Why I Love My Crockpot
Post Published: 09 March 2010Having a family, I would say a crock pot is an essential kitchen item whether you work outside the home or are a stay at home mom. If it is on a day I work I can have a meal put together in my crock pot on low when I leave for work and dinner is ready when I get home. If it is on a day I am not working I can get our dinner together in the crock pot on high when I am making lunch and I am not worrying about dinner all afternoon. I am amazed at the variety of meals that you can do in the crock pot. Today I put together stew while I made the boys lunch. Here is my recipe for Crock Pot Stew:
4 potatoes cut in chunks
4 carrots cut in chunks
4 stocks of celery cut in chunks
2 onions sliced
1 can diced tomatoes
3 lbs stew meat cubed
1 ½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
3 Tbsp flour mixed in ½ cup water
2 cans of beef broth
I like to brown my stew meat before I throw it in the crockpot, but you wouldn’t have to do this if you didn’t want to.
Update: So I actually had my stew cooking in my crockpot cooking when I posted this. Dinner was great and then as I had the crockpot insert in the sink to wash, it just shattered. I don’t know if it was the temperature of the water or if it hit the side of the sink. I was so sad! You see, in November, I had retired my crockpot that was 13 years old for this new one I got on a black Friday sale in November. I have ordered a replacement insert, but am sad it broke and can’t wait until the replacement gets here.
A Month In Review
Post Published: 01 March 2010
Do you remember a few weeks ago when I told you I was going to track my spending and savings for the month of February? The numbers are in and I am amazed! I spent $402.62 out of pocket and saved $1126.94! This makes my overall savings for the month of 74%. The smallest amount I saved was on a meat transaction that I only saved 47%. My best shopping trip I saved 98%. With my coupon binder organized and a little planning I am not only buying the things my family needs now, but stocking up so that I will be spending less and less. I was able to get my sons’ Valentines’ cards for free using register rewards and already bought next year’s Valentines on 90% clearance a couple of weeks ago. I purchased everything for my son’s birthday party in the numbers you see above. For those of you skeptical about how healthy and if everything I am getting is processed I will tell you no. I got milk and yogurt for free, bags of salad for 47 cents, 2lb bags of baby carrots for 98 cents, 10lb bags of potatoes for 99 cents, free bath soap for the boys, air fresheners for 16 cents and the list could go on and on. When you ask if it is worth my/your time I would say absolutely! I spent about an average of 6 hours a week. This includes time spent clipping coupons and organizing, reading to keep up on the deals and my actual time spent shopping. Looking at the amount I saved and the time spent it comes out to my time being worth $46.95 an hour.
To finish off the month, I was also able to use my skills for myself as this past weekend, I went to Macy’s clearance sale and got 3 new sweaters, 2 new dress blouses and 2 casual wear shirts. I combined their 75% off sale with my coupons and spent $58.16 and saved $288.63! I would say after all my hard work I deserve it. Wouldn’t you? A mom has to take care of herself too!
The Gadget Bag
Post Published: 27 February 2010Last week my middle son turned 5. He is my little adventurer and has quite the imagination. He really cracks us up at times and gets into some really good mischief at other times. So this is where I had to use my brain to come up with a unique gift to me. One day it just came to me as I was walking through the dollar store – a gadget bag! I have joked in the past that he is my gadget boy and as I was walking through the store I started noticing all sorts of “gadgets” he would love. I picked up a laser leveler/screwdriver, measuring tape, carabiner watch, lock & key and some other gadgets. Now all I had to do was find the right “gadget bag”. I pictured a bag something like a toolbelt only with lots of pockets. It was a few days and a few stores later, when walking through the craft section of the store that I found a craft caddy that looked like the gadget bag I had envisioned. When I got home I loaded it up with all of the gadgets I had found and put it in a gift bag.
So now fast forward to the day of his birthday, we gave him his gift bag. As soon as he took the tissue out of the top of the bag and grabbed the handle to take it out of the gift bag, he squealed with excitement “A gadget bag!!”. He knew exactly what it was and couldn’t have been more excited. The past week the “gadget bag” has barely left his side with it placed carefully on the end of his bed every night. He has rounded up his gadgets he had before and placed them inside with the new ones. I am sure as the weather warms he is going to spend many days in the back yard with his gadget bag coming up with all sorts of ideas and adventures. We often joke how kids play with the cardboard boxes from toys more than the toys themselves. In this case I spent under $20 on his gadget bag and everything placed inside I don’t think any more expensive toy out there could have made him any happier. Score one for mom!
A Meal Made From My Stockpile
Post Published: 18 February 2010Here is how I made dinner from my stockpile last night:
I used a 3 1/2 lb beef roast I purchased a few weeks ago on sale and with a meat coupon for $8.40, fresh potatoes I purchased for 88 cents for a 5lb bag (I only used 4 potatoes), fresh baby carrots that I purchased for 98 cents for a 2 lb bag (I used about 1/4 of the bag), rolls that were 89 cents after instore sale and doubling a coupon, salad 47 cents after coupon. The roast and vegetables spent the afternoon cooking in my crockpot and so dinner was super easy and quick! This meal cost about $10.26 and there was enough left over for 2 lunches for my husband to take to work.
