Summary Sunday: Prepping Edition

BIG post coming tomorrow. The big shopping trip has been completed and I'm going to share all of the details with you. Because I'm saving all the info for tomorrow, today's post will be somewhat short. (And by short I apparently mean kind of normal sized. Geez.)

This week was hectic as usual, with Collin working weird hours and Darian having three days of field trips. (I'm going to let him do a post about his trips next week, but I haven't told him that yet.) I spent the majority of the week prepping for the shopping trip as well as the shopping trip aftermath. This evening I also managed to repair our dryer and located the problem with our washer...which I'm hoping will be a cheap fix.

Now on with the other stuff I did...

Posts I Posted: With all my time being used up, it was a quiet week on the blog. But...I did share a review of the best book ever by the woman who has become my girl crush. I also finally got around to showing another week of Project Life...a project which is haunting me from the corner of the scrapbook room. The guilt of being behind is killing me.

Books I Read: I finished reading The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty and will be reviewing it soon. I have to say, it surprised me. I am now reading East of Denver by Gregory Hill. Both of these books were Goodreads wins.

Recipes I Tried: I did some crazy work with croissants this week that I'll be sharing in a few days. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier!

Projects I Finished: I fixed the flipping dryer people! It has been getting worse and worse, taking more and more cycles to get our clothes dry. Collin and I pulled it apart once before to try and repair it, but my hand couldn't reach far enough in the vent to pull out what we assumed was a lint blockage. Carole sent us a brush kit a couple of months ago and I kept asking Collin to help me...but he's rarely home. Tonight Darian informed me that he had NO pants for school tomorrow. Apparently half of his jeans are missing. What the crap?!? I knew I didn't have time to deal with our crap dryer so I pulled it out, took it apart from both inside and outside and cleaned the vent from both directions. Voila! I just pulled out a dry load of jeans after ONE cycle. I'm pretty proud of myself right now.

And that's it. That's all you get. Well...that and this...

I saw these yesterday while Darian and I were at Target. I was sorely tempted to buy them. Now normally I'm pretty boring and conservative about my clothes - nothing too flashy. But these spoke to me. I tried them on with my jeans. So much fun. I think they just might be on my wishlist.

Summary Sunday - Superbowl Sunday Edition

Superbowl Sunday has now come and technically gone. I'm not really one for professional football and I typically watch the game just for the commercials, but I have to admit that the game was a pretty good one. As for the commercials, eh...not bad. A couple of good ones in there. I enjoyed the bribing Doritos dog, the first Acura owner and of course the Matthew Broderick CRV commercial. Also, high five to NBC for using Betty White in their commercial for The Voice. Anything with Betty White is an automatic win.

Now...let's take just a moment to discuss the halftime show and then we'll move on. I like Madonna, really...I do. I like her older stuff better than her more recent works, but I think she's a good singer. I thought she had the potential to put on an amazing show. But...when you lip sync the entire thing in a way that becomes obvious ten seconds into it...I lose interest and, quite honestly, some respect for you. Oh Madge, I held you to a higher standard.  Also, maybe you should've discussed with MIA how to behave properly during a Superbowl show. Thanks for the cursing and middle finger salute. You really brought maturity to the table there. Thanks. Heaven knows we're now going to hear about that for the next week. Pathetic.

Okay...that part's done now. Moving on...

I busted out my huge shopping run and got enough groceries to get us through the next two months and then some (excluding the produce and dairy we may need to replenish along the way).  I'm pretty proud of myself. My meal plan includes a bunch of new recipes and a large portion of crockpot recipes. I got quite a lot of food, including a ton of meat and cheeses. Plus, I estimated really well. Once I figured out my recipes and the special items I wanted to buy, I expected to walk away at around $400. Our final total? $398.78. I'm happy with that. If things work out like I expect them to, that will put us at around $175 per month. That works out to less than $2 per meal and most of those meals will leave leftovers.

Collin worked a lot this week and I spent a good chunk of my time trying to fix his office books for the accountant (there were some issues with how inventory has been being entered). All in all, by Saturday morning we had spent about four hours together this week. We did however get to relax yesterday evening and spend some time together on the couch. Thanks to Costco, we also had some yummy red velvet cake. But...back to work he went today. He may be home on Wednesday. If not, we won't see him again until Friday. It's a completely nutso schedule, but we just keep plodding along. One of these days we'll be rewarded by having our debt paid off.

