit pefectly in to the contour bowl and tray baskets. Go to my website to order.

Question of the Day...

Question: How am I doing it? (saving that is)

Answer: Well, it is a combination of adverstised specials, coupons, and stock piling.

So here are a few examples, using my Publix lute from last week. The Nabisco wheat thins and triscuts are normally $2.75 per box. At Publix last week, they were on sale buy 1 get 1 (b1g1); which made them $1.38 and $1.37 per box. A great price so buy two, whether you currently need two or not, just check the expiration dates to get a long one. Well, to top that off, by couponing, I also had 2 $1.00 off coupons for a box of wheat thins and a box of triscuts. So, at the end I paid $.38 and $.37 per box of crackers a total savings of $2.37 per box or $4.74 for both.

Example number 2: Orville Redenbacher popcorn is normally $4.89 per box. Last week at Publix, they were b1g1; which reduced them to $2.45 and $2.44 per box. Yet again this is a great price, so buy 2, not 1, it won't go bad before you eat it, but most likely will not go back on sale before you want more. Then by couponing, I had a $.50 coupon for the regular size bags and a $.50 coupon for the mini bags (great for kids). But it gets better than $1.95 and $1.94 per box, because Publix, as well as Kroger, double coupon all the time up to $.50. So, the end result was I paid $1.45 and $1.44 per box of popcorn that would normally cost $4.89 per box a savings of $3.44 per box or a total of $6.88.

Example number 3: Clorox 2 ultra 2x stain fighter and color protector is normally $6.19 per bottle. Last week Publix had it on sale for $3.99 per bottle. A great price, but it gets better, because I had a two $1.50 coupons per bottle. So of course I picked up two bottles. Do I currently need 2, NO, will it go bad, NO, should I buy two, YES. So, I paid $2.49 per bottle for a product that would normally be $6.19 a total savings of $3.70 per bottle.

I think you are probably getting the idea as to how this works using the sale papers and coupons. A plus, I am now buying things I would never have bought before, because I can get them cheaper than the store brand now.

Question: Where do the coupons come from?

Answer: The Sunday paper, coupons.com, smartsource.com, and redplum.com. I have also used a new site this past week, thecouponclipper.com. You have to pay for the coupons on that site, which I did last week, I got $40.00 ($80.00 if doubled) worth of coupons for $5.75. The advantage to that site is you can pick what you want and how many you want. I will let you know if it was worth it or not before you use it. Other great sites that I use are moneysavingmom.com and fistfullofcoupons.blogspot.com. These ladies link you to coupons and great deal at other stores. They each also explain the CVS and Walgreens game really well.

This is a time consuming undertaking; however, I am finding it worth the time and effort. I saved over $400.00 dollars last month and I am on my way to or greater than that for this month. Yesterday we had friends over, grilled 3 racks of baby back ribs, one package hot dogs with buns, potato salad (homemade), and salad, oh and paper plates (chinet) and out of pocket I spent approximately $18.00. SALES baby, that is the way to go.

Question of the Day...

Where is all this food and household stuff going?

Answer:

Well, I have a good bit of cabinet space that I did not have in the old house, there is a cabinet above the stairs going down to the scrapbook room, there is a cabinet in the laundry room full of laundry soap (15 bottles), a shelve in the scrapbook room with condiments, and an upright deep freezer in the laundry room, a refrigerator in the kitchen and a refrigerator in the garage, as well as a cabinet in the kids bathroom and our bathroom. Everything stays just about full. The hubby is looking to close in the area under the stairs in the scrapbook room for me to make into a pantry.

Yesterdays Lute

I think I might just be addicted to saving money. Here is yesterdays lute:

Target: Total Spent Out of Pocket: $54.43, Total Saved: $33.19 ($26.00 in coupons) As you can tell, there is a package of Huggies pull ups, Little Swimmers for Grandma's house, a rack of baby back ribs, and two packages of Oscar Mayer deli fresh lunch meat to name of few things off.

Publix: Total spent outof pocket: $54.33, total saved $71.02 ($22.75 in coupons). No, I don't currently need 4 bottles of syrup, just one, but it is not going to go bad before my kids use it all up on all the waffles I got last week at Target. Three jugs of V8, the Hubby loves this stuff, 4 boxes of spaghetti, just need one, but buy 1 get 1 is hard to pass up. Two bags of potatoes, we eat lots of potatoes in our house. Two bags of onions; just about everything I cook calls for onions. We eat lots of yogurt and cheese in this house and the popcorn; while that is just a great snack. Two more bottles of laundry detergent,not including the two I picked up at Kroger as well.

