Free Ice Cream Day at Walmart (today 5/30/09)

Stop by your local Walmart for a free ice cream treat between 11-4. Check out this link to see if your Walmart is participating. Featured brands will include Ben & Jerry's, Blue Bunny, Breyers, Edy's slow churned, Haagen Daas, Hershey's, Keebler, Klondike, Popsicle and Reddi Whip.

Lowe's Build & Grow Clinics

Check out this link for some fun Father's Day ideas that your kids can put together for free at your local Lowe's.

My shopping trip (a few days ago)

I don't know about you, but I had a great Memorial Day weekend. It was busy and I just haven't had a chance to post what I bought last Friday. It was a pretty good sale (still is - through tonight).

(Sorry it's kinda fuzzy - I've been having some issues with the camera lately)

1 DiGiorno Flatbread Melt (free)

1 Kashi meal (free)

3 boxes Keebler Graham Crackers

3 bags Kraft marshmallows

3 pkgs Hershey's chocolate

4 Kraft dressings (free)

1 pkg Albertson's hot dog buns

1 bottle Planters Dry Roasted nuts

5 Gatorades

5 Kraft BBQ sauce

3 pkgs Bar S Hot dogs

1 pkg Bar S bologna

1 bag Cheetos

2 Juicy Juice

4 Darigold milk

4 bags Pepperidge Farms goldfish

6 cups Kraft Easy Mac

4 tubes Colgate toothpaste

5 Skintimate shaving gel

1 8pk Coke (missing in picture)

Spent $57.78

Saved $102.23

58 items - spent about $1.00 each

I have to say that I also shopped at a different Albertson's this week. I was very impressed with the Layton store! I talked with the store mgr and she was very nice. I even found a few extra coupons that I could use in the store on the items I was going to purchase that night!!!! I'll definately be back.

A quick coupon reminder

Due to the holiday weekend, you won't get any coupons in this Sunday's paper. They should pick up again next week.

Have a great 3 day Memorial Holiday!

Free Baby Welcome Kit from Target

I saw this posted on another blog. It sounds like a bunch of really fun stuff. This is the season for babies. I'm sure most people know someone who is pregnant right now.

Thanks - wantitall4free! Congratulations and enjoy your new little one.

Hosting a class

I haven't blogged about hosting a class in a while, so I thought I'd take the opportunity.

I honestly save between 40 and 60% every time I go to the grocery store. I would love to show you how I do this.

I'm currently booking classes for June and July. If you'd like to pull a group together (co-workers, friends, family, neighbors, church groups, mom's groups, couples - whatever), I would love to teach you this. I'll come to you.

• The class is free
• The website I use is free
• And who couldn't use a fun night out? (I promise to make it fun).

You can email me at callmestacy@yahoo.com or call me at 801-589-3946 to set up a date and time.

Things I do to save and for the convenience

If you've looked at some of the shopping trips I've made, you will notice that I don't usually pick up milk or beef. Here's what I do, do though.

1 - Every fall, we get 1/4 of a beef. It is enough meat to last my family of 5 for a year. We get lots of steaks and hamburger with a few roasts. I've never sat down to compare the costs at the store, I mostly do this for the convenience of being able to run to the freezer for something. As a time saver, I will pull about 5 lbs of hamburger out at a time, brown in and re-freeze it for those quick meals. I also bottled some of the hamburger to put into food storage. I also just canned a bunch of chicken - I don't want to look at raw chicken again, but it sure tastes good.

2 - I get milk delivered by a local dairy. The price is pretty close to what we'd pay at the grocery store. I get it delivered twice a week, so we're never out. Plus, this milk does not have any weird preservatives added and it tastes ssssoooooooooo much better! We drink skim milk and it's as creamy as the store 2% milk. My husband is a huge milk drinker and I often tease him that we just need to park Bessie in the back yard with as much milk as he can consume.

3 - I've joined a co-op to add more fruits and veggies to our diet. Needless to say this is something that has positively impacted our family.

4 - I'm committed to gardening this summer. I read the Square Foot Garden book, by Mel Bartholomew and loved it. I have not been the best gardener in the past, but this looks easy and managable. I will post pictures of the different stages of my garden in a future post. I'm almost ready to plant (hopefully this weekend).