I also made a couple of noteworthy purchases this week. Using the money I had left on my Barnes & Noble giftcard, I marched right out to their website and preordered Let's Pretend This Never Happened...the memoir written by Jenny Lawson (you know, The Bloggess, my girl crush). I'm super excited for it to get here, but I have to be patient. Delivery is expected around April 17th. And yes, that's right...I gave you a link...because I know you all will want it too.

The second purchase...a new carpet cleaner. I've been absolutely distraught since my Hoover Agility took a dive back in November. It's been hard to part with that loss. It was such a good little trooper. So...after much time and patience, I finally worked up the nerve (read: had a complete mental breakdown and became obsessive when it became evident that everyone around here was out to destroy my carpet) to go out and find a new one. My new Bissell should arrive next week. I'll let you know how it goes, but I'm pretty sure it will be amazing.

Here's what else I was up to this week :

Posts I Posted : I busted out not one, but two tutorials. I'm pretty darned proud of myself. I taught you how to make bottlecap coasters for the men and decoupaged paper & photo coasters for the ladies. I'm inclined to like both of them, but the photo ones make me particularly happy.

I also received the Liebster Blog Award and passed it on to five of my blogging friends.

Darian also posted a review for you on Fever 1793. This was his first review of an assigned book. I think he did pretty well, but he obviously doesn't have the appreciation for historical fiction that I do.

Projects I Finished : Because I am apparently not the type to think while I work, I was forced to make new models for my tutorials this week in order to get the photos I needed. So...I busted out a few coasters. They're not technically finished yet, but they're pretty stinking close. I also finished a scarf for a cute little girl. You may remember that I gave this purple scarf to my friend Erin for Christmas.

Well...her adorable daughter decided she loved it and was modeling it around their house shortly after I gave it to her mother. I decided that maybe the little diva needed her own. So hers is basically a reverse of her mother's. Whereas Erin's is purple with a hint of fuschia, hers is fuschia with a hint of purple. I know, cute right? I did make one mistake and made it slightly wider than I should have, but I made the length slightly shorter so it will fit her fairly comfortably. We'll see how she likes it when I give it to her tomorrow.

Books I Read : I finished reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It was fantastic! I'll be doing a review on it later this week. I am now reading Once on a Moonless Night by Dai Sijie. It's a bit of a departure from what I normally read, but it is technically historical fiction. It's been a challenging read, but I hope to be able to finish it either tonight or tomorrow so that I can stay on task with my BOTY goal.

Recipes I Tried : Meh. I didn't make anything new other than the Crockpot Sesame Chicken that we tried last Sunday. I did make one of our easy family staples, though. For lack of a better term, we call it goulash. Now don't get all technical with me...just go with it. It's super easy to make. Cook one box of Macaroni & Cheese according to the box directions. Add in one can of chili and one can of diced tomatoes. Tada. See...easy. And it's good...I promise.

I don't have any favorite blog posts for you this week...for two reasons. 1 - I spent a good portion of my evenings getting ready for my grocery run...and 2 - I forgot to star the ones I liked. Oops. I warned you, my memory is crap. Oh well, maybe next week.

Summary Sunday - Chore Day Shmore Day Edition

Well...I have a ton of stuff on my "to do" list today. I'll be honest...stalling by writing this post? I'm totally okay with that.

Here's what's on the list for now :

1. Laundry : 1st load is in the dryer, 2nd in the washer. I'm thinking another 2 loads and I can call that done. We're just going to pretend that putting the clothes away isn't part of this task...

2. Coupon Cutting : So, I'm slightly anal about how we go shopping. But - it pays off! Other than picking up the essentials like milk and cheese, our family has been able to avoid grocery shopping since November! (And, if you're wondering...we've now been Wal-Mart free for over a year!) That's right. When I did my shopping last fall I was able to stock us up so well that we've had meals for three months! Honestly, we could probably make it for another two weeks if I just went and got eggs and cheese, but the natives are getting restless for some new snacks.

