I did my weekly shopping today at Publix and boy did I get some good deals! Here’s a picture of what I purchased (minus the 12-pack of Coke to take to the church picnic tomorrow – I forgot I had already put it in the fridge when I took the picture):

I only paid full price for the…wait, I didn’t pay full price for anything! Even the stuff I needed that I didn’t have coupons for was on sale: eggs and breast milk storage bags. Score!

Here’s a recap of some of the best deals I got:

All laundry detergent: on sale for $2.99 each, plus I had 2 $2.00 off coupons = $0.99 each!!!

Cascadian Farms organic frozen fruits and vegetables: on sale for $1.99, add that to my 6 $1.00 off manufacturer’s coupons and my 2 $2.00 off store coupons = $0.32 each!!! These are normally anywhere from $2.50 to $3.50, so I was super excited about this deal.

Benadryl Allergy: (very timely sale, the pollen is unbelievable right now!) on sale for $3.99 each, add to that my $5.00 off two coupon = $1.50 each!!!

I scored other great deals too by combining coupons and sales, so my grand total (including $4.99 for the Coke) was

:::drumroll please:::

$43.39

My total before coupons was around $75, and my receipt says that between coupons and sales I saved a total of $60.66 off regular prices, including $35.16 in coupons alone!

I do need to once again mention that many of these items are not ones I would normally buy without getting a great deal, so the amount saved is a bit skewed for me but it was still a great trip!

Tell me about your savings, I love to hear about others who are taking advantage of coupons!

I find myself sitting here wondering what we’re going to have for dinner tonight. Why, you ask? Because for the past two weeks I have not done any sort of meal plan. After doing so well for the past few months, I can really see how it benefits us! It’s kind of stressful not having a plan, not to mention we don’t eat nearly as well when I don’t have a plan.

For instance, last night Katie and I ate green eggs (scrambled eggs with broccoli puree and cheese) and strawberries for dinner. Not the worst dinner in the world, but certainly not the best! And tonight? No idea. Maybe boxed potatoes (not the yummiest but Katie loves them!) and chicken fingers. Like I said, we won’t be eating as well as we would with a plan!

I can’t seem to get motivated to do it. I have the start of one in my head, which basically includes pot roast tomorrow. From there, who knows. And before I know it, it will be Sunday and time for next week’s meal plan. Maybe I’ll do one then!

This week’s shopping trip was a huge success! I’m happy to be back shopping the deals, instead of just getting the bare minimum of what can get us by. It doesn’t hurt that there were some great sales this week. One unexpected benefit of doing the Eat From the Pantry Challenge – going back to our normal $50 per week budget seems like a fortune! Combining some great sales with coupons allowed me to get all this…

…for a grand total of $45.93!

The only items I paid full price for were the milk, eggs, and produce (minus strawberries – they were majorly on sale!)

Here are a couple of the best deals I got:

Coffee Mate Creamer: I paid a total of $2 for 8! They were on sale BOGO and I had some great coupons. I normally don’t buy these but I couldn’t pass it up for $0.25 each!

Betty Crocker Au Gratin Potatoes: 6 boxes for $3!

Green Giant Chopped Spinach: 9 boxes for $6!

YoPlait Fiber One Yogurt 4 packs: 2 for a total of $0.50! That’s one of the best deals I got, thanks to IHeartPublix I found a great coupon to combine with the BOGO sale.

My receipt says I saved $62.05, but I have to say that I would not buy many of these items if it weren’t for sales combined with coupons, so that’s not a totally accurate figure. I can say that I had $20.80 worth of coupons, though!

Can’t wait to see what’s in store for next week! Thanks, IHeartPublix for posting all the weekly Publix deals!

…and got all this!

I’m so excited about the strawberries – they were picked this morning! That’s Swiss Chard over on the right, I discovered a really yummy recipe last time I bought this and we loved it – even Katie ate some!

Let me break down what I paid:

Strawberries: $1.00 per bowl, I bought two bowls

Bananas: $1.25

Tomatoes: $1.75 for both

Zucchini: $1.50 total

Squash: $1.50 total

Swiss Chard: $2.00 (grown organically and locally, so what a great price!)

Avocado: $0.75

I estimate that if I had bought all this at Publix, I would have easily spent $20, especially buying some of it organic. What a deal!

I know I haven’t updated this in a while. It’s been an awfully busy few weeks at our house! But that’s a story for another post…

We managed to stay on budget for our Eat From the Pantry Challenge this month, even the week we had company for dinner twice in one week!

One tip that has helped us tremendously: shopping at the farmers’ market each week. I’m able to pick up a ton of great quality produce really inexpensively. I really learned how big a difference it is when I went grocery shopping at Publix yesterday. Normally I can buy 2 large red onions for $1 at the farmers’ market. (We love our Mexican nights here!!!) Well, when we were there on Saturday I neglected to pick one up, so I just grabbed one in the produce department of Publix when I did my weekly shopping. Big mistake. I paid $1.85 for ONE red onion! And to think there was a time in my life I didn’t even look at the prices on these things…

I realize that for all of you out there who don’t live in the paradise I call home, a weekly farmers’ market is not an option. Take comfort in the fact that during the summer when you’re enjoying your farmers’ markets, it’s too stifling hot here for them! They stop at the end of spring, so I’ll be looking at alternatives for summer produce buying.

One thing I would suggest to those who don’t have a weekly farmers’ market is to try looking at your local farms. You’d be surprised at what you can find locally very cheap. It can take a little legwork and maybe a couple field trips to check things out, but if you find one you like it’s totally worth it. This is actually on my (endless) list of projects I’d like to get done – I’d like to find a local farm to buy dairy from. Milk is so darn expensive at the store ($3.19 per gallon!), there has got to be a better way!

