Thrifty??

Yes, we're still alive at our house! I just haven't had the desire to get on a computer. It's more fun to just play with the kids, read books and try my hand at reducing our grocery bill.

This past November I went to a coupon class our ward put on. I was so excited and I thought I could totally do it. Well, that's about as far as I got. I was a little overwhelmed at the thought of couponing and the big world that it is! A few weeks after the class, the gal that taught it asked me if I had heard of Bountiful Baskets. I hadn't and she said she was trying it out and she'd tell me how it was. She later said she wasn't a big fan of it and so I didn't persue looking into it more. Then my SIL blogged about it and I thought about it a little more but then life took over again.

About 3 weeks ago, a friend of mine here in IF area told me about it. She was so excited about it and was loving it! I finally decided it was worth looking in to. I jumped on the website www.bountifulbaskets.org and put in my first order. You don't know what you will get but it will be 50% fruit and 50% veggies.

This is our first basket that we picked up on Saturday! We loved it and ate very well over the weekend. The kiwi is our ultimate favorite in our house. It lasted about 5 minutes and was gone. We had blueberry pancakes for breakfast on Monday. We had Swedish pancakes today for Mayci's birthday topped with cool whip and fresh strawberries. I will admit, I was a little scared of the asparagus since I've never tried it. Neither had my kids. So, Sunday for dinner we cooked some up and we all ate some. I like it, it's not my favorite but it was good. We are wondering about the acorn squash. We've never tried that! We did have a fabulous salad with our dinner on Sunday night and it was so great to eat healthy! The best part! It was all for only $15!!!!! I'm thinking we would have easily paid about $30 at least for all of this wonderful food!
I finally braved up and did my first real couponing this week. I've been taking the paper here and I get 5 copies on Sunday. I've cut out all of the coupons for the past 2 weeks and I've even got a binder put together to store all of my coupons. This week, Albertson's had doublers and I had 15 of them (YEAH!!) so I planned out my trip to Albertson's. I was a little scared and called my friend Jamie up about 4 or 5 times before, during and after my trip. I went with the goal of getting only a few items. I wasn't prepared to focus on more than these things:

I was really hoping for about 36-48 cans of Cream of Chicken but they were all gone when I got there. I did get a rain check for them though. The soup was on sale for $.75/can and I had a coupon which made them $.50. I used the doublers and mad them all $.25 a can! Talk about a fun shopping trip! I ended up paying on $25 dollars for all of this and would have spent $96! Needless to say, I felt pretty good even though it took me a little longer than it should have to go get these items. I'll get this figured out eventually! Until then, I'm feeling good about my start with my food storage. (I did get a really good book called, 'Pick another check out lane, Honey' and it's got some good ideas in it).

As for this picture, it was just a cute one I thought I'd share. My 3 girls are too dang cute some days and I sure love them to pieces! All 4 of us girls have been trying to ward off a nasty cough for the last week and Mayci has been pretty yucky. Last night she was crying and pulled at her ear for a few hours. Today she hasn't even touched her ear but she's acted really bothered and sounded terrible all day! It's hard to be sick on your birthday! Yes, my little one is 2! I can't believe it. More pictures to come soon regarding her birthday!

Happy St. Paddy's Day!!!