I'm cheating. I'm dividing up the tasks over the next few days so that we can be ready for shopping either Thursday afternoon or Friday. Today, I'm cutting coupons. Tomorrow, I'll be taking inventory. Tuesday, I'm gathering up my recipes and doing the meal plan. Based on what is going to be on sale, I'm going to aim for two months worth of meals. I'm also going to attempt to do more crockpot cooking over the next few months. It's highly convenient and it seems to stretch my dollar further. In fact, I currently have some sesame chicken in the crockpot thanks to Pinterest. We'll see how it goes.

But, I digress. Wednesday will be my wrap up day. I'm going to put everything together and build my binder for the trip. I'm expecting a $200-300 run if we end up with two months of meals. I'll keep you posted...

3. Project Life : I've totally been slacking on this. I'll admit that right now. I have the photos all together for the last three weeks, but I'm behind on journaling. So the goal for today is to get caught up on journaling and prep the pics for my post on January's pages (finally).

I'm pretty sure I had other stuff on the list, but I think I've already hit burn out. I can't remember anything else at the moment. Oh well, let's move on to wrapping up the week instead.

Posts I Posted : It was a slow week. Darian wrapped up his reviews for the Percy Jackson series and I went slightly postal on my feelings for stupid parents.

Recipes I Tried : Other than today's foray into Crockpot Sesame Chicken, it stayed pretty low key around here. The nice thing about making big Pinterest meals is that we tend to have leftovers for a while. Oddly enough, the boy loves him some leftovers. He always cheers when I say that's what we're having for dinner.

Books I Finished : It's not finished yet, but it will be by this evening...I'm currently reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It's really good. Thank you to Patti for her suggestion!

Projects I Finished : Nothing got finished. Let's face it, it was kind of a lazy week. I did do some things in preparation for a tutorial I'll be posting next week, but other than that, the only thing I finished was editing the photos I took at Kirsten's birthday party last week. Some of them turned out quite cute. I even managed to get one that makes my guys look photogenic.

Best Blog Post : I've taken to cheating and starring my favorites on Google Reader. My memory is crap. I'll just go ahead and throw that out there. So, even if I find something wildly hilarious...I completely forget what it was by the time Sunday gets here. I need all the help I can get.

This week, it isn't something funny, but rather something that I found pretty poignant. It's Ali Edwards' post of a video based on Ira Glass' "Ira Glass on Storytelling, Part Three". She found it on Sabrina Ward Harrison's facebook page. I found it fairly inspirational...and I'm not very sappy, so that's saying something. Oh, and I initially watched it with the sound turned off. I found it even more powerful that way.

On that note...I'm going to go be creative...with coupons...and Project Life...

Slight Miscalculation in Time

Ya...so...I know I was supposed to post about my scrapbook supplies tonight, but I ran into a small snafu. Apparently today is the 29th...not the 28th like I originally thought when I woke up this morning. I had this brilliant plan to go grocery shopping after work on Thursday to make sure I could use up all of my coupons that expire on the 30th. Ya...fail. I realized today at about...oh...1pm, that the 30th is actually tomorrow. Fantastic. I haven't gone grocery shopping in about 6 weeks and I haven't done anything with the piles of coupons I've been amassing. So...in addition to helping with 4th grade English homework, I've been doing inventory, creating my meal plan, cutting coupons and readying the binder for a trip to the store tomorrow. Yippee. Thus far I'm about three hours in. Looks like I should finish up within the next hour, but then I'm planning on bed. Sorry. You'll just have to wait until tomorrow to see the coolest scissors ever.


** As a side note, it is apparently a good decision not to do a "real" post this evening as CableOne continues to tease me with internet service. For the 3rd post in a row my internet has dumped out as I have been writing.

Buildin' the Binder...It's Craft Time!

It's time to continue explaining how I cut my family's grocery budget in half. If you're just now getting here...here's the steps you've missed.

1. Inventory
2. Meal Planning
3. Coupon Cutting

So now you have a pile of coupons and nowhere to put them. Well...this is where THE BINDER comes in (did you hear the heavenly music that was just playing?). That's right, it's that fantastic.

