Author Archives: Sheila

Super Doubles

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I just checked back to see what I had attempted to budget for groceries this month. My goal for August was $400 and the plan was to eat out of the freezer for the majority of the month. However, I have ran into a small snag in the plan. First, I failed to realize that I would need to stock up on school supplies for the year, and attempt to get them at the lowest possible price. Next we are having a surprise visit from Matt’s brother in law this weekend. It will be awesome as we always enjoy them. But I wanted to purchase some extra food to make it a simple and special meal on Saturday. We decided on doing alot of finger foods/appetizers so that no matter what time they arrive it will be warm and ready to eat. They are travelling home from Disney so the timing is always a question. I checked the budget and so far I have spent around $380 and it is not even the middle of the month. But I was able to catch some great deals at Harris Teeter this week.

Super Doubles means that any coupon up to $1.98 will double up to $3.98 or the value of the item. Harris Teeter is also running some excellent sales on school foods/lunches. I picked up an order through the Express Lane yesterday after work and today Matt, myself and the little kids went to Salisbury. I have saved around 60% on the trips combined but in reality have stocked up on paper Towels, Lunchables ($1 each), chips, Capri Suns (which will be donated for our kids carnival), Chex mix and Bugles(both ended up being 0.44 a bag). I am pleased with what we were able to grab. I am hopeful that the rest of the month will be uneventful in the grocery area~!

Lazy Saturday

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It must be a first, there is nothing scheduled for today, the house is decent, and I have nothing on the “I must get this done list.” So it has turned into a very peace and lazy days. Matt has gone to church for the last workday as we are scheduled to have our first service in the new building in the morning. Haley is still at her dad’s, Amanda is working so the little ones and I have been at home in our pjs. I have had a chance to order some Christmas presents, read all the blogs I am behind on and just sit around and veggie. I also am writing 2 post so hopefully that is a good sign of things to come. This afternoon, I promised the little ones we would go out and pull weeds from the playground as well as a trip to Walmart for tax-free weekend. The most exciting news is that we have started Potty training with Zach. If you know us or have been reading awhile then you realize that we have been working with Kendall almost a solid year on potty training. However, Amanda, Haley and Lily were all trained prior to being 2 years old. Zach has used the potty 3 of the 4 times I have taken him today. So is this the end of diapers in our house?

Disney World- Never forget Rapunzel

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I am having a lazy Saturday today and enjoyed looking again at our Disney World Pictures. One of the memories that I don’t want to forget is how we got to meet Rapunzel, who is Lily’s favorite princess. We found out by chance that our first day was also the last day of a very special meet and greet with Rapunzel. The story of my wait is posted earlier but what I didn’t share then was the wonderful pictures we got so here are 5 of my favorite!




Lily actually gave her picture that she colored to Flynn Rider who put it in his bag!

Shopping Thursday

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We needed to go to Costco to stock up on our monthly items for the pantry. I also had the entire day off so it was decided that we combined a needed trip with several other shopping things that would be beneficially for us all. We ended up at Hanes Mall first where we hit JCPenney’s, Old Navy, Bath and Body Works and of course the Carousal. I did remember to print coupons for Old Navy so the best part of the day is that we saved at least 50% at each of our stops. We were able to grab Matt 5 shirts, me 3 shirts and 2 camis and Lily 4 shirts and a pair of leggings for less than $70 at Old Navy. I stocked up on foaming hand soap at Bath and Body Works while Lily got a free bottle of hand sanitizer. Our next stop was Harris Teeter for some rolls and coffee creamers. After Costco we headed home.

After putting the kids to bed I made a run to CVS, Walgreens and Food Lion. At the three stores I spent a total of 50 but was able to stock up on school supplies as well as finish buying Lily’s school list. The only sore spot of the whole day was at Food Lion, where the cashier was bored and decided to read each word on my coupons. She proceeded to tell me that I was only allowed to use one coupon per transaction to which I replied “I guess you need to ring up 6 transactions. After a snort and call to the front manager who simply started scanning the coupons I left with one transaction and a savings of almost 70%.

