I just returned from Kroger, where I happened to find organic, hormone- and antibiotic-free milk, for 2 dollars. And this wasn't the little single serving carton size, this was a whole gallon. So I will be drinking a whole lot of milk in the next 6 days. (I do plan on freezing some for baking and cooking.)

On a side note, I've heard that the above-mentioned variety of milk is much better for you than the regular kind, but my husband made a good point: Straight from the cow milk would have hormones as well, since the cow produces them naturally in order to lactate. So my question is, what is the big deal about cow's milk being "hormone-free"? Is it because they are artificial and worse for you than natural hormones (I'm not sure if that's true or not) or is being hormone-free a claim that organic companies make in order to sell more milk?

This isn't enough to stop me from buying it from time to time. I'm just curious.

I saw Meredith's post today about being in a frugal rut, and I know exactly what she means! I've been in quite a rut the past few months, especially with frugal grocery shopping and cooking. I mentioned my cooking rut before, which I still haven't gotten over. Getting up the motivation for coupon-clipping, price-comparing and self-denying is taking its toll. Grocery shopping isn't fun anymore, and I haven't even been to CVS in weeks!

I used to spend a lot of time coming up with cheap meals, using coupons, and buying the cheapest meats, but that usually left us with meals we didn't want to eat, or worse, hungry. Then we'd run to the nearest Chick-fil-A and splurge. I was satisfied with my grocery expenditure, but the money was still leaking out from other places.

This is where we are at right now. I'm burned out from frugal grocery shopping, and we eat out much more than I care to admit. I really, really want to keep spending less money, but I also want to spend more time making wonderful meals with fewer processed ingredients and more local and organic items. It's a hard line to balance. Right now free-range beef and chicken are way out of my price range. I would love to buy half a cow, but I don't have the space for a deep freezer. I would love to grow my own produce, but having 4 square feet of soil on a balcony will not feed a family of 2, no matter how much I try. Produce seems to be hard to find in my farmer's market (I believe since I get there so late.)

I'm hoping this weekend I can sit down and organize my thoughts to come up with a strategy. I'm planning on making a master list of all the recipes Stuart likes, along with several quick and easy ones I'm eager to try. From this, I'll look over sales flyers for meat that's on sale at the grocery store, then pick out the recipes that seem to fit with the meat selections. I'll by the veggies I need from the farmer's market, and pick up whatever else I need at the grocery store as well. I'm hoping this way will balance my desire to cook well and cook cheaply.

Since this is a holiday weekend for me (no work on Monday!) I have no excuse for my slack-offishness of late.

I have been inspired in the last month by many recent posts about meal planning and supermarket savings tips and thought I would give them a try.

First, I found these recent posts (see the first in the series here) from Like Merchant Ships where she plans a whole menu based on loss leader items at her local grocery store. (These are the well-discounted meat and produce items that grocery stores reduce the price in order to draw people into their store. They are usually prominently featured in their weekly ads.) It looked so easy! It makes so much sense to plan a menu based on items on hand or on sale at the store, rather than planning the grocery store trip around the meals.

After reordering my meal planning, I used shopping tips from Crystal. I thought I'd try my hand at couponing, but Kroger doesn't take printed ones from the Internet. So, I spent money and actually bought a newspaper. I never thought that I would bother to do this, but Sunday evening I trotted over to CVS to pick up my very own copy of the Houston Chronicle. I only had to fork over $1.75. I was thinking I would be fortunate if I found anything good at all, but I found about $7.00 worth of coupons to use this week alone, including a completely FREE, don't need to buy anything else box of Electrisol Dishwashing tabs (worth about $4.29). That was worth the price of admission alone.


Here's a run down of my purchases:

Kroger: Retail price $18.40
Card discount $3.25
Coupons $5.00 catalina from previous purchase at Kroger
$5.00 from Pillsbury Bake-Off entry
Total spent $5.15

Randall's: Retail price $16.45
Card discount $7.70
Coupons $4.29 for Electrisol Tabs
Total spent $4.46

CVS: Retail price $ 34.34
Card discount $7.90
Coupons $2.75 for various products
ECB $9.47
Total spent $15.39
Plus, $9.49 back in EB (my $5.99 ECB would not work, so technically I have $15.48 in ECB!)