5- Whenever I find butter, bread or marshmallows on sale - I stock up and throw those into the freezer to use at a later date. Yes, I freeze marshmallows. I read about doing this on Pinching Your Pennies. I tried it and it works. You just need to allow about an hour for the marshmallows to thaw. They are as soft as if you just bought them from the store. I've even heard that you can freeze milk (always allow plenty of time for it to thaw though). I've not personally tried this only because we never have any excess milk at our house.

6 - I bought a FoodSaver earlier this year. I've mostly used it to seal bottles, containing items that I've bought in bulk (chocolate chips, left over holiday candy, spices etc....). This method gives those foods with shorter shelf lives a longer shelf life if you can remove the air.

7 - As my bananas go black because no one ate them, I peel them and add them to my plastic bag in the freezer. It's nice to have some very ripe bananas in case I need to whip up a quick loaf of banana bread.

These are just some of the things I do. I would love to hear what you do to save time, $$ or just out of convenience.

Look what Mother Nature brought this week.

As you know, I've kinda gotten into this fun Co-op thing. I think I'm addicted. I truly love the idea that I have almost all the things in my fridge to make a salad now. Before doing this, I never had all the ingredients.

I also love the element of surprise. I love not knowing what I'm getting each time. It challenges me to try and incoporate new fruits and veggies into what we're eating. My family has also enjoyed trying things I would not normally buy at the store.

I decided to get the bread this time (can't wait to try it)

5 loaves 9 grain bread

6 tomatos

6 mangos (yep - those funny shaped things are mangos)

1 honeydew melon

9 bananas

8 oranges

2 red peppers

7 red potatoes

10 pears

2 bunch's of broccoli (I got an extra for helping this morning)

1 spaghetti squash

3 cucumbers

1 head romaine lettuce

I joined Bountiful Baskets co-op. They deliver every 2 weeks. There are currently 5 delivery sites with several more coming (Provo/Orem and another one in West Valley). If you'd like to see one in your neck of the woods and are willing to manage a site, contact Bountiful Baskets to see about getting a site set up.

Kraft online printable coupons, Jennie-O and Bountiful Baskets

Here are a couple of great offers to take advantage of.

The first one is from Kraft. Click on this link to take you to the page where you can print up to $50 worth of Kraft coupons. There are a limited number available, so I would take advantage of this soon. Remember you can print these twice. Once you've selected them and printed them the first time, hit the back button and refresh your page and they should print a second time.

The second offer is by Jennie-O. If your a Biggest Loser fan - the finale is tonight and Jennie-O has been a big sponsor of the show. They will be offering a $5 coupon on their website tonight when the show airs. There are only $25,000 available. Click on this link to take you to their site. Thanks PYP for the info....

Lastly, if you're interested in signing up for a fruit/veggie basket from Bountiful Baskets Co-op, the ordering starts today, and pickup is 5/16/09 (every 2 weeks). Slots go quickly so run - don't walk. If you'd like more information about this co-op, click on this link for additional details. (Update - I've always ordered on Tuesday's. I tried at about 10:00 am this morning and was unable to register. I will keep you posted as to when I can get in. I've sent the website a note requesting information.)

(2nd update - I was finally able to get in (about 1:00 pm) and it looks like they have a few more pick up sites available. There is still Brigham City, Clearfield, Roy and now they've added a site in Pleasant View and one in West Point. )

Mars Real Chocolate Relief Act (free chocolate)

Visit this site every Friday through September for a chance to get a Free* Real Chocolate coupon for your favorite Mars product below. If it’s Mars, you know it’s Real Chocolate.

Sounds good to me. I missed it yesterday (I'm obviously blogging about it a little too late), but it gave me a spot to fill out my email and they will remind me to go in and register next Friday.

Hey - I'm all about free chocolate!

Grocery Shopping and Dumb Mistakes

I'll admit, I made not 1, not 2, but 3 stupid mistakes shopping yesterday. I have no idea where my head was, but it certainly wasn't on shopping.

First - here's what I got and then I'll point out my mistakes.