Coupon Blessing July 31st

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This coming weekend August 5th-8th is Tax Free weekend in North Carolina. It is usually thought that this is a great weekend to buy school supplies but it also applies to computers, printers, clothing, shoes, sports equipment and diapers. So this week we will focus on diapers.

CVS
Purchase 1 pk of Pampers any size for 8.99, use $2 off from 7/31 P&G insert and recieve 1 ECB back.

Exciting news is that we moving into our new church building this Sunday August 7th. So on August 27th we will be hosting a family carnival and concert. We will be having a give away table of school supplies. So for the next several weeks we will be collecting school supplies for this table!!!

July in Review

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Blogging: This is the 11th post for the month, much better than in previous month. I do have to say that the majority of this was due to our vacation but I can hope trend continues at least through August. The goal is 15.

Devotions: No change from last month except have probably been more on the miss side.I am going to make this a priority! Goal: 3 per week.

Couponing/Grocery Budgeting: We are actually under for the month at $630. Couponing continues to make this number go down. Meal Planning on Sunday has also been a big help in keeping us on track. In August our goal is to stay under 400. The one huge way we hope to do this is by eating out of the freezer for the majority of the month. Our extra freezer in the building is completely full. So we are hoping that we can begin to not only eat and save for this month. Our Grocery Budget is set at $800 per month, this includes diapers, cleaning supplies, food and toiletries.


Financially: July was a different month for us as I expected. We took a vacation to the beach for 5 days. I also have bought some clothes and other school supplies that are needed. I would say that because we were able to met budget and go on vacation. Goal met for this month. It has now been a year of unemployment for Matt. We are going to really focus during the rest of the year on achieving our financially goals. As mentioned above I am planning on reducing our Grocery Budget and using this money to make some house repairs so that we can achieve the Emergency fund ASAP! Goals in this area: Emergency fund of $1000, car fund equal to a payment of $300 each month and by January- debt free except for mortgage.

Weight– Have not even stepped on the scale. This will become a propriety in the next couple of months maybe?Or I may eliminate from the goal list all together!

Vacation Bible School

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This is one of the most looked forward and exciting weeks around our house especially for Lily. This year it also marked the one year anniversary of Matt becoming unemployed…we have survived and are actually enjoying more time as a family and even being able to splurge a little. After a year of construction, our new church facility is almost complete, so much so that VBS was held at the building while last minute construction, painting and staining were occuring. Matt volunteered to help “where-ever needed.” He ended up in charge of games, the best news is that was only 3 days. I had hoped to arrange my schedule to be able to spend a little time each day at VBS, but that was not to happen. I have worked around 38 hours this week. I was able to sneak away at lunch on Friday and watch the closing program. Lily was so excited that I made it.

The week of VBS is also one of the most busiest for us as a family. We spent last Sunday evening helping prepare crafts and doing some last minute moving of things to the new facility. Each morning I left for work at around 8:15am. VBS starts at 9:20 with all workers set to arrive at 9:00am. For us this means that EVERYONE must be feed and dressed with hair and teeth brushed. This served as an awesome reminder of how blessed we are not to have to attempt to get this accomplished every morning to take the kids to daycare. I honestly don’t know how anyone with more than one small child makes it anywher before 9 any morning.

The week ended with a couple of bangs as well. We decided after the pool on Saturday (today) to head to Salisbury for Chinese and Shushi. We made several discoveries on this trip. First Zach is allergic to shrimp. At least that is what we are thinking. His face, arms and body broke out in a itchy rash after 6-8 shrimp. While waiting to pay, I looked over and noticed Lily’s ear was black around her earring. So I have to remove, clean her ears and we bought her some sensitive earrings to wear. While at Walmart, getting Lily’s earrings, Kendall decided she wanted her ears pierced. After several minutes we agreed and she is wearing the most adorable rainbow flowers I have seen. She changed her mind after I had already paid for the new earrings, and she even cried when they pierced both ears but now she is excited to look at them in the mirror. Wow what a week. Now back to our regular not quite so busy lives!