Total: Retail price: $69.19
Out of pocket spent: $25.00 (that was not intentional, I swear!)

My favorite find was the $1.00 bag of Starbucks Winter Blend coffee in the bargain bin at Randall's. This unfortunately didn't make it into my picture (I left it on my counter!). The kitty is playing with the plastic baggie holding the tomato. She loves plastic baggies.

This probably won't be a typical week for me, since I had those two $5.00 coupons for Kroger, and I didn't need to purchase meat. I love the strategy of using coupons for prices already reduced with the store card. Being creative with the loss leader meats and produce is another wonderful tip to save money. My favorite of all has to be CVS and their Extra Care Bucks system, which I've been using for about a month now. If you're not familiar with this, click here. It's actually very easy once you get the hang of it.

I know to many it may seem ridiculous to spend so much time trying to save money that it seems like I might be Ebenezer Scrooge! And I know that many people simply don't have the time or desire to shop this way. But for me, not only do I enjoy the game of saving money at the grocery store, I love that I'm being a better steward of the money we have. To me, I'm not being miserly. Since I'm spending less on groceries, it means the more I have to give away. I love how Crystal can spend $35 on groceries and have food left over to donate. It makes all the thriftiness worthwhile.

I found this recipe in a recent Taste of Home magazine, and have fallen in love with them! Hubby actually prefers these to regular chocolate chip cookies. Not only that, but this recipe is also cheap to make (it's in the bargain meals section). Taste of Home estimates that it would cost $3.60 to make the recipe according to directions (which I'm not actually sure is cheaper than regular ones or not), but one could easily save more by finding items on sale.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 Tbls molasses
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup quick cooking oats (I use regular oats; they work fine)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (6 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips

In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar. Beat in molasses, egg, and vanilla. Combine the flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt: gradually add to creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.

Roll into 1 1/2 inch balls.* Place 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack. Makes ~1 1/2 dozen cookies

*After forming the balls, I freeze them in freezer bags, since the 2 of us cannot finish a whole pan of cookies by ourselves. I pull out however many frozen cookies I want to bake, and extend the baking time by 3-4 minutes. They still come out great!

So I've been meaning to highlight some of the sites that I especially like that are on our sidebar. These are rather recent websites and blogs I've come across, and I am eager to share them!

DesignTalk: Home Design Help
I came across this website/blog when I was looking for help with my living room, and I really like it! They answer questions about home design and have a lot of great ideas. They are clear, easy to understand, and illustrate their ideas with pictures which is nice for visual people like me.

PDF Online
Do you have a file that you need converted to a PDF, but don't have Adobe Acrobat Pro? Well this site is a great resource for you! It's fast, easy, and best of all - free. They do a variety of documents (including Microsoft Word), and there's no registration necessary. I used this service especially when I was searching for a job two years ago.

DivShare
Since I work in the printing industry, I am often having to transfer really large files to and from clients. When something is too big to email, I recommend DivShare to them. No complaints yet!

What the Font?!
With a clever name, this site has been very useful to me as a designer! I can upload an image with the font I want to identify, and they come back with their options. If you don't have an image, check out Identifont for a similar service.

ChiliTried
For those who are familiar with ChiliHead, she now has a new site with product reviews! I especially enjoyed her review of a just-for-redheads makeup brand. :-) I can imagine this site will be a valuable resource as I continue to learn about how to be a homemaker.

Number Gossip
Okay, this site is just for fun. :-) You type in a number, and it tells you all the cool things about that number. You might appreciate this more if you are a math lover.

