Monday, July 13, 2009

So, here I am Christina, age 28.. mother of 2 daughters, Lexi age 9 and Shiloh age 7. I am also a wife, bandaider, nurse, cook, maid, taxi cab driver, doctor and dentist taker-er(hehe I love made up words by my girls) and everything in between. I do all of the housewife chores, although, my girls are at the age where they are old enough to help me out. Secretly, I don't mind at all doing these things. They keep me busy and that makes a day go by fast. Now, that being said, sometimes I do have my "lazy" days. I do, however, make my girls do a few of their own little chores such as cleaning their OWN rooms and taking their laundry to the basement. Other than that, they are allowed to be kids and enjoy their time off of school. One of the things that I get the greatest pleasure out of doing is grocery shopping. I KNOW, some people may hate the thought of going and doing all of the shopping, but me I love it. It is not only a time where I can go by myself while my husband stays home with the girls, but it's a time I feel like I get a natural high anticipating the sales and savings that I can come home and brag to them that I found!! Sounds silly, but all in all I'm otherwise a pretty boring person. Hey, at least I can laugh at myself and be honest about it. My days of bars and big keg parties are long gone.

Monday July 13, 2009 started the allyou grocery challenge. This is almost like waiting on Christmas for me. I get to put all of my experience with money saving and meal planning to work for a chance to win $1,000.00 shopping card?? I never would have imagined this day would come! YAY!

Every Sunday morning, I get up with my coffee and make some sort of good breakfast for my girls. They get so excited that Sunday is not cereal (again) or anything that comes out of a toaster. Now, don't get me wrong, the girls love poptarts and waffles, but nothing compares to momma's pancakes. My oldest daughter, Lexi, is 9. She is a great foodie at her age already. She wants to know the ins and outs of how to cook and also to save money. We are raising ourselves an otherwise old fashioned girl in the 21st century and it makes me proud. She even wrote a poem this past school year about my pancakes. That was great. "the smell, the warm pancakes when she bites into them covered in strawberries and warm syrup". It was quite the emotional poem considering she does savor every last bite like she is the best critic to walk this side of the Ohio River. After breakfast, I sit with my coffee, newspaper, scissors and coupon binder to go on a hunt like no other. I sometimes sit for hours going through every ad to not only find the greatest deals on groceries but also deals that I cannot pass up, even if I have to drive a few minutes out of my norm. I always coordinate my coupons and ads together to get the best savings.

Example of the best savings I can think of are deals that involve buying groceries but finding the deal that coordinates with them. This past Sunday in the Meijer ad, if you bought any combination of kelloggs, sunshine, keeber or eggo products equaling $10.00 you would automatically get $10.00 off any backpack. That is a great deal, considering I have 2 daughters going in the 2nd and 4th grade. I myself, had coupons for all of the products. I purchased 3 boxes of kelloggs cereals, 2 boxes of poptarts and a box of eggo pancakes. (I know these aren't "momma's pancakes", but the work during the week for a craving.) The poptarts and cereals were advertised 5 for $9.00, to which I had a coupon for $2.00, $1.00, $1.00, .55 & .55. The first backpack I bought was $12.00. All in all I spent $8.78 for all of the products and even had a coupon for $1.00 off of milk when I bought one of the cereals. Alone, you can barely get cereal and milk if it isn't on sale for that price. So, I killed alot of birds with one stone that day. I plan on going back this week again before Saturday to get the deal again for my other daughter. The next deal I was very happy with was Meijer had ground beef for $1.50 prepacked pound and A1 for $2.49 (which is a great deal in itself considering it is pretty expensive when not on sale). I had a coupon for $2.00 off of A1 and the A1 bottle had a $1.00 off coupon off meat. Well, that made my total for a pound of lean ground beef 80/20 and a bottle of A1 for $1.00. We use alot of A1 in my house for fries and my husband and daughters like it on pot roast instead of gravy.

I take alot of pride in my shopping habits and my husband has accepted the fact that I am going to the grocery and may be gone for 4 hours if needed. I grab my coupon filer, tote which carries the filer and ads, Ipod and I'm ready to roll after my morning of coupon clipping.

This week, starting out I already have quite alot of pantry items and freezer items to start out with. I usually only go to the grocery store one time weekly for majority purchases but have to go at least once midweek for small purchases such as milk, oj, bananas or coffee creamer ( I HAVE to have my coffee!).

Monday morning, I started the challenge. It has been easy as every other week already is. I already have a pantry in my basement for items that cannot fit in my pantry in the kitchen. I admit, when cereal goes on sale and with the plus of the backpack last week, I have 33 boxes of cereal in my basement unopened. It's like shopping when the girls want to open a new box! Monday mornings breakfast meal consisted of me having rice krispies (my favorite) with a sliced banana, milk and of course...coffee. My daughters had cookie crisp cereal with a sliced banana and milk. I should go ahead and say, it wasn't breakfast for them. It was brunch, considering they decided to sleep in after a party we had Saturday night was a LATE one, so they had to catch up on their "beauty" sleep. Here's where I let you know my oldest daughter is a beauty queen in her eyes, my youngest just rolls her eyes at her sister. Complete opposites. Girly girl and daddy's lil tomboy. I can't say that I wasn't the mixture because I was both them at one time or another. It just makes me laugh when I borrowed my daughter's digital camera, which is much better than mine might I say, and looked to see that she obviously thinks she is a beauty queen with 130 pictures of the emotional journey of herself.. I laughed until I cried almost.

Lunch consisted of leftover pasta salad for me with a jello pudding cup and coolwhip, satisfying and yummy especially the banana chocolate sundae! Believe me, I say leftover pasta salad, I mean ALOT of it. So, hopefully I won't be getting sick of it too quickly.

Back to the day. I had a doctor appointment that afternoon and we arrived home in time for dinner. Sunday night, we had fried chicken breasts with chicken gravy and mashed potatoes with sweet italian rolls. So, last night with 2 remaining BIG chicken breasts, I reheated them in the oven and made chicken sandwiches with cheese and honey mustard, grilled veggies from the party on Saturday night consisting of broccoli, baby carrots, red pepper strips and onions, and cottage cheese. I found out at my doctor appointment that I have gained a few pounds in the past 6 weeks, so I am trying to cut back on a few non-essentials for me. Perfect timing I guess when it comes to this challenge. I opted out on the chicken and stayed to the grilled veggies, quite a serving though, but I know that they were healthy and the fiber kept me full, or was it the gas from the broccoli? Either way, I was full for the night.

My daughters enjoyed a jell-o pudding cup, sugar free with cool whip, which I might add that meijer had on sale Sunday 2 jell-0 pudding packs equals free cool whip, plus I had a $1.00 off coupon, so not too bad for $3.00 for 12 pudding cups and coolwhip. Makes for a healthy minded dessert that they like (and so do I.)

Now, I must admit, with this challenge is a challenge within itself. My husband, Chuck, works outside all day long. So summertime is hard for him. It's warm out and he doesn't have a refrigerator to keep food in at work. Just a cooler. If anyone has went out with a cooler and a sandwich they know that sometimes a mush ham sandwich is not all the crave in the heat. So, he decides to opt out on food most days but buys quite a few polar pops in the day to stay hydrated. I do make a cooler for him with about 7 drinks daily, but the ice melts quickly in the sun. The total for our Monday allowance of $25.00 per person weekly is only at a mere $1.48 for 2 polar pop drinks. Not too shabby, if I say so myself.