A Different sort of Vacation

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Today has been totally different from any other days I can remember on a vacation. Usually, we sort of get into a routine or at least have a plan for how each day will go. This time we didn’t, on both Thursday and Friday we spent all day (6 plus hours) on the beach. The canopy makes is so easy to do snack, lunch and nap outside there is no need for coming back to the hotel. The kids on both these days have asked to go to the pool. We attempted the pool on Thursday night but the temperature was cool and the water was down right cold. I ended up staying up late last night because of my teenage daughters, so I want a nice easy day. Matt and I decided that this morning we would stay around the hotel room and then spend the day by the pool. Much to our surprise the pools remained chilly all day. This morning we ended up in one of the hot tubs and then came up around 11 for lunch. All the kids went down for naps really easy so we joined them. We headed back to the pool for another round but ended up sitting on the edge. We came up earlier to get dressed to go out for our really nice dinner today. It was nice not to have to rush and to spend time on hair and makeup for a change. We ended up taking pictures on the beach before and after the dinner so I hope we were able to get some decent ones for use in calenders and Christmas cards. Dinner was awesome!! We ended up watch a “Fire and Hula” show at the hotel tonight! The kids loved it. Matt is a very awesome husband today by going to Krispy Kreme to end the night! One interesting thing we have noted is that we are being charged 11%tax on food. This is extremly high in our eye but what can we do! Final note I am having issues publishing my post from yesterday so if it appears out of sequence you know why.

Couponing on Vacation?

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One of the “hard” decision that I had to make last week was if I want to bring my coupons on vacation with us or not. I knew I would be bring my netbook but did not have plans to go shopping at all. I have gotten WAY behind on organizing my coupons. Several people at church have been taking part in our “coupon blessing”, by bring coupons in to be used. Several weeks we have gotten full inserts as well as envelopes of already cut coupons and some inserts that have one or alot of coupons already cut but even more left in the insert. The whole insert are the easiest for me because I simply file them with the ones I purchase, the others I have been placing in a bag. One of the reason I was avoiding these was because I really dislike filing in my baseball card inserts, it seems too time consuming for me. I also have fallen about 2 months behind on going thur my insert and send some to my niece in Alaska and throwing out the rest. I knew that I would most likely have the time to work on the coupons but I was still debating on what to actually do with them, so by not bringing them I could continue to ignore the issues.
I finally came up with a solution so I brought ALL of the coupons with me. So far I have spend about 3 hours on them and Matt spent almost 2 helping me last night with the first stage of organization of them. Currently, I have completed stage 2 and now am ready to go back and catch up on the sorting out of expired coupons. So what is that solution? First any whole insert that I receive or buy will remain filed by date in my organizer. Next all partially cut insert, I am going to first cut out the coupons and then file by expiration date in a second organizer. The idea being that if I am looking for a coupon I will first find it in my whole inserts, check the expiration date and then locate any or all others by locating by expiration date. So currently, I have cut all coupon, sorted by month of expiration and then resorted first by like coupons together and then by expiration date in order. So I have coupons that expire on 7/29 before the ones that expire on 7/30. I also have these coupons sorted in separate tabs by month they expire. Coupons that expire in the month of July are also listed in red on southern savers so that gives me a additional place to start. I plan to spend at least an hour each of the remaining nights of vacation pulling out expired coupons. My goal is to have all the coupons in order prior to Monday so that I can start just maintaining the inserts and new coupons that come in each week. In reality this will mean an hour or so each Sunday to keep on top of these.
Now to the real reason I am so glad I brought my coupons with me. I realized today that we are using sunscreen about double my expectation, so I need to purchase additional sunscreen today. I decided to stop by CVS, use my ECBs and purchase some sunscreen. I was able to save 50% on sunscreen tonight at CVS!! I think this is awesome especially considering that prices at that CVS here were the same or less that that I purchased at home! I did use a 10 off $50 purchase and one $1 off sunscreen!
Couponing is FUN again!