stephanie * also known as mom

Woohoo!  Guess what guys.  Another new $10 off any purchase code at Medco.    Just head on over to the  Medco Health Store. And remember you don’t have to spend $10, if you spend $9.50 the coupon will still work and you’ll just pay shipping of $0.99.  This is coupon is working for new and old customers.

They have diapers, wipes, vitamins, toothpaste, allergy & pain medicine and so much more. So hurry and click on over and score an awesome deal. Use coupon code: DR10.

In the P&G insert that was in yesterday’s newspaper (6/6/10) there is a $2 off Pampers Baby Wipes 60 ct or larger coupon.  This week SuperFresh (and that usually means A&P too), has Pampers Wipes on sale for $1.99 a package as long as you have the shopper’s card.  Combine the sale price with the coupon & you get free baby wipes!

This week I bought 3 newspapers at Dollar Tree totaling $3, The baby wipes are usually $3.99 a package, and I got them for free!  So before I use any of my other coupons, I’ve already made money off this week’s newspaper purchases.

Raising a Family on a Budget
During the 4MOMS Networking Hour
Robert Wood Johnson Center for Health & Wellness
Thursday, July 15, 2010 from 1-2p
Admission: FREE

Come out & receive tips and tricks for finding the best deals and making your coupons work for you, as well as ideas on how to stretch a buck in other ways. Also find out how to get great deals & freebies directly from the manufacturers!

Additional details about items in the goody bags & other giveaways during the workshop will be posted as we get closer to the event.

The 4MOMS Networking hour is a free weekly support group/playgroup for moms with young children (newborn – preschool). You are welcome to bring your child(ren) to this event.

Please feel free to invite other mommies that you know!

RSVP to this event on Facebook!

It’s back again! The $10 off any purchase is back again.  But, wait…awesome news.  Now, you don’t have to be a Medco member to shop.  Woohoo!  Just head on over to the  Medco Health Store. They have a $10 off any purchase coupon and there is only $.99 shipping. And you don’t have to spend $10, if you spend $9.50 the coupon will still work and you’ll just pay shipping of $0.99.  This is for new customers only.

They have diapers, wipes, vitamins, toothpaste, allergy & pain medicine and so much more. So hurry and click on over and score an awesome deal. Use coupon code: FIRST10

I created an account in my name & in my husbands to be able to use this offer twice and got 8 boxes of baby Mum-Mums for only $1.98 in shipping & handling!  These snacks retail for $3.79 at my local grocery store so this was a huge savings for me.  I’m not sure how long this will last, so get it while it’s hot!

Thanks to livingrichwithcoupons for sharing this information!

June means the end of school, the start of summer, opportunities to BBQ, farm stands open in full swing, and a clean slate for all of the coupon websites!  Check out your favorites today as many of the coupons get reset on the first of the month:

• Stonyfield Farm
• RedPlum
• SmartSource
• Coupons.Com

With May being as crazy & hectic as it was, I never got around to planning a menu for our families dinners.  This lead me to realize two things:

1. I need to be organized and menu planning does that for me
2. When I don’t have a menu plan, my family eats a lot more junk

So tonight I sat down to plan out dinners for June.  A few things came into play with my meal planning.  The first is that I am tired of eating the same thing every month, so this month we are trying out seven new recipes!  I am excited to be trying something new and different, and if they go over well these recipes will become family staples.  The second thing is that I am participating in the All You Grocery Challenge which begins on June 20th.  Some meals may have to be tweaked once I have done my shopping so that I stay within the financial boundaries of the contest.

All that aside, my June menu is finished and now I can begin the pantry & freezer inventory, and therefore compile my massive grocery list.  I like doing one major shopping trip a month (even if it takes several days to different stores), so now I am off to do some online comparison shopping before actually going to the grocery stores.

Feel free to post your weekly or monthly menu plans too!  The more we share the less bored we will all be with what’s for dinner.

My daughter turned one on May 14th, and yesterday was her party with all of the family & friends.  Since we have a large family, and a small house, we decided to have the party at Mercer County Park.

Our idea was to have a bbq and cook hotdogs on the grills, but when the forecast said 70% chance of showers during the early afternoon, plan B was to get deli trays instead.  So I put the 12 packages of hotdog buns, and 9 packs of hotdogs in the freezer (I’m grateful for having a large freezer) on Saturday afternoon and headed to our local deli.  After talking with the deli manager for a few minutes I found out that they couldn’t do the deli trays on such short notice.  On to plan C – make the deli trays myself.

I found a site that recommended 4oz of lunch meat & 2 oz of cheese per person, so that is what I did.  All total I spent $83 and got 2 lbs each of American Cheese, Ham, Turkery, Roast Beef, and Chicken, plus the 2 plastic trays to put it all on.  If I had purchased the deli trays containing the same amount of lunch meat, I would have spend about $130!  My savings – $47.  Since we had already been planning on a picnic, I had already prepared potato salad, fruit salad, 7 layer salad, pasta salad, and an Asian Coleslaw, plus several bags of snacks.  Total cost of about $15.  I love to bake, and think that the best invention when it comes to birthday cakes are the Wilton shaped cake pans.  It took about 2 hours to decorate my daughter’s cake, but it the end she had the most adorable Winnie the Pooh cake.

The pavilion at Mercer County Park already had the picnic tables, so we didn’t have to rent anything, and the playground was about 20 feet from the tables.  The children had a wonderful time.  My son played non-stop for the 3 hours we were at the park.  My daughter like being with all the people, and the cool breeze in her hair (what little bit she has).  The party itself was a huge success!  The rain held off until evening, and the weather was cool and breezy so no one got overheated with all that running around going on.