If you've seen the Krazy Coupon Lady's website or watched TLC's Extreme Couponing then you see that those hardcore couponers all have big fatty binders they carry around full of their coupons. I will admit, when I first saw them I thought that this was crazy. But I quickly learned that it is something of a necessity. Now...that being said, I don't have binders as big as theirs and I do my system a little bit differently (let's remember - I'm a lazy couponer).

On our first couponing trip I tried to just put my coupons in an envelope, sorted by department. This was a disaster. I still found everything, but it took WAY too long. If I hadn't changed things after that trip I don't think we would still be doing this. I'm pretty sure my family would've either mutinied or had to commit me.

Most binders shown are just full of coupons sorted into baseball card holders. While this is a good idea, it's just not OCD enough for me I guess.

Creating my binder gave me the chance to BE CRAFTY! Yay! Get out the scrapbook supplies baby!

I have built my coupon binder so that I have things divided by department and/or aisle (based on my store). Each section has a space for coupons as well as the list for that department.

I went through a couple of versions before I got the list to be fully functional. I will admit, it's still not perfect, but I know where things are now so it totally works. I've cut a lot of time off of the envelope trials.

I busted out my handy dandy Stampin' Up tag punch (it's one of my favorites) and created some label tabs on  my printer. I adhered them to clear sheet protectors using my Xyron. These tabs used to be in a nice even order down the side of the binder, but after a few revisions, they're now a little off-kilter. I tried to move them, but that Xyron adhesive is not kidding around when it says permanent.

Then I took the poly pockets that got ordered in the wrong size at my office and adhered two of them to the back of every section's page protector. These would hold my coupons. I love them.

In designing my binder, I didn't just want a pile of coupons in each section. Sure, I'd be able to find my coupons easier, but what's the point of buying something with a coupon if it's at a higher than average price? I'm out to save as much as possible without making it difficult on myself. So I created a set of spreadsheets that allow me to track the best prices. I don't use a coupon unless the product is priced at, below or very near my lowest recorded price.

You probably already know this, but let me clue you in...the stores lie to you. Their ad may say that this week's price on hamburger is the lowest of the season, but that's not necessarily true. For example, a couple of weeks ago my store was having their annual anniversary sale. Everything was supposed to be at it's lowest price. Bologna (or is it boloney? I admit I always hear the Oscar Meyer song in my head. But I digress). I am currently in need of restocking my ground beef so I thought this would be the perfect time. Ha! The current price on ground beef (80% lean for those curious) was at $3.97/lb. WHAT?!?! In January I purchased the same beef for $1.89/lb. No way I'm spending more that $2/lb more. Don't trust the store. Watch for yourself.

Each item list page is in alphabetical order and has three separate sections for listing my coupons. This lets me use each sheet of paper for 3 trips. It saves me time (I just transfer over the unused coupons) and it saves paper. Look at that, useful and green.

The column next to each item shows the best price I've purchased that item at. For some items I have also included the lowest price after coupon. (e.g. $1.99/$1.49 - This would mean that $1.99 was the lowest shelf price and $1.49 was the price I paid after the coupon.)

The two columns are used to track how many of an item I need to buy (based on the meal planning and inventory I completed earlier) and what coupons I have available.

I sort each section's coupons by item and write them down in my little code. It's really not that fancy. $0.50 means I have a $0.50 off coupon. BYG1 means buy one get one free. $0.50(2) means get $0.50 off when you buy 2 and $0.50x3 means that I have three of the same coupon for $0.50 off that particular item.

One last step and the binder is ready for the store. Highlighting. Yay for adult coloring!

The yellow highlight is something that I need to buy for the next couple of weeks' planned meals. If the price of that item is close to lowest then I'll buy it. If it's crazy out of whack then I'll wait and readjust my meal plan when I get home.

The pink highlight tells me that the coupon is going to expire before my next planned trip. So again, if the price of that item isn't necessarily at it's lowest, but close enough...I get it. That is, unless I have a pile of coupons for the same thing that will still be good next time.

I move through each category and get things assembled. If it's the first run on that sheet then everything gets typed into the spreadsheet and printed. If it's the second or third run then I just write it in with a pen.