Another option for produce is a co-op. We have them locally but I don’t participate because it ends up costing more per week than what I spend, and I have the time and inclination to do the work of a weekly farmers’ market trip. But, I know there are a ton of people who just don’t have time for that! So a co-op is a great alternative – you simply pick up your weekly crop and get to enjoy a variety of freshly picked produce. It can also really broaden your horizons with the types of vegetables you eat. It’s a great way to try different vegetables you would never normally buy, because you’ll be getting them at their freshest and best tasting.

So all in all, we came out of our Eat From the Pantry Challenge completely unharmed. I got to experiment with different combinations of food, and although we didn’t always stick closely to the meal plan, I got to flex my creative muscles with making meals from what we had. We actually didn’t eat much differently than normally!

I’ll most likely do another Eat From the Pantry Challenge in May, so stay tuned!

In my last installment, I explained how we converted our monthly expenses to a cash system. Now we’re to the really juicy part of our story – deciding to pay off all our credit cards in 2010!

We have a significant amount of debt that we accumulated in a relatively short time period. We traveled a lot when we first got married and had a lot of fun, ate out all the time, and didn’t pay too much attention to what we were spending. Looking back on that now, I don’t regret it because we had such a wonderful time, but I am just shocked at how willingly we spent more than we made! We certainly were not faithful stewards of what we were given – we were throwing it away without thought.

We have grown significantly in our financial maturity in the past year. It was about one year ago that I started budgeting and couponing, but as I explained here we were still overspending like crazy. Then a few months ago God really impressed upon me the need for us to set a goal and stick to it, to get rid of our debt.

When I approached Andy with this idea, he thought I was crazy. Looking at the numbers, it simply does not work without some divine intervention! But I had faith and slowly he came on board with the idea. And you know what? God has already shown us that He’s helping us through this. I’ll go into more detail about that in a later post, but let’s say we’ve definitely been unexpectedly blessed so far!

So now we have the framework of our plan – living like no one else so we can live like no one else. We are using the envelope system for our cash, we have stopped using credit cards, and have committed to pay off all our credit card debt in 2010.

Next, I’ll go into more detail about the trials we have faced with this new way of life, and later I’ll explain how God has shown He’s there for us and how He has blessed us already!

We went to the farmer’s market again this week and I scored a great deal on bananas and an ok deal on strawberries. I got 3 HUGE bunches of bananas for $3.75 and a quart of strawberries for $2. I spent $0.75 on a red bell pepper and we got out of there for $6.50! We had some left over money from being under budget last month, so we didn’t dip into the week’s grocery budget. Kind of cheating, but I ended up under budget at the store so not so bad!

I went to Publix and picked up milk, coffee (on sale BOGO and I had coupons, so I got 2 lbs of French Vanilla coffee for $3!), flour, and shaving gel for Andy all for about $15.

So in total I went over budget about $1.50 but I didn’t dip into next week’s money (I’m determined not to do that!).

I’ve been so happy there haven’t been many good grocery deals, it’s really hard for me to pass those up!

So far it’s been so easy eating from the pantry that I’m tempted to do it again next month! It doesn’t hurt that last month I was able to freeze half of many of the meals I made, so I have a lot of ready made meals in the freezer. I have even been able to freeze a lot of what I’ve made this month, like last week’s slow cooker chicken tacos. I was able to freeze two more meals just from that!

This week’s meal plan is pretty simple. Andy’s cleansing today, so I’m not making anything special. And he’s not home for dinner much this week, so it’s going to be a pretty low key week for us!

Here’s the meal plan:

Monday: hot dogs

Tuesday: Grilled chicken, risotto, and snap peas

Wednesday: leftovers

Thursday: tacos (using the frozen chicken taco meat mix and I’m going to try making homemade flour tortillas – should be interesting!)

Friday: Spaghetti Lasagna with garlic bread (I used leftover spaghetti from last weekend and layered it with cheese in casserole dishes – we’re having company so it will be an easy meal all the kids will love!)

Saturday: hamburgers and mac and cheese

Sunday: Pesto Pizza (I had planned on making this last week and we ended up having to eat up some leftovers so I postponed it.)

I’ve been reading on various blogs recently about home organization, and I have to tell you that I’m not the most organized person in the world. In fact, I would title my condition “Extremely Disorganized With Good Intentions.” I really want to be organized, I just have not found the right system to do it yet. And believe me, I’ve tried!

Late last year I bought a small calendar, thinking I’d carry it in my purse. It sits on the desk in the office, rarely opened. I also bought a weekly calendar to put on the refrigerator. It’s there, but we don’t use it much. I also received as a gift a weekly menu planner to put on the refrigerator. I am proud to say that I actually use this! It took me a while, but I have a menu planning system down, which is one step in the right direction.

After reading about different home journal options, I am challenging myself to get organized this month. The way I see it, I already have about 2 extra hours every week this month since I’m not spending much time planning our grocery trips. So this time will be devoted to the seemingly impossible: getting our home organized and running like a well oiled machine. Cliché? Probably. Necessary? Absolutely!

Read about home journaling here, here, and here.

Since I made a freezer inventory a few weeks ago, I’m able to decide on meals from the freezer without standing in front of the open freezer and missing things in back. This week we’re definitely eating a lot out of the freezer!

Monday: leftovers

Tuesday: Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos (I’ll be able to freeze half for next week)

Wednesday: Chicken/Broccoli/Cheese casserole from the freezer

Thursday: leftovers

Friday: Pesto Pizza (our basil is huge so I’m excited to use it!)

Saturday: Slow Cooker Turkey with Squished Potatoes

Sunday: leftovers (Saturday’s turkey breast is huge so there will be tons to eat and freeze!)