Surprise!

I received this from my sister and so I am now passing this on to all my lucky viewers!

So here's how it works:The first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive a gift from me during this year. When and what will be a surprise. There's a small catch though...Post this same thing on your own blog and then come back and leave a comment telling me you're in. Fun, huh? Remember, only the first 3 comments receive the gift!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a class with my mom and sister in-law on coupons. I have never done coupons because they never seemed worth it and you can always by the no name brand products for less than a name brand product with a coupon. Anyways, this class explained how to save money using coupons and when they were the most beneficial.

One of the ways to really save money was to use coupons for in-store promotions. Albertsons had one of these promotions this week, and so I thought I would try this coupon thing out. So I spent two days printing coupons, reading blogs, and organizing my execution of purchases.



On the day of my trip to Albertsons I organized all of my coupons in order of which trip I was going to use them and figured out the best deal. You had to purchase ten qualifying products in order to get $10 off your next purchase. So I lined out which ten products I was going to purchase, in which order, and had the coupons for each item.



I made 5 trips through the check out line, with Chelsea who kindly went with me. By the time I was done I had:



10 boxes of cereal

4 Pillsbury Grands! Biscuits

6 boxes of Fruit Roll Ups

5 boxes of Fruit Gushers

2 boxes of granola bars

3 bags of Cheerios snack mix

1 bag of chex mix

1 gallon of milk

16 cans Progresso soup

4 boxes of Toaster Streudels



And I only spent $25 including tax. I was so proud of myself for all the money I saved. Yes, I did buy some items that we don't normally buy, but we don't buy them becuase they are too expensive and we don't "need" them. Also, I tried to make sure I didn't over-buy and I think I accomplished that.



So, I guess coupons are worth it!

Share the Wealth

I am not sure if this is going to work or not, but I am going to try. Caleb found this coupon for TGIF's for a buy one meal get one meal free. We went there last night and they told us that you could print the coupon as many times as you would like. We did use the coupon last night and there were no catches. The coupon does expire on the first of March and it does say that you can only use one coupon per visit, but they let us use two coupons for two different checks. Anyways, we both ordered a meal and I got a salad and our total was $16. It obviously could be cheaper if you order a sandwich or something other than one of their dinners. So hopefully this works to where you can all print the coupon from this blog. We'll see! If you click on the coupon, it will open in another page and you should be able to print it from there.

Valentine's Day!

Heart Shaped Pizza from Idaho Pizza Company: $13.78

Dr. Pepper: $1.39

Tikki Punch: $0.89

Table Cloth: $1.00

Rose Petals: $1.00

Having my boys (Caleb, Trenton, and Gavin) tell me why they love me and giving me hugs and kisses all day:

PRICELESS!

Here are some pics from our night out/in.



We got really dressed up! I with no make-up and Caleb not shaven or hair done :(


The boys kept saying thank you for the wonderful dinner! They loved drinking from their Valentine's cups.

Addison enjoying her first and very own piece of pizza!

Valentine's Cookies

The boys and I decided to make some cookies for all the people we were going to visit for Valentine's. We baked them on one day and decorated them the next day. The boys really got into the cooking. About half way through cutting out the cookies, they decided that they needed to get out their aprons, chef hat, and rolling pin (Gavin's Christmas gift from Aunty) It was so cute!

This is the final result of our cookie making.

If you look closely there is a finger swipe through a couple of them. It didn't take much to figure out who did that! Gavin took a finger lick of nine of the cupcakes. Good think we cooked 24! We packaged the cookies and cupcakes into these really cute boxes I got at the dollar store and delivered them to some family members.

Fun at the Cabin

Last weekend, we went up to the cabin. We went up Saturday morning and stayed until Monday afternoon. Trevor and Christina met us in McCall on Saturday and we walked around and looked at all of the snow sculptures. It was beautiful! Sadly, a lot of the sculptures had melted and so they weren't as gorgeous as they may have been that first week.

We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and playing in the snow. Every year, Caleb builds an amazing "slide" for us all to go sledding down. He did not fail us this year! The boys had so much fun. They just kept going down and down again. The weather was wonderful and so they played outside for as long as we would let them!

Little Addison had fun, as well. She didn't get to go sledding, but she sure enjoyed watching everyone.