Finding Contentment in the Suburbs
Started by Lindsey from Enjoy the Journey fame, a blog about avoiding the common pitfall of always wanting more-more-more money. This site comes at a perfect time for me, as my husband and I are approaching (albeit slowly!) that same quandary. It's not about get-rich-quick, but about being content with what God's given you.

Frugal Living Journal
While we're on the subject of finances, I have enjoyed this website which gives practical tips of living frugally. Being a good steward of God's resources and being content with what He's given to you go hand-in-hand.

Happy Tails
Animal lover that I am, I was excited to see that Mrs. B has a blog devoted just to animals! She already has posted some great advice about dogs, and I look forward to future posts. It makes me want to start a blog about my own pets...

Living in Peru
Okay, I'm not sure if ANY of our readers will find this interesting, but here is a site all about living in Peru - AND it's in English! As most of you know, I grew up as a missionary kid in Peru so I always enjoy finding resources like this. :-) You can read my 10 Things About Peru here to learn more about this beautiful country.

That's all for now! Happy reading. :-) And if you have a site you recommend, let us know!

Life is settling down a little bit again, so I hope to have a few good posts up soon. Work has been very busy the past recently, but things look like they will quiet down again very soon.

I've been meaning to post on several happenings at home, but since I keep putting it off, I'll throw everything into one post.

. . . I still haven't gotten around to cleaning out my cabinets, but I'm hoping to tackle this project this weekend. I'd like to get rid of several appliances I never use to free up my cabinet space, so that I can have more room to buy some bulk products (like flour, sugar, etc.), since I go through these quickly, and they tend to be cheaper in bulk . . .

. . . I recently picked up the Tightwad Gazette from my library--I absolutely love this book and may try to find it at a local used bookstore. In it are wonderful tips and advice for living the frugal life, which she explains is not depriving oneself, but being a better steward of available resources. As a celebrate a year of abundance, I hope to implement some of her recommendations at home. . . .

. . . I've found another way to put my sewing skills to good use. Hubby and I have been needing coasters for our living room, and the ones we have seen at Target and other places have been about $12 for a set of 4, and these were the ugly cheap coasters. I decided to make a set of 8 from my fabric stash, using this pattern. I'll have to post pictures later, since I've been lazy and have not gotten around to taking pictures . . .

. . . And, finally, I want to share that my coffee habit has been harder to break than I originally thought. I was hoping to rely on a morning cup of tea to get me through the day, since I have a limitless supply. Instead, I still buy coffee most every morning. I'm still trying to cut back and enjoy the tea that I have!

Last night, while taking out the trash for my dear husband, I spotted them--4 beautiful picture frames, leaning against the side of the dumpster. I inspected them closely, not sure that someone would be willing to throw the beautiful frames away. But there they were, and in almost pristine condition. One was taken apart, but all the pieces were there, and the glass for it was all in one piece. I brought them home.

All 4 are the same style--very simple mahogany-colored wood, about 11"x13" in size. These would cost $30 dollars a piece at a home decor store. I think I can make a gorgeous arrangement with them above our couch, filling them with black and white pictures of my husband and me. I want to make our apartment a home, not just a place to sleep and keep our stuff.

I've not always been frugal--in fact, if you had talked to me a month ago, I would have been convinced that the best thing is to just go ahead and spend the money on stuff I "need," instead of being creative and finding cheap solutions for things that are really actually "wants." For me, this encompassed everything from clothes, to shoes, to home stuff, to the best and healthiest food. I was so focused on looking great, having a home that could grace the cover of Southern Living, and all the other "joys" that money can bring (meaning earthly joys that only satisfy for the present)--that I was neglecting my life with my heavenly Father. God has since convicted me that we should try to be more careful with the money He has given us. My husband has forever been encouraging me to focus less on the material and more on the eternal. I hope it's finally clicked. I've been so focused on money and what it can do for me, instead of focusing on the greatness of our Father.

I know in my heart that it will still be a struggle for me to focus on God and not money. I'm far from perfect, but I know that I'm a baby step closer to surrendering my all to Him.

"Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless." Ecclesiates 5:10