Family Home Evening

As a Latter-Day Saint I try to participate in the weekly ritual of Family Home Evening. This week I decided to plan the activity. We would be learning about staying within our budget, food storage, and personal preparedness. After I got home from work Evan and I headed out to K-mart. We hardly ever venture into the store, because frankly it kinda scares me and the prices are the same as my clean, well-lit Target. But alas they lured me in with the promise to double the value of my coupons. Here is a picture of our purchase.

Recap of what we purchased:

5 boxes of Kellogs Special K cereal

2 boxes of Kashi Go Lean

3 cans Campbells Tomato Soup

1 can Campbells Chicken Noodle soup

5 tubs of Huggies wipes

1 bottle of Huggies lotion

1 bottle of Huggies Shampoo

1 bottle of Huggies body wash

1 5pack of Bic highlighters

2 Men's Speed Stick deodorant

1 Arm& Hammer toothpaste

Grand total= 15 CENTS plus I got a coupon for $5.00 off my next purchase of $5.00 or more

Evan and I have come to love our little shopping "dates." As appreciation Evan even collected all the stray carts in the parking lot and put them in the cart return.

Recently we have kept a pretty accurate expense report sheet and as September draws to a near I am proud to announce to my posterity (and to the rest of you) that we have spent $61.86 on groceries ($163.14 UNDER budget), $11.16 on household items ($3.84 Under budget), $9.96 on personal hygiene products ($5.04 Under budget), $35.47 on gifts ($10.47 OVER budget; but considering it included 7 baby shower gifts, a Christmas gift for my nephew and a Christmas gift for my niece AND the wrappings to go with it, I'm ok with going over 11 dollars).

All in all I think we had a productive family night and reviewed the basics of budgeting and personal preparedness.

Retail therepy

Since I follow a few "frugle" blogs I came across an AWESOME coupon. $10.00 off any purchase in the juniors department at Sears (NO MINIMUM PURCHASE)!! At my Sears right now they are having a sale on their clearance...40% off the already marked down clothes. So I found two tops. They rang up with tax 9.09. I gave the cashier my coupon and paid $0.00 out of pocket! Then I raced home to print off two more coupons, when I realized that the "juniors" bathing suits were not in the Juniors section, but with all the other bathing suits. Both bathing suits rang up at $8.99. I did two seperate transactions to get both tops for free!! Can you believe that?? I still can't believe it.

Also Seventeen Magazine was doing a promo with ULTA, a beauty supply store, if you bring in a printed copy of Seventeen Magazine's home page you get a free FULL SIZE Bad gal's Mascarra. If you haven't heard of this mascara lets just say it's "pricey." I got over to Ulta a couple hours after it opened and got the last one!