My husband and I were so happy with how things went at the park, that we have decided this is our new go to spot for children’s birthday parties.

My husband and I both have iPhones and absolutely love them!  I know a lot of people can’t justify the additional cost of a data plan, but considering his job pays his monthly bill, paying for the data plan on just one phone isn’t that bad.

My favorite thing about the iPhone is the applications.  I have about 80 different applications on my phone, and just about all of them were free.  Here are my top picks:

1. MEEBO – Meebo is a web based chat client that gives you one interface for using all of your other chat programs.  I use it on my iPhone as well as on my desktop computer to chat via Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc.  It is a great resource, and as long as I am logged in on the phone it will run in the background.  Then, when my husband would normally text me, he sends me a message using Meebo instead and it saves on the text count for the month.
2. CardStar – CardStar takes the place of all of the key tags you acquire to the grocery stores.  You input all of your information into their program and then when you get to the checkout counter you just open up the program, click on the store, and the bar code for that store’s key tag will show up on the screen.  The downside, all card numbers have to be entered in on the phone & there is no web interface.
3. GasCubby – This has got to be one of my favorite aps & it is so practical too!  GasCubby tracks your gas usage & can calculate your mpg.  You can also use it to track vehicle service records.  The best part is you can link several vehicles together, for example, my husband & I sync our accounts so that we both know when the vehicles are in need of service.

I just joined the All You grocery challenge.  Do any of my other frugalista friends what to join me?  This type of challenge will get us to really clip coupons, menu plan, bargain shop & watch our spending in addition to thinking about what we put on or families table.  The challenge: for 4 weeks, spend no more than $25 per person per week on groceries.  That means all the food you consume for breakfast, lunch, dinner & snacks.

We are a family of four, so that gives me $100 a week to play with.  You will need to keep receipts to show what your actual spending is, so no cutting corners and stocking your pantry now to use the food later unless you plan on keeping the receipts.  My strategy is to clip coupons, utilize Aldi & Halo Farm, and enjoy the produce from my own garden.

Good luck & happy savings!

When I first got my driver’s license my mom made sure that I had jumper cables, a quart of oil, and loose change in the car before I would go out.  When I got a little older, the emergency kit also included a cell phone charger, flashlight, and road map.  Now as a parent, it includes a whole other bag of stuff that I never considered keeping with us until recently.

It all began on Mother’s Day.  My husband and I took the kids for a ride and to run a few errands.  We decided that it would be a nice day for a drive, and after two hours decided to stop at a diner for lunch.  Not planning on being out all day, I only had a few diapers for each child & some wipes in the diaper bag.  No snacks, baby food, bibs, or utensils.  What is a family to do?  We stopped at a tiny grocery store where I bought 2 jars of food for my daughter and a package of yogurt melts for the kids to snack on.  Then we went to the diner for lunch.

Ok, so that wasn’t too bad.  But I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to have some stuff in the car in case of an emergency or spontaneous road trip instead of having to track down a store first?

After posting on Facebook that I wanted some suggestions from other parents, here is what I came up with:

• First Aid Kit – cost about $5 but has a ton of bandaids, ointment, antiseptic towels, Tylenol, etc.
• Extra diapers & wipes – picked up a travel pack of wipes for $1 and put 4 diapers per child in a ziploc bag
• Change of clothes for each child – both of my kids are young, so a bodysuit & pair of pants will work out well
• Snacks – I have several prepackaged snacks that the kids like so that is what went in my kit: cereal bars, container of cereal, Mum-Mums, Gerber Puffs
• Random ointments, wipes, etc – I have a bunch of samples that I have received so they all went in a ziploc bag & got tossed into the kit
• Sunblock – $1 in the sample bin
• Baby powder – $1 in the sample bin

Some friends had also suggested small toys, swimsuits/swim diapers, juice boxes, water, potty seat, change of clothes for parents, towels, blanket, straws, lollipops, and paper towels.  I figured I had enough stuff in my emergency kit, so I decided to not bring anything else.

So yesterday we put the new Emergency Kit to the test.  The family went for a day trip to Island Beach State Park to play in the sand.  It was the first time either of our children had gone to the beach, so we were excited to see their reactions to the sand and the ocean.  I am a bit of a beach bum, so I was much more excited than anyone else in the family.  My son was not sure what he thought of the water, and didn’t want it to splash over his toes.  My daughter wasn’t thrilled with the sand either!  When I tried to get her to stand up in the sand, she lifted both legs up & sat in the air with her tush hovering over the ground!  After a little bit, I carried my daughter down to the water’s edge to see what she thought of the ocean.  Again she pulled her legs up so not to touch the water or the sand with her delicate little toes.

My husband chased our son who was collecting shells & sand, and I took a little walk along the water.  Since it was only in the mid-60s I was wearing jeans, so as the waves were crashing I kept jumping back a little so my pants wouldn’t get soaked.  Well, wouldn’t you know that two waves crashed in close succession, and the water was getting higher around my ankles, so I took a few steps backwards to keep from getting soaked and that’s when it happened…I fell into the ocean while holding my daughter!  Another small wave crashed over my legs, and the cold water was everywhere!  My jeans were soaked, and not just at the ankles, but everywhere.  So was the bottom third of my shirt.  My daughter was just in a bodysuit, so her legs got a little wet but not too bad.  I was dripping.  My husband came over to help me get up, and I was crying & laughing so hard.  Once I calmed down our daughter it was time for me to air out.  Stood on the beach for about 30 minutes, then tied a towel around my waist and used the hand blower in the ladies room to dry my jeans out some more for the 2 hour drive home.

The moral of this story, when your friends recommend that you also put a change of clothes in the emergency kit for yourself, do it, or else you might just fall in the ocean to prove a point!