It is difficult for me to pass up a $2-3 bottle of detergent when you are used to paying $5-6, or $1 box of cereal when you were paying $4 or a $0.39 box of crackers when you were paying $2.50 or $0.90 for a box of popcorn that you were paying $5 or $0.08 for B-B-Q sauce.

Out of what you see, the potatoes, onions, yogurt, 1 box of spaghetti, 1 bottle of syrup, garlic, lemon, mushrooms, bean sprouts, and wipes, were the only things I NEEDED this week.

I hope you all are enjoying reading about my savings, because I am really having fun with this, plus it gives me my shopping fix that I so love. So not only am I saving money on groceries, I am also saving money on shopping, because now I don't go as much. It is great.

Couponing

So, I thought I would let you all see how the couponing and sale paper watching was going. So here are the final totals for April, my first month of couponing.

Total before savings $1,015.18
Total coupons used $207.61
Total advertised savings $252.33
Total out of pocket $577.21

I will continue to keep you all updated as to how the couponing is going. So far, I am pretty well stocked on things that I use regularly, now I am working toward other staples that will not go bad. I am not trying to reduce my budge right now. I figure I will keep it were it was for three months while I stock pile, then start trying to reduce it. For those that may not know, my monthly budget for groceries and household neccessities and items is $600.00. Before couponing, I was actually spending between $800.00 and $900.00 per month.

Online Exclusive for May 20th

The large picnic basket is the online exclusive this week, for those that are interested. Regularly it is a $140 basket, for today only, on my website (www.longaberger.com/brendareeks) it is $89. The large picnic basket is great for many uses not just as a picnic basket; recycling bins, and toy basket for grandma's house are just two ideas that quickly come to mind.

You know it is great when life is slow and there is little to be done; however, when there is little to be done there is little to write. Praise God for the slowness for life right now.

Saturday, the hubby and I got a lot done around the house before the rain came. I got the grass cut, the hedges trimmed, and we found all the sprinkler heads (man they installed a lot of them), the hubby unclogged the bathroom pipes (good thing we bought the auger versus renting one), fixed one set of sprinklers, cut the died limbs from the dogwood tree, and a few other things.

We went to Mega church yesterday, it took 30 minutes to sign our kids into Sunday school. We had to be finger printed and our pictures taken. All this to drop off and pick up our children. The associate minister preached, the hubby and I agree with everything that he said; however, we got the impression that the sermon was out of the norm for this church. We get the impression it is more of a feel good church with the regular minister. We will probably try it again with the regular minister just to see.

One thing that the hubby and I are really learning right now is what God's church has become. Which is an excellent thing to be learning, due to our still feeling led to pastor a house church. It is really sad how we as humans have set up the church the way we think it should be and not the way God ever intended it to be. Last week, for example, we were actually at a church that is "name it and claim it". I have never actually been to a "name it and claim it" church until then. I knew they existed, but never attended. Well, I have now.

We know and trust that God will put us where He wants us and when He wants us there. But we also know that, He may not want us to plant roots anywhere other than where we attend on Sunday nights. If we truly our being called to pastor a house church, we don't need roots in a local church other than on Sunday nights. And we love where we are at in the evenings and the kids really like it as well.

What's Going On...

You can't see them very well, but I finally got the plants that "Am I Getting Old" gave me. I don't remember the name of them, so if you would remind me that would be great. I put them along the fence line under the magnolia tree. I hope they do okay there.

The hubby got the whole house fan completely installed this week. It is nice. We have not run the A/C since it has been running. It does not cool the house, but there is a consent flow of air through the house, which makes it feel cool.

Then this is the great fun. A roof leak. We are not sure what is causing it yet. We have picked the roofer we are going to allow to fix it though, because he was the most logical about what to do. He wants to come back when it is raining to see if he can determine exactly where it is leaking from, instead of just tearing the roof off and going from there, like all the others have wanted to do.

Weekly Online Exclusives

Here is this weeks online exclusive for today only, May 13th. If you want any of these baskets go to www.longaberger.com/brendareeks.

Decorating...Painting...Again

The downstairs room, scrapbook room, is in desperate need of remodeling. But that is just not going to happen yet. We have other things we would rather do first.

So I decided to ahead an give it a coat of paint. Paint makes anything look better, right?

As you can tell, the downstairs room is the same gray that the laundry room and garage are painted. So I don't really feel like it is part of the house, although it is.

So I have the doors painted going into the laundry room, the window paint (the blue blinds have to go), and now I am working on all the holes in the walls. As you can tell from the picture with the plaster, there is a lot of holes. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I hope to see everyone tonight. I am looking forward to see you guys. Have a great day.