Building Up A Stockpile
Post Published: 18 February 2010A few weeks ago I did a post called “Changing The Way You Think”. One of the concepts I mentioned in that post, is that with couponing you want to build up a stockpile of items so that you are shopping from your shelves for meal planning and not planning your shopping list from after you meal plan. While you will still have a few fresh items to buy each week, the majority of your food will come from the food you have stocked on. This means you combine store sales, coupons, manufacturers coupons, and catalina’s/register rewards so that you are stocking up on items at the cheapest price point. You can store your stockpile in a pantry, store room, shelves in the garage, extra freezer and extra refrigerator. I was fortunate to already have a freezer and extra refrigerator that we keep in our garage. However, often you can find good deal on an extra one on Craig’s List or the newspaper. I was also very fortunate to have a wonderful store room in the basement of our house. Even though I wasn’t couponing when we bought our current home I fell in love with the store room the moment I saw it. You see, being raised in a very rural area on a farm, I learned stockpiling from a very young age. Most couponing blogs and books you read will tell you to plan on it take 2-3 months from the time you begin couponing to build up a decent stockpile. I want to share pictures of my store room and freezer so you can see what my stockpile after 3 months of couponing looks like. It is so easy to plan meals and not have to worry about running to the store to pick up last minute items! Last week when I was sick it made it so easy to plan meals for my husband and the boys. My stockpile means that I don’t have to buy anything from the store unless it is on sale at a super price. My fresh items that I buy on a weekly basis can be purchased based on what produce is on sale for the week and then I can plan my meals from my store room and freezer.
My husband loves to organize things and so he deserves a lot of credit for how we have everything arranged. It makes it so easy to find things so that I can shop off my own shelves for meals.
Everything you see was purchased using my weekly cash budget. Before I started couponing, I was simply shopping to keep us going from week to week. Now we have cut our budget and I have built a stockpile that we can live off of and continue to add too.
Update: Someone has brought up the concern of expiration dates after seeing this post. It is true that you need to look at expiration dates when you are shopping to stock up and when you are arranging your stockpile. That is why we have organized everything with the newest stock at the back. Nothing in these pictures expires until July. The majority of the items in these pictures have long expirations into 2011-2012. The concept of stocking is to stock for 3, 6, and even 12 months at a time on certain items when you are getting them at there lowest price point.
Valentine’s Day With The Kids?
Post Published: 12 February 2010Are you getting to spend some alone time or go on a date with your valentine? I hope so. However, I have a recipe that can be fun for a family valentine too.
Easy Chocolate Fondue:
In a small crockpot add:
1 ½ cups of heavy whipping cream
2 cups of chocolate chips
½ bag of marshmallows
1 tsp of vanilla
Heat on low and stir every 15 minutes until smooth and creamy.
Most kids love to dip things and so this is why I thought it would be fun for the family. Ideas for dipping: pound cake, rice crispy treats, angel food cake, graham crackers, and any fresh fruit.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Update: So I made this fondue on Sunday for Valentine’s. While my husband and I have had fondue before, our boys hadn’t. I think we have a new Valentine tradition in our house! The boys absolutely loved it. We used strawberries, apples, pound cake, nut clusters and marshmallows for dipping. My 7 year olds biggest concern was whether the fruit was still healthy when dipped in choclate. I told him it was 50/50!
When Mom Is Sick
Post Published: 11 February 2010The other morning I woke up an hour before my alarm was due to go off and as I laid there I knew something wasn’t quite right. I tried to go back to sleep for almost the next hour and decided I may as well just get up and start getting ready for work. As I made my way to the bathroom my tummy started to rumble and a sick feeling came over me. I started to try to get ready and it wasn’t getting any better. Maybe if I just lie back down for a few minutes it will pass I thought. I tried this, but as soon as I tried to start getting ready again I had this overwhelming feeling of being sick to where I didn’t think I could function at all. I made my way back to bed and thought about what I was going to do. Going to work was not an option. I had daycare arranged for the boys and I have to tell you that at that point I couldn’t even imagine how to make the 3 trips back and forth from the school with my 18 month old to get my older 2 where they needed them to be.
I guess I am fortunate that I don’t get sick often and when I do it is usually a cold that I may not function well with, but at least I can get the kids to and from and what they need. However, this time I could tell this wasn’t going to work. I also knew my husband missing work wasn’t an option. At that moment I made the decision that my husband was going to have to get the boys ready and even though I wasn’t going in to work, daycare was the best option. I woke my husband and told him I was sick and that I needed him to get the boys ready and to the daycare. At the same time though, I felt like I should be getting the boys ready. My husband is wonderful with helping when asked and perfectly capable, but I have a hard time asking for help sometimes. Now I know I am not the only one out there as a mom that feels that way. As I lay there feeling too sick to do anything I felt guilty. I still felt that I should have been able to muster up and get through. How many of you have felt that way? As mom’s we feel that it is our responsibility and that no one else can do our mom jobs as good as we can ourselves?