After that, I'm ready to hit the aisles!

Lazy(ish) Sunday

It's getting closer to Halloween and we're getting all prepared at our house. We've spent the last few days getting things ready to go. Darian has finally decided what he wants to be so I spent Friday and Saturday sewing part of his costume. I still have one element left. What has he chosen to be? Finn (with Jake as his trick or treat bag) from Adventure Time. Algebraic!!

So far I have his hat and backpack complete. We had to pick up fabric for Jake last night so I'll be working on him during the upcoming week. (I'll be sharing some tutorials for the costume elements in the next couple of weeks.)

But that's not all we'll be working on next week...we're also getting ready to start assembling our yard decorations. We went out today and spent our set aside "pumpkin cash" in preparation for the event. I still have to go pick up the needed mini-pumpkins, but today we got our twenty, yup...twenty regular sized pumpkins. It's going to be magnificent. I'd tell you the plan, but that would wreck the reveal. I'll share some pics during the week as things move forward.  There is a LOT of carving to do. Tonight I will be wrestling with wire hangers, needle nosed pliers and crepe paper...I'll share those results tomorrow. And don't worry...those pumpkins won't go to waste. I will be keeping the seeds for roasting and the uncarved pumpkins will be broken down for future pies, cookies and bread.

Here's what else I've been doing this week :

Recipes I Used: Tonight's meal is my jambalaya - one of my absolute favorites. I'll be sharing it as it's own post for you tomorrow. This week I was fairly lazy and we did a lot of leftovers and lazy meals (like the makeshift nachos I made a couple of days ago). On Tuesday we continued to break down the leftovers in order to return my stew pots to rotation. I finished off our Peanut Sesame Noodles, a really easy delicious recipe that can be eaten cold or hot. (I found this one on Spark Recipes about six months ago.)

Ingredients :

2 cups cooked spaghetti
1 tbsp. sesame oil
3 tbsp. smooth peanut butter
1 tbsp. fresh ginger (I use 1 tsp. ground ginger)
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
3 tbsp. hot water
1 garlic clove, chopped (I use 1 tsp. garlic powder)
2 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. toasted sesame seeds

Cook spaghetti according to package instructions. In a separate bowl, combine all remaining ingredients - except sesame seeds. Mix until peanut butter is fully dissolved. Blend spaghetti and sauce until noodles are coated. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

I more or less tripled this recipe when I made it last week. That used up a full box of noodles so that I didn't have open ones hanging around. It also provided us with two dinners and two lunches.

Books I Finished: I finished reading Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. It was fantastic! I read it really quickly and it should do well in the brackets. Speaking of which...the next round will be up this week. I started reading Mercy by Jodi Picoult - so far also good.

Projects I Finished: We completed couponing in preparation for November. Our local store was having their "anniversary sale" so there were some really low cost items that made me go out for groceries a couple of weeks early. Collin was busy working so Darian helped me. We did really great and ended up with about a 35% savings margin.

I finished sewing Darian's hat and backpack for his Halloween costume.We also picked up some other craft supplies for five other projects that are on the burner. I am proud to say that I did manage to save 50% on everything purchased thanks to my sale/coupon shopping savvy. In the end, Darian's costume will end up costing me less than $15. Each of the other crafts will work out to about $5 each.

Posts I Posted: We completed two phases of Frugal Meal Planning, including how I lazily clip my coupons. I showed you how Bailey prefers to spend his evenings and I told a tale of home auto repair by Crazy Neighbor only to discover that you all apparently only enjoy Crazy Neighbor when he has the potential to kill someone in the process of his neuroses. (You're all demented and very sick puppies...I respect your dedication to high expectations.)

Favorite Post of the Week: A post from my favorite blogger of all, The Bloggess involving this :

(Tell me you haven't already laughed.)

The Best Thing I Found on the Interwebs: Thanks to my brother Tyler I was introduced to Chuck Testa.

You're welcome.

Coupon Cuttin'

The thing that started all of my food budgeting was hearing about couponing. This was just before the whole thing exploded and crazy couponers became regular conversation, news and a series on TLC. I was a pioneer people...ish.

