Lindsay
My Secret to Being Super Busy at Home
My Secret to Being Super Busy at Home
Lindsay
Harvest Festival at Dollywood
Harvest Festival at Dollywood
Lindsay
North Chicagoland

Frugal Finds

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A Peek into June's Monthly Shopping

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Monthly grocery Shopping at Super Busy at Home. Money saving, budget conscious ways to save money for your family!

So this past weekend we went grocery shopping.  But not just any grocery shopping...monthly grocery shopping.  

If you want you can read all about my Monthly Shopping Trips to salvage and discount stores to see where exactly I go and how and why I do it.  

As always, while driving to the first store we go to (which is about half an hour away) I am frantically finishing my grocery list and trying to remember if we needed vanilla or if we were good on that. 

I always remember though to stop in the midst of the craziness and the whining from the backseat for donuts, and pray for God's favor.  

After all, staying home is tough on the fiscal side of our household and groceries make up a big chunk of where our money goes.  

God doesn't let us down.  I am not surprised and yet every time He blows me away. 

I thought I would show you just a teeny bit of the deals that we scored this time around. 

Monthly grocery Shopping at Super Busy at Home. Money saving, budget conscious ways to save money for your family!

I just can't believe the deals we got!  I know the photo shows some but let me expand a bit:

Orange Juice for 39 Cents!  The children love orange juice but I am a stickler that they can only have one glass a day.  Despite the vitamins it contains when you factor in the sugar content verses the fiber it lacks when the actual fruit is taken away, it's better to go for straight, whole fruits than just their juices.  Anyway, we go through about a carton and a half a week so we bought 6 of them for a total of $2.34!  How amazing is it that we bought enough orange juice to last us an entire month for less than the cost of one carton at a super market?  And in case you are wondering, these are not past their expiration date.  There's nothing wrong with them.  We have a deep freezer so we kept one out and froze the rest.  Amazing deal! 

Fage yogurt for $4 a case!  That's 12 cups of yogurt for $4.00.  These yogurts are about $1.29 at the stores near us so we saved $11.48 on something that would have cost us $15.48 at the store.  We stocked up and bought 3 cases of yogurt.  Again, we keep out a carton of yogurt and the rest goes into the deep freezer.  We were lucky to find that they were vanilla so it's a neutral flavor that can have preserves or fruit mixed in so we don't get bored.  Nick takes a yogurt to work every day and the kids love it so we go through a lot of this stuff.  Score!

Organic Buttermilk for 50 cents each!  Such an amazing deal :)  If I don't have buttermilk I usually do the 'ole teaspoon of vinegar to cup of milk trick to make buttermilk but in truth this buttermilk is so much creamier and yummier than my janked up version.  

Sargento cheeses for 50 cents each.  These go for about $3 at the store and they are so yummy!  We like to keep some little cheeses on hand so when we need a date-ish type thing to do we can break out some crackers and cheese after the kiddos go to bed and watch a movie. 

So those are just some of my finds.  As you can see, when all of the things I buy are discounted this deeply, it's no wonder we save so much money!  

Happy Shopping! 


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Menu Planning Meets Monthly Shopping

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If you've read my blog for any length of time I am sure that you have heard me prattle on and on about how we work on a monthly grocery shopping system.  I love it.  LOVE it!  We've done this for years now but now that God has blessed us with a deep freezer I am loving it even more.  

The gist of it is that we live in a city surrounded by Amish land so once a month we drive around to smaller country shops run by cute amish families and stock up on groceries...some are salvage stores, some are local butcher shops, some are dented can type places.  There I can fill my fridge and freezer with some real beauties of bargains!  Seriously, we pray before (as) we go...that God will bless us with what we need.  That God will provide for us (and our budget!) through these trips.  And he always does.  But buying in bulk sometimes eludes me from meal planning.  I generally find myself buying general types of ingredients and then later on trying to piece together what I have to make meals.  It seems to work super, fabulously well the first part of the month but leaves me with large gaps of missing ingredients for recipes the last part of the month.  

