Becentsable workshop

My dh and I went to the workshop yesturday. In all honesty, I was not that impressed, but I did learn some things and I have more of an idea now of how to get started. We actually missed some of the first part of it due to bad weather, but we got caught up after a little while. Our educator was really good and knowledgable, but I think that the program could be a little more in-depth. They only have a very short time to go over awholelotta information. As I put these things into practice, I'll post about it. I did score 12 more sets of inserts at the gas station that I went to last week, so soon I will have quite a stash of coupons! If any of you are starting out in couponing leave me a comment as to how it is going for you

Buried Treasure!

Okay, so how many people that you know use coupons? As for me, I've never even seen anyone use them let alone used one myself. I thought that coupons were just for people that bought alot of junk food and wanted to save a very little bit on that purchase. That is until I found a blog that shows how this lady uses them. I had never in my life heard of people using coupons like this and I thought that it was not possible. That is until I found many more sites ( more than 50) that showed that these people were doing the same thing.

This was like finding buried treasure for me! My family has a budget of $47.50 a week for groceries. That includes perishables and non perishables. Talk about a daunghting task! I found the website Becentsable.net that offers workshops that teach you how to maximize your savings at the store using coupons. I am planning on attending on September 21( I'll blog about what I learned there afterwards). I also found wonderful sites ( I will add them into my sidebar later) that help you learn everything you need to know about couponing, stockpiling( here are some pics of stockpiles), rebates etc...

So lately I have made a major change in lifestyle. I am no longer ignorant to the major stores agenda, and plan to spend as little as need be to get the things we need.

I also found these great sites-Hotcouponworld.com and STL Mommy. They are so helpful and loaded with info that is essential for being a savvy saver. I had no clue of what to do, so I set out to learn as much as I could this past weekend. I read coupons inserts come mainly in the Sunday paper, and that sometimes you could get them for free if they hadn't sold. So I went to every gas station in town to see if I could get any for free and guess what? One place let me have 12 papers worth of inserts!! They said that I could do that every Sunday!! I decided to get alot right from the start, since I read and saw pictures of so many people that stockpile and they get 40 or more a week. I was excited and right away started asking questions on these websites to find out how to use what I had gotten. The first thing they told me to do was to organize them in stacks and then file them away with the name of the certain insert and date. They said not to clip them, but to just file them away and clip when I need a certain coupon. I thought that I would organize it a little bit more and used some sticky tabs to list what coupons I wanted from inside the insert, then I just stuck it right on the front of that insert. This is as far as I have gotten so far, but I will keep posting on this subject since it is completely new to me and I am learning from scratch. Hopefully I can complile a "how to use coupons" once I have gotten my feet a little wet.

New Cookbook and Meal Planning

Since returning to the US, we have really seen the need in our own lives to live and spend as frugally as we can. My husband is working only 4 days a week (and it depends on the weather most of the time since he is a construction worker) and attending Paramedic school for 2 days. We figured that our budget for food weekly comes out to be around 35$. So I have searched all over the internet and have been excited about all that I have found in regards to saving money by using coupons, rebates etc. I hope to add another section to my blog about this in the future when I have tried it and gotten past the "newbie stage". I will also be attending a Becentsable.net workshop, and will post about that after we go. I have been looking for good, simple, nutritious cookbooks and have had a real hard time finding one that I would use almost daily. That is until I stubbled onto this at the library. This cookbook is simply put -practical and fun. It has great recipes that are unique and simple. I made one the other morning called "Sausage and Egg gravy over biscuits" and my husband even told his boss about it at work since it was so good (a very rare occasion). It is in a format that works like a meal plan for the whole year! It has cute little ideas for kids like peanut butter playdough and cleaning and kitchen tips that are really useful. Kudos to Penny E. Stone for this cookbook. I plan to buy it and found one on fetchbooks.info for $ .60. Check it out. Let me know if you have a treasured cookbook that fits all your families needs, I'd love to find more like this one.