The first thing I did was sign up for our store's customer rewards program (we use Fred Meyer). By having their customer card we get weekly special deals and we get a percent back each quarter that goes towards future purchases. We save about $12-25 on each trip in store deals and we have been getting another $15-20 in quarterly rewards. That comes out to around $300 so far this year! Some people are worried about the stores using these cards for customer profiling, but I honestly don't care. If they want to know that my family likes Tillamook cheese or Kettle Brand chips, then more power to them.

My second step was obtaining a subscription for our local paper. I'm pretty cheap and we really don't read the paper (we're online news people) so I didn't want to make it a big investment. We happened to be at the store on our very first meal plan trip when the local newspaper had a kiosk recruiting subscribers. We ended up getting a year's subscription of Sundays and holidays for $52. That's $1 per week. Not too shabby. I told Collin that we'd see if this investment paid off. It ended up being worth it. The first week we got the paper I cut out $12 in coupons that we used on our next trip. The subscription paid for itself before the end of the first month. After taking out the amount we spent on the subscription, we've probably saved at least another $200 on our newspaper coupons. If you're keeping track, that's $500 in coupon savings so far.

A lot of couponers will cut coupons weekly (or even daily) and gather extras from neighbors. Some are even die hard enough to go dumpster diving for their coupons. I warned you...I am a lazy couponer. I don't do anything that requires too much extra effort. I don't gather up extra coupons and I don't cut my coupons every week. I pull apart the Sunday paper and stack the coupon flyers plus the ad for Fred Meyer on the kitchen counter. I check the weekly coupons for the local store, but then leave the rest for later. I don't deal with them again until I'm getting ready to plan my trip to the store.

I also get extra coupons online. There are multiple sites that host coupons for printing. These rotate on a regular basis (each site has a different rotation pattern, but checking every two weeks will typically catch the majority of coupons offered). I primarily use Coupons.com and Smart Source. These are both free sources. There are other sites out there that offer coupons via mail for a fee as well as services that will create a list of the week's deals and coupon coordinations. I figure I'm trying to save money, not spend more and I really don't want to spend a bunch of extra time dealing with it. I also don't like having to download a bunch of crap onto my computer in order to operate the various websites. These two sites are simple enough for me and still save me a good amount of money. I print multiples of the coupons that I know I will use. The sites will typically let you "start over" and print additional copies 2-5 times depending on the item. These coupons get me another $20 or so in savings each trip. Figuring twice a month this adds up to $360 this year to date. Total couponing savings this year based on these estimates: $860. Wow.

So every other week (more or less) I sit down and clip out the coupons. I typically do this while I'm watching TV - making use of otherwise nonproductive time.

I first sort the coupon flyers. I put the ones I am going to use in one pile and discard the rest in the garbage. That's right. I throw away coupons. No way I'm wasting my time to clip a coupon for some item I know we'll never use...like say dryer sheets. I'm allergic to them. They're useless to our family so spending time cutting those coupons out would just be dumb.

I most often cut the computer printed coupons using my scrapbook paper cutter and the flyer coupons with my scissors. I've also recruited Collin to help me clip in the past. (FYI...I'm still missing the cover to my Tim Holtz scissors if anyone is wondering. I have NO idea what I did with the darned thing. However, I have been able to avoid skewering myself with them again. Small victories.)

After all the coupons are cut I sort them into piles by category. You'll want to create your own categories based on your store's layout, but I will share mine with you when I talk to you more about my coupon binder.

Once they're categorized I then sort my coupons into my coupon binder. I have adhered little poly pockets to each section's page to keep things contained. More on this next time. I'm so excited! Crafting!!!

This amount of time this process takes depends on how long it's been since my last trip. Typically it takes me about twenty minutes to print the coupons, ten to sort the flyers and thirty to cut and sort. That's at least thirty minutes of perfectly good How I Met Your Mother time.

Now you know all you need to know about uber lazy coupon clipping. Yahoo! See...not that daunting right?

Next time we get to my favorite part...the binder! My binder is my pride and joy. It's been through a few revisions, but I think it's a pretty smart arrangement. Maybe you won't be as impressed as I am. I don't care. I'm still giddy. I might go hug it for a while now.

