Author Archives: Sheila

The Disney Chain

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April 1st, typically known as “April Fool’s Day” had a way different feeling at our house this year. It marked for me the beginning of the countdown til our massive vacation to Fla. I am so excited, Haley is as well. The little girls and Zach have no idea what it means or how much fun it will be so I wanted to build some excitement. I decided that I would turn this into a family activity, I was going to make a “countdown” chain. We had, yesterday, 15 days until leaving for Fla. I asked Matt to take 2 sheets of construction paper and divide them into eight pieces with line. Lily practiced cutting on a pencil line and I help Kendall cut the other lines that I made larger using a marker. The rest is simple fold and staple. Zach tried to help by handing me the pieces. The chain is hanging on the kitchen curtain rod and each day we get to talk about the trip and cut off a link. This morning it was so cool to hear Kendall ask to take a chain off and then we all got excited about our trip. The countdown chain did inspire me to work on a packing list and budget (firm) for the trip. I am planning a more detailed post of this hopefully tomorrow.

March in Review

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Blogging: I actually have improved with this in the month on March. I am currently on my 14th post but I have to admit that I did post 4-5 of just pictures from Haley’s birthday party. I am going to set my goal at 3 a week or 15 plus a month. I honestly don’t think that I will ever be able to post daily but I want to keep trying to keep up with the blog to document life if nothing else. Devotions: I am trying but I still have not met consistently 3x a week with a higher goal of 5 times a week. I have to design a time and stick to it. Couponing/Grocery Budgeting: This has been an awesome month in this regard. I checked the Grocery spending for the month and it is 800.35!! This includes the food for Haley’s party and quite a bit of stockpiling especially of drinks and diapers. The plan for April is that we cut the budget in half to $400 but not include the money we spend on food in Florida. In case you are wondering, I have budgeted $100 a day in addition to $150 for each of the 2 special meal that we have reservation for. I have already paid for the most expensive meal at “The Royal Table.” My plan is to take in one soda a day for each of us and the water bottles. I honestly don’t think the food budget will be a problem on the trip but of course I can alway be very wrong. Financially: We did okay this month. My car ended up with some major repairs during the month of February and March. We ended up spending almost 300 in March alone for repairs. However with that begin said, it is running awesome, I am hoping to get at least 300000 out of it. We also are spending around a thousand dollars on our septic system. Hopefully this will solve or at least move the problem so that we don’t have to replace it yet again. We did not pay off any extra debit but after looking over our spending for last month, we had around 300 additional in medical expenses and we have been eating out ALOT. Matt and I talked and this is going to change we have decided to limit eating out to 50 a week or 200 for April. We are not including our trip in any aspect of the budget this month. Hopefully we will have an awesome time and still stay on track! Weight– A big ole ZERO, nothing..I am disappointed……any suggestions?

Haley’s Sweet Sixteen Party

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The focus of this past weekend has been Haley’s birthday party. I spent most of the day Saturday decorating the fire station for the party. The party was from 7 till 11pm. We arrived home around midnight thanks to the help of some great friends who not only helped decorate but also helped clean up! I really enjoyed this party because I have seen most of these kids from the time she started school and it had been cool to watch them grow -up. Haley also a group from the youth group come. You hear alot about how bad the kids are but this group is definitely different. We had not one problem and everything we have heard is that EVERYONE had an awesome time. Sunday has been spent sleep and shopping. My plan over the next couple of days/post is to share Haley’s party in pictures and then to share about my awesome shopping day. We are also now shifting focus to start counting down the days until our trip to DISNEY!!!! I am so excited! But first Haley’s party pictures……the decorations……..

Harris Teeter Super Doubles

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I did find time on Haley’s birthday to make a trip to Harris Teeter. The reason of course is the fact that they are having their “Super Doubles” event which means they will double any coupon up to $1.98. I was able to grab a lot of stuff for free. In total I spent $24 and saved $114 or 82%. I am REALLY pleased with this for a couple of reason. I purchased 6 containers of strawberries and 2 bags of Doritos for Haley’s party this Saturday without coupons. They both were a decent price but still NO coupons. I also got a 6 pack of Pedisure for Zach that after coupon doubling to $3 the price for 6 was around 7.50. I couple of items I got for free included bandaids, creamer and milk. I am planning to return on Sunday to finish using my 22 coupons that are left! Of course that depends on how well I survive Haley’s party on Saturday!

CVS- The Rain check Trip

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CVS has also been running a good sale on Coke products, which is $1 each with 5 ECB when you buy $15, making them 0.66 a piece for 2 Liter Diet Cokes. At this point I have a stockpile of around 45 Diet Cokes and did get a rain check today for another 15. I am hoping to return once more this week to get another second rain check. My reasoning for 2 rain checks is that rain checks never expire so if prices rise as everything is saying they are going to, I can plan to have Diet Coke at least once a day for a long time!

I was disappointed today(Sunday) , to find that most of the items I intended to buy were out of stock already. In fact I only bought one item on my list, contact lens solution. I had 5 ECB from last week and I had received a coupon from the Redbox for 3 off a $10 diaper purchase. I have learned and always carry Diaper coupons with me! Today, I checked and Huggies were 8.99 a pack using the overage from the Contact lens solution, the store coupon and 2 $2.50 coupons I had I purchased a bottle of Contact lens solution, 2 packes of Diaper and a bottle of Hair Spray for $7.01 a savings of 81% or $37. I also used my green bag and received an additional 1ECB!

Food Lion

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Life is in full swing around here and this week I have been able to do something fun. I have been doing a lot of coupon shopping this past week as well as making plans for at least one trip to Harris Teeter next week for Super Doubles starting on Wednesday.

One of the reasons that it can be a challenge to shop and save lots of money in Lexington is the fact that Food Lion is one of 3 “chain” grocery stores; Walmart and Aldi are the others. Food Lion does except coupons but never a double or triple. Most of the time I try to only go to Food Lion once a month or if we need staples without time for a trip to Costco. However, this changed this week, I have made 4 separate trips to Food Lion this week making multiple transactions each time. This week, Food Lion has several deals going on at one time. They have 2 promotions for money off. The first is the store brand promotion in which you receive a coupon for x amount off your next order. The second is called “Big Deal” in which you get 5,10 or 15 off instantly. Finally, like several other stores I have heard they have a buy 3 boxes of cereal and get a free gallon of milk. On Thursday, I took all three kids and spent around a hundred dollars. This does include alot of the food for Haley’s party this week. Matt and I returned Thursday afternoon using his MVP card. We stocked up on bagged Chex mix which was on clearance for 1.25 with 50/2 coupons. I have been using these sales to buy some staples I would normal go to Costco for, buying the store brand and receiving 0.25 off each item. I have stockpiled BBQ sauce and sodas this week as well. I returned to Food Lion on Friday at lunch to grab bread and things needed for dinner. Today, I made a final trip to get milk. My saving today, the only trip I can find all my receipt for was around a 52% savings but the things I purchased today were all things we were out of so I am not too disappointed.