This Week’s Haul

 

2 boxes of muffin mix ($.36/each)

6 jars of baby foor ($.06/each) (I think my husband panicked when he saw the baby food jars…hee, hee)

3 toothpaste (FREE)

Not a huge haul but every little but adds up, right?

I just received an email from Care 2 Action emphasizing how many charities will be overwhelmed with requests for help as the holidays approach.  Food Banks in particular will be hard hit.

What can you do right now to help?  I know what I’m doing.  I am going to keep on couponing for good.  If I can pick up 10 items each week, that will be close to 100 items by Christmas…see every little bit helps!

If you have any ideas of other simple, easy ways to help others, let me know.  If we all do just a little we really can make the world a better place.

Peace Out Coupon Scout,

Kate

 

 

 

SNAP Budget- FAIL

I haven’t posted for the past few days.  I am embarrassed.  You see, I failed on a SNAP budget.  I truly thought I could do it.  Not only did I think I could do it, I thought it would be fairly easy. HA!  I laugh at myself.

Three days into it and I tossed in the towel.  While it’s true that weekly I don’t usually spend more than $150-$175 at the grocery store, every 4-6 weeks I stock up on things at COSTCO.  Moreover, we eat out once or twice a week -never anything fancy, pizza or sub sandwiches, but not meals that I count in my grocery budget. It makes a difference.  We were not off by lots of money but we were off by enough.  It got complicated and frustrating and I quit.  I am feeling very fortunate that I could just quit.

This experiment not only made it clear to me how hard it is to be on food stamps, it also made me realize how important food banks that can supplement SNAP are and why couponing for good is in fact, a good idea.

For more information on SMAP and protecting it, go here:

http://www.strength.org/blog/snap/stories

I did not find any great couponing freebies this past week but am hoping there will be some good ones in the ads tomorrow.  I’ll keep you posted.  Remember, the food banks need us!

Peace Out Coupon Scout!

Kate

 

Pumpkins on the Cheap

We first moved to GA three years ago.  I wanted to make our first Halloween here special for the kids as they had been upset by the move.  We went to a wonderful pumpkin patch with all kinds of rides and a corn maze.  It was a blast.  Before leaving I let each of my children pick out their own pumpkin.  My oldest, 11 at the time, picked out the largest pumpkin he could carry.  He slowly and carefully carried it over (possibly even rolled it over) to the scale to be weighed and was so proud of his obscenely large squash. I was not as pleased especially when I saw it ring up for $19…. FOR ONE PUMPKIN!

Needless to say, we no longer purchase our pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.  We still go and take part in all the pumpkin games.  We just purchase our pumpkins at ALDI….and look at these beauties.  I got them for $3.49 each!

Halloween Decorations on the Cheap

This really isn’t meant to be a how to be frugal blog.  There are so many of those and I am really not trying to jump on the bandwagon.  My purpose with this blog is to highlight some freebies you can pick up to donate each week and motivate folks to help others in a simple way that doesn’t cost much time or money.

But I just can’t help showing off my super inexpensive and easy to do Halloween mantel decorations.  This cute little get up only cost me $11.

Here’s what I bought:

• 4 leaf garlands
• 4 foam pumpkins
• 2 large spiders
• 1 spider web

I purchased everything at The Dollar Store.  I had spray paint and the 2 large candles on hand which helped me stay super frugal.  I spray painted 2 of the garlands and 2 of the pumpkins black and I sprayed the other 2 pumpkins cream.  Everything I painted got 2 light coats of spray paint.  Then I just plopped it all on my mantel (after waiting 24 hours for everything to dry of course) and Voila! A seasonally decorated mantel!

I suppose in order to make this fit in with my blogs purpose I could suggest that you pick up a few of these items and donate them somewhere in order to help an organization create their own seasonal decorations….or I could just admit that I just wanted to show off my cute mantel!