I Cut Our Family Grocery Budget By More Than Half

In January of this year I decided that I needed to get more organized about our meal planning. Our garage freezer was stocked with things that had been there for over a year while we kept cycling new things in and out. I was losing a good portion of my produce simply because I kept forgetting I had it and never planned it into meals. I never thought about it, I just went with whatever sounded good for dinner. I decided that this needed to change.

This also went hand in hand with another revelation. That revelation? I HATE Wal-Mart. I like their prices, but I hate going in them. I don't know about the ones around you, but generally I come out of the ones near my house feeling somehow less "clean". Have you seen People of Walmart? There's a reason we avoid it. Collin & I even tried switching to one a little further away from our house hoping that it would be less "ghetto", but within six months you wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. We came to the agreement that Wal-Mart had to go.

Our friends Owen & Patti had been touting the joys of shopping at Fred Meyer for months. Short of their ridiculously huge bulk meat purchases from Costco (that's right...I'm looking at you guys...) they picked up nearly all of their groceries there and loved it. (In their defense, buying bulk is a lot cheaper and if you have a big freezer it's well worth it - we do it too.)

I had also been introduced to The Krazy Coupon Lady about this same time by my friend Erin. The woman who operates this site was saving huge amounts of money by buying her groceries based on what was on sale and what coupons she had available. I was talking to my Mom about it and she started telling me about how she clipped coupons when we were kids and it saved her a pretty decent amount of money.

So...I made it a resolution. We were not going to shop at Wal-Mart any longer, we were going to start using Fred Meyer. We were going to meal plan and we were going to use coupons to shop. I started implementing the plan in late January and to date we have saved about 30% on our groceries by couponing alone. Meal planning has reduced our waste and we have lowered our household grocery budget from about $400/month for the three of us to about $150/month.

Now. There are a few things you need to know about me before you read on further.

#1 - The way I coupon will not get you through the grocery line with $1000 worth of groceries for under $20. I don't have that much time on my hands and I'd rather spend what free time I do have doing something I enjoy more. I also refuse to beg my neighbors for their coupons or go dumpster diving to get them. Nope. Not my style.

#2 - I do not go to the grocery store every week. I am not a fan of that either. I go once a month for the majority of things and then add an additional trip about two weeks in to get my second half of produce and restock my dairy, as needed. So I don't always get the absolute best price (we're talking like a $0.10 difference, if that) and I occasionally have coupons that expire (the horror!).

#3 - In order to work my meal plan, I occasionally have to buy things that are not on sale or at their lowest price. I try to keep this at a minimum by moving those recipes that require a non-sale ingredient to the end of the month. That way I may catch it on sale during my produce run.

#4 - I DO NOT coupon the way you see on Extreme Couponing. I refuse to buy more than makes sense and I will not run a store out of an item just because I can get it cheaper. It will go on sale again. I get what I need for a couple of months and then wait it out. I hate people who clear the shelves. It wrecks it for everyone else who is just trying to save a dime for their families.

#5 - I like cooking, but I hate cleaning up. I don't like messes...they mess with my OCD. So I am all about the simple meals. I also like keeping some quickfire meals available on the list for days when work has been ugly or I'm just not feeling like putting forth much effort. This means that we occasionally deviate from the meal plan, moving a recipe up or down the schedule or just grabbing one of the quickfire meals and replacing a menu item all together.

So this is my mission. I will share what I do with the rest of you. Not to make you crazy couponers and obsessive shoppers, but to maybe help your family save a few bucks here and there without spending a ton of time. The whole shebang typically takes up about 5 hours per month. I don't think that's too bad.

So if you're interested in seeing what semi-lazy meal planning and couponing can do...just stick around. I'll be breaking it down by task. No sense in getting overwhelmed. Next lesson...inventory. (Sounds daunting, doesn't it? I promise...it's not that bad.)

Oh...and FYI. To date, I have only been to Wal-Mart twice since we made the resolution. Neither of these times was actually for myself. I went once to pick up a prescription for a family member and once to get a gift card for my employee (who requested Wal-Mart). Collin has only been one additional time, to pick up a headlight for his mom at 11:30 at night when no one else was open. I think that's pretty darned good.