I managed to fall back to sleep for a couple of hours and slept in until 8:30. Yes, that is sleeping in for me. The last time I slept in until 8:30 was last year when my husband and I went away overnight for our 10 year anniversary. The silence in the house was unbelievable and just didn’t feel right. I felt like I needed the noise of my boys. It’s ironic that the same noises of arguing, getting into things they aren’t supposed to, screaming, toys, harassing each other that usually fill our house and at times wear on me, I now missed. I must have been really sick right? Actually I think it is just being a mom and how much of my life it is. I think I would be more abnormal if I didn’t feel guilty about the things I could not do and didn’t miss the noise. I am grateful that I had the day to recuperate, but I missed my boys and was happy to get hugs when I picked them up. Sometimes it is in those quiet moments that you realize how much you have!
Starting Off February……
Post Published: 02 February 2010……with a bang for my buck! For the month of February I am going to track all of my household shopping out of pocket and amount of savings to give you a figure. So last night I began with this….
This was all purchased at Smith’s. I have 14 packages of steamfresh vegetables with pasta or rice, 4 So Be drinks, 4 cans of Rotel, 7 cans of Hunt’s dices tomatoes, 1 jar of pickles, and 2 packages of Keebler cookies. The total? I spent $4.43 and saved $74.08 by combining the sale the store had going on for a savings of 96% by using manufacturer’s coupons both from the paper and internet printable, and one set of doubler’s from Albertson’s.
While these don’t qualify as February purchases, on the weekend I purchased these items:
30 boxes chewy granola bars – $12.72 (Quaker sale at Albertson’s)
4 D’animal 6packs – free except for tax (D’animal coupons with Albertson’s doublers)
4 D’animal Crush Cup 4packs – $1.96 plus tax (D’animal coupons with Albertson’s doublers)
2/1gallon jugs Whole Milk – free using Register Rewards I had from Walgreen’s
12 pack of Frigo String Cheese – $1.29 (Frigo coupon with doubler at Albertson’s)
This is just to give you an idea an is not all of my purchases for the week.
Are you excited to see how February goes? I will keep you up to date!
They Really Should Tell You…..
Post Published: 02 February 2010……….when you are learning to breath in childbirth class that the breathing doesn’t just help you deal with labor, but is going to be an essential tool in raising your children. The way I see it is that getting through labor and the birth of your children is really just the beginning. So you deliver your baby and really, the first time you nurse your baby you need to take a nice slow deep breath. Then, the first time your baby is getting shots at the doctor’s office and you feel anxious seeing your baby get poked , you need some slow deep breathing to get you through to be able to comfort your baby. What about the first time you let someone else watch your baby? Slow deep breaths and the wonders of a cell phone to call and check in. As you watch your baby stand and teeter you need a few deep breaths to allow them the opportunity to fall and get back up again. Then there comes their first fall where they bonk their head or split a lip and again you need to breath to keep your calm to be able to continue to support and comfort them. Also there is all the well meaning advice that others like to give in which sometimes you need to just take some nice deep cleansing breaths to keep your calm and realize that everything you are doing is not wrong and that you can make the choices for your child based on what you think is best. Then there will be the time that your child discovers the cereal or flour in the pantry, or the toilet paper in the bathroom. So what do you do? You guessed it………. slow, deep cleansing breaths as you divert them from their task and clean up the mess. Then comes potty training, and let me tell you that can demand the fortitude of constant slow deep breathing some days. What about the first time you have to take a trip to the ER? They need you to be calm to get them through the IV, stitches or anything else that may be involved.
Think about their first day of school as you are proud of how big they are getting, yet tears come to your eyes as you aren’t sure if they (maybe really you) are ready. Then there is the first time they come home and tell you about the bully who is harassing them. Slow deep breaths to get you ready to teach them how to handle the situation and not become a bully themselves. Then there are the days that you may feel like a broken record or drill sergeant in your repetition where you have to step back and use the slow deep breathing. While I may not be passed this point yet, I can imagine the situations to come. What about when they become a teenager? I can only imagine the amount of slow deep breathing that is going to require……… their first date, learning how to drive, trying to sneek out with friends, starting their first job, going to college, getting married, having children of their own. The list can go on and on, but the way I see it is that I am going to need those deep cleansing breaths and slow deep breathing the rest of my life as well as my husband to help keep me focused.
Recall Alert: Dorel Asia Cribs & Graco Strollers
Post Published: 21 January 2010There have been a couple of important safety recalls put out this week by the Consumer Product Safety Commission that I felt should be posted on here.
The first recall is on Dorel Asia cribs that can pose a strangulation and suffocation hazard. By clicking on the link you can find out specific information on the recall along with the affected models and pictures. These cribs were sold at K-Mart, Sears, and Walmart between January 2005 – December 2009.
The second recall is on Graco strollers due to fingertip amputation and laceration hazards. The affected strollers were manufactured between October 2004 – February 2008. Burlington Coat Factory, Babies “R” Us, Toys “R” Us, K-Mart, Fred Meyer’s, Sears, Target and Walmart are among the retailers where these strollers were sold. Again, by clicking on the link you can find out more specific information on the recall if you need to check your stroller