1 bag Albertsons pretzels

1 bag Santitas corn chips

1 bag Albertsons potato chips

8 cans Hunts Spaghetti sauces (mistake #1)

2 pkg of Mission tortilla's (mistake #2)

4 pkgs Albertsons Au Jus mix

4 pkgs Albertsons brown gravy mix

1 pkg Chocolate/Banana mix

1 pkg Orange mix

1 gallon Albertsons orange juice

2 loaves Grandma Sycamore bread

1 pkg Albertsons hamburger buns

2 Betty Crocker cake mixes

2 cans Betty Crocker frosting (birthday season at my house)

1 pkg Twizzlers

1 pkg Gummy Lifesavers

2 Oscar Mayer Deli Creations sandwiches

6 boxes Kellogs Poptarts (mistake #3)

6 Glaceau Vitamin waters

6 Yoplait yogurts

1 pkg Sushi (California rolls)

1 pkg Oreos

2 Chef Boyardee meals

1, 8 pk of Coke

2 pkgs Albertsons 1lb bacon

I still did pretty well on price. I paid $80.47 and saved $57.72. I had 2 $5 off coupons from my last shopping trip to Albertsons and I had another $5 off the purchase of $30 coupon that was mailed to me. So right there, that was a good chunk of savings.

Here's where I went wrong.

Mistake #1 - I failed to cut the coupon out of the paper making the Hunts Spaghetti Sauce $.88 rather than the $1.00 each that I paid for them.

Mistake #2 - Again, I failed to cut the coupon out of the paper for the Mission Tortilla's. On top of that, I only half read the coupon. I saw the word Medium on the coupon and on the ad and automatically picked up two packages. When I got home, I realized I purchased some very large quantities of tortilla's - see for yourself.....I'm glad these freeze well.

Mistake #3 - Again, it was not cutting out the coupon from the paper.

I could blame this on the cashiers (they usually know me and just ring them up with a coupon they have on hand), but that wouldn't be fair. It was my fault and I failed to catch it before leaving the store at midnight last night. I probably could have saved another $5-$7 if I had done what I should've and cut out the coupons.

Oh well - we all live and learn, I just wanted to show that even I make mistakes when I grocery shop. Lets chalk this up to a learning experience.

Free Arby's Iced FruiTea on May 6th (National Beverage Day)

I've mentioned this before that I signed up with Arbys to get special deals. I got one today. All you have to do is say "I'm parched. FruiTea me," on May 6th and you'll get to pick from Passion Fruit, Mandarin Peach, Diet Peach and Diet Blackberry.

Personally, I'm not much of a tea drinker, but I may just swing by for a yummy combo meal and cola drink. Gotta love the Arby's!

My newest pick of fresh fruits and veggies (Co-op)

I have to admit, this is so fun to do. I wasn't sure I would "love" all this fresh produce, but let me tell ya - I do. I love knowing that I have this stuff around to make side dishes or to add to the main dish that I'm preparing for dinner on any given night. It used to be "work" for me to try and come up with a healthy side dish and now it's so easy. I would never go to the grocery store and just buy all the stuff I got today. But now that I have it, it makes cooking for my family a lot more fun.

So here's a picture of what I got today.

7 pink lady apples

8 plums

3 red onions

9 tomatoes on a vine

1 container of blackberries

1 cantaloupe

1 mini watermelon

1 bunch of bananas (7 total)

1 head Romaine lettuce

2 bunches of spinach

2 heads broccoflower

1 bunch of green grapes (above the lettuce and spinach)

11 carrots

(My extras for showing up early to help were 1 extra broccoflower, several extra carrots and an 1 extra bunch of spinach)

I was very pleased with my last pickup, I can't wait to dig into my new produce. I remembered my gloves this time, I also picked up a sturdy basket to carry all my yummy stuff and I arrived a little earlier this time to add some additional help. Again, I benefitted for arriving early with a couple of extras in my basket.

Okay - now for the really exciting news. Bountiful Baskets will be adding a few new sites. One for sure is Syracuse, UT and the other I think was Orem/Provo area. I was not given the exact dates on these new sites opening, but will keep my blog updated as I get information. Remember, if you want a site to open in your area, you need to be willing to volunteer and have a decent number of people who would be interested. Bountiful Baskets is listening - contact them and let them know you want to see this in your area.