Anyway...

The farthest away place we go takes about 45 minutes on the interstate, so it does take some time and gas, but if you are getting a lot like we do then it is definitely worth the trip.  Here are some of my all time favorite finds: 

5 pounds of Starbucks whole bean coffee for $14.97

King Arthur Organic Whole Wheat flour, 5 pounds, for $1.99

Fage case of 12 blueberry yogurts for $1.99

32 ounces of Chobani vanilla yogurt for $0.50 

And the list goes on and on!  

Well anyway, I love my bargains but my problem has been the difference that falls between shopping at these places and my meal plans.  For example, I've made a menu plan with something like clam chowder, but when I get to my said bargain stores, I can't find any of the ingredients I need.  So then I buy some of the ingredients, get home and discover though that I don't have

all

of the ingredients...so I am forced to shop our local grocery store where I pay two to three times more than I should on ingredients, thus cutting into my savings.  

So this week, rather than be daring and inventive with my meal planning, I decided to stick with meals containing ingredients I already have on hand or what I know, know, know is at our discount stores.  This way I will be able to plan good food ahead of time so I can be on top of my menus and save lots of money.  

To get ideas for meals I asked my dear friends on facebook, am perusing pinterest, and am going through the stack of magazines I have on hand.  I am going through to plan what I am going to serve for the entire month...breakfast, lunch, and dinner for every day of the month.  With only 28 days in February I figure this is a good month to start my new system :)  

Wish me luck as I tackle menu planning.  And I'd love to know if any of you have any pointers for planning meals or maybe some of you have some amazing recipes to share :)  

Look for my next post as I list what I am planning on making :)  

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My Buys: Carter's Clearance

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Yesterday we went to the Outlet Mall near our house.

We all went and it was so much fun.  It was pretty cold but it was sunny and beautiful outside.  On the way Emma was telling us that while there we should look for pajamas "Because seriously guys, everytime I put p.j.s on I wake up and am an inch taller.  So we need new pajamas."  She's so silly!  And while she may be exagerating a teensy-eensy bit, she was right, she's growing right out of all of her clothes!

Starting last weekend, I had been getting emails regarding sales going on at different stores there.

One of them was Carters. 

We scored some amazing deals!  If you have a Carters near you I encourage you to go.  Run!  Hurry. 

Here's what I got, in order of the pictures:

Blue half zip sweatshirt/track jacket for Cal: $3.19 on sale from $30.00

Shirt for Emma (I thought this would be super cute for her gym class!): $3.19 on sale from 18.00!

2 piece purple pajamas for Emma: $3.19 on sale from $32.00

3 piece pink pajamas for Emma: $3.19 on sale from $34.00 (that's a 91% savings, y'all!)

3 piece space pajamas for Calvin:$3.19 on sale from $34.00!

I should tell you that I do not usually find anything at Carters.  For the quality a lot of time their clothes are just too expensive for me.   I usually prefer to shop at Gymboree, Hartstrings, Hanna Andersson.  But I always look. 

Yesterday I saw this super cute red tulle skirt for Valentine's Day!  It was some crazy price like 38.00 or something.  Wha???  I just can't fork over that much money for something she'll wear once, maybe twice.  Yoinkers.  But like I said, I always look.

So I guess if you are on here looking for a little snippet of advice, it would be to not disregard stores for deals.  I mean, honestly, it has been probably 2 years since I've found a deal at Carter's, but I look every time I go there.  Nick thinks this is a huge waste of time, usually...but not yesterday!  And really he doesn't hem and haw too much, he knows what I am doing and trusts me to hurry it up if I'm not finding anything. 

And if you will need Christmas pajamas for this Christmas, they had oodles on sale!!!  I had my eye on some super cute ones but they didn't have any matching ones in the sizes we will need.  Oh well! 

So super happy with what I found.  The Lord always provides!

Happy Shopping!!! :)