At it Again

Our household budget for groceries is $300.00 per two weeks (this includes food, health and beauty, and household stuff, light bulbs, bags air filter, etc). Before, I started all of this I was actually spending between $450.00 and $500.00 every two weeks. Now I am buying things I would not have bought before (ie, chocolate milk, cereal, easymac, new razor, fresh vegetables, etc.). I am currently staying inside of my budget by about $30.00 to $40.00 per two weeks, and looking for room to store everything in my house. Example, I have 14 boxes of cereal that I maybe paid $25.00. I know I can't bye anymore cereal for a little while, I just hate to pass up an $.88 box of cereal. The Hubby told me last night that he truly appreciated it, even though it takes a lot more time to shop this way.

This is my Kroger stop today. I got 3 boxes of cereal, 4 gallons of milk, 2 dozen eggs, 2 packages cheese, 4 bags Dixie Crystal sugar, 2 green peppers, 8 ears of corn, onions, 2 packages of pudding, and 2 packages of hotdogs. Out of pocket, 36.17.

Here was todays Target trip. I got 2 boxes of Fiber one cereal (Kid-O loves this stuff), lunchmeat, sour cream 2 packages Fiber one yogurt, large jar of peanut butter, 6 easy mac (Little Man loves these for lunch), Dannon la Creme yogurt, 3 boxes of Eggo waffles and a Shick (sp) Qauttro razor. Out of pocket, 23.08

Pick up a Pork Loin at Sam's also and fresh salsa that the hubby and I love (thanks to the mom-in-law) to have it and no one has put it on sale. Out of Pocket, 24.82. I get about six meals off the pork loin.

Cake Deorating

I had an order for a Mother's Day cake. The catch: it had to be allergy free, wheat, egg, soy, gluten, etc. For a Mother's Day cake, I wanted flowers.

Well you can't use the meringue powder required to make the flowers harden on an allergy free cake because it contains egg whites. So my idea was to us silk flowers.

What do you think?

Random...

My parents minister gave the Hubby a book a while back. We we both finished the books we were working on, so we swapped books. I read this last night and thought it wonderful and worthy of sharing with others.

"If a random sample of one thousand American Christians were taken today, the majority would define faith as belief in the existence of God. In earlier times it id not take faith to believe that God existed-almost everybody took that fr granted. Rather, faith had to do with one's relationship to God-whether one trusted in God. The difference between faith as 'belief in something that may or my not exist' and faith as 'trusting in God' is enormous. The first is a matter of the head, the second a matter of the heart. The first can leave us unchanged, the second intrinsically brings change."

"Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men and women,and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace. As Hans Kung says, 'It deserves neither God's mercy nor men's trust. The church must constantly be aware that its faith is weak,its knowledge dim, its profession of faith halting, that there is not a single sin or failing which it has not in one way or another been guilty of. And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance. If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.'"

"There is a myth flourishing in the church today that has caused incalculable harm-once converted, fully converted. In other words, once I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord ad Savior, an irreversible, sinless future beckons. Discipleship will be an untarnished success story; life will be an unbroken upward spiral toward holiness. Tell that to poor Peter who, after three times professing his love for Jesus on the beach and after receiving the fullness of the Spirit at Pentecost, was still jealous of Pauls' apostolic success."

These are three separate paragraphs in "The Ragamuffin Gospel" So far it is an excellent read. I will keep you updated on this book.

I finished "The Shack". I thought is was an excellent work of FICTION.
Some of the authors thoughts are thought provoking, thereby making it a good book in my opinion.


****Hope everyone is planning to come to the house Monday.****

Open House

Okay, here is the deal. I want my friends to come see my house, experience fried bread, and help me get my Longaberger foot off the ground. Fried bread you ask. Well, it is homemade bread dough that is then fried and served with your choice of toppings. I always eat my with butter, some use sugar, Kid-O says honey and syrup is good, and I think my sister always used cinnamon sugar.
So Monday, May 11th at 6:30pm, I want all my friends to come to the house. I will send out an email as well since not all my friends read my blog. Hope to see you here.

Stay as long as you would like, and eat fried bread. Some ladies and I went out last week for dinner and I mentioned the fried bread I made for the kids. That is how this whole thought started with open house, fried bread and Longaberger.

If you would like to order a basket (free shipping until May 15th) or book a show to help me out that would be fabulous as well. I decided to start selling Longaberger to help contribute to the family. I thought it would be a great way to save for a vacation every year. So that is my goal. Plus you can always order online at www.longaberger.com/brendareeks.

So if you want to come to see the house, and eat